No thread with the anti-semite and pro-Saddam idiot George Galloway is worth my time.
I've visited and gone skiing in Switzerland many times since summer skiing the Kleine Matterhorn in August 1980. The Swiss can afford a low PMI for a long time. They made a fortune off Nazi Germany’s war expenditures and the Nazi elite’s looting of their victims’ assets. This included the Emil Buerhle & Co's factory manufacturing Hitler's favorite anti-aircraft gun in Oerlikon, next door to Zurich airport:
Between 1940 and 1944 Bührle sold armaments worth CHF400 million to Germany and CHF100 million to Italy. Indirectly, and to a limited extent (CHF 870,000), Bührle profited from forced labour in Germany, through a licensing arrangement with Ikaria to produce aircraft cannons. The war industry, which previously had made up a rather modest proportion of Swiss exports, made up 14% of total exports by 1941. The Oerlikon factory had a major role in this growth. During the war years, Emil Bührle’s personal fortune grew exponentially. By 1945 it amounted to CHF160 million. He became canton Zurich’s biggest taxpayer.
Emil Buerhle was also a major collector of artworks looted from Jews murdered by the Nazis:
The American Office of Strategic Services Art Looting Investigation Unit Reports 1945–46, state that during the Nazi era, Bührle was an “important recipient of looted works of art by purchase from Fischer and Wendland”.
Between 1940 and 1944 Emil Georg Bührle’s arms dealing increased his fortune from 140,000 to 127,000,000 Swiss Francs (roughly $6 billion in 2015 U.S. dollars), which he used for art-buying sprees in Nazi-occupied Paris, forming the core of his collection. Bührle bought many artworks through the dealers Siegfried Rosengart, Fritz Nathan and Toni Aktuaryus as well as other dealers.
Add that to the Swiss banks' theft of dormant accounts' assets from Holocaust victims, and the Swiss don't get my sympathy for a minor recession due to sanctions.
The link says nothing about the impact of sanctions on Russia. Rouble hit 98/$. Putin is doubling down on North Koreanizing Russia with the new draft law authorizing martial law that would allow for seizure of property from individuals and organizations for the "national defense".
The latest Russian ship listing in the Black Sea after getting hit by a Ukrainian drone is a metaphor for the Russian economy. From Joe Blogs' the best accountant following the Russian economy's numbers that the Russian govt tries to hide:
