swiss banks,

the swiss banking tradition is one of being discreet about its customers.
the point being they cater to customers who have wealth to hide or rather one that needn't want the rest of the lesser folks to know about their wealth, its all about being discreet...

swiss banks cater to that market of keeping ones wealth secret.

however the swiss banking tradition is completely lost out on Generation X, especially those who have become rich with a change in market dynamics especially so from the dot com boom, real estate, IT, retail, etc. The nouveau rich GEN-X have nothing to hide, I mean it is fairly common knowledge who got rich on the bourses, or who is the new CEO of these new market firms, or who sold his/her stock options, or who came up with yahoo or google or hotmail, or who is the world richest folks from the Forbes 500, such folks have really nothing to hide.

Their names are featured in books, newspapers, magazines and even if they do intend to be discreet, these folks all made money on stock, the stock exchanges hold information about who sold what and who bought what...there is no place to be secretive in such a market mechanism.

So why do the Swiss banks still do business or rather where are the customers that still needs their identity and wealth information to be kept discreet.

I mean the point of wealth is you've got it, flaunt it.
But then again you want to be discreet when wealth is garnered by unscrupulous means.

any sane person would dread banking with Swiss banks whose affiliations and customers are unscrupulous folks. Folks who their identity disclosed, as their income is from unscrupulous means.

But let's face it, most of us really just want to be able to say, "Oh, I'll wire the money from my Swiss bank account."

It is as though we would want to imply that we have income from unscrupulous means!