Unusually Large Trove of Data Leaked About Offshore Tax Havens - What Might Coincidence Mean?

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Offshore tax havens rocked by bank account leaks

The data in question was leaked TO "86 journalists worldwide, under the leadership of the International Consortium of investigative journalism."

No mention of where the leaks came FROM. Could that source be the group that broke away from WikiLeaks? Looks like much of the same data.

Whomever they are, the source SEEMS to have a protection pact with national governments - at least in public - and maybe only as long as they leak only "The Right Stuff." :(   [No way the source is actually G7 governments, right? :)  That would mean they had the data all along!  Better not go there, unless you want to want to hear the sound of drones, up close.]

At any rate, what seems more interesting is the total sum of illicit assets circulating in tax havens. Surely the sum of the amounts being discussed pales in comparison to the TARP looting? No?  The article claims $32 Trillion hiding from taxes.  Didn't the net bailout of our crooked & incompetent bankers come to about $27Trillion - in the USA alone?

Maybe the tax data is being leaked precisely because the TBTF bankers no longer need these inefficient tax dodges in far off places? They've created their own, virtual tax dodge called Uncle Sam and his Corporate Welfare genie.

If YOUR clan had both $27 Trillion AND $32 Trillion salted away in separate but potentially vulnerable schemes ... would you consider giving up the $32 Trillion with much fanfare? Maybe if it legalized your ability to keep the $29 Trillion.

With this kind of distraction, maybe electorates will look the other way even as US Social Security is trashed (and pensions everywhere). It's called securing your protection racket. If frauds understand MMT, they understand that it's better to preserve buying power than to preserve fiat currency alone.  Their motto may well be "Never forego a good opportunity to CREATE a fiat crisis!"

If we can teach our kids to play chess, why can't we teach 'em to play politics?

No matter which TACTICS one sees in action, an electorate not immediatly examining the potentially associated strategies and policies behind the direct action - or a distracting feint? - is undoubtedly sitting in the road, about to get run over by yet another truck (or drone), coming from yet another unexpected direction.

Steve Randy Waldman on bank bailouts

Speaking of wealth redistribution (up), here is a good compliment to Randy Wray and J. Andrew Felkerson's post on the Fed bailouts.

I find it really depressing that I have to write this. But it seems I have to write it.

Substantially all of the TARP funds advanced to banks have been paid back, with interest and sometimes even with a profit from sales of warrants. Most of the (much larger) extraordinary liquidity facilities advanced by the Fed have also been wound down without credit losses. So there really was no bailout, right? The banks took loans and paid them back.

Bullshit.

Read the rest at Interfluidity

Yes, Virginia. The banks really were bailed out

by Steve Randy Waldman

See also

TARP To Cost The U.S. Nearly Double The Initial Estimates: CBO

at The Huffington Post

The government's bailout of banks may cost U.S. taxpayers nearly two times more than originally estimated, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Troubled Asset Released Program, better known as TARP, will cost the federal government $34 billion, the CBO reported on its director's blog. That's $15 billion higher than the agency's previous estimate in March. The increase in the estimate is mostly due to a drop in the market value of the government's investments in American International Group and General Motors.

Pimco's equity strategist, Neel Kashkari, wants to leverage the firm's "macoreconomic ability"

Remember Neel Kashkari? He was Hank Paulson's "right hand boy" running the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Well, he was hired by Pimco to run their fledgling equities division, where he says...

You're not going to see us launch some plain, old U.S. large cap fund or just tell people to go buy the S&P 500 500," he revealed to the paper. Instead, the Pimco products will leverage the firm's abilities in currenices and macroeconomics to remiove volatility from portfolios based on well-researched stock picking.

That awesome macroeconomic ability sure helped Bill Gross figure out the Treasury market earlier this year, didn't it? Remember their brilliant short bet and "who's gonna buy them now?"

I can't wait to see the performance of Kashkari's portfolio. His current macro view is that interest rates "can't go lower." I guess we can infer from that comment that he means stocks can only go up? Maybe someone should send him a chart of the Nikkei.

Another Goldman "genius" unleashed.