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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (54480)	9/4/2009 7:35:35 AM
From: Chas.	Respond to of 217750

Thanks for the info, I now consider myself enlightened......

To: TobagoJack who wrote (54480)	9/4/2009 9:25:09 AM
From: carranza2	8 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217750

While the note makes some very cogent economic points, a Swiss bank heading off a major announcement with a screed about 'morality' is the height of irony, if not outright hypocrisy. It's too complex an issue to discuss at length here, but evidence I have read indicates that the vast majority of Swiss banks actively engaged in deceit regarding the deposited funds of German Jews who thought that numbered accounts were safe. It was only after a NY federal judge appointed Paul Volcker to investigate that the Swiss 'fessed up, and made some very significant reparations - in the billions, I think - to the heirs of Holocaust survivors. It is very, very difficult to find out which banks were involved. However, the limited data I've seen indicates that the vast majority had some sort of involvement in either actively aiding and abetting the Nazis or simply trying to steal the funds after the end of the war. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing. They sat on their fat arses for decades. They tried to destroy incriminating records; a very sordid story. Swiss banks and World War II Several inquiries have been made into the conduct of Swiss banks during the Nazi Germany period (1933–1945), especially regarding funds deposited by or stolen from victims of the Holocaust. In October 1996, as inquiries into the banks' activities during the Holocaust were ongoing, Swiss ambassador to the United States Carlo Jagmetti admitted that some banks prevented Holocaust survivors from accessing their funds, although he disputed the amounts claimed in lawsuits by survivors. Among those leading inquiries into the banks' conduct during the war was Alfonse D'Amato, a United States Senator from New York.[38] Union Bank of Switzerland security guard Christoph Meili became a prominent whistleblower when he prevented the destruction of Holocaust-era records and brought attention to their existence. Due to his actions, Meili lost his job and received death threats; he became the first Swiss citizen ever granted political asylum in the United States. After settling in southern California, he was honored by the Los Angeles Jewish community.[39] Meili was supported financially by several Jewish organizations, and was offered a full scholarship at Chapman University in California.[40][41] Meili however became homeless and returned to Switzerland in 2009 (see main article on Meili).In 1998, an international panel of historians released a study that claimed a significant amount of gold had been stolen from Holocaust victims, as well as the treasuries of conquered countries, and deposited in the Swiss National Bank. The panel found that, despite evidence of theft and wrongful acquisition of the gold, the SNB continued to accept the deposits.[42] In 2000, Judge Edward R. Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York approved a US$1.85 billion settlement between several Swiss banks and Holocaust victims. An estimated 50,000 accounts in Switzerland were opened by victims during the Nazi regime; some banks refused to make payments to victims' families because of the lack of death certificates.[43] However, an article published on October 13, 2001 in The Times of London claimed that the tribunal entrusted with tracing Holocaust era accounts found that only 200 of the 5,570 abandoned foreign accounts in question, containing about 12 million dollars, could be traced back to Holocaust survivors; most of the abandoned accounts were owned by wealthy gentiles, and half the accounts contained less than 1,000 francs. en.wikipedia.org So please excuse my sneer when I read a Swiss bank start off a note with a pompous pronouncement on morality. I won't even get into the moral issues inherent in assisting corrupt politicos, narcos and crooks and criminals of every stripe and variety in hiding illegally obtained loot.