What fairy-tale phrase was coined in 1964 when London politicians blamed secretive Swiss bankers for increased speculation against the pound?
"in a crisis meeting of the Labour politicians in November 1964. The politicians blamed Swiss bankers for raising speculation against the pound. During the meeting, politician George Brown criticised the Swiss bankers and said, ""The gnomes of Zürich are at work again."" The term ""Gnomes of Zürich"" was then used by many other politicians of the time. Then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson vowed to resist the gnomes' sinister power. Paul Rossy, a top banker in Zürich at the time, stated, ""In the world it is not the image, but the substance behind the image which counts."" The phrase ""gnomes of"
"Zürich"" was adopted by the Americans as well. Soon after the catchphrase became famous, a few Swiss bankers started answering their phone as ""Hello, gnome speaking."" An audacious Swiss banker moved to London in order to set up his business and named it ""Gnome of Notting Hill"". In recent decades, Zürich bankers have lost the foothold they had in the global economy due to the rise of London, New York, Dubai and Hong Kong as leading financial capitals. The Zürich Money Museum displays the sculpture of a gnome. Jurg Conzett of the Zürich Money Museum says that nowadays, bankers see"
"in Britain and dubbing Soros ""the man who broke the Bank of England"". Britain's membership of the ERM was also blamed for prolonging the recession at the time, and Britain's exit from the ERM was seen as an economic failure which contributed significantly to the defeat of the Conservative government of John Major at the general election in May 1997, despite the strong economic recovery and significant fall in unemployment which that government had overseen after Black Wednesday. In August 1993, the margin was expanded to 15% to accommodate speculation against the French franc and other currencies. On 31 December"
"$2.80. The move prompted several other currencies to be devalued against the dollar. Operation Bernhard was the codename of a secret Nazi plan devised during the Second World War by the RSHA and the SS to destabilise the British economy via economic warfare by flooding the global economy and the British Empire with forged Bank of England £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes. In 1961, 1964, and 1966, the pound came under renewed pressure, as speculators were selling pounds for dollars. In summer 1966, with the value of the pound falling in the currency markets, exchange controls were tightened by"
"a ""yes"" vote were ""incomprehensible,"" citing Winston Churchill's 1925 Gold Standard decision and the actions of America's Federal Reserve that triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s, as other mistakes of a similar magnitude. The Swiss UBS financial services company supported the position of the Deutsche Bank. Supporters of independence have said that Scotland does not meet its full economic potential because it is subject to the same economic policy as the rest of the UK. In 2013, the Jimmy Reid Foundation published a report stating that UK economic policy had become ""overwhelmingly geared to helping London, meaning Scotland and"
"(who nevertheless sounded out Maudling for the governorship of the Bank of England in 1966) blamed the ""dash for growth"" that followed the 1963 budget for increasing pound sterling's chronic instability between 1964 and 1967 and by greatly increasing domestic demand the budget certainly exacerbated the existing balance of payments problem. Maudling largely recognised this himself by the time of the 1964 budget and, although he increased taxes, he did little to subdue demand in an election year. By 1963, during the Profumo affair, there was talk, encouraged by Martin Redmayne (Chief Whip) and Lord Poole (Party Chairman), of Maudling"
"relatively higher interest rate. Speculators increasingly borrowed money from the Bank of England and converted the money into the German mark at the fixed exchange rate. The demand for the British pound dropped so much that the exchange rate was no longer able to be maintained and the pound depreciated suddenly. Investors were then able to convert their German marks back into pounds at a significantly higher rate, allowing them to pay off their loans and keep large profits. Shorting stocks also takes advantage of the depreciation of the currency following a speculative attack. Investors sell their stock with the"
"like bonds or stocks often is considered to contribute positively to economic growth by providing capital, currency speculation does not; according to this view, it is simply gambling that often interferes with economic policy. For example, in 1992, currency speculation forced Sweden's central bank, the Riksbank, to raise interest rates for a few days to 500% per annum, and later to devalue the krona. Mahathir Mohamad, one of the former Prime Ministers of Malaysia, is one well-known proponent of this view. He blamed the devaluation of the Malaysian ringgit in 1997 on George Soros and other speculators. Gregory Millman reports"
"in which Sandgate was situated). Upon his death his estate was valued at £8. Financier George Soros was called ""The Man Who Broke the Bank of England"" in 1992, following the infamous Black Wednesday which saw Britain's exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Charles Coborn (then aged 82) performs the song in both English and French in the 1934 British film ""Say It With Flowers"". The song title inspired the 1935 US romantic comedy ""The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo"". Although the song appears in the film, the narrative bears little relation to either the song"
"reflected the preceding government's expansive fiscal policy in the run-up to the 1964 election, and the incoming Wilson team tightened the fiscal stance in response. Many British economists advocated devaluation, but Wilson resisted, reportedly in part out of concern that Labour, which had previously devalued sterling in 1949, would become tagged as ""the party of devaluation"". In the latter half of 1967, an attempt was made to prevent the recession in activity from going too far in the form of a stimulus to consumer durable spending through an easing of credit, which in turn prevented a rise in unemployment. After"
"1985, before rising to $1.70 in December 1989. In 1988, Margaret Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, decided that the pound should ""shadow"" the West German Deutsche Mark (DM), with the unintended result of a rapid rise in inflation as the economy boomed due to low interest rates. (For ideological reasons, the Conservative Government declined to use alternative mechanisms to control the explosion of credit. For this reason, former Prime Minister Edward Heath referred to Lawson as a ""one club golfer"".) Following German reunification in 1990, the reverse held true, as high German borrowing costs to fund Eastern reconstruction,"
"counterfeiting the banknotes more difficult. By 1967, the series was heavily counterfeited, and by 1973, the $50 banknote had a counterfeit ratio of over 950 parts per million. The banknotes were described as ""a little less pro-British"" by the ""Halifax Chronicle-Herald"". The design of the hair behind the ear of Elizabeth II ""gave the illusion of a grinning demon"", leading to the banknote series nickname ""Devil's Head"". The demon was described as having ""pouchy eyes, hooked nose with flared nostrils and thick loose lips"". The devil's head appearance can be seen in the banknote obverses illustrated above, particularly if the"
"protectionist tendencies of that country. It was because of this prediction that he became known as ""The Raven of Zurich"", the raven being a bird associated with dire omens. He was one of several economists who later expressed the view that the depression might not have occurred if there had not been a conjunction of events, including the election of Hitler in Germany and of Roosevelt in the US. He was in New York City when the stock markets were plummeting and, seeing that fellow bankers were buying recklessly, he sent a wire to Zurich telling his associates there to"
"high on 11 July. The DJIA and Nasdaq Composite, both reached an all-time high on 12 July and 8 August respectively. It was expected that the weaker pound would benefit aerospace and defence firms, pharmaceutical companies, and professional services companies; the share prices of these companies were boosted after the EU referendum. The pound remained low, and became the worst performing currency of the year to date against 31 other major currencies. Several politicians have indicated strong personal opinions about the stock market selloff. Speaking on August 24, German chancellor Angela Merkel and France's President François Hollande described the world"
"of the Conservative leader Michael Howard and Treasury spokesman Oliver Letwin. Both Howard and Letwin are Jewish, and the Labour Party was accused of encouraging anti-Semitism; the Labour Party denied any such implication, but withdrew the posters. A separate poster depicted Howard as a hypnotist with a watch on a chain, and the caption ""I can spend the same money twice""; this was seen by some Conservatives as a depiction of either Shylock from the ""Merchant of Venice"", or Fagin from Oliver Twist, and in either case therefore similarly anti-Semitic. The Labour Party said the poster was intended to remind"
"the Swiss stock market sharply declined; due to a stronger franc, Swiss companies would have had a more difficult time selling goods and services to neighboring European citizens. In June 2016, when the results of the Brexit referendum were announced, the SNB gave a rare confirmation that it had increased foreign currency purchases again, as evidenced by a rise of commercial deposits to the national bank. Negative interest rates coupled with targeted foreign currency purchases have helped to limit the strength of the Swiss Franc in a time when the demand for safe haven currencies is increasing. Such interventions assure"
"reasons. In particular the Swiss were, and continue to be, criticised for the way they aided the shipment of Nazi funds abroad and provided banking facilities for the concealment of looted art treasures and gold, much of it stolen from Jews. In late 1943 safes at a Swiss bank at Interlaken were rented by high-ranking Germans to store funds. Later, high-ranking Nazi officials withdrew their deposits from German banks and transferred large sums to Swiss banks and to the Swedish Consulate at Karlsruhe. Italian and Swiss press reports also stated that many leading Italians banked large sums in Swiss francs"
"additional money was intended to allow the IMF to have increased lending resources. In 1964, the funds were used by the IMF to rescue the Pound sterling. The G-10 grew in 1964 by the association of the eleventh member, Switzerland, then a nonmember of the Fund, but the name of the G10 remained the same. In 2011, Spain and Australia followed. The Group of Ten signed the Smithsonian Agreement in December 1971, replacing the world's fixed exchange rate regime with a floating exchange rate regime. The GAB enables the IMF to borrow specified amounts of currencies from these 11 industrial"
"also much too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices. By September 16, 1992, the day of Black Wednesday, Soros's fund had sold short more than $10 billion in pounds, profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or float its currency. Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound. Soros's profit on the bet was estimated at over $1 billion. He was dubbed ""the man who broke the Bank of England""."
"rating agencies and their clients"" Some in the Greek, Spanish, and French press and elsewhere spread conspiracy theories that claimed that the U.S. and Britain were deliberately promoting rumors about the euro in order to cause its collapse or to distract attention from their own economic vulnerabilities. ""The Economist"" rebutted these ""Anglo-Saxon conspiracy"" claims, writing that although American and British traders overestimated the weakness of southern European public finances and the probability of the breakup of the eurozone breakup, these sentiments were an ordinary market panic, rather than some deliberate plot. Greek Prime Minister Papandreou is quoted as saying that"
"their issuance of large banknotes. As of August 2009, the number of 1000 Swiss franc notes circulating was over three times the population of Switzerland. In comparison, the number of £50 banknotes circulating is slightly less than three times the population of the United Kingdom. But the 1000 franc note is worth roughly £600. The British government has traditionally been wary of large banknotes since the counterfeiting Operation Bernhard in World War II which caused the Bank of England to withdraw all notes larger than £5 from circulation, and not reintroduce other denominations until the early 1960s (£10), 1970 (£20)"
"inflation rates, a devaluation of the Swiss franc in 1971, the plummeting US dollar exchange rate, collapsing stock prices, scandals surrounding Cologne’s Herstatt-Bank in 1974 and Switzerland’s SKA in 1977, along with a recession in Liechtenstein that started in 1975 – the first in the post-WWII era for the Principality – all combined to make the 1970s indeed a turbulent decade. To defend against excessive capital inflows from abroad, the Swiss government in June 1972 prohibited the payment of interest on foreign CHF-denominated deposits and imposed a commission on them (negative interest rates of up to ten per cent quarterly,"
"Swiss banks ""have long adhered to an unwritten code similar to that observed by doctors or priests"". Since 1934, banking secrecy laws have been violated by four people: Christoph Meili (1997), Bradley Birkenfeld (2007), Rudolf Elmer (2011), and Hervé Falciani (2014). After insurmountable professional setbacks, all the men were either fired or resigned from their banks, served with federal arrest warrants and fined. The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) estimated in 2018 that Swiss banks held US$6.5 trillion in assets or 25% of all global cross-border assets. Switzerland's main lingual hubs, Geneva (for French), Lugano (for Italian), and Zürich (for German)"
"a devaluation in September 1949, the British Pound (which still affected several important ""Sterling bloc"" currency zones in addition to Britain itself), left the Swiss resorts looking even more expensive from the perspective of what had previously been identified by management as key foreign markets. From 1950 intensified pressures also began to emerge, slowly, on the cost front as seasonal hotel workers, traditionally recruited inexpensively from, in particular, Italy, began to find opportunities for more attractively remunerated hotel work at home. During the winter season of 1953/54, the Sporthotel stayed shut, citing staff shortages. Meanwhile, a boom in hotel building"
"such as in the ""New York Times"", the ""International Herald Tribune"" , and most recently in the FT and ""The Economist"". Locust (finance) Locust is a pejorative term derived from the German word """", which German politician Franz Müntefering (from the social democratic SPD party) created in the context of describing private investors, private equity funds and investment banks. The term has been popularized and is continually used in discussions critical to capitalism in Germany. In 2004 Franz Müntefering demanded that his party take a critical position towards certain practices of private equity firms. In a speech in November 2004,"
"Locust (finance) Locust is a pejorative term derived from the German word """", which German politician Franz Müntefering (from the social democratic SPD party) created in the context of describing private investors, private equity funds and investment banks. The term has been popularized and is continually used in discussions critical to capitalism in Germany. In 2004 Franz Müntefering demanded that his party take a critical position towards certain practices of private equity firms. In a speech in November 2004, he first associated private financial investors with locusts: This metaphor was repeated several times by both official pamphlets of the SPD"
"its portrait of Benjamin Franklin, while a Canadian might refer to it as a ""Borden"", after its portrait of Robert Borden. Since its introduction in 1999, a number of slang terms for the euro have emerged, though differences between languages mean that they are not common across the whole of the eurozone. Some terms are inherited from the legacy currencies, such as ""quid"" from the Irish pound and various translations of ""fiver"" or ""tenner"" being used for notes. The German ""Teuro"" is a play on the word ""teuer"", meaning 'expensive'. The Deutsche Mark by comparison was approximately worth half as"
"was in the week ending 16 July 1994, when the daily figure was 4,305,957. The highest ever one-day sale was on 18 November 1995 (4,889,118), although the cover price had been cut to 10p. The highest ever one-day sale at full price was on 30 March 1996 (4,783,359). On 22 January 1997, ""The Sun"" accused the shadow chancellor Gordon Brown of stealing the Conservatives' ideas by declaring, ""If all he is offering is Conservative financial restraint, why not vote for the real thing?"" and called the planned windfall tax, which was later imposed by the Labour government, ""wrongheaded"". In February"
"run on the dollar, as currency speculators believed a Labour win would mean devaluation. Despite a deepening foreign exchange crisis, Muldoon continued to refuse to devalue, forcing the Reserve Bank to take some extraordinary steps, such as closing the Forex markets for a short period of time to slow down devaluation. On 14 July, Muldoon and National lost the general election, and the Fourth Labour government led by David Lange was sworn in on 26 July. By constitutional convention, between election day and the return of the writs for the election, an outgoing caretaker government implements the directions of an"
"Smith"" (pseudonym of George Goodman), wherein he applied the story to the then-tendency of economists to assume that inflation would go away, and mocked the notion that economists are ""the high priests of this esoteric mystery."" In contrast, he asks ""why the economists are always wrong."" The phrase ""assume a can opener"" became ""his nagging accusation against the deductive logic and analytical models of economists."" The Italian finance minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa used the phrase in 2006 to illustrate that ""Very often, when economists comment, they assume politics away."" It has been used in Australia to describe ""a treasurer who has"
"Union in view of Germany's effect on the balance of power in Europe. After Thatcher's Bruges speech in September 1988 and her increasing hostility to a European currency in the last years of her premiership, Powell made many speeches publicly supporting her attitude to Europe. When Heath attacked Thatcher's speech in May 1989 Powell called him ""the old virtuoso of the U-turn"". When inflation crept up that year, he condemned the Chancellor Nigel Lawson's policy of printing money so sterling would shadow the German deutschmark and said that it was for the UK to join the European Monetary System. In"
"Bank of England continued to buy and Quantum continued to sell until Lamont told Prime Minister John Major that their pound purchasing was failing to produce results. At 10:30 AM on 16 September, the British government announced a rise in the base interest rate from an already high 10 to 12 percent to tempt speculators to buy pounds. Despite this and a promise later the same day to raise base rates again to 15 percent, dealers kept selling pounds, convinced that the government would not stick with its promise. By 7:00 that evening, Norman Lamont, then Chancellor, announced Britain would"
"coined. For Milo Keynes, the phrase was first used by the American diplomat Norman Davis. While for historian Antony Lentin, the phrase arose among younger members of the British delegation. There were three principal reasons: the ""astronomically"" large sums the Twins thought should be extracted from Germany, the ""beatific smile"" they would sometimes both adopt after rendering a judgement in situations where they had the upper hand in a debate, and the fact they were generally inseparable at Versailles—both at work and while enjoying the Paris nightlife. Additionally, Britons in 1919 would have been well aware of Sarah Grand's New"