Gnomes of Zürich

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Gnomes of Zürich is a disparaging term for Swiss bankers. The term was coined by the British Labour Party politician Harold Wilson, then Shadow Chancellor, on November 12, 1956 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.

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 Gnomes of Zürich are also one of the secret societies playable in Illuminati and Illuminati: New World Order, both by Steve Jackson Games.

Gnomes of Zürich, in a more modern sense, also refers to currency traders.

A Gnome of Zurich is also featured as a character in the Infocom text adventure Zork II, where his role is to permit the player character to escape when trapped in the Bank of Zork in exchange for a treasure (but doing so causes the character to finish the game with less than the maximum number of points.) There is also a bug in some early versions of the game that, surreally, causes the game to respond: "I can't see the Gnome of Zurich anywhere!" when it doesn't understand certain commands in the Bank.