Tag Archive: Switzerland

Un-Becoming American – One Man’s Painful Journey To Renouncing Citizenship

In April 2012, I returned to Switzerland – my country of birth – to commence a new phase of my adult life. Naturally, one of the first steps to undertake when establishing oneself in a new country is to open a bank account. I went down to the local Raiffeisen bank branch in the village of Aesch, Luzern, where my relatives and ancestors had lived and worked as farmers for over 10 generations.

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Confiscation: Sorry, You Can’t Have Your Gold

We warn regularly of the risk involved in storing wealth in banks. They’ve made the removal of your deposits increasingly difficult in addition to colluding with governments to allow them to legally freeze or confiscate your money. To add insult to injury, they’re creating reporting requirements with regard to the contents of safe deposit boxes and restricting what can be stored in them – again, at risk of confiscation.

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Best Countries To Store Gold: How Did America, A Serial Defaulter, Make The Cut?

An era of slowing growth, falling corporate profits, record debt levels, and currency debauchment has many investors buying gold as a bet against global central banks. Holding that gold outside the banking system, and for some, outside one’s own country, are increasingly popular options. Canada, Switzerland, and four other countries have particularly attractive characteristics.

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Rogoff Warns “Cash Is Not Forever, It’s A Curse”

2016-09-14

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2016-09-14

Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, postulates to get rid of cash. In his opinion, killing big bills would hamper organized crime and make negative interest more effective. Kenneth Rogoff makes a provocative proposal. One of the most influential economists on the planet, he wants to phase out cash.

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Strong Swiss growth lessens chance SNB will act

2016-09-13

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2016-09-13

Swiss real GDP growth data surprised on the upside in Q2, expanding by 0.6% q-o-q (and 2.5% q-o-q annualised). In addition, growth in the three previous quarters was revised significantly higher. As a result, our GDP growth forecast for growth in Switzerland rises mechanically from 0.9% to 1.5% for 2016.

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Attack The Fed’s War On Savers, Workers And The Unborn (Taxpayers)

2016-09-13

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2016-09-13

The central banks have gone so far off the deep-end with financial price manipulation that it is only a matter of time before some astute politician comes after them with all barrels blasting. As a matter of fact, that appears to be exactly what Donald Trump unloaded on bubble vision this morning:

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Case For -2 percent Rates, Banning Cash? Jim Grant Blasts Lunatic Proposals

2016-09-11

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2016-09-11

Looking for group think, extrapolation of extreme silliness, linear thinking, and belief in absurd models? Then look no further than Fed presidents, their advisors, and academia loaded charlatan professors. Today’s spotlight is on Marvin Goodfriend, a former economist and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve’s Bank of Richmond, and Ken Rogoff, a chaired Harvard economics professor, a one-time chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

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Negative and the War On Cash, Part 2: “Closing The Escape Routes”

2016-09-08

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2016-09-08

History teaches us that central authorities dislike escape routes, at least for the majority, and are therefore prone to closing them, so that control of a limited money supply can remain in the hands of the very few. In the 1930s, gold was the escape route, so gold was confiscated. As Alan Greenspan wrote in 1966:

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Negative Rates and The War On Cash, Part 1: “There Is Nowhere To Go But Down”

2016-09-04

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2016-09-04

As momentum builds in the developing deflationary spiral, we are seeing increasingly desperate measures to keep the global credit ponzi scheme from its inevitable conclusion. Credit bubbles are dynamic — they must grow continually or implode — hence they require ever more money to be lent into existence.

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Europe Debates The Burkini: “We Will Colonize You With Your Democratic Laws”

2016-09-04

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2016-09-04

"We will colonize you with your democratic laws." — Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Egyptian Islamic cleric and chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. "Beaches, like any public space, must be protected from religious claims. The burkini is an anti-social political project aimed in particular at subjugating women.

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Gold Withdrawals From The NY Fed Accelerate, Hit 388 Tons Since 2014

2016-08-31

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2016-08-31

First it was Germany who redeemed 120 tons of physical gold from the NY Fed in 2014; then it was the Netherlands who "secretly" redomiciled 122 tons of gold; then last May, we learned that Austria would be the third "core" European nation to repatriate most of its offshore gold, held primarily in the Bank of England, redepositing it in Vienna and Switzerland.

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Finland Unleashes Helicopter Money In “Greatest Societal Transformation Of Our Time”

2016-08-31

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2016-08-31

Finland is about to launch an experiment in which a randomly selected group of 2,000–3,000 citizens already on unemployment benefits will begin to receive a monthly basic income of 560 euros (approx. $600). That basic income will replace their existing benefits. The amount is the same as the current guaranteed minimum level of Finnish social security support.

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‘Last Economist Standing’ John Taylor Urges “Less Weird Policy” At Jackson Hole

2016-08-25

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2016-08-25

I attended the first monetary-policy conference there in 1982, and I may be the only person to attend both the 1st and the 35th. I know the Tetons will still be there, but virtually everything else will be different. As the Wall Street Journal front page headline screamed out on Monday, central bank Stimulus Efforts Get Weirder. I’m looking forward to it.

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Two More Banks Start Charging Select Clients For Holding Cash

2016-08-19

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2016-08-19

Bank of Ireland, which is 14% owned by the State, has informed its large corporate and institutional customers that it plans to charge them a negative rate of -0.1% for deposits of €10 million or more starting in October.

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The World’s Dominant Gold Refineries

2016-08-19

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2016-08-19

There are many precious metals refineries throughout the world, some local to their domestic markets, and some international, even global in scale. Many but by no means all of these refineries are on the Good Delivery Lists of gold and/or silver.

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Spectacular Chinese Gold Demand Fully Denied By GFMS And Mainstream Media

2016-08-18

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2016-08-18

In the Gold Survey 2016 report by GFMS that covers the global gold market for calendar year 2015 Chinese gold consumption was assessed at 867 tonnes. As Chinese wholesale demand, measured by withdrawals from Shanghai Gold Exchange designated vaults, accounted for 2,596 tonnes in 2015 the difference reached an extraordinary peak for the year.

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UK Imported Net 152 Tonnes of Gold in June, 68 from Switzerland

2016-08-16

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2016-08-16

On a firmly rising gold price the UK is one of the largest net importers of gold in 2016. The gold price went up 25 % from $1,061.5 dollars per troy ounce on January 1 to $1,325.8 on June 31. Over this period the UK net imported 583 tonnes and GLD inventory mushroomed by 308 tonnes.

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2 Men, 3 Women 6-Year-Old Kid Burned, Stabbed By 27-Year-Old Attacker On Swiss Train

2016-08-14

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2016-08-14

Seven people are in hospital with stab wounds and burns, police say, after an attack on a train near St.Gallen, Switzerland. The man set the train carriage on fire using a flammable liquid and also stabbed passengers, including a six-year-old child, police said. Details are sparse for now but The BBC reports, the suspected attacker, described as a Swiss man aged 27, was also taken to hospital after the incident near Salez in St Gallen Canton.

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Golden Stockpiles – The Key to Gold as a Store of Value and Safe Haven

The behaviour of the gold price allows gold to play the role of unique financial asset that retains its purchasing power over time, acts as a safe haven, diversifies risk, and provides hedging benefits.

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Best Countries To Store Gold (How Did America, A Serial Defaulter, Make The Cut?)

2016-08-09

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2016-08-09

An era of slowing growth, falling corporate profits, record debt levels, and currency debauchment has many investors buying gold as a bet against global central banks. Holding that gold outside the banking system, and for some, outside one’s own country, are increasingly popular options. Canada, Switzerland, and four other countries have particularly attractive characteristics.

Read More »