A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore ”“ as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together ”“ according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.
James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.
He shows that at least £13tn ”“ perhaps up to £20tn ”“ has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, “protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy”.
…The sheer size of the cash pile sitting out of reach of tax authorities is so great that it suggests standard measures of inequality radically underestimate the true gap between rich and poor. According to Henry’s calculations, £6.3tn of assets is owned by only 92,000 people, or 0.001% of the world’s population ”“ a tiny class of the mega-rich who have more in common with each other than those at the bottom of the income scale in their own societies.
Mitt Romney has at least double the asset worth needed to place him in that elite 0.001%, by the way.
What would Peter Kropotkin do?
The Money Party RSS
Per Wikipedia:
It should not be too difficult to destroy…
I consider this to nearly treasonous. How can people like Mitt Romney claim to be patriotic when they won’t even keep their money in the country they want to govern? This makes no sense to me and should be an immediate disqualifier for elective office.