Word: germanize
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...months, we have heard banker after Wall Streeter after mortgage lender declare that market conditions are the worst since they got into the business. Some go even further. "The worst market crisis in 60 years," pronounced investor George Soros. "The worst financial crisis since 1931," declared a top German regulator. "We have not seen a nationwide decline in housing like this since the Great Depression," said the CEO of Wells Fargo...
...Rancor like that suggests money is at stake, and of course, it is. Berlin is keen to claim an estimated $6 billion in unpaid taxes on funds that German citizens are thought to have spirited away to Liechtenstein, beyond the reach of Germany's tax authorities - but not, it turns out, of its spies. Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, the BND, paid as much as $7 million to a former employee of a trust controlled by the LGT Group, a bank owned by the principality's royal family. In return, the BND received stolen computer discs containing names of people...
...nation's banks managed assets of around $52 billion; by 2006 that figure had surged to more than $150 billion. Clearly there aren't enough Liechtensteiners to pile up that much cash. No wonder the principality has always rebuffed Berlin's demands for the names of German citizens with accounts there. Without the protection offered by its banking-secrecy provisions, Liechtenstein's financial-services boom would quickly die. Hans-Martin Uehlinger, a spokesman for LGT Group, is uttering Liechtenstein gospel when he says, "Paying taxes is the responsibility of the customer, not the bank...
...tiny Liechtenstein, bracing itself for its finest hour, is standing firm even as Germany threatens to stop the country from joining Europe's passport-free zone. "We will not cave in to German pressure. We will not disclose information about the owners of bank accounts," says government spokeswoman Gerlinde Manz-Christ. "The rogues are the ones who are evading their taxes, and that's not the people here in Liechtenstein," says Wendelin Schrädler, a rosy-cheeked butcher, as he hacks off a side of ham for a customer...
...Liechtenstein, the enemy is clear. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined the debate recently, the local newspaper, Liechtensteiner Vaterland, said she was "using Liechtenstein like a whetstone to sharpen her claws." Günther Fritz, Vaterland's editor-in-chief, says, "We're not a very patriotic people, but under pressure from Germany, everyone is banding together." Bankgeheimnis - bank secrecy - may not stir the human soul the way liberté, egalité, fraternité does, but it seems to work in Liechtenstein...