Bond Outlook by bridport & cie, October 26 2011

There may be lessons from the Swiss national Banks’ negative repo rate and the failure of Dexia. Both reflect aspects of how the euro crisis has become a banking crisis.

Since we are still awaiting the results of the euro summit, and, having already made our own forecast of the outcome (see our last Weekly), we turn today to the strange case of the actions of a central bank with too much liquidity, and interest rates already at zero, viz, the Swiss National Bank. Switzerland’s problems are of course extremely unusual: the loss of confidence in both EUR and USD, and resulting flight into the CHF, pushed its exchange rate well above what is justified in terms of international trade competitiveness.

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