We ran four articles on the Swiss gold initiative, beginning with Claudio Grass of Switzerland, who was interviewed on Mises Weekends. Grass was generally positive about the intitiative, if not its prospects for success, here and here. During the second interview, however, Jeff Deist noted several critics who have pointed out numerous point of weakness in the initiative when it comes to really limiting the central bank.
Thorsten Polleit, writing from Germany, explained the intitiative in detail here in Mises Daily.
Frank Hollenbeck on the other hand, writing from Switzerland, felt the initiative was far too weak, although a step in the right direction.
Meanwhile, the European Wall Street Journal states as unadulterated fact that the gold initiative “would have eroded [the Swiss central bank’s] ability to conduct monetary policy.”
Steve Forbes also chimed in from the pages of Forbes to declare that the initiative “deserved to fail” and doubled down on his assertion that ”Linking a currency to gold is like fixing the standards for weights and measures: 12 inches in a foot, 60 minutes in an hour, 16 ounces in a pound, etc. It doesn’t restrict an economy’s money supply.”
For more on this aspect of the debate, see Joe Salerno here, Robert Batemarco here, and David Gordon here and here.
Forbes also makes the amazingly broad statement that “a vibrant economy will have a larger money supply than a stagnant one.”
a story from the AP did note this interesting fact:
At 125 grams per capita, Switzerland has the largest gold reserves per head of population of any country - triple those of Germany and quintuple those of the U.S.,” [Fritz Zurbruegg, a member of SNB’s governing board], told a conference last week.
Here at the Mises Institute, we’re not in the business of being boosters for gold. We’re simply in favor of private commodity money, and it’s up to determine which commodities are most valued. But naturally, the initiative led to much debate over what the initiative would do to the value of gold, if passed, and that’s nicely summarized by Barron’s here.
