The SUPER-Rich are Spooked ***DollarCollapse.com ***

Well, the SUPER Rich are feeling the pinch by falling prices for property AND the infamous SECRET Swiss-Bank Accounts are now being exposed so the U.S. can pick up tax evaders.

Our very own I.R.S. is on a mission!!!

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The Super-Rich Are Spooked

A couple of seemingly unrelated articles in Friday’s Wall Street Journal illustrate how life is getting more complicated for the super-rich.

First, it seems that the UBS debacle was not just a U.S./Swiss disagreement. Far from it. Now that the IRS has shown other high-tax countries how easy it is to pierce the veil of bank secrecy, the Europeans want their tax evaders too. And in Switzerland, theirs are a lot more numerous than ours.

Swiss Banks Lose European Clients

ZURICH -- While the spotlight has been on the aggressive drive by the U.S. government to flush tax dodgers out of Switzerland, bankers here are instead grappling with the loss of a much richer clientele: Europeans.

Americans have made up no more than 5% of Switzerland's $1.8 trillion offshore-banking business. But European clients are steadily coming clean, spooked by threats of a crackdown by their own governments.

Nonresident, or offshore, clients make up about a third of Switzerland's private-banking business, with just more than half of those coming from other European countries. According to KPMG, as much as 80% of the Europeans' money in Switzerland is undeclared. In all, KPMG reckons that tax evasion could represent up to 25% of Switzerland's total private-banking market.

This weekend, Swiss banking giant UBS AG will hand over the names of 500 suspected American tax dodgers to the Internal Revenue Service, the first of 4,450 names it will turn over as part of an August agreement between the U.S. and Swiss governments. That accord marked a historic breach of Switzerland's cherished bank secrecy, and prodded many Swiss banks to refuse to take American clients for fear of falling foul of U.S. laws.

Now, in the wake of the American crackdown, and Switzerland's cooperation, an exodus of European money is under way. This past week, Italian tax authorities raided local offices of Swiss banks, in what Swiss bankers regard as an attempt to scare tax dodgers. And new treaties Switzerland has signed with France and the U.K. make it easier for those countries to pursue information on suspected tax dodgers.

For Swiss banks, a fat business is slipping away. Citizens in Italy, Germany and France -- the big three tax-dodging nations -- stashed their money in Switzerland because of political unrest at home, high inflation and sky-high tax rates. They weren't always after high returns, and they complained little about performance and rarely visited their bankers, who typically had them sign discretionary mandates allowing the bank to act on their behalf. Higher fees on discretionary mandates mean such clients are twice as profitable as those who directly manage their accounts. Some bankers privately admit that the fees on undeclared money can be several times those on declared money.

Since around 2000, the bigger Swiss banks such as Credit Suisse Group, UBS, Julius Baer Group AG and Pictet & Cie have tried to diversify away from tax dodgers by opening branches in Italy, Germany and France and building big onshore businesses with these clients. They are also targeting new millionaires in Russia, the Middle East and Asia. With taxes low at home, investors in these countries are instead fleeing political instability. Indeed, Singapore, also courting these emerging-market millionaires, is now Switzerland's main offshore rival.

An Avalanche of Price Cuts

The hard sell has hit high-end ski areas.

"ANOTHER PRICE REDUCTION!" shrieked a recent email to Aspen, Colo., real-estate agents in bold red 48-point font, advertising the fact that a large home in the exclusive community of Starwood was now asking $9.95 million, 38% less than its original $15.95 million asking price. "CONTRARY TO RUMORS, 101 STEIN IS NOT UNDER CONTRACT!" screamed another, in lime-green size 24 font, about a ski-in, ski-out townhouse now asking $4.8 million, down from $7.4 million. But the biggest shocker, says Aspen broker Pamala Steadman, was the email reporting the markdown of a mansion on Red Mountain—a prestigious area of a prestigious town—to $19.9 million from $28 million.