Is it just me or do you get the sense the editors of Newsweek magazine get together with the Obama administration to plan each week's edition?Look at the cover of the latest issue, hitting the streets Monday. It might as well say "Obama wants you to spend."
The cover story says Americans better start spending real soon or the entire economy, which consists primarily of consumer spending thanks to the inept trade and labor policies adopted by Congress, will collapse.
Anyway, the story that caught my attention isn't about consumer spending. It's the one on page 32 about Swiss bank accounts.
One single bank -- UBS -- holds the secret bank accounts of 46,000 Americans, worth an estimated $18 billion, according to Newsweek. (I wonder how many of the 46,000 voted for Obama?)
And that's just one bank in one country. Imagine how much wealth Americans are hiding in overseas accounts. The reason people put their money into foreign accounts is to avoid paying taxes. And with Barack Obama promising to raise taxes, more Americans are expected to move their money offshore.
From the article:
Lately, the Feds have tried to crack down on these rich Americans as tax evaders (generally, the depositors do not pay any taxes on the income from these accounts). The Swiss, not surprisingly, have been resisting. For more than three centuries, Swiss bank secrecy has offered safe haven to the wealthy, some of them unsavory types — Nazis, dictators such as Saddam Hussein and, allegedly, Islamic terrorists. At a time when the rich are coming under close and unsympathetic scrutiny, the details starting to come out about the way the Swiss banking game is played are eye-popping, if not infuriating. Judging from documents and testimony examined by NEWSWEEK, Swiss bankers, like spies, practice what is known in the espionage business as tradecraft — elaborate and often clever steps to evade detection.You can read the full story, "Cracking the vault," at Newsweek's online edition.
Originally posted at TONY PHYRILLAS
