Tag Archives: private property rights

Part I of II by Claudio Grass It might sound like an old-fashioned notion, the sort of thing that one reads about in period novels and romantically sighs “oh, the good old days”. It might sound like old timely advice, perhaps of the kind that our grandparents would have given to our parents: “It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes, even if you lose everything, as long as you still have your honor”. Sure. But in our cynical, jaded and largely pedestrian day and age, the idea of...

Switzerland’s long-standing and well-deserved reputation as one of the last bastions of individual and financial liberty has been recently vindicated and reaffirmed. It was a much-needed boost of confidence for Swiss citizens like myself who had come to worry over the last years whether the governmental trespasses of our neighboring nations and the way they rule their people might one day come to influence or even corrupt our own system of governance and our way of life. This...

Over the last two years, we’ve all witnessed state abuses of power and extreme overreaches the likes of which many average citizens had never imagined they’d see in their own lifetimes. This caused a great part of the body politic in many Western nations to revisit their previously held beliefs about what is and isn’t possible for their governments to do and to question whether there really is such a thing as going “too far” or whether anyone in the political class is subject to the...

Interview with Patrick Barron – Part II of II Claudio Grass (CG): This crisis has shaken a lot of industries and core functions of the global economy and international trade. How do you assess its impact on the most important part of the machine, the banking system? Do you see risks there that investors should be worrying about? Patrick Barron (PB): Banks are financial intermediaries. They take deposits and make loans. That has been going on for millennia. What we...

Interview with Patrick Barron – Part II of II Claudio Grass (CG): This crisis has shaken a lot of industries and core functions of the global economy and international trade. How do you assess its impact on the most important part of the machine, the banking system? Do you see risks there that investors should be worrying about? Patrick Barron (PB): Banks are financial intermediaries. They take deposits and make loans. That has been going on for millennia. What we call banking...

Economic, social and human cost Beyond privacy, there is also widespread concern over the economic impact of a fully cashless system. For one thing, as citizens slowly become exclusively dependent on big banks and card companies the systemic risk to the wider economy spikes. But it goes further than that too. Without the option to keep some cash outside the banking system and retain some degree of financial flexibility, banks have the potential to essentially keep their clients hostage....