Will Sweden Follow Switzerland’s Lead by Adopting a Currency Floor?

WhenEuropean Central Bankpresident Mario Draghi announced a package of interest rate cuts in early June, traders said they expected the euro to decline in value over the coming year against a large basket of currencies. One currency that bounced briefly higher was theSwedishkrona, raising the question of what tools non-euro countries might use to keep theirs from appreciating too much in the event of a major euro decline.

Draghi cut interest rates by 10 basis points, leaving the deposit rate in negative territory for the first time. He also introduced new liquidity programs designed to spur bank lending and left the door open to adoption of an asset-buying program like the日本量化宽松推动日元下降了25便士ercent last year. “We aren’t finished here,” Draghi told reporters.

“I think there will be an initial weakening of the euro, and it actually goes in the direction of Japan’s decline,” says Hans Redeker, global head of forex strategy at Morgan Stanley in London. Redeker says three forces are working against the euro: speculative flows; U.S. money market funds, which are heavily invested in European banks and may reduce those holdings because of the lower interest rates; and decoupling from other interest rate incentives. One-year forwards show the euro trading at $1.18, he notes. It stood at $1.37 in early June.

Daragh Maher, currency analyst at HSBC Bank in London, believes the Swedish currency, nicknamed the stocky, will rise in value as the euro falls against most other currencies. HSBC is predicting a euro decline at year-end to $1.28, a 6.5 percent fall. If that happens, Maher believes Sweden will have to resort to unusual action. The benchmark Swedish interest rate now stands at 0.75 percent. “If the stocky were to strengthen against the euro, they have to start looking at options other than interest rates once they’ve cut to zero, and that’s where a currency floor comes in as a candidate,” Maher says. A rate cut would be “no match for the ECB’s printing presses,” he contends.

Currency floors, which governments use to limit appreciation while permitting depreciation, have been gaining popularity in Europe in recent years. In September 2011,Switzerland从1.20到欧元的法郎下面放在欧元下，这是一个以来一直以来举行的职位。瑞士国民银行在去年的一份声明中表示，地板“防止了不期望的货币状况紧缩是法国的向上压力，再次加剧。”？市场认真地采取瑞士：？中央银行在近两年内仍未介入保护地板。

Last November the Czech Republic followed the Swiss move, threatening to intervene in the currency market if the koruna strengthened.

瑞士主要担心阻碍了威胁国家行业的资本流入泛滥，而瑞典的问题更为集中在通货紧缩。过去一年左右，该国遇到了温和的通货紧缩，促使瑞克银行，中央银行，谈谈克朗。鉴于大约50％的瑞典进口和出口与欧元区有大约50％，欧元的货币与欧元造成的新鲜崛起可以加剧通货紧缩威胁。此外，汇丰的Maher指出，瑞典的债务是170％的可支配收入;当消极通胀使债务更大时，金钱变得更加困难。

But Henrik Unell, senior fixed-income and forex strategist at Nordea Bank in Stockholm, says he doubts that krona appreciation will be a problem in the short term. Unell reckons that the Riksbank would like to see the krona strengthen from the 9.07-to-the-euro level that prevailed after ECB president Draghi’s recent speech to roughly 8.70. Sweden’s central bank will probably trim interest rates from the current 0.75 percent to about 0.45 percent at its next meeting in July and make another cut in October, he says. If the krona starts appreciating too strongly, Unell thinks the bank could also adopt its own program of quantitative easing, as it did in 2010, when it bought $33 billion worth of ?bonds.

“We are part of Europe, and our export income is in euros,” he says. “We’re slow starters in this currency war, but if we have a much stronger currency, then we would have a real problem with deflation.”

但是，Unell补充说，任何与欧元采用货币楼层的任何努力都需要议会投票，因为Riksbank缺乏自己强加一个权力。议会选举可能会复杂于9月14日，没有明确的冠军投票表明。•

更多地获得更多foreign exchange.