Can I add that people with Raiffeisen accounts need to know that if you are a cooperative member, you are actually LIABLE if Raiffeisen needs to raise money. From memory, I think the sum is between 6000 to 8000 CHF which you have to pay (max) if they need it.

This only applies if you paid the 200 CHF member fee. Raiffeisen Switzerland actually lists this amount multiplied by the nr of members in their annual report. Let's hope they never need it. (If you want details, look up the Statutes you received and it is one of the articles in the beginning).

You can contact Raiffeisen and degrade to a non-member to avoid this risk. (I did this). You get back the 200 CHF but will incur costs for your Maestro card etc. next year.

Spread it around, I use 1 UK bank, 2 Swiss banks & the Swiss post office.

Marton

Sure my pleasure:

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003558

Great link thanks. Makes interesting reading.

I must be stupid. Please show me where it says that UBS are funding McCains campaign.

I did find this

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain...reet_0917.html

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/f...n/by-employer/

Interesting to compare UBS with Credit Suisse. Especially when the Harpers article claims that Gramm was binned.

Also on the Banking front, the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB for £12.2bn has been confirmed this morning.

Rod

Yep, and now latest rumors are that also Morgan Stanley could be up for sale... HSBC could be a potential buyer....

I just wonder if the I-banking world will ever be the same again as it was before these events - do you think we will see average annual comp. of $500K again?

I heard a quote from Nancy Pelosi (speaker of the house) on the bailing out of AIG (and the others), something like "all gain is privatised, all loss is nationalised".
The capitolists have been making the rule to their own games, and now it's the very people who have lost their homes due to the mortgage crisis that have to bail out the banks during the credit crisis. Not to mention other countries having to prop up the economy. I hear it's nesseccary so that we don't all lose everything. But I have nothing so I'm not that worried - I imagine it's the "haves" of this world that are a bit nervous now.

for what it's worth ...

An American colleague called his brokerage account in the US this morning, and asked to move his entire money market funds to cash. he asked the customer service rep if that was the recommended thing to do. The lady said she couldn't say if that was the right thing to do, but that every single call she had taken today was from customers wanting to do the same thing.

I've just taken a third of my UBS balance and spread it around. I don't care if it reduces my risk, i just want to be able to stop worrying about it ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080918...dbankingstocks

---will it or won't it?

CONFIRM.
Plenty of poop and babies being thrown out with the bathwater right now.
Only real cash is worth anything today :-/

Paul

Not in Zimbabwe, unless you don't call their currency real cash. Inflation is 11.2 Million Percent (or probably more by now)

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS...ion/index.html

A loaf of bread is now 1.6 Trillion Zimbabwe Dollars

Rod

Sounds like the sort of rumour that I would want to spread if I had just bought a lot of UBS options.

Such a merger makes no sense to me unless UBS has a lot more unannounced skeletons in the cupboard.
It would potentially produce a very large bank that might require federal approval?

Marton

...probably get a bar of gold there cheaper than a sliced loaf!

LOL - funny guy :-)
But yeah, I had fuggotten Zimbabwe.


Paul

Of course. A few decades down the track when all the regulations that are going to be put in place over the next 12 months are removed again, the cycle will repeat once more.

Sooner than that. It just needs the next generation of investment bankers who think they know it all to be in place.

suddenly gone very quiet here

what next

Marton

Please forgive my ignorance, but if UBS DOES collapse, would our personal stuff in safety deposit boxes be safe/secure?

Yes of course.

But you will have to dig it out from the rubble yourself.