samedi 20 novembre 2010

"Swiss bank accounts yield no interest"

This statement is listed among "myths" about Swiss Banking. Here is the response.

It is clear from that response, that an owner of a Swiss Bank account has no fixed rate of interest given by the bank for the amount of money and the time it stays in the account, in the hands of the bank. He has however a very big option of investing from his account. Getting money from investments is not the same thing as getting money from a "hiring out" of one's money.

Which is the reasonable response to someone claiming one needs interest in order to have finance. There are some responses to give to Muslims, if they claim their finance is finer and purer than ours. That claim may disguise (or precisely not disguise at all) a "jihad by persuasion", and it may prepare a "jihad by ressources".

If Muslims claim it is wrong to invest in wine, that is their problem, or even non-problem. From a Swiss Bank account they could very easily invest in business not involving alcohol. And a Christian can just as easily invest in business involving wine, beer, cider or distilled products. As the grandson of a state paid distiller who was a friend of wine farmers in outskirts of Vienna, I highly recommend such investments.

If Muslims claim it is wrong to invest in armament, they probably mean armament of Christian or other non-Muslim nations. We as Christians have a perfect right to invest in things like French or Swedish armament, at least as long as nuclear armament can be discounted (Sweden having no nuclear weapons means Bofors is a fair investment, that way - but I am not quite as sure when it comes to some non-Christian countries they sell to). I think the National Rifle Association of the US would agree we have also a right to invest in hand guns and other personal defense.

The Swiss banking system is under attack because it involves a secrecy that did not make exceptions for tax evasion. But it is a far better thing than the US or British Banking systems that do involve taking interest.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
20/XI/2010
Paris: in Pompidolian libr.

1 commentaire:

HGL a dit…

Note on "hiring out": you can hire out a horse or a chair, because the time you keep the horse or chair you may have uses for it every day, and the time it is hired out, the one keeping your horse or chair has new uses for it every day, or can be presumed to have so. When you get the horse or chair back, you retrieve what you have been without, but you also get an amount of money for the uses the one receiving hire has had of it.

If you lend someone a steak, he does not get fatter and fatter from the one steak over the year until he pays it back: that is why he should pay only the amount and quality of steak he has eaten.

Money is - like a steak, unlike a horse or a chair - spent in the using of it. Hence, one cannot propoerly speaking hire out money.