Word: francs
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...netted what was probably the biggest holdup haul in French history: $3,540,000. But the question that bedeviled Frenchmen last week was what in the world the culprits thought they could do with their loot. The bandits had made off with newly minted, neatly packaged, bronze-colored ten-franc coins-1,770,000 of them, to be exact-that weighed 17.7 tons and would require nearly 30 cu. yds. of space merely to store. If the four bandits each spend $100 per day of their bulky loot without raising suspicion, they will be plunking down the last of their...
...should be able to absorb the coins (provided police informers don't spot them). Moreover, several national passions-ranging from tippling to the weekly tierce horse race-force cafes to keep large amounts of coins on hand. Last year two crooks who had stolen $80,000 in one-franc coins tried to convince police that the loot was unrecoverable because they had spent it on that greatest French coin guzzler of all-the pinball machines...
...when an influx of foreign currency sharply forced up the value of the Swiss franc, the Swiss National Bank tried to slow down the flow by imposing a 10% quarterly negative interest rate on large nonresident accounts in Swiss banks. But most institutions got around the rule by accepting this nervous money in "fiduciary" (trust) accounts to be invested in Eurodollar deposits-a safe investment yielding modest returns. The safety of the investments was crucial, since by Swiss law the banks could not issue guarantees on the accounts without incurring a 35% withholding...
Export Disadvantage. Increasingly, there are indications that among the Swiss public banking is no longer quite the hallowed institution it once was. Manufacturers feel that the flow of funds into Switzerland has overvalued the Swiss franc and thus put Swiss textiles, watches and machinery at a disadvantage in export markets. Says Swiss Accountant Max Fluri: "Our banking sector has grown taller than the Swiss Confederation. For some time, it has been bringing the country more harm than good...
...Chiasso loss, and indeed that seems true. But the Chiasso affair and the other failures are raising severe questions about the efficiency, as well as the ethics of Swiss banking. Even some Swiss financiers are charging that Swiss bankers are vastly overrated and that only the constantly climbing Swiss franc makes them appear proficient. "Swiss banking relies on an old-boy network," says a Geneva banker. "That is why there are people in positions of responsibility here who could never get a job in a bank in Germany, Belgium or The Netherlands...