for the first time after the crisis, money supply is growing below the nominal gdp, reflecting the prudential bias of our approach. • second, a managed floating exchange rate regime that enables us to weather financial stress situations – that is, a regime that prevents excessive volatility and provides predictability. • third, countercyclical insurance policies to be prepared against shocks. these include the accumulation and active management of foreign reserves and a sound and well - matched financial system that buffers turmoil, instead of spreading it. in this regard, the past few months have provided a valuable opportunity to stress - test the current system. and, in this case, the flexibility of our monetary and financial system has proved to be adequate. the central bank took several steps to mitigate the adverse effects that could be anticipated, including buy - backs of our securities in auctions and the secondary market ; and the optimization of auctions, according to prevailing liquidity conditions. in this sense, the current managed floating exchange rate regime has been a key factor to our strategy. on the one hand, it does not provide a “ foreign exchange insurance ” that favors the inflow of hot money. on the other, it aims to prevent short - term volatility from affecting spending, savings and investment decisions. we do not want to prevent variables from converging to their long - term values, but we would rather avoid excessive volatility as a source of unnecessary disturbances in economic decisions. from the outset of this international crisis, the nominal peso - dollar exchange rate has changed by around 2. 5 percent. to put it in perspective, in the same period of time, the brazilian real changed by 10 percent ; the colombian peso, by 13 percent ; the russian ruble, by 2 percent ; the thai baht, by 12 percent ; and the korean won, by 6 percent. there is no point in mentioning other examples. clearly, the argentine exchange market has recently behaved in a normal way from an international viewpoint. under a free float, the exchange rate would have reached much higher levels, running serious risks of going back to the devaluation - inflation dynamics that has been so recurrent throughout argentine economic history. this foreign exchange market evolution was due to the central bank's prudential foreign reserve accumulation policy pursued during the favorable phase of the international financial cycle. by definition, countercyclical policies should start in the cyclical upturn, and thinking that such a favorable phase

thomas jordan : swiss monetary policy and provisions introductory remarks by mr thomas jordan, member of the governing board of the swiss national bank, at the end - of - year media news conference, zurich, 10 december 2009. * * * introduction tension in the global financial markets began to abate this spring, and has continued to do so ever since – though despite all the talk of recovery, they are still far below their pre - crisis levels. whereas initial price rises were mostly corrections of previous excessive falls, markets are currently being driven mainly by the improving economic outlook, by companies ’ predominantly positive earnings reports and by expansionary monetary and fiscal policies. however, there is still considerable uncertainty in the financial markets. in the course of the crisis the swiss national bank aggressively relaxed its monetary restraints, sometimes treading new paths in the implementation of monetary policy. i shall now briefly summarise the instruments that we used in connection with the financial crisis, highlighting their effects on the snb ’ s balance sheet. the risks that exist in the snb ’ s balance sheet or that the snb could potentially be required to take onto the balance sheet demonstrate the importance of strengthening our equity capital. i shall therefore, as already indicated by the chairman of the governing board, jean - pierre roth, briefly explain to you the new regulations governing our policy on provisions. one of these monetary policy crisis measures is the snb ’ s stabilisation fund ( stabfund ), which i shall deal with later. i shall conclude my remarks by commenting on a change in the terms of admission to the swiss franc repo system. deployment of monetary policy instruments in the crisis and trends in the snb balance sheet from october 2008 to march 2009 we carried out a massive reduction in the libor target range in several steps. the most important instruments for expanding liquidity during this phase were repo transactions and currency swaps. since the reduction of the repo rate to 5 basis points in december 2008, we have been pursuing a de facto zero interest rate policy. beginning in october 2008, the heavy foreign demand for swiss francs was influencing the level of the libor – and this made it necessary to conduct swiss franc / euro currency swaps. swap agreements with other central banks gave more foreign banks access to swiss francs, thus bringing the libor down faster. as of march 2009, in order to loosen the monetary reins further when there was no more room for interest rate reductions, we adopted so - called unconventional measures.