When lawyers become greedy

A sobering reminder of the problems investors can face when they use a lawyer to get compensation for fraud or misdemeanour they suffer at the hands of a financial adviser. Dealing with a (real or imagined) compensation claim is a complicated affair and people are in most cases facing no option but to trust the legal expert once they have asked for his services.

Is Switzerland a safe place for your Money?

Recent reports about Swiss financial institutions refusing cash disbursements when clients demand them cast a very long shadow on Switzerland as a safe location for investors that traditionally have seen it as a bulwark against authorities in their native countries. We leave it to our readers to work their way through the various agreements between Switzerland and other countries (see for example the agreement with Germany) but the fact is that these are rubber paragraphs where the interests of the investors are right at the bottom of priorities and the interest of an overbearing state is right at the top. We would add that a perusal of the 'interpretation' by the Swiss Banker's Association or a 'position paper' issued by the Financial Regulator does not inspire more confidence either.

Nine out of ten clients get bad advice

While a survey conducted by a consumer organisation in Germany may at first appear to be of little relevance on a wider global scale it offers a useful insight into problems faced by clients of banks, investment advisers and insurance companies. They are usually at an information disadvantage compared to their adviser/salesperson and we suspect that a survey conducted on a more international basis would produce similar results. Getting advice that is not influenced by any monetary incentive such as commissions, transaction fees etc is more important as products continuously become more complex and more difficult to analyse for the laymen - including businesspeople who may be used to dealing with sophisticated financial product in their 'day job' running often quite substantial businesses.

Germany: last vestiges of individual freedom supressed

One should have thought that the political and bureaucratic establishment that holds Germany in an iron grip should at least have learned the lessons of history after decades under national-socialist or communist totalitarian regimes. But quite the contrary is happening. The tendency to control everything that the citizen does is so ingrained in the national psyche that the state has no problem extending its reach into ever-more absurd niches of the citizen's lives. Now a new law is proposed that would have banks automatically document the content of safe-keeping boxes that are rented out. In addition these reports would have to be passed on to the 'authorities'. This ludicrous encroachment into individual freedom is just in addition to supervision of all bank accounts, courier services (!), telecommunication and postal services as well as transportation companies. In addition the state's functionaries would not need prior agreement from any court to obtain their information. Citizen-Investors need to be more vigilant than ever to protect their assets from an all-devouring state that exists only to divert their assets to pet projects favoured by politicians and those well-connected to them.