REGION B – EUROPE

THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC

(April 14-15, 1912 – North Atlantic Ocean)

Swiss National Bank

(Bern, Switzerland)

ROTHSCHILD OWNED & CONTROLLED CENTRAL BANK

The Official Story

THE SWISS NATIONAL BANK
(Bern, Switzerland)

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the central bank of Switzerland, responsible for the nation’s monetary policy and the sole issuer of Swiss franc banknotes. The primary goal of its mandate is to ensure price stability, while taking economic developments into consideration.

The SNB is an Aktiengesellschaft under special regulations and has two head offices, one in Bern and the other in Zurich.

History

The bank formed as a result of the need for a reduction in the number of banks of issue, which numbered 53 sometime after 1826. In the 1874 revision of the Federal Constitution it was given the task to oversee laws concerning the issuing of banknotes. In 1891, the Federal Constitution was revised again to entrust the Confederation with sole rights to issue banknotes. The Swiss National Bank was founded under the law of 6 October 1905 (‘the National Bank Act’), which entered into force on 16 January 1906. Business was started on 20 June 1907.

Sometime during World War I (1914–1917) the bank was instructed to release notes of small denomination, for the first time, by the Federal Council of Switzerland.

The Federal Council devalued the Swiss Franc during 1936, and as a result there was made available to the National Bank an amount of money, which the bank subsequently stored in a Währungsausgleichsfonds reserve for use in future situations of emergency.

In 1981 the bank participated in research involving Orell Füssli and an optical research group named Landis+Gyr, on matters of banknote design.

During 1994 the bank was described as a joint-stock company acting under the administration and supervision of the Confederation. It had eight branches and twenty sub-branches within cantons. The governing board had overall executive management of the National Bank, with supervision entrusted to its shareholders, the banks’ council, the banks’ committee, its local committees and auditing committee. The three members of the governing board together decided the monetary policy of the National Bank. Towards the end of 1993 it had 566 employees.

With the inception of Article 99 of the Federal Constitution, in May 2004, the National Bank achieved formal independence.

World War II

The Swiss National Bank provided 1.2 billion CHF to the Reichsbank, of this, a value of approximately 780 million CHF of the gold given to the National Bank was gold which had been looted by the forces of Germany. In addition the National Bank also exchanged between 1.2 and 1.6 billion CHF for gold from the Allied forces. During 20 April 1944, gold from the gold reserves of Italy arrived from Como at the railway station within Chiasso.

There is controversy over the role of the Swiss National Bank in the transfer of Nazi gold during World War II. The SNB was the largest gold distribution centre in continental Europe before the war. A study by the U.S. Department of State in 1997 notes that the bank “must have known that some portion of the gold it was receiving from the Reichsbank was looted from occupied countries”. This was confirmed by the Swiss Bergier commission in 1998 which concluded that the SNB received US$440 million in gold from Nazi sources, of which US$316 million is estimated to have been looted. The gold from Nazi governorship sources was in the form of lingots containing gold looted from central banks of Europe and gold from Jews executed within the concentration camps established by the machination of the Nazi regime, which the SNB took without knowing these facts at the time, nor inquiring to any great degree in the process of its transfer into the possession of the SNB, according to Robert Vogler, a former archivist of the SNB.

Source: Wikipedia