There has been much hand wringing among popular blogger-economists in response to the breaking of the Euro peg by the SNB.

According to CBC News:

The Bank of Canada shocked markets today by cutting its key overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point, citing the economic threat posed by plunging oil prices.

According to Source there have been several restaurants in San Francisco that have succumbed to the burden of increasing government intervention including higher minimum wages and mandatory employer spending on health care for employees. In San Francisco, if you have 20 employees working at least 8 hours per week, an employer has to spend at least $1.65 per hour on employee health insurance and related benefits.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, revealed that it was a  ”a bit of a surprise” that she was not informed in advance of the Swiss National Bank’s decision to dissolve the the inflationary peg with the euro.  Of course, the modus operandi of central banks is to keep the public in the dark about their imminent changes in policy or to prevaricate about them.

Allan Stevo writes:

President Obama’s acolytes have begun circulating the term “middle-class economics” through the Sunday morning news programs and throughout the media. 

That exact phrase “middle class economics” I’ve heard repeated 15-20 times in the media these last two days by the President’s supporters in preparation for tonight’s State of the Union address. 

The Swiss central bank’s recent move to de-peg the Swiss franc from the euro reminds us of the importance of choice in currency. By pegging the Swiss franc to the euro, the Swiss central bank was in effect subsidizing the euro by refusing to compete with it. If carried into the long term, this would have meant a de facto monetary union between the euro and the franc.

Austrians never tire of emphasizing Mises’ point that the entrepreneur is the driving force of the economy. But surprisingly, even though we write a lot about the theory and current practice of entrepreneurship, relatively little work has been done to apply the Austrian approach to economic history.

The Mises Institute of Sweden has translated two Mises.org articles on the Swiss defection from the Euro peg into Swedish.