Tag Archive: newsletter

Swiss parliament votes in favour of flight tax

2020-06-15

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2020-06-15

A majority of Switzerland’s parliament voted in favour of introducing a tax on flights departing from Switzerland. 132 voted in favour of the tax, with 65 against. The tax would range from CHF 30 to CHF 120 depending on the distance and class of travel, according to 20 Minutes.

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Is the Pandemic Over and a V-Shaped Recovery Baked In?

2020-06-15

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2020-06-15

So what do we know with any sort of certainty about the claim that "the pandemic is over"? Very little. Is the pandemic over in China, Europe, Japan and the U.S./Canada? Is the much-anticipated V-Shaped economic recovery already baked in, i.e. already gathering momentum? The consensus, as reflected by the stock market (soaring), the corporate media and governmental easings of restrictions seems to be "yes" to both questions.

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The Scandinavian Model Won’t Work in Chile

2020-06-15

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2020-06-15

Scandinavian welfare states continue to allure leftist onlookers across the world. The Nordic welfare model is marketed as a humane alternative to the cutthroat nature of Western capitalism. It received a massive boost when Vermont senator Bernie Sanders campaigned on emulating these countries in both of his presidential runs during 2016 and 2020.

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EM Preview for the Week Ahead

2020-06-15

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2020-06-15

EM and other risk assets stabilized to end the week after Thursday’s selloff, but remain vulnerable. The risks ahead are the same as before, which include a second wave of infections as well as a longer and shallower than expected recovery in global growth. The Fed’s message of low rates as far as the eye can see was balanced by Powell’s grim outlook for unemployment.

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Coronavirus: new cases stable with small rise in deaths in Switzerland

2020-06-14

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2020-06-14

In the seven days to 12 June 2020, the number of new SARS-CoV-2 infections recorded in Switzerland was 127. A similar number of new cases was recorded in the week before (108) and the week before that (121), according to Worldinfometer.com.

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This Thing Is Only Getting Started; Or, *All* The V’s Are Light On The Right

2020-06-14

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2020-06-14

The Federal Reserve’s models really are the most optimistic of the bunch. With the policy meeting conducted today, no surprises as far as policies go, we now know what ferbus has to say about everything that’s happened this year. Skipping the usual March projections, what with the FOMC totally occupied at the time by a complete global monetary meltdown Jay Powell now says “we saw it coming”, the central bank staff released the calculations...

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Why The FOMC Just Embraced The Stock Bubble (and anything else remotely sounding inflationary)

2020-06-14

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2020-06-14

Mainstream Models World Bank
The job, as Jay Powell currently sees it, means building up the S&P 500 as sky high as it can go. The FOMC used to pay lip service to valuations, but now everything is different. He’ll signal to all those fund managers by QE raising bank reserves, leading them on in what they all want to believe is “money printing” (that isn’t).

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The Great Society: A Lesson in American Central Planning

2020-06-14

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2020-06-14

Most people associate the Great Society initiative with Lyndon Baines Johnson. There is very good reason for that, to be sure. As president, Johnson, the “master of the Senate,” was the driving force behind the raft of legislation that passed during his administration, the 1964 and 1965 legislation that framed and filled in his vision for a “great society” in which the blessings of postwar America’s bonanza would be shared by all.

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A Dollar Crash Is Coming

2020-06-14

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2020-06-14

◆The world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism. The era of the U.S. dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” as the world’s primary reserve currency is coming to an end. In the 1960s French Finance Minister Valery Giscard d’Estaing coined that phrase largely out of frustration, bemoaning a United States that drew freely on the rest of the world to support its overextended standard of...

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Swiss forests are healthy but need better management

2020-06-13

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2020-06-13

Despite threats such as drought and insects, Swiss forests are better equipped to handle natural hazards than they were a decade ago. Not content to mind her own business, Susan studied journalism in Boston so she’d have the perfect excuse to put herself in other people’s shoes and worlds. When not writing, she presents and produces podcasts and videos.

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Cool Video: A Quick Review of the the FOMC and a Look to Next Week

2020-06-13

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2020-06-13

Sometimes the news drives the price action, but sometimes the price action drives the news.  If the initial rally in US stocks after the FOMC meeting had been sustained and if the dollar had continued to decline, observers would drawing a different conclusion.  

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Dollar Firm as Risk-Off Sentiment Intensifies After FOMC Decision

2020-06-13

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2020-06-13

Coronavirus Daily Change, 2020
Concerns about still rising infection numbers and a second wave ofCovid-19 have contributed to today’s downdraft in risk assets; for now, the weak dollar trend is hard to fight. Despite delivering no change in policy, the Fed nonetheless sent an unequivocally dovish signal; stocks have not reacted well to the Fed; weekly jobless claims and May PPI will be reported.

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Deep State to Powell: Stop Goosing Stocks Higher Or You’ll Re-Elect Trump

2020-06-13

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2020-06-13

Come on, Jay, you can always goose stocks back to new highs after the election. Indulge me for a moment in some backroom speculation. It's absurdly obvious that the unelected, permanent, ever-expanding National Security State, a.k.a the Deep State, and its Democratic Party allies have been attempting to torpedo Donald Trump since the 2016 election took them by surprise. (Imagine doing everything that worked so well in the past and failing at the...

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The Employment Situation Is Still a Disaster

2020-06-13

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2020-06-13

US Unemployment Rate, 2011-2020
Last Friday, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released new unemployment data. The report surprised many because it showed a decrease in the unemployment rate, while many observers had expected an increase.

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Reject the “Next Generation EU Plan”

2020-06-13

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2020-06-13

The Václav Klaus Institute urging the Czech Government to reject the dangerous Ursula von der Leyen´s plan. It is rather rare that I share articles on my channel that are not from my own pen. The following article is therefore an exception and for good reason. It is written by none other than the former President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus, with whom I have a long-standing relationship, based on great respect and many shared values.

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FX Daily, June 12: Licking Yesterday’s Wounds Today

2020-06-12

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2020-06-12

Overview:  The nearly three-month rally in risk assets ended with high drama with a stomach-churning almost 6% slide in the S&P 500 yesterday. Follow-through selling was seen in the Asia Pacific region, but most markets recovered from their lows, and although losses were still recorded, the downside momentum seemed broken. The same holds true for Europe. Bourses opened lower but by mid-morning had moved higher (~1.4%) and US shares are trading...

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Expats in Switzerland need even deeper pockets

2020-06-12

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2020-06-12

Three Swiss cities – Zurich, Bern and Geneva – are among the ten most expensive in the world for expatriates, according to the annual Cost of Living survey by consultants Mercer. Hong Kong remains at the top of the list of 209 countries for the third year in a row. Six of the top ten are in Asia, three in Switzerland and one in the United States.

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Dollar Firm as Risk-Off Sentiment Takes Hold

2020-06-12

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2020-06-12

Equity Markets YTD Performance, 2020
Today’s risk off price action appears to have been triggered by profit-taking; the dollar has gotten some traction. The Fed expanded its Main Street Loan Program to include more businesses; the jobs rebound has removed a sense of urgency regarding the next round of fiscal stimulus.

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We Have Reached The Silly Phase of the Bull Market

2020-06-12

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2020-06-12

Have we entered a new bull market? Was the 35% pullback in the S&P 500 in March the fastest bear market in history? Or is this just a continuation of the bull market that started in 2009, interrupted by a rather large correction? Bull markets and bear markets are about behavior, about the human emotions of fear and greed. While we got a brief bout of fear in March, greed has since overwhelmed all sense, common and otherwise.

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Mark Packard’s Value Learning Process: The Two Kinds of Knowledge Entrepreneurs Must Have

2020-06-12

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2020-06-12

The Two Kinds of Knowledge Entrepreneurs Must Have
Key Takeaways and Actionable Insights. Innovation is one of the keys to business success. The world is changing at such a pace, and your customers’ preferences are changing so fast, that your business has to change at the same speed, or even faster. How to keep up is a part of the entrepreneurial challenge.

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