Tag Archives: Switzerland

Overview: The dollar is firm. Rates are mostly higher and equities lower. The moves scored in the holiday-thin markets are at end of last year are being unwound. This does not appear complete yet. Geopolitical tensions remain high but do not seem to be having a direct market influence as both gold and oil are trading lower. Among the G10 currencies, sterling has been the most resilient today but nearly flat. Within the emerging market complex, the Hungarian forint...

Project Tourbillon, an initiative led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub Swiss Centre and supported by the Swiss National Bank (SNB), explored the feasibility of a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), finding that it is possible to implement a CBDC design that provides anonymity to the payer and which is scalable and secure. In a new report released in November 2023, BIS shares details of the project, outlining findings of their...

Overview: The US dollar is mixed today. The dollar-bloc currencies are firmer, while the euro and yen are softer. We had anticipated a recovery of the dollar on ideas that the market has too aggressively pushed down US rates, and pricing in more Fed easing with higher confidence than seems to be warranted by the recent data.  However, US rates have not recovered, but the dollar has.  Partly, this reflects that rates have fallen as faster if not faster elsewhere, and...

Part I of II by Claudio Grass For any reasonably well read adult, any amateur student of history or any responsible citizen for that matter, the idea that ”war is the health of the State” should be adjacent to a truism. After all, literally nobody benefits from violence and bloodshed apart from those at the heart of any State that is directly or indirectly involved and their cronies. In fact, the more horrific the violence and the more protracted the bloodshed, the greater the...

Part I of II by Claudio Grass For any reasonably well read adult, any amateur student of history or any responsible citizen for that matter, the idea that ”war is the health of the State” should be adjacent to a truism. After all, literally nobody benefits from violence and bloodshed apart from those at the heart of any State that is directly or indirectly involved and their cronies. In fact, the more horrific the violence and the more protracted the...

Dani Stüssi interview with Claudio Grass Over the last few years, the financial woes and daily pressures that have been unleashed upon the average citizen, saver and taxpayer have put the spotlight on money itself. Countless ordinary people who have otherwise never seriously pondered these questions, began to question basic principles like: what makes their paycheck shrink from month to month, what or who actually responsible of it and what, if anything, they can do to protect...

Overview: The dollar is mostly firmer against the G10 currencies and has been confined to tight ranges through the European morning. Outside of the China's deflation and Japan's monthly portfolio flow data that showed Japanese investors bought the most amount of US Treasuries (~$22 bln) in six months in September, the news stream is light. Most emerging market currencies are trading with a softer bias today. The Philippine peso is the strongest among the emerging...

The “Banking Stability” Expert Group that was formed following the failure of Credit Suisse has published its report (in German). I quote and add my own comments in brackets […]. Summary: Die staatlich unterstützte Übernahme der Credit Suisse durch die UBS im März 2023 hat eine gefährliche Situation schnell stabilisiert. Die Schweiz hat damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zur internationalen Finanzstabilität geleistet. Die Credit Suisse war am 19. März 2023 die erste global systemrelevante Bank...

While some banks have started experimenting with blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT), widespread migration to these systems are unlikely to occur due to a number of roadblocks, including regulatory and compliance challenges, the high costs of the endeavor, as well as uncertainties about the long-term benefits and potential disruption of the technology on existing business models, Benjamin Müller, an advisor on banking operations for the Swiss National...

Echo der Zeit, SRF, 12 May 2023. HTML with link to audio file. Implications of capital injections and liquidity assistance for the federal government, the SNB, and Switzerland.