ZURICH (Reuters) – Central banking is not boring, although being prepared to carry the label is perhaps the key to success, departing Swiss National Bank Chairman Thomas Jordan said on Saturday.
Jordan, who is due to step down at the end of September, defended his record steering the central bank through a raft of crises over the past 12 years.
The executive has come under fire for being inflexible and sticking doggedly to his mantra of price stability, as well as not doing more to help Credit Suisse before the bank’s implosion last year.
“What we do is not boring, that’s a cliche,” Jordan told the Bieler Tagblatt in an interview published on Saturday.
“I believe that the people who are responsible for the national bank should concentrate on their job. They must fulfil their mandate and not get themselves noticed with other activities.”
The 61-year-old told his hometown newspaper that perhaps being boring was the key to success.
“It’s better to be called boring or stubborn than for people to say I’m pursuing the wrong monetary policy,” said Jordan, who added that he has not decided what to do next in his career but that a political role did not appeal.
The central bank had done its best to maintain price stability, which it defines as inflation of 0-2%, he said. The effort has paid off, with Swiss inflation currently on target for the last 12 months.
“We prevented deflation several times, and then successfully fought inflation after Covid,” Jordan said. “Inflation was much lower in Switzerland than elsewhere.”
(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
