Deal to Cut $38 Billion Averts Shutdown
By CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders and President Obama headed off a shutdown of the government with less than two hours to spare Friday night under a tentative budget deal that would cut $38 billion from federal spending this year.

After days of tense negotiations and partisan quarrelling, House Republicans came to preliminary terms with the White House and Senate Democrats over financing the government for the next six months, resolving a stubborn impasse that had threatened to disrupt federal operations across the country and around the globe.

Speaker John A. Boehner, who had pressed Democrats for cuts sought by members of the conservative new House majority, presented the package of widespread spending reductions and policy provisions and won a positive response from his rank and file shortly before 11 p.m.

Both Democrats and Republicans proclaimed they had reached a deal and would begin the necessary steps to pass the bill and send it to Mr. Obama next week.

Democrats said that under the agreement, the budget measure would not include provisions sought by Republicans to limit environmental regulations and to restrict financing for Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions. But Mr. Boehner said in a statement that the agreement included a restriction on abortion financing in Washington.

“This has been a lot of discussion and a long fight,” Mr. Boehner said as he left the party meeting. “But we fought to keep government spending down because it really will in fact help create a better environment for job creators in our country.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/politics/09fiscal.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Corporate secrecy, which involves hiding the identities of company owners from tax and other legal authorities, is itself no secret. It is well known that offshore banking centers such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands have for many years enabled fraudsters all over the world to carry out scams, launder illicit profits, stash stolen loot and hide money from tax authorities.

The basic method is simple: Shell companies with no real business functions are created for the exclusive purpose of hiding the identities of the owners of valuable assets. The legal fiction works because offshore secrecy jurisdictions, by definition, do not require the real owners to identify themselves to the banks and other financial institutions with which they deal.

http://thekomisarscoop.com/2010/12/shells-shams-and-corporate-scams/

The consumer products giants Unilever and Procter & Gamble (P&G) have been fined 315m euros (£280m, $456m) for fixing washing powder prices in eight European countries.

It follows a three-year investigation by the European Commission following a tip-off by the German company, Henkel.

Unilever sells Omo and Surf, P&G makes Tide, and Henkel sells Persil in certain European countries.

The fines were discounted by 10% after the two admitted running a cartel.

Unilever was fined 104m euros and P&G was fined 211.2m euros.

Henkel was not fined in return for providing the tip-off.

The Commission called the investigation "Purity".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13064928

That's the problem when you run a cartel... One of the participants may rat on the operation in order to gain an advantange... In this case not being fined... Ah well, it's whitewash as usual...

A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.

James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.

He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy

$21 trillion represents more than a quarter of the entire world GDP per annum... 

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A far-reaching new study suggests a staggering $21tn in assets has been lost to global tax havens. If taxed, that could have been enough to put parts of Africa back on its feet – and even solve the euro crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy-tax-havens

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On top of this please note that a few years ago a study about the "Chinese diaspora" showed that Chinese outside China had a wealth nearly equivalent to that of the USA.... See toon at top...

Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.

The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens.

In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it.

In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation.

But the two can now be named for the first time because of their use of companies in offshore havens, particularly in the British Virgin Islands, where owners' identities normally remain secret.

The names have been unearthed in a novel project by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ], in collaboration with the Guardian and other international media, who are jointly publishing their research results this week.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/03/offshore-secrets-offshore-tax-haven

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China's princelings storing riches in Caribbean offshore haven

By James Ball and Guardian US Interactive Team

More than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are making use of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, leaked financial documents reveal.

The brother-in-law of China's current president, Xi Jinping, as well as the son and son-in-law of former premier Wen Jiabao are among the political relations making use of the offshore havens, financial records show.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/jan/21/china-british-virgin-islands-wealth-offshore-havens

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机密文件披露中国精英的海外资产
两万多名中国内地及香港投资者在避税天堂注册公司

美国一家独立新闻组织取得的机密档案和资料库显示，中国高层领导的近亲在加勒比海避税天堂持有隐秘的离岸公司，有助中共精英在海外隐藏巨额财富。 这些文件包括国家主席习近平的姐夫在海外与他人合伙的地产公司注册资料，以及前国务院总理温家宝的儿子、女婿注册的BVI（英属维尔京群岛）公司。 国际调查记者同盟（缩写ICIJ）获得的密件显示，近22,000名中国内地和香港的投资者在离岸金融中心注册公司，其中起码有15名包括富豪、全国人大代表、涉嫌贪污的国企高管等知名人士。

文件还显示，普华永道、瑞银集团（缩写UBS）等会计事务所和欧美银行扮演了关键性的中间人角色，为中国投资者在英属维尔京群岛、萨摩亚群岛等离岸金融中心开设资产信托（trust）和公司。例如，瑞士金融巨擘瑞士信贷集团（简称瑞信）曾协助温家宝的儿子注册BVI公司，当时温家宝仍是国务院总理。

有关的档案和数据库来自两家专门为投资者开设离岸公司、信托和银行账户的商业机构，也就是总部设在新加坡的保得利信誉通集团（Portcullis TrustNet）和总部设在英属维尔京群岛的Commonwealth Trust Limited.

ICIJ两年前获得这批内含250万份文件的离岸密档后，与欧美和亚洲等地50多名记者合作，展开为期一年半的跟进调查与采访。ICIJ与合作的媒体自去年4月起发表一系列有关离岸金融中心的调查报道，在多个国家触发当地政府立案调查、高官下台。有关的政府因而修订有关公职人员和企业的财务披露政策。

半年前，ICIJ 开始分析密件中有关中国大陆和台、港的离岸金融资料，今天首度发布初步的分析报告。

资料显示，中国大陆作为世界第二大经济体，对遥远的离岸金融小岛依赖日增。由于隐蔽、免税和方便国际贸易的特点，避税天堂大受中国投资者青睐。中国经济转型为社会主义和资本主义混合体后，已成为海外避税天堂的主要客户。

Translation below:

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Disclosure of confidential documents elite Chinese overseas assets More than twenty thousand investors in mainland China and Hong Kong registered company in a tax haven   Independent news organizations have made the United States a confidential files and databases show that close relatives of senior Chinese leaders held secretive tax havens in the Caribbean offshore companies , help the CCP elite wealth hidden abroad . These documents include President Xi Jinping 's brother ( British Virgin Islands ) in partnership with others overseas property company registration information , as well as former Premier Wen Jiabao 's son, son- registered BVI. Confidential investigative reporter International League ( abbreviation ICIJ) obtained showed that nearly 22,000 investors in mainland China and Hong Kong registered companies in offshore financial centers , which are at least 15 , including the rich , National People's Congress , the state-owned enterprise executives and other alleged corruption celebrities. The document also shows that PwC , UBS ( abbreviation UBS) and other U.S. and European banks and accounting firms played a key intermediary role , as Chinese investors to open in the British Virgin Islands , Samoa and other offshore financial centers asset Trust (trust) and companies. For example, the Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse Group ( CS ) has assisted Wen 's son BVI registered company, was still Premier Wen Jiabao . Relevant files and databases from two investors opened specifically for offshore companies, trusts and bank accounts of businesses, which is headquartered in Singapore Prodigy reputation Tong Group (Portcullis TrustNet) and headquartered in the British Virgin Islands the Commonwealth Trust Limited. Two years ago, after ICIJ obtain these documents contain 2.5 million offshore secret files , cooperation with Europe and Asia, more than 50 reporters , launched a year and a half investigation and follow-up interviews . ICIJ and cooperation between the media published a series of reports on the investigation of offshore financial centers since last April , triggering local governments in several countries to initiate an investigation , officials step down. Therefore amend the relevant government public officials and corporate financial disclosure policy . Six months ago , ICIJ start analyzing confidential information relating to the offshore Chinese mainland and Taiwan, Hong Kong , today released a preliminary analysis of the first report . Statistics show that in China , the world 's second largest economy , on the distant increasing reliance on offshore islands . As the concealment , duty-free and convenient features of international trade, tax havens greatly favored by Chinese investors . China's economic transition to socialism and capitalism after the mixture has become a major customer of overseas tax havens .(translation by Google...)

See toon at top...

Many of the world's problems — from declining public services to corruption — can be explained in two words: offshore wealth.

That's according to investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, who is working to unravel the intricate global web of money and power.

"I think the damage that is being done by this is now more and more visible and more and more obvious," he says of offshore tax havens and widespread kleptocracy.

And while he says the problem is big, it's also relatively new.

"I think officials have probably always stolen from the people they rule, but essentially 60, 70 years ago if you stole money, you could put it in a hole in the ground but that was more or less all you could do with it, you couldn't really enjoy it properly," he told RN's Geraldine Doogue. 

But the invention of offshore finance by bankers in London and Switzerland in the 1950s changed that, he says.

"You didn't need to put money in a hole in the ground any more, you could steal it, stash it, and then miraculously they liberated it, they set it free — and then you could spend it," Bullough says.

Now, the super-rich grow nest eggs and siphon funds into offshore tax havens, and corruption inflicts damage on political and democratic institutions across the world.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-13/oliver-bullough-on-moneyland-tax-e...

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At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions are the largest global players in the world of international finance. How did this come about, and what impact does it have on the world today? This is what the Spider’s Web sets out to investigate.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/14/watch-the-spiders-web-britains-secon...

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by Frank Lee

 To understand the present, we must understand the past, and possibly the future direction of historical processes. Well where did it all begin?

Well “it” (i.e., unbounded, rent-seeking, extractive capitalism) had existed for a long period of time dating back to the 19th century and perhaps beyond. 

Economic theories have always been little more than a rationale for what was essentially a conflict between classes and vested interests, and, whisper it softly, this is still essentially the case. The rentier regime based upon rent extraction on behalf of the land-owning aristocracy was historically pitted against the rising industrial manufacturing classes, the bourgeoisie in the manufacturing cities and towns.

Additionally, the emerging working class was beginning to flex its economic, and in the fullness of time, its political muscles. 

Unexpectedly perhaps, what was to emerge was an (albeit unstable) marriage of convenience between bourgeois and proletariat against the rentier class. In the UK the liberal reformers of the 19th century, David Ricardo, J.S.Mill et al. and during the 20th century J.M.Keynes. [1] carried the struggle against the ruling rentier classes, but both lacked a mass movement and were ultimately superseded though not completely extinguished by radical socialist reformers, principally based around the Independent Labour Party, the Trade Union Congress, and the Fabian Society. 

These were to form the Labour Representation Committee, which eventually became the Labour Party in 1906. A similar process was apparent in Germany when the SPD increasingly took on the role of leader of the working class against the Bismarckian political ascendency, anti-socialist laws notwithstanding. The Fabian socialist Weltanschauung was systematically outlined in Fabian Essays in Socialism, first published in 1889, where the general evolutionist theme is clearly discernible.

The essays identify and break down general historical trends into more specific ones: firstly, there was the onward march of democracy; secondly, the increasing organization of the economy and the demise of laissez-faire; thirdly, the gradual socialization and integration of society. 

In one of the essays, The Historic Basis of Socialism, Sidney Webb argued that the unstoppable momentum of democratisation would provide the bridge to socialism; democracy being the prerequisite for a socialist society. 

The mainstream which has borne European society toward socialism during the past 100 years has been the irresistible progress of democracy. De Tocqueville drove and hammered this truth into the reluctant ears of the old world two generations ago; and we have pretended to carry it about as part of our mental furniture ever since.”[2]

Sentiments of the above sort, common enough at the time and still valid today, seem curiously antique in the modern world. The struggle between productive and extractive capitalism has always swung to and fro between the banking, landowning, financial elites and the industrial, manufacturing class strata, and in addition, with the working class in a struggle against both; although the labour movement often formed alliances against the financiers and rentier elites.

Both Teddy and Franklin D Roosevelt were to become engaged in a struggle against extractive rentierdom and monopoly by mobilising state policies and institutions during different historical epochs – the policies of Trust busting, and the New Deal being the successful outcomes of this struggle, although they stopped well short of socialism. The latest manifestation of this cyclical phase of political/ideological struggle – i.e., neoliberalism – came into existence roughly in the early 1970s and became entrenched from the 1980s onwards. (See more below.) 

In our own time the dominance of the rentier classes and extractive capitalism seems, in the short term at least, to be complete. The central ideological features of this mode of financial hegemony are: tax avoidance/evasion, corporations and intra-firm trade, deregulation and privatisation – lesser and perhaps more sordid goals included corruption and criminality; and the whole configuration enveloped by an all-encompassing culture which is anti-state, anti-tax, anti-redistributive; a winner-takes-all mindset which erodes social solidarity leading to various types of social crises and malfunctions, both individually and collectively. 

Symptomatic of these changes is manifest in today’s world where at any one time a huge ball of speculative hot money circumnavigates the globe in search of a quick buck at somebody else’s expense. Such a practise can only take place in the absence of capital controls (which of course entailed deregulation).

The developing East Asian economies in 1997/98 became a target for such a speculative attack and were brought low by this incursion of hot money – a visitation as welcome as a cloud of locusts – and were then picked clean as their currency, property and exchange rates were destabilised and looted before the exit of these same speculative flows. Not being shackled by a liberalisation of their capital account, China had capital controls and so escaped the 97/98 crisis largely unscathed. 

In another contemporary context the author notes: 

Developing countries lost $1.2 trillion, in 2008 – losses that have grown at 18% per year. Compare this to the $18 billion in foreign aid that they received during the same period … that means that for every dollar that we (i.e., the West) we have generously been handing across the top of the table we have been taken 10 dollars of illicit money under the table … Remember that the next time some bright young economist wonders why aid to Africa is not working.” [3]

These monies generally emanate from various corrupt regimes in Africa, Latin America and other developing areas but are nullified, by a considerable margin, by the inflows of monies from the developed world. Strange to say that the developing world is in effect subsidising the developed world.

Moreover, in addition to the flow of monies from the developing to the developed world there should be added other clandestine streams which wend their way into licit outlets by way of offshore mechanisms and subterfuges after having been carefully laundered. 

…these financial flows break down into three categories. Criminal monies, from drug smuggling, counterfeit goods, racketeering and so on, accounting to about one third of the total. Corrupt money – local bribes remitted abroad, or bribes paid abroad or a small part of the total, or the third total, cross-border commercial transactions. An important fact to note from this is that the drugs smugglers, terrorists and criminals use exactly the same offshore mechanisms and machinations – shell banks, trusts and dummy corporations – that corporations use.” [4]

Moreover, in our own gilded age tax avoidance continues to grow and diversify in the form of an excrescence on the real economy; this situation is tolerated and even encouraged due to the many vested interests that profit (literally) from it. In mafia parlance tax avoidance and money laundering enjoys a ‘made’ (protected) status. 

The laws and regulations – the ‘super-ego’ – which once kept the uncontrollable ‘Id’ of finance capital in its Pandora’s Box, unfortunately no longer prevail. The annulment of these legal instruments which forbade any infringement of these rules, e.g., the Glass-Stegall Act of 1934. 

Glass-Stegall strictly separated the activities of commercial banks from investment banks preventing speculators from making bets with depositors’ money (which in passing was revoked by the Clinton administration – but of course!) as well as capital controls, or the gold-dollar standard of fixed exchange rates enshrined in the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944; all this ended when the lid of Pandora’s Box was lifted and all the evils and miseries of the world flew out to afflict mankind.

The pivotal moment in this deregulatory zeitgeist was the ‘Big Bang’ of 1986 as it was called. This was explosive enough, but an even bigger bang followed:

Modern histories of London’s growth as a financial centre typically point to the Big Bang of 1986, the sudden deregulation of London’s markets driven by the Thatcher administration … However, one particularly astute journalist – Tim Congdon – wrote in the Spectator magazine, of a much bigger bang which had transformed international finance over the last 25 years … 

…An extraordinary situation has arisen, where the euromarket which has no physical embodiment in an exchange building or even a widely a widely recognised set of rules and regulations is now the largest source of capital in the world … According to Gary Burn the eurocurrency/eurodollars emergence … ‘was the first shot in the neo-liberal counter-revolution against the social market and the Keynesian Welfare State.’ This was the banks and financial industries great move offshore.”[5]

There now exists a tax haven archipelago consisting of dozens of offshore locations straddling the globe. For UK this consists of its crown dependencies in the Channel Islands, principally Jersey, Guernsey and in the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man.

More outlying havens would include those Caribbean outlets the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Montserrat as well as several smaller jurisdictions, and finally to a number of pacific atolls. 

And of course, the UK is itself a tax haven which is why American banks came to the UK to escape the more stringent restrictions placed upon them in the US. The UK thus became a financial Guantanamo in the sense in which they could do things in the UK that they could not get away with in the US. To get some idea of the magnitude of monies squirreled away in one UK tax haven, Jersey, Trusts, a specific type of asset, are not simply about tax. 

Many people would be surprised … to find out how central these havens are to global finance, there are some £400 billions tied up in ‘Trusts’ – basically a tax avoidance racket – and a description of what trusts are, how they work, who they belong to, and who profits from their existence is another book – from the tiny tax have of Jersey alone – and several trillion $s worth worldwide shrouded in secrecy.” [6]

If flight money and tax evasion capital of these proportions are piling up just in Jersey how much more has been moved offshore to the rest of the world? One can only guess at the magnitudes involved. 

Offshore is a world apart; it has a distinct culture and clientele drawn from both ends of the opulent classes. What we have is a merger of the global overworld with the global underworld held together by secrecy and an oath of Omerta. Dukes, Bankers, Oligarchs, Gangsters, corporate CEOs, millionaires and billionaires. After laundering these groups appear eminently respectable and as clean as a whistle.

Offshore general frameworks which distinguished between criminal and the legitimate have been eroded away and replaced by networks of trust that distinguish between the well-established on the one hand, and the unknown and dubious on the other. 

Individuals with sums to launder and/or invest with minimal taxation want to know that the people with whom they deal can be trusted not to have any moral qualms. If the bankers don’t know someone, that someone may have to jump through many hoops; if they are long-standing and trusted clients the rules fall away.

These opaque networks who are deferential to the aristocracy of wealth and money and oblivious of formal laws, are the ultimate comfort for the banks wealthy clients and totally amoral. As F Scott Fitzgerald once commented:

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. 

They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are.

They are different.”

The iron law of money is not new: in the gilded jazz age of late 19th century America of The Great Gatsby. we can see the echo of our own present decadence. It speaks through the voice of Amory, a central character in one of F Scott Fitzgerald’s lesser novels.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/01/only-little-people-pay-taxes/

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the dollar dollop...