Tag Archive: Politics

Swiss companies pull out of Venezuela

2017-08-19

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2017-08-19

Swiss firms have been cutting hundreds of jobs in long-established branch offices in Venezuela, as the oil-producing country experiences an economic and political crisis. “The disaster – economic, social, political and humanitarian – which is engulfing Venezuela with the government of [president] Nicolas Maduro is forcing Swiss companies to resize their presence or to gradually leave the country,” wrote French-language newspaper Le Temps, which...

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Government compromises on medical tariffs

2017-08-18

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2017-08-18

The Swiss cabinet has approved an amended billing system for medical treatments aimed at creating more transparency and limiting a further increase in healthcare costs.The decision is expected to lead to annual savings of CHF470 million ($483 million) and a drop of about 1.5 percentage points in insurance fees for patients, according to Interior Minister Alain Berset.

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“Under Any Analysis, It’s Insanity”: What War With North Korea Could Look Like

2017-08-14

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2017-08-14

Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump
Now that the possibility of a war between the US and North Korea seems just one harshly worded tweet away, and the window of opportunity for a diplomatic solution, as well as for the US stopping Kim Jong-Un from obtaining a nuclear-armed ICBM closing fast, analysts have started to analyze President Trump’s military options, what a war between the US and North Korea would look like, and what the global economic consequences would be.

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UN group demands reversal of Swiss minaret ban

2017-07-30

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2017-07-30

Switzerland should take steps to ensure that people's initiatives do not contravene international law, the United Nations Human Rights Committee says. It notably called for the repeal of a Swiss vote banning the construction of minarets.

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Italy demands data on billions in suspect Swiss accounts

2017-07-24

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2017-07-24

Italian financial crime investigators have asked the Swiss authorities for help in tracking down the beneficial owners of €6.7 billion (CHF7.4 billion) held in Switzerland. The information came to light during an investigation by the Milan authorities into the activities of Credit Suisse.

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Swiss-US meeting focuses on vocational education and jobs

2017-07-22

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2017-07-22

Schneider-Ammann
Swiss Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann on Tuesday expressed satisfaction with his two days of meetings with senior Trump administration officials, capping efforts to boost cooperation between Switzerland and the United States on education, jobs and trade. He also invited Ivanka Trump, the daughter and adviser to US President Donald Trump, and other Trump administration officials to visit Switzerland so that they can "explore ways of...

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Switzerland Hosts Meeting on Tax Transparency

2017-07-20

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2017-07-20

Alexander Karrer
An international meeting on transparency and exchange of tax data is underway in the Swiss city of Geneva. The five-day gathering of the Global Forum peer review group is to examine the implementation of so-called group requests and the issue of the identification of beneficial owners, according to the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters.

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Swiss banks asked to give Swiss expats fair deal

2017-07-06

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2017-07-06

ATM
New moves are underway in parliament to ensure that Swiss expatriates are granted unrestricted access to services of Swiss banks. The Organisation of the Swiss Abroad (OSA) says two motions were filed, asking the government to reform regulations, providing services, including credit cards of the state-owned Post Finance, to expats with the same conditions as Swiss residents.

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Switzerland signs up to corporate tax dodging remedy

2017-06-11

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2017-06-11

Switzerland has officially agreed to a raft of measures to combat the tax avoidance tricks of multinational companies. More than 100 countries have pledged to tackle the so-called base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) shenanigans. Huge companies, such as Starbucks, Amazon and Fiat, have been publically taken to task by the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) over the way they distort their tax bills.

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Sweeteners proposed for revised corporate tax reform

2017-06-04

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2017-06-04

The government will consider a package of voter-friendly sweeteners, including extra child benefits, as it strives to breathe new life into controversial company tax reforms. The new proposals come less than four months after Swiss voters rejected a major overhaul of the corporation tax landscape.

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Remembering A Still Falling Hero: Small Business

2017-05-30

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2017-05-30

On this holiday weekend known here in the U.S. as Memorial Day, I would like to make a slight turn in the narrative that many give little to no attention too, yet, is one of the most important underlying principles or fundamentals which helped shape, lift, mold, sustain, and create one of the world’s greatest economic powerhouses bar none.

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Global Asset Allocation Update

2017-05-27

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2017-05-27

Moderate Allocation
There is no change to the risk budget this month. For the moderate risk investor, the allocation between risk assets and bonds is unchanged at 50/50. There are, however, changes within the asset classes. We are reducing the equity allocation and raising the allocation to REITs. 

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review

2017-05-23

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2017-05-23

The economic data releases since the last update were generally upbeat but markets are forward looking and the future apparently isn’t to their liking. Of course, it is hard to tell sometimes whether bonds, the dollar and stocks are responding to the real economy or the one people hope Donald Trump can deliver when he isn’t busy contradicting his communications staff.

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Political Lobbying on the Rise in Switzerland

2017-05-21

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2017-05-21

Links between parliamentarians in Bern and lobby groups have grown steadily in recent years, according to a study by the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva. Between 2007 and 2015, these sorts of ties between interest groups and politicians increased by 20%.

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Swiss-German ‘spy’ drama raises hackles – and questions

2017-05-14

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2017-05-14

The sale of stolen Swiss banking data has centered on the German state of North Rhine Westphalia(Keystone) The arrest of a suspected Swiss spy in Germany has raised questions about what roles the Swiss secret service, the state public prosecutor and UBS bank played in the affair. The 54-year-old man, known as Daniel M, is accused of spying on the German tax authorities to find out who sold stolen Swiss banking data.His arrest...

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Bi-Weekly Economic Review

2017-04-25

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2017-04-25

bi-weekly
It wasn’t a very good two weeks for economic data with the majority of reports disappointing. Most notable I think is that the so called “soft data” is starting to reflect reality rather than some fantasy land where President Trump enacts his entire agenda in the first 100 days of being in office. Politics is about the art of the possible and that is proving a short list for now.

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Five Keys to Understand Trump

2017-04-01

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2017-04-01

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States surprised many people, even seasoned political observers and astute investors. He failed to win the popular vote but did carry the electoral college, which is how the US elects its chief executive. His victory is a bit of a Rorshcach test, where people project the issues that allowed Trump to succeed, with different observers making different claims.

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100 Years Ago, Russian Stocks Had A Very Bad Day

Russia Equity Index to 1900
In recent months, Ray Dalio seems to be undergoing a deep midlife and identity crisis, which has not only led to dramatic recent management changes at the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater, but also resulted in some fairly spectacular cognitive dissonance, as Dalio first praised, then slammed, president Trump.

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Proposal to remove Swiss home-owner tax rejected

2017-03-02

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2017-03-02

Property-tax-Switzerland, © Ronnie Wu | Dreamstime.com
In Switzerland, those who own the home they live in must add imputed rent to their income when calculating their income tax. This means owner-occupiers are taxed for living in their own homes, an odd concept for some who are new to Switzerland.

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Dollar Index: The Chart Everyone is Talking About

2017-02-21

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2017-02-21

Many are discussing a possible head-and-shoulders pattern in the Dollar Index. We are skeptical as other technical signals do not confirm. We recognize scope for disappointment over the border tax and the next batch of employment data, but European politics is the present driver and may not be alleviated soon.

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