Looking at the bigger picture, it is nothing else than arrogance: While in almost every other country the banks have to share their costumer information with the govbernment, in 1934 Switzerland decided that their banks don't.

For a long time this worked surprisingly well, but over the decades – and with an increased globalization combined with the novelty of internet banking – more and more foreign money found it's way into a Swiss bank account (a few Swiss banks also supported this trend actively). Nowadays there is an estimated thousand billion US Dollars (that's a 1 followed by twelve 0's) foreign money in Swiss banks. An estimated 80% of this money isn't declared, meaning tax fraud. A report conducted by a sub-committee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee claims that bank secrecy laws cost the United States 100 billion US Dollars – per year.

The result of this report, along with the current financial situation, makes it no surprise to see the United States acting upon the Swiss bank secret. Switzerland responds with rather emotional defense: The Swiss bank secret is aligned with Switzerland's long standing neutrality and is deeply rooted in its tradition. "It is our historical proof of trust into the sovereingnty of our citizens", explains the Swiss Federal Council Hans-Rudolf Merz.

In todays world this sounds like a strange justification, which must lead to the assumption that there is no reasonable foundation of the Swiss bank law. In fact, the Swiss bank secret is allowing international tax fraud in large dimensions and therefore must be considered as illegal and selfish.
Because of the increased global interconnection it is also very likely that this US claim is just the start and similar advances of other countries in similar situation demanding for their rights is only a question of time. Specially the neighboring countries of Switzerland – Germany, Italy, France – are believed to loose out on large amounts of tax money due to the Swiss bank law.

With this forecast the Swiss defensive behavior is even more astonishing. Continuing with this passive strategy Switzerland will have to give in little by little without receiving anything in return. If the Swiss banks instead would notice the turn of the tide and act with vision and foresight, drop the bank secret globally at once while demanding a valuable countertrade. A priceless image campaign securing also political goodwill.

Of course, large sums of money would leave the country at first. Some Swiss banks would be essentially troubled, but maybe they would just have to pay the prize for following an aggressive strategy in the gray area of international law over the last decades. In the long term it's likely that a ultimate drop of the bank law (even for Swiss citizen) would strengthen the Swiss bank industry and bring it back to the real traditional values Swiss banking holds: reliability, stability, combined with an excellent customer service.

Zurich, Feburary 2009