Casino Suisse

An article with Credit Suisse clients complaining in the comments section about their worthless capital protection products issued by Lehman Brothers, but actively sold from Credit Suisse, got me boiling as well.

Of course these clients were naive and not informed. But what for do you need a client adviser, if you have to read the small print yourself and if you have to be well versed with the financial markets yourself!!! Do I need to study medicine in order to go to a doctor?! And many of these products are very complicated, complex, and setup to be confusing. In fact to understand them very well, not a master in finance might be in place but some mathematical background instead (just a hint, these people call themselves Quants and they study this stuff not because it helps directly to make money yourself but because it helps to get high paying jobs - well, at least so far).

Credit Suisse claims to have weathered the storm fairly well, in addition they hire away people from UBS as if they had a growing business and even look to pick up some leftover of Lehman Brothers (like the cheap backoffice operation in India) or some other easy bait that will come along.

But just like the rest of the bunch, they don't understand how lightning fast they throw away the most precious thing any bank can possibly have, that (little rest of) trust they might still have with the people (and I am not talking of UBS here, that gambled the existance of the world's biggest wealth manager with sums no client or investor would have thought possible).

If they think the purpose of a bank is to be greedy, they will learn better the hard way. The whole concept that "the purpose of a company is to make profits" alone is simply bullshit. The purpose of a bank is that people can store their money somewhere safely. The profits then are a necessary side effect. Otherwise, just hand over the money and then?!

The big scam becomes obvious.

What made Swiss banking stand out, was the absolute trust you could put in your banker. He would travel everywhere to hand you some cash (of course, only if you played in the right league). Even the big scandals with the Jewish accounts, you can also see in the light that, even after almost 100 years, the accounts and their money were still there!!! Think that about any other countries bank accounts! My bet is in other places they would get treated more like hotmail accounts, after not too much time without any "user" activity, zip zilch ninada (thanks Bill for this point).


(In Gold We Trust - Swiss Philosophy)

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