Tag Archives: Politics

Why are profit margins persistently high? With decent earnings this quarter, corporate profits as a % of GDP will approach (maybe exceed) 10% again. That is abnormally high compared to the period 1960 to 2000. Margins actually started to rise in the mid-80s but really accelerated after 2000 and outside of the 2008 crisis have remained high. Why? What changed in 2000 to elevate corporate profits so much? Is this just...

Nicolas Maduro (blue shirt) at the tomb of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Santiago on August 15 (Keystone) Swiss firms have been cutting hundreds of jobs in long-established branch offices in Venezuela, as the oil-producing country experiences an economic and political crisis. “The disaster – economic, social, political and humanitarian – which is engulfing Venezuela with the government of [president] Nicolas...

The Swiss cabinet has approved an amended billing system for medical treatments aimed at creating more transparency and limiting a further increase in healthcare costs. The decision is expected to lead to annual savings of CHF470 million ($483 million) and a drop of about 1.5 percentage points in insurance fees for patients, according to Interior Minister Alain Berset. However, it falls short of initial proposals for...

Now that the possibility of a war between the US and North Korea seems just one harshly worded tweet away, and the window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution, as well as for the US stopping Kim Jong-Un from obtaining a nuclear-armed ICBM closing fast, analysts have started to analyze President Trump’s military options, what a war between the US and North Korea would look like, and what the global economic...

The country voted narrowly in 2009 to ban the building of minarets. (Keystone) Switzerland should take steps to ensure that people’s initiatives do not contravene international law, the United Nations Human Rights Committee says. It notably called for the repeal of a Swiss vote banning the construction of minarets. The recommendations, released Thursday, came after the fourth periodic review of Switzerland by the...

The information behind Italy’s request came from an earlier probe into Credit Suisse (Keystone) Italian financial crime investigators have asked the Swiss authorities for help in tracking down the beneficial owners of €6.7 billion (CHF7.4 billion) held in Switzerland. The information came to light during an investigation by the Milan authorities into the activities of Credit Suisse. In a statementexternal link issued on...

Swiss Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann on Tuesday expressed satisfaction with his two days of meetings with senior Trump administration officials, capping efforts to boost cooperation between Switzerland and the United States on education, jobs and trade. He also invited Ivanka Trump,  the daughter and adviser to US President Donald Trump, and other Trump administration officials to visit Switzerland so that...

An international meeting on transparency and exchange of tax data is underway in the Swiss city of Geneva. The five-day gathering of the Global Forum peer review group is to examine the implementation of so-called group requests and the issue of the identification of beneficial owners, according to the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters. “This meeting confirms that Switzerland supports the...

Le Matin. On 15 June 2017, one day after kicking off the job of collecting the signatures required to call a referendum, the text for a new plan to limit access to Switzerland’s job market was presented to the Swiss government. Before a Swiss popular vote or referendum can be launched 100,000 valid signatures must be collected within the space of 18 months. The text for this initiative calls for immigration to be halted when unemployment rises above 3.2%. The International Labour...

Companies like Amazon have been forced to review their global tax strategy in light of the BEPS probe (Keystone) Switzerland has officially agreed to a raft of measures to combat the tax avoidance tricks of multinational companies. More than 100 countries have pledged to tackle the so-called base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) shenanigans. Huge companies, such as Starbucks, Amazon and Fiat, have been publically...