The United States has long relied on informal agreements with private sector institutions to assert its interests in the global financial system. If we are to fight kleptocracy, we need to make this privately run plumbing more accountable to international institutions, argues Edoardo Saravalle in … [Read more...]
Finance Curse
Tax havens harm our well-being and security
Image: NeoNazi_02″ by Chad Johnson is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 This week we published a special edition of Tax Justice Focus on national security, guest edited by Jack Blum, Charles Davidson and Ben Judah. You can read their editorial here. In the coming days we will publish the five … [Read more...]
Offshore, National Security and Britain’s Role
Image: NeoNazi_02" by Chad Johnson is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The long recession precipitated by the 2008 financial crisis fed political failures across the world, increasing inequality and polarising societies to the point of social breakdown. As far-right movements threaten to take … [Read more...]
How GDP masks the finance curse
Every country needs a financial centre, but as it grows beyond a certain optimal size (where it is carrying out the functions it is supposed to do) it starts to harm the country that hosts it. That is the finance curse, and many countries including the United States and United Kingdom passed that … [Read more...]
Taking Panama to task: Women’s rights trampled by financial secrecy
Just over four years have passed since a huge archive of secret documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, containing wide-ranging details of fraud, tax evasion and other illegal financial schemes, were leaked to a German newspaper provoking a global scandal. The public outcry that … [Read more...]
Tax, reparations and ‘Plan B’ for the UK’s tax haven web
The killing of George Floyd by US police in Minnesota, on 25 May 2020, has sparked a public response both more powerful and more international than almost any of the previous cases in a very long line - including Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, 13 March 2020. The demands for justice extend far beyond … [Read more...]
Britain’s Slave Owner Compensation Loan, reparations and tax havenry
Update: you can hear Naomi Fowler and John Christensen discussing this research in edition 102 of the Taxcast, our monthly podcast, starting about 2 minutes in: It's hard to believe but it was only in 2015 that, according to the Treasury, British taxpayers finished 'paying off' the debt which … [Read more...]
A “world fit for money laundering” must end in the post Covid-19 era
We're sharing here the details of explosive new research on "the untold history of how prominent civil servants in the UK tailored US-devised anti-money laundering policies in ways that suited the needs of Britain’s financial services industry." This new research was carried out by our senior … [Read more...]
Malta, murder and the finance curse: a podcast recommendation
This four-part podcast special series is well worth a listen. It's called My Mother's Murder, an investigation into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. It is narrated by one of her sons Paul Caruana Galizia. Here's part of the description of the podcast series: Daphne investigated … [Read more...]
Videos: Touring London, the capital of secrecy
After three and a half years of acrimony, Brexit will become a reality in just a few days time. January 31st will be a historic moment, for both Europe and the United Kingdom, marked by jubilant celebrations in some circles and profound misgivings in others. One very small but extremely powerful … [Read more...]
Let’s shrink the City of London finance sector, for prosperity’s sake
This week journalist and Tax Justice Network writer Nicholas Shaxson sounded the alarm in Britain's Guardian newspaper about plans for a “Singapore-on-the-Thames” economic model, a tax haven strategy, after Brexit: The strategy to win the great global race to attract financial capital by … [Read more...]
Twenty reasons to shrink your financial centre
(Cross-posted with financecurse.net) The Finance Curse is a concept first developed by the Tax Justice Network. It is a relatively simple idea -- and also an original and powerful multi-level critique of the modern global economy. The core message is "too much finance can make a country … [Read more...]
Transforming local economies: the Preston Model – a Taxcast special edition, May 2019
In this special extended edition of the May 2019 Taxcast we go to Preston in the North of England to see the Preston Model in action and how they're transforming their local economy and democratising wealth. Also: we discuss dark money and the European elections - the elite interests aligning … [Read more...]
Rising inequality and dysfunction in the tax haven of Jersey: a Taxcast special edition
In this special extended edition of the April 2019 Taxcast, broadcast from the tax haven of Jersey: we explore Jersey's poor showing in the OECD's Better Life Index and ask why Jersey's spending so much money on improving its bad image instead of setting up public registers of beneficial … [Read more...]
‘The Magic Money Tree:’ From Modern Monetary Theory to Modern Tax Theory
by John Christensen and Nicholas Shaxson Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has gained prominence since the global financial crisis. The rising star US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said recently we should be “open” to its ideas, and some mainstream economists have given it a (qualified) … [Read more...]
