No Government Bailout, Please, We're Swiss

Swiss banking house UBS ( who in the end controls the banking world anyway) now says it has “substantially reduced” its exposure to rotten U.S. mortgage-backed assets, although it is less clear where the garbage has gone. The toxic assets were likely snapped up by vulture investors, a source told Forbes, although UBS wouldn’t specify where it all went, saying simply it “disposed” of them. The bank said it could have offloaded up to $8.8 billion of its mortgage-related investments, if necessary. Shares in UBS soared on the news. At one point, UBS has $15.1 billion in bad debts of various types, reports Forbes. Analysts expect a new round of writedowns shortly when the bank reports earnings, although probably no greater than in previous quarters. Meanwhile, Julius Baer Holding, the biggest money manager in the country, is “selectively” buying, says its chief investment officer. “We've been buying financials for the last two weeks, selectively, which we haven't done since 2007,'' Beat Wittmann, chief executive officer of investment products for the $80 billion fund, told Bloomberg. “We're in capitulation territory and that's how the bottom of a market is created.” © 2008 Newsmax