Thanks to its efforts to weaken the franc, the Swiss central bank has amassed $750 billion in stocks, bonds and
cash.
That has provoked a lively debate in Switzerland: What should the country do with all of that? And whose money is
it, anyway?
For now, the Swiss National Bank holds on to it, and invests it around the world--but not in Switzerland. It held
$2.7 billion in Apple Inc. stock, for instance, at the end of March. Some lawmakers and many economists think a
sovereign-wealth fund created outside the SNB should invest a chunk at home.
The SNB's profit last year was 24.5 billion francs ($25.4 billion), or about $3,000 per Swiss resident.
Switzerland's central bank isn't the only one making profits. The Federal Reserve earned nearly $100 billion last
year from its bond portfolio. Eurozone central banks also make profits. But these central banks pass a big chunk of them
to their treasuries.
The SNB's current agreement with the government, which runs through 2020, allows for profit distribution of up to 2
billion francs a year. The SNB has put most of its profits into buffers to guard against large paper losses, which
occurred two years ago when the franc soared.
Two dozen Swiss parliamentarians want the arrangement to change and in June backed legislation introduced by
Socialist lawmaker Susanne Leutenegger Oberholzer to use some reserves and their profits for a sovereign-wealth fund.
Unlike the SNB, which invests the reserves only in non-Swiss assets, a fund could put the money to work inside
Switzerland, boosting long-term growth, backers say. The SNB takes passive positions in foreign stocks to mirror broad
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