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Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by clarkmoody on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @02:38PM (#17611679)
I would blame the size of the financial services sector on the Fed and inflationary money. I don't see what military power has to do with it?

What's the size of the financial sector of Luxembourg or Switzerland?

Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by qaq on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @03:20PM (#17612000)
Well name 1 other country that cab increase money supply the way FED does yet maintains the status of world's reserve currency? Luxembourg nobody cares on a global scale. Switzerland has extremely competent military and they are def. not in a position to manipulate the currency the way FED does and remain a viable financial center.
Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by rsync on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @04:00PM (#17612286)
"Switzerland has extremely competent military and they are def. not in a position to manipulate the currency the way FED does and remain a viable financial center."

Well, actually, since you brought it up ...

The SNB has been buying euros, and other currencies (selling swiss francs) since 2011 in an effort to depress its value, which they believe is too high and hurts their exports.

Here is a decent summary of the events leading up to their interventions and the current scenario:

https://admiralmarkets.com/analytics/traders-blog/price-shoc...

In summary, the CHF is viewed by many market participants as a safe-haven, or reserve currency (especially in Europe) and the Swiss National Bank has been acting, unilaterally, for many years to manipulate the CHF downwards in value.

Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by qaq on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @04:35PM (#17612563)
Thats an interesting read I was not aware this was done at this scale. But still hard to remove military from equation.
Re:Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars by arkis22 on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:26PM (#17614425)
Switzerland has been manipulating their currency for almost a decade now. The central bank has been consistently selling reserves to keep their currency low.

The USD is the world's reserve currency because we have a balance of being the largest economy with a fair rule of law, lots of real estate, 50 competing states, natural resources, and the manufacturing expertise that means if anything goes super wrong we're the best place to be.

Luxembourg and Switzerland also have a history of being tax havens.