While I cannot say for certain if this studied, lucid article from Quartz transparently lays out absolutely everything one need know about the Swiss decision to untether its currency from the euro, but I believe it is a very good and accessible primer. With economic crises unsettled elsewhere in 2011, the CHF became quite an attractive berth for one’s cash—leading to weakened exports and relative, domestic inflation, and in order to hold the exchange rate at less seductive levels, the Swiss federal bank began printing more money to buy up foreign dollars, euros and roubles to keep matters in check.
That’s really the only way a nation can interview to control exchanges rights—it cannot issue a mandate for price controls but only act indirectly. Arguably, it is the same pyramid scheme that the US Federal Reserve is chancing to shore up the dollar—although America is doing so with the repurchase of its own debts rather than foreign currencies but both vehicles may fail to retain their worth meanwhile. The huge amount of Swiss wealth converted to euros, et al gives the franc grave exposure, meaning more deflation and trade problems, especially with the concession to standard operating procedures elsewhere that the European Union may allow for quantitative easing (printing money) itself in order to prevent an ailing Greece and a fit but scorned Iceland from leaving the Euro-zone.
