The population of Switzerland rejected an initiative to provide the national bank of the country with a "full monopoly on money" at a national referendum. The idea of refusing fractional-reserve banking in the non-standard version gained only 24.3% of the supporters among the voters in the country. However, the referendum rather opens than closes this discussion. The rigidity of banking...

Moody's agency issued another report on the state of the aerospace and defense industries, and gave a forecast for their development for the next 18 months. On average, the operating profit of companies related to these industries will grow by 7% by the end of 2019. Airbus and Boeing will be doing the best in the emerging market conditions. A bright future - at least in the coming years – is...

China may take possession of the world's largest gas field in Iran thanks to American sanctions against Iran and Total’s forthcoming leave. Tehran is ready to transfer the share of the French oil giant Total in the South Pars gas field to the Chinese partner. In July 2017, Total signed with Tehran an agreement worth $ 4.8 billion to develop the 11th phase of South Pars, the largest gas field on...

A strike at one of the world's largest copper deposits resulted in a rapid rise in prices. In five days, they have risen by almost 7% and after a four-year break exceeded the level of $ 7.3 thousand per ton. However, metal prices still can also drop rapidly due to speculators playing in the case of a quick agreement between the controlling shareholder and the workers of the Chilean mines....

On Tuesday, the cost of European oil grades fell below $ 72 per barrel in the spot market after a six-month break. The commodity market is adversely affected by reports of a possible curtailment of the OPEC + deal to limit production at the request of Washington. If this happens, oil prices may return to below $ 70 per barrel in conditions of increasing production in the US, experts predict....

The outflow of portfolio investments from emerging markets has accelerated sharply in May to $ 12.3 billion from $ 0.3 billion in April, the Washington Institute of International Finance (IIF) calculated. The funds were flowing out of stocks and bonds in equal shares; this trend mainly affected the Asian countries (minus $ 8 billion) and the countries of Africa and the Middle East (minus $ 4.7...

Despite the accelerating growth, the world economy has been facing the highest level of risk in recent decades, say experts from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an analytical division of The Economist. Protectionism, territorial disputes, terrorism, the growing number of cybercrimes and even the threat of nuclear war are the incomplete list of the geopolitical, financial and operational...

Economists and central banks are trying to find out why acceleration of large economies is not accompanied by an acceleration of inflation. There are different theories, such as globalization, development of Internet commerce, weaker influence of trade unions, and so on. This is a mystery, former US Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen admitted. The solution may lie in changing the age structure...

Development of electric transport can become a serious threat to oil companies. Therefore, they have already begun to adapt to the coming changes. It follows from the recent report of the International Energy Agency (IEA) that the global number of electric vehicles has reached 3.7 million. So far this is negligible compared to the global fleet of vehicles, which accounts for more than 1 billion...