Swiss Miss

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the a case that the Internal Revenue Service, America's tax collector, has brought against UBS, the Swiss Bank. See "Behind UBS Case, a Dogged IRS" by Carrick Mollenkamp, Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2009. The IRS is alleging that UBS has been aiding US citizens evade taxes, and it is asking the courts to force UBS to reveal the names of some 52,000 US clients (obviously, because UBS does not want to do so voluntarily). What caught my eye in the report is the following passage:

The IRS investigation has peeled back decades of Swiss secrecy, detailing how UBS recruited clients in Miami and how UBS used a secret email code -- the color orange for euros, green for dollars -- to discuss transactions. An amount of one million was called a "swan."

What sort of organization acts like this? Simple: an outlaw organization. I can easily imagine the Mafia and Al Qaeda communicating in the UBS manner.

And then there's this:

Last week, the Swiss government unexpectedly said it was prepared to take control of UBS data and prohibit UBS from complying with any summons. In a court filing, the Swiss government said it would go so far as to take control of the account information and prohibit UBS from complying with any summons.

What sort of government acts like this? One that knows that providing a haven for outlaws is its main competitive advantage. It is one thing for Afghanistan's government to do nothing about Afghanistan being the supplier of 93 percent of the world's heroin, but to see the country that makes those wonderful cuckoo clocks sink to this level is just sad.