Swiss Referendum on Gold and its wider macro ramifications

An interesting development is coming out of Switzerland, home of pretty mountains and secretive banking. 100,000 Swiss voters have signed a referendum calling for the government to maintain what many call a "partial gold standard". This move requires the Switzerland National Bank to hold 20% of its monetary reserves in the shiny gold bullion. This is big news to anyone following money and government monetary policies, since the gold standard has been used many years in the past. The world financial system has not been actively connected to gold since a couple of years after the Nixon Shock with references to gold removed by a 1976 government decree.

There are several reasons why this referendum is also big news:

1. The recent huge surge in gold reserve purchases by Russia, by India and by China
2. Long term of gold and other currencies that challenge the supremacy of the US dollar as the future reserve currency

The question is if Russia and China are buying up a lot of gold, what are their central banks going to do? Are they diversifying away from using the dollar as a fiat backer of their reserves or are they trying to establish a partial gold standard? There has been speculation for years that the Chinese government working in tandem with the Chinese Central bank has been planning for a Gold-Backed Yuan. Alan Greenspan, who is no stranger to central banking and monetary policy, said recently in an Foreign Affairs article published last month seemed to hint at China's resurgent gold reserve policies that were of huge importance to that of the United States. What's interesting is that Alan Greenspan has come out recently and mentioned that he's worried about the future of monetary policy, but also that gold should be a "good place to put your money these days given its value as a currency outside of the policies conducted by the governments. These statements don't surprise any of us that have been following Alan Greenspan. This goes back to his earlier associations with Ayn Rand and her Objectivist collective that he had participated in, with him penning Gold and Economic Freedom in Ayn Rand's book, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. He must think of the massive quantitative easing that the Federal Reserve has undertaken and the impending currency crisis that the Federal Reserve will eventually face.

Where does this lead us to with the Swiss referendum? If the policies on the referendum pass the voters, it would have to go through the many cantons within the Swiss Confederation. If this vote can pass, it would have huge ramifications on the gold markets, the financial markets and the world fiat currency system. If countries that are much larger in scope and in size, like China or Russia, also adopted similar currency laws for their Central Bank, it would create enormous demand for gold, driving up gold prices, while decreasing worldwide demand for the current reserve, which is the US dollar. This vote could have significant macroeconomic ramifications for the world.