Ghisla Art Collection

Locarno, Switzerland

Alps

Alps

Locarno

Matterhorn

Zurich

EU enforcing capital repatriation from Switzerland

No doubt we are witnessing in the Euro zone massive capital flights from PIIGS countries to safer core Euro countries. Greece and Italy are experiencing an exodus of capitals to Switzerland and other stable European countries and offshore locations.
Finally this has caught the attention of the EU and a move is being made in Brussels to “force” the Swiss government/banks to transfer all of the assets of Greek citizens back to the Greek banks. For a Greek this means that your money is hostage. It has been functionally expropriated. It will be transferred into a banking system that is fraught with risk. Some portion of the money that goes back to Greece will certainly be lost. This is setting a dangerous precedent for more masive interventions in capital controls should the situation degenerate in the future.

- BRUSSELS—The European Commission is helping Greece negotiate an agreement with Switzerland to repatriate as much as $81 billion believed to be hidden in Swiss bank accounts, a high level European Union executive body official said Nov. 17.

The European Commission is working with Switzerland and Greece stop what it believes is an ongoing exodus of money from Greek bank accounts into Swiss and other offshore banking centers, the EU official said.

We have a situation developing where the European Union is effectively trying to institute capital controls.
The fear of broader capital controls and more repatriation will spread like wildfire. The fact is, capital flight is a very reasonable response in our current environment. Capital controls that either stop or reverse it will undermine confidence and create a panic the will feed a gigantic exodus of capitals to countries out of reach of the EU grasp.
Officials in Brussels are unleashing hell.

George W. Bush as Pinochet?

Image via Wikipedia

Interesting news from Switzerland:

Former U.S. President George W. Bush has cancelled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.


Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.


Quite interesting how for the first time in history a US president is risking the same faith of Pinochet (The Chilean dictator was arrested by the British Government in 1998 during a trip to London for medical treatment under charges of human right violations) and it is also a sign of how weakened the US influence on world affairs has become, few years ago the simple proposal of such an action would have been enough to start a diplomatic row against the U.S Government independently if the current administration belonged to the same party or not (after all the White House has always thought that if you create a precedent there is no telling when it could come back and bite you as well) , today not only we are not seeing any official diplomatic reaction to this indictment but also we have a former US president un-defiantly renouncing his trip.

Aside from the technical aspect of apprehending a former US President which is still under protection of the US Secret Service, the question arising in this story is how faded has the presidential figure become independently from the low popularity of a single president.

Not that Bush is the real deal here, most certainly he should have been facing some kind of judgment for his many failings as president, the real question is how weak is the current projection capacity of the american diplomacy in light of this and the Wikileaks affair? It appears quite a lot.