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SWITZERLAND DOES NOT foresee a break-up of the eurozone – but is nonetheless drawing up an action plan in the event of its collapse, the country’s central bank chief said today.
Thomas Jordan, who became chairman of the Swiss National Bank last month, told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper that a working group was discussing measures to combat any strengthening of the safe haven Swiss currency.
The bank intervened in September to stem the rise of the Swiss franc which had soared as investors sought a secure place for their cash, hurting Swiss exports and the tourism industry.
Jordan said the eurozone crisis had worsened in recent weeks and he foresees bumpy times ahead.
“The working group is focussing mainly on instruments to combat a strengthening of the franc,” said Jordan. ”We have to be prepared for the scenario of a currency union collapse, although I don’t think that will happen.
“One measure would be capital controls, that’s to say controls directly influencing the flood of capital into Switzerland,” he said, declining to give further details.
Jordan said the bank would defend its exchange rate floor against the euro of 1.20 francs. The franc closed at 1.2014 on Friday.
The SNB has consistently said it will enforce the minimum rate and is prepared to buy unlimited quantities of foreign currencies if necessary.
The cap was introduced after the franc posted a sharp gain in value last year, going from 1.23 to the euro at the beginning of July to less than 1.05 a month later.
“Maintaining the minimum price is the monetary policy that we will continue with determination for the foreseeable future,” Jordan said.
The euro had extended its slide against the dollar on Friday, dipping below $1.25, under pressure from uncertainty over the future of Greece in the eurozone, and the risk of contagion from its debt crisis.
Jordan succeeded former bank head Philipp Hildebrand who quit in January over a controversial dollar trade by his wife.
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But, but, but ….. Who do you believe now…. Kenny and his treasonous government, or the No camp. If the Greeks are forced out of the Euro, the fiscal treaty will be dead in the water, however, we will have already written into our constitution that Germany and France must approve any of our future budgets… wake up… The treaty was supposed to guarantee us access to the ESM fund … The problem is that this fund will be non-existent once Greece is forced out (Estimated costs are approximately 1 trillion euro). The ESM fund will only have 500 mbillion in it… By the time Ireland needs access to it, the well will be dry.
We will have given Germany and France total control of our fiscal affairs, and Ireland will not be able to give grants to multi-nationals in the future to come to Ireland, as France and Germany will not allow us to do it. They will have the power to over-ride any decision we make in this country at a sovereign level.
Vote NO.
This ^^^
Seriously, nobody in their right mind can justify a yes vote!
#voteno #euref
Do the right thing and vote no.
Thank you.
That is just Shinner talk from the Swiss Central Bank, same it is Shinner talk from Paul Krugman the Nobel Prize economist who is very much against the treaty. UBS bank, who said that the Eurozone banks are nearly 3 trillion short – sure they used to the Easter lilly on every year.
Shane Ross has turned all shinner as well.
I hope the Irish state is making provisions for the Euro collapse rather than concerning itself with this half baked treaty.
http://m.brne.ws/ireland/ross-calls-for-no-vote-in-fiscal-treaty-referendum-553052.html
Germany and France approving our budgets? Yes, in the same way that Ireland and Spain will have a chance to approve theirs.
James??? Have you not heard, they voted away the Veto right during the last treaty … the one where we rejected first time, and made vote again until we got the answer right… Remember the one where “Yes for job” and since then we lost over 130,000 jobs, over 200,000 emigrated.
Right now, its majority rules, and coincidentally, each country gets a weighting based on its population… And guess which two countries in the Europe have the largest populations?
You and the rest of the Government supporters can stick your head in the sand as long as you want… But at some point, you will have to come up for air, and then you will see what devastation looks like.
As a civil servant, I will be voting yes.
We were told if Ireland allows it’s banks to fail it would be a catastrophic.
We were told that if Ireland did not bail out the bank bondholders the markets would punish Ireland.
Denmark has now allowed two banks to fail, burned the bondholders and the markets love them.
The same doughnuts are now threatening and harassing the population into supporting this treaty. Again they’re wrong.
Europe’s situation is now extremely precarious. We will never get another oportunity to rid ourselves of this bank debt. As long as we vote no.
http://www.independent.ie/business/world/denmark-burns-bondholders-shuns-euro-and-markets-love-it-3119809.html
@James
Of course you are voting YES. You are overpaid and your snout is buried in the same trough as our political betters. You believe that it is your right to force our children to pay for your greed.
Honestly I’m with James on this one. Tiz a YES vote from me.
@Eric. You don’t know what I do nor know how much I’m paid.
@James
You are a civil servant by your own admission. A member of the most overpaid cosseted class in this country.
I’m also making provisions, I’m working and letting the government tax the shite out of me so that I’ve no euros left at the end of the month so if/when a new currency comes in, il have nothing to worry about….simples
Eric
My wife is a civil servant n’works many unpaid extra hrs because of staff cuts she grosses under 30k p.a
Is it not about time that the writers of articles in the press stopped looking to be the next economic guru? The Swiss central bank chief said “SWITZERLAND DOES NOT foresee a break-up of the eurozone “! Of course they are looking at all the possibilities, that is what they simply have to do. I would dread to sit beside one of these “journalists” on a flight when the attendant give the safety notices! They would be up screaming that the airline is planning to preparing for a crash! It seems to me that everyone wants to be the next person who can predict the future!
It would be considered both irresponsible and undiplomatic for the SNB or Swiss government to simply come out and state that a Euro failure is imminent.
In much the same way that it would be irresponsible for a central bank to publicly question the solvency of banks under it’s supervision. As the ECB did with the Greek banks following their election. An action that has resulted in a bank through Europe’s periphery nations.
Excerpt from Irish Times 17/05/12 :
“THE EUROPEAN Central Bank said it would temporarily stop lending to some Greek banks to limit its risk as president Mario Draghi signalled the ECB would not compromise on key principles to keep Greece in the euro area.
The ECB said yesterday that it would push the responsibility for lending to some Greek financial institutions on to the Greek central bank until they have sufficiently boosted their capital.
The move comes after Mr Draghi acknowledged for the first time that Greece could leave the monetary union.
While the bank’s strong preference” is that Greece stays in the 17-nation euro area, the ECB would continue to preserve “the integrity of our balance sheet”, he said in a speech in Frankfurt yesterday.
“I think the ECB is playing hardball,” said Mark McCormick, currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York.
“I doubt they want to get too involved in EU politics, but I think they’re trying to show Greek policy-makers what their banking sector would look like without support from the ECB.”
The move comes as the man who represented private creditors in negotiations leading to the Greek debt restructuring earlier this year said a Greek exit from the euro posed “more ominous potential” to the global economy than the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers more than three years ago.
The effect of Greece leaving the single currency would be “somewhere between catastrophic and Armageddon”, the managing director of the Institute of International Finance Charles Dallara said.”
Vote Yes.
NO BLOODY WAY MATE.
Why? So we have access to the ESM and can squander more money? So we can increase the national debt that is borne on the backs of the private sector tax payer? (public service tax payees don’t count unfortunately as the source of their gross pay is the private sector tax take)
I’ve had enough. Enda stop licking my balls. I have no more sweat to give
My source inside the DoF is telling me that as soon as the treaty is approved with a yes vote, there will be significant movement on the promissory notes. The troika do not want a second bailout and want Ireland back in the markets.
James, why are they waiting on the result of a vote?
I will be honest, if they announced that they were eliminating the 64 billion euro private banking debt, i might consider voting Yes… As it will give our country a chance to grow. But, if we vote Yes, what bloody incentive is there for them to release us from the German banking Debt? Answer… None
Vote No, force them to give us an incentive to vote Yes.
Cal, the write down is on the way. Do the right thing and stand shoulder to shoulder with your European brethren.
James. Please. I’ve heard it all now. Some toilet cleaner u know in DoF is telling u a deal for the bank debt is in the offing. This is not our debt! It’s Germany’s!! Michael Noonan should stick that debt in a cylindrical tube, smother the exterior in copious amounts of Vaseline, ram it up Merkels arse, then graciously accept her apology for trying to offload it onto us in the first place
When AIB and BOI make losses so big on the Irish property market that they face immediate closure and all customers loose their deposits, the Irish Government put in place a bank guarantee to prevent it from happening. How could this possibly be seen as German debt?
Oh, and by the way, my source doesn’t clean the toilets in the DoF.
Significant movement on promissory notes my arse!
If Ireland votes NO, Europe will have no option but yield on the banking debt. There’s currently trillions of euro in debt ready to make a bee-line for the German taxpayer if the Euro project unravels.
Remember, Ireland’s taxpayers received no concessions for bailing out French and German taxpayers. Only onerous debt at punitive rates.
Anyone who believes this nonsense should be medicated for their own good.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Europe will have no option? Are you serious? I hope you’re winding me up.
James.
Never count on anything you don’t already have. There is no write down, if you have whispers of a write down it means nothing if it isn’t in an agreed contract.
Don’t be so flippant with your precious vote.
Make no mistake their will be intense interest in core nations on Irelands referendum. They may be witnessing their own children being sold into debt slavery.
“Professor Hans-Werner Sinn, head of Germany’s IFO Institute, said German taxpayers are facing a dangerous rise in credit risk from a plethora of bail-out schemes. “The euro-system is near explosion,” he told Austria’s Economics Academy on Thursday.
Dr Sinn said Germany is on the hook for much of the €2.1 trillion in rescue measures for EMU debtors – often by the back-door – that will saddle Germans with ruinous losses one day.
“It is a horror scenario,” he said, warning that the euro system is splitting friendly countries into blocs of mutually hostile creditors and debtors, exactly the opposite of what was hoped.
Earlier this week, the Foundation for Family Business in Munich filed a criminal lawsuit against the Bundesbank, accusing the board of disguising the true scale of risk born by German citizens.”
Der Speigel
@James Darmody, is your source Michael Noonan? He’s been promising a “significant move on promissory notes” for 12 months now and when the ECB were asked about it recently it was the first they’d heard of it.
“Stand shoulder to shoulder with our European brethren” My European brothers and sisters are the working class of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, I will stand with them by voting NO!
@Sean. Love the Cicero quote. Not much has changed in 2,000 years
@James. I hate to have to be the one to tell you this but the money AIB, BoI and Anglo lent did not grow on trees. Maybe nobody went up there to public service land and told ya. It came from German banks who were so stuffed with money they didn’t know what to do with it. As for depositors losing all their money, each account had a state guarantee of 100k. Anyone dumb enough to leave more than that in a deposit account deserves to lose it.
As for you hearing of movement on the promi notes, I suggest you read an excellent book which should explain the situation to you in parable form. “the emperor has no clothes”
Finally you tell us ur friend in DoF is not the toilet cleaner. He’s not the toilet cleaner yet!
Vote No
Scrap, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the concept of fraudulent conveyance.
Under conveyance legislation a debtor can be found to be in breach of criminal law if he secures or attempts to discharge a debt in a fraudulent manner.
However, there is also a duty of care placed on the creditor to satisfy himself that the debtor has the the means to comply with the terms of the contract. In other words, a creditor who can not show that he satisfied himself as to the ability of a debtor to service the terms of a debt could possibly not only have breached the terms of the contract, but also be guilty of a fraudulent conveyance.
It is often suggested that creditors can simply throw any amount of money at debtors and the law will back up the creditor if the debtor is unable to meet the terms of the loan, but this, at least theoretically, is not correct.
It’s strange then that with all the problems now arise of mortgagees being unable to comply with the terms of their loans and French and German bondholders expecting returns of 100 cent in the Euro that this doesn’t seem to arise.
Makes you wonder what government ministers are thinking and who the hell is advising them.
Good auld Swiss always there to pounce on an opportunity; they were quick to take the Jews gold and even slower to give it back. What a nation.
@Rona, and tell me now , buddy , why can’t we do this without foreign interference.
(getting very angry now)
just as I thought, no answer. logging off now.
It seams to me that our government needs the straight jacket of budget restraint to stop our corrupt governments from blowing our children’s and or children’s children income of make life easy for us now. Yes there should be an orderly default on the bank debt, but at the same time we need fiscal controls to stop current and future governments blowing money on “jobs for the boys”. For these reasons a yes vote is important, yes it will make our life difficult but we need to do this for our children.
We should just write off the anglo, and wipe the slate clean, and start again. The swiss are ok, they are not part of the euro, it is well for them to prepare for the fall of the euro, they will not be suffering from the collapse, the members of it will be. Why don’t they help nations in trouble, then they can comment. Vote no on Thursday otherwise that will be the end of Ireland.
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