Yes, that is the traditional view.

I just wonder with the US already effectively printing money and probably other major countries following suit if this approach would work?

Marton

The beauty of having your own currency rather than Euro countries all having to use the Euro is that you can do what you want to a great extent to it to suit your economy. SNB said they will sell Franc and buy Euro if they have to to push down the Franc and they have an unlimited supply of it (i.e. printing presses.)

Would they do it? If push comes to shove, you bet. They're not about to have the Swiss industry destroyed by a weak Euro. They have picked a good currency to devalue against because the ECB is still rather reluctant in cutting rates so SNB might well win the first round of competitive devaluation.

But this is a beggar thy neighbor policy which can escalate into trade wars. The Geithner comment about China's currency "manipulation" is not a good start. Let's hope it doesn't get out of hand or we're heading for the Great Depression 2.0 when world trade collapses on account escalating trade wars.

Bing-o...
Everybody would like a competitive devaluation at this stage, but the problem is that the system works as a series of communicating bodies. One currency goes down vs. another one going up.
And if they want to talk the currencies down it sure looks like real assets (land, commodities, for example) might be the "currencies" that appreciates.
Come to think of it, gold has been behaving quite strangely, of late.

Paul

There's every chance if the world embarks on the game of competitive devaluation, gold would shoot up. However, many central banks around the world still have lots of gold reserves they could sell to force investors to put their cash into the economy rather than storing it either in cash or gold.

Some Swiss newspapers are quoting rumours that UBS will announce a 20B loss for 2008.
Any views on the possible size of the loss?. Anyway I assume they will get substantial tax refunds?

marton

Swiss Re, Switzerland's largest reinsurance company today announced an amazing loss of CHF 1 Billion for 2008. Their failing shares dropped 17% so far today.

UK bank rate down by 0.5% to 1.00%. That should help the pound, NOT...

Well, if this is the top of the financial industry losses, then the world might still have a chance of a revived economy. But I'm not too optimistic. Neither am I optimistic despite Goldman Sach's head economist Jim O'Neill pulling for Sterling predicting that it'll hit $1.80 = 1Pound. I suspect it'll tank some more before it goes back up.

Is this a rumour or anyting to be worried about?




http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009...s-to-be-named/

Apparently, Madoff's real losses were "only" around 20-25 billion, half of what was first thought. So that means with all the losses already accounted for around the world, UBS or CS won't likely have an extraordinary part of Madoff stuff and will pale in comparison to what other losses they have from subprime.

So, back to how safe is UBS...

UBS reports CHF19.7bn loss for 2008

It doesn't seem to have made a great deal of impact on the share price, so I'm guessing that it was pretty much in-line with expectations after all...?

Yes, the newspapers were forecasting a 20B loss for some weeks so I assume the share price anticipated it - although how you can value UBS shares at this time I have no clue; btw, that loss was after a 1.7B tax return.

Also some assets were recoded; whatever that means.

Marton

The loss was slightly worse than the median predictions but re the stock price reaction, that disappointment is being offset by comments that for 2009 YTD net new money inflow has turned positive and operating conditions have shown some improvement.

LOL - they're saving a crapload on bonus payouts, according to Bloomberg ...
P.

As I said somewhere in this thread back in Sept/Oct this bank badly needs change at the top. Fresh blood; new broom and all that. They haven't done a bad job fighting the fires but leadership and vision aren't coming across. Confidence won't come back with that.

I agree with you there, even more so after reading the following swissinfo article about Credit Suisse losses.

That is a staggering difference in client confidence!

I am also reminded that in 1998 when the SBC-UBS merger was going through, many Swiss were uneasy about remaining clients of the "new mega-bank" and were transferring their savings elsewhere. UBS' reaction at the time was that no employee was authorised to allow clients to close their accounts without getting their supervisors involved and attempting to keep the client. As was evident from posts on EF last year, UBS didn't seem to be doing anything similar on this front.

I guess so.
CS also lost 8B last year; incredible. The shares now -3%.

BTW, UBS said they will only sell 39B toxic assets to teh national "bad" bank not 60B. I did not find an explanation; anybody know why?

Marton

Accounting smoke and mirrors. It doesn't mean they've offloaded some of the toxic waste. As far as I understand it, accounting changes have allowed them to reclassify certain assets as loans. That means UBS doesn't have to mark them to market so UBS will keep them on it's books.

Ahh... that is what they meant when they talked about recoding some assets.

Marton

More on the US side of the crisis - TARP / TAFL / bailouts.
According to this interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMu1mFao3w
just before the first TARP was launched, the US financial system witnessed withdrawals for $550bln in a matter of one hour
The rest of the interview is unfortunately interesting... plenty of political acknowledgment that the guys on Capitol Hill are up the proverbial creek.
Ouch.
Gold > $1'000? Sure looks like it at this point :-/

P.

Hope so, as mentioned in post 236 that is where I put my spare cash.
Just keeping my fingers crossed that the safe deposit box is safe

Marton