<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Any other business

Why Switzerland should have listened to Hong Kong on currency pegs

Plus: Catching up on the careers of old colleagues at a big birthday

24 January 2015

9:00 AM

24 January 2015

9:00 AM

The Swiss National Bank usually ticks away as quietly as one of its nation’s more expensive timepieces, but when the cuckoo does occasionally burst out of the clock, all hell breaks loose. After a policy was introduced in September 2011 to depress the Swiss franc against the euro (as traumatised investors continued to pour money into safe-haven Switzerland), governor Philipp Hildebrand resigned when it came to light that his wife Kashya had sold a huge bundle of francs ahead of her husband’s market intervention, then bought them back at a handsome profit.

Now, weeks after Hildebrand’s successor Thomas Jordan called the...

Already a subscriber? Log in

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

As the US decides, so can you

Subscribe today and get a $50 Amazon gift card if you correctly predict the next US president.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close