Yugoslavia: a "Communist Switzerland"

Communist Yugoslavia had many similarities to Switzerland: its multi-ethnic nature and its neutrality being two important ones. WI the country that brought us the Yugo found a way to become a business/financial centre as well. This could be accomplished by having a policy of "internal Communism" while being open to foreign investment. A rock-solid currency, bank secrecy (at least for foreigners), and anonymous P.O. Boxes (at least for foreigners) would be part of the package. ASB?
 

Cook

Banned
The difference is that in Switzerland the clocks are Cuckoo, in Yugoslavia it was the Politicians.
 

abc123

Banned
Communist Yugoslavia had many similarities to Switzerland: its multi-ethnic nature and its neutrality being two important ones. WI the country that brought us the Yugo found a way to become a business/financial centre as well. This could be accomplished by having a policy of "internal Communism" while being open to foreign investment. A rock-solid currency, bank secrecy (at least for foreigners), and anonymous P.O. Boxes (at least for foreigners) would be part of the package. ASB?


Switzerland is multilingual country, not multinational. All of them think that they are one nation, but with 4 languages.
In Yugoslavia ( at least Communist one ) it was not like that.
;)
And, that's impossible, because Switzerland isn't rich because banking secret and anonymous P.O. Boxes, than because of Swiss mentality.
Same for Yugoslavia. But just the opposite.
;)
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Switzerland is multilingual country, not multinational. All of them think that they are one nation, but with 4 languages.
In Yugoslavia ( at least Communist one ) it was not like that.
;)
And, that's impossible, because Switzerland isn't rich because banking secret and anonymous P.O. Boxes, than because of Swiss mentality.
Same for Yugoslavia. But just the opposite.
;)

Swiss banking is mainly because of Swiss neutrality, something that only really exists since 1815... Of course even for "poor agrarian society exporting its soldiers" Yugoslavia is on the wrong foot, since it's in the wrong century and all that.
 
The roots of Swiss banking go back to the 18th century -- Necker, Huguenot refugees, and all that.

However, Switzerland as an ultra-secure, hyper-discreet destination for the bank accounts of the elite? That's a late 19th century innovation. The foundations for that were laid when Switzerland mostly sat out the revolutions of 1848 (modulo a brief unpleasantness in which commerce-minded Protestants crushed some reactionary Catholics). Switzerland captured its first wave of "crisis capital" from Austria and the German states.

The Swiss Bank Corporation (modern UBS) was founded in 1854 to see if they could turn this one-shot windfall into a regular profitable business. However, "Swiss banking" as we know it didn't really evolve until the 1870s or 1880s, and it wasn't supported by national legislation (i.e., giving clients the right to sue if their privacy was infringed) until the early 1900s.

The last piece of the structure was Switzerland's Banking Law of 1934, which wrote extreme client confidentiality into law, and which has been the keystone of the system ever since. That was passed because of a now-forgotten banking scandal in France... actually, that's an amusing story, and deserves a post of its own.


Doug M.
 

Susano

Banned
Swiss banking is mainly because of Swiss neutrality, something that only really exists since 1815... Of course even for "poor agrarian society exporting its soldiers" Yugoslavia is on the wrong foot, since it's in the wrong century and all that.

Well, even after 1815 Switzerland was a poor agrarian mess of squabbling cantons. In fact, showing it as one state before 1847 is kinda wrong. If its shown as one state, then the HRE and the German Confederation would have to, too, and teh Swiss central authorities had cerca about as much authorities. This really only changed in 1847... the adaption of the 1847 constitution is really what originally set Switzerland on the road to prosperity.

And those cantons mostly squabbled about religion, more so than language. One could even draw a parallel to Yugoslavia there. Though of course they were smaller and there were more of them. In Yugoslavia, you primarily had this antagnoism between two large groups, the Serbs and the Croats. And unlike Swiss cantons they had medieval kingdoms on which to base a historical national identity. That all didnt help.
 
The Swiss Banking Law of 1934

"In 1932, the radical Herriot government was supported by the Socialist party. The international financial crisis made preparing the national budget a perilous exercise. Herriot had planned an austerity program that was difficult to defend before a left-wing parliament. That was when the Basler Handelbank affair broke out.

"The president and vice-president of the commercial bank in Basel were arrested by the French police. In their trunks, the Parisian investigators found the list of 2,000 French clients who had confidentially deposited their holdings in Switzerland. They represented all of French high society: a few senators, a former minister, bishops, generals and manufacturers.



"The Chamber of Deputies set the stage for a raging debate. The Socialist deputy Fabien Albertin denounced capitalism and tax deserters. As he had ties with the central customs office, he was able to obtain a copy of the list of the accused and revealed its contents in defiance of State [secrecy laws]. He assessed the amount of the French tax loss at 9 million francs and called for the government to organize [for] genuine tax extradition through agreements with the other countries. The Minister of Finance jumped at the opportunity and announced that he would negotiate with the Swiss government for legal authority over the accounts of French citizens. The Left supported the initiative and demanded an inventory of French taxpayer assets in order to avoid any tax desertion whatsoever...



"The debate was relayed in the French press. Le Figaro, representing the interests of the Right, waxed indignant over an anticonstitutional debate, in which the separation of powers and State secret had been flouted. What is more, this newspaper recalled that the deputies paid tax on only half of their premiums, while a small group of 8,600 taxpayers - downright "suckers" - paid half of the global tax. As for the Communist paper L'Humanité, it denounced the "2,000 bourgeois compromised in a massive organized tax fraud scandal". A list of 150 names was published...


"The Handelsbank bankers were questioned and summoned to open their registers. They sought refuge behind the jurisprudence of the Federal Court that called upon bankers to retain absolute confidence on their clients' files. There were heavy threats. The Herriot government presented its budget, [which] projected placing bank operations under tax authority surveillance: opening accounts, renting safes, all had to be declared by the banks to the tax administration. But on 18 December the Herriot government was brought down. The affair lost its political clout and became old news. All of the accused benefited from a dismissed case by reason of procedural flaw.



"The debate did, however, have a strong impact on Swiss conscience. The increasingly flagrant State interference with the private sphere, as much in France as in Germany, put the country's editorial writers in a flutter. An ever widening gap was forming between this development and the liberal beliefs of the Swiss... [so they] came to a consensus on the necessity to defend bank secrecy and the economic interests of the country as a whole... With no convincing force to affront its powerful neighbors, the Swiss government had to be able to rely on a clear and indisputable law that would prohibit it from violating bank secrecy, even under the influence of pressure."



Two points. One, it's astonishing how familiar and modern this 75 year old French scandal sounds. (See, e.g., http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/oil-leaks-continue/.)


Two, as noted upthread, the 1934 law was not the beginning of Swiss bank secrecy. That dated back to the 1850s and had reached something like its modern form during the Belle Epoque. Rather, it was the capstone and confirmation of secrecy, and its formal adoption as a key element of the Swiss economy.


Three, in fairness, it should be noted that there are two competing schools of thought about the 1934 law. One claims that it was passed because of pressure from Nazi Germany to reveal German assets in Switzerland -- Jewish assets most of all, but also capital being tucked away by wealthy Germans who didn't trust the new regime. This seems to be mostly a myth; the banking law existed in draft form and was being debated before Hitler ever came to power.



Another says that it was largely an internal Swiss evolution, with the 1932 scandal having little influence. That argument can be found here:


http://www.swissbanking.org/en/vogler-definitiv-deutsch.pdf


I don't find this persuasive, for a number of reasons -- one of which is that this is more or less an official publication of the Swiss banking industry. "Sure, we changed our law because of external pressure" is not exactly the message these guys want to send. Still, included for completeness' sake.





Doug M.
 
To bring it back to the OP: Communist governments didn't generally take the position that /any/ personal information was confidential from the State. Even relatively liberal Yugoslavia had a censor in every post office checking the mail.

Banking information was an open book to the state. Banks were supposed to report suspicious transactions to the authorities, and hand over detailed account information upon request. They were also expected to obey state instructions -- freezing the accounts, for instance, of persons accused of serious crimes. (In fact, in many post-Communist countries it's still surprisingly easy to get a bank to freeze someone's account -- though now you need a court order to do it.)

So, it's hard ot see Yugoslavia ever passing bank secrecy laws; or if they do, it's hard to see anyone believing they'd be taken seriously.

I note in passing that the wealthiest elites of Communist countries preferred to bank in Switzerland; Ceausescu is said to have had several hundred million dollars in Geneva.


Doug M.
 
I think it's a myth that Switzerland is rich because of secret bank accounts. Maybe back in the old days. Today they make money by helping foreign corporations escape taxes at home by offering them a low tax location for their corporate operations. For example when Europeans by toys from a prominant American company, the goods are not taxed in America or Europe, but paid to Switzerland. The toys come from Asia but never actually touch Swiss soil. The rich get richer, governments lose tax revenue, and the Swiss gets the benefits of world trade without making anything.

The secret bank accounts are really a by product of this. Because it is the equivalent of a money train interchange, people need a place to stash their cash.

In addition to low corporate tax. The Swiss tax code is very simple. It looks like a thin novel rather than a set of encyclopedias. Just as importantly, Switzerland is a very stable democracy with a long history of protecting their business partners. This level of trust is not easy to come by. Finance is the only thing they do, and the Swiss electorate is not going to do anything stupid like voting for a leader to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
 

abc123

Banned
To bring it back to the OP: Communist governments didn't generally take the position that /any/ personal information was confidential from the State. Even relatively liberal Yugoslavia had a censor in every post office checking the mail.

Banking information was an open book to the state. Banks were supposed to report suspicious transactions to the authorities, and hand over detailed account information upon request. They were also expected to obey state instructions -- freezing the accounts, for instance, of persons accused of serious crimes. (In fact, in many post-Communist countries it's still surprisingly easy to get a bank to freeze someone's account -- though now you need a court order to do it.)

So, it's hard ot see Yugoslavia ever passing bank secrecy laws; or if they do, it's hard to see anyone believing they'd be taken seriously.

I note in passing that the wealthiest elites of Communist countries preferred to bank in Switzerland; Ceausescu is said to have had several hundred million dollars in Geneva.


Doug M.


First and foremost: Human rights in communist countries in general, and so in Jugoslavia didn't exist at all.
You did have as many rights as some party aparatchikk told you to have.
Today you could have all of rights on paper, tomorrow they could kill you without trial or send in a work camp until you die there.

So, communist Yugoslavia cann't be ritch Yugoslavia. She is or a communist or a rich. There is no middle way.
Even today, people in ex-Yugoslavia countries dont understand fully concept of human's rights. They simply don't understand that power of Goverment can/should be restricted with soething so virtual as constitution or human rights.
;)
 
Yugoslavia will never be anything remotely like Switzerland. Now it could go the path of our dear old friends the Chinese and adopt some tenets of the capitalist system while the state retains some degree of control in order to boost their economy. To my knowledge, Yugoslavia had a decent economy for a Communist nation.
 
"Some tenants of free market"??? Bwahahaha. We had private and mixed enterprises since late '60es. Sure, pure private businesses ownership was limited to rather small scale, it was only in '80es when private enterprises started joining the big leagues.

But all the arguments stated above stand. Internationally respected banks in YU, no wai! But we were one of the richest, or at least highest living standards communist country. Till you know what hit the fan.
 
"Some tenants of free market"??? Bwahahaha. We had private and mixed enterprises since late '60es. Sure, pure private businesses ownership was limited to rather small scale, it was only in '80es when private enterprises started joining the big leagues.

But all the arguments stated above stand. Internationally respected banks in YU, no wai! But we were one of the richest, or at least highest living standards communist country. Till you know what hit the fan.

Nationalist dick-waving.
 

Don Grey

Banned
Communist Yugoslavia had many similarities to Switzerland: its multi-ethnic nature and its neutrality being two important ones. WI the country that brought us the Yugo found a way to become a business/financial centre as well. This could be accomplished by having a policy of "internal Communism" while being open to foreign investment. A rock-solid currency, bank secrecy (at least for foreigners), and anonymous P.O. Boxes (at least for foreigners) would be part of the package. ASB?

Well i dont think that will happen of the reasons people listed below. Plus i think there is only room for one switzerland in the world. There size on geographic position on the map helps too. Yugoslavia wasnt a very tiny country and wasnt in a very stable place in the world. Some times when your position is important bigger nations wont let you be neutral and force you to pick a side. While switzerland is the exact opposite.

The difference is that in Switzerland the clocks are Cuckoo, in Yugoslavia it was the Politicians.

Im thinking i should sig this.
 
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