SZ News


[Skip to the end]

Wonder if our administration will go after them the way it is going after China for doing same.

Bad to buy dollars and US treasury securities vs your currency to support your exports — currency manipulation.

Good to buy dollars to buy treasury securities to, in the words of Secretary of State Clinton, enable the US to buy your products.

US policy could not be more confused and contradictory.

SNB Attention May Have ‘Shifted’ to Targeting Dollar, RBC Says

By Daniel Tilles

July 10 (Bloomberg) —The Swiss National Bank may target the franc’s appreciation against the dollar more than the euro, according to RBC Capital Markets.

“Since the SNB started intervening in March, euro-franc is up 2.2 percent, but dollar-franc is down over 9 percent,” Sue Trinh, a senior currency strategist in Sydney, wrote today in a report. “If the SNB’s attention has now shifted to dollar- franc, it would be consistent with the SNB’s change in tactics from intervening via euro-franc to dollar-franc in their most recent round of intervention and suggests dollar-franc may now be the better way to express the threat of SNB intervention at current levels.”

The dollar rose 0.5 percent to 1.0842 francs as of 8:10 a.m. in Zurich.

SNB to Maintain Currency Purchases, Roth Tells Handelsblatt

By Simone Meier

July 10 (Bloomberg) —The Swiss central bank will continue to buy foreign currencies if needed to weaken the franc and prevent deflation, President Jean-Pierre Roth told Handelsblatt.

“We stick to our policy in a decisive manner,” Roth told the newspaper in an interview published today. “We don’t announce an exchange-rate target but observe that the franc hasn’t appreciated further.”

While the Swiss National Bank is “relatively well prepared” to withdraw its stimulus measures, the bank is “still far away from a change in rate policy,” Roth said.

The Swiss economy could return to “slightly positive” growth rates in 2010 after shrinking between 2.5 percent and 3 percent this year, according to Roth. He called it a “good sign” that UBS AG, the country’s largest bank, managed to find private investors. “It shows that the market has regained confidence in the bank and that there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” Roth told Handelsblatt.


[top]