Swiss Francs to Finally Get Facelift; Blackout Hits Hinterhof Party; The Free Wifi Will Go On; Real Estate Index Sounds Warning

News For 18 August 2015   TheLocal.ch, a Swiss web-zine reports that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has finally announced plans to introduce all-new high-tech banknotes in April 2016 to replace the currency currently in circulation throughout the country.  The plan was delayed by more than six years after the bank reported technical problems with its paper vendor.  Apparently, the company Orell Fussli - the Zurich based printers who've had the mandate to print Switzerland's currency - encountered issues with its paper vendor that would have made it difficult to incorporate the new safety and anti-counterfitting technologies into usable banknotes.  First to be put into circulation will be the 50 franc note, which will debut next spring featuring the art work of Zurich based graphic artist Manuela Pfrunder.  The art will depict mountains and hikers on one side and the sun on the other.  The remaining denominations of 10, 20, 100, 200 and 1000 notes will be released one at a time every 6 months until 2019.  Gone from the entire line-up of new notes will be the pictures of Swiss luminaries, replaced by landscapes and activities reminiscent of Switzerland and its lifestyle.  The new notes will be the ninth revision the SNB has made to the Swiss currency since it started producing money for the country in 1907.     *******************************

An unexpected power outage on Saturday night left revelers in the dark at the Club Hinterhof.  According to the IWB - Basel's electric company, it was not clear why the power to the Gundeli and Bruderholz district went out.  Not to be deterred, the promoters who were expecting a wall-to-wall crowd let the party go on.  On the guest list for the evening was none other than ex-MTV News host Markus Kavka, who said afterward via Twitter that the event was one of the 3 best parties he'd ever attended.  When the lights came back on at close to 2 in the morning, the 500 strong crowd which remained was apparently determined to light-up-the night - as it were.  The club's owners report that despite the chaos of the hour long outage, overall the evening was a success, and one of the best in terms of sales in the club's history.

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The effort to bring free city-wide Wifi to Basel continues, albeit at a slower pace than hoped for by the project's promoters.  Freifunk Dreilandereck, the company behind the effort, hailing from Grenzach-Wyhlen in Germany, directly across the border from Basel, has installed 25 of their wireless routers in Basel based enterprises.  Well short of their target of 500 by the end of 2015, they remain optimistic that 200 of the routers will be installed in the same period which would get the company considerably closer to its goal of providing city-wide coverage of their service.  The directors of the company lament that business owners who would ideally host the wifi routers which proprietors get for free from Freifunk are reluctant to sign up because they fear the consequences of having to share their bandwidth with the public.  In the meantime, the organizers have also been trying to coordinate with Basel's Tourism office to enlist their support as they already have a mandate to provide 25 free public wifi hotspots by this time next year.     ***********************   Many listeners thinking of settling in Basel for an extended period are no doubt contemplating buying, rather than leasing their dwelling.  According to a recent real estate report published by UBS those folks may want to think twice, as a key indicator tracked by the bank is signaling that Swiss Real Estate is at risk of being in a property bubble.  While many communities were studied for the latest analysis, Basel-Stadt is singled out as among those cities at greatest risk.  Underlying UBS' thesis is the fact that house prices and outstanding private household mortgages went up disproportionately relative to Switzerland's weak economy.  Furthermore, the divergence between the economy and housing prices is expected to continue to widen in the short term.  Driving these factors are, of course, extremely low interest rates and lack of housing on the one hand and weakening Swiss economic activity resulting from the strengthening Franc, on the other.  Further evidence of a bubble is also the fact that real estate rents have in fact dropped 3% year over year, meaning commercial landlords are paying higher prices for land and buildings, and getting less income.  Authors of the Real Estate report at UBS expect that housing prices will resume their downward trend later this year.