This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Chart Of The Day: How The Swiss National Bank Went "All In", Three Times And Counting
Think the Fed (with its balance sheet amounting to over 20% of US GDP), or the ECB (at 30% of GDP) is bad? Then take a look at the balance sheet of the Swiss National Bank, whose assets now amount to some 75% of Swiss GDP and which has now "literally bet the bank" in the words of the WSJ not once, not twice, but three times in a bid to keep the Swiss Franc - that default flight to safety haven - low, and engaging in what is semi-stealth currency warfare by buying other sovereigns' currencies for over two years now, although he hardly expect the US Treasury to even consider it for inclusion on its list of currency manipulators - after all, "everyone is doing it".
More from the WSJ:
The nation's central bank is printing and selling as many Swiss francs as needed to keep its currency from climbing against the euro, wagering an amount approaching Switzerland's total national output, and, in the process, turning from button-down conservative to the globe's biggest risk-taker.
Switzerland's virtue is the root of its problem: broad confidence in the Swiss currency and economy has investors hungry for francs to escape euros, the currency of its shaky European neighbors. Such demand makes francs more expensive and, in turn, drives up the price of Swiss exports.
In the past three years, the Swiss National Bank SNBN.EB -0.20% has printed francs to buy euros and other currencies in a swelling portfolio of foreign assets four times what it was at the beginning of 2010.
Nearly every major central bank is buying nontraditional assets to resurrect domestic economies in the wake of the worst global recession in 75 years. The U.S. Federal Reserve is buying mortgages; the European Central Bank is making unusually long loans to banks; and the Bank of Japan is buying real-estate investment funds.
All risk losing money, but Switzerland's exposure stands out in character and scale: Its central bank is buying assets from other countries and its holdings of currencies, bonds, stocks and gold—nearly 500 billion Swiss francs, about $541 billion—are nearly the size of the nation's gross domestic product. In contrast, the Fed's buying of bonds and mortgages amounts to about 20% of U.S. national output, and the European Central Bank's holdings stand at 30% of total GDP.
In September 2011, the SNB set a goal of keeping its currency from rising beyond 1.20 francs to the euro, a threshold that SNB Chairman Thomas Jordan has said the bank would fight to maintain "with the utmost determination."
...
Given its golden reputation, the franc became a magnet for investors fleeing the beleaguered euro, pushing the currency to levels that threatened to cripple Switzerland's export-driven economy.
Although Switzerland is best known for chocolates, watches, banking and Alpine resorts, midsize specialized companies form the backbone of a manufacturing industry that accounts for one-fifth of Swiss GDP. Exports produce half the GDP, with the euro zone by far its largest customer.
Read on here
»
- 20180 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Although Switzerland is best known for chocolates, watches, banking and Alpine resorts, midsize specialized companies form the backbone of a manufacturing industry that accounts for one-fifth of Swiss GDP.../
No wonder they all have guns.
That's pretty fucked up, I would be pissed if I were a Swiss citizen.
We are that's why we've launched a popular initiative to amend our constitution to require the SNB to hold at least 20% of it's assets in physical gold which has to be stored inside the country:
http://www.pmbug.com/forum/f2/switzerland-referendum-prohibition-gold-sales-snb-storage-only-ch-min-20pct-reserves-434/
Guys, I've been making some serious money selling EUR-CHF puts below 1.20, knowing full well that the SNB is watching my back. Zhers have turned their noses up at this oportunity, just like they snobishly rejected HARP, low interest-mortgages and high-yielding peripheral debt. I am shocked that the Zerohedge community rejects clear money-making oportunities provided to them by our global leaders and central bankers, simply because of a childish hatred for leadership and smart economic planning.
Must.devalue.SFR.everyone.going.all.in.on.ponzi
Race to the bottom? It's ON, bitchez!
If its ON, the Swiss should WIN.
They are Kings of the Downhill...
Thank you! I needed a good laugh today.
I'm not childish, I just don't have enough spare cash or understand the dynamics of the 'market' well enough yet.
I have benefited from the clear ramping in equities that occurs for a few months following each QE and also made some returns from paper gold, although missed selling the peaks each time.
And I did try to get some Greek paper middle of last year, but actually couldn't find anyone selling it to a single retail buyer in a structure that made the risk worthwhile... from memory the return worked out around 12% which at that time just didn't feel like enough.
I agree, the global leaders are providing some pretty obvious opportunities.
The trick is timing my cashflow to match their opportunities. They unfortunately seem to have the knack of gifting these chances when I don't have 2 cents to rub together... which means the real money continues to get harvested by those that have real money already :-(
On a long enough timeline...your serious money will become serious fireplace kindling
Front running central banks is always easy money, and with inside information and enough leverage, virtually infinite money with zero risk. Are you willing to share your trades in real time?
Which broker have you used to short the EUR-CHF puts? Not many brokers allow naked short-selling. Thanks.
Where ever you're a citizen you should be pissed... because it's coming to all countries. This is the model. BTFD
OT: Switzerland has also something very, very important: the draft
in fact, citizens are drafted, trained for a dozen weeks and given their assault rifles by the government for home keeping, because everyone is in the militia, subject to several calls for two or three weeks of military training until they have grey hairs
and so they do have what could be called a different approach to the philosophical principles that the US 2nd amendment tries to uphold
Well, you can buy a waiver from the draft, but it's generallly correct.
It's not like military service is dangerous over here, because we haven't fought a war since Napoleon invaded us. There's basicly no risk of getting killed during military service.
Yeah....but it's gotta be kinda risky having that assault weapon in the house.....right?
wrong. 2 killed in my platoon.
The Swiss are generally nice folk and smart too. I think they should embark on something useful like a cure for cancer.
"...and so they do have what could be called a different approach to the philosophical principles that the US 2nd amendment tries to uphold."
Not really. Technically, everyone in the US is also in the militia. Adult men fall into three categories: you are either in the Regular Army, the Organized Militia (aka National Guard), or the Unorganized Militia (everyone else). The Founding Fathers said as much, and this concept was also enshrined into law in the early 20th century (The Efficiency of Militia Bill, aka The Dick Act)
http://12160.info/profiles/blogs/dick-act-of-1902
I hear from Swiss friends that periodic "crazy-guy" shootings in Switzerland are leading to discussion about gun control. Even some former military guys are in favor of limiting guns to the police and military.
Where, exactly, do those "crazy guys" come from, I wonder?
Two countries on planet earth present the greatest threat to the New World Order: The United States of America, and Switzerland.
There are dark forces working overtime to destabilize and disarm these last two remaining bastions of independence and freedom in the world.
Did you ever imagine 15 years ago that you would someday think these thoughts?
The news on the ground in CH is pretty disheartening. Like elsewhere in Europe, there is a big influx of foreigners with very different value structures. Price inflation is already tough for everyone except the very rich. Even with the 1.2 EUR peg, companies are struggling badly and employees are stressed with longer hours and related problems. Certainly better than most of the rest of Europe, but definitely fraying around the edges.
plus a few others they do not have pupet NWO leaders yet, Syria, Iran, Nort Korea, but we are working to fix this.
Why not have all those unemployed kids do the fixing of that?
to the point: Switzerland wants to keep it's economic ties to the eurozone. lots of interconnected industry and trade.
no other way. period
the logic of currency wars - the same reasons why the old european currencies would be all dollarized, without the EUR
btw, the SNB is controlled by the Swiss State Banks, who are controlled by the Swiss States (Cantons), who are controlled by their citizens
the FED is a bad copy of the SNB
49% of SNB shares are publicly traded, but have no voting rights. I'm a shareholder.
The Swiss state banks (Kantonalbanken) are not shareholders of the other 51%, the states are themselves.
Me too.... we could meet at the general assembly and discuss NV Gold too...
Somebody please look over the hill; what happens when the US$ reaches its intrinsic value? What is that?
In 2008 there were $800 Billion US$. Today there are $3.4 Trillion and growing by $85 Billion a month.
Exports are not closing the gap, house prices down, stocks down, in fact the size and value of the American Pie that the US$ is based on (each dollar is a claim on a slice of the pie) has got smaller with the growing number of dollars printed.
If the number of dollars increases by 5 times, then the value of each dollar is reduced by the same amount.
Therefore, the intrinsic value of the $US is 80% below where it is now.
When it reaches that value, what happens to the reserves of countries that hold US$ denominated paper?
Brazil is close to 98% paper, China is over 90% US Paper, Switzerland has 10% Gold and 45% Euros, but remember, the Euro is supported (not backed) by a holding of 65% of its foreign currency reserves (by value) in Gold.
At that point in time, countries will be under pressure to issue new non-fiat currencies to stop or prevent a total collapse.
The Euro has Gold, most of the European countries have enough Gold to issue a 15% Gold backed currency.
Think along these lines and you begin to worry.
Who does not have Gold (or claims to have Gold that is leased out).
If the fiat currencies collapse and countries go to collect their Gold from foreign stores in the US, UK and Switzerland, what do you imagine will happen?
The US and UK have very little Gold after the foreign ownership is discounted.
They will not allow themselves to be stripped of the Gold.
Corzine was a test of the system, he has got away Scott free using the (bought and paid for) judicial system that kow-tows to Obama and his powerful cronies.
Some kind of law, along the lines of rehypothecation will be invoked and the Gold will stay where it is. The US and UK will print a new currency with this Gold as backing and nobody will be able to touch them.
War will follow, if not physical, then financial, as the rest of the world wakes up to the fraud and corruption and He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules.
When you talk about intrinsic value of a dollar, what are you comparing it to? Keep in mind all other currencies have been debasing to keep up, so the dollar will not suddenly plunge compared to other currencies.
Gold was in the 400s in 2005 and rose steadily from there; We are not that far from having a 5X increase in gold price in line with the 5X increase in USD supply.
"No wonder they all have guns."
That and the collective brow wipe after WW2.
Jesus
Don't forget the formidable Swiss Army Knife with all of it's utility. I clipped my fungus riddled toenails with mine this morning and clipped my nose hairs right afterwards. Picked the bacon out of my teeth with the trusty "tooth pick" attachment and will pull this damn growth that has formed in my nose in the last several hours with the handy "tweezer" attachment.
The one I use was bought nearly 30 years ago and is still going strong, without having a service
But there is no bank run in Europe!
Unless there's some panic out of francs, the people buying franc are eventually going to win this.
You should add a chart of XAU/CHF and compare it to the fx reserves spikes.
Gold IS money!
http://goldprice.org/NewCharts/gold/images/gold_5_year_o_s_chf.png?0.016753710856256654
Go get em swissaustrian!
Every time in the past when I've seen these charts and am blown away at CB commitment to their cause, I used to think "it can't keep going.. it HAS to stop". I've learned my lesson. Buying the dip is way easier and WAY less stressful. This chart PROVES it CAN keep going.
This is actually irrelevant, as we are talking about paper vs paper, that can be settled in paper. It can go to 1000% of GDP and it would be the same. The CHF is a debt based currency, so they need to print print print :), not a good idea to get left behind when everybody is debasing the currency. With the new print all the fuck money you can Japanese program you can bet this chart is going up. Exponentially!
Switzerland is not Japan.We're not funding our own debt with this money printing, we're funding other countries by buying their bonds with the newly printed money. Our own government debt is just 40% of GDP and we're running budget surpluses.
Yes but if you funded your own debt, you could have your purchasing power decrease by 100% in four years, while having stocks jump 100% as well.
Don't you Swiss want to be paper rich? It's all the rage. My god think how rich you'll be when toilet paper costs 1 trillion francs. You'd have a fortune in the quadrillions at that point.
Man, those guys in Zimbabwe had it made. These guys in America want to be trillionaires. The bar needs to be set higher than that. Zimbabwe already had trillionares.
Hungary had 100 quintillion Pengo bills, so there were, presumably, Sextillionaires. Thats 10^21 or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
I have seen a calculation that the EUR that the swiss buyed this year (2012) represent 40% of the new EUR denominated debt of the EURozone.
Switzerland is funding the EU and preventing his implosion, but distorting the market because the swiss buy only DE, NL, FR, FIN, EUR debt.
that is now old, now they are selling some of them to rebalance - and in that they are buying UK "gilts", for example
Not sure this is irrelevant.SNB is printing CHF (increasing supply) to meet a high demand level. Supply is increasing, which for currencies usually results in price inflation if that currency chases actual goods. At the moment, the demand for CHF is by people seeking to preserve their wealth so the money stays out of circulation. The SNB is sucking EUR and other currencies out of the system (helping slow Eurozone price inflation) and not suffering much consequence because the newly printed CHF's are mostly staying out of circulation.
Someday, people holding those CHF's will want to trade them in for goods. At that point, something bad happens. Whatever they convert them into will increase in nominal price. Interesting to ponder. Bruce Krasting writes about this topic periodically. A good topic for next time might be speculation about the net outcome. So far, BK and others have been wrong about how long this could go on.
20 Facts About The Collapse Of Europe That Everyone Should Know
http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-economic-implosion-of-europe-is-accelerating-20-facts-about-the-collapse-of-europe-that-everyone-should-know/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-09/20-facts-about-collapse-europe-...
I'm beginning to hink that it just doesn't matter how big they blow up the balance sheets.If the fed can go to 75% of GDP or higher then that is a lot of bond buying power.
Short term = Noise.
Long term = Global banking system collapse.
I think they will go to 75%...to us it will not matter....but other countries will make changes...and adapt...
this won't end well.
China's M2 have been doubling every 4 years since it joined the WTO. it looks just like the SNB.
Yeah, I agree... China's version of this graph is the one to worry about.
I wonder if we will ever see it.
And yet, while buying up fiat of all kinds those idiot Swiss bankers are ignoring gold. Well at least officially, after all, what would their bosses at Goldman and JPM do if they actually started buying gold instead?
http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Wars-Battle-Against-Perspective/dp/0971038007
The swiss cannot openly buy gold. TPTB will just crush them if caught.
Hey guys, maybe it is all this interconnected money that is the problem. Of course their answer is, yes it is, we need a one world currency instead of every country telling each other to fuck offand do it all themselves.
All this bullshit to keep the zombified business of public enterprise afloat. Keep pumping stocks, keep pumping stocks, like stocks can increase business and production.
The world's official product is now worthless paper. Everything else is secondary. I just wish they would lace the ink with vitamins so we can actually get some nutritional value out of it when we are forced to eat it. I'm hoping the trillion dollar note tastes like bacon.
How do the Swiss look once a new sovereign bankruptcy regime is put in place and they swap all the Eurozone debt they've been buying for equity in their neighbors? Just wondering?
www.tradewithdave.com
The Swiss also do an unbelievably good potato peeler (marketed as a tomato peeler) which is quite possibly the best manual veggie peeler on the planet........and they also do a seriously good line of zirconium oxide bladed chefs knives
:)
i am a proud owner of one of those peelers. best thing since sliced bread.
have to check into that knife, although i am quite happy with my Santuko WMF knife for all my chopping requirements.
When the Swiss locked in 1.20 and the franc dropped 10% in seconds, the price of gold in CHF went up 10% at the same moment. That was a light-bulb-on moment for a lot of folk here and a few people I know are going for gold in a big way now.
#BZFD as we say in Swiss-German!
Step aside SNB, Gartman has sold all his gold about 7 times so far.
A little "plug" for me?? The WSJ article had this line:
"The SNB is acting very much like a leveraged hedge fund," Bruce
Krasting, a former currency trader, wrote on his blog. "It's making
currency 'bets' with the people's money. It's taking some very big
risks."
Ho hum....You read about this at Zero Hedge eight days ago - who needs the WSJ?
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-01-01/big-hedge-fund-whacked-a...
MSM does not like the "Blogosphere", which is why most publications never attribute their sources when they get information from blogs.
H/T to you Bruce.
No advertizing money.
Kudos Bruce.
See my comments above about net outcome. Interesting as this will ultimately impact us all.
no gloating!!
"In contrast, the Fed's buying of bonds and mortgages amounts to about 20% of U.S. national output, and the European Central Bank's holdings stand at 30% of total GDP."
comparing flows with stocks: meaningless.
Can anyone explain what the risk of a central bank having a "risky balance sheet" is? I see this hockey stick chart but I don't really know what the implications are. They are printing money like crazy, and buying outside assets. Some of those assets could blow up and the bank would show possibly big paper losses, but then what? They have to print more-er?
Looking at a chart like that does make you go WTF. It does show systematic instability (i.e. look at what it takes to keep the status quo up and running), but it also shows how much more room the FED and the ECB have. 80% GDP for the FED means a balance sheet of around 13 T. That is a lot of bonds and mortgages.
So I guess to answer my own question. It's mega printing as far as the eye can see. But I think the eye can see pretty damn far. Maybe this goes on for decades...?
you can also argue that the swiss are getting richer and richer by increasing their holdings of other peoples debt, gold and stakes in non-Swiss companies.
the risk in this case is the heightened level of mockery the swiss are making of global financial markets. the swiss just have to print money and get (non-swiss) wealthy.
at the moment, the corruption scandals at the Swiss National Bank, the tax scandals as the swiss aid and abet tax evaders in europe, asia and the US have not tainted the demand from "investors" for currencies that are not destined for zero values as a result of central banks debasement (in the UK, the US, Europe and Japan).
you might ask also who the buyers of swiss frances are. you might find the answer includes central banks, but largely it was probably fx speculators engaging in basket trades (selling sterling, dollar, yen and euro and buying nok, oz, kiwi and looney).
now that the swiss central bank is engaging in currency manipulation to protect its exporters, the euro becomes an unwitting "beneficiary" of artificial strength. unfortunately, this penalises the exporters in the euro currency, most notably, spain, italy and portugal who cannot devalue the euro.
the next leg will be the japanese who want to devalue the yen. Abe seeks to direct the BoJ (via the Mof) to sell yen and buy Euro and ESM bonds. Not US dollars you notice.
these are the opening salvos of war..albeit currency war..unlike physical warfare where guns and shells of the strong take the property and assets of the weak, this is war with notes, coins and electronic platforms.
the ECB now is faced with the quandary of having to sterilize intervention of other countries central banks.
that is, europe has to issue debt for the swiss and the japanese to buy because it has already monetized (via acceptance of collateral in the form of various government bonds) the government bond markets. if this collateral is taken from the euopeans, the european banks no longer have the collateral with which to secure loans from the ECB.
the screwing over of one nationalistic bloc by another is a currency war and it is an excuse to NOT FIX THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM OF TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT SPENDING FROM TOO LITTLE TAX.
Yes, the SNB is taking a page from the USD's reserve currency status: trade a bunch of printed paper for assets and resources from other countries.
and good point about the ECB's challenges.
All this for fringe porn and plastic watches?
dont forget the perverse logic that the swiss operate under...they will search you for weapons religiously at airport security in geneva and zurich..and will then try and sell you a multi-bladed swiss army knife once you are past airport security...
don't forget the fringe porn involving cow bells and chocolate...so im told..and the large amount of drugs consumed by yhe under 30's in Basle, where the banksters regulator BIS meets as regularly as possible.
I'm thinking central banksterz came up with the wrong answer when Mom asked: "If everyone else jumped over a cliff, would you do it too?"