Roughly half of these investments were concentrated in the European continent. Over the years, and given Switzerland's trade surplus, our companies have thus developed an extremely dense international network of production facilities. In addition to the 4 million jobs within the domestic economy, Swiss companies employ a further 1.8 or so million people abroad. Of these, 1 million work in European countries. These figures show that Switzerland has by no means resigned itself to low growth, but has seized the opportunities created by the opening-up of borders and markets. These days, a lot of people worry about competition from low-wage countries and the resulting relocations. However, they overlook the fact that our country is a major beneficiary from the more pronounced international division of labour brought about by globalisation. The relocation of certain production stages is inevitable. It allows our companies to stay competitive in the face of high Swiss labour costs. In some respects, the jobs created abroad secure those at home with more added value. "One out of every two francs is earned abroad" is the phrase that comes to mind when the performance of our exporters is being discussed. This also means, however, that one out of every two francs is still earned in Switzerland. Put another way, the domestic economy plays a crucial role in our country's economic development both on a demand and production level. In 2004, domestic turnover grew more slowly than sales abroad. The growth figure of 1.8%, however, was still higher than in the previous year.

From one perspective, the unconventional nature of monetary policy around the world adds little that is fundamentally new to the challenges that face EMEs. Today’s monetary policies simply represent a way of easing that was necessitated by hitting the zero lower bound here and elsewhere. Central bankers have managed differences across countries in cyclical positions and policy stances many times in the past. This time should not be fundamentally different. But, from another perspective, we have less experience operating with unconventional monetary policy, we have been in this regime for a long time and this creates more potential uncertainties. These uncertainties put a premium on clear communication among central  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  bankers as well as between central bankers and market participants. In my view, an important fact is that the large scale asset purchase programs undertaken in the United States and elsewhere have dramatically shrunk the size of bond risk premia globally. This new set of monetary policies affects financial asset prices in a different way compared to changes in short-term interest rates, and we should be humble regarding what we claim to understand about this distinction. Looking ahead, it seems likely that markets will remain focused on those vulnerabilities that they might have ignored prior to the taper tantrum in 2013. The greater premium on strong fundamentals, policy coherence and predictability will likely remain. Although we will undoubtedly experience further bumps in the road. I think we can remain generally optimistic about the prospects for adjustment.