‘Primum non nocere’ – First, do no harm. So goes the Hippocratic oath medical doctors take. Has the Swiss National Bank (SNB), as the attending physician for the Swiss economy, even taken this oath?

It is a well-known strategy, prior to engaging a country in warfare, to flood the target economy with counterfeit currency. This covert practice invariably results in economical collapse.

Why were counterfeiters scalded to death instead of being dealt with like common criminals? Because counterfeiting is first and foremost a scam that conjures riches out of thin air by the stroke of a pen.

Invariably, these fraudulent riches end up cheapening labour for everyone else in society, eventually destroying fair trade and thus social contract.

Here is my cloakroom ticket: I left my coat in the attendant’s care and expect it back when I leave, as you do. But what if, unbeknownst to me, counterfeit tickets were issued?

Our social contract, the deal we made with the Swiss ‘cloakroom’ is that we would lodge our wages, the proceeds of our labour in their care, day in and day out, and be issued legal tenders to the exact value of said wages. With this legal ‘cloakroom ticket’, we are made to believe we can withdraw wealth to the value of our initial lodgment.

But what if the cloakroom manager decides it now takes 7 tickets to access what wealth 1 ticket used to be worth? If each old ticket is fairly and accountably replaced by 7 new tickets, no harm done. To collect a coat, it now takes 7 tickets. The price has changed but the value hasn’t.

If on the other hand new tickets are issued without the knowledge of the customer, can I recoup the original value of my labour if I come collect my ‘coat’ with my original ticket, say 40 years after placing it in the cloakroom?

Savings placed in pension funds over the years no longer on a par with current costs of living with no-one held accountable– does this ring a bell?

To ‘first do no harm’ principle involves offering undisputable proof that a treatment is, at best, beneficial to the patient or at least won’t leave him worse off.

Did the SNB issue a report showing that its creation of new currency has none of the undermining effects the military expect from a covert counterfeiting operation?

Has the SNB ever commissioned a risk assessment study comprising true to life simulations that would make it possible to account for the consequences of its wholesale currency creation, be it public or covert?

I am not aware of any such study.

Indeed, we are told on the one hand that numbers on bank accounts match the actual value of real bank notes.

We are also told that counterfeiting money is very, very wrong, that it is against the law.

But on the other hand when it comes to numbers CREATED on bank accounts by the bank, out of nowhere, that’s ethical: creating numbers is not at all the same thing as printing counterfeit banknotes.

Does this sound off to you? Well it sure sounds off to me.

Could I have been taken for a mug for the last 40 odd years?

Keynote Address No 8.1 by Bernard Dugas at the AGM of the Swiss National Bank on Friday April 28th, 2017, Bern (Switzerland)

Translated into English by Celia Richard (celiarichardartist (@) hotmail.com)