The big story this week has been the release of the so-called Panama Papers……a group of documents that spell out all thew people, rich people, that are avoiding taxes and such through an offshore corporation.
One of my readers asked me in my first post on this why there were not any Americans on the list……I told him that I did not know and that was a promise of much more to come….(you can read it here)……
Source: Panama Papers – In Saner Thought
But it got me to thinking…..how wealthy would someone have to be to pay to keep the info secret? Then I read this piece……
The newspaper that first received the Panama Papers says it isn’t going to release all 11.5 million files it received from a whistleblower to the public or to law enforcement—because it “isn’t the extended arm of prosecutors or the tax investigators.” Sueddeutsche Zeitung has shared files relating to celebrities and politicians, but the German paper doesn’t believe there’s public interest in exposing all of the individuals and companies involved, the AP reports. The paper says it was contacted by a source at Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca who felt a “very strong moral impulse” to expose the tax evasion and money laundering the firm facilitated with its creation of thousands of offshore shell companies. In other coverage:
- Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela, apparently unhappy with his country’s name appearing in headlines about financial crimes all over the world, has promised to boost transparency and clean up the industry, the BBC reports. He says the country will bring in international experts to recommend changes.
- The Guardian looks at how the scandal has exposed China’s “red nobility”—wealthy families connected to the Communist Party. Prominent figures named in the papers include the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping. Unsurprisingly, the scandal is not being reported in China, and censors have been trying to scrub every mention of it from social media.
- The CBC looks at how the wealth revealed in the leak is just a fraction of what an analyst calls “absolutely astonishing, mind-boggling amounts of money” tied up in offshore funds. Estimates run as high as $31 trillion, or 13% of global wealth, much of which is being kept in offshore funds to cheat governments out of tax revenue—or to hide the plunder of national resources.
- The New York Times looks at the history of the Mossack Fonseca firm and its role in Panama’s economy. Co-founder Ramon Fonseca had been trying to expand his role in the country’s government, claiming he wanted to improve the nation’s human rights record.
- At the Atlantic, Brooke Harrington examines the legal issues involved and concludes that the real scandal isn’t the law-breaking—it’s that so much of what Mossack Fonseca did was perfectly legal.
So my guess is that we may NEVER know all the bad players in this saga.
But I noticed that the media is not a good faith player either…..they basically focused on a Putin ally and overlooked the US allies that were on the original list…..so it looks like they will be protecting those that pay for the privilege.
Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained ………
Source: Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak – Craig Murray
Do you think we will ever know thew whole story of the extent of this outrage?
To answer most simply…. No. Did you really expect to hear it all? It’s all just another salvo in the inter-corporate wars for economic dominance that has been taking place for several decades now, as the corporate oligarchs jockey for possession of the most slaves and markets for their arms and weapons…
No, we won’t know it all until it all falls down…
gigoid, the dubious
Someone needs to light the fuse on this powder keg….chuq
Have patience; the idiot oligarchs have no sense of proportion or restraint, and are busily lighting fuses all over the world. It will happen…. it’s like an atomic bomb; the reaction has to reach a critical flash point, then it all goes up at once… It’s a pretty good metaphor for how human rage works…. I reached my flash point a long time ago, as did you. We’re just waiting for the rest to catch up…
gigoid, the dubious
Yep….I am tired of waiting….chuq
Me, too, which is why I’ve been trying to think of more ways to add to the critical mass points… once enough people are pissed off, it only takes ONE to tip it over the edge into a rage that will dwarf everything else in history…
gigoid
All we can do is keep pushing….the harder the better…..chuq
I always liked the phrase from the movie about the teen with the pirate radio show, Harry Hardon, whose signature phrase was “Talk hard!”….
And, I agree, the harder the better…
I mean, usually it takes a two-by-four to the forehead to get their attention…
😉
g
But the ignorance has gotten so ingrained that even a 2 X 4 would only make them flinch a bit….c Man
I find repeated applications with a 2X4, with sufficient force, to get the attention of almost anyone… But, then, my 2X4 is a Louisville slugger…. I like the handle… Then, of course, once we have their attention, repeated application of a ball-peen hammer is also useful in driving home one’s points…
😉
Ah, good memories…
Hahahaha! Love it….chuq
It’s obvious that there are so many bad players, just at this ONE firm, that listing them would take a few hundred thousand times the average human-goldfish’s attention span.
The problem is that this shady practice is so normalized & accepted that even the outright illegal examples barely raise an eyebrow in the industry. Yesterday, I watched a Canadian TV interview with some “tax experts” who actually thought they were being “edgy” by suggesting much of this activity was “tax avoidance” instead of the preferred industry term “tax planning”. I shit you not!
And of course, both “edgy” experts insisted the basic premise is perfectly legal and diminished the role it plays in the overall economy. However, one went out on a limb and came close to committing “heresy” when she suggested Canada should review its outdated tax laws and reevaluate the merit of these standard industry practises.
The US needs new tax laws badly….we even have ads on the tube by accountants that tell you that they can keep you from paying taxes and avoid any cash you may already owe….
I long for the days when more citizens were scared of the IRS than the NSA.