Most of the time we get what we want. Of course if we've made the decision to get on a plane to Switzerland and made the continuing decision to stay here we'd feel like we made the right decision. After all, that decision was ours to make. Often times I feel that my peers in the UK are laughing at me. I pay quite a hefty amount for my apartment. A 2 bedroom/105 sqm right on the Niederdorf. But when my friends visit they're sort of sheepishly quiet. Where's the balcony? Where's the gas stove? Just one reception room? No car? Can't eat out every night because of money?

Most of them are taking advantage of the drop in the markets to buy property. They're going to be wealthy because of it. No, I'm not feeling smug or justified. I like it here but I'm worse off by every measurable indicator, and I bet if you look at your apartments etc you might realise you are too.

Feeling very far from smug trying to live in la belle suisse on a UK£/US$ pension.

You moving to Switzerland getting probably a much higher salary than in the UK but then discovering that housing and the cost of living is also proportionally more expensive in Switzerland is exactly the same situation as an East European moving to the UK.
If money is the only driver and living to work and one intends to go back to the poorer country at a later date converting those higher savings, then Switzerland is much better, but if one doesn't like the Swiss lifestyle then maybe it is not worth it.

Indeed. Living here has all the appeal of a padded room in Strangeways.

If, and more than likely when, the 51st state (the UK) goes tits up so, too, will the US and everyone else. It seems like no country is immune to financial problems right now and, when things really get bad, being a foreigner is much less attractive. Look at how many EU countries, e.g. Finland and the 'True Finns', are electing extreme right nationalist groups.

For me, being outside my own country in a time such as this makes me very nervous.

Ah good point. But you use the word proportionally. And it isn't. I would estimate that if you earned 40 000GBP per year as a single guy living in suburban London and enjoying things like bars and restaurants you'd need to earn 90 000GBP/122 000CHF to enjoy the same sort of quality of life. Of course you could change your preferred pastimes to alpine running and telling off the neighbours, but that hardly makes it a fair test. I'm not sure many people double their salary by moving here, but if they do, best of luck to them but God help their employers.

You are probably comparing Zurich Central to Suburban London (East London or NW London such as Acton, Wealdstone etc. as opposed to Zurich Central and Kensington/Kinghtsbridge/St. John Wood etc.

As I said if one is living to work for money then your East European labourer working in suburbs of London on £60 a day and living in a 3 bed terraced house in Wealdstone with 9 others paying £1,200 a month rent, eating and socialising with mates can save a considerable amount.
You would find exactly the same in Switzerland but even be better off if you did the same but it is lifestyle choice.

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I do not have friends..........I have contingent liabilities

Not really no - it's difficult to really find proper equivalents but I would content there are no true analogues of (for example) Knightsbridge or Chelsea Village here.

But this isn't only about London. If you live in Schwyz or Glarus or central Switzerland I would say you live in the rough equivalent of North Wales - it's beautiful and remote.

http://www.findaproperty.com/display...=1&pid=8869902

Here's a lovely property (a detached 2 bedroom cottage) for rent for 700 chuffs a month. What do you pay?

Feeling grateful to be established here and worried that if all goes tits up I might have to go back to a country I no longer recognise as my home or indeed the one I left.

I pay chf 1,200 rent including expenses to my own Swiss company for this:
http://www.homegate.ch/rent/10341231...ault&l=default
with nice views and a nice mediteranian climate.

I'm sold due to the bathroom tiles

As I said, I'm an economic migrant - I went from 19,000 GBP to 110,000 CHF when I moved here 12 years ago. Does that count?

PS: don't forget Basel rent is lower when considering your reply...

PPS: this is rapidly turning into a UK vs. CH thread. Never seen one of those before, have we, folks?

I think there are a lot of folks who think a 2nd crash is coming and that it will be bigger and more devastating than the last. I try not to read too much of the economic news as I find it too depressing but it's hard to ignore and shrug off something like this http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspecula...ts-on-its-way/

Hard to say where the best place to be when it hits the fan....but I'm thinking Canada looks like a winner...small cabin up north.

I've moved from the UK in Jan for the second time to CH, to be honest I could smell the the place about to go up in flames.

The problem is the lower and middle classes have been constantly raped over 20+ years by those in power who've fed their mates pockets, and hopefully they will wake up and smell the coffee soon.

What gets me is people vote for these idiots, tory, lib dem, labour they are all the same. With few exceptions. They are corrupt and lobby groups now control the houses of parliament.

Hopefully it does descend into chaos and the place breaks down. It needs to to start again minus the banks, producing real goods and offering real opportunities for everyone rather than the uber rich and greedy.

Anyone answer why no banking exec has yet been tried and convicted for fraud in the UK? Bob Diamond is the first who deserves a bullet arrogant chunt.

(Yes I still have family in the UK and I know what this means to them)

UK in a single sentence?

Years of asset stripping have lined the pocket of the few and the many are now expected to pay for these "experts" f ups.

I would say that Switzerland is probably the best country to be in in Europe.
If the rumours of the inevitable war are true; then Swiss citizenship and residency in Switzerland would make sense working in the United Nations, Geneva Convention or counting the crooked politicians money.

I like the lead quote from this:

“There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner,” says hedge fund legend Mark Mobius, “because we haven’t solved any of the things that caused the previous crisis.”

In other words, haven't figured out a way to get politicians to globally ban hedge funds.

More like they've not figured out a way to curb human greed. Financial innovation will always find a way to make lots of money without regulation.

It's the same for the US though the US populace has lower expectations of government and fewer, far fewer, entitlements.

As for the Bankers....many of the same folks who ran Morgan Stanley, etc., into the crisis are still in the game, both in academia and advising corps and the government, e.g. the white house.

And Swiss Banks are also heavily implicated in much of the mess. I don't know what would happen to the Swiss economy if much of the banking industry took a dive, but I don't know that I want to find out, either.

Hedge funds aren't/weren't the problem. Derivatives and the lack of regulation thereof is. The fact that all these financial types are talking about it in very concerned language makes me think it must be much worse than we think.

I got the first hint of trouble in a very oblique way back in 2007 - I had just had my daughter after moving back to the US after a number of years elsewhere. The housing prices were just absurd but we managed to find something decent at a reasonable price. One of the women in the baby class I went to was a high flying investment banker. When one of the conversations got onto the topic of buying homes she said that she rented and would continue to rent for the foreseeable future which raised a red flag. Of course, when the whole house of cards crapped itself a few months later I asked her if the impending crisis was why she rented she nodded but didn't comment other than to say that she couldn't.

Sure, there's always going to be greed but even parasites know that you need to keep the host alive in order to survive. Doing what they did and are continuing to do is not very bright.

There's a common misconception - reading between the lines - that banks, and their employees, are in it for everyone. They are not. They are in it for themselves and nobody else. Why are people so surprised that they are not that interest in the sustainability of the system when they can make a 2-pip profit/share on their entire fund today?

Don't blame the animal for doing what it does - look to the master...

No, YOU have not got it. The last few years for Switzerland is a picnic compared to what is potentially to come.

You will see soon enough when Greece defaults/re-structures (Switzerland is massively exposed to Greek debt). The tremors from the coming collapse in China will be felt throughout the world.