Word: france
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...Swiss have a reason to be protective: the financial industry has afforded the small nation an enviably high standard of living, with massive capital inflows propping up its currency (the Swiss franc), making imported goods relatively cheaper. That's why maintaining bank secrecy has effectively been national policy for decades. As a Senate investigator, Blum got a taste of that when he tried to question a European representative for American companies in Switzerland who was suspected of commercial bribery. "I was personally warned by the Swiss ambassador that if I tried to talk with anyone about money hidden in Switzerland...
Certainly the U.S. did not embrace the idea of carry trades being funded by the greenback, because this worked to only further weaken the dollar against major currencies, including the euro, the British pound and the Swiss franc. This made imports more expensive for consumers - at least in theory. (In reality, because of the size of the U.S. market, few importers could risk raising their prices for fear of being pushed...
Investors keen to protect their precious cash have sought security in all the usual places in recent months. The U.S. dollar, the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen - each with a history as a safe haven - have all provided homes for nervous depositors' cash. But as the economies of those three countries flounder, it's time to look around, and smart investors think they've discovered a new harbor to protect them from the choppy economic seas. "The best safe haven currency," analysts at banking giant HSBC wrote in a research note this month, is Norway's. According to HSBC...
...krone's strengths also reflect the current weaknesses of rival currencies. The yen and the Swiss franc had been doing pretty well amid the chaos. The Japanese currency, for instance, rose more than a fifth against the dollar in the last four months of 2008, as previously big-spending investors cashed in risky assets overseas and brought their earnings home. But that's changing. Japan's economy is in freefall. In its latest assessment of the global economy published March 19, the International Monetary Fund forecast the country's output shrinking by 5.8% this year, much more than...
...Switzerland's one step further along. In an effort to fend off the threat of deflation, the Swiss National Bank announced March 12 it would dump francs in the first such move by a major central bank for years. The move was enough to cut 3% off the currency's value against the euro; since then, the franc's fallen further still. Even the greenback, which rallied in recent months, stands at its lowest level against the euro since early January following the Fed's announcement last week that it would spend some $1.2 trillion on government and mortgage bonds...