This is a video just released of me talking a couple of weeks ago with Ross Ashcroft of the Renegade Economist about the state of the UK economy and how to rescue the failed discipline of economics.
Over the last week I’ve been arguing that the government gilt purchases made under the quantitative easing programme effectively cancel that debt. Being realistic, as the IFS predict, we’re running big enough potential deficits over the next few years to mean there will in practice be no capacity to resell this debt. The reality is that as money supply is falling but for quantitative easing we could not also resell the debt. So for all practical purposes it’s cancelled. That means in net terms over the last seven years from 2005 to 2011 inclusive we’ve borrowed a little under £35 billion a year in net terms, and that is less than we did in each of the years 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Do long as the banks do not lend this situation will persist. Bank lending has been the way we’ve made the money that the country needs to keep the economy going. As long as banks don’t lend, and that looks likely to be for some time to come since without an increase in one of consumer demand, business investment or net exports their lending is bound to fall, then it will fall to government to both fill the gap in the economy that they create by their inaction and at the same time create the money that’s needed to keep the economy going. So, I can pretty confidently predict that if, as the IFS suggest, the government deficit will be £120 billion next year, £99 billion the year after that and £79 billion in 2014-15 then you can be pretty sure that quantitative easing in those years will be £85 billion, £65 billion and £45 billion respectively leaving net borrowing at around £35 billion a year. Total government debt despite the deficit will, therefore, be no more than about £750 billion or so in 2015 which will be, give or take, about 50% of GDP, a figure that will be vastly lower than elsewhere in the Eurozone in particular. And we won’t have inflation as a result because, as a consequence of the actions of this government which have pushed almost 3 million people now o9nto unemployment, with that figure bound to rise over these years, wage inflation pressure will be virtually non-existent whilst the collapse of demand in the Eurozone will tkae the pressure off other prices too.
It’s pointless arguing about the opportunities that this provides to this government: it is clear that this government only has the main of destroying the state sector and public well being. It will do this for doctrinaire reasons whatever the economics of the issue. So the question is what opprtunity does this provide to Labour?
First, it has to tell this story. Politics is about telling credible stories about how the world works. This one is such a story.
Second it has to claim credit for it. Labour created quantitative easing.
Third it then has to say the debt crisis is not an excuse for all that has happened: there has been no debt crisis. The pain we’re going through and the much greater pain to come is not and cannot be justified by the economics of this situation: they will have been imposed by Tory choice.
Fourth, we could then plan a very different economy. We could then plan to borrow for growth. After all, we’re hardly borrowing at all now. Net borrowing of just £35 billion a year by the government is not enough net borrowing to meet the demand of pension funds for UK government gilts to underpin the pensions of baby boomers now retiring in ever increasing numbers - and it is those gilts that are actually used to pay those pensions. So the government may actually need to borrow more to meet the demand for gilts.
What might it do with the extra lending? Well, it could invest in the Green New Deal for a start, making this country much less dependent upon carbon fuel and much more fuel efficient in the process. That would provide a massive rate of return on the spending incurred in the future, and help our long term exchange rate. And it could build all the hospitals, schools and other infrastructure we need without recourse to PFI. It could even build the flood defences we need – to stop the Wash and 50 miles inland flooding, for example. We could also build the social housing that is so obviously and desperately needed in the UK; housing that would pay for the interest on the borrowing with the rents received.
The point is, once we understand that our borrowing is now already under control we can then talk about what we really want to do with the economy. And because of quantitative easing, whether it was planned to achieve this outcome or not does not matter, our borrowing is now under control. And in that case we can plan for the sustainable growth in jobs we need.
Now of course as employment would rise quantitative easing may cease to be possible as the risk of inflation would then be real. I accept that. But that doesn’t matter. By the time that became an issue those then in work would be paying enough additional tax to make sure we need not need quantitative easing anyway. A virtuous circle of debt reduction would have been created.
All this is possible: we just have to realise that quantitative easing has delivered the solution to our debt problem. Why are we waiting?
I have noted that when my explanation of why the UK owes much less debt (see also here) than the Tories claim was posted on the Liberal Conspiracy web site some of the right wingers who inhabit that space suggested I could not consolidate accounts. As a result they claim my conclusion was wrong: they said the debt owed by the government could not be cancelled by the fact that the debt was owned by the Bank of England because I ignored the liabilities of the Bank of England to repay the cash it had used to buy the government issued gilts. Well, they are, of course wrong and let me explain why the accounting behind my claim is exactly right.
Let’s start with the government issuing a gilt for £100 million. It creates a loan (the gilt) for £100 million that is a credit in its accounts and it then has £100 million in cash (a debit balance).
In accounting terms this looks like this:
| Government Accounts | |
| Cash | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
| Government Accounts | |
| Gilt Loans | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
Then it spends that cash on buying an asset (or a lot of assets!). The accounting then looks like this:
| Government Accounts | |
| Cash | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | 100 |
| Government Accounts | |
| Fixed Assets | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
Now there’s no cash. The £100s balance out to nothing. The accounts balance though. There’s an asset of £100 million balanced by a liability of £100 billion for the gilt. There’s just no cash left.
Now let’s suppose the Bank of England does a quantitative easing programme, as of course it has. Let’s look at the double entry of that.
First it creates the cash:
| Bank of England | |
| Cash | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
| Bank of England | |
| Promise to repay account | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
Remember that this is a bank making cash out of thin air. It has effectively ‘printed’ cash. So it has created £100 million in cash, which is a debit entry in its books. What’s the matching liability since you can’t have anything but double entry in the accounts? Well, it is, of course, a liability and for ease I’ve called it the ‘promise to repay account’. Why? Because that’s what it says on a bank note: the Bank of England promises to pay it. It’s that promise that represents the liability. The fact that if someone went to the Bank of England and asked for repayment of their £10 note they’d be given another one does not change the promise to pay. £10 is owing – but it’s payable with the money that’s just been printed. That’s what legal tender means: it’s cash made out of thin air. The liability will not be paid: it’s pure gain, but that’s what happens when you make cash out of thin air. This then is a very different liability from the government’s gilt. That will be repaid, in cash. And it carries interest. The Bank of England will never repay on its promise and the liability carries no interest.
Now let’s suppose that the cash that has been created is used to buy the gilts the government has issued. It’s pretty simple double entry. It looks like this:
| Bank of England | |
| Cash | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | 100 |
| Bank of England | |
| Promise to repay account | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
| Bank of England | |
| Gilt asset account | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
The cash has gone: it has been paid to the previous owners of the gilts. The two 100′s balance out to zero. That cash has now entered the economy and left the Bank of England. That is how the cash enters the economy in a quantitative easing programme.
The net result is that now the Bank of England owns £100 million of gilts (the debit balance) matched by a liability of £100 million in the ‘promise to pay the bearer’ account which will in reality never be paid.
Now what I have then suggested is that we should consolidate the resulting accounts of the government and Bank of England since the government owns the Bank of England. Let’s look at what the accounts look like before we consolidate. The government accounts now look like this:
| Government Accounts | |
| Fixed Assets | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
| Government Accounts | |
| Gilt Loans | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
The government has £100 million of assets and owes £100 million in gilts.
The Bank of England accounts look like this:
| Bank of England | |
| Promise to repay account | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
| Bank of England | |
| Gilt asset account | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
The Bank owns £100 million of gilts and has made a promise to pay £100 million.
Now let’s be clear about what happens when you consolidate: you cancel out trading between the consolidated parties but as I have ignored interest for ease there is no trading to get rid of here. And second you cancel assets and liabilities owing between the consolidated entities, which are the government and Bank of England in this case. What is cancelled out? Well it’s the gilts: they are debt after all. The government owes £100 million to the Bank of England in this example but since the Bank of England is owned by the government then it is like owing debt to itself – or if you like, it’s like a husband owing a wife when they agree they really share all their property in common. So it can simply be cancelled out.
The net result is that the accounts really look like this. The two gilt accounts balance each other out to zero and we’re left with:
| Government Accounts | |
| Fixed Assets | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
| Bank of England | |
| Promise to repay account | |
| Dr £’m | Cr £’m |
| 100 | |
So the government has now got assets paid for with a promise to pay – it’s printed the money to pay for the asset. It’s used the subterfuge of owning the Bank of England and printing money to achieve the result but let’s not deceive ourselves, this is the result. But, as I have explained, it can do that precisely because there is both no risk of inflation now because of the state of the economy and because the economy needs that cash – there is a shortage of cash at present that is threatening to close down economic activity and create deflation if this new cash were not created by the Bank of England now.
So, what’s the conclusion? First, the double entry works: the critics are simply wrong. They forgot there’s an asset. Incidentally, it doesn’t also actually matter if it was spent on the running costs of the NHS instead for double entry purposes; there would still be a debit. I use an asset to indicate it’s better that liabilities are matched by assets and that the current account be balanced if possible. That’s the logic of the Green New Deal. But I stress, either way my double entry works and my critics are guilt of doing single entry accounting – which is always a mistake.
Second, the economic logic is right: the national debt has to be stated net of quantitative easing gilt repurchases or the figure is simply mis-stated.
Third, this radically changes the whole economic narrative, completely. But that’s another blog. The point here is that technically I have to be right.
Having said which, I know the assets repurchased may not have been paid for at the price they were issued at: I accept that’s leakage in the matter but it does not change the fundamentals of the argument one iota, it just means that the banks pick up some subsidy on the way (which fact will, I suspect surprise no one). But we still have not got debt of £1 trillion. Very soon we’ll have national debt of less than £700 million and what is more we’re only borrowing about £35 million or so a year on average.
And we need to recognise that if we’re to have an honest economic debate.
Last week a wrote a blog explaining why all the data being published about government borrowing is wrong. We haven’t right now got government borrowing in total of about £1 trillion; we have instead, I argued, because of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme got government borrowing of about £725 billion.
In December the UK money supply fell by 1.4%. (Table A2.1.1 here). In other words, more was being repaid to banks as loan repayment than they were lending. The consequences are painful: business has less to spend, consumers have less to spend, demand falls, and we all head for recession. That’s hardly surprising given that we have relied on commercial banks to create our money supply through their lending and we know that they’re failing on all their lending commitments. So, the banks would drive us into recession if we left them to the job of creating money right now, and since this fall in money supply would also lead very quickly to deflation which has the effect of reinforcing recession because people defer sending as they think things will be cheaper in the future the outcome is really pretty bleak.
Which is why, of course, more quantitative easing is inevitable. Larry Elliott reckons it will be £75 billion and very soon and I tend to agree.
Today the IFS said the government will borrow £124 billion this year. Let’s assume they’re right and plug that number into my forecast, also allowing for the £75 billion of QE announced in October and the £75 billion now anticipated and we get this overall borrowing data:
| Year | Net borrowing | QE | Net |
| £bn | £bn | £bn | |
| 2005 | 35,736 | - | 35,736 |
| 2006 | 35,543 | - | 35,543 |
| 2007 | 37,182 | - | 37,182 |
| 2008 | 66,368 | - | 66,368 |
| 2009 | 147,878 | 200,000 | -52,122 |
| 2010 | 147,686 | - | 147,686 |
| 2011 | 124,000 | 150,000 | -26,000 |
| Average | 7 years | 34,913 |
Remember the basis for this calculation: since the Bank of England is buying government debt which has no chance whatsoever of being resold to the market and the Bank of England is wholly owned by the government that debt is effectively cancelled once bough by the Bank of England. The only proper accounting for this debt is to recognise the government can’t and does not owe itself this money and as such it should be cancelled out even if it technically still exists.
The net impact is that this year the government will not borrow at all: it will repay £26 billion of debt. And it can do that because the only effective economic activity keeping the economy going is government spending and that spending needs to be financed by the creation of new money made out of nothing by lending – as all money is made (remember that fact – if you doubt it, read this).
Now we happily live with banks creating money to fund private sector growth if it happens and don’t panic about it. We should be just as relaxed if the government is doing that if inflation is unlikely as a result. And there is no chance of inflation as a result of this activity right now. That’s because there is so much slack in the economy we have real wage deflation – so there is no chance of this extra money reversing that. Of course green quantitative easing would eliminate that risk entirely, but it’s practically zero anyway.
So what does this mean? Well, actually government debt is falling right now: yes, I mean that.
And it also means we can afford to run a deficit. Indeed, we can’t not afford to run a deficit.
And it means that because that’s true the only spending that could possibly need cutting is that which we can’t afford to fund net of QE, but since over the last seven years borrowing net of QE will have been less than £35 billion on average a year or less than 2.5% of current GDP and not a person thinks we can’t afford to fund that we actually have no need for a programme of cuts right now. And nor will we do so until such time as employment rises and the prospect of real wage growth returns, which seems a distant prospect at present.
In that case the whole Tory economic narrative is wrong: we can afford the current deficit and must spend at current levels to ensure unemployment falls, wages rise and tax revenues increase to clear it unless we want to keep printing money for good. Since I’d rather people worked than print money I’d go for that stimulus option now. And to do that I would, I admit, have to borrow more. But when net borrowing is negative right now of course we can and should borrow more when the cost of doing so is near enough nothing: net real interest rates are about zero or even negative for the government at present.
This is the only sane economic policy option we have. All that’s stopping us taking it is the completely false story that a) we’re borrowing more than £100 billion a year when we’re not and b) that debt is rising when this year it will not.
And yes, I’m aware how bizarre this will sound to many people. But just remember that Schopenhauer absolutely right when he said that truth goes through three stages. In the first stage, it is ridiculed. In the second stage, it is violently opposed. And in the third stage it is accepted as self-evident. We’ll be at stage 1 with this idea right now. I give it a couple of years to reach stage 3.
Will Hutton made an interesting point in the Observer yesterday:
Fewer than 150,000 jobs are directly involved in the making of [1.4 million cars and more than 3 million engines in the UK each year] and the numbers have been gently falling for years as modern production techniques transform productivity. Tata is building a new engine plant in Wolverhampton that will be a world leader in low-carbon engines; it might create 750 jobs.
I discussed this phenomena in detail in a recent article on the new economics of social democracy, here but the way Hutton presents the argument makes it easy to draw the conclusions in a different way.
When Henry Ford built his car plant he realised that unless the product he made was cheap enough for the workers to buy then there was no point in building it: there was no market to supply. This was the basis of Fordism.
Now we can build cars with fewer and fewer people. Indeed we can build anything with fewer people, and although we might make more ‘stuff’ the number of people involved is still falling steadily. As a result even though those remaining people engaged on such work are well paid their share of the total reward from manufacturing is falling and profits are rising as a share of GDP. That’s what happens when productivity reaches such extraordinary peaks.
The consequences of such productivity are only now becoming apparent though. The pressure and ability to consume despite stagnant or falling real wage shares was, of course, fuelled by the finance sector that promoted debt to fill the gap in demand as overall wages fell and profits grew as a result of this obvious fact. But that has proved unsustainable: the model of consumption based on personal debt growth is dying.
But with the close of that model of consumer capitalism two other things are happening. The consumer is no longer spending: growth has disappeared; the growth that has underpinned our current model of capitalism has gone. And there is no prospect of that consumer returning when the universal reaction to debt management issues in the public and private sectors alike is to cut spending. The inevitable result is that jobs in services are being decimated: 50% yout unemployment in Spain is the obvious result. It is more than 20% in the UK.
We’ve forgotten the lesson of Ford. Being able to make something is not enough. Unless someone wants to but the product then the technical ability to produce it is in very many cases pointless. And to make sure people want what can be produced they must have jobs, and jobs that pay well enough for them to afford what the market wants to offer them to buy. Those jobs either come from the production process itself or by redistributing the surplus – usually arising in the form of rent – from that production process. Those rents, on skills, on the use of resources, on the compartmentalisation of risk and so much more, belong to society but they’re not being shared now. Instead they’re being captured by the few who aren’t paying tax and whose wealth is not trickling down.
So right now we’re demanding production at the same time as we’re demanding a cut in the number of producers and a cut in the number with the resources to buy what is being produced. The consequence is inevitable: this model will fail. We’ve forgotten Ford and the need to create markets. Instead we’re now intent on destroying them.
I’m not saying Ford’s idea of production was entirely right: there are limits to growth. But we’ll discover those limits a lot sooner if we do not ensure that people have the capacity to buy what business has to offer, and our current model of capitalism matched with the political thinking of those who are the supposed strongest supporters of that model guarantees a dearth of consumers. In combination it’s a giant suicide note for our current economic model. No wonder we need alternatives waiting in the wings.
IPPR produced a report on globalisation last week. With a forward by Lord Mandelson the report was written by Will Straw and Alex Glennie.
I admit I don’t agree with either Mandelson or Straw; they have a political perspective I don’t always share but this report has merit to it, as others have also noted since its publication. It represents a clear change of heart on Peter Mandelson’s part, and that I welcome.
The report is especially strong on the need for corporate tax reform. Having noted that profits are rising as a trend t also notes that there is a steady fall in corporate tax receipts as a proportion of profits and realises this is an issue that has to be addressed. It dismisses the alternative to corporate tax proposed by Oxford University and Mirrlees, which is a form of Value Added Tax. As the report rightly notes there is no doubt this would be regressive and so unacceptable. Instead it suggests five reforms, as follows:
First, the European Union should implement the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). Under the current tax regime, multinationals file separate accounts for each country in which they operate; under the CCCTB, each company would compute only its EU-wide consolidated profit, on a common definition of the tax base. This profit would be allocated to member states on the basis of an apportionment formula containing factors such as shares in employment, payroll, assets and sales. Each member state would retain autonomy to tax its allocated share of profits at its own tax rate. This approach would allow countries to retain their own tax rate and pursue healthy tax competition. But within the EU, companies would have to actually move their staff and physical capital to the lower-tax regimes, rather than relying on the accounting mechanisms outlined above. In time, other jurisdictions could be encouraged to join, paving the way for an eventual global consolidated tax base.
Second, the EU and its member states should begin discussions with the International Accounting Standards Board to introduce a requirement that all multinational corporations report sales, profits and taxes paid in all jurisdictions in their audited annual reports and tax returns in what is known as country-by-country reporting. Country-by-country reporting discloses the profits that companies record in each jurisdiction in which they operate and the taxes that they pay on them. This means that they can be held accountable for what they do and do not pay. The requirement would complement the CCCTB by providing simple transparency on the activities of multinational companies in jurisdictions outside the EU.
Third, other jurisdictions should be encouraged to adopt the EU Savings Taxation Directive as a means of creating an automatic exchange of taxation information. Since 2005, the directive has ensured that paying agents either report interest income received by taxpayers resident in other EU member states or levy a withholding tax on the interest income received. In Cannes, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh called for the G20 to take a lead on the issue ‘in the spirit of our [2009] London Summit that [said] “the era of bank secrecy is over”’ . But the communiqué only committed to ‘consider exchanging information automatically on a voluntary basis as appropriate’. The EU should also adopt an amendment to the savings directive which would close existing loopholes and prevent tax evasion by stopping taxpayers from channelling interest payments through trusts and intermediate tax-exempted structures.
Fourth, as the Financial Action Task Force has already recommended, the beneficial ownership of companies, trusts and foundations should be on the public record. This would prevent multinational corporations from using networks of international subsidiaries to transfer profits and reduce their tax liability. This reform would also have the added benefit of making money laundering and the handling of illicit funds more difficult.
Fifth, bilateral and multilateral donors should support developing countries in building their tax collection and enforcement agencies.
Taken together, these measures will act to reduce the power of tax competition and lower the incentives on companies to execute tax arbitrage strategies.
There is much in here that is based on my work, that of the Tax Justice Network and colleagues in the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development. I welcome that.
I welcome Peter Mandelson and Will Straw seeing the merit of these ideas over those that were technically presented to them by economists as superior, but which ignored the political realities of taxation.
The tide is turning: the merit of international cooperation on tax is becoming apparent. It will help get us out of the mess we’re in: that’s now indisputable by all those except the governments of those states that promote tax evasion and those who benefit from it.
Jan 302012
Like the Labour Party I have major problems with the government’s pursuit of a ‘happiness’ agenda.
I have long felt ‘happiness’ a vacuous goal. That’s because, like making money, happiness is an epiphenomena that is the consequence of the achievement of some other goal: it can never be the goal in itself.
So, in The Courageous State I define the goal of human endeavour as being the achievement of a person’s potential. Potential in this sense simply means what a person is capable of doing. It sounds simple, but around the world billions of people are denied the chance to do just that every day. No wonder they’re not happy.
What they do instead is adapt to a circumstance in which they’re forced to accept a sub-standard opportunity for achievement.
It’s my fear that the supposedly clinical methods used to assist the achievement of happiness, whether CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) or positive psychology, are not seen as ways of providing opprtunites to assist people achieve but are instead ways of conditioning people to accept the sub-optimal reality they’re being presented with daily. The promoters of these methods may be honourable: the political use of these ideas may not be.
In that case these psychologies offer no cure for the anger people are quite reasonably feeling. That anger is rational, deep seated and justified. Answers will only come when its causes are addressed. Teaching people to be ‘happy’ will not do that. It’s just a variant on pill popping. Treating the symptoms and not the casues of malaise in our society will not work.
It’s time people had the opportunities they deserve, and which our current market system is denying them.
The Telegraph reported yesterday that:
People who receive cash-in-hand payments for goods and services are harming the economy, according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) most senior taxman Dave Hartnett.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, he criticised tradesmen and other workers who try to get out of paying tax by asking for their payment in cash and said there will be a crackdown to catch individuals who do so from April 2012 onwards.
Mr Hartnett claimed evading VAT or income tax is ‘diddling’ the economy and will lead to further cuts for things like hospitals and schools.
“Tax provides the funding to run the country: hospitals, schools and everything else. Every time someone pays cash in order not to pay VAT, the nation gets diddled,” he remarked.
Of course Hartnett is right: the tax gap, about which I have campaigned for years, and which I forced (via the TUC) onto HMRC’s agenda and in turn into national debate, is of course a major factor in the management of the deficit. Given that the gap is £120 billion that has to be true.
But let’s be clear, welcome as Hartnett’s recognition of this obvious fact is, he has ultimate responsibility for the fact that the gap is this big for two reasons.
First of all, he’s denied the size of the gap, persistently – and the propaganda his department put out under his direction about how small the gap supposedly is in his view has been used by him and his colleagues to leave this matter alone and to deny its significance. HMRC say the tax gap is just £35 billion right now (see the table, here). The numbers are grossly inaccurate for reasons I explain here, here and at length here. The consequence is obvious: too little attention has been paid to the issue and that is because HMRC worked persistently to hide its own incompetence to hide the fact.
Second, using the incorrect data his department produced Hartnett justified reducing the staff in HMRC. The numbers will fall from 100,000 in 2005 to about 50,000 in 2015. And like it or not collecting criminals requires human activity to detect and prove the crime. Tax evasion is a crime and there aren’t enough people now employed to detect much of it – so the tax gap has grown. Hartnett is responsible for that. And we see the result in cuts in services, pensions, disability living allowances, education, health, defence and so much more.
So sure, Hartnett’s right – people should not pay in cash knowing the cash will not be declared to tax authorities. But the biggest culprit by far in the creation of the massive UK tax gap that threatens our pubic services is Hartnett himself – and he’s just trying to deflect the truth by making the claims he’s now seeking to make in valedictory effort to justify his actions.
HSBC, again
Banking, Tax evasion, Uncategorized
Comments Off
Jan 282012
HSBC Holdings PLC is under investigation by a U.S. Senate panel in a money-laundering inquiry, the latest step in a long-running U.S. effort to halt shadowy money flows through global banks, according to people familiar with the situation and a company securities filing.
The inquiry being conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations could yield a report and congressional hearing later this spring, these people said. The subcommittee has a history of conducting high-profile hearings that have proved embarrassing for the world’s biggest banks.
People have suggested I am seeking to highlight HSBC’s seemingly consistent involvement in investigations of tax evasion as if I have ulterior motive.
I dispute that: I don’t need to highlight that HSBC seem to be consistently involved in investigations of tax evasion; the fact is that they are.
The question is, why is that the case?
Maybe The Rev Lord Stephen Green could offer an explanation as former CEO and Chair of the bank?
