The Adage from the Oracle...

"It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked."
- Almost every investment bank
- Every other financial services firm
- The auto industry
- Iceland, the country
- Bernie Madoff
- Ramalinga Raju

and now, Allan Stanford.

Warren Buffett is a genius :).

Awards for the best swimmers in each category here:
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12796770

UBS Bows to US Pressure: Are Indian Regulators listening?

Something very significant happened yesterday. For the first time in history, a Swiss bank (UBS) came out of its shroud of secrecy and agreed to provide the names of 250 account holders to the US government authorities. Here is the report on it.

This should be a wake-up call for Indian tax authorities as Indians are rumored to be the second largest investors in these Swiss secret bank accounts. In fact all countries should start a concerted effort to dismantle this veil of secrecy around the Swiss banking system, so that the next best option for a criminal looking to offshore his loot becomes some unstable country like Cayman islands, thereby reducing the incentive to send money offshore.

I have always wondered why on earth a democratic, civilized country would open up its banks for all sorts of criminals to load up, with a stupid tradition of maintaining customer privacy. Who knows, eventually we might even find accounts linked to Al Qaeda in these banks.