Is Switzerland About to Revert Back to a Gold Standard?

London (Nov 9)  The British pound hasn’t been linked to gold since 1931. The U.S. snipped the cord in 1971. But the Swiss only fully severed ties to gold in 1999, when voters approved a revamped constitution.

Now, a good chunk of them seems to want to go back

On November 30th, Swiss voters will cast ballots on a number of issues including the “Save our Swiss Gold” initiative launched by the right-leaning Swiss People’s Party. The ballot measure would instantly ban the Swiss National Bank from selling gold. It also would require that the national bank keep 20 percent of its assets in gold within five years. (It currently has about 8 percent in gold.) Oh, and it would demand that all the gold be stored in Switzerland itself. (About 30 percent is parked abroad right now.)

“It’s really an attempt to return to some kind of gold standard, for those who don’t trust paper money and who want gold backing it up,” UBS strategist Beat Siegenthaler told Reuters.

While it’s not strictly the same thing as a gold standard—for instance a classical gold standard stipulated that national banknotes be freely converted to gold at a fixed price—the Swiss gold initiative is a step in that direction.

Source: TheAtlantic