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Jamie Douglas and Julie R Butler
By Jamie Douglas
U.S. diplomats, long famous for their lack of diplomacy, are once again putting pressure on the Swiss financial authorities to put pressure on 11 major banks in Switzerland to release the names of and all clients that may have even remote connections to the IRS fiefdom. In addition to a complete client list, they also want access to all the names of employees who may have had dealings with said customers. The price for non-compliance: The U.S. wants to impose a fine of $10 billion on the financial institutions.
One thing that should be brought to the forefront here is the fact that the crumbling Corporate States of America is only going after individuals, completely ignoring the huge corporate tax cheats operating out of P.O. boxes in Panama, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Singapore, and Belize, to mention just some of the top offenders. The amount of tax dollars that could be harvested from closing the insane loopholes that allow corporations to game the system into a zero tax liability is absolutely insane. Would it not be an interesting research project to assign some MBA candidates or political science majors to find all the loopholes created, who created them, and what type of bill they were surreptitiously added to at 4:00 AM by the likes of Senator Ted Stevens † or West Virginia’s Senator Robert Byrd †, the two undisputed kings of pork barrel spending.
The Union Bank of Switzerland has already settled with the U.S. for millions of dollars, and the justice department is now working hard to get similar results from some of the other giants: Credit Suisse, Julius Bär, and several Cantonal financial institutions. The Swiss have been given until the end of the current year to comply. I assume there will be a steady drumbeat to war on Fox News, with the invasion of Zürich by U.S. and allied armed forces to capture the evil Gnomers residing in their golden shoes deep under Zürich’s Bahnhofstrasse (Remember Panama).
While many have unpleasant memories of Swiss bankers and the holding of the assets of many of the Jewish victims of persecution by Nazi Germany, it was not the Swiss who tried to exterminate them. At the time of their acceptance of the funds and other valuables, no one could have anticipated the evil to be perpetrated by their neighbors to the north. The agreement was to hold the assets until they were reclaimed by either the client or their heirs. No one thought to codify how to deal with the assets in case of a pogrom, so the funds just stayed in the banks, and like banks all over the world, the funds were used to lend out, to develop and rebuild the world after the disaster of WWII.
No doubt, the banks in Switzerland could have made more of an effort to locate the heirs, but Europe was in shambles, with many official records were difficult to locate. I touch on this delicate subject merely to point out that the U.S. government is to an extent still using the holocaust victims’ memory to try to extort information about individual customers from the institutions. I do not endorse tax cheating for individuals who could easily afford to pay a slightly larger portion of their income, but before the United States of America throws the might of its justice department against a small nation like the Swiss Confederation, should they not at least equally pursue corporate tax cheats that shuffle their profits around the world until they arrive in the best possible tax haven of them all: Ireland?
Perhaps not, because all that hiding and shuffling is made possible by the friendly U.S. Senators and Congressional members, with the help of the lobbyist, the U.S.’s institutionalized system of corruption. It’s all about money and power. Those who have the money have control of the power structure. So logically thinking, why does the U.S. government think they have power or control? After all, their public debt of humpteen trillion dollars is dwarfed by the actual total U.S. debt (the amount of debt owed by everyone in the U.S. economy) of 56,388 trillion dollars. Foreign sovereign nations are holding 4,646 trillion dollars of the U.S. indebtedness. The U.S. needs funds, and who better to blackmail and extort it from than the Swiss banks, because that is where the money is.
Jamie Douglas
San Rafael, Mendoza
[image: Bahnhofstrasse, in Zurich, via Wikipedia]
I encourage you to write to me, jamie@expatdailynews.com with any questions or suggestions you may have, and if necessary, we can establish a voice communication via Skype. Disclaimer: I am not in any travel related business. My advice is based on my own experiences, and is free of charge. (Donations accepted). It is always my pleasure to act as a beneficial counselor to those who are seekers of the next adventure.
Jamie Douglas is an Adventurer, Writer and Photographer with an amazing array of Nikon equipment, and a lifetime of experience traveling and documenting. To contact him for assignments, email: jamie.douglas [at] yahoo.com
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That is a great idea!! Or paper for PhD!
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