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In this post we will show the history of the Swiss Franc until 1971, a monetary era driven by the gold standard and the Bretton Woods period, both periods with nearly fixed exchange rates.

In the new series George Dorgan suggests that the euro crisis is a temporary development but not a long-lasting crisis. In the first part he shows that Spain actually created a lot of jobs in last twenty five years.

After the strong revaluation of the Swiss franc in recent years, some economists, like the ones at the Swiss National Bank (SNB), claim that the franc is overvalued. Many use misleading Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) measures like the Big Mac index, the OECD index or the PPP based on consumer prices for computing fair values. The second big mistake is to use the wrong base year and to assume, for example, that in 1999 the CHF was correctly valued. The third mistake is to ignore massive Swiss...

We present twelve reasons that could sustain a further euro appreciation to $1.40 or even 1.50 in the upcoming two to four years. The main one is that Germans are net global creditors and Americans net debtors. This is reflected in fiscal and monetary policy and in investors' behaviour. The post was written in December 2013, but the arguments are still valid today and will continue to be valid in the future.

Money creation and sight deposits may have two points of view: 1. The central bank creates money - i.e. the SNB decides to increase sight deposits when it does currency interventions 2. Commercial banks create money - inflows in CHF on Swiss bank accounts make those banks increase their "sight deposits at the SNB. If inflows in CHF are higher than outflows then CHF must rise, unless the central bank does currency interventions. We will present both alternatives.

This IMF data on the SNB website shows SNB Forex and gold reserves in the last month. It is so-called "IMF Special Data Dissemination Standard (SNB Data)"

George Dorgan explains why currencies of countries with trade surpluses must appreciate over the long-term. Thanks to these surpluses, inflation and costs of companies rise more slowly than in other countries. In Forex a mean reversion does not exist, but only an inflation-adjusted reversion to the mean: a real exchange rate mean reversion or in short the "real mean reversion."