There is one big lesson from the Danske Bank money laundering scandal. Regulating the modern banking system does not work. Modern banks are now primarily giant hedge fund managers speculating on financial assets or they are conduits for tax avoidance havens for the top 1% and the multi-nationals.…
John Horan, senior associate at Maze Investigation, Compliance and Training Ltd. in Belfast, says money laundering is a Europe-wide problem. “dark money will almost certainly continue to flow through the European banking system like sand through a sieve.” It’s a never-ending story. ...
The ‘official’ view that regulation is the only way to control the banks is accepted by most Keynesians or those who see the financial sector as the only enemy of labour. Take Nick Shaxson. Shaxson wrote a compelling book Treasure Islands, tax havens and the men who stole the world, that exposed the workings of all the global tax avoidance schemes and how banks promoted tax havens and tax avoidance for their rich clients.
And more recently, he has done a new piece of research that argues that not only does the City of London and the UK financial sector operate to help tax avoidance and money laundering, it does not provide credit for productive investment.…
As Gabriel Zucman and Thomas Wright have shown in a meticulous and in-depth analysis of the size and extent of tax havens and tax avoidance, far from them being reduced or controlled, on the contrary, such schemes are an increasing part of US corporate profits, organised and transacted by the banks.
About half of all the foreign profits of US multinationals are booked in tax havens with Ireland topping the charts as the favourite (Irish tax rate just 5.7%). And the benefits for the increase in profits have gone to shareholders, the Zucman and Wright showed. “Ireland solidifies its position as the #1 tax haven,”Zucman said on Twitter. “US firms book more profits in Ireland than in China, Japan, Germany, France & Mexico combined.” ...
So those who think that ‘regulating’ the banks and tax evasion using ‘regulators’ will work are expecting pigs to rev up their jet engines for flight.Michael Roberts Blog
Regulation does not work
Michael Roberts
4 comments:
If regulation doesn’t work, what does?
It seems to me that regulation works just fine, but it is not applied to the rich, or to the bankers.
Regulation is only applied to the lower classes. Indeed, the more the rich are de-regulated, the more the lower classes are regulated (i.e. crushed into submission).
Decriminalization of bank fraud, top-level financial fraud, and corporate malfeasance is a cornerstone of neoliberalism. Other conerstones include privatization and gratuitous austerity.
If regulation doesn’t work, what does? konrad
You don't recognize how heavily privileged banks are??
Hint: Why can't ordinary citizens use their Nation's fiat in convenient, inherently risk-free form via accounts at the Central Bank itself?
Hint2: Then what need would there be for deposit insurance and other privileges/welfare for the banks?
@ Andrew Anderson:
Please clarify. Do you favor having only one bank, a central bank, fully public, whose services are available to all US citizens?
“It seems to me that regulation works just fine, ”
Not when moron art degree people are at the regulatory controls....
They regulate banks at a 1:10 Leverage Ratio then out of their ass put $1T of Reserve Assets on them “to lend out!” to “help!” and thus bankrupt them then wonder what happened...
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