Although the financial services sector made up a significant 15-17% of GDP, in recent years prior to the global financial crisis it had been driving almost 50% of Swiss GDP growth according to government reports.
As they have been known to say up Zurich way, "A greedy person and a pauper are practically one and the same."
AP
Swiss bank UBS reports 4Q loss of $7.57 billion
Tuesday February 10, 2:24 am ET
Swiss bank UBS AG reports fourth-quarter loss of $7.57 billion, exceeding analysts' fears
ZURICH (AP) -- Swiss bank UBS AG said Tuesday it lost 8.1 billion Swiss francs ($7.57 billion) in the fourth quarter and announced it would cut a further 2,000 jobs as it refocuses on its home market after a troubled year abroad.
The results exceeded the fears of analysts, who on average had predicted net losses of 6.2 billion francs ($5.79 billion).
A year earlier Switzerland's biggest bank had reported a net profit of 1.33 billion francs. The latest results bring its full-year loss to 19.7 billion francs for 2008.
UBS said it plans to refocus on its core activity in Switzerland, its international wealth management franchise, and its global onshore business. To this end it will create two new business units. Wealth management and Swiss bank will be led by Franco Morra and Juerg Zeltner, while wealth management Americas will be led by Marten Hoekstra.
UBS is also shedding 2,000 jobs at its loss-making investment banking unit, which has been blamed for many of the bad investment choices that have seen the bank write down tens of billions of francs (dollars) since mid-2007.
The Zurich-based bank said net new money outflows from its wealth and asset management businesses reached 85.8 billion francs during the fourth quarter...
10 February 2009
UBS Reports Record Loss
09 February 2009
The Incontrovertible Truth About Debt, Deleveraging, Devaluation and Recovery
It is incomprehensible that any informed economist does not understand this difference between deflationary deleveraging and a cyclical recession.
And if they do, how could they possibly justify giving trillions of capital to the banks to support them in their excess so that they might freely make loans again, when it was their reckless lending and speculation that brought us to this point?
And the economists also know full well that the real cure lies in devaluing the currency and restoring the balance sheet of the individual households through an increase in the median wage and the debt relief of bankruptcy.
There must be reform, a change in the system that spawned these repeated bubbles and epoch of voodoo economics and malinvestment.
"Basically what happens is that after a period of time, economies go through a long-term debt cycle -- a dynamic that is self-reinforcing, in which people finance their spending by borrowing and debts rise relative to incomes and, more accurately, debt-service payments rise relative to incomes. At cycle peaks, assets are bought on leverage at high-enough prices that the cash flows they produce aren't adequate to service the debt. The incomes aren't adequate to service the debt. Then begins the reversal process, and that becomes self-reinforcing, too. In the simplest sense, the country reaches the point when it needs a debt restructuring. General Motors is a metaphor for the United States.
The process of bankruptcy or restructuring is necessary to its viability. One way or another, General Motors has to be restructured so that it is a self-sustaining, economically viable entity that people want to lend to again.
This has happened in Latin America regularly. Emerging countries default, and then restructure. It is an essential process to get them economically healthy.
We will go through a giant debt-restructuring, because we either have to bring debt-service payments down so they are low relative to incomes -- the cash flows that are being produced to service them -- or we are going to have to raise incomes by printing a lot of money.
It isn't complicated. It is the same as all bankruptcies, but when it happens pervasively to a country, and the country has a lot of foreign debt denominated in its own currency, it is preferable to print money and devalue....
There will be substantial nationalization of banks. It is going on now and it will continue. But the same question will be asked even after nationalization: What will happen to the pile of bad stuff?... (More precisely, who will take the loss? If it is not those that took the profits, then you have injustice, transfer of wealth - Jesse)
The Federal Reserve is going to have to print money. The deficits will be greater than the savings. So you will see the Federal Reserve buy long-term Treasury bonds, as it did in the Great Depression. We are in a position where that will eventually create a problem for currencies and drive assets to gold....
Everything is timing. You print a lot of money, and then you have currency devaluation. The currency devaluation happens before bonds fall. Not much in the way of inflation is produced, because what you are doing actually is negating deflation. So, the first wave of currency depreciation will be very much like England in 1992, with its currency realignment, or the United States during the Great Depression, when they printed money and devalued the dollar a lot. Gold went up a whole lot and the bond market had a hiccup, and then long-term rates continued to decline because people still needed safety and liquidity. While the dollar is bad, it doesn't mean necessarily that the bond market is bad...
From the U.S. point of view, we want a devaluation. A devaluation gets your pricing in line. When there is a deflationary environment, you want your currency to go down. When you have a lot of foreign debt denominated in your currency, you want to create relief by having your currency go down. All major currency devaluations have triggered stock-market rallies throughout the world; one of the best ways to trigger a stock-market rally is to devalue your currency...
Buying equities and taking on those risks in late 2009, or more likely 2010, will be a great move because equities will be much cheaper than now. It is going to be a buying opportunity of the century."
Recession? No, It's a D-process, and It Will Be Long - Ray Dalio - Barrons
SP Futures Hourly Chart at Market Close
Tomorrow appears to be showtime for Turbo Tim, Zimbabwe Ben, and Leisure Suit Larry. The Yes We Can Man probably will get a few more chances if he throws one or all of them to the wolves if the plan fails which it probably will. We'll have to wait to see it.
If it is the "guarantee program" then it is only as good as the price floors of the guarantees. Too high and the banks are welfare queens. And to say that the 'market will set the price' with an implicit price guarantee from Treasury underpinning it sounds like the Son of Fannie and Freddie, and not even a remotely fair price for the taxpayers.
The most serious flaw in the solution, of course, is that bank lending is really not the problem. Easy money for lending was the solution Greenspan used the last five times we reached a point like this, a little worse on each revisit. We have probably reached the limit of the law of diminishing returns of hitting that old easy money for the banks booty call again.
Why? Because the consumers themselves have hit the wall. Years of suppressing the median wage and understating inflation as a matter of government industrial policy have left the consumer flat out busted.
Saving the banks so they can lend more is like fixing the holes and repairing the engines on the Titanic so it can ram the iceberg again. Can we please consider changing course?
