who do you think bought these bonds ? do you think a lot of, say, Germans converted Euros to CHFs just to buy bonds yielding 1% ?

i guess gross of these bonds were bought by Swiss banks and pension funds

@Stevie: your knowledge about Switzerland must be coming from FOX News, is it?

I’m certainly not going to go into Swiss history here.

Suffice to say that your reply made no mention of my other accusation that the poor of the world have suffered because of the smug, self-enriching Swiss attitude to secret bank accounts and their rwo-fingered response to legitimate foreign tax-authorities. Hopefully the recent UBS $ 3/4 billion fine and having to open their books to the US authorities will be just the start of a global revolt against Swiss banks. Not before time.

If you know nothing about history than the junk you read in the “news”papers, you rather shut up. The Swiss have thouroughly reflected on their role in WWII several times over. In the 90s, when the silly campaign of Senator d’Amato against Switzerland was what formed your pitty brain, the Swiss taxpayers have financed a complete review of *all* Swiss banks to the tune of 1 billion Swiss francs only to find 76 million CHF on accounts from WWII, two thirds of which where non-jewish in origin. It’s the British, the French and many others who are in denial about their dark sides, certainly not the Swiss, pitty you!

“globalization won’t stop … nature is globalized” to the contrary, nature creates isolated and diversified worlds. Globalization is the highly unnatural and unstable result of a human mind’s sickness.

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2008/12/top-ten-predictions-for-the-2009-global-economy.html

What irks me about the situation is that many policy makers had their heads buried in the sand about what was sure to transpire. We are in a deleveraging process with many potential pitfalls. A much more aggressive response is warranted than the one we have seen in Europe, the UK or the U.S. Had these problems been addressed earlier and an IMF bailout or similar remedy been proposed, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

Writing something like: “At the end of September, one had to pay 46 francs for 100 Polish zlotys. Today it is 30 francs.” is irrelevant as this loans were issued long before September 2008.

It’s true that the Polish Zloty lost 20%-30% of it’s value in the last year but at the same time the CHF Libor crashed and the monthly payment is now lower for some mortgages.

Of course the current hardship could make it more difficult for some people to repay a loan and this could further destabilize Swiss banks and Switzerland . But one must not forget that this hardship results from the wrongdoings in the U.S.

I wonder why The Telegraph, Moody’s and even RBS try to destabilize the Euro and the CHF.

I am the one who translated the article. And, yes, Artur Schmidt is an ‘economic journalist’ rather than an economist. He writes at Money Cab, which I have referenced in the sources.

I am not taking a position in this post, but rather relaying information I believe is relevant. I tend to think Schmidt is overplaying the severity of the crisis regarding bankruptcy. But, his conclusions should not be dismissed i.e. Swiss franc weakness and ratings downgrade.

The figures used by Schmidt are real as are the problems at UBS and Credit Suisse involving additional potential writedowns. These are problems that are widely known.

Also, you should note that I quoted from NZZ in an article about UBS. The link is below.

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2009/02/ubs-is-sitting-on-billions-in-bad-student-loans.html

Also you should note my quote from the referenced earlier article:

The Swiss are funding the UBS assets they took on in September. UBS transferred positions worth $16 billion to the same SNB StabFund issuing the short-term U.S. dollar notes. The SNB is acquiring tens of billions in toxic assets. Here is a story on that (here). This seems very likely.