From what I understand, the spiel (according to one example for a bank I read) goes like this:

• Is the client a US-person?
• If yes, does the client wish to invest in US securities
• From then on, it gets weird, if the answer is yes, you seem to be better of than if the answer is no, as the no answer means you have to sell all your US things with withholding tax levied and your account has to be closed by the end of 2012 at the latest. And your account is frozen. Yes means you can do a certain reporting to the IRS and I didn't see anything about having to close an account. Maybe it's the IRS' desire for control, "home investments" might be easier to monitor?

To be honest, the only way around this I can see is to not be a US Person. This is not the Swiss banks' fault, it's the US government making demands that are against our banking regulations and the clients seem to insist on such things as banking secrecy, which the new laws make impossible to maintain. Unless you are in some kind of trust, where you can have the account held jointly.

It's very complicated, see other threads on this topic...