Meanwhile Swiss fund manager Egon von Greyerz, whose views would put him naturally into the Yes camp, commented in an interview on King World News that the Swiss government is against this initiative, like all governments are, because it takes away from them their ability to manipulate the currency and gold markets. He goes on to say that the government continues to argue that gold is not good for the country. He noted that the Swiss Finance Minister called gold ‘A risky asset,’ and therefore not be held by Switzerland. However he goes on to make the point that in his view she is totally wrong because it’s the Swiss franc that is risky, not gold. The Swiss franc has already fallen 50 percent against gold, he said, in just the last 15 years, and it’s gone down 90 percent against gold since 1914. As a hard money Austrian school of economics adherent, von Greyerz reckons that, given the retention of the status quo if the No vote prevails, this will remain the case because governments always print unlimited amounts of money. He says that Switzerland has printed more than any other country in the world on a relative basis since 2008 - 400 billion Swiss francs in order to buy risky euro assets and other foreign currency assets in order to keep the Swiss franc low.
