Below is an excerpt of a speech given by Lukas Reimann, a Swiss member of Parliament from Kanton St. Gallen. “The gold initiative gives us a one time opportunity to end and break the delusion of fiat money, thus unsecured paper money. Yes, the biggest fraud of our time happens with our money. Central banks, commercial banks and governments play with the property of their citizens. While these three parties can use the newly printed money without inflation worry, the majority of citizens, being deceived, will feel the effect of inflation with this newly printed money and must simply swallow this. If the purchasing power of money decreases annually by only 2 percent because more and more unsecured money comes into circulation, will the value of your money be halved in 20 years ? Increasing the money supply is easy. We are dealing with an invisible tax, that can be increased at will. A simple observation will help you see though this trick. What happens here is nothing less than a concealed form of confiscation. Until WW 1, paper money was backed by precious metals that cannot and could not be arbitrarily increased. After WW 1 this backing was diluted as otherwise the wars of the 20th century could not have been funded. Under the gold standard the United States enjoyed 136 years of price stability. Since 1913, however, purchasing power has dropped by a staggering 95%. In Switzerland, the 40% gold backing of the Franc as required by the old Federal Constitution, was quietly removed at the time of the revision. Exactly this gold backing made the Swiss Franc stable, secure and independent. The money supply, when issued as gold and silver currencies, was sound money. The state monopoly decreed unsecured paper money, fiat money, is sick money, it is false money. In our direct democracy in Switzerland, this leads to senseless situations. We let the people decide on small items, 50 million franc, 100 million francs, than a huge outcry that it is too expensive. At the same time the National Bank expands the money supply to 100’s of billions of francs, without debate and without asking the people. The few who criticize these mechanisms since a long time and who also predicted the current crisis, were independent economists influenced by the Austrian school of economics. But they were barely heard”

“Switzerland’s central bank (SNB) is stepping up efforts to block a populist motion launched last year that would force the financial institution to almost triple the proportion of reserves held in gold.

The Alpine country will vote on Nov. 30 on the so-called “Save our Swiss Gold” initiative organized by the right-wing People’s Party, or SVP. The motion calls for the central bank to hold at least 20% of its assets in gold, which currently make up about 7.5% of its total assets. In addition it should be prohibited from selling any gold in the future, and all of its reserves of the precious metal must be stored in Switzerland.

The Swiss Federal Council, the seven-member cabinet, as well as both houses of parliament have recommended voters reject the motion.

“The Swiss electorate will vote on an initiative which, paradoxically, would severely constrain the SNB’s room for maneuver in a future crisis,” SNB’s vice president Jean-Pierre Danthine said last week in a speech prepared for delivery at a conference in Martigny.

The proposed ban on future gold sales would have even more serious consequences for the SNB as an increase in gold holdings couldn’t be reversed, Danthine said.