In, what was once, the most diabolical pinning of any state policy ever, Swiss carved out for itself an innovative niche in an early nineteenth century. The exact Circa is 1848. Lacking much population, having borders against five militarily powerful nations, nourishing five diverse ethnicities in its populations, and little agriculture, Swiss decided that barring some high precision industry, they needed some other source of money to keep their kitchen hearth lit with fire. The industry was to slyly and secretly keep sleaze money of the dictators, crooks, bandits and merchants. To ensure that they could run this industry on the largest scale, Swiss in 1848 declared itself as permanently “neutral state”, which in simpler words meant that they were, in fact, keeping the moneys of both the looters of the nation, in a case, even if they happened to be war without either of them ever coming to know about it. Swiss, thus, were not only two timing but were multi timing all the villains of the world.
The blunt truth is that Switzerland operated as a financial whore who promised to keep every promiscuous client’s confidence. They cultivated this art, and built legal provisions to punish with rigorous imprisonment for years whoever breached the client confidentiality that since at least 1848 no country ever invaded Switzerland despite the fact it has borders with at least three most powerful military states, Germany, France, Italy, While, in all fairness, apart from having sleaze money as prime source of livelihood, they also created a manufacturing industry that specializes in high-technology, knowledge-based production of precision instruments, chocolates and watches. Swiss also promoted tourism by keeping the age of girls eligible or opting for prostitution at 16 years as against European norm of 18 years, permitted restaurant and hotel owners to import sex workers from Korea and Thailand under the garb of ‘dancer” on a two year work permit even of age as low as sixteen years. It is a well known secret till last few months, ever since Switzerland has come under attack for all kinds of unethical practices.
To make a rent out of beautiful Alps in its geography, tourism was also promoted with famous byline of the nation being the “paradise of the world”. Swiss also developed a close alliance with the Buckingham Palace in nineteenth and twentieth century where in fact most of the offshore islands under English occupation were also used for secret banking and they also helped migrate these criminal billionaires to immigrate to any place in Switzerland and England. The truth of the strength of the bond between these two nations is evident from the fact that England has no outstanding dispute of recovery of their hidden stolen assets in Swiss banks, as whatever they were of little amount, have been amicably settled between the two.
Since 1848, It did not side with any of the warring nations, for nearly a century, wilfully asserting to abstain itself from taking a side in war between nations proclaiming neutrality as a state policy principle. It is a different scene now that in terrorism tarred Pakistan where more casualties take place on a daily basis killing innocent citizens and maiming many, Swiss ambulances and Swiss are now nowhere to be seen. In fact it was a charade that made lot of sense to then economics of Switzerland. Even as the façade of ‘state neutrality’ was being played on by bagpipers, the “private bankers” of Switzerland were busy providing of ‘numbered” secret accounts to world’s dictators who looted their people and hoard such wealth with them with no interest paid.
Why just Hitler, Switzerland has been a most notorious history of having kept the loot of practically every dictator of the world starting from Mussolini, Hitler, Marcos, Mubarak Hussein, Saddam, Zardari and countless others. It is indeed a tribute to Swiss diplomacy and its wiliness or, more, perhaps to corrupt regime currently in India that we are refusing to pressurize for return of 1.4 trillion US$ back to India. The truth is that Swiss economy is still in recession and they badly want access to Indian markets, permission to set up their precision unit industries in India, because of most of growth in the world is likely to be centred in China, India. This corrupt government has not only allowed Switzerland’s most notorious bank UBS to open its branches in 2005 in Hyderabad and in Bandra, Mumbai in 2008. That how steep this government’s involvement with desire to earn sleaze money is evident that in 2007 when the entire full delegation of Swiss private Bankers Association came to India to seek permission to operate as FIIS in Mumbai Stock Exchange via notorious Mauritius Route. Permission was granted by UPA2 cabinet. In crude terms, it meant that 1.4 trillion US$ with Swiss banks was permitted to be used against Indian tax payer’s tax paid investment to allow garnering huge profit to these unscrupulous bankers.
But, as they say, “good times do come to an end”, and surely they did since 2006. Ever since the global recession that hit US and Europe since 2006, Swiss political elite is jumping like a cat on a hot tin roof. Partly, and ironically, Swiss sleaze banking industry, itself played a huge role in it. An unregulated American mortgage and banking industry allowed some greedy players with the sleaze money in billions that they had in Swiss banks decided to form what are known as “Hedge Funds”. This unregulated industry of “Hedge Funds”, an alliance of billionaires operating from huge funds invested in all kinds of derivatives right from crude oil barrels, metals like, gold, copper, aluminium, copper to platinum, including food grains like wheat, rice, corn in such a manner to create huge scarcities by betting derivatives to synchronize a prolonged shortages for each of them for a sustained period. Crude oil barrel touched 140$ a barrel from just 40$ a barrel a year ago under the severe onslaught of the biggest speculators working in tandem to make humungous profits. Most made profits, some lost money. The result was America alone lost roughly 24.4 trillion US$ alone plus over 5 million jobs as a result of severe recession that emanated in USA and soon spread to most of the Europe, Asia and Africa. It was this in 2006 that President Obama, then with the assistance of OECD countries and European Union decided to crack a whip at Swiss sleaze banking industry.
More Swiss are unemployed today. Tourism has vanished, partly, because sleaze money depositors are not only under fear of losing their deposits and worried about being noticed by international law enforcement agencies determined to crack the sleaze money banking industry to its knees. Results are visible. Swiss economy is reeling under recession and as more and more of sleaze deposits get taxed or are confiscated by International law enforcement agencies, including Interpol, whose assistance US President is taking in regard to their citizens who have still not liquidated their deposited in tax havens. Swiss are panicky about keeping their money in their banks itself. With zero interest rate on deposits, Swiss economy grew by .8% only in 2009 and 2010.
At the end of December 2010, cash worth CHF 54.3 bn was in circulation in Switzerland. This means that the volume of cash in Switzerland has risen by almost 30%, or CHF 12 bn, in the last 10 years. Cash in circulation is increasing roughly on a par with GDP growth. Furthermore, the volume in periods of crisis and low interest rates, such as we have experienced in recent years, is rising disproportionately. At such times, people put their trust in cash alone. In other words, they would rather hoard cash without earning any interest than worry that the bank might become insolvent, taking their savings with it.
