Intact despite two world and a policy, the economic interests are the priority: Why Switzerland plays in the world economy, a role that seems to be clear. But if we consider the proportions of our small country in world trade, the Numbers still amazed: According to the latest calculations, the share of Switzerland in the global transit trade in crude oil and wheat, respectively, 40 percent; sugar, 45,, coffee 55, in the case of metals 60 per cent. Total runs – according to estimates, one-fifth to one-quarter of the global raw material trade of our country.
As the smallest state could be to the Bastion in the transit trade, although he himself has no significant raw materials to call, no direct access to the sea, no colonies possessed, and no imperialist policy? And how you can make a business more tangible, which is largely invisible? Because the Latter is to acquire the core of the transit trade: the Swiss company, move, and sell Goods between third countries, without the commodity ever, our country happened.
Strongly as a geek
The historian Lea Haller searches in a large study to answer the question of why Switzerland could be one of the most important nodes in the global transit trade. Self-sufficiency was for a small country like Switzerland is never an Option, writes the author. And the outside has been brought in to the country also benefits: “Up to 1848 there was no Switzerland,” said the Journalist, Lorenz Stucki, the Haller quoted. “In Petersburg or Amsterdam, Lisbon or New York, you acted as Basel, Zurich, toggenburg; no Native could think of it as something, and so it was no Problem, even in the fiercest Wars are always on the right page and in France, every Englishman, in England, every Frenchman out.”
In the flexibility, Haller sees a characteristic of the transit trade, and even of the Nation: Not as a “solid Container”, but rather as a “type of processor” should be thought of Switzerland; it will not deregulated the economy and politics, but always re-programmed, so you can customize the national framework conditions of the global capital flows.
How do you have such a reprogramming specifically, imagine, shows Haller on tax competition, in which Switzerland mixed vigorously. So, for example, as the holding privilege by the income tax, what is the number of holding companies in Switzerland finally explode left – from 128 to almost 2000 in just the years between 1921 and 1938. Or, as it is a Zurich-based business law formulated, than he seized in 1924, the Initiative for a new Zug-based tax law: What is in terms of profit in tourism through a lot of capital is possible, would be reached “through a few simple sentences in the tax legislation”.
The Deals with the Nazis
Overall, one learns at Lea Haller very much interesting about the global trade. Repeated the historian also, complex market instruments to portray vividly. For example, when she describes the so-called Hedging on the example of a businessman of the Winterthur merchant house Volkart, was purchased in 1922 in Texas 100Baumwollballen. Out of fear of a price decline in Volkart-man bet against themselves and selling a Futures contract against its cotton-shopping – on the stock exchange. When he received a few days later with an offer for his cotton in the amount of 600 dollars, he said – and bought back at the same time, his Futures contract for 500: There is a net profit of $ 100.
the shadow side of The transit trade, ignores the book. Also those of colonialism, of the Swiss retailers benefited, not just those who were directly or indirectly involved in the Deportation of 172’000 slaves. On the basis of their notes to the Clearing System for transactions without the Transfer of foreign currency transacted, illuminated Haller also Deals with the Nazis, Switzerland’s owed as a creditor, a “clearing billion”: a “survival action,” says Haller, the the country from an attack by the Germans protected. In the light of these shops, it was but pure “Goodwill” that the allies included Switzerland in the post-war order.
remedy moderately structured
Haller’s reading book with respect. Not least because of the difficulty of your project: With a focus on the export industry of the transit has been underestimated in Switzerland trade as an economic factor for a long massif. Only in 1934 an attempt was made to create a statistics for the transit trade. Even today, there is no comprehensive, reliable figures basis – in the light of the global interdependencies, and the secrecy of the industry, which keeps its archives, for the most part under lock and key. In this respect, the book is one of the pioneers. Less convincing in its structure, which is determined by the chronology, is a temporary moderate effect: The author presents in the introduction the question of a Narrative, with the historic fabric could be present. This question remains unanswered.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 10.05.2019, 17:59 PM
