Swiss Macro
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Swiss Trade Balance First half of 2017: Exports with record value
In the first half of 2017, both exports (+ 4.4%) and imports (+ 4.8%) were dynamic. While the former scored a record result, the latter scored a higher in eight years. In both directions of traffic, chemicals and pharmaceuticals contributed decisively to growth. The trade balance loops with a surplus of 19 billion francs.
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Swiss Producer and Import Price Index in June 2017: -0.1 YoY, -0,1 MoM
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Switzerland Unemployment in June 2017: Remained unchanged at 3.2 percent seasonally adjusted
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Swiss Consumer Price Index in June 2017: Up +0.2 percent against 2016, -0.1 percent against last month
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Swiss Retail Sales, May: -0.3 percent Nominal and -0.3 percent Real
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Tourism balance of payments 2016: Negative in 2016
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KOF Economic Barometer June: Prospects Are Brightening again
FX Trends
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FX Daily, July 20: ECB Game Day
The US dollar is enjoying a firmer tone against the major currencies today. It does not appear to be simply position adjustments ahead of the ECB meeting. Consider that Australia reported strong employment data, and after making new highs, reaching almost $0.8000, it has reversed to toy with yesterday's low. A convincing break of that area (~$0.7910), especially on a closing basis, could be the kind of technical reversal that momentum traders...
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Oil Update
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FX Daily, July 19: Dollar Stabilizes on Hump Day, Awaits Thursday’s BOJ and ECB Meetings
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Sterling, McCafferty, and BOE Policy
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FX Daily, July 18: Dollar Dumped on Doubts on US Economic Agenda
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FX Daily, July 17: Markets Mark Time, Dollar Consolidates Losses
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Weekly Speculative Positions (as of July 11): Speculators Switch to CHF Long against USD
Swiss Markets & News
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Switzerland Hosts Meeting on Tax Transparency
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.
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Number of vacant homes rises again in Vaud
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Where there’s smoke, there’s political fire
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UBS worried about departing baby-boomers
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Swiss abroad react angrily to pension cut comments
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Swiss private bank accepts bitcoin
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Switzerland Opens Door To Bitcoin Asset-Management Business
Global Macro & Emerging Markets
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Retail Sales Conundrum
Retail sales were thoroughly disappointing in June. Whereas other accounts such as imports or durable goods had at least delivered a split decision between adjusted and unadjusted versions, for retail sales both views of them were ugly. Seasonally-adjusted first, spending last month was down for the second straight time. Worse than that, estimated sales were just barely more than in January.
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US S&P 500 Index, Federal Funds Target, Manufacturing Payrolls, US Imports and US Banking Data: All Conundrums Matter
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Global Asset Allocation Update: Not Yet
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Bi-Weekly Economic Review: Attention Shoppers
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Emerging Markets: Preview of the Week Ahead
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Wholesale: No Acceleration, No Liquidation
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China Imports and Exports: The Ghost Recovery
Monetary Metals & Gold Price
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“Financial Crisis” In 2017 Or By End Of 2018 – Prepare Now
John Mauldin of Mauldin Economics latest research note, Prepare for Turbulence, is excellent and a must read warning about the coming financial crisis. Mind refreshed from what sounds like a wonderful honeymoon and having had the time to read some books outside his “comfort zone” he has come to the conclusion that we are on the verge of a “major financial crisis, if not later this year, then by the end of 2018 at the latest.”
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Stockholm Syndrome – Precious Metals Supply and Demand
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“Financial Crisis” Of Historic Proportions Is “Bearing Down On Us”
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India Gold Imports Surge To 5 Year High – 220 Tons In May Alone
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Putting the Latest Silver Crash Under a Lens
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“Silver’s Plunge Is Nearing Completion”
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China, Russia Alliance Deepens Against American Overstretch
Austrian Economics
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Adventures in Quantitative Tightening
All remaining doubts concerning the place the U.S. economy and its tangled web of international credits and debts is headed were clarified this week. On Monday, Mark Yusko, CIO of Morgan Creek Capital Management, told CNBC that:
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How Dumb Is the Fed?
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No “Trump Bump” for the Economy
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Tales from the FOMC Underground
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Nikki Haley – Warmonger Extraordinaire
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The Money Velocity Myth
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Work is for Idiots
SNB and Central Banks
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Weekly SNB Interventions and Speculative Positions: Hawkish ECB, less SNB interventions
Hawkish comments by Mario Draghi boosted the EUR against both USD and CHF. It also reduced the need for SNB interventions. The question is how long Draghi will remain hawkish, especially next winter, when headline inflation in the euro zone may fall under 1%.
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Weekly SNB Intervention Update: Sight Deposits and Speculative Position
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Worin die populäre Geldschöpfungskritik irrt – Teil 1
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Moderne Portfoliotheorie bringt dem Anleger mehr Schaden als Nutzen
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The Swiss National Bank Owns $80 Billion In US Stocks – Here’s The Catch
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Banks in Switzerland 2016
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Central Banks Buying Stocks Have Rigged US Stock Market Beyond Recovery
Gold & Switzerland
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Buy Gold Near $1,200 “As Insurance” – UBS Wealth
Yesterday North Korea sent the US a ‘package of gifts’ for Independence Day. Unsurprisingly the successfully tested and launched intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was not well received. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the move a “new escalation of the threat” to the U.S. and its allies and that “global action is required to stop a global threat.”
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New Gold Pool at the BIS Switzerland: A Who’s Who of Central Bankers
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Gold’s Advantages Over Fiat Currency – An Interview with Claudio Grass
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New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle: Part 2 – Pool vs Gold for Oil
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New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle, Switzerland: Part 1
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German and Swiss Precious Metals Refiners join forces as Heraeus acquires Argor-Heraeus
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Switzerland’s Gold Exports To China Surge To 158 Tons In December
Europe and Euro Crisis
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Ecouter le silence des abstentionnistes! Liliane Held-Khawam
Les législatives françaises qui se sont tenues le 11 juin 2017 apportent la preuve que nous sommes bel et bien entrés dans une ère post-démocratique. Près de 52% ont refusé de se prêter au processus électoral. Pourtant ce silence crie des émotions et des opinions non relayés sur la place publique.
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Euro Saves Germany, Slaughters the PIGS, & Feeds the BLICS
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Economic Dissonance, Too
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European Commission Offers 5 Scenarios
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Greece and the Return of the Repressed
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Martin Armstrong: “EU in Disintegration Mode”
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Expropriation and Impoverishment: “Capitalist” Greece and “Socialist” Venezuela
Negative Rates and the Ban of Cash
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Negative Rates: The New Gold Rush… For Gold Vaults
Negative interest rates and the populist uprising that spurred the UK to vote for Brexit and Americans to elect Trump has helped reignite a rush into physical safe haven assets like gold and silver, which however has led to a shortage of safe venues where to store the precious metals (unlike bitcoin, gold actually has a physical dimension).
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Europe Proposes “Restrictions On Payments In Cash”
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Migros Bank could pass on negative interest rates
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Wie die SNB durch Kapitalsteuern die Schweizer Wirtschaft belastet
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Canadian Bank Starts Charging Negative 0.75percent Rate On Most Foreign Cash Balances
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Cashless Society – Is The War On Cash Set To Benefit Gold?
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NIRP Has Failed: European Savings Rate Hits 5 Year High
Helicopter Money
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The Path to Inflation: “Helicopter Money”
Yet conventional economists are virtually unanimous that deflation is the danger and inflation is a "good thing" we need to spur so servicing existing debt becomes easier for debtors. Due to the deflationary pressures of technology and stagnant wages for the bottom 90%, the consensus sees low inflation as far as the eye can see.
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The Point of War Is Not to Win
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Interview with Doug Casey
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Japan’s Planners Ratchet up Monetary Experimentation
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A Convocation of Interventionists – Part 1
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Finland Unleashes Helicopter Money In “Greatest Societal Transformation Of Our Time”
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‘Last Economist Standing’ John Taylor Urges “Less Weird Policy” At Jackson Hole
The Gold Standard
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Time to Hedge State Reserve Funds with Gold?
Financially prudent individuals set aside surplus funds to protect against unforeseen expenditures. This way, when faced with loss of income, house repairs, car trouble, or anything else, they will have a buffer against unanticipated downturns. In the same vein, almost every state in the United States has established a “savings account” for government operations.
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If It Didn’t Abandon The Gold Standard, U.S. Empire Would Have Collapsed…
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Sound Money and Your Personal Finances
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Pension Funds Need Gold before It’s Too Late
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How Trump Can Bring Outside-the-Box Thinking to Bear on the Fed
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We Should Take Our Cues From Markets – Not Politicians
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Introducing Yield Purchasing Power, the Video
Richard Koo and Sector Balances
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Weak Yen, Is it Really a Currency War?
Some journalists, like Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the U.K.'s Telegraph and Michael Casey of the Wall Street Journal, have already claimed this to be a shot in the currency wars. Casey focuses exclusively on the BOJ activity and does not even mention GPIF. Evans-Pritchard spends most of his time talking about the bearish yen implications of the increased BOJ purchases, and mentions GPIF only at the very end of the his essay, and even then to...
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Richard Koo, Revitalizing the Eurozone without Fiscal Union, April 2012
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7d) Richard Koo’s and other Sector Balances
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How Long Will the U.S. Recovery Last? A Reminder: The False Japanese Recovery in 1998/1999
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Richard Koo: Balance Sheet Recessions
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Balance Sheet Recession becomes mainstream, four years too late
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Cultural Reasons for Japan’s Deflation: Can the U.S. Go into a Balance Sheet Recession?
Marc Meyer
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Wer trägt Risiko für SNB-Schuldenberg: Banken oder Volk? Darum gehts beim Staatsfonds.
Quengelware – wer kennt sie nicht? Ware, die an den Kassen der Einkaufszentren auf Augenhöhe unerzogener Kids aufgestellt ist, damit deren Quengeln Eltern zum Kaufen drängen. Ähnlich beim Schweizer Staatsfonds. Als Quengelpolitik könnte man nämlich die Begehrlichkeiten vieler Politiker bezeichnen, die lauthals deinen solchen Fonds oder sonst etwas Unnützes fordern, um die Aufmerksamkeit der Wählerinnen und Wähler zu erheischen.
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Wie entsteht Geld? Nicht so, wie Thomas Jordan uns weismachen will
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Gefühlskältester Event des Jahres: Die GV der grössten Zockerin aller Zeiten
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Unsere Exporteure sind die neuen Bauern. Statt deren Milch ist ihr Euro garantiert
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Schuld an der Steuerklatsche sind die honorigen Ökonomen
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Ist die SNB fachlich überfordert?
CHF End of Peg
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Impressive Swiss Recovery After SNB Peg Removal
Retail data shows that the SNB peg removal in January 2015 as early as April 2015 with minimal adverse impact on the economy. Trade surplus showed that Switzerland had fully recovered its lost trade surplus in May and expectations crossed an important threshold into positive territory in June. CHF strengthened since May end, as the market caught wind of the Swiss recovery, and the Grexit would further strengthen the CHF if it were to occur.
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Q1/2015: Swiss Real GDP Rises by 15 percent … in Euro Terms
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Is the Swiss Franc Really so Expensive or is Swiss Consumption anemic?
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End of EUR/CHF Peg
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Colin Lloyd on the end of the EUR CHF peg
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Why did the Swiss franc spike? Lack of Capital Outflows
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What Caused The Swiss Financial Tsunami? Three Reasons, One Trigger, One Chain Reaction
The History of the Swiss Franc
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Swiss Franc History, 2012: CHF becomes a “safe” Risk-On Currency
At the end of May, SNB president Jordan admitted that the EUR/CHF floor will not raised (here also cited by Bloomberg): “We cannot arbitrarily manipulate our currency. In an even worse crisis situation this would be disastrous and counterproductive. The floor must be legitimized. The current minimum exchange rate is realistic and has helped the Swiss economy.”
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Swiss Franc History, from 2004 to 2009: The undervalued franc
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Swiss Franc History 1986-1996: Swiss real estate Boom and Bust
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History of SNB Interventions
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Swiss Franc History: Volcker Shock, Oil Glut and the Breakdown of Gold and Emerging Markets
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Volckers Attack on Stagflation
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Swiss Franc History: The long-term view and the comparison with gold
Economic Theory
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7c) Michael Pettis
The most important pages on MIchael Pettis and on sector balances .
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Mainstream Economics , The Medium Run
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Supply Side Economics
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Hans Werner Sinn’s Piketty Critique: “r ≠ i > g”
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7d) Richard Koo’s and other Sector Balances
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Traditional Monetarist vs. Market Monetarists
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7a) Economic Theories Overview
