Switzerland will have a referendum on whether to stop private banks from creating money

The Swiss population will be the first in the world to vote on their banking and money system, thanks to the tireless efforts of our sister organisation Modernizing Money (MoMo).

The campaign, which has involved over 100 activists collecting signatures, gathered 111,819 signatures to have a referendum on removing the power that banks currently have to create money when they make loans. They made it within 18 months, which under Swiss law results in a referendum.

On Tuesday 1st December Positive Money’s director Fran Boait and the coordinator of the international movement for monetary reform Stan were in Switzerland at the invitation of the MoMo to officially hand in the petition with all the signatures to the Swiss Parliament.

This was a great day for the monetary reform movement. Some of the other members of the International movement and also NEF joined the MoMo in Switzerland to celebrate handing in the petition and to begin planning a strategy for the referendum.

Here you can view the video of the hand-in (although the commentary is available only in German):

The Financial Times has reported about it in an article entitled “A licence to print e-money for private banks” by Martin Sandbu:

But what if ordinary joes like you and me cotton on to this scam?

What scam?

That private banks just create money at will.

You mean you agree with this Swiss initiative now?

How could I not? If banks can just print electronic money, that’s just as destabilising as printing notes freely.

It’s a really great article. You can read it in full here. One of our twitter followers have commented on it with the words:

Calling all economics lecturers: use this witty @MESandbu column to teach money creation process. https://t.co/vK7LfVxvhY

— Richard Baldwin (@BaldwinRE) December 5, 2015

Duncan McCann, researcher on Economy and Finance from NEF was there at the hand-in of signatures as well and has written an article about it which you can read here.

Although the battle to get the Swiss parliament to acknowledge the current problems with the Swiss monetary system will be hard, the referendum offers perhaps the greatest opportunity we’ve seen in Europe for a fundamental rethink of the current monetary system and a genuine debate about the future of economics. Economist Steve Keen added that “whatever the outcome of this proposal, the debate it will allow over our monetary system is one that we have to have”.

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