(Bloomberg) -- Outgoing Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan doesn’t have a problem if his 12 years leading the institution are viewed as dull in some quarters, saying he always did what was right for the country.
“It’s better to be called boring or stubborn than to be told that I’m pursuing the wrong monetary policy,” the central banker told newspaper Bieler Tagblatt in an interview published on Saturday.
There and in a second interview published simultaneously in Corriere del Ticino, he went on to say that the SNB had risen to challenges and done the “essential things right” under his leadership.
Jordan cited the 2008 financial crisis, the UK’s departure from the European Union and the Covid pandemic, which he said the Swiss economy handled well.
“Especially when we compare ourselves with our European environment, Switzerland has come through these difficult years very well,” he said.
If much of Jordan’s tenure is perceived as boring, it still had its moments of high drama. The most notable was his decision to scrap the SNB’s currency cap in 2015 without notice, which sent a shockwave through markets.
In the interviews, Jordan defended the franc cap and almost eight years of negative interest rates as necessary and successful measures, given haven flows into the Swiss currency. Since he took the top job in 2012, the SNB “prevented deflation several times,” he said.
He added that today, implementing a new minimum exchange rate is not on the table.
Looking past his exit at the end of September, Jordan — who turned 61 earlier this year — said that he likely won’t go for a political office after leaving the SNB.
“I don’t think so,” he said when asked if such as job would appeal to him. “As president of the SNB, I already had a public role.”
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