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If somebody wants to Soros attack them, then somebody can. Plenty of operators out there who have better hard-currency credit than a small sovereign. There are ways to cut their balls off, but those ways require quite heavy-handed intrusion into your domestic banking system,1 which I am not confident the Swiss have the political stomach for.
If people do not want to Soros attack them, or even buy their stuff, then why, precisely, should they care that somebody is conjuring up some Monopoly money and playing with it? A run on fake CHF will not do anything the Swiss CB can't defend against if they want to.
- Jake
1Hike liquidity requirements above total outstanding sovereign bond volume, restrict rediscounts to notes collateralised by domestically held non-financial assets - or just to non-financial assets if you're feeling generous. Then publicly announce these measures, along with the fact that they mean that most of the alleged CHF being sold is not backed by any Swiss bank or government institution. That is, it is counterfeit in every way that matters.
If idiots persist in buying counterfeit CHF off Goldman or some other high street bank, well, that's their problem when Goldman can't deliver. If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
As I've already said, currency traders don't give a hang about the relative valuation of the Real Economy of the country whose currency they are manipulating. There are, however, trans-national companies who do; their purpose of being is to seek out "under-valued" assets and grab 'em on the cheap. This process, confined within the US, is how Warren Buffet took a $3 million textile company and in 45 years turned it into a $372.229 billion conglomerate. At the point everybody goes stampeding out of the Swiss Franc it's going to fall and if it falls low enough¹ it exposes Swiss companies to the predators.
¹ something nobody can predict Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
Unless the Swiss National Bank has accumulated enough foreign reserves. But I guess your point is that it's impossible for the SNB to accumulate enough reserves to counter the possibility of massive naked short selling of its currency in the international FX market. Economics is politics by other means
And the Swiss CB/financial regulator can grab the Swiss banking system by the short and curlies quite literally overnight.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
Or a severe currency crash. Y'know, whichever comes first.
[Emphasis added]
The potential for a debt spiral is very real, as any deterioration in the economy causes the HUF to weaken further, creating a negative feedback loop with Swiss Franc loans and further deterioration in non-performing loans. With another peak in gross government re-financing coming next year amounting to about 20% of Hungarian GDP, and the foreign debt burden denominated in HUF worsening, the markets are watching closely. Interestingly, the Swiss themselves weren't foolish enough to do any of this lending. [!] Austrian banks provided about 40% of CHF loans in the euro-zone. And between 15-25% of the balance sheets of the top four Greek banks are exposed to SE Europe, including almost 40% and 30% of loans to the private sector in Bulgaria and Romania respectively, according to Macquarie Bank. In turn, German, French and other northern European banks are heavily exposed to Greece. No wonder then, that the EU fears the chain reaction which would ensue from a Greek default.
Interestingly, the Swiss themselves weren't foolish enough to do any of this lending. [!] Austrian banks provided about 40% of CHF loans in the euro-zone. And between 15-25% of the balance sheets of the top four Greek banks are exposed to SE Europe, including almost 40% and 30% of loans to the private sector in Bulgaria and Romania respectively, according to Macquarie Bank. In turn, German, French and other northern European banks are heavily exposed to Greece. No wonder then, that the EU fears the chain reaction which would ensue from a Greek default.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I'm beginning to think there are two scenarios:
#1 is not even within shouting distance of the Overton window.
The problem is that central bankers are idiots and didn't do their job properly. Moreover, they used the EU's free movement of capital for cover:
"There is nothing we can do to stop foreign exchange borrowing, and we don't even try. As members of the European Union, we have to respect the free flow of capital," he [Hamezc Istvan, director of Hungary's Central Bank] said.
In the interim, an IMF intervention and a rescue of the Central-Eastern European economies by encouraging Western Banks to not bail themselves out of their Central-Eastern European investments, going by the name of "the Vienna Initiative" has been in place since 2009.
We're going to have another round of currency crises in the same countries we have already had to rescue? Economics is politics by other means
You're going to have countries going further into recession, making it harder for them to service their debt, that will be seen and responded to as a currency crisis.
The ECB, et.al., is dealing with the symptom, not the problem. Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
So you're saying another three iterations of Teh Stupid: One to realise that it's a currency crisis (European Tribune: Get your news two years early), but deal with it by the IMF playbook. Another one to realise that maybe it's time to dust off the proper policy response (John Maynard Keynes: Get your policy response eighty years early). And a third one to actually get their act together and convince even the dumbest Bild Zeitung reading meatbrain that Keynes was right all along.
What great fun. Maybe I should move to Germany.
The recent boffo-socko idea of a BALANCED BUDGET!!1!11!!eleventyone!!!! is Yet Another bit of evidence showing how removed from reality TPTB are. Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere
Maybe I should move to Germany.
Why bother? German policy, at a minimum, is coming to you. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Germany policy is designed to benefit Germany.
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