Tag Archive: Featured

Reality Beckons: Even Bigger Payroll Gains, Much Less Fuss Over Them

2020-07-05

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2020-07-05

What a difference a month makes. The euphoria clearly fading even as the positive numbers grow bigger still. The era of gigantic pluses is only reaching its prime, which might seem a touch pessimistic given the context. In terms of employment and the labor market, reaction to the Current Employment Situation (CES) report seems to indicate widespread recognition of this situation. And that means how there are actually two labor markets at the moment.

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Gold Will “Trend Toward $10,000 Per Ounce Or Higher” Over The Next Four Years

2020-07-05

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2020-07-05

You’re likely aware of the price action in gold lately. Gold has rallied from $1,591 per ounce on April 1 to $1,782 per ounce as of today. That’s a 12% gain in less than three months.

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Swiss salaries rise faster than inflation for the first time in 2 years

2020-07-04

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2020-07-04

In 2019, Swiss salaries were on average of 0.9% higher than the year before. A nominal rise of +0.9% combined with low inflation of 0.4% delivered a real boost of 0.5% to someone earning an average salary in Switzerland.

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Novartis pays big fine for bribing doctors in the US

2020-07-04

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2020-07-04

Swiss pharma company Novartis will pay $729 million (CHF688 million) to US authorities in an out-of-court settlement over various charges, including that the company bribed doctors to use its drugs.

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Dancing Through the Geopolitical Minefield

2020-07-04

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2020-07-04

The Global Wealth Pyramid
The elites dancing through the minefield all have plans, but how many are prepared for the punch in the mouth? Open any newspaper from the past 100 years and you will soon find a newsworthy geopolitical hotspot or conflict. 

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The Disastrous Legacy of Woodrow Wilson

2020-07-04

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2020-07-04

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Princeton University has made it official: Woodrow Wilson’s name no longer will have any place on campus. The former president, or at least his memory, now is part of cancel culture, which is sweeping the nation. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs will replace the former president’s name with “Princeton,” and Wilson College now will be called First College.

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Fewer cows, more cars: Switzerland misses its emission targets

2020-07-03

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2020-07-03

Switzerland’s emissions have declined over the last 30 years, but not enough to meet the national targets set for 2020. What’s behind the gap? By 2020, greenhouse gas emissions in Switzerland should be down by 20% from what they were in 1990. That’s the target outlined in the federal CO2 law.

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Willkommen in einer Zukunft ohne Zins

2020-07-03

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2020-07-03

Die SNB, die EZB und andere Zentralbanken erwarten auch langfristig keine Zinswende – und machen Nullzinsen zur Regel. Eine Übersicht der Prognosen. Diese Woche ist die Welt einer Zukunft ohne positive Zinssätze ein Stückchen näher gerückt. Schwedens Notenbank erneuerte ihren Zinspfad.

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Dollar Soft Ahead of Jobs Report

2020-07-03

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2020-07-03

Presidential Elections Odds, 2020
Re-shutdowns continue to spread across the US; the dollar has come under pressure again. Jobs data is the highlight ahead of the long holiday weekend in the US; weekly jobless claims will be reported. FOMC minutes were revelatory; the Fed for now will rely on “outcome-based” forward guidance and asset purchases to achieve its goals; US House passed the latest China sanctions bill.

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How Historians Changed the Meaning of “Liberalism”

2020-07-03

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2020-07-03

Understandably enough, the current disfavor into which socialism has fallen has spurred what Raimondo Cubeddu (1997: 138) refers to as “the frenzy to proclaim oneself a liberal.” Many writers today have recourse to the stratagem of “inventing for oneself a ‘liberalism’ according to one’s own tastes” and passing it off as an “evolution” from past ideas.

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FX Daily, July 2: Dollar Thumped Ahead of US Jobs Report

2020-07-02

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2020-07-02

Market optimism over the possibility of a vaccine in early 2021 overshadowed the continued surge in US cases, where the 50k-a-day threshold of new cases has been breached.  Following the NASDAQ close yesterday at record highs, global equities have advanced.  Led by Hong Kong returning from yesterday's holiday, Asia Pacific equities rallied.  Most local markets rose by more than 1%, though Tokyo and Taiwan lagged.

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Coronavirus: Swiss government makes masks compulsory on public transport

2020-07-02

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2020-07-02

On 1 July 2020, Switzerland’s federal government announced that it would become compulsory to wear masks on public transport from 6 July 2020. Due to the the growing number of people using public transport and a rise in the number of people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 since mid-June, the Federal Council has decided to make it compulsory for those taking public transport to wear a mask.

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Swiss government extends coronavirus economic support

2020-07-02

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2020-07-02

The Federal Council is extending short-term unemployment benefits by another six months and plans to help cushion financial losses faced by public transport. On Wednesday, the government announced that it is extending the maximum period for receiving partial unemployment support from 12 to 18 months to counteract a rise in unemployment.

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An Interesting Juncture in History

2020-07-02

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2020-07-02

US Health care, 1960-2010
Just as the rewards of central-bank bubbles have not been evenly distributed, the pain created by the collapse of the bubbles won't be evenly distributed, either. We've reached an interesting juncture in history, and I don't mean the pandemic. I'm referring to the normalization of extremes in the economy, in social decay and in political dysfunction and polarization.

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July Monthly preview

2020-07-02

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2020-07-02

Many major and emerging central banks took action in June, but outside of possible technical adjustments will continue with the current supportive stance in July. The policy focus will shift back to fiscal initiatives. The highlights will be the EU Summit on July 12, which is considering the EC's 750 bln euro package of grants and loans, and the US decision regarding the $600 a week extra unemployment insurance (expiring at the end of July) and...

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Gold Outperforms All Assets In 2020 YTD as Enters Seasonal Sweet Spot of July, August and September

2020-07-02

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2020-07-02

Source: Finiz.com ◆ Gold is the top performing asset in the world in the first half of 2020, outperforming all stock markets including the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq and outperforming “safe haven” U.S. government bonds (see table above).Gold had an 18% gain in dollars in the first half of 2020 as risk assets, especially stock markets, fell sharply with the S&P down 4.5% and other stock markets down more than 10% (see table). Gold gained...

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FX Daily, July 1: Second Verse Can’t be Worse than the First, Can it?

2020-07-01

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2020-07-01

The resurgence of the contagion in the US has stopped or reversed an estimated 40% of the re-openings, but the appetite for risk has begun the second half on a firm note, helped by manufacturing PMIs that were above preliminary estimates or better than expected.  Except for Tokyo and Seoul, equities in the Asia Pacific region rose.  The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose almost 15.5% in Q2. 

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SWISS slowly expands web of destinations from Zurich and Geneva

2020-07-01

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2020-07-01

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has published its flight schedules up to October 24, the end of the summer timetable. As well as resuming service to more network destinations, it plans to intensify its frequencies on routes already restored in both its short-haul and long-haul networks.

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What The PMIs Aren’t Really Saying, In China As Elsewhere

2020-07-01

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2020-07-01

China PMI, 2010-2020
China’s PMI’s continue to impress despite the fact they continue to be wholly unimpressive. As with most economic numbers in today’s stock-focused obsessiveness, everything is judged solely by how much it “surprises.” Surprises who? Doesn’t matter; some faceless group of analysts and Economists whose short-term modeling has somehow become the very standard of performance.

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A Review of Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth

2020-07-01

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2020-07-01

The good news is that Stephanie Kelton has written a book on MMT that is very readable and will strike many readers as persuasive and clever. The bad news is that Stephanie Kelton has written a book on MMT that is very readable and will strike many readers as persuasive and clever. Narrated by the author.  Original Article: "A Review of Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth".

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