Tag Archives: Politics

Interview with Daniel Model: Part I of II During these absurd and uncertain times, it is easy to be consumed by the 24-hour news cycle, to be constantly distracted by the latest news and updates, and eventually to lose track of what really matters. We are indeed facing unprecedented challenges and we are witnessing a historic turning point in the relationship of the individual citizen to the state and to centralized power in general. Thus, one cannot be blamed for the urge to...

Gold has been used as money (or a store of value) for thousands of years. It’s always been valuable to humans, for some reason, and it’s withstood everything history has thrown at it. Silver too. Fiat money is what we use today. It’s essentially money created out of thin air, on a spreadsheet, by banks and the government via monetary policy, and it has absolutely nothing backing it. This is why currencies come and go, such as the Zim Dollar which lasted a few decades....

Hildebrand had to concede defeat having failed to generate enough support for his candidacy. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer Former Swiss National Bank (SNB) chairman, Philipp Hildebrand, has pulled out of the race to become the next secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Hildebrand announced that he had withdrawn his candidacy on Twitter on Thursday evening. “It was a privilege and an honour to have been Switzerland’s...

The Conference on Afghanistan on November 28, 2018. With the exception of a few organisations and institutions that continue to operate in person, such as the UN Human Rights Council, which is currently conducting its Universal Periodic Review process, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the WHO and some permanent missions to the United Nations, most day-to-day business and multilateral activities are conducted online. March 2020 marked a major...

Interview with Theodore Dalrymple After a year of lockdowns, social isolation, financial uncertainty and extreme political polarization, a lot of people are finding it very difficult to remain optimistic and to see a way back to some kind of normalcy. While the economic, social and political impact of the covid crisis can be easily identified and frequently discussed, the unseen, psychological pressures that millions of people are struggling with often go...

Interview with Theodore Dalrymple After a year of lockdowns, social isolation, financial uncertainty and extreme political polarization, a lot of people are finding it very difficult to remain optimistic and to see a way back to some kind of normalcy. While the economic, social and political impact of the covid crisis can be easily identified and frequently discussed, the unseen, psychological pressures that millions of people are struggling with often go undiscussed. Even when...

Increasingly over the past decade, but infinitely more so over the last year, we’ve been hearing politicians, mainstream media and all kinds of experts urging, and often sternly demanding, citizens, voters and taxpayers to “follow the science”. This demand usually accompanies various new policies, regulations and mandates. Very often, those tend to have passed into law with very little public debate and most of the time, they require some type of sacrifice on the part of the...

e-id-referendum.ch Lawyer and parliamentarian Sibel Arslan explains why she is against the proposed new law on digital identity (eID) and why rejecting it would be an opportunity for digitisation. The government and parliament have drafted a national law on digital identity to regulate the identification of people on the internet. The vote booklet advises that the law would provide a sound basis for simple, safe and government-approved digital identities. On March 7,...

Interview with Karim Taleb Part II of II Claudio Grass (CG): Part and parcel of that same institutional “strategy”, especially in its current form, is the idea that deficits and debt don’t matter. Basically, after 2020, it can be argued that we’re all Modern Monetary Theorists now, as nobody in any position of authority has expressed any real concern over the actual costs of all this “free money”. Given the undeniable political advantages of such a “Magic Money Tree”, do you think...

Interview with Karim Taleb Part I of II:  A lot has been said and written about the impact of the Covid crisis on the global economy and on the prospects of a strong recovery in 2021. Especially since the start of the year, there seems to be a consensus among government officials, institutional leaders and mainstream market analysts and pundits, pointing to an extremely positive outlook. And yet, many investors and market observers who understand monetary history, who have...