International Safe Money Haven II

Part II, people really liked the initial International Safe Money Haven.

The offer of the folks behind the ISMH to help those who would like to give parked money back to society has not found any takers yet, says an email from the founders. But they are optimistic about the future of the foundation.

The K-Landnews folks read all the papers and bytes they could process and can now provide a digest of reactions throughout the Western Hemisphere.

U.S.:  Some very cute beach and boating pictures combined with a major yawn.

Southern Europe: What's new? The world is what is is.

The small European banking states: We don't do this.

France: Socialists do it too! How long since we had that revolution?

U.K.: The City of London has absolutely nothing to do with all of this, we are insulted by any insinuations to the contrary!
Translated into English: Of course, we know. The money needs to come from somewhere and to go somewhere, but it's either the American offshore folks or us, so calm down, life goes on. The British Virgin Islands or Jersey are not houses built on top of huge bank vaults, my dear, the cash is right here. Trust us for once - we've been an empire long before your countries existed.

Germany: It's election season, Game of Thrones time! Territories need to be staked out, alliances forged, the populace aroused (in an electoral way), and we need to watch out for any dragons that might just surprise us. The Social Democrat opposition touts an initiative to close the offshore havens, everybody acknowledges the problem and wishes they had some of the dough. Nothing new in the West.

Switzerland: The K-Landers have not checked on the Swiss but decided to tell an anecdote by a German friend. Several years ago, on a long German holiday weekend, this friend was on a short vacation in the Alsace region of France and decided to return by going through neighboring northern Switzerland.
They stopped to see the falls of the Rhine river (smaller than Niagara) and sat outside downtown at a cafe. That's when I realized something, she said, there was a steady stream of Germans going into the banks. Some of them, mostly middle aged couples were a little furtive, ducked into the bank like young males often duck into that adult shop.

And we learned something: Germany is a little bit of a tax haven itself for foreigners. Not so much for the locals, can't have that. Kind of funny, wealthy US and UK citizens can use the local tax shelters, wealthy Germans have to look elsewhere.