Levin has been waiting for this day a long time. (That’s Senator Carl, not Editor Bess). Swiss banks are in a great deal of trouble. First, they face rather significant trials for their liberal use of Swiss Franc as insulation for East European houses. Second, they are looking at a massive depositor exodus if their primary selling point, banking secrecy, doesn’t hold up. Right now, it is under rather serious assault.
The sanctity of the secret Swiss bank account — an icon of global finance — is under growing pressure in a tax investigation due to come into public view on Wednesday at a U.S. congressional hearing.
Senator Carl Levin, a long-time foe of offshore tax havens estimated to deprive the U.S. government of $100 billion in annual revenues, will convene the hearing before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that he chairs.
It will be most interesting to see if the United States can actually press Switzerland to give up one of the only features that keeps their economy relevant- and how spineless the Swiss are prepared to be.
U.S. Senate panel to question Swiss banker, secrecy [Reuters]
Well, they can always fall back on clocks and chocolate.
Martina Hingis is a coke-snorting skank.
We’re talking about the Swiss here. Do you really think they are going to give up centuries of secrecy?
They’ll give Senator Levin and Treasury all of the little fish – people with, say $50 million squirreled away over there.
And that will shield the big-time, politically connected money as the American public will be satisfied after watching some dentists, dermatologists, and scions on the perp walk.
BTW – is there any truth to that rumor Obama has ordered a guillotine be set up in Lafayette Square?
Obama should just grow some balls and invade Switzerland.
Bush invaded two countries, Obama has to pony up and show the world he means F’ing business!
Wasn’t the Swiss banking system started by the Knights Templar? If they can evade the Roman Catholic Church, First Reich (Holy Roman Empire I), then certainly, they can tell the U$ to hit the road. Right?
So, where does this guy think he’s gonna get any campaign contributions when all the wealthy supporters he’s relied on have their Swiss accounts exposed? What a dolt.
The Swiss are the smuggest people on the planet.
I’ll support anybody who wants to kick them in the teeth.
the only things Obama is going to invade are 1. your rear end 2. your 401k and 3. your wallet
They’ve managed to stay out (read: buy their way out) of every single conflict that hits the continent.
It’s time to pay the piper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfvDCSWu3s
I wonder why the gnomes just don’t divest themselves of all investments in the state of Michigan.
Will the wonderful swiss be giving back all the holocaust art and money the shit-ass pet-fucking Germans stole and hid in their chocolat bank vaults?
The Swiss can keep bank secrecy, they just can’t keep bank secrecy and operate like a large global bank in the US, opening up an office in mid-town Manhattan and advertising on CNBC. Those businesses are incompatible, and it gives leverage to US regulators. You don’t see Lichtenstenian banks advertising on CNN, do you? Nor are they likely to feel any particular need to fly over and talk to a US legislator about what they do. (If that US legislator wants to invest with them, he or she will have to visit Lichtenstein like everyone else.)
“Liechtenstein.”
@4 Excellent Idea!!!! Take those boring losers to the wall and take their friggin chocolates!!! They can keep the cuckoo clocks!
@12 Absolutely correct!!!! Give it back, Gents!!!! Or we’ll carry out @4′s plans!
i work at UBS, want me to show you where we keep all the gold teeth, mother fuckers?
The germans invented the cookoo clock.
@2 – i love her, too
Ok, EP you gotta be fair. Gotta put up the Obama index.
@8, he’s already done that.
What about the watches? Christ are you people crazy?!!!
@16 rofl!! do they have embroidered “special” hair socks as well??
Lets see according to Obama Math 100bn in tax revenues means 4trillion in new spending!!!!!!!!!!!
@16
They’re crooks through and through. Google Christoph Meili. He was the security guard who found all the prewar files about confiscation of Jewish property about to be shredded, he reported it and was promptly arrested for his trouble.
i have it on close personal information that the US gov’t is only seeking transparency to a find a one Jason Bourne who is currently believed to be in Switzerland
Id be pissed too if BoFA dropped info on my checking account
Did Geithner visit Switzerland after the G-7 meetings in Rome? Just where did he go afterwards? He seemed to disappear.
And if he did visit Switzerland, which side of the banking secrecy argument did he advocate to the Swiss? The “give-up-the-names” side, or the “keep-quiet, some-of-those-people-were-bho-donors” side?
i’m rooting for the swiss on this one. levin (the senator) can go f*ck himself, and the horse he rode in on.
Reading all the comments I wonder how you Americans couldn’t manage to come up with your own word for ‘schadenfreude’, so good are you at showing it.
You’ll be disappointed though that only 15% of Swiss GDP comes from the financial sector, which is a lot, but you can be sure it wouldn’t shrink to zero just because of handing some names to the IRA – or as you put it, giving up the “only features that keeps their economy relevant”.
The comment on Eastern Europe is even further off the mark: it’s Swiss FRANCS, not BANKS, that are involved in these loans: the banks who made them were mostly Austrian, Swedish, Italian, and Belgian. The Swiss banks come into this game as lenders to the lending banks, but given the prospect of EU bailout when push comes to shove, this doesn’t seem like our biggest problem.
All this is not to say that Swiss banks are fine. Far from it. But their crappy legacy assets are mostly positions in US structured credit and ARS sec’s. Ever bothered to remember what happened to Merrill, Citi or Lehman who had about as big an exposure to dodgy US fixed income assets as UBS had???
But hey, y’know what, the bonuses paid out by Swiss banks have furthest to fall on Wall Street – now is that bad news for Switzerland or for the US? You tell me.