Monday, March 23, 2009
A brief note from Zurich
It is a chilly night in Zurich tonight, and there is still snow on the ground in the outskirts. In Tuttlingen, Germany, about 90 minutes northeast of here by car or train, there was snow on the fields yesterday morning. It is melting fast now, but the locals said that until last week the snow had covered the ground for four months.
To compare, this is a picture I took in Zurich on March 27, 2007, when people were walking around in warm weather clothing:
Europe, like the northeastern United States, has had a cold winter.
I had dinner this evening with a portfolio manager who has bought some of my company's stock for the fund he runs. I asked him what the Swiss thought of Barack Obama. He said that they were "of course thrilled" with his election, since they expected him to pursue a very different foreign policy from George W. Bush. However, the Swiss have soured a bit on Obama in recent weeks. The reason? They believe that the administration's armtwisting to get Union Bank of Switzerland to cough up the names of American depositors in violation of Swiss law amounted to the bullyinng of a small country in disregard of law, not unlike the rap on Bush.
Of course, Swiss unhappiness is unlikely to spread quickly to other countries, at least over this issue. In the current climate, bank secrecy laws are not a lot more popular than big bonuses for Wall Streeters.
UPDATE (6 a.m. Zurich time Tuesday morning): It snowed last night, enough to stick to the cars and grass.
9 Comments:
By 
SR, at
Mon Mar 23, 08:40:00 PM:
Hmmm, follow the money eh? I would guess there is a fair amount of Jihadi money in Swiss banks too.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Mar 23, 09:11:00 PM:
Richard W. Rahn (senior fellow at Cato Institute), in the Wall Street Journal, 18 Mar 09:
"It is true that not all people are saintly. But it is also true that not all governments are free from tyranny and corruption, and not all people are fully protected against criminal elements, even within their own governments. Without some jurisdictions in the world enforcing reasonable rights of financial privacy, those living in un-free and corrupt jurisdictions would have no place to protect their financial assets from kidnappers, extortionists, blackmailers and assorted government and nongovernment thugs."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10053
By 
, at
Mon Mar 23, 10:12:00 PM:
Although you are a wise and wordly guy, TH, I think it is always a trap to ask one person to encapsulate the thoughts and notions of an entire country "What do the Swiss think of Obama?"
Does this man, no matter how wise and intelligent, have poling data to back up his assertions? Of course, I'm being sarcastic, as I'm sure that you too realize this was cover for him to state what he thinks.
A year ago last January, I had fun with some of my international co-workers (while in cosmopolitan Paris) explaining the primary politics of the US, and the so-called Obama phenomenon. I attributed it mostly to the visceral hatred that factions of the Democratic party had for the Clintons, Hillary especially. Guess that shows how little I actually understand my own country, huh?
-David
By Big Don, at
Tue Mar 24, 12:09:00 AM:
Hi TH, My wife and I are likely moving to Basel in a month or two. In Indy right now. Any pointers on what to look out for...good,,,,bad?
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Mar 24, 01:03:00 AM:
David - No, he had no polling data but his comments make sense to me. Bank secrecy is something of a Swiss "national brand," like watches, chocolate, and multi-functional tools. They are protective of it, and not happy about foreign criticism of it (although used to it, as well).
Big Don - Switzerland is a beautiful and orderly country. How much you like it will depend on how much you like order. Everything works incredibly well, but after a while you realize why the Swiss have produced so few great cultural or artistic treasures. It is a nation of watchmakers: careful, moderate, orderly people. My metric is this: As you travel around, you will see wood piles near houses on farms. Every single one will be ultra-orderly, and they will all look basically the same. I defy you to locate the Swiss farmer with the sloppy woodpile.
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 08:00:00 AM:
Re: Cold winter: Still no sunspots. Check out this site: SpaceWeather.com. Average sunspot number over the entire last year is zero! Why is this important? More sunspots means increased solar wind, more solar wind means more cloud formation, more cloud formation means more heat retention, thus more warming. If the sunspots don't start increasing soon, we could go into a little ice age. Volcanic eruptions aren't helping. My bet? Here in Detroit area, I bet we get another snowfall this spring ....
By Viking Kaj, at
Tue Mar 24, 02:04:00 PM:
Switzerland was one of the poorest countries in Europe in 1890. Rural people routinely suffered from goiter and other forms of malnutrition.
What happened to change this? The Russian revolution and the Nazi period. At the turn of the last century Switzerland was the world's largest TB Sanitarium. Anyone who had the money traveled there for treatment. Only 12 of the 200 richest families in Russia survived the revolution, the assets of the rest escheated to their Swiss bankers. During the Nazi period they profited again, first from the Jews trying to protect assets and then from the Nazis.
This continues with the Shah of Iran, African dictators, etc.
Over the last century the Swiss have largely made their living from the misfortune of others, so there is a certain arrogance about them that is actually kind of sinister.
Any pressure put on the Swiss probably won't matter either, since there is a huge market for secret transactions. Many wealthy US individuals are chartered as their own bank in the Bahamas, which is a lot easier to get to from Florida and just as secret.
Oh, and speaking of tax cheats and other crooks, wasn't it one of the Clinton's who pardoned Marc Rich?
By , at
Tue Mar 24, 02:29:00 PM:
TigerHawk: "Everything works incredibly well, but after a while you realize why the Swiss have produced so few great cultural or artistic treasures."
Hold on a minute, TH. For one thing, I think Swiss watches are a cultural treasure: they reify discipline and order and reason, and also individual achievement & autonomy, better than any object I can think of. Libertarians shouldn't admire architects, they should admire watchmakers.
Second, if you define "great cultural or artistic treasures" solely in terms of pretty pictures & music, then yeah, Switzerland has been pretty barren. Yodeling and woodcarving are not likely to dethrone Mozart and Michelangelo.
But if you define culture as Nietzsche did -- a compelling unity of style -- then I think little Switzerland starts to shine. Calvin's austere form of Protestantism -- an anti-style that became a style -- molded life in England and early America (note: Princeton connection) in ways we still feel today. I can't imagine modern Western (esp. Anglosphere) society -- democratic, individualist, capitalist -- without Calvin.
-Prospect
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Mar 24, 03:25:00 PM:
Well, Prospect, you make a good argument?
