swissaustrian
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I went shopping today in Zürich, Switzerland. The financial sector is neighbouring the main shopping Avenue. There were some Occupy people (about 10 of them) protesting both UBS and Credit Suisse, the two Swiss tbtf. I had some time left before I had to go home, so I thought: Let's discuss with them.
I don't look like a greedy capitalist (although I kind of was one until early 2011 when I managed a commodities fund), so they were friendly when I approached them. I intially talked to a guy with a sign which said: "End capitalism". So my question was: "How do you define capitalism?" His answer was some Marxist bs about the exploitation of labor by the capitalists. His solution: More power to governments. After 10 minutes of discussion, we discovered that governments are run by lobbyists, so more power wouldn't change anything. By this time, all the Occupiers had joined the discussion.
Then I brought their attention to the Swiss central bank and the famous insider trading of Philipp Hildebrand. The intial reaction of the Occupiers was to defend Mr H and the central bank, because you know "it's a government agency"
I thought some class warfare rhetoric might impress them, so I told them that Mr H earned over 900K $ a year whereas the Swiss president just earns about 250K$. Then I told them that I am shareholder of the SNB (49% of the shares are privately owned) and that they pay me an annual dividend of 16 CHF per share (yielding about 1.6% p.a. at the current price of ~ CHF 1000). That nearly made their heads explode. One guy told me that I must an evil 1%ter, some started calling me names. So I decided to disclose my professional past as a fund manager and why I got out of that doomed business. I had the opportunity to talk about paper money and it's biasedness towards those who understand it. I also told them how central banks secretely bail out commericial banks with zero interest loans, so these commercial banks can lend the money to their customers at 3,4,5% interest.
Finally, I brought an argument up that made the hardcore Marxists nearly puke: Why should governments use the free market to loan money and commerical banks get priviledged loans from the central bank?
After that, I had to leave. I gave one guy 20 CHF, so he can buy a copy of Ron Paul's "End the FED" (it remains to be seen whether he actually uses the money for that, but anyway) :rimshot:
I don't look like a greedy capitalist (although I kind of was one until early 2011 when I managed a commodities fund), so they were friendly when I approached them. I intially talked to a guy with a sign which said: "End capitalism". So my question was: "How do you define capitalism?" His answer was some Marxist bs about the exploitation of labor by the capitalists. His solution: More power to governments. After 10 minutes of discussion, we discovered that governments are run by lobbyists, so more power wouldn't change anything. By this time, all the Occupiers had joined the discussion.
Then I brought their attention to the Swiss central bank and the famous insider trading of Philipp Hildebrand. The intial reaction of the Occupiers was to defend Mr H and the central bank, because you know "it's a government agency"

Finally, I brought an argument up that made the hardcore Marxists nearly puke: Why should governments use the free market to loan money and commerical banks get priviledged loans from the central bank?
After that, I had to leave. I gave one guy 20 CHF, so he can buy a copy of Ron Paul's "End the FED" (it remains to be seen whether he actually uses the money for that, but anyway) :rimshot: