Regarding Italy I have no facts whatsoever, except that they would still speak Italian as do the 45000 Italians that come to work in Ticino every day, and that these 45.000 are very upset about the way the Italian government is behaving towards Switzerland. There has also been a spike in demand from Italians to become Swiss citizens in recent months following the diplomatic row when Italy’s finance minister said that his objective was to “dry up” Lugano.

About protecting assets: Most jews lost everything they had in the 30’s. All their assets were confiscated regardless of what type they were. It was illegal to do any business with Jews and to help them in any way. Your “friendly” neighbourhood bank was either happy to, or forced to empty the box into the hands of the rulers.
I can see that bank secrecy is ambivalent, but I think the positive aspects and the historical reasons for bank secrecy are rarely mentioned in the debate.

Yes, my last statement was pure provocation I am happy to clarify that it was not based an anything in your blog. It is a provocative statement to illustrate why I think privacy, individual rights, and individual property rights are fundamental for any society that believes that all men are equal.

Regards
Joakim

2. “Northern Italy would most likely be thrilled…” Most likely? And they probably wouldn’t mind having to speak German instead of their native tongue either, would they? Do you have any documentation in support of this rather sweeping assertion (that I somehow “forgot”)? What YOU have forgotten is to use the phrase “in my opinion” rather than speak as if the outlandish statements you make are somehow established facts.

3. “What you call shady and murky banks, are in fact institutions that help individuals keep their assets safe from theft.” Oh, please! How old are we? Most people over the age of 12 or so know very well that the smiley-face picture you portray of Swiss banks is hardly is an accurate description of a far more ambivalent reality. There’s nothing wrong with keeping assets safe, but of course that can easily be done by renting a safe deposit box at your friendly neighborhood bank, can’t it? Look, it’s common knowledge that Swiss bank accounts are also used to launder money, evade taxes and fund organized crime, among other happy things. The real picture is not nearly so benign as you paint it — so let’s not be disingenuous, shall we?

4. “I assume you consider the Nazi Government during the 30’s righteous…” Your assumption is, well, asinine. How in the world you arrived at THAT conclusion is a mystery to me, but I do know it has very little to do with logic, demonstrable facts, or anything I wrote in this piece or anywhere else on this blog (which isn’t exactly “nazi-friendly”)…. Can you say “non sequitur,” boys and girls?…

2. What you call shady and murky banks, are in fact institutions that help individuals keep their assets safe from theft.

3. The bank secrecy laws in Switzerland were introduced in the 1930’s after Nazis came fishing for Jewish accounts in order to empty them, while threatening, torturing, and killing the rightful owners.

I assume you consider the Nazi Government during the 30’s righteous, democratic, and in full right to tax people at 100% of assets (plus taking their lives). As such Switzerland should have immediately returned all Jewish assets to the regime in power since it is a crime to escape taxes.

It’s been my experience for 4 years that text messages are charged a flat rate per message, and not by character. We also have access to unlimited texting plans. I’d like to know what cell phone network charges per character and club them with a sturgeon. Is that a telegram pricing structure?

It could be an alignment with pronunciation. Hun has a spelling that looks more like it sounds. Hon looks like one should say hawn.

Winnie the Pooh dialog contains hunny and not honey, and the bear’s a little popular.

Or, since the term hunny-bunny is pretty popular, maybe it was the word bunny that seduced the first word into becoming more bunny like? You know how those rabbits are, they multiply like crazy.

Perhaps I can help clarify things for this individual. Now, yes — Adolf Hitler DID ride into the French capital as a victorious conqueror in June 1940, but to the best of my knowledge (which can be independently verified by photographic journalistic archives in the public domain) he was not nude when he did so.