Tony Bellows has written a first rate review of vulture capital’s use of Jersey to purse its claims through the courts in Jersey. Vulture capitalists – always based in tax havens – buy up third world debt at heavily discounted prices in the market place and then sue for full recovery of the money due on the
Read the Rest…

The FT made this observation yesterday: Fork-lift truck drivers in Britain could expect to earn £19,068 in 2010, about 5 per cent lower than in 1978, after adjusting for inflation. Median male real US earnings have not risen since 1975. Average real Japanese household incomes after taxation fell in the decade to mid-2000s. And those in
Read the Rest…

Colin Powell, the man many credit with being behind the success of Jersey as a secrecy jurisdiction, has sent me a note. I think it only appropriate I reproduce it in full. It says: Dear Richard I hope you are well. I have noticed recent references by you and others to the fact that Jersey
Read the Rest…

Michael Gove has called teachers unprofessional for striking. He says they will lose their reputation with the public.  he says the public will support the government in strike reform as a result. But now the doctors are also saying  they will not accept pension reform.  I should declare a benefit:  my wife is a GP. And as the Guardian reports
Read the Rest…

I have argued that no country can devote its entire economic policy to maintaining an external marketplace,  and yet that is what the existence of the Eurozone  demanded of its member states.  Of course, they have failed to deliver: that is the whole basis of the current Greek crisis. Now we have a crisis there
Read the Rest…

Further thoughts on Greece from me, on Forbes where I argue that the suspension of mark-to-market accounting is vital, now.

I have already noted the danger that the current developments in Greece pose because the logic of neoliberalism, inherent in the Maastricht Treaty and now imposed upon Greece, suggests that the state is secondary to the market.  It isn’t, of course,  And yet the whole logic of Maastricht, if it was to work, was that
Read the Rest…

I’ve already noted that the Greek economic crisis was inevitable, and the result of a series of logical errors, all driven by neoliberal economics. Perhaps the most significant of all of these was the idea that markets were more important than states. The EU ideal was to create a ‘common market’. But simple freedom from
Read the Rest…

The Jersey Evening Post is reporting that the EU has given: The strongest sign yet that the Island’s controversial zero-ten business tax regime is to be cleared by Europe. The tax package took huge a step forward as a result of the outcome of a meeting of finance ministers of the 27 member states. The
Read the Rest…