Tag Archives: Politics

Swiss resident’s are regularly reminded of the large financial gap is Switzerland’s state pension system. Despite this, several attempts at reform have failed to gain sufficient support. Those that have still leave a large shortfall. On 24 January 2023, UBS published four additional reform scenarios. Only the fourth, with a life expectancy adjusted retirement age of 68.2 years eliminates the current projected shortfall. Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.comMany nations have large...

Like many governments across the world, Switzerland’s federal government is spending more than it collects. Extraordinary spending on Covid and refugees has pushed Switzerland’s finances into the red, a situation Karin Keller-Sutter, the current finance minister, hopes to eliminate by 2024. Photo by Louis on Pexels.comDuring its meeting on 25 January 2023, the Federal Council made preliminary decisions to ensure a balanced budget in 2024 and beyond. It hatched a plan to boost revenue and...

Part II of II by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland The blame game  As we know from every crisis in human history, and especially the more recent ones, the most important item on any politician’s agenda is to find someone else to blame for it. It can be a foreign foe in the form of a hostile state, it can be an “enemy within”, usually long-standing political opponents and their supporters, or it can even be some invisible villain like a virus. To the politician, it...

Part I of II by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland The middle class in the West has been shrinking for years, but after the covid crisis and especially after the inflation explosion, whatever was left of it is now basically under threat of extinction. This has immense sociopolitical implications. When any society, at any point in history, becomes divided into haves and have nots, instability and dangerous tensions are quick to follow. The decline of Reason and respect for...

It’s that time again when the US government has to prepare itself for an internal battle to raise the debt ceiling so it can meet various obligations. This is a merry dance that has been danced before, as we mention below. For sure, every time it happens fewer and fewer people are convinced of the trustworthiness of the US dollar. This combined with the recent announcement by Saudi Arabia of its willingness to consider trading in currencies other than the US Dollar...

On 9 January 2023, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) announced it had made a loss of CHF 132 billion over the course of 2022. Despite the near certainty of the losses and the resulting absence of SNB payments to cantons, a number of cantons included the extra revenue in their budgets, reported RTS. © David Taljat | Dreamstime.comThe SNB has made payments to cantons for around a decade and so adding the windfall had become routine. However, some might argue the last decade of SNB profits has...

Interview with Jeff Deist, President Mises Institute, Auburn, USA Division, friction and polarization have been on the rise in the West for at least a decade, but the escalation we saw during the “covid years” was especially worrying. Over the last year, this “worry” has become a truly pressing concern, even a real emergency one might argue, as inflationary pressures and an actual war were added to the mix of political and social tensions. Going into 2023, there are...

Interview with Jeff Deist, President Mises Institute, Auburn, USA Division, friction and polarization have been on the rise in the West for at least a decade, but the escalation we saw during the “covid years” was especially worrying. Over the last year, this “worry” has become a truly pressing concern, even a real emergency one might argue, as inflationary pressures and an actual war were added to the mix of political and social tensions.   Going into 2023, there are many...

Even though what we saw during the height of the pandemic was shocking enough for most people, what we saw during 2022 was arguably even more astonishing. During the lockdowns and quarantines and the forced business shutdowns, the sheer number of all the rights and freedoms that were coercively “suspended”, as though that’s a thing one can do with true liberty, left so many fellow citizens in disbelief. However, what many people found even more horrifying was the way it was seemingly...

Even though what we saw during the height of the pandemic was shocking enough for most people, what we saw during 2022 was arguably even more astonishing. During the lockdowns and quarantines and the forced business shutdowns, the sheer number of all the rights and freedoms that were coercively “suspended”, as though that’s a thing one can do with true liberty, left so many fellow citizens in disbelief. However, what many people found even more horrifying...