Tag Archive: Featured

FX Daily, November 18: Balancing Pandemic Surge with Optimism about Vaccine

2020-11-18

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2020-11-18

News that Tokyo will go to its highest alert as it faces a rising contagion snapped a 12-day rally in the Nikkei, but most bourses in the Asia Pacific region excluding Japan advanced, though Chinese equities were mixed. European equities are narrowly mixed as the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 continues to gyrate within Monday's range.

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Why big companies fear the Responsible Business Initiative

2020-11-18

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2020-11-18

Big multinationals in Switzerland have been nearly unanimous in their rejection of an initiative to make companies more accountable for their actions abroad. What are they afraid of?

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Talk of “Unity” Is Both Hypocritical and Delusional

2020-11-18

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2020-11-18

Grand invocations that "I will unify us" are actually shorthand for "We mean to get our way, regardless of others' well-being and desire."

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Dollar Soft as Markets Start the Week in Risk-On Mode

2020-11-18

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2020-11-18

EM CDS, 2020
The odds of national-level action in the US against the second wave virus outbreak remains small, even after Biden takes over; the dollar continues to soften. There is growing speculation about former Fed Chair Yellen becoming Biden’s Treasury Secretary; Fed manufacturing surveys for November will start to roll out; Peru’s interim President Merino resigned under pressure from more demonstrations.

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Roadblocks and Opportunities for International Trade in 2021

2020-11-18

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2020-11-18

We see significant upside risk for global trade coming from “top down” forces (such as politics), but at the same time we expect the undercurrent reconfiguring many of the existing relationships to intensify. The “Peak Globalization” narrative (at least regarding trade) is being challenged by hopes of a revival of multilateral cooperation under Biden and the latest Asian trade agreement.

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FX Daily, November 17: Greenback Remains Under Pressure

2020-11-17

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2020-11-17

Overview: Moderna's announcement did not spur nearly the magnitude of the disruption caused by Pfizer's similar announcement a week ago.  Still, in the US, the NASDAQ underperformed the other indices, and the US Dow Industrials saw record highs.

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Six Point Nine Times Two Equals What It Had In Twenty Fourteen

2020-11-17

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2020-11-17

China Industrial Production, 1999-2020
It was a shock, total disbelief given how everyone, and I mean everyone, had penciled China in as the world’s go-to growth engine. If the global economy was ever going to get off the ground again following GFC1 more than a half a decade before, the Chinese had to get back to their precrisis “normal.”

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Don’t Blame Covid: The Economy is Imploding from Over-Capacity and Corrupt Cartels

2020-11-17

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2020-11-17

Now that the bubble has burst, the hope is that removing the pin will magically restore the burst bubble. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Here's the fantasy: if we stop the shutdowns, the economy will naturally bounce back to its oh-so wunnerful perfection of Q3 2019. This is a double-dose of magical thinking and denial.

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Covid, November 16: 198 deaths in Switzerland over weekend as infection rate slows

2020-11-16

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2020-11-16

Cases in Schweiz
Over the last 72 hours, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) reported 198 deaths among laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases, bringing the death toll to 1,427 since summer and 3,158 since the beginning of the year.

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FX Daily, November 16: Risk-On Despite Surging Pandemic

2020-11-16

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2020-11-16

EUR/CHF and USD/CHF, November 16
Despite the surging pandemic and new restriction measure, risk-appetites appear strong to start the week. Led by 2% gains in the Nikkei and Taiwan's Taiex, all of the Asia Pacific region's equity markets advanced. European markets have followed suit and the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is knocking on last week's eight-month high.

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Drivers for the Week Ahead

2020-11-16

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2020-11-16

The virus numbers in the US show no signs of slowing; the dollar should continue to soften. October retail sales Tuesday will be the US data highlight for the week; Fed manufacturing surveys for November will start to roll out; the Senate will hold a procedural vote this week to advance Judy Shelton’s nomination to the Fed Board of Governors.

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Ex-Credit Suisse boss recruited by Rwandan government

2020-11-16

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2020-11-16

Tidjane Thiam, who resigned as CEO of Swiss bank Credit Suisse in February, has been tasked with using his connections to build up the Rwandan capital Kigali as an international business location, according to Swiss business newspaper Handelszeitung.

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Will vaccination campaign convince hesitant Swiss?

2020-11-16

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2020-11-16

Faced with considerable public scepticism towards a Covid-19 vaccine, the Federal Office of Public Health is preparing an information campaign about vaccinations. However, the country’s top hospital hygienist thinks offering incentives is a better way to make people get a jab.

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Prepare for Winter

2020-11-16

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2020-11-16

Realism must precede optimism or the optimism will collapse as the tsunami of reality comes ashore. It's time to prepare materially and psychologically for a winter unlike any other in our lifetimes.

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James Mill: Laissez-Faire’s Lenin

2020-11-16

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2020-11-16

[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)] James Mill (1771–1836) was surely one of the most fascinating figures in the history of economic thought. And yet he is among the most neglected. Mill was perhaps one of the first persons in modern times who might be considered a true "cadre man," someone who in the Leninist movement of the next century would have been hailed as a "real Bolshevik." Indeed, he...

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Vote November 29: Spotlight on ethical business practices

2020-11-15

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2020-11-15

A proposal to make Swiss-based multinationals accountable for their business practices abroad is tabled for a nationwide vote on November 29. An initiative aimed at restricting investments in the arms industry is the second issue on the ballot sheet. 

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Where Is It, Chairman Powell?

2020-11-15

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2020-11-15

CPI less Food & Energy, 1983-2020
Where is it, Chairman Powell? After spending months deliberately hyping a “flood” of digital money printing, and then unleashing average inflation targeting making Americans believe the central bank will be wickedly irresponsible when it comes to consumer prices, the evidence portrays a very different set of circumstance.

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Swiss advance plans to take goods transport underground

2020-11-15

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2020-11-15

Building a 500-km tunnel network to transport goods under Central Switzerland is the ambitious aim of the “Cargo Sous Terrain” project. The vision has moved closer to reality since the Swiss government brought forward enabling legislation last month.

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Here’s What Donald Trump Should Do Before Inauguration Day

2020-11-15

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2020-11-15

Audio Mises Wire
Even if he loses, Donald Trump still has time to change military policy, pardon allies, unseat the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and throw a wrench in the deep state apparatus. Original Article: "Here’s What Donald Trump Should Do Before Inauguration Day​". This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.

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‘Artificial intelligence won’t replace humans’

2020-11-14

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2020-11-14

Artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining ground in our societies, posing a threat to jobs and increasingly invading our private lives. A new centre for AI research at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich wants to put people at the centre of its work.

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