Tax havens are now under attack because governments in the socialistic countries in the West are desperate to do something about the sea of red ink that is drowning them. Much of this red ink is due to saving bankers and others who use these tax havens to avoid paying for the social/government systems they use to make themselves richer. Blaming socialist spending for the economic collapses is short sighted.
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Swiss Secrecy Onslaught May ‘Criminalize’ Elites, Hummler Says – Bloomberg.com
European leaders should give up the attack on Swiss banking secrecy and accept a withholding tax on foreigners to avoid criminalizing wealthy taxpayers, said Konrad Hummler, managing partner of Switzerland’s oldest private bank. .
“If there is really a desire to criminalize part of the elite in European countries, then it would be a bigger problem for these countries than for Switzerland,” Konrad Hummler said in an interview at the offices of Wegelin & Co. in Zurich. The “majority of European clients were not criminals but just diversifying away from their home country.”
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Socialism means taxes. Since day one, this has been true. No taxes=no social services. Countries that try to have no social services usually are places that have no modern services at all. The degree of socialist actions is what is debatable just like the rate of taxation and who pays is up for debate. But there is no debate about the concept that there is this wonderland where one can have total social services and no taxes or a wonderland where there is no need for social services.
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Or rather, people living in the bosom of socialist industrial states might fantasize about the possibility of having a totally non-socialistic condition. Socialism is very peculiar: it can be limited in cruel ways. For example, there can be racist or religious discriminations that prevent sections of the population from accessing any social services. This is how Naziism operated, for example. The Nazis drew up a long list of people who were labeled ‘Untermenschen’ and were then denied any services at all and were cut out of jobs, business, healthcare, everything.
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The Jews have done a replication of this system in Palestine. Jews get full social services while the natives of Palestine get very little to none. The natives are herded into small ghettos while the Master Race gets to do as it pleases. But Israel is very much a socialist state. All of Europe has socialism to varying degrees. They also tried to not have restrictions on who gets social services. This has led to a flood of illegal immigration just like the social system in the US which is superior to Mexico and Central American social systems (which are nearly non-existent in many cases).
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First world retirees are moving to second world countries with few social services. The retirees get all the social benefits of their home country’s social taxes while not paying it on a daily basis via property or sales taxes. Many Europeans and a number of Americans pursue this. The Spanish and Turkish building booms for retirees was all about evading social service taxes, for example.
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Social services=higher taxes. People who have money wish to leave this system because they ‘got their own’. Of course, most of them got this money due entirely and totally to the existence of this social service system. After reaping the benefits, leaving for cheaper digs is a natural response. And the natural response of any social system that works well due to being socialist, is to prevent this from happening. The game of dropping taxes so no one leaves but NO ONE PAYS is a disaster.
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It is part of the problems that are now destroying world economics. Namely, half of humanity has no social services. This is a huge problem. Naturally, people with no social systems want to live where there are social services! This is because countries that have this are better off and people live longer and healthier lives if they live in socialistic countries. Now, there may be readers here who object to any sort of social system. The problem with this is, migration data clearly shows, the majority of humans tend to move towards socialist systems, not the reverse.
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There are malfunctioning social service systems, of course. And there are mixed systems like in the US where we get to have low taxes and fairly high social services. But these places are the key to the destruction of global banking: they are all running very deeply in the red. In particular, the US, UK and Japan all have been very deep in the red. Eastern European nations are doing the same. Running a social system in the red is very dangerous. It leads to depressions as we see in Japan.
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The tax havens run by the British Crown and assorted others are under fire by the socialist countries who need to close these tax loopholes or die. I have advocated using our navy to take over British Protectorates, for example, in order to seize the records of corporations and individuals using them as tax evasions. The US is in terrible trouble, financially. I see lots of desire to eliminate or destroy our retirement systems like Social Security rather than fixing the problems that are undermining our industrial/social systems. Well, the pretense that England doesn’t run these pirate island havens is being dropped. England is taking over these islands quite openly.
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BBC NEWS | Americas | Cayman Islands fears as debts grow
As things stand, the Cayman Islands government cannot borrow any more money to pay debts as it has hit its borrowing limits, which means it now has to get permission from the UK Foreign Office to borrow any extra money.
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The Foreign Office is willing to let them do so, but only if they introduce direct taxation, something the Cayman leader, McKeeva Bush, is wholly opposed to. “There will be no income tax; there will be no property tax. We are not asking the United Kingdom for anything. I wouldn’t expect the UK to give me anything; I wouldn’t expect their taxpayers to pay for anything in the Cayman Islands,” said Mr Bush.
. The Cayman Islands, along with Anguilla and the Turk and Caicos Islands, have been hit not just by the campaign against tax havens but also by the global recession, which has led to a dramatic fall in tourists.
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Since England is dropping the pretense that these places are independent, it is time for England to fez up and stop pretending these places get to write their own rules. Either the government takes control of these out of control islands or someone with a large navy should do this. Letting them be used as pirate coves whereby hedge funds and others can cynically operate raids on our financial structures is insanity.
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Not only due to tax evasion, the other issue is government regulations: many of these piratical countries are used to evade restrictions. I keep talking about the need for restrictions and regulations because I believe the concept of Libra is highly important to all economic systems. Since a lot of wealth can be made out of nothingness, there has to be severe restrictions on this or the wealth created this way will vanish into nothingness when it begins to shoot to infinity. This is a philosophical concept that must be grasped by everyone.
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The refusal to understand the dangers of wealth creation is one of the reasons why so many people at the top were blindsided by the obvious looming collapse in the summer of 2007. I fully expected this collapse and knew it was inevitable. The diagnosis for this collapse is what now interests me. ZIRP has been chosen as the ideal solution because it is both magical and it is nothingness at the same time: the hope is, it will produce a flood of instant wealth, yet again.
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One major tool to prevent imbalances in systems is taxes. If we taxed the banking gnomes at a high rate, they would not be tempted to create money out of nothingness and then give themselves most of it. They would gain nothing by doing this because the government would confiscate it! People who exploit workers by outsourcing jobs should be very heavily taxed so they are reluctant to do this since they would not profit. The list is long of things governments should tax so people won’t do various things. We already have ‘sin taxes’ and this could be called ‘greed taxes.’
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‘Age of Austerity’ Awaits G-20 as Debt Haunts Rogoff (Update3) – Bloomberg.com
Global leaders may be saddled with the weakest recovery since World War II if they are to pay off the $9 trillion tab they ran up rescuing the world economy from the deepest financial slump in seven decades. .
U.S. President Barack Obama and his counterparts from the Group of 20 nations meet in Pittsburgh today warning that the recovery is still too weak to start reversing lifelines to banks and the broader economy. Their next challenge will be to reduce the resulting debt before it sparks higher bond yields and erodes their governments’ creditworthiness. .
“There’s no question that the most significant vulnerability as we emerge from recession is the soaring government debt,” said Harvard University ProfessorKenneth Rogoff who is a co-author of a new history on financial crises. “It’s very likely that will trigger the next crisis as governments have been stretched so wide.”
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And how do governments fix this? Via taxes, of course. The struggle to see what will be done will cause immense troubles in the future. Cut social services and we can expect revolutions, uprisings and social violence. The countries saddled with many elderly will probably see a much faster death rate for retirees. Retirees hoping to skip out and live in luxury in foreign second class countries will suddenly find out their retirement checks destroyed by falling currencies at their former home base, for example. Or no checks coming at all!
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The $9 trillion spent on bailing out the banking sector was a total waste. That is, you can’t capitalize a system with debts. Government debts simply moved the mess forwards so that it now looms over ALL systems instead of just the banking or real estate systems! We have to beware of the collapse of entire governments! Previous major economic disruptions happen to be times of such changes. The Great Depression’s many changes led to a convulsive war that engulfed nearly the entire planet earth.
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Bank calls ‘crisis’ meeting for experts – Telegraph
The Bank will host a seminar of all London’s major economists next Tuesday – the first time it has invited them in en masse in recent memory – in what has been construed as a sign that it fears market participants are starting to lose faith in its efforts to pump cash into the economy. The move has also sparked speculation that it is poised to announce a major change to the monetary policy framework, although insiders dismissed such suggestions.
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It came after the minutes from the Bank’s latest Monetary Policy Committee meeting revealed that the idea of cutting the interest rate banks are paid on the reserves they hold there was not discussed this month. The pound has lurched lower in recent weeks, thanks in part to speculation that the Bank will impose charges on banks for holding excessive amounts of cash in reserve at its vaults. Under QE, it is pumping £175bn into the economy, but much of this cash is sitting in banks’ reserve accounts rather than being recycled and flowing around the broader economy.
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The banks are using government debt to capitalize themselves. All banking capital has one purpose only: to cover losses so the bank doesn’t have a run and then, a total collapse. Thanks to the Derivatives Swap Beast, bankers thought they didn’t need much or any capital at all because investors who bought and sold these OTC contracts would pay for any losses! When AIG went down in flames, this began a total collapse in the Credit Default Swap markets and we are still deep in this mess.
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The OTC business has not been fixed at all. The CDS market still exists even though it was shown to be a total fraud. The entire banking system clings to the government teats to stay alive. This is the only way they can move losses to someone else: the taxpayers. And these investment bankers and others all use tax havens to hide money so they don’t have to be taxpayers! And we are funding them, providing their capital for them and in return, they run off to tax havens!!!
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This is most infuriating.
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Japan’s Exporters Confront ‘Longing’ for Stronger Yen (Update2) – Bloomberg.com
Japan’s exporters are in danger of being left behind by a global trade recovery as the nation’s change in government ushers in a tolerance for exchange-rate gains that threaten to erode their profits. .
Japanese exports fell 36 percent in August from a year earlier, the Finance Ministry said yesterday, an 11th straight decline. The drop was exacerbated by the yen’s 17 percent surge against the dollar in the past year, making Japanese goods more expensive abroad and hurting the value of repatriated earnings. .
Japan’s currency jumped to a seven-month high last week after Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii, whose Democratic Party of Japan won elections promising to boost consumers’ purchasing power, said he didn’t support a “weak yen.” The comments suggested a change from the Liberal Democratic Party, which ruled for most of the past 55 years supporting the exporters that led growth.
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This news makes it crystal clear that my analysis about Japan has been totally right from day one. At other websites, before I began Culture of Life News, people would yell at me for talking about the Japanese yen all the time! Well, here it is: the yen was far too low in value for far too long. Now that the US has joined Japan in a ZIRP depression system, note how the yen is now much stronger! Our only tool we can use these days to stop predatory trade is to make the dollar weak!
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What a dumb system this is. It is far more lucrative to have tariffs. This stops too many imports plus it FUNDS THE GOVERNMENT!!! How nifty is this? If you hate taxes, you should love tariffs. We are now being protected from a flood of high-end manufactured goods thanks to the awful tool of having our entire economy collapse! So, if millions of Americans lose their jobs, we get to balance trade? This is anti-social. Protectionism isn’t a cuss word. It is a good concept that has been tossed out by fools.
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Chinese investors asked to hire Indians- Jobs-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times
An India-specific approach will have to be thought over by Chinese companies, S Jaishankar, India’s new ambassador in Beijing told a conference attended by Indian and Chinese businessmen and officials. He pointed out that companies from other foreign countries did not feel the need to bring their own workers to projects in India, which has a vast reservoir of skilled workmen and a long history of industry and entrepreneurship…. .
….Indian companies sourcing equipment and services from China should advise and assist the sellers on reducing their dependence on Chinese workers and using more of Indian skill, Jaishankar said. . Companies from other foreign countries do not feel the need to bring own workers to projects in India, says ambassador Jaishankar His statement comes at a time when Indian comapnies have also joined the chorus with their Chinese partners for increasing the issuance of visas Indian govt is not encouraging this as large inflow of foreign labour can hit skill development and welfare of Indian workers.
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India aggressively sucks down many jobs that should be based in the US. India exports to places like the US. Meanwhile, India is very aggressive in preventing the opposite. This is smart, of course! Japan is extremely protectionist! Why don’t we imitate China? India? Obviously, people who want big profits want the opposite. They want to exploit cheap labor in Asia and then import goods and services to the US and have us go deep into debt for this stuff.
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Indian role in Afghanistan may invite Pakistan reaction: US
India’s growing influence in Afghanistan could “exacerbate” regional tensions and encourage Pakistani “countermeasures” in Afghanistan or India, a top US military commander says…..India has pledged $1.2 billion for a host of reconstruction projects in Afghanistan ranging from roads and bridges to power transmission lines and grassroots training. Pakistan has repeatedly objected to India having four consulates in Afghanistan in addition to the embassy in Kabul, saying these are used to spy on Islamabad.
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India is riding on our backs to expand their influence in Afghanistan. They are using us to ride herd on Pakistan. This means, Pakistan will enable the Afghani uprising against us. This has many obvious implications. And it not mentioned much in the news here. 5 US troops killed in southern Afghan attacks is the latest bad news from Afghanistan. And this won’t get better. The US has to understand how imperialism can be destructive if applied wrong.
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Afghanistan is far less a danger to us than the Cayman Islands. And much harder to conquer. And is bleeding us to death. Whereas, if we conquer all the British protectorates, we will have tremendous financial gains. Only the guys using these places as tax havens do not want this to change and they have either corrupted or control or are the people running our own government which is why they are so lax about these tax havens.
Culture of Life News 
Besides the medium term monetary consequences of peak oil, it seems to me these tax havens are the short term critical vulnerability of the new world order elites.
Money, assets, and corporate ownership hidden in foundations, trusts, and accounts, daisy chained through jurisdictions, lawyers and bankers.
For the elites, tax havens represent mobility. They represent limited freedom from taxation and forfeiture from nations betrayed. They represent financial secrecy and a staging area for bribery and blackmail.
150 years ago, international law was much more limited and formal. The long term security of tax havens has weakened with modern legal systems, paradoxically brought about through treaties of internationalization and globalization initiated for the benefit of new world order.
Of course, the NWO has other vulnerabilities such as the intrinsic illegitimacy of anything secret. Maybe an expansion of treason laws, blackmail laws, or bribery laws, etc.
OT
UK diplomat convicted and
fined for being critical of
Gaza war
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=107085§ionid=351020601
“European leaders should give up the attack on Swiss banking secrecy and accept a withholding tax on foreigners to avoid criminalizing wealthy taxpayers…”
What? Calling wealthy tax escaping parasite a criminal? Oh the horror! This is exactly what should have been done from the start, break all tax heavens and never let any form.
Hahaha, only 2 permits issued to ‘protest’: 6 Groups Sue Pittsburgh for Protest Permits
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/visualizing-upcoming-treasury-funding-crisis
Note the dangerous hockey-stick graph in Treasury Bills!
Ed M, correct: this is Zimbabwe-USA.
Ever since the Seattle riots, no one has been allowed to contest with the G20 or WTO goons. The US mocked Iran for suppression of demonstrators. The US should look in a mirror. It is disgusting.
Elaine,
You might enjoy Sony Kapoor’s views
http://www.re-define.org/
see particularly his videos
http://www.re-define.org/audiovideo
Even with rising federal employment, the economy is still sinking. One headline tells us that luxury hotels may be headed for bankruptcy; their $850 rooms are empty. Another tells us that there are people living in the drainpipes under Las Vegas. Obvious solution: give the drainpipe people jobs with the government…and put them up in the luxury rooms! Hey…they can call room service and stimulate the economy even further.
The US Post Office has a problem too. It may need a $4 billion bailout, says one news item. Another tells us that ‘exhaustion’ has hit a new record. ‘Exhaustion’ refers to people whose unemployment benefits have run out. Apparently, more than half the unemployed run out of benefits before they find a new job – more than ever before.
http://tinyurl.com/y8q94wg
Tax havens under attack?
The privacy of normal bank customers is under attack, for example in Austria and Switzerland which are cannot seriously considered as tax havens. A tax haven has no or very low taxes, neither is the case in Austria or Switzerland.
Normal bank customers can no longer count on their privacy while the rich have still plenty of real tax havens available, even in the US, just think of Delaware or some US-controlled pirate islands. The same goes for UK-controlled territories as Elaine often explains … don’t get fooled by political mumbo-jumbo on alleged tax havens. Do you really think the same rich who brought e.g. Obama to power are willing to pay taxes?
Mds: those countries don’t tax people who put their money in the banks there like they tax their own people. If they did tax this money from outside the country, there would be no point in depositing the money in say, Switzerland.
The U.S. is eliminating routes to get money out of the country for all but privileged bankers, politicians, elite and hedge funds.
99% of us are being screwed – our accumulated wealth must stay at home so that the 1% can steal more of it.
And it is not just the Swiss banks that are affected. I hold a PM account at a Swiss vault and have been informed that I can no longer sell PMs in the currency of my choice since I am from the U.S.
In the past, I could sell PMs and keep the money in my account (no interest paid, just a holding account). For example, last year gold had a nice run and I sold some close to the top.
I was paid in Yen as specified, and at the time Yen was going up. So, then when the PM market dropped again (corrected?) I bought more PMs. I won’t get wealthy this way but it does provide some opportunity to pay fees and maybe make a few bucks anyways.
I’m no longer allowed to use the “holding account” because of the U.S. government threatening the Swiss. This stuff infuriates me because I know damed well that Goldman, JPM, etc, etc, are working through the Caymans and other places to launder and hide billions.
One time Elaine showed an international cash flow chart with money going through the Caymans, Great Britain, Japan, etc. If anyone remembers where that chart is I’d appreciate a link.
Larry
RobG wrote:
“What they’re essentially doing is refusing permits for any demonstration in downtown Pittsburgh, and that’s unprecedented,” said Witold Walczak, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.”
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Pittsburgh was the perfect place to hold the G-20 summit in that the main part of the city is basically an island surrounded by rivers on three sides. Most of the bridges were closed so there was only access from the East.
Code Pink and the other groups you mentioned were active and protesting, but only allowed “downtown” before and after the official summit.
I’ve attended a number of protests but this was my first G-20 and it was the first time I felt more like a spectator rather than a participant. There were many groups with a myriad of causes so it lacked focus and cohesion.
One thing that bothered me was the amount of people against capitalism. I don’t think capitalism deserves the demonetization as we haven’t practiced it for almost 100 years.
I had my “End the Fed” sign and regalia which was welcome by almost every group. I kept wishing that the full force of such a large throng would be squarely against the Fed. I think this is the one issue that can unify the movement.
One thing that was interesting was for two evenings there were confrontations with the police – east of downtown – in the Oakland area. This is where the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Carlow College are located.
On the national news these people were called protesters but they were in actuality almost all local college students. Here’s a video link – note the “protesters” are chanting “let’s go Pitt” at around 2:09:
And here is a video showing that many of the students were just out on the evening taking in the sights of the police in full riot gear.
It made me angry that these students were treated roughly and portrayed as crazy protesters.
As a 50 something (I forget which) person, I was encouraged to see so many young people protesting the G-20. Most of the protests I have attended are mostly people in their 30’s and up.
You’re spot on about tariffs Elaine. That was the original methodology of the founding fathers to fund (much smaller) government operations. But tariffs are nearly perfect. Figure out the government budget for a given year and set the tariffs accordingly. If spending is too high, goods become expensive and savings (or pressure to reduce spending) grow. Self regulating operation and consumption (of foreign goods) is taxed indirectly. It also supports the production of US goods.
What is wrong with the political mechanism?
well done Elaine,
truer words were never spoken — opps written! Enjoy your weekend.
Capitalism isn’t evil. It is DEBTISM that is evil. Ahem. That is, using debt as capital leads to bubbles which bust.
The demonstrators can be forgiven for being confused, of course.
Way off topic but I wanted to share this none the less:
Coldtype , nice medium, images today are so disposable, why are some still valued?
There was just enough in Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s words on Wednesday about a harder line on Iran for the White House to claim that Russia had bent, finally, in Washington’s direction. Even as the President Barack Obama administration was savoring its success, however, China was there to spoil the moment. – M K Bhadrakumar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KI26Ak04.html
Rather quiet around here. End of the fiscal year coming up, no thoughts on that Elaine? Or are you unsure about what is going to happen as well?
I had to do lots of construction work this weekend, Shizuka.
I was going to post again last night but we had ferocious thunderstorms all night long so I had to put off posting things here.
What a series of storms we had!