Swiss Post stops accepting parcels and letters to China

Swiss Post has said it will no longer accept packages addressed to China, according to Tribune de Genève. Because of the covid-19 virus, airlines have stopped or drastically reduced flights to China. This fall in air traffic has reduced postal service capacity to China by two thirds.

USD/CHF New York Price Analysis: Dollar eases from session highs, trades below 0.9830 vs. Swiss franc

USD/CHF prints another 2020 high and retraces down in the New York session. Bears are challenging the 0.9830 level. After hitting yet again a new 2020 high, USD/CHF is easing from session highs. The spot is trading below the 200-day simple moving averages suggesting an overall bearish momentum in the long term.

Widening Bid-Ask Spreads, Gold and Silver Market Report 17 February

The price of gold rose $14 and the price of silver fell $0.07. The gold-silver ratio rose further with this price action. Welcome to our new Gold and Silver Market Report, or “Market Report” for short. We are separating this from the economics essay, which was attached for many years. As they used to say in many toy commercials of yore, “batteries sold separately”—or in this case essays.

Nationalism as National Liberation: Lessons from the End of the Cold War

During the early 1990s, as the world of the old Soviet Bloc was rapidly falling apart, Murray Rothbard saw it all for what it was: a trend of mass decentralization and secession unfolding before the world's eyes. The old Warsaw Pact states of Poland, Hungary, and others won de facto independence for the first time in decades. Other groups began to demand full blown de jure secession as well.

Swiss Trade Balance Q4 2019: Secondary sector shows positive growth rates again

20.02.2020 - Secondary sector production rose by 1.3% in 4th quarter 2019 in comparison with the same quarter a year earlier. Turnover rose by 0.3%. This rise has continued without interruption since the 1st quarter 2017 but was slightly weaker in the reporting quarter. This is shown by provisional results from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).

Swiss Post stops accepting parcels and letters to China

Swiss Post has said it will no longer accept packages addressed to China, according to Tribune de Genève. Because of the covid-19 virus, airlines have stopped or drastically reduced flights to China. This fall in air traffic has reduced postal service capacity to China by two thirds.

FX Daily, February 21: Covid-19 Contagion Outside China Keeps Investors on the Defensive

Overview:  The spread of Covid-19 outside of China and early signs of the economic consequences again emerged to weigh on investor sentiment.  Poor Japanese and Australian preliminary February PMI reports and some trade indications from South Korea saw most Asia Pacific equities sell-off.  China was an exception.  The small gain (0.3%), lifted the Shanghai Composite 4.2% on the week.

Time Again For Triple Digit Dollar

Being a member of the institutional “elite” means never having to say you’re sorry; or even admit that you have no idea what you are doing. For Christine Lagarde, Mario Draghi’s retirement from the European Central Bank could not have come at a more opportune moment. Fresh off the Argentina debacle, she failed herself upward to an even better gig.

The Secret to Fun and Easy Stock Market Riches

Post Hoc Fallacy. On Tuesday, at the precise moment Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell commenced delivering his semiannual monetary policy report to the House Financial Services Committee, something unpleasant happened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) didn’t go up. Rather, it went down.

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.

History of SNB Interventions

High inflows of around 400 billion francs between 2009 and 2012 in the Swiss balance of payments could only be countered with an increase in reserve assets and interventions by the Swiss National Bank. This number is far higher than the one seen during the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, when the ten times bigger Germany had to buy reserves for 71 billion German Marks (at the time around 56 billion CHF). We look at the detailed history...

Rational Expectations, Lucas Critique and NAIRU

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...