Get in the car, kids! We’re goin’ to Switzerland!

And we get to hear Hank-the-Bank Paulson yodel!

Swiss authorities moved to stabilize their storied banking system today, agreeing to take $60 billion in troubled assets off the books of financial giant UBS and put them into a special government-backed fund, in a deal financed at least initially by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

In a forceful example of how dollars from the Fed are being put to work in the global financial system, the Swiss National Bank said it would use up to $54 billion from the Fed to buy “illiquid securities” from UBS.

The Fed announced earlier this week that it would provide dollars on an unlimited basis to a consortium of foreign banks, including Switzerland’s, in hopes of freeing up world credit markets that have all but ceased to function. Though the foreign banks post their own currency with the Fed in return, protecting the balance sheet of the U.S. central bank, the Swiss announcement said access to dollars through the Fed allowed them to pursue a major bailout that might have been hard to finance otherwise.

Swiss National Bank Takes $60B in Troubled UBS Assets.