Peer Steinbrück and the weight of history: "Die Schweiz, das kleine Stachelschwein, die nehmen wir auf dem Rückweg ein.."
German minister of finance Peer Steinbrück must have slept back in 1968 and 1969 when during his training as a reserve officer of the Deutsche Bundeswehr the subject of the relations between the German Reich, the Wehrmacht and Switzerland was discussed. The above slogan was used by members of the Wehrmacht to explain why they did not invade Switzerland between 1939 and 1942.
Switzerland, when frontally attacked, is no easy adversary. The questions that are to be discusse these days are neither the inappropriate behaviour of Swiss banker Joe Ackermann at the helm of Deutsche Bank nor the behaviour of hundreds of milliardaire German citizens that have evaded German taxes by buying houses in the Swiss Alps, but the excellent cooperation of the Swiss Federal Reserve (Schweizerische Nationalbank) with the European Central Bank and the anger of hundreds of thousand of Swiss citizens and foreign inhabitants working in Switzerland who pay heavy taxes on the communal, cantonal an federal level over
unqualified remarks by a member of the German government.
The Swiss are themselves very well aware of the imperfections of their tax system, but they are absolutely adamant in asking for the right to fix this mess themselves.
Peer Steinbrück may be reminded that e.g. in the Canton of Basel-City, taxation is not negotiable, whereas such solutions are in use in certain Central Swiss Cantons.
An excuse not only to the Federal government, but to the ordinary Swiss citizens by Peer Steinbrück is overdue.
1 comment:
Firstly: Glad you are back!
On a day that could prove to be "quite a day", when the amazingly gifted Minister of Education of Basel, Christoph Eymann, endeavours to put a halt to the intended merger of the Swiss Liberal Party with the FDP. A merger, which based upon recent discoveries merely appears to be a step, to absorb the for more than a century proudly independent and even most recently surprisingly successful Basle, Geneva and also Vaudois liberal parties. A merger with an FDP, where a "Plangesellschaft" is not only supported with a frightful degree of enthusiasm by their former parliamentary leader, Zurich Senator Felix Gutzwiller, but had in fact been initiated by him.
As far as the staunch German Socialist Peer Steinbrück, also an apparent believer of a “Plangesellschaft”, is concerned, I would not overrate his yet again more than inopportune statements, which I am certain have been governed by despair. The €uro best reflects, where Europe is going: Down the drain, irreversibly!
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