A Swiss Servator explaner

I realize I have often put in a link about the Confederatio Helvetica and complained that the CS-UBS saga has sucked all the air out of the Swiss room. So I am going to do a very crude, and very likely only semi-accurate, summary of the entire sheißsturm.

UBS (UBS Group AG) a lovely Swiss bank from Zurich, got caught up in the 2006-2007 “slap residential mortgage backed securities together and get them out the door”… this led to 2008’s implosion costing them 20 billion Swiss francs. That is serious coin.  The Swiss federal financial watchdog (the Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht or FINMA, the Federal Financial Market Supervisory Authority) unleashed their Banking Commission on UBS and the report they issued was an absolute arse kicking.

But, before that, the Swiss National Bank had to pump lots o’ money into the bank, so it didn’t dry up and blow away. A whole bunch of regulations were passed (like here in the US). Did it work? HA! Just like here, it seems that a pile of regulations isn’t a magic shield against failure.

So, in March of this Two Thousand, Twenty-Third Year of Our Lord, Credit Suisse, another big-arsed Swiss bank, strolls onto the scene and says “hold mein bier und schauen Sie an!” They fail in a whole pile of scandals – money laundering, tax-evasion, lots of shady stuff with various dictatorial shitholes, kickbacks, and jobs being dangled for business being given (do the last two sound like Chicago or what?). Remember, this is right when Silicon Valley Bank blowed up real good, so people were getting a wee bit nervous about bank failures.

Swiss authorities said they didn’t want to shell out to prop up another self-inflicted flop….so, they politely “asked” good old UBS (“remember how we didn’t nuke you in ’08?”) to belly up to the bar and take what was left. It turns out that Swiss authorities lie like ours…having said this was a purely “commercial” solution, they ended up offering a bunch of credit and guarantees. This has led to the Swiss press having story after story after story on this. I can’t blame them, as it involves every respected part of Swiss society; banks, financial regulators, business leaders, etc. Every week something else comes up.

So there you go.

Now, the Links.

  • In another sign of the END TIMES approaching, France makes me wish we could be a little more like them.
  • I hope I am not stepping on Riven’s turf too much with this link. I am not sure what to think of this, other than be sure the court will most likely come up with some muddled and probably wrong determination (hard cases make bad law).
  • Not me tendies! REEEEEEEEEE!

Music…lets go old school.

The comments are open and all yours.