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How did the 600 billion get to Swiss bank accounts, and how, in practical terms, could it be taxed? Index of Frank's Diaries
Regarding the Swiss bank accounts, the government has gone on record saying that there is a lot of Greek money in Switzerland but not that much (perhaps 40 billion, they say). It seems likely that the 600 million might be some sort of total amount of transactions through Swiss banks. I would trust Spiegel (the alleged source of this information) over the Greek government on such matters however. The government has suggested that it might pursue a German-style deal with Switzerland regarding tax-evaders, perhaps by imposing a one-off 10% tax on any deposits by Greek citizens not declared to the tax authorities already (I reckon that 2-3 billion Euros of all Greek Swiss bank accounts are properly taxed in Greece). However it has also been rumoured that after the Swiss-German deal a lot of Greeks moved their deposits from Switzerland to other, ostensibly "safer" tax havens. So I'm not sure how large a part of this stash can be taxed. But any part would help.
As to how it got there: Political corruption, bribery, crime, shady bookkeeping and no effective watchdogs... a lot of money changed hands in Greece over the last couple of decades, money that was not invested in the real economy, or money extracted from the demolition of the real economy The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
There's too much Stockholm Syndrome here, stemming from feelings of inadequacy over being excluded from "Europe" for decades (mostly as a result of dictatorship persisting into the 70's). Keynesianism is intellectually hard, as evidenced by the inability of many trained economists to get it - Paul Krugman
a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.
To be poor is shameful, maybe this also holds when it comes to representing an indebted nation. Sure sounded so when Persson talked about sneering twenty year olds and woved to pay down the swedish debt (and embrace the third way). Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
How did the 600 billion get to Swiss bank accounts, and how, in practical terms, could it be taxed?
Repatriating funds from flag-of-convenience countries is reasonably straightforward, as long as the funds are in bank accounts, not in cash, diamonds or products.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
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