Page 61 - SARB: 100-Year Journey

The Commission was named after Edwin Kemmerer, an economics professor at Princeton University, and Gerard Vissering, the President of the Nederlandsche Bank, the Dutch central bank.
Edwin Walter Kemmerer. Gerard Vissering. /Getty /Alamy Images
On 27 April 1925, Britain returned to the gold bullion standard ahead of South Africa. The Union resumed the gold specie standard on 18 May 1925. Six years later, and months before the Bank’s founding Governor, William Clegg, was to retire in 1931, Britain suspended the gold standard on 21 September in terms of the Gold Standard Act of 1925. Britain was “forced by a continuous and substantial drain on its gold reserve, due to large withdrawals of funds from the London money market,” reflects De Kock (1954, p 138).
The withdrawal of funds from London came as a result of a financial panic in Europe, which is generally taken to have been caused by depressed world conditions and, in particular, by the failure in May 1931 of one of the largest continental banks – the Austrian Kredit Anstalt, writes De Kock (1954, p 138).
In September 1931, crowds gathered on Throgmorton Street, outside the London Stock Exchange, on the announcement that the gold standard had been suspended. /Getty Images
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