Jean-Pierre Roth: Seventy years after - the final collapse of the gold standard
in September 1936
Opening remarks by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National
Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, on the
occasion of the Conference "Seventy Years After: The Final Collapse of the Gold Standard in
September 1936", University of Zurich, 15 December 2006.
These remarks have been prepared with the help of Mathias Zurlinden, Economic Analysis unit, Swiss National Bank.
* * *
I am pleased and honoured to open this conference on the final collapse of the gold standard in
September 1936. This event, 70 years ago, marks one key date in the history of the Swiss National
Bank.
From the middle of the nineteenth century, gold played a pivotal role in Switzerland's monetary
regime. It was central, as the foundation of the international monetary system and the anchor of the
Swiss franc. And what is more, people took it for granted that the gold-based system would prevail. A
hundred years later, after the Second World War, its role began to fade, although a gold parity of the
franc continued to exist until 2000.
When the Swiss National Bank was created, in 1907, the international gold standard stood as a potent
symbol of a world characterised by free markets and free movement of capital and labour. In the
memorable words of Keynes "The inhabitant of London could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap
and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could
despatch his servant to the neighbouring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as
might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, ..., bearing coined wealth
upon his person .... But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and
permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant,
scandalous, and avoidable."1
When Keynes wrote these words in 1919, the First World War had destroyed the old economic order.
The international monetary system was in shambles, international trade was disrupted, and social and
political unrest was making it hard to achieve any progress on economic issues. At the beginning of
the war, Switzerland, like most other countries, had suspended the convertibility of its currency. Such
a suspension, in a wartime emergency, was in line with gold standard thinking, as long as convertibility
was resumed once the emergency had passed. After the end of the war, however, misalignments in
price levels made it necessary to leave flexible exchange rates in place for the time being. Later,
Switzerland was one of the countries to restore pre-war parity. In 1924, the SNB moved the exchange
rate towards that goal, finally achieving it by the end of the year. Thus Switzerland was part of the
gold-exchange standard that constituted the international monetary system from about 1925 to 1931.
In 1929, legislation was adopted to prepare the ground for a return to a pure gold standard, with
convertibility of notes into gold coins. While this pure standard never actually came about, it
demonstrates that Switzerland regarded gold as the natural foundation of its monetary regime.
The gold standard in the Great Depression
In 1929, at the outset of the worldwide economic downturn that led to the Great Depression, the
dominant view in the Swiss government, and certainly in the SNB, was that depressions were
unavoidable. A downturn must run its course until good times returned, as they inevitably would. But
as the depression worsened, a hands-off policy of this kind became increasingly difficult to pursue. By
1931, the situation in Switzerland was aggravated by the decision of a large number of countries to
come off gold. The British suspension of convertibility in the summer of 1931 was followed by the
countries of the Empire and the Scandinavian states. Then, in 1933, the United States allowed the
dollar to float, before stabilising it again one year later at a vastly lower rate.
With the Swiss franc greatly overvalued against key currencies, the options were either deflation or
devaluation. As the Swiss later realised, it would have been better to follow the British example. In
1931 and 1933, however, that option was not seen as the appropriate response. The SNB saw
Britain's suspension of convertibility in 1931 as a regrettable step that could not last. Empirical
evidence showing that Britain and others had fared better after devaluing their currencies was
routinely dismissed with the argument that the structure of the Swiss economy was different, since it
was highly dependent on imports. It seemed to both the SNB and the Swiss government that gold was
the only stable element in a turbulent world, and that the only way to restore the competitiveness of
the Swiss economy, therefore, was reducing domestic costs and prices.
As it turned out, the advocates of deflation miscalculated on several accounts. For one, they did not
foresee that deflation would make very little progress over the coming years. Deflation policies were
strongly opposed by labour and other special interest groups. Backed by the threat of referendum, this
undermined the willingness of government and parliament to take an uncompromising stance. As a
consequence, state interventionism was on the rise, self regulation of markets was hampered and rigid
price and cost structures protracted the depression. At the same time, it appears that the advocates of
deflation policies overestimated the inflationary consequences of devaluation in the countries that did
devalue. The SNB repeatedly warned of the inflationary effects of devaluation, yet price increases in
the UK and the US were moderate and - until World War Two - neither country regained
predepression CPI levels. As a result, the Swiss franc remained overvalued right through to 1936, with
the extent of the overvaluation changing little throughout this period.
From a modern-day perspective, it may appear surprising that markets largely considered the Swiss
government capable of staying the course, despite these difficulties. Most indicators suggest that the
credibility of Switzerland's commitment to the gold standard was still intact after 1933. Its gold stocks
had risen - modestly at first in 1929 and 1930, and then more dramatically in 1931, when many
currencies had come under pressure and had to come off gold. Between 1933 and 1935 stocks
decreased significantly but were still considerably larger at the time of the devaluation in September
1936 than they had been before 1931. The movement in forward premiums on the foreign exchange
market suggests the same interpretation. The premium for the British pound against the Swiss franc
was modest even at the time Belgium was forced to devalue in 1935, as well as during the spring and
summer of 1936. Thus the likelihood of a devaluation of the Swiss franc was seen as relatively small.
Nineteen thirty-six
The devaluation, when it came in September 1936, was widely regarded in Switzerland as an
externally imposed step. To many, it came as a shock, since over the course of many years the
Federal Council and the SNB had been constantly emphasising their view that devaluation was no
remedy. The decision to devalue by about 30 percent was taken in the early afternoon of September
26, a Saturday, shortly after the devaluation of the French franc. This was followed the next day by a
radio address to the nation, given by the President of the Confederation in order to reassure the Swiss
people. His famous sentence, "One franc remains one franc," was intended to boost the public's
confidence in the value of money. In the following week, on the Monday and the Wednesday,
respectively, the two chambers of parliament endorsed the decision of the federal government. After
some heated debate in the parliamentary groups, voting on the issue had been by and large along
party lines.
It is interesting to note how the policy reversal was explained to the public. The trigger, of course, was
the French devaluation. Attention was drawn to a number of consequences of the French decision.
First, the devaluation of the French franc was a further blow for the export industry and for tourism.
Second, an unchanged Swiss franc parity would increase the risk of speculative attacks. Although the
gold reserves were regarded as sufficiently large to hold out for some time, it could be assumed that
speculation against the Swiss franc would begin right away. It was better, therefore, not to use up the
gold reserves in a struggle that in all probability could not be won. The authorities conceded that the
policy of the preceding years had not succeeded in restoring the competitiveness of the economy
vis-à-vis the countries which had already devalued. Finally, they pointed out that the Tripartite
Agreement between the American, British and French governments opened up the way for a new
beginning and a more cooperative international framework. Surprisingly, perhaps, this argument was
put forward as a crucial one in the early statements. However, it rapidly became clear that the hopes
placed in the Tripartite Agreement might have been excessive.
With the devaluation of the Swiss franc, Switzerland's monetary authorities had reneged on a
fundamental commitment. But in most other ways the monetary standard remained unchanged. The
currency continued to be gold-backed, and the gold parity continued to be essential. The operating
procedures had not changed and, in contrast to some other countries in that period, the relationship
between government and central bank was not altered at the expense of the central bank. Thus, the
devaluation was seen as a painful setback in Switzerland's monetary history, but not as the dawn of a
new era.
Fixed exchange rates, of course, were carried over to the Bretton Woods system in the post-World
War II world. And although Bretton Woods differed in many ways from the interwar gold-exchange
standard, a central banker of the 1930s would have adapted without major difficulties to the world of
the 1960s. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the subsequent move to flexible exchange
rates in 1973 were far more important events in the SNB's 100-year history than the devaluation of
1936. Indeed, the crisis of the international monetary system in the early 1970s essentially
transformed the SNB's task and scope for action. Switzerland gained full control of its money supply,
price stability became the primary objective of monetary policy and the legal framework of the SNB
was gradually amended accordingly.
Beyond the gold standard
As I said at the outset, the role of gold has faded over the years. But gold had an afterlife long after it
ceased to be relevant in any form for the conduct of monetary policy. First and foremost, the legal link
between the Swiss franc and gold continued to exist until very recently. The constitutional changes
that severed this link took effect in 2000, followed, within the same year, by the corresponding
changes in the relevant law. The new law no longer includes an obligation on the part of the SNB to
redeem banknotes for gold - an obligation which - in practice - had been suspended for decades.
Moreover, it has abolished the minimum gold coverage of the banknotes in circulation and the gold
parity of the Swiss franc. With these changes, gold finally became a normal and marketable asset for
the SNB. In May 2000, the SNB began to sell part of its gold stock. About 50 percent of the gold once
owned by the SNB has now been sold. I should emphasise that the SNB will continue to hold gold as
a monetary reserve, but the legal relics of the gold standard era no longer immobilize the gold stock as
they did for decades.
A second aspect of the afterlife of the gold standard is its presence in discussions on domestic and
international monetary standards. In the 1970s and 1980s, when inflation was high and exchange
rates volatile, a small but vocal group endorsed the gold standard as an alternative to the paper
standard of the post-Bretton Woods era. Judged by practice, they were on the losing side. There
appears to be a widespread consensus - both among economists and central bankers - that a gold
standard generates few positive things that cannot be provided by other means. For one, the gold
standard has all the drawbacks of fixed exchange rates. That is, monetary policy cannot be used to
achieve domestic goals and the parities are vulnerable to speculative attacks. Also, the gold standard
has all the disadvantages of a commodity standard. In other words, the system is not only expensive
to maintain, it also allows the supply and demand conditions for the commodity in question to affect
the general price level.
Some advocates of the gold standard did not propose the gold standard as an international system but
promoted it as a tool for solving domestic problems. In particular, they argued that the link to gold, by
providing a credible anchor, would keep inflation under control. This argument is valid as far as it goes,
but ignores the fact that a gold standard has its own credibility problems. If countries can tie their
currencies to gold, they can also untie their currencies from gold. This is what happened in the 1930s.
The markets know that and form their expectations accordingly.
For this reason, most countries preferred to go other ways. In recent years, many of them have
adopted clear mandates for their central banks which specify price stability as the primary goal. They
then try to achieve this goal with some form of inflation target - be it implicit or explicit. Results have
been good so far, although not all can be attributed to improved policy making. Some have argued
that globalisation and the move towards more competitive markets have reduced inflationary
pressures, thus making inflation targets easier to reach. But whatever the reasons, the results in
recent years have been encouraging. I believe that as long as this continues, and central banks
succeed in keeping inflation under control, the appeal of the gold standard will remain limited. But I
have no illusions that commodity money will be discussed again as an alternative should central banks
fail to achieve their goals and inflation rise to high levels.
In concluding, let me re-emphasise the fact that the devaluation of the franc was a major event in our
monetary history. But although this devaluation was considered to be of great importance, it was not
seen to herald the end of the gold-backed system. It took about 40 years - and many other difficulties
- before flexible exchange rates were regarded as a feasible option, and more than 60 years before
the gold parity of the franc was removed.
Today the 1936 devaluation remains vivid in the memory of the general public. The Swiss like to
remember that their currency has only been devalued once since its creation in 1850. With or without
the gold standard, the history of the Swiss National Bank has been marked by a continuous search for
a stable anchor. In order to protect the purchasing power of money and the price competitiveness of a
country largely dependent on exports, monetary stability has been the overriding target of SNB policy
throughout its one hundred year history. Of course, seen from a modern-day perspective, mistakes
have been made and decisions taken too late - the 1936 devaluation can be seen as an example of
this - but the fact that we can still use the set of coins introduced in 1850, when the franc was created,
shows that Switzerland, thanks to prudent policy, has succeeded in avoiding the monetary disorders
that have plagued so many European countries since the nineteenth century.