My Thursday blog was very well received and thanks to all who wrote to me about my essay on negative interest rate policy, or NIRP. I note that today's Financial Times had an op-ed article on the same subject by Gillian Tett and am sending her my note of yesterday by email. I have met her in NYC but we are not formally introduced because it is so long since my husband was linked to the pink paper.

Ms Tett's op-ed article is rather overshadowed by the FT's amazing interview with Vladimir Putin which he decided that classical liberalism was “obsolete” and no longer needed. I hope that world leaders, including El Presidente Trumpet, challenge his assumptions and support for nastiness to refugees, gays, and traitors to the Russian regime. I also think some challengers starting with Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and everyone of the Democrats hoping to run against The Donald will also stand up for Western traditional rights against the new Czar of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovich.

The Swiss government has acted to prohibit trading of Swiss company shares in the European community starting Monday because of a dispute over regulation of many different sectors. The EU will no longer recognize trading in Swiss bourses starting July 1. About a third of Swiss stocks trade in European markets outside Switzerland every day, not counting the ADR market. Most of the Swiss stocks traded in the EU are in fact traded in London which is about to leave the European Union and will probably work out a way to keep the Swiss business. And of course there are many Swiss multinational trade in the US as ADRs. To boost its markets and their “infrastructure”. Berne will let non-Swiss European brokerages do their trades in Zurich.

Another Asian big firm has been hit with charges of accounting flim-flam against its shareholders outside the country. It is Garuda, the Indonesian airline whose shareholders claim it misrepresented a $240 mn deal. We ran into this with one of our shares which is effectively bankrupt.