I’m currently going through ‘The World for Sale’ by Blas and Farchy. Wow. It’s a brilliant overview of how commoditry traders have operated over the years, mostly ‘in the shadows’. But there’s also a lot in there about how Switzerland facilitated the industry. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised but in ‘the old days’ companies such as Mark Rich set up in Zug partly due to low tax rates but mostly because of the way they were allowed to operate (it was the only place where bribes could be written off as tax deductable costs of doing business). There’s also a brilliant bit about how Glencore came into being thanks entirely to a huge investment from Roche who were looking to do something with their Valium bonanza. Thoroughly recommended for anyone looking to get a small peak into the ‘Swiss Way of Working’ at least in the recent past. (to be fair, I have no idea what that would look like today).
I literally just downloaded this as audible after reading the teaser on kindle a few weeks back.
It was not just the “Swiss Way of Working” it was everyone’s way of working when dealing with commodities especially if selling to the third world. I remember one deal where we swapped pharama for raw cotton that we then moved to another country where it was made into T-Shrits and sold by a well known brand. I remember it so well because the ship of cotton went awol for a week or so on the high seas and we thought it was lost in a storm!
That notion is nonsense and flat out false.
Germany for instance (from the Wiki page via deepL)
Tax treatment of bribes
In the past, ‘benefits in business transactions’ (bribes/kickbacks) were tax-deductible in Germany. In some places, these payments were recognised as ‘useful expenses’ (N.A.). Since 1 September 2002, bribes paid by German companies to foreign business partners have been punishable - and therefore no longer tax-deductible. Until then, this only applied to domestic business transactions or the bribery of foreign public officials.
I don’t remember in which museum, but I read that one of the first commodities traded here were textiles. And all because a war forced the traders to find a new home in Switzerland. Is this something mentioned in the book?
Well… I’m just repeating from the book… it must have been the Zug cuisine then
Well three hours into the audiobook narrative and it seems to me that the one way to reduce climate change is to rein in the commodity traders, their mantra of “profit, profit über alles, über alles auf der Welt!” is what is killing our civilization.
Yeah… as I get to nearly the end of the book I kinda agree but… they’re just an inevitable consequence of the global system that has evolved. If you have a lot of [insert commodity here] and have 2 choices… take the time, cost and price of finding buyers yourself or sell the whole bunch to that dodgy barrow boy with a big bank account… what’s more likely ? (that’s the ‘nice version’ … the embargoed version is ‘when nobody is supposed to buy your commodity but that barrow boy is waving bundles of dosh under your nose’ what would you do ?)