After a years long campaign of managing the value of the franc, Swiss national bankers are wondering what to do with the hoard of assets they have accumulated in their efforts to keep the currency’s value low.
Today the Swiss National Bank holds over $750 billion in assets, and the Swiss are beginning to ask how this money could be used, and by whom.
Monetary policy around the world is in uncharted territory, and sorting out the details will take time.
Brian Blackstone writes:
Thanks to its efforts to weaken the franc, the Swiss central bank has amassed $750 billion in stocks, bonds and cash.
That has provoked a lively debate in Switzerland: What should the country do with all of that? And whose money is it, anyway?
For now, the Swiss National Bank holds on to it, and invests it around the world—but not in Switzerland. It held $2.7 billion in Apple Inc. stock, for instance, at the end of March. Some lawmakers and many economists think a sovereign-wealth fund created outside the SNB should invest a chunk at home.
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