U.S. Government Ends Swiss Bank Secrecy

Yesterday, I wrote about how Hillary Clinton and the feds were pressuring Switzerland to give up the names of Swiss bank clients, in violation of Swiss law, so the IRS could fish for evidence of tax evasion.

Clinton and the Swiss foreign minister met yesterday.  How’d it go?  The first sentence of this Miami Herald story says it all: “Swiss banking secrecy is no sure bet anymore.”  The exact terms of the “deal” aren’t public, but it involves Swiss bank UBS giving the IRS the names of thousands of Americans who were once assured that their identities would remain private.

By the way, the two countries’ governments would like you to know that the timing of Mrs. Clinton’s meeting with the Swiss foreign minister, just days before a hearing in the ongoing federal lawsuit against Swiss bank UBS, was entirely coincidental, and that she and the Swiss foreign minister, in fact, talked about lots of stuff besides how the U.S. is insisting that the Swiss disregard their own most dearly held laws protecting liberty and privacy so the IRS can get at $20 billion in their banks.

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10:47 am on August 1, 2009