First columnist to refer to Eric Ambler's The Siege of the Villa Lipp will be ... a Brit in the FT? Krugman? Nocera?
I don't think I can hazard a guess about the first columnist to refer to Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas, but I will happily buy that person a drink.
Jürgen Mossack is a German immigrant whose father sought a new life in Panama for his family after serving in Hitler's Waffen-SS during World War II. Ramón Fonseca is an award-winning novelist who has worked in recent years as an adviser to Panama's president.
Wait, rich people are hiding their money? How ever will we gone on in the face of such shattering news?
I've never really been to Panama, but I've been through the airport a couple times. From the air, the city looks like its totally booming. Based on what I've heard, Panama seems to have really come into its own as a hub for the Americas. If I was young and Spanish-speaking, I'd totally move to Panama.
I've never really been to Panama
But have you been to you?
I assume the airport in Panama blasts Van Halen at all hours.
Panama Papers: Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% ...selective leaking, decided at the start.
The airport in Panama is sweet because your arrival gate and departure gate are invariably close to each other.
And you don't have to clear immigration to transit, like you do in Miami. I imagine the whole "not needing a US visa" bit has done huge things to promote regional travel through Panama instead of Miami.
The Lincoln Airport is really convenient as far as having the gates close to each other, but it doesn't have very many connections. Possibly it doesn't have any connections.
According to Fran Lebowitz, you can change planes in Omaha, but I've never tried it personally. Don't eat the breakfast pizza is you're over say 12 or so.
On topic because Omaha probably has more billionaires per capita than most places.
bob, thanks for the link in 10. I had actually been wondering about that... the exclusively-foreign names mentioned in news articles I read seemed suspicious.
The BBC not mentioning that the Prime Minister's father was in the leak was a bit eyebrow-raising.
16: huh. The coverage I read was all "official X, putin crony Y, David Cameron's late father, and businessman Z." He was the only person mentioned that wasn't directly implicated...
After a quick search, I'm not finding the original source material. Has that been released?
The BBC not mentioning that the Prime Minister's father was in the leak was a bit eyebrow-raising.
Yes, they cleverly concealed that story on the front page of their website.
Cameron's father was Mossack Fonseca client
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-35961422
What bob doesn't understand is that when you have a massive collaborative story like this, all the news outlets involved agree which stories they are going to release when, because otherwise there would be a mad cutthroat scramble to scoop each other.
So the Zeitung and the Graun and the BBC and all the others will have agreed that the first story they'll all publish, at 1800 on Sunday, will be the Putin one; then the Iceland one on Monday morning; then the Ian Cameron one on Monday afternoon and so on.
The fact that Senor Mossack is the son of a refugee Waffen-SS officer who hid out in Panama after the war is what takes this story from "John Le Carre outraged" to "Ben Elton crashingly unsubtle".
We took a vacation in Panama last year - it was super nice. Prosperous enough that you don't feel like a complete asshole taking a vacation there, not so prosperous as to actually be hideously expensive.
Not so tropical though, although the Toledo Canal is pretty impressive.
June is really the best time to see Toledo.
ajay obviously didn't explore the second link, because at the bottom of the page is a link to "Celebrities, the Rich, Criminals" that leads to 140 names and faces. The mainstream articles may not have been written for details, but the suspects have been named.
1 British, 2 France, zero United States.
Now there may be reasons, and one source says there will be more names than the above 140, and well...here.
The World's Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States ...Bloomberg Jan 26
The ways corrupt money is safer and more protected in the US are named Legion lawyers.
I don't know if there are any hidden Nazis near Toledo, but John Demjanjuk buried outside Cleveland.
They probably don't grow the world's most expensive coffee there, or anywhere in Ohio even.
Here's the other massive international financial crime story that broke recently:
Unaoil, the Bribe Factory
28: that sort of undermines your original point, doesn't it?
32: Point-having is merely an expression of bourgeois morality.
That a German newspaper had the lead role on this is important. Germany has not only super-strict libel laws but strict privacy laws that can hold a paper liable for publishing things that are true.
I assume the airport in Panama blasts Van Halen at all hours.
I felt certain that 1999 would be spent perpetually blasting Prince, but nope. It was just another year.
That's not how I remember it. You were just too young.
28
Mathew Ingram asked why there were no Americans on the list and the Süddeutsche Zeitung's tweeted reply was "just wait for what's coming next."
There are, after all, over 2TB of data, and no newspaper is going to use all of its potential headlines in one go.
37: Not unless you're the same age as LB.
38: That is what they say.
The selective nature of the initial release and the sources of the funding allow me to wait until I see what they actually do.
And as I hinted above, the wealth of the US that makes 6 figure speech payments ( for instance) and other legal open forms of corruption more common; the already very low tax rates, loopholes, and avoidance infrastructure; and the oligarchic control and popular acquiescence to same that allows a Romney with his tax history to be competitive in top-level politics make offshore havens less necessary.
And the fact that revolution, or serious reform that will attack wealth is essentially unthinkable in America is a large part of why our interest rates are so low. The safest country for uberrich on Earth.
Yggles has another post up about tax avoidance.
One question to think about is the difference between avoidance and evasion, and why Ireland, Belgium, and Delaware are good havens for corporations but not necessarily for individuals. And what that difference says and means.
One point I haven't seen made is that this is reported to be the fourth-largest law firm doing such work. This one seems to have a significant UK/Commonwealth affiliation. It seems entirely likely that the Americans, besides just not being #1 on the release list of the current collection of journalists, have been hiding their money via the other 75%+ of shell companies.
41 sounds like it might be interesting, if Bob would care to step out of Delphic mode.
This one seems to have a significant UK/Commonwealth affiliation
I think its more the British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies than the Commonwealth. Places like Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, and the BVI bring all the benefits of the rule of law without that pesky government regulation and oversight. The Queen should be ashamed of herself for letting that kind of thing prosper within her realm.
One Commonwealth member I did see mentioned was The Bahamas. I would suspect that's out of Freeport, which is a "Free Trade Zone" where companies don't have to pay taxes.
Delaware's not a tax haven. It's a corporate governance and bankruptcy haven, but equally a your-lawyer-likely-knows-the-law-of-Delaware-and-nowhere-else haven.
For reasons that are completely unknown to me, lots of entertainment companies filter their foreign earnings through the Netherlands for some kind of tax advantage. The smartest people in the studios are the ones who figure out how to game the various national and international tax incentives and funnel the money around -- it's both the difference between profitability and not for tons of projects.
One point I haven't seen made is that this is reported to be the fourth-largest law firm doing such work. This one seems to have a significant UK/Commonwealth affiliation. It seems entirely likely that the Americans, besides just not being #1 on the release list of the current collection of journalists, have been hiding their money via the other 75%+ of shell companies.
We'll see, and I'm not at all a specialist in this area, but generally speaking the US is much better about cracking down on tax evasion than other industrialized countries, especially in Europe, not to mention third world countries. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there just weren't very many Americans in this particular game. Both the way in which we tax foreign income and the FCPA and our banking regulations make it pretty hard to just hide the money. The real US complicity is likely much more in taking the tax-evaded money and using it to support bankers and real estate purchases and lots of other stuff in the United States.
Those people and the people who created the pissing eagle scene in the Angry Birds movie trailer. That one just slays the kids. The movie almost certainly is horrible, but now I have to see it.
Those people and the people who created the pissing eagle scene in the Angry Birds movie trailer.
There must be a lot of smart people associated with that movie, because somehow they got the UN Secretary General to agree to this.
42 et al.: it's all speculation obviously, but I wouldn't read too much into it. I would not be at all surprised if the other three firms all had UK/Commonwealth connections. There's a slew of kinda-sorta British law firms specialising in "offshore" corporate/tax law. Partly because of all the not-quite-British tax havens, and partly because of Britain's own tax law, which is particularly suited for incentivising moving income offshore.
For reasons that are completely unknown to me, lots of entertainment companies filter their foreign earnings through the Netherlands for some kind of tax advantage.
It's mainly because the Dutch a) have double-taxation treaties with loads of countries, and b) are EU members and not an obvious and hence politically untenable tax haven.
Also I'm not aware of Belgium being a particularly notable tax haven (as opposed to having lots of people/entities evading taxes), certainly compared to neighbours Luxembourg and, as discussed, the Netherlands (not massively a haven in itself, but very much used as a conduit to reduce tax).
41: Oh, just general capitalism stuff, that corporations (etc, like NGOs) are, relative to individuals, better protected, pay less taxes, have massively greater degrees of freedom, etc. A corp can get a kind of XXX country "citizenship" much quicker and easily than a person.
Reading and recommended Janine Wedel's Shadow Elite. She was onsite when Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed, restructured, privatized, and has done twenty years of interviews and research since to come up with a new organizational theory. Let us say that there were 6 players privatizing Russia. They would set up almost a a new govt agency or shell NGO every week, placing themselves as officers in a gigantic shifting web, for the purpose of getting power, grant money and making unaccountable decisions.
Haven't read that far yet, but then of course the really profitable use for this model came in Iraq.
And then, as is my wont, another level of particularity and abstraction, what does that mean?
I like to think of eg Goldman Sachs as not one thing: it is a guy or group on the ground in Greece or Ukraine, and way up at the top a field like the internet. No center, no control, no mind.
Maybe I was thinking Netherlands instead of Belgium.
They both have to do with leaks. One because of the dikes and the other because of that statue.
Louis Proyect discussing an interview between Chris Hedges and Michael Hudson, with reference to sharecropping in post-Civil War South.
HEDGES: But could it go down and down, and what we end up with is a form of neofeudalism, a rapaciously wealthy, oligarchic elite with a kind of horrifying police state to keep us all in order?
HUDSON: This is exactly what happened in the Roman Empire.
Proyect:Returning to Hedges and Hudson, I can understand their anger over what appears to be a return to the past. Yet the notion that feudalism is on the agenda seems ahistorical. The growth of a rentier economy is not an indication that we are about to enter anything resembling the late middle ages.
....
All three of these guys are old cranks, with Proyect being the better Marxist.
We are heading for something new, and the concept of rentiers as a class is superseded. Post-capitalism, when everything is Capital, there will be a lot of agency but very little power. It will look like anarchy, but everyone will be serving Capital without capitalists, Arendt's fascist hurricane with an empty center. Accumulation will no longer provide a competitive advantage. Etc. Not even a theory just a research project.
55: Go back to Vox, Wonkblog, and Upshot. They will comfort you.
You know, keeping track of cross-national corporate ownership actually strikes me as a potentially reasonable use case for blockchain technology. I'm thinking of a massive decentralized public ledger that could record the ownership of every financial entity in the world, with nowhere to hide from your taxes or former spouse. It would be awesome, if only because it would represent the exact opposite of what the Bitcoin people were originally trying to accomplish.
As long as we can still hide things from our current spouse.
||
Anime!
Last couple years American live-streaming of the Japanese anime seasons has exploded, now dozens of series are being simulcast. But does Funimation, based here in Texas, know what it is getting. The Japanese...are different.
Kumamiko is a new series about a young (14) Shinto priestess (miko), in a remote village who wants to move to town for HS. Her shrine is dedicated to bears (kuma). The local bears can talk because they mated with humans hundreds of years ago.
Anime always surprises me. I though this would be cute warm slice of life, turns out to be 8th grade raunchy humor, with quite a bit of bear on human sex ("his tongue was soft yet rough on my nether parts") and representations of bear on miko rape. Jokingly of course, and not extended.
But Funimation might be in trouble.
|>
You know, keeping track of cross-national corporate ownership actually strikes me as a potentially reasonable use case for blockchain technology. I'm thinking of a massive decentralized public ledger that could record the ownership of every financial entity in the world, with nowhere to hide from your taxes or former spouse.
Except, you know, not using the ledger.
The tricky bit is not the ledger technology, but the lack of legal obligation to record and report beneficial ownership. Crack that and you can record it however you want.
Right. I guess if you made all money electronic and literally traceable when transferred, that would help with the need to know about beneficial ownership (e.g., you could see if a dollar used to pay down the debt of Panama Russia Shell Corporation LLC was used to buy a stallion that ended up in the stables of Vladimir Putin) but barring that the solution is in the law, not technology.
DPRK has implemented something like 63. for data files. It's an OS that watermarks user data that it touches, so that the machine provenance of any suspicious data can be resolved.
Before implementing beneficial ownership of bits of money, recording beneficial ownership of US-registered accounts would be a less draconian starting point. I thought that DE and recently (like last 10 years) WY were places in the US where setting up a shell company was pretty straightforward. For a US resident to cheat taxes with such a thing is tax fraud as far as I know, and I would guess is much less easy. But merely setting up the shell, there's lots of reporting that this is not hard, and a source of income for some US states from at least foreign clients.
"Shell company" isn't a particularly useful term, though. It covers a lot of things. There's a massive difference between a conduit company whose ownership can be traced, even if only to the next level, and one using as in the Panama case bearer shares which are entirely untraceable, or in the New Zealand case effectively anonymous directors or tax free trusts. These are usually dead ends for tax authorities and other investigators
"Untraceable bearer shares" are a pretty great concept. I mean, a ludicrous one, but a great one.
It's difficult to think of something else that so clearly has no legitimate use whatsoever. Big bag of heroin? Valuable high-strength analgesic! Silenced automatic weapon? Just don't want to disturb the neighbours during late-night squirrel hunts! Barrel of hydrofluoric acid, hacksaw, powerdrill and duct tape? I'm a DIY enthusiast and I'm getting into engraving! Untraceable anonymous bearer shares? Um...
Is that actually a thing? I saw it in Die Hard and figured it was just made up for the movie.
Is that actually a thing? I saw it in Die Hard and figured it was just made up for the movie.
Illegal most places but not, apparently, Panama.
I thought Die Hard had bearer bonds, not bearer shares. Let's get our facts straight.
Bearer bonds certainly exist or rather existed - they're mostly extinct in the U.S. Bearer shares are a new one to me.
Bearer shares and bearer bonds have often been the missing links in war stories related by older lawyers and law professors speaking, in the cold dark hours of long-lost conference rooms, of the days when men were men and bills were paid in a timely fashion unlike today Larry Jesus Christ do you think we amend your loan documentation for fun or something and don't even get me started on your busting my balls on the fee caps you asshole, but at almost a Pop Rocks & Coke remove from anything but the rankest hearsay.
This is an interesting discussion. Panama recently cracked down, because the OECD on the use of bearer shares (so crazy!) by requiring them to be deposited with a custodian in Panama, who could provide them to a beneficiary in probate. HOWEVER the excellent lawyers at the link above have a solution to this problem -- you put the Panamanian bearer shares into the name of a "STAR" Trust in the Cayman Islands, which (a) can be held in perpetuity (b) can be completely anonymous (c) is not required to release any information to purported beneficiaries (!) and (d) subject to only minimal taxation. Yay!
71, 74: And let's not forget Heat and Beverly Hills Cop.
78: Jesus, get on that. Great cast and has one of the all time great shootout sequences.
Did I mention it was great? Great great great.
"for a much more understandable reason - to preserve confidentiality in the ownership of those shares" I guess you have to say this stuff if you're a lawyer writing in public, but...
Dude, you haven't seen Heat? Dude. Even the BFI Modern Classics volume is fantastic.
Does it have lesser birds drinking eagle piss?
I don't understand how people with bearer shares aren't constantly getting murdered by their butlers.
What my theory supposes is what if they are.
How could you never have seen Heat? That's a great movie. Need to see.
I guess if your shell company exists for the purpose of holding stolen bullion, bearer shares make a certain amount of sense.
It sounds like its purpose was more for disposing of stolen bullion that holding it.
Thirding or fourthing Heat. Watch it, Moby.
87: I'll add it to my list, but I've got to get to Citizen Kane and Tremors V first.
Although, Tremors 4 (a prequel) was pretty disappointing. Not "Episode 1" disappointing, but still not a strong move.
Have you seen them both? I'll believe you if you have.
No, but how good could Tremors V really be?
Big business blowhard buffoons bearing bearer bonds.
I didn't see Heat when it came out because the local critics said it wasn't very good. And now that everyone claims it is a great movie, it makes me weirdly hate it, because I could have seen a great movie in the theater, and I didn't.
92: I agree with this - though to be honest I still rank it above Tremors III.
I don't understand how people with bearer shares aren't constantly getting murdered by their butlers.
In order to maintain ecological equilibrium, we need to posit an equal number of people with butler shares who are being constantly murdered by their bearers.
Janine Wedel's books about NGOs in post-Soviet Russia are indeed really great. I can't help with Bob's other recommendations.
Meanwhile, I am just amazed at the bearer shares thing. So old school! So blatant! I seem to remember there was a classic 1980s London heist that ripped off something like £50m in bearer bonds from a motorbike courier, but I'm not sure they were ever presented for payment ("Morning! Here to collect on this case full of bearer bonds, ma'am" "Excuse me...are you sure you're not the robber?")
Today's Sueddeutsche is concentrating on the German bourgeoisie - all of them, or thereabouts. Rather wonderfully, though, there's one guy who inherited money who managed to lose his bearer share:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/deutschland-verloren-im-paradies-1.2933833
This is all reinforcing the need for what I call the Woodes Rogers Strategy, in which the UK embarks on a systematic process of invading all the little BDT tax havens and bringing them under the heel of HMRC and the FCA. Most of them barely have armed forces and in any case they've already got the Queen on their stamps so it doesn't really count as aggression.
But that would really need a prime minister who is not, to extend the metaphor, actually doing business with Edward Teach.
We'd have to Brexit first, though, because it's quite clear the money in them belongs to vast numbers of generic Euro-bourgies who are going to hate us so much when the nice man from the Finanzamt turns up clutching the data-sharing request.
Had not heard of Woodes Rogers before today, so thanks for that. Truly epic Wikipedia page. It claims that "piracy expelled, commerce restored" remained the official motto of the Bahamas until the 1970s, which isn't really setting the bar high as a mission statement.
Anyhow, yes of course you guys should invade. Canada can take the Turks and Caicos.
They can have the Turks but we're keeping the Caicos. Also, we want to hang on to St Vincent and at least one Grenadine.
And the story linked in 102 is the best. Joachim zu Baldernach is my hero. "Damn it, where the hell DID I put my Panamanian bearer shares?"
98: There's a dated concept, "local critic".
110 is true. 98 also happened to me (though the greatness of movies in question is still to be determined) which is why I don't read local critics anymore.
Relevant: Where are all the Americans in the Panama Papers?
http://fusion.net/story/287671/americans-panama-papers-trove/
In honour of the forgetfulness of Joachim zu Bandersnatch we should rename the thread "Panama read"
If the modal American in the panapapers is similar to the population mode, I can see why British and German newspapers would get on with their own greedy dentists and two-bit pols before starting on the US state legislators, auto dealers, minor property developers etc. Strangely enough, America is not everyone's first priority.
Best Baldernach detail: he noticed he was short a Panamanian bearer share or two when he wanted to get a bigger yacht.
And what does your company do, Mr Alyakhin?
- We sell yachts.
What kind of yachts?
- Messive yachts.
And to whom do you sell them?
- To people who do not have messive yachts. Or, more often, to people who do have messive yachts, but would like another yacht even more messive. Or newer. Or less sunken.
I did see a documentary about super yachts the other night. Apparently the really big ones are a bit déclassé because you can't take them to St Tropez, at least according the super yacht designer who seemed quite worn out designing all these 100 metres monsters for the parvenus.
I did think that perhaps if you didn't like pandering to stupid rich men with giant egos, being a super yacht designer was an odd career choice.
I think I'd rather enjoy having a massive yacht, St Tropez notwithstanding.
The problem with old yachts is that they don't have bluetooth.
A friend of a friend of a friend designed yachts in New Orleans. He was apparently pleased to find after Katrina that all the unfinished yachts had floated up to the rafters and then settled back down on their trestles unharmed. Then the whole operation moved to Gulfport. In conclusion, the future belongs to Panamanian yacht designers.
Prediction: The Panama Papers will be a nine days' wonder, because it will turn out that nobody much cares.
Also, blurry face cares what you think.
Iceland appears to have uniquely effective democracy, cf. their bank non-bailout.
I think I'd have to read up on what happened before 2008 before I'd say how effective I thought their democracy was.
I also never saw Heat (it looked very generic to me), but I think of it often because I happened to be in Buenos Aires right after it came out, and down there the title was Fuego Contra Fuego, which seemed to over the top compared with its USian name.
So, devotees: which name do you prefer/find more accurate?
He was apparently pleased to find after Katrina that all the unfinished yachts had floated up to the rafters and then settled back down on their trestles unharmed
A disastrous and avoidable climate-change-related disaster lifts all boats!
106: Starz has a television show right now in which he's a major character, which revolves around the whole Bahamas piracy thing. It's actually pretty great, though not Spartacus great. And it's very clearly filmed around Cape Town which makes it kind of funny sometimes if you've been there because there are a lot of shots where it's super clear that you're nowhere near the West Indies.
re: 124
Small enough, I suppose, that senior politicians face a genuine likelihood of being harangued face to face.
A friend of mine is a journalist and went to Iceland after the banking crisis to interview a few people. One evening he phoned up the headquarters of one of the main opposition parties to see if he could arrange an interview with the party leader. The party leader answered the phone.
168 Spartacus (the Starz tv series) is great? It looked cheesy to me but I didn't hang around long.
Also pretty poor oysters to snails ratio IYKWIM AITYD.
there are a lot of shots where it's super clear that you're nowhere near the West Indies.
That's too bad. Its not like there aren't a bunch of West Indian countries who would be perfectly thrilled to host production of a TV show.
There would be too many continuity issues with beer bottles floating in the ocean.
there are a lot of shots where it's super clear that you're nowhere near the West Indies
Accidental inclusion of hippopotami, penguins, giraffes, Tokyo Sexwale and other clues that are obvious to the trained eye.
130: I saw an interview with Lucy Lawless where she reminisced about the large collection of pubic wigs the makeup trailer contained, as all the actresses were following the trend of shaving their bits, requiring a merkin for modesty during the many (not gratuitous at all!) nude scenes. Black Sails has far fewer merkins and many more pirate ships, so there's that.
There would be too many continuity issues with beer bottles floating in the ocean.
Just say they are rum bottles. Problem solved.
Iceland appears to have uniquely effective democracy, cf. their bank non-bailout.
It also has a uniquely ineffective democracy, viz the causes of its banks needing a bailout. Its entire economy pre-crisis was a massively overlevered nexus of banking, fishing and shipping, with the same three or four families popping up all over the place and in government.
135: Such a dirty mind, togolosh. Barry was obviously referring to sinisterly ambiguous senatorial speeches.
with the same three or four families popping up all over the place and in government.
Its Iceland - everyone is related. Three or four families is all they've got.
That's why they have a dating app with anti-incest programming.
130: For whatever reason it takes four or so episodes to find its feet, but yeah it's really good. It isn't, you know, subtle or anything but the subject material isn't really that great for subtlety anyway. There's a lot of heightened emotions and drama, surprisingly good character work underneath it, well constructed/fast plotting and a lot of visual style (a bunch of which is there because they couldn't afford not to have it, but it works). So it's less The Americans and more Hannibal, but that just means it's doing something different.
137:
a massively overlevered nexus of banking, fishing and shipping
Completely unlike Cyprus, Britain, the US...
I don't disagree with you, but I think those anti-bailout referendums are quite remarkable.
There's a lot of heightened emotions and drama, surprisingly good character work underneath it, well constructed/fast plotting and a lot of visual style (a bunch of which is there because they couldn't afford not to have it, but it works).
You already had me at "Lucy Lawless nude scenes."
Those scenes are pretty great.
The funny thing about Spartacus is that the nudity feels way, way less gratuitous to me than in almost every other show with nudity in it. And the reason is that it's pretty much constant and also gender neutral. I mean, you get to see almost if not every major female characters' boobs, yes, but if you ever wandered what Manu Bennett's dick looked like, well, there you go*. So it's not HBO style "time for some exposition so take off your shirt every female extra" stuff so much as the fact that, well, people are just nude and having sex all the time.
*There aren't that many dicks flopping around** openly, but pretty much every male character takes their clothes off at one point or another, or probably more accurate a lot of points or another.
**Well, there is the character just called "Horsecock", but that ends badly.
Completely unlike Cyprus, Britain, the US...
I don't disagree with you, but I think those anti-bailout referendums are quite remarkable.
I mean, I'm not going to disagree exactly, but they really didn't have much choice. Iceland wasn't a Eurozone or even EU member, and at the time of the crisis its external debt to GDP ratio was 7x and the banking system was 10 times GDP. Only Cyprus comes close on that front. They simply couldn't credibly bail out the banks (and nor did Cyprus, famously). And bear in mind that the referendums weren't about bank bailouts but guarantees that the Icelandic deposit protection system (and ultimately the government), owed foreign savers.
Microstates are a drain on the global economy, mostly because being a tax haven is the only way they can compete on the global stage. We should do as much as possible to eliminate them all. The British crown dependencies and overseas territories would be a good place to start. No independent state or territory should be allowed with population less than a million.
Still not disagreeing, but if I understand correctly, the decision not to guarantee foreign deposits resulted in the liquidation of the banks (or their foreign-deposit taking subsidiaries) which strikes me as effectively a non-bailout.
Your lack-of-choice point is good though.
The microstates with full independence don't actually tend to be tax havens - or not outrageously shady ones at any rate. The field really is dominated by the Crown dependencies and overseas territories. I don't think you can revoke their independence because they aren't actually independent. But, given that they are already not independent, the British government really needs to take responsibility for making them clean up their act.
148
Kinda true, but don't forget Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Monaco
148. You could make them independent if you really wanted to. But I expect the British Treasury would prefer things the way they are.
Being a tax haven seems like a relatively innocuous problem compared to what some macrostates get up to.
I like to imagine 140 as a slider that sets a quantitative preference.
One end is labeled "Angelina Jolie's Brother."
The other end is "Sigmund".
Or possibly the same end, because I don't understand 154.
Ian Welsh blah blah but neat at the end
Bernie Sanders speech on the Panama Free Trade Bill, 2011
Then, why would we be considering a stand-alone free trade agreement with this country?...Bernie Sanders, there is moreWell, it turns out that Panama is a world leader when it comes to allowing wealthy Americans and large corporations to evade U.S. taxes by stashing their cash in off-shore tax havens. And, the Panama Free Trade Agreement would make this bad situation much worse.
Mr. President, the trade agreement with Panama would effectively bar the U.S. from cracking down on illegal and abusive offshore tax havens in Panama. In fact, combating tax haven abuse in Panama would be a violation of this free trade agreement, exposing the U.S. to fines from international authorities.
Clinton supported this bill, and Obama signed it But the only possible problem one could have with the godlike Obama is with the color of his skin.
Moby likes him.
There is a huge moral difference between voting for the lesser evil, which I did myself, and "liking" evil or calling evil good.
The same thing happens with states: it's only ones that are too small that are the tax havens (Delaware and South Dakota, most notably).
Yep. Wyoming and Alaska would do it too, but they actually have natural resources to extract so they don't need to as much.
Still not disagreeing, but if I understand correctly, the decision not to guarantee foreign deposits resulted in the liquidation of the banks (or their foreign-deposit taking subsidiaries) which strikes me as effectively a non-bailout.
Not really. The liquidation, or at least the resolution, preceded the referenda and was triggered by the banks inability to pay their wholesale debt (and the government's/central bank's refusal to step in). Landsbanki went bankrupt in October 2008. Kaupthing was nationalised and broken up right after that. Glitnir was nationalised at the same time, and was effectively wound up in early 2009, though it wasn't formally declared insolvent until after the first referendum.
I mean, it's definitely not a bank bailout. But the people who weren't bailed out as a result of the referenda weren't bank shareholders or bondholders. It was British and Dutch depositors in Landsbanki. Which, you know, is indeed a striking thing for a democracy to do, but I'm not sure it's a triumph of anti-bailoutism compared to the first part, nationalising and breaking up the banks.
How much extra interest were they getting on those deposits? Did they lose their savings trying to get another .25%?
No, more like an extra 4%, which should have been a red flag of course. The Icesave accounts were by far the highest yielding demand deposit accounts around in the UK (and I presume the Netherlands), though the Irish banks were also very aggressive (see a pattern?).
I have plaid lenses in my glasses.
The Wikipedia page on this is too complex to read while participating in a conference call.
spartacus added to netflix watch list!
Make sure you start with Blood and Sand rather than Gods of the Arena. That one chronologically comes first, but only for the sad reason that everyone was waiting to see if Andy Whitfield (who really is amazing in the first season) was going to survive cancer and they needed to make something to keep the show alive. It's still good, but without the first season it's not as interesting because it assumes you've watched what follows.
Don't worry! Vox is here to explain why shell corporations are sometimes legitimate!
Wyoming and Alaska would do it too, but they actually have natural resources to extract so they don't need to as much.
Didn't need to, I think you mean. I hadn't thought of becoming a tax shelter as a solution to AK's fiscal woes, but I could maybe see it happening. We've certainly got the "minimal taxation" part down.
IANATL, but Delaware isn't meaningfully a tax shelter, I don't think. I mean, they don't have state corporate tax, but who cares. It's pretty good for shielding ownership, if that's what you're into, but you don't have people stashing their illicit unreported income and then using untraceable bearer shares to pick it up, a la Panama. And you better believe the feds and the IRS can figure out who owns what if they want to. South Dakota is primarily known for its dynasty trusts -- you can tie up your wealth for the beneficiaries in your family forever, and there's no state level income tax on that, so lots of rich people do so. This isn't exactly a tax shelter, though -- there are various complicated ways in which this avoids or minimizes federal estate or inheritance taxes, but it's not a means of tax evasion. Neither state makes it easy to set up entities used purely for tax evasion. I guess you could have anonymous owners of a Delaware or Nevada corporation be the next level of anonymity for your tax-evading account in Panama, but I don't see how you could usefully set up such entities purely for tax evasion on their own. Possibly because I'm not creative/criminal enough.
there are various complicated ways in which this avoids or minimizes federal estate or inheritance taxes, but it's not a means of tax evasion
This statement seems to be either self-refuting or relying on an overly technical definition of "tax evasion".
Well, it's not a means of illegally stashing your taxable income, as some German who sends his money offshore into the Panamanian bank is.
In addition to dynastic trusts, South Dakota also sells fireworks that are illegal in surrounding states.
Or, I guess what really happened is that the German transfers personal assets into the name of the secret Panamanian corporation, which then keeps cash in Swizerland, and the German goes to Switzerland, hands over the bearer shares, and gets cash that's escaped the authorities' notice. It's kind of great in its way.
What's to stop the guy working for the Panamanian corporation from just stealing it? Asking for a friend.
If you just mean it's legal as opposed to illegal
I guess my question is, if something is both untraceable and handled by a lawyer in Panama, why doesn't that guy just steal it and fuck off to Switzerland himself?
And reputation more generally, I guess. You can probably make more overall by helping lots of rich people hide their money than you would by stealing it from one rich person.
Obviously, except you wait until the big fish comes.
We clearly need to start an Unfogged tontine where the surviving beneficiary gets paid in bearer shares.
Stealing money from rich people who are trying to hide their money illegally seems like a good way to wind up dead.
181, 2 and 4 explain why you don't steal a million dollars, not $50 million or whatever. I bet you can hide very well with $50 million.
186: If you steal all their money, what are they going to do to get you? Call the cops? Find a hit man who charges need-based fees?
I bet you can hide pretty well with $50m, but not well enough to prevent the professionals hired by the guy whose $50m you took from finding you.
They're not going to give you all their money. They'll spread it around to various other guys like you.
Maybe they explain this in more detail in law school.
I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to entrust ALL their money to a single untraceable account handled by a single Panamanian lawyer. I doubt they'd even entrust a meaningful percentage. Rich people diversify.
Diversifying your investments is a pretty fundamental skill for being a rich person.
190: Probably true, but if I'm an Panamanian lawyer whose father was a fleeing Nazi, I probably went to German school with those other guys.
178 -- sounds like you haven't heard of a little thing called "professionalism," my friend. With their exceptional self restraint and selfless dedication to client service, these Panamanian lawyers should be heroes to the profession.
Yeah but, fifty. Million. Dollars...American.
I think I should take out an ad in the PBA Journal. "If it's really untraceable, you can just steal it."
Half of the reason (historically) government exists is to let rich people define stuff as theirs. I feel like the guy in Doctor Strangelove* who points out how stupid it is to build a weapon you actually can't control.
* I haven't seen this movie either.
Yeah but, fifty. Million. Dollars...American.
Six of the seven Star Wars movies. Airplane!, the Canadian film Airplane! was based on, and The Lego Movie.