Cosy stagnation in Switzerland

Matthew Lynn

Although stuck in a growth slump, Switzerland remains one of the wealthiest and most stable societies on Earth

In the 1949 film classic The Third Man, the racketeer Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles, contemptuously dismisses Switzerland with the remark: "In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.'' If Graham Greene, the scriptwriter on the film, were putting together those lines now, he might add something else to the list: comfortable stagnation. The Swiss economy, once one of the most efficient in the world, appears locked in a growth slump. The rest of the global economy goes up and down, but Switzerland remains in its...