Swiss Banks Secret No More?

You know I love a good adventure/spy novel. On my profile, you can see that I read Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. One "given" in those types of books is that a Swiss bank account is a nice, secret place to keep one's money. Can that have changed?

The US blew a hole in Switzerland’s famed bank secrecy on Wednesday as Bern agreed to reveal the names of 4,450 wealthy Americans holding offshore accounts at UBS, the country’s biggest bank.

Washington hailed the deal as a victory in its clampdown on tax evasion and indicated that it would pursue other foreign banks and individual tax “cheats”....

The criteria used to select the names on the UBS list will only be revealed in three months, in a strategy by the IRS to maximise uncertainty and put pressure on more of the bank’s estimated 52,000 US offshore customers to come forward voluntarily. Lawyers said the most likely criterion would be the use of sham companies, allowing tax rule loopholes to be exploited.

More here.