Word: frances
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
Switzerland's tradition of financial discretion goes back at least to the 17th century. In the wake of World War I, as many European currencies became unstable, the consistent (not to mention neutral) Swiss franc attracted depositors. After France, incensed by the loss of revenue, raided a Swiss bank's office in Paris and revealed the names on its accounts, the Swiss passed a law in 1934 making such disclosures criminal. Years later, Swiss banks both sheltered the assets of German Jews and accepted looted Nazi gold (and later set up a $1.25 billion compensation fund for Holocaust victims). Corrupt...
...only thing the Swiss have had to sell for two hundred years has been the soundness of their currency. I, for the first time in my life, have started asking myself questions about the Swiss franc because of the UBS deal. It never occurred to me that the Swiss would do this [the bailout]. I have not started selling my Swiss francs. I have stopped buying them. I'm watching to see how it works...