Switzerland was once a great place to move your assets to and enjoy the benefits of top of the line banking secrecy. The Swiss economy lives of the banking powerhouse which was created a long time ago and wealthy individuals have flocked to Switzerland from all over Europe, the U.S. and to a lesser degree from Asia.
Swiss secrecy protected capitalists and sheltered them from the socialists who made it their personal mission to chase them all over the world. It was a great place to go and conduct business while knowing that your assets and secrets enjoyed top of the line protection and secrecy which no government could penetrate. Switzerland, always known for its neutrality in every global aspect enjoyed a nice boom from the system they created. True enough, they really lack in areas of customer service outside its banking system which is a small price to pay for what they offer when it comes to the world of finances. It used to a worthwhile sacrifice.
Switzerland comfortably build the biggest offshore banking center in the world and had a great finance economy going with hundreds of private banks and finance boutiques as well as several major global asset manager giants such as Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and UBS. Everyone was happy, except socialistic governments who hated the Swiss for what they created.
Switzerland decided to create this offshore banking super center in 1934 and successfully welcomed about one-third of the global off-shore wealth to its coffers. Three years ago Switzerland decided to commit financial suicide. The most powerful socialists, the U.S., decided to sue UBS on February 19th 2009 and pressured the Swiss government to full disclosure on bank accounts of 52,000 American customers who were alleged of potential tax evasion.
The Swiss government could not handle the pressure and put a shotgun in its mouth while begging the socialists to simply pull the trigger. The socialists could not resist and as they pulled the trigger with a smile on their face as big as the one of a 10 year old boy who just discovered his first erection and what he can do with it. Since socialists suffer from a mix of severe mental retardation coupled with ridiculous stupidity topped off with a layer of ignorant idiocy they somewhat missed which will now cause the Swiss off-shore banking powerhouse to slowly bleed out over the next eight years before it will shrink to about one-third of its current size before it fades away completely.
Even if Switzerland would reverse course now they will not recover as confidence was sucked out of the system. Switzerland had a total of 312 banks at the end of 2011 including 154 branches of foreign banks. Nine foreign banks already pulled out of Switzerland in 2011 and more will follow. There will be bank closures and mergers and the country may be left with a few dozen smaller banks when it is all said and done. Assets will experience a spike in outflows in 2013 which will not be stopped until the system will be crushed.
UBS was already torn into pieces and others will be forced to follow. As soon as the Swiss sold out its secrecy laws to the socialists they delivered the death sentence to their off-shore banking powerhouse. This is a sad tragedy for the free market and a big victory for the socialists. Lichtenstein initially told the U.S. that they had to right to drop to their knees and perform a nice round of fellatio, but one bank already struck a deal with the DoJ in order not to be prosecuted. One can only hope that Prince Alois, eldest son of Prince Hans-Adam II, the reigning Prince of Lichtenstein, as well as the Regent of Lichtenstein will hold his course and tell the socialistic pest to eat feces and cease to exist.
