61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

to avert this development. Nonetheless, there were obvious signs of new
inflationary pressures. In their simplest form, monetary theories tell us that
gold purchases by a central bank (or indeed any other increase in its assets:
the purchase of securities would have the same effect) increase the money
supply and exert inflationary pressure. The gold purchases may be sterilised
through an equivalent sale of securities by the central bank, usually to the
government (although this practice, which was commonly resorted to by
central banks during the inter-war period, had been unknown in
Switzerland). However, during the Second World War, the Swiss Confederation
reverted to a stability-oriented sterilisation of gold holdings. Between
1943 and 1945, the Confederation’s gold deposit rose from 12 million francs
to more than 1 billion francs, with a corresponding decrease in the money
supply.
Marguerat and Lambelet ignore these facts and assume that the SNB’s gold
purchases were necessary to counter the obvious increase in the gold price by
releasing gold coins onto the market. This process is described in the ICE’s
report on gold. However, the ICE does not share the authors’ assumption that
regulating the price of gold in this way enables an effective stability policy
to be pursued. Another argument is found in a report by Vincent Crettol and
Patrick Halbeisen, published by the ICE in 1999. 5 The authors of this sound
academic study argue that the gold purchases sent money abroad (i.e., to the
Reichsbank) and thus had no inflationary effect on the Swiss domestic money
supply. However, this ignores the fact that the Swiss francs constituted a
claim with respect to Swiss goods and services, even if the initial holder of
this currency had no intention of using them in this way. The Reichsbank
frequently used Swiss francs to make payments in Portugal, and Portuguese
claims could then either be used to buy Swiss products, or be held in Swiss
banks (again adding to the Swiss money supply).
Gold purchases by a central bank are inflationary, and the argument that they
are motivated by a concern to reduce inflation is inherently implausible.
The debate about the gold transactions
The gold purchases were the subject of intense controversy during the war. The
debate about their legality which erupted during the 1990s is therefore
certainly not new. Even during the Second World War, the Allies as part of their
economic war and their efforts to cut off German supplies of raw materials had
condemned the gold transactions. The Allies demanded comprehensive restitution
of looted gold, with «monetary gold» at the forefront. During the first
post-war decades, the issue was largely neglected, however. After Peter Utz in
1980 and Hans Ulrich Jost in 1983 drew fresh attention to the scope and signif-
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