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Tags: Gartman | Swiss | bank | franc

Dennis Gartman: Swiss Currency Move Is Worst Central Bank Decision I've Seen

By    |   Thursday, 15 January 2015 12:25 PM EST

Dennis Gartman, renowned publisher of the Gartman Letter, says the Swiss National Bank's decision to abandon its three-year-old ceiling for the franc represents the worst central bank policy he's seen in four decades of watching markets.

"This really is a silly decision on their part, and it has inflicted enormous losses across the world to a great number of people," he told CNBC.

After the Bank dropped the 1.20-franc floor that it had set for the euro, the common European currency plunged as much as 41 percent to 0.8517 franc before rebounding to 1.0378 francs in late Zurich trading Thursday.

The Swiss Bank wanted to restrain its currency to protect exports, but it came to see its policy of selling francs as more expensive than it was worth. Gartman was unimpressed. "They gave you no indication that this was going to happen," he said.

"They had been spending enormous amounts of Swiss francs [to restrain their currency], which they could create as a central bank out of the thinnest of air. They promised that they would be doing that on a consistent basis," Gartman noted.

"The sum of money that the Swiss central bank is going to lose is going to be in the tens of billions of dollars. The impact upon the Swiss stock market and the losses that are accruing to Swiss citizens . . . are going to be hard for the Swiss national bank officials to defend."

Others were shocked too. "It's amazing that such a stoic central bank could end up abandoning such a long-held policy with such short shrift," George Buckley, an economist at Deutsche Bank, told Bloomberg.

"I thought we were out of the situation where central banks surprise so significantly as this."

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Finance
Dennis Gartman, renowned publisher of the Gartman Letter, says the Swiss National Bank's decision to abandon its three-year-old ceiling for the franc represents the worst central bank policy he's seen in four decades of watching markets.
Gartman, Swiss, bank, franc
292
2015-25-15
Thursday, 15 January 2015 12:25 PM
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