Tag Archive: newsletter

Employment Barometer in the Q4 2019: Uninterrupted employment growth in Switzerland for 10 years

2020-02-25

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2020-02-25

Switzerland Employment Level, Q4 2019
25.02.2020 - In the 4th quarter 2019, the total employment (number of jobs) in Switzerland rose by 1.2% in comparison with the same quarter a year earlier (+0.2% with previous quarter). Employment growth has thus been uninterrupted for a decade. In full-time equivalents, employment in the same period rose by 1.1%.

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2019: Wertpapierdepots klettern um fast eine Billion Franken

2020-02-25

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2020-02-25

Aktiendepots bei Schweizer Banken befinden sich auf Rekordniveau (Bild: shutterstock)Ende 2019 erreichte der Wertschriftenbestand in den Depots der Schweizer Banken laut den neuesten Daten der Schweizerischen Nationalbank SNB einen neuen Rekordstand von 6,72 Bio. Fr. Die Zunahme belief sich auf fast eine Bio. Franken.

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Unions say anti-EU initiative is bad for workers

2020-02-25

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2020-02-25

Trade unions have come out against the initiative to scrap the freedom of movement agreement with the European Union, saying a “yes” vote would be “an attack on all workers”. Accepting the right-wing proposal would lead to a situation whereby “collective agreements and wage checks would be replaced by an unfettered competition of all against all,” Swiss Trade Union Federation boss Pierre-Yves Maillard said on Monday.

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Was It A Midpoint And Did We Already Pass Through It?

2020-02-25

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2020-02-25

Benchmark 10-year UST, 2010-2013
We certainly don’t have a crystal ball at the ready, and we can’t predict the future. The best we might hope is to entertain reasonable probabilities for it oftentimes derived from how we see the past. Which is just what statistics and econometrics attempt. Except, wherein they go wrong we don’t have to make their mistakes.

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When Will We Admit Covid-19 Is Unstoppable and Global Depression Is Inevitable?

2020-02-25

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2020-02-25

The Rising Wedge Model of Breakdown
Given the exquisite precariousness of the global financial system and economy, hopes for a brief and mild downturn are wildly unrealistic. If we asked a panel of epidemiologists to imagine a virus optimized for rapid spread globally and high lethality, they'd likely include these characteristics: 1. Highly contagious, with an R0 of 3 or higher.

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Tax Burdens, Per Capita Income, and Simpson’s Paradox

2020-02-25

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2020-02-25

Home Price
How many times have you heard that higher taxes mean greater social welfare and economic development? The statement is backed up by a touch of popular wisdom: “More taxes, more public services.” Almost incontestable empirical evidence is also cited: with very few exceptions, the richest countries’ tax rates are very high, whereas taxes in poor countries are relatively low.

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FX Daily, February 24: Stocks Slammed and Yields Drop as Virus Containment Fails

2020-02-24

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2020-02-24

Overview: The ring of containment of Covid-19 has grown from China. The new frontline is Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Iran. A lockdown of around 50k people near Milan and Austria blocking trains from Italy is scaring investors. Asian markets fell, but South Korea bore the brunt with a nearly 4% decline. The national holiday in Japan spared local equities.

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Who wins and who loses because of negative interest rates?

2020-02-24

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2020-02-24

The Swiss National Bank’s negative interest rates, introduced five years ago, are having an increasingly significant economic and social impact. But despite criticism, the SNB does not want to remove them. It considers the measure necessary to stop the Swiss franc appreciating too much.

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When It Comes to Raw Power, Few Have More of It Than Central Bankers

2020-02-24

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2020-02-24

A common retort to the claim that in voluntary exchange both parties expect to become better off (or they wouldn’t do it) is that exchanges are seldom, if ever, a matter of horizontal, equal exchange of values. Instead, any such interaction between people is ultimately a matter of their exercising power over one another. The implication, and often explicitly stated conclusion, is that there is no voluntariness, that exploitation is always present,...

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FX Weekly Preview: Sources of Imbalance and the Pushback Against New Divergence

2020-02-24

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2020-02-24

The US dollar's surge alongside gold has eclipsed the equity market rally as the key development in the capital markets. Even the traditional seemingly safe-haven yen was no match for the greenback.  The dollar appeared to have been rolling over in Q4 19, as the sentiment surveys in Europe improved, Japanese officials seemingly thought the economy could withstand a sales tax increase, and data suggested the Chinese economy was gaining some...

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EM Preview for the Week Ahead

2020-02-24

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2020-02-24

The still-growing impact of the coronavirus should keep EM and risk sentiment under pressure this week.  The weekend G20 meeting in Saudi Arabia acknowledged the risks to the global economy and said participants agreed on a “menu of policy options.” However, the G20 offered little specific in terms of a coordinated policy response.

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Crypto investigator still needs permission to view files

2020-02-24

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2020-02-24

The man tasked with investigating the Crypto spying affair for the Swiss government doesn’t have direct access to all the relevant documents. Niklaus Oberholzer, formerly a federal judge, must ask the federal authorities whenever he wants to access sensitive files.

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Swiss Post stops accepting parcels and letters to China

2020-02-23

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2020-02-23

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.

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Swiss digital stock exchange offers partners ownership stake

2020-02-23

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2020-02-23

The Swiss stock exchange is offering strategic partners a stake of up to 30% in its new digital assets trading platform. The SDX digital exchange hopes to launch by the end of this year, trading digital shares, bonds and other assets on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform.

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Time Again For Triple Digit Dollar

2020-02-23

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2020-02-23

Argentina Official Reserve Assets, 1998-2018
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.

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

2020-02-23

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2020-02-23

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.

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Ermotti’s UBS record: solid but not all plain sailing

2020-02-22

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2020-02-22

Sergio Ermotti arrived at UBS in 2011 during a dark chapter in the history of Switzerland’s largest bank. He will depart in November, nine years later, with a reputation for injecting greater stability but not for stamping out controversy. Ironically, UBS arguably faces some greater challenges than cross-town rival Credit Suisse, where earlier this month former CEO Tidjane Thiam was forced to step down unceremoniously following an internal spying...

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Credit Suisse MD Dies In Freak Accident After Slipping Through Chairlift And Being Suffocated By His Own Jacket

2020-02-22

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2020-02-22

Almost exactly 10 years ago, we detailed the tragic death of Gerard Reilly in a skiing accident - the point man on Repo 105, the point person for E&Y's "investigation" into the Matthew Lee whistleblower campaign, Lehman's Level 2 and Level 3 asset valuation, the brain behind the idea to spin off Lehman's commercial real estate business, Lehman's Archstone investment, and likely so much more.

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Covid-19: Global Retrenchment Will Obliterate Sales, Profits and Yes, Big Tech

2020-02-22

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2020-02-22

If you think global demand will rebound as global debt and confidence implode, you better not be making consequential decisions based on Euphorestra-addled magical thinking. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the global economy was slowing for two reasons: 1) everybody who can afford it already has it and 2) overcapacity. One word captures the end-of-the-cycle stagnation: saturation.

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Gold is the 7th sense of financial markets

2020-02-22

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2020-02-22

Claudio Grass (CG): Looking at the interest rate policy of the last years, it would seem that central banks are backed into a corner. They cannot hike borrowing costs without risking a domino effect, as both government and corporate debt have reached record highs, encouraged by the central banks’ own NIRP and ZIRP policies. In your view, is there a “safe” way out of this vicious circle?

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