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Pamp (Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux) in Switzerland is the world's largest private refiner of precious metals, including gold ingots

I’ve just had a good chuckle reading Chris Bowlby’s BBC article on the gnomes of Zurich, where he takes us back to 1964, when British political leader George Brown apparently used the phrase for the first time. Bowlby relates a little Swiss banking political history and mythology, ending with musings on today’s British bankers who are moving to Switzerland to escape the UK tax man, public outrage and regulation. It’s an enjoyable read. He ends by wondering if someone will come up with another catchphrase for the next group the government will blame if ex-Brits who know the banking world start to speculate against sterling.

My guess is that we’ll come full circle. “Gnome” appears to have been popularized by Paracelsus, a Swiss (of course!) alchemist who used the word to describe people who could “move through solid earth as fish move through water”, according to Britannica. The British may find that they need those Zurich gnomes, or alchemists, to turn poor sterling into something more solid.

The “Paracelsian Debates“, ironically perhaps written up on a US government web site, were heated. Paracelsus’s ideas were sometimes called immoral and the man himself arrogant. They pitted the British and French against the ideas of the Swiss man who, despite their tirades, built a reputation for knowing his business.

Sound familiar?

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