Dan Crawford — Who owns the Wealth in Tax Havens?

WHO OWNS THE WEALTH IN TAX HAVENS?, an NBER working paper, points to following the money:

I read the abstract and conclusion and perused the paper. It is relatively short and an easy read.

The authors state that it is an introductory study in an area that has been shrouded in secrecy for reasons of "privacy." Heh heh.

The initial results suggested pretty much what was suspected. Runaway offshore wealth at the top owned by the usual suspects and stashed in international "tax havens." No real surprises.

Worth a look, but don't expect to find any smoking guns.

Angry Bear
Who owns the Wealth in Tax Havens?

Dan Crawford

See also

Deficit hysteria again.

What a surprise, the Washington Post is at it again, and it is the usual culprit, Robert J. Samuelson. Of course he has his attack buried under a title that appears to point more broadly, “The deficit is everybody’s fault,” although not if “everybody” includes people who die before they become eligible for Social Security and Medicare (and those parts of Medicaid that go to old people). He even has further cover in that the new numbers come from the “left-leaning” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in a report issued on Sept. 6 written by Paul van der Water, and I grant that the numbers he shows do come from that report, which makes projections out to 2035, the year when the adjustment for baby boomers going onto elderly entitlement programs will have been largely completed....

His only proposal is his usual one, to make further reductions in increased per capita Social Security payments as a percent of GDP beyond those already cooked into the books, although he does not recognize or admit that this is what he is doing. But then, we have seen this before from him repeatedly, so this is not a surprise.

Arguing over a pseudo-problem.

It Is Monday, And WaPo Bashes Social Security Again

J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University

Leonid Bershidsky — Piketty Zeroes In on Putin's Pain Point

Russian ex-pat Leonid Bershidsky is blowing holes through Western narratives that are out of touch with Russian reality and heavily influenced by Western russophobia.

This raises the question of whether the current Western sanctions against Russia strike at the heart of the Russian system or merely pretend to do so. Since the sanctions were introduced, no Western government has made a meaningful effort to investigate the provenance of hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian offshore assets. No significant asset freezes have taken place. The money is still out there, to be invested inside or outside Russia, in the service of its "perceived national interest" or otherwise (Putin would like to get his hands on some of it, too, but it doesn't belong to his cronies).

A Western effort to track down that money and make it available to a post-Putin, democratic Russia could potentially be a game-changer. But it would require far more work, and probably a lot of uncomfortable revelations about Western business and politics. The current sanctions regime is simply not intended to open that can of worms.

Bloomberg View
Piketty Zeroes In on Putin's Pain Point
Leonid Bershidsky