The dark side of anti-"Swiss bank account" politics

I have no details about Mitt Romney’s Swiss bank account—and neither does the recent Vanity Fair article that the Democratic anti-Swiss brigades were citing as their primary source material over the weekend (all the piece did was regurgitate the news that Romney’s disclosures in 2010 showed a $3 million account that has since been liquidated). But in addition to the living-in-Switzerland explanation for having a Swiss bank account, there are at least three other perfectly seemly reasons for Americans to have one:…

2) Because you believe in diversifying your portfolio. Remember at the top of this article when Dick Durbin criticized people who “believe the Swiss franc is stronger than the American dollar”? Well, it is. Ten years ago a greenback reliably got you more than 1.40 Swiss francs, but the dollar was down to 0.86 when the Swiss National Bank announced a currency peg to the Euro last September. Though that helped break the fall, the buck still hasn’t clawed its way back above the 1.00-franc mark since, and I would be comfortable wagering that another decade from now it will be closer to 0.50.

Is Dick Durbin protecting his million-dollar portfolio through a buy-American-only strategy? Hell no, he isn’t—why, just right there I can see such asset items as “ING Clarion Global Real Estate Income,” and “Matthews Asia Dividend Investor,” and “Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Domestic.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Switzerland is an unusually stable country with an unusually sound fiscal track record and an unusually strong banking sector. I would be shocked if any $100 million American didn’t have at least some stake in a country that has long been one of the largest foreign investors in the United States.