I offer no apology for quoting extensively today from a report in the Guardian that is headed:
World Bank and IMF chiefs: tax dodging is grave concern for global economy
This says:
The leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have warned that the industrial scale of international tax avoidance revealed by the Panama Papers represents a “great concern” for the global economy and is having a “tremendously negative effect on our mission to end poverty”.
Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, said the revelations that many of the world's richest and most powerful people are avoiding paying millions in taxes by hiding money from the taxman in offshore havens is a “great, great concern” and “very, very damaging” to the bank's “mission to end extreme poverty”.
“When taxes are evaded, when state assets are taken and put into these havens, all of these things can have a tremendous negative effect on our mission to end poverty and boost prosperity,” Kim said as he opened the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington.
Of course I agree.
But I have a lament. It is thirteen years since John Christensen, Prem Sikka, I and others who set up the Tax Justice Network - the first civil society organisation in the world to take on these issues - began saying such things.
Why has it taken so long for the IMF and World Bank to even vaguely catch up with us?
And what has been the cost of delay?
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The issue has now received publicity on such a scale they feel they can’t be seen to be simply ignoring it, as they have done and do. Expect them to solemnly offer their full support to Osborne and his entirely cosmetic attempts at ending evasion. Meanwhile, the looting continues… business as usual.
Precisely …..the IMF is one of the most ghastly and destructive neo-liberalist institutions on the planet with a policy of financial depredation and utter disregard for the sufferings of ‘human capital.’
let’s be clear here..we are dealing with an organisation that , in the words of author Ernst Wolff are ‘Pillaging the World.’
Every so often they offer a sop to the public when they feel the ‘plebs’ are stirring whilst not changing on iota their underlying policy. Remember Lagarde’s (holds up crucifixes and garlic) glib utterance when the Greeks made their next ‘payment’ to the IMF:
‘I’VE GOT MY MONEY BACK.’ What clearer evidence that we are dealing with sociopaths of the first rank? On the same moral level as Clinton’s LIbya comment; ‘We came we saw we he died.’
(FFS!)
Because although you think that you guys are important in the political process, you’re really not!! You’re just minions, even though you claim to play a key role, both individually [country-by-country reporting… come on… it was years before your time!!] and collectively – [TJN]. The media are interviewing you because they have so few other people to turn to and are not fully appreciative of your left leaning bias, partly because the media, in general, are so clueless themselves!!
There are two obstacles to tax justice in the world: the Tax Justice Network and the Coalition for Tax Competition. If both were eliminated, the rest of the world could get on with developing an international system that is neither left leaning or right leaning. A level playing field that enables tax justice for all. You’re blocking the path for tax justice.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion
But if you really think we’re so opaque that people can’t see what our aims are then you are really very mistaken
The economic migrants heading for our shores are trying to escape from the dire poverty in their home countries caused in large part by the corrupt flow of capital to tax havens. By allowing the tax havens that are in british jurisdictions to exist, we in the UK have been complicit in this. You reap what you sow. Unless things change very soon there will be a lot more to come. To deride them and refuse assistance is, in my opinion, immoral.
Hopefully the excellent work done by the TJN will start to open people’s eyes to this injustice.
Possibly because the people that get appointed to such organisations and many senior people that work in them have no vision, sense of leadership, or strength of mind, or originality of thought in order to challenge the status quo or wish to challenge it.
Plus many of them will be economics graduates, which unfortunately, isn’t really conducive to producing critical thinkers (etc if you are already a critical thinker).
For more information regarding the historical background to the Panama Papers, can I suggest to your readers this interview with Michael Hudson? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0t1KXdeWbo. As the roots go way back in US (and UK) history, it suggests that it’s going to be an uphill struggle to achieve real systemic reform. Don’t hold your breath!
Michael Hudson has an interesting perspective on a lot of the economic non-sensical arguments that we so often hear. Well worth following and considering where he is coming from.
If you follow the rise and fall of all empires, you will spot a common trend in their need to finance a growing military and state apparatus and its balance of payments. The Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, British Empire and now the American “Empire” all needed a massive amount of funding which inevitable results in political and financial eyes being closed and ears being covered when confronted with some very odious business practices.
Why do you think it took so long for the governments of their days to focus on such things as the opium trade, slavery, apartheid, drug barons, the mafia, the arms trade and now tax havens?
Because without them some empires would have crumbled before they had even got going!
It’s not that they didn’t realise, it’s just that now they have no choice but to admit it!
Two non-democratic, elitist institutions representing financial capital at the expense of almost everything most people hold dear.
It really isn’t surprising at their failure if you observe the track record of both the IMF and the World Bank which are littered with corruption, bribery, economic and political warfare against democratic governments and often in collusion with non-democratic dictators all around the world.
The ECB, IMF and the World BanK? Three heads of :-
http://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Creatures/Cerberus/cerberus.html
😉
Varoufakis would be impressed!
George Monbiot’s article on neo-liberalism pretty much sums up the problem with the lack of democracy at the heart of global finance.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
It’s a good article but he seriously underestimates Keynes in my view. At Bretton Woods in 1944 Keyne’s put forward proposals for a Global Surplus Recycling Mechanism to correct imbalances in trade and encourage productive investment over speculation. America rejected it and we got the IMF instead. See: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/30/syriza-finance-minister-big-idea-will-germany-accept-it
We need the Bancor
Hear hear!