Gnomes of Zürich

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Gnomes of Zürich is a disparaging term for Swiss bankers. Swiss bankers are popularly associated with extremely secretive policies, while gnomes in fairy tales live underground, in secret, counting their riches. Zürich is the commercial center of Switzerland.

The term was coined by the British Labour Party politician Harold Wilson, then Shadow Chancellor, in 1966 when he accused Swiss bankers of pushing the pound down on the foreign exchange markets by speculation.

The relevant portion of Wilson's speech on the House of Commons ran as follows:

Traders and financiers all over the world had listened to the Chancellor. He had said that if he could not stop wage claims the country was facing disaster. Rightly or wrongly, these people believed the Chancellor. On September 5th, when the T.U.C. unanimously rejected wage restraint, it was the end of an era, and all the financiers, all the little gnomes in Zürich and other financial centres, had begun to make their dispensations in regard to sterling.^[1]

[edit] In popular fiction

The Gnomes of Zürich are one of the secret societies playable in Illuminati and Illuminati: New World Order, both by Steve Jackson Games. The Gnome of Zurich is also a character in the Infocom computer game Zork II.

The "Gnomes of Zurich" are referred to in the Rutles song "Knicker Elastic King" as being "green with envy" of the said King's successful business.

In the Harry Potter series of novels, the wizarding bank Gringotts is run by gnome-like goblins.

Lord Gnome is the name of the fictitious proprietor of the British satire magazine Private Eye.

[edit] References