Why did the Swiss National Bank fix the EUR/CHF exchange rate at CHF 1.20?
"Due to the issues in the Eurozone, many foreign investors were buying Swiss Francs as a hedge against a Euro devaluation. They were in effect treating the Franc like gold, silver or some other commodity with perceived intrinsic value. This causes huge problems from the Swiss, as the value of the Franc increased and their exports became more expensive for foreigners to purchase. Things were getting bad enough that the Swiss in some places were travelling to Germany to buy groceries! To enforce this ""fixing"" of the Franc, the Swiss Central Bank announced that they would buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities by printing Francs. In reality, just announcing that they were going to do this was sufficient to discourage foreign investors from loading up on Francs. NPR's Planet Money did a really good job covering this topic:" "As the European crisis worsened the Swiss Franc (CHF) was seen as a safe currency so Europeans attempted to exchange their Euros for Francs.  This caused the Franc to appreciate in value, against the Euro, through the summer and fall of 2011.  The Swiss government and Swiss Central Bank (SNB) believe mercantilism will create wealth for the citizens of Switzerland.  The Swiss central planners believe that having an abundance of export businesses in Switzerland will create wealth for the citizens of Switzerland as the exporters sell their good and services abroad and pocket a bunch of cash.  Thus, the central planners tend to favor exporters.  From the article: At the start of the year, when exporters urged for government and SNB action, ... The Swiss Central bank continued to intervene in currency markets in 2011 to prevent the CHF from appreciating.  This was done to prevent a decrease in export business.  Finally after many failed attempts they announced the 1.20 peg in September.   The central planners give little consideration to imports, however, since manufacturers in foreign countries don't vote or contribute to the campaign funds of the central planners in Switzerland.  As the CHF strengthened many imported items became very cheap for Swiss citizens.  This was of little concern to the central planners. Currencies are like other goods in a market in that they respond to supply and demand.  Their value can change daily or even hourly based on the continually varying demands of people.  This can cause the exchange rate to rise and fall against other currencies and goods.  Central planners mistakenly believe that the price of certain market items (like currency) should not fluctuate.  The believe there is some magical number that will cause the market to operate ""better"" or ""more correctly"". How does the SNB maintain the peg?  They maintain the peg by printing Francs and purchasing euros." It's not. If you look at the page you link to and change dates, it's clear the rate changes a bit. 120.15 120.1 per hundred. The Swiss can keep the 1.200 as a target and if it's higher, sell agingst the euro to bring it down, if lower, buy. If the swiss experienced a serious financial crisis and their currency fell, they may not have the power to control it, if the rest of the world said it was worth less, you can be sure it will fall.
"Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are the guys in Switzerland that came up with the Basel accords and gave us fun things like Capital Adequacy Ratios and kept bankers constipated for the last decade.  It seems According to them, the bankers have been up to no good again and have been engaging in bank to bank currency swaps and derivative swaps in a manner that has allowed them to by pass regulatory safe guards and hide the debt off balance sheet, and a situation is occurring where they have to pay back their debt before the debt that is owed to them matures and that could lead to a credit crunch and liquidity crisis.  The trigger they feel for this could be a rise in inflation in the US which would lead to the Fed raising rates or an unforeseen shock to the dollar that would tighten the market.   ""Signs of excess are visible everywhere. “Corporate debt is now considerably higher than it was pre-crisis. Leverage indicators have reached levels reminiscent of those that prevailed during previous corporate credit booms. A growing share of firms face interest expenses exceeding earnings before interest and taxes,” said the report.  Up shit creek and its in danger of popping" It seems possible if the Euro is partially/entirely unwound that policies could be enacted to prohibit exactly this behavior, otherwise what will stop outflow to the stronger countries on a massive scale? (Thus amplifying the resulting decade-long clusterfuck)  We've never had this situation in Europe before, and already for Greece and Spain there are suggestions to instigate withdrawal controls. It doesn't seem far fetched to imagine retroactive controls placed on private deposits in newly-foreign-currency banks.  If I were concerned about the Euro's collapse I'd be more inclined to move assets out of the eurozone entirely "Well there are a couple reasons that people from various countries use specific currencies:  1.  Government courts will recognize the settlement of contracts if they are paid with their local currency.  So even if you wanted to be paid in Swiss Francs, your contracting partner can choose to pay you in USD instead.  This artificially inflates the value of the local currency by increasing demand for it.  2.  You're only allowed to pay your taxes in the local currency.  This also artificially increases the demand for it, and it's the ""root value"" of the currency - people clamor for bits of green paper because if they don't have enough of it to pay off the tax man, they'll go to jail." "As a Venezuelan who used to buy USD, I believe there is not better explanation than the one given to someone who actually lives and works here in Venezuela. Back in 1998 when Hugo Chavez took the presidency, we had a good economy. Fast forward 10 years laters and you could see how poor management, corruption and  communist measurements had wreaked havoc in our Economy. It was because most of the money (USD) coming in Venezuela were not invested here but instead, given away to ""pimp countries"" like Cuba. Remember, communism lasts while you have money. Back then we had an Oil Barrel going over 100$ and crazy amounts of money were coming in the country. However, little to no money was invested in the country itself. That is why some of the richest people with bank account in Swiss are Venezuelans who stole huge amounts of Oil Money.  I know this is a lot to take in, but all of this led to Venezuelan economy being the worst in The American Continent and because there is not enough money inside the country to satisfy the inner market, people would pay overprice to have anything that is bought abroad. You have to consider that only a very small amount of people can actually buy USD here in Venezuela. Back in 2013 I was doing it, I could buy about 80 usd/month with my monthly income. However, nowdays that's nearly impossible for about 99% of Venezuelans.  To Illustrate. Minimum wage = 10.000 bolivares / month Black market exchange rate (As of January 2016) = 900bs per 1usd 10.000/900 = 11,11 usd.   <<< that is what about 50% of Venezuelans earn every month. That's why this happens:  http://i.imgur.com/dPOC2e3.jpg The guy is holding a huge stack of money of the highest Venezuelan note, which he got from exchanging only 100 usd. I am a computer science engineer, the monthly income for someone like me is about 30.000 bolivares --- so that is about 34$ a month. oh dear! So finally, answering your question Q: Why do people buy USD even at this unfavorable rate? A: There are many reasons but being the main 2 the following 1.- Inflation in Venezuela is crazy high. The inflation from 2014-2015 was 241%. Which means that having The Venezuelan currency (Bolivares) in your bank account makes no sense... in two weeks you won't be able to buy half of the things you used to with the same amount of money. 2.- A huge amount of Venezuelans dream with living abroad (me included) why, you ask? well sir, it is certain that life in this country is not the best: I hope you can understand better why people in 3rd world countries and crappy economies buy USD even at an unfavorable rate. The last question was: Q: Why would Venezuela want to block the sale of dollars? A: Centralized currency management is an Economic Measure that should last 6 months tops. (This was Argentina's case in 2013) but at this point, reverting that would take quite a few years.  However, Turukawa's wikipedia link explains that very well. Regards." It's not necessary to convert it back for the changes to affect value.    Lets say you have a euro account with 1000 euro and a gbp account with 920 gbp (the accounts are equal in value given current exchange rates).  You could exchange either account for ~$1180 usd.    If you exchange the euro account for USD, and say the euro gets stronger against the pound and dollar (and subsequently the pound and dollar are weaker against the euro); then if you would've kept the 1000 euro it would now be worth more than 920 gbp and more than 1180 usd, and you would've been better off exchanging the gbp account for usd.  Barring some cataclysmic economic event; exchange rates between well established currencies don't radically change over a few weeks trip, so I wouldn't really worry about it one way or the other. "The answer from littleadv perfectly explains that the mere exchange ratio doesn't say anything. Still it might be worth adding why some currencies are ""weak"" and some ""strong"". Here's the reason: To buy goods of a certain country, you have to exchange your money for currency of that country, especially when you want to buy treasuries of stocks from that country. So, if you feel that, for example, Japanese stocks are going to pick up soon, you will exchange dollars for yen so you can buy Japanese stocks. By the laws of supply and demand, this drives up the price. In contrast, if investors lose faith in a country and withdraw their funds, they will seek their luck elsewhere and thus they increase the supply of that currency. This happened most dramatically in recent time with the Icelandic Krona." You might want to see this question and its answers.  If it was me, I'd prefer to exchange the currency in Germany.  Why?  When you are in the US you will be on vacation.  It does not seem fun to spend vacation time in a bank. The United States Federal Reserve has decided that interest rates should be low. (They think it may help the economy. The details matter little here though.) It will enforce this low rate by buying Treasury bonds at this very low interest rate. (Bonds are future money, so this means they pay a lot of money up front, for very little interest in the future. The Fed will pay more than anyone who offers less money up front, so they can set the price as long as they're willing to buy.) At the end of the day, Treasury bonds pay nearly no interest.   Since there's little money to be made with Treasuries, people who want better-than-zero returns will bid up the current-price of any other bonds or similar loan-like instruments to get what whatever rate of return that they can. There's really no more than one price for money; you can think of the price of those bonds as basically (Treasury rate + some modifier based on the risk) percent.  I realize thinking about bond prices is weird and different than other prices (you're measuring future-money using present-money and it's easy to be confused) and assure you it ultimately makes sense :) Anyway. Your savings account money has to compete with everyone else willing to lend money to banks. Everyone-else lends money for peanuts, so you get peanuts on your savings account too. Your banking is probably worth more to your bank on account of your check-card payment processing fees (collected from the merchant) than from the money they make lending out your savings (notice how many places have promotional rates if you make your direct deposits or use your check card to make a purchase N times a month).  In Europe, it's similar, except you've got a different central bank. If Europe's bank operated radically differently for an extended period of time, you'd expect to see a difference in the exchange rates which would ultimately make the returns from investing in those currencies pretty similar as well. Such a change may show up domestically as inflation in the country with the loose-money policy, and internationally as weakness against other currencies. There's really only one price for money around the entire world. Any difference boils down to a  difference in (perceived) risk. Banks in certain countries are offering such facility. However I am not aware of any Bank in Hungary offering this. So apart from maintaining a higher amount in HUF, there by reducing the costs [and taking the volatility risks]; there aren't many options. As others said, Greece cannot set.monetary policy because that is the job of the ECB. If you meant fiscal policy, then you are right: their high levels of debt plus their default this year make it so that they cannot unilaterally borrow more money to run a deficit as the private market will not lend to them. This makes them dependent on a bailout. Certainly. My old professor of international relations used to say that if we wanted to understand complex issues, what we really needed to do was try to follow the lines of national interest. Here it seems like the Germans are acting against the national interest of the entire rest of the Eurozone, only for their narrow short-term interest. Its disgusting! Yes, they need expansionary monetary policy to help them with their internal devaluation.   However, this involves leaving the euro. So there are additional costs to the normal costs of inflation, they are experiencing some of these costs right now as capital is fleeing the country and it will get worse if/when they really leave. It's also worth keeping in mind that Greece doesn't have very good institutions (it's why they are in this mess in the first place), so it's hard to say that they'll be able to leave the euro and devalue without also trying out policies that will lead to hyperinflation.  Internal devaluation is possible without expansionary monetary policy, but it takes some time and the capital flight in anticipation of taxes/neo-drachmas means that meanwhile there is also little investment in the economy in the meantime. "How Italians have a general mistrust in the euro and the ECB makes me crazy.  The country with over 2000 billion in debt, that got its ass saved by quantitative easing done by the European Central Bank (iirc, 46% of bonds bought were of the Italian debt). No politicians says he wants to reduce the debt, no, the problem is again something ""outside"". How about reforming Italian banks and their infamous credits they're still not writing off as losses because of politics? How about reducing the debt?  How each and everyone who has a bank account in Italy isn't grateful to Draghi is a mystery to me.  The consequences of driving a G8 country, the 3rd largest economy in the EU, to the ground because of moronic politicians who can't for the love of their life plan long term are horrible.  It's not like the fucks given by politicians are hidden in this new currency system. FFS.  Quick edit: problem number 1, 2 and 3 of Italy is to reduce its debt. Il resto è noia, everything else is boredom." I've been short the Euro for several months now against the USD (could be various others as well). I got in at 1.42, sold on a bounce up to 1.36, bought back at 1.38 and now will probably ride it out lower.   Regardless of whether or not the Eurozone breaks up, I see it breaking through the 1.30 mark in the near-term. After that, I'm not sure how low it goes, but there is certainly potential for it to head towards 1/1. In order to reduce the burden, the ECB needs to devalue the currency.   Although Germany really doesn't want this due to their anti-inflationary ideology, if Italy comes crashing down, so does France. When France goes, Germany goes into a deep recession if not a depression. They have to devalue some.  As for a collapse, I have no idea. It probably depends on how many (if any) countries retain the currency and who they are. Some comments above are inaccurate. Advertised interest rates for deposits and savings in Russia (from Russian banks) are generally for Ruble (RUB) denominated accounts; however, USD and EUR denominated accounts still offer favorable interest rates when compared to Western counterparts. For example, Sberbank advertises these Annual Interest Rates:  RUB — 8.79–11.52% USD — 2.05–5.31% EUR — 2.05–5.21%