Swissie fit

摘要

It is not easy being Swiss. Every other country complains about your bank-secrecy laws. If you live in Zurich, the nice houses by the lake are taken by rich foreigners and you have to put up with something more modest and farther out. Worse still, in a crisis, everyone buys your currency, in effect tightening your monetary policy, UBS excepted, Switzerland did not indulge in an Anglo-Saxon-style speculative boom over the past decade. But it is suffering nevertheless. The Swiss National Bank thinks the economy will contract by between 2.5% and 3% this year. Consumer prices are expected to fall by 0.5% in 2009; in other words, the economy is suffering from deflation.