Word: switzerland
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Switzerland boasts that it has more banks than dentists. There are, in all, 4,200 banking outlets, or one for every 1,300 people. The banks earned $295 million last year, nearly as much as the tourist industry, and attracted $568 million in foreign capital-on which the nation has long depended to offset its persistently large trade deficit...
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...
...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...
Bankers in and out of 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...
...cheap grease permeates the atmosphere. The average person's monthly income is 600 East marks, or $270 at the unrealistic official rate of exchange, but only $38 at the free market rate. A pound of coffee costs 32 marks, the cheapest suit 150, a simple dress imported from Switzerland between 400 and 600. To earn such "luxuries," most people work beyond their normal 45 hours a week, or moonlight, or put their wives to work...