Word: swiss
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Neutrality & Conservatism. Something like the fairy-tale gnomes that guarded subterranean treasures, Swiss bankers speak sparingly, avoid social ostentation, and bury their money-two floors below ground level in vaults that are built to withstand even nuclear at tack. Nearly half the deposits are in the vaults of five banks along Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse. In addition to the Union Bank, they are the Swiss Credit Bank, the Swiss Bank Corp., and-much smaller-the Swiss Popular Bank...
This golden tide owes its swell chiefly to Switzerland's reputation for neutrality, conservatism and sound currency. (Today, the Swiss franc is backed more than 100% by gold.) The Swiss have sheltered foreign possessions as well as people through the Thirty Years' War, the Huguenot persecutions, the 1848 revolutions, and the last three major wars in Europe...
Secrets Galore. Swiss banks hold $3,000 worth of riches for each Swiss inhabitant, but their greatest treasure is the anonymous sanctuary of numbered accounts. Only two or three bank officers usually know the true identity of the depositors. The bankers also assign false names to all such depositors (obtaining a specimen signature of the alias) so that nobody can present a lucky string of numbers to a teller and walk away with a secret fortune. Any banker who violates what the law calls "his duty to observe silence or professional secrecy" faces a fine...
...Swiss will lift the secrecy veil if a depositor is accused of a serious crime, but they refuse to worry about tax dodgers. "We cannot act as a policeman for foreign governments," argues Schaefer. He says that his bank provides numbered accounts only for people known to its officers-"not Al Capones or South American generals" -and that it turned down deposits from the Dominican Republic's ousted Trujillo family. But he allows that "not all banks in Switzerland apply the same standards...
...Switzerland agree that relatively few depositors really have something to hide. Even so, plenty of people are willing to make quite a sacrifice either for anonymity or, more often, for the security the country offers their nest eggs. Under a law passed in 1964, the Swiss banks pay no interest on foreign deposits-and last week, in a special referendum, Swiss voters extended that law for another two years...