James Henry, former chief economist at McKinsey and an expert on tax havens estimates that as much as 32 trillion euros worldwide is held by a handful of dictators and billionaires (a staggering sum roughly equal to the combined National Debt of the USA and the European Union) and this statistic doesn't include their non financial assets like mansions, yachts, private jets and art.
The reality is that .001% of the worlds' population are systematically skimming off the wealth of ordinary citizens. Take the time to listen to this interview with James Henry wherein he describes the collusion between the extremely wealthy, bankers, lawyers, lobbyists and greased politicians to facilitate this massive ongoing theft.
By what logic can we justify this grotesque transfer of wealth that if repatriated and taxed would go a long way to resolving the crisis with the Euro and eliminating any justification for dismantling social spending? Why are we sidestepping this fundamental issue? HSBC, Goldman Saks, JP Morgan, Barclay's, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse have been the dominate players in facilitating money laundering and setting up offshore accounts. Contrary to the public's general understanding, the small offshore banks are mainly conduit for sums eventually ending up on Wall Street, Swiss banks and The City in London. Each of these centres do not report to tax authorities the money deposited by foreigners and there is a long history of benefiting from the illegally gained and laundered wealth of the dictators, drug dealers, tax avoiding corporations and oligarchs they do business with. It is referred to as Hot Money. Their political donations, investment in lawyers and extensive lobbying renders them untouchable. And compounding this injustice the banking system demands indebted nations to accept high interest loans, years of austerity and the selling off of public assets to reduce it's debts while at the same time assisting their wealthiest citizens to the avoid taxation that would alleviate many of the problems. A disgusting two-faced banking logic earning money from indebted nations while earning more by helping its richest citizens to hide their wealth and thereby avoiding their rightful taxation contribution. Facilitating the rape of a nation's wealth is clearly a corruption of the banking system but lawyers and politicians keep them out of jail.
And this wealthy group never has enough and with the support of their corrupted politicians advocates the dismantling of government programs such as social security and Medicare, privatizing public utilities, eliminating unions, further deregulation and promoting the denial of man made global warming as a means for their further enrichment without government interference. They must have more. There is no end to their gluttonous demands. They have become the untouchables ably supported by their bankers and richly rewarded politicians.
Their credo is don't tax us, don't regulate us and some of it will trickle down. Their justification is the Laffer Curve as it is applied to the highest incomes. It is much loved by the Tea baggers, Libertarians and their devoted followers, but not by any serious economist. The curve states the obvious. At the low end of the curve the government role is minimized with insufficient tax revenues to support social programs and public investments, and oligarchs and banks and businesses have all of it to invest; at the highest end of the curve heavy taxation keeps most money in the hands of governments who conservatives believe will only waste it and not enough is left for business investments. The conservative assumption is that if the government can't get their hands on revenues the economy will thrive from private investments. Well Globalization, off-shoring wealth in tax havens and the casino effect of hedge funds have changed all these assumptions and recent studies overwhelmingly show that wealth has poured up to the untaxed rich instead of trickling down with the income gains of the wealthiest at the expense of the public. For example in 1978, CEOs in the US took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make on the average roughly 206 times more than workers and the pay isn’t always tied to the performance of their businesses. Commonly huge CEO pay increases often occur when stocks are plunging and jobs are cut.
The reality in this nightmare is that the wealth of the untaxed rich (better known as Hot Money) mainly ends up in offshore accounts where aside from self indulgences is mostly directed to investments in speculative Hedge Funds and foreign investments. Casino like electronic day trading and the marketing of complex and often fraudulent financial products with this Hot Money simply compounds this theft. What we have here is a greed driven human chain without principles and with no purpose other than 'having more' with oligarchs, bankers, traders, media hacks and hangers on all chasing money. With the immense wealth created within this system they buy their politicians to do their bidding and the nation-state can no longer represent the needs of it's citizens.This is a power grab by people without a vision other than personal gain. I don't think they even know where they want to take us and where it will end.
The public is easily led, confused by the complexity of what is happening and their attention easily diverted by divisive media created issues to influence opinion. There is no limit to the lies, distortions, flag waving and inflaming imagery the rich will invest in publicizing to deflect the public's attention from their massive theft and their determination to place nation-states under their control. The politicians who mouth this filth are their paid prostitutes. Clearly democracy is in conflict with their greed driven goals and must be converted to bread and circuses to entertain and manipulate the masses. Simply the music of the pied piper leading the many to the slaughter.We are sheep and our pastures are drying up.
The reality is that .001% of the worlds' population are systematically skimming off the wealth of ordinary citizens. Take the time to listen to this interview with James Henry wherein he describes the collusion between the extremely wealthy, bankers, lawyers, lobbyists and greased politicians to facilitate this massive ongoing theft.
By what logic can we justify this grotesque transfer of wealth that if repatriated and taxed would go a long way to resolving the crisis with the Euro and eliminating any justification for dismantling social spending? Why are we sidestepping this fundamental issue? HSBC, Goldman Saks, JP Morgan, Barclay's, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse have been the dominate players in facilitating money laundering and setting up offshore accounts. Contrary to the public's general understanding, the small offshore banks are mainly conduit for sums eventually ending up on Wall Street, Swiss banks and The City in London. Each of these centres do not report to tax authorities the money deposited by foreigners and there is a long history of benefiting from the illegally gained and laundered wealth of the dictators, drug dealers, tax avoiding corporations and oligarchs they do business with. It is referred to as Hot Money. Their political donations, investment in lawyers and extensive lobbying renders them untouchable. And compounding this injustice the banking system demands indebted nations to accept high interest loans, years of austerity and the selling off of public assets to reduce it's debts while at the same time assisting their wealthiest citizens to the avoid taxation that would alleviate many of the problems. A disgusting two-faced banking logic earning money from indebted nations while earning more by helping its richest citizens to hide their wealth and thereby avoiding their rightful taxation contribution. Facilitating the rape of a nation's wealth is clearly a corruption of the banking system but lawyers and politicians keep them out of jail.
And this wealthy group never has enough and with the support of their corrupted politicians advocates the dismantling of government programs such as social security and Medicare, privatizing public utilities, eliminating unions, further deregulation and promoting the denial of man made global warming as a means for their further enrichment without government interference. They must have more. There is no end to their gluttonous demands. They have become the untouchables ably supported by their bankers and richly rewarded politicians.
Their credo is don't tax us, don't regulate us and some of it will trickle down. Their justification is the Laffer Curve as it is applied to the highest incomes. It is much loved by the Tea baggers, Libertarians and their devoted followers, but not by any serious economist. The curve states the obvious. At the low end of the curve the government role is minimized with insufficient tax revenues to support social programs and public investments, and oligarchs and banks and businesses have all of it to invest; at the highest end of the curve heavy taxation keeps most money in the hands of governments who conservatives believe will only waste it and not enough is left for business investments. The conservative assumption is that if the government can't get their hands on revenues the economy will thrive from private investments. Well Globalization, off-shoring wealth in tax havens and the casino effect of hedge funds have changed all these assumptions and recent studies overwhelmingly show that wealth has poured up to the untaxed rich instead of trickling down with the income gains of the wealthiest at the expense of the public. For example in 1978, CEOs in the US took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make on the average roughly 206 times more than workers and the pay isn’t always tied to the performance of their businesses. Commonly huge CEO pay increases often occur when stocks are plunging and jobs are cut.
The reality in this nightmare is that the wealth of the untaxed rich (better known as Hot Money) mainly ends up in offshore accounts where aside from self indulgences is mostly directed to investments in speculative Hedge Funds and foreign investments. Casino like electronic day trading and the marketing of complex and often fraudulent financial products with this Hot Money simply compounds this theft. What we have here is a greed driven human chain without principles and with no purpose other than 'having more' with oligarchs, bankers, traders, media hacks and hangers on all chasing money. With the immense wealth created within this system they buy their politicians to do their bidding and the nation-state can no longer represent the needs of it's citizens.This is a power grab by people without a vision other than personal gain. I don't think they even know where they want to take us and where it will end.
The public is easily led, confused by the complexity of what is happening and their attention easily diverted by divisive media created issues to influence opinion. There is no limit to the lies, distortions, flag waving and inflaming imagery the rich will invest in publicizing to deflect the public's attention from their massive theft and their determination to place nation-states under their control. The politicians who mouth this filth are their paid prostitutes. Clearly democracy is in conflict with their greed driven goals and must be converted to bread and circuses to entertain and manipulate the masses. Simply the music of the pied piper leading the many to the slaughter.We are sheep and our pastures are drying up.
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