Following the U.S. Fed’s biggest rate hike since 1994 on Wednesday, which brought oil prices down 1%, central banks across Europe on Thursday raised interest rates by record amounts in an effort to rein in inflation as energy prices soar. The biggest shocks came from the Swiss National Bank and the National Bank of Hungary. The Swiss National Bank made its first interest rate hike since 2007, increasing rates by 50 basis points, from -0.75% to -0.25%, sending the Swiss franc surging higher. “We came to a conclusion that it is now better to increase interest rates by 50 basis points and not by 25 points in order to make an initial first step, in order to really also signal that we are fighting inflation so that it will also, over the medium-term, be in the range of price stability,” CNBC quoted the bank as saying. In Hungary, the […]