Neutrality's Fangs

Switzerland always ranks at the top of countries least likely to get entangled in global conflict.  No other nation, regardless of political system, alliances, ethnic composition, religious dominance or economic system, has been so free of antagonists for many generations.   

What are they doing right in the eyes of the world?  

They stand for amoral neutrality. And what, besides cheese, watches, overpriced ski-lifts, subscribing to yodeling podcasts and signing on to migrant phobia, is the key to their shameless prosperity?   

Their banking traditions make them the launderers extraordinaire for genocide coordinators, plunderers of national treasuries, mobster heads of state and their kin, white collar embezzlers, arms merchants and sundry other tax-averse and corrupt movers and shakers.

Switzerland is the most non-judgmental, and perhaps thereby the most cynical of nations. This secular nation has a lord of lords: money.  

No questions asked. Well, that's not entirely true.  

Children and grandchildren of Jews whose assets were stolen by the Nazis and hidden by them in Swiss accounts, couldn't get their legacies returned post-war to their families without death certificates, which, of course, the Swiss knew never existed for incinerated victims thrown into ditches. 

Being sticklers for documentation, they are enamored of record keeping and concealed bank accounts. Should the integrity of the United States' banking system be reinvented to along similar lines?  

Should banks essentially refuse to cooperate with investigations that might reveal the scandals and ignominy of its account holders?  Should banks be allowed to function as politically biased institutions?  Should they be permitted to act as sub-contractors of the government as retribution for ideological opposition?

When they deny services strictly on a partisan basis, it's called "de-banking." A recent Presidential Executive Order purports to seek the abolition of this practice. It does not force banks to provide all services indiscriminately, just that it cannot ban or bar those who are qualified.

The U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) several months ago had already warned lenders not to reject loan applications that otherwise met established eligibility criteria, but during both Democrat and Republican administrations, it's been demonstrated that lenders deny loans and other services critical to their business or personal solvency for punitive reasons related to political differences

Could the denial in some cases have been at the behest of the government, which through its regulatory powers can pressure banks into compliance with, what in a different context in the news lately, has been called "illegal orders"?  

Banks must dance to the tune of federal oversight. If that tune is  off key, banks will abandon their "perfect pitch" if they know what's good for them.

Are banks ever silent partners in rogue government weaponizations? "De-banking" is a harmless sounding word, but like the medieval "iron maiden", but they are both instruments of torture.

When banks refuse to do business with you, excluding you from credit and payment processing services, perhaps freezing, making inaccessible, or closing your accounts all together, for no other reason than where you are perched on the ideological divide, it can wreck your business, your personal life, your future, and marginalize you as you are suddenly unable to pay your kids' tuition, meet payroll,  make other routine transactions or participate in society.

If they provide any explanation at all, it may be something vague, like their obligation to "manage risk", as though you were suspected of being an arms dealer, terrorist client, illegal funds processor or fraudster.

When banks "de-bank", they are not required by law to give reasons. Their victims have no redress.  They are thrown into a financial Arctic storm without shelter.    

Accountability is the nemesis of banking. The hoopla about transparency applies more to ladies blouses than lending practices. 

The withholding of financial services, known as "redlining," should be banned on the basis of ideology as it is already forbidden on the grounds of race. Yet we still must witness wildly disparate enforcement of criminal statutes regarding everything from mortgage applications to contempt of Congress citations.

"Financial principles" are supposed to be firm and objective. But hiding behind the drapery of this concept is a subjectivity and flexibility that is driven by the litmus test of ideological dogma. 

The more heavily the banks are regulated, the most arbitrary becomes their sanction to operate.

De-banking, though not in the sense of Trump's EO, can, by stretching its meaning slightly, be said to also apply  to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to convince state and city governments and employees' pension systems, to abolish all investments, regardless of their high performance in markets.

Of the more than 20 nations of the world, only one has been targeted, despite the human rights abuses that abound in dozens of other "non-aligned" nations.  When it comes to geopolitical policy and theocratic bias, "fiduciary responsibility" is no longer applicable. 

It is a practicum in capriciousness and arbitrariness.

Whether out of conviction or as a business decision, banks are often conscripted into the government's underworld services. So is much of the media, including some of our once most venerable newspapers.  

Do they get paid off for being propaganda assets?  

The long arm of the law is stretched to the point that the concept of "overreach" must be reimagined. The government's claws are dug into the throats of the banking industry, law enforcement, medicine, education, and the judicial courts. 

When Government is regarded as the Supreme Being, true freedom fighters must be apostates.  Its disciples will quote its misadventures as scripture. 

 Since Supreme Beings, especially secular, are beyond reproach, they will test the unrestricted limits of their will to power. Hence the "Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act" (FISA).

When persons are suspected of espionage, terrorism, or being an agent of a foreign power, FISA has been used since 1978, to allow the government to comprehensively survey every detail of a suspect's activities, using the full  range of intelligence-gathering methods, tools and schemes,  to compile  a massive, all-inclusive data base on individuals, without their knowledge, on the flimsiest of pretexts. 

They are rubber-stamped by judges.

There are ordinary folks, as well as sitting members of Congress, who for years have had every detail of their phone calls tapped and memorialized, even without an articulable or alleged grounds for suspicion of criminality.  This is not a simple violation of privacy rights, but since all targets were outspoken members of the opposing political party,  it strongly suggests an abuse and usurpation of power. 

Even more so, when SWAT teams descend in top secret pre-dawn raids, synchronized with a camera crew of a tipped off cable news company, sympathetic to their philosophy.

Both political parties, once in office, try to equate, in the public's collectively gullible minds, their ideological platform with the constitutional holy writ which is supposed to be binding upon the government. They create new ways and look for fresh openings to make their dogma the functional equivalent of the law of the land. 

They  seek to make their manifesto the sole, or at least super- dominant "legal tender" and final arbiter of all debate, if we let them.

And huge chunks of the population are willing to do just that.

Both parties are glib at what Eric Raymond calls "bludgeonspeak". And our weeping nation is more and more prone to loquacious silence.