Laundering Havens for War Budgets — Sharmini Peries interviews Michael Hudson

“Closing Panama Tax Haven Will Require Fighting the Most Powerful Lobby In the World,” The Real News Network, April 14, 2016.

Economist Michael Hudson says oil and mining industries and the State Department created Panama and Liberia for the express purpose of tax evasion.

Video and transcript.

MichaelHudson.com
Laundering Havens for War BudgetsSharmini Peries interviews Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic ll Street Financial Trends (ISLET), a WaAnalyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Constantin Gurdgiev — 10/4/16: The Real 'Panamas' Of Tax Havens... Are Not In Central America

A lot of what is already known is now in the spotlight owing to the Panama papers.

True Economics

10/4/16: The Real 'Panamas' Of Tax Havens... Are Not In Central America
Constantin Gurdgiev

Dan Glazebrook — Britain is the heart and soul of tax evasion

The British government’s claim to be tackling tax evasion is about as credible as Al Capone claiming to be leading the fight against organized crime. In fact, Britain is at the heart of the global tax haven network, and continues to lead the fight against its regulation.

The 11 and a half million leaked documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca have proven, once again, what we have already known for some time – that the ‘offshore world’ of tax havens is a den of money laundering and tax evasion right at the heart of the global financial system.

Despite attempts by Western media to twist the revelations into a story about the ‘corruption’ of official enemies – North Korea, Syria, China and, of course, Putin, who is not even mentioned in the documents – the real story is the British government’s assiduous cultivation of the offshore world. For whilst corruption exists in every country, what enables that corruption to flourish and become institutionalized is the network of secretive financial regimes that allow the world’s biggest criminals and fraudsters to escape taxation, regulation and oversight of their activities. And this network is a conscious creation of the British state.

Of the 215,000 companies identified in the Mossack Fonseca documents, over half were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, one single territory in what tax haven expert Nicholas Shaxson calls a “spider’s web” of well over a dozen separate UK-controlled dens of financial chicanery.

In addition, the UK was ranked number two of those jurisdictions where the banks, law firms and other middlemen associated with the Panama Papers operate, only topped by Hong Kong, whose institutional environment is itself a creation of the UK. And of the ten banks who most frequently asked Mossack Fonseca to set up paper companies to hide their client’s finances, four were British: HSBC, Coutts, Rothschild and UBS.….

The entire UK-controlled web is home to offshore deposits estimated in 2009 to be worth $3.2 trillion, 55 percent of the global total….

The remnant of empire.

Whilst ostensibly involved in a process of ‘decolonization’, in fact the UK hung on to a large global network of small, sparsely-populated islands: “The British empire”, Shaxson wrote, “had faked its own death.” These islands were to serve the same imperial purpose the empire had always had: the projection of British power and the channeling of African, Asian and Latin American wealth into Britain. But whilst some of the islands, such as Diego Garcia and the Falklands, were to serve as crucial military outposts, many of the others were developed as a means of facilitating the financial plunder of the former colonial world.

In Shaxson’s words, the role of these tax havens is to “capture passing foreign business and channel it to London just as a spider’s web catches insects” whilst also acting as a “money laundering filter that lets the City get involved in dirty business while providing it with enough distance to maintain plausible deniability.”…

Indeed, much of Cameron’s battling with Europe has been driven precisely by the desire to maintain the impunity of the City and its web of tax havens in the face of attempts by the EU to regulate the banking sector.…

RT
Britain is the heart and soul of tax evasion
Dan Glazebrook

A top expert on tax havens explains why the Panama Papers barely scratch the surface — Libby Nelson interviews Gabriel Zucman

The biggest scandal in the Panama Papers leak, which revealed that political leaders around the world were hiding money in offshore accounts, isn't about corruption or organized crime.

The 11.5 million files stolen from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed just how unequal the world is.

The economist Gabriel Zucman estimated in his 2015 book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, that worldwide more than $7.5 trillion is squirreled away in offshore tax havens — 8 percent of the world's financial wealth. While some of it is properly declared to world governments, about 80 percent, or $6 trillion, is never taxed at all.

Zucman, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California Berkeley, argues that this tax avoidance worsens the vast global gap in wealth and income between the rich and the poor. Hiding vast sums of wealth from taxation makes it easier for the rich to stay rich and avoid tax policies meant to help the poor. Offshore accounts also make it harder for everyone else to get rich, because they're paying higher taxes to make up for the tax dollars the wealthy don't pay when they shelter their assets overseas.
"If we want to deal with rising inequality seriously, then we need to make these forms of tax dodging much, much more limited," Zucman told me in an interview.

We discussed how Zucman totaled up that $8 trillion number by solving a puzzling mystery in global economics, the disturbing lessons from the Panama Papers, and the drastic steps toward transparency Zucman argues are necessary in order to stop tax evasion.

The transcript of our conversation follows, edited and rearranged for length and clarity….

Vox
A top expert on tax havens explains why the Panama Papers barely scratch the surface
Libby Nelson interviews Gabriel Zucman, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California Berkeley

William K. Black — The WSJ and NYT Spin Elite Tax Fraud as “Good News”

See, we all have it all wrong. We all need to read the WSJ and the NYT and celebrate the good news of massive tax fraud by business elites and join together to denounce government. Ignore the tens of thousands of wealthy men behind the screen of bank secrecy evading taxes. They are a “distraction.”

The neoliberal spin machine.

Triple Crisis
The WSJ and NYT Spin Elite Tax Fraud as “Good News”
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Neil Wilson — Panama Pandemonium

Taxes.

3spoken
Panama Pandemonium
Neil Wilson

Jon Schwarz — Here’s the Price Countries Pay for Tax Evasion Exposed in Panama Papers

How much tax revenue do the world’s governments lose thanks to this kind of financial engineering?

According to The Hidden Wealth of Nations, a recent book by University of California, Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman, the answer is that tax evasion costs governments approximately $200 billion per year.

Zucman also estimates that tax avoidance by U.S. corporations — which, unlike tax evasion, is generally carried out in the open and is technically legal — costs governments an additional $130 billion per year. (European and Asian corporations have the same incentives to avoid taxes, but there is not enough data to estimate its scale.)...

The Intercept

Here’s the Price Countries Pay for Tax Evasion Exposed in Panama Papers

Jon Schwarz

More austerity pusher GOP hypocrisy and deceit. Michael Grimm (R-NY) indicted.

I met Congressman Michael Grimm (R-NY) several times while I was still at Fox News. I never liked or trusted him. He was a cocky dude and a diehard austerity pusher. "Too much spending, we gotta cut, balance the budget,"  blah, blah, same talk as all the other sadistic Conservative cretins. He didn't care who got taxed (yes, spending cuts are tax increases): seniors, students, children, needy families, as long as it wasn't his rich NY friends. They got to keep whatever.

Well it looks like Grimm has now been indicted on charges of Federal tax evasion, lying to authorities. He kept two sets of books of course at his Manhattan restaurant so he could show one to the IRS and keep the real money for himself. (What? Tax me???)

Another classic hypocritical asshole. No problem taking money from the needy and regular working stiffs, but the millionaires...they get to keep it all.

I wrote about this dude along with other Conservative cretins like NJ Governor Chris Christie (here and here) in several posts last year.

Grimm may be finally getting his due, but he won't go quietly. The guy is running for re-election so shame is clearly a word that is not in his vocabulary.

Karma's a bitch, eh Mike?

Robert Oak — Oh Those Credit Suisse!

Yet another Senate report, yet another bank is busted for tax evasion. The Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations has released a report on Credit-Suisse bank detailing their systemic offshore tax evasion of U.S. funds.

Economic Populist
Oh Those Credit Suisse!
Robert Oak

Michael Hudson — Corporate Accountability And Workplace

In June 2000, international groups rolled out blacklists targeting offshore refuges that shelter tax dodging and money laundering. Some observers predicted “the death of tax havens.”

By 2002 the campaign had, as one tax analyst put it, “dissolved into a series of toothless pronouncements.”

In 2009, offshore centers faced new attacks as the United States pursued an investigation of Swiss banks and nations hit by economic crisis sought to boost tax revenues. “Tax havens and bank secrecy are finished,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared.

By 2010 it was clear the offshore industry had once more survived mostly unscathed.

Now offshore havens are under attack again in the wake of exposés by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other news outlets.

Britain has vowed to lift the secrecy covering the Cayman Islands and other financial sanctuaries operating under its flag. Dozens of rich nations have agreed — in an unprecedented example of global cooperation on offshore issues — to begin swapping information about assets stashed in foreign accounts. Another French president — François Hollande — has promised to “eradicate” tax havens.
“Looks like the offshore party is over,” the Chicago Tribune said recently.

Will this time be different?

Many financial crime fighters are skeptical....

Typically thorough and detailed report.

AlterNet

Corporate Accountability And Workplace
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City

Pope Francis — Evangelii Gaudium, 56

Conservatives seem to have caught their breath and are now attacking the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis as "Marxist." Here is the passage in especially in question.

56. While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. Debt and the accumulation of interest also make it difficult for countries to realize the potential of their own economies and keep citizens from enjoying their real purchasing power. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule. — Evangelii Gaudium

Marxist? Really?

Al Jazeera — Storied Swiss bank to shut after US tax trial

Wegelin & Co, founded in 1741, to close after admitting it helped wealthy Americans evade at least $1.2bn in taxes.

Al Jazeera
Storied Swiss bank to shut after US tax trial

Interesting. They got a bank for helping tax evaders but other banks laundering drug and terrorist money, fraud, etc. not even a wrist slap.