rigorousintuition.ca

....I'm seeing an analogue to the FBI vs Apple stand-off on i-phone decoding..........offshore financial centres don't actually physically hold any money per se...they just act as a layer of "encryption" on financial structures that lock out govt. scrutiny & leave them relying on nothing more than exhortation & appeals to co-operation to those whose entire business model relies on doing no such thing...

...this story must also be relevant to the current discussion about these events....

OECD unveils global push to end tax havens and loopholes

The OECD has spent two years working on a plan to "end the golden era of tax avoidance" and address base erosion and profit shifting,

...fair warning : this is an admittedly very broad brush & speculative train of thought but one wonders if we might be able to use these analogies to theorise some sort of emergent conflict - an unseemly struggle for the steering-wheel - between what we might term Realists - or those "voter-facing" governmental ruling elements firmly grounded in national polities & consequently more exposed to the pressures building up from below in the face of increasingly obvious panopoly of policy disasters : "austerity",unconventional monetary policy, ZIRP, NIRP, wars etc vs the Fundamentalists ideologically driven ( or sufficiently well remunerated ) to the protection über alles of corporate interests, corporate secrecy, bank bail outs / ins, destruction of "barriers", destruction of the western welfare model, "free-trade" & all the other aspects of the general globalist agenda....

...to state matters more simply I am seeing an irreconcillable conflict or contradiction between the revenue-generating / profit-maximising interests of the large corporate "business model" vs the revenue-generating function of the "government model" that might be approaching some form of cathartic crisis wether by accident or design ....

I would argue that in particular the Trump phenomenon ( & potential movement ? ) & the reactions to it of his opponents within the GOP & its opinionsphere let alone the general MSM may be seen as further evidence of this emergent ideological fissure & consequent destabilisation within establishment circles which has an internecine dimension to it that sets it apart from the more conventional idea of poliitcal insurgency from "outside" or "below" or from oppositional figures such as Sanders...

in the face of current intractable spending deficits leading to an inevitable, eventual setting-in of austerity-fatigue amongst already rebellious electorates & ever-more desperate & intellectually incoherent doubling down on failed nostrums then one can surmise that the timing was finally deemed right for a possible game-changer, a strategic coup such as a massive raid on the bloated off-shore piggy-banks ..

I'm struggling to incorporate the other elephant in the room of geo-politcal risk & issues of "security" into this rough model but on the basis that somewhere, somehow "something's gotta give" on the 35 yr neo-liberal hegemony I am currently envisaging a peeling away of these "Realist" elements into some form of political re-alignment or shifting onto common political ground with the ideological "anti-system" challengers....

...the most obvious point of commonality upon which such a re-alignment & new form of political consensus might emerge could be around attempted halting & reversal of the hollowing out & destruction of the real economy, the middle class, welfare & broader public goods under the guise of "free-trade agreements"....

Not to derail--I didn't think this warranted a new thread--but, at the same time, I think this is interesting for anyone who thinks that the Panama Papers scandal is anything but a complete farce with nefarious intent. Of course, the following should not come as a surprise to anyone considering our two-tiered system of justice...just a sort of reality check.

A Louisiana Man Faces 20 Years to Life in Prison for Stealing Candy Bars meanwhile Wells Fargo Just Admitted to Robbing US Citizens by Deceiving the Govt and No One Was Charged.

So the people who cratered the economy in 2008 are not only still running free almost a decade later, they continue to plunder the economy of millions, if not billions, yet a black guy who has been found guilty of stealing less than $100 may face life in prison. Granted, the guy is a habitual-offender, however, comparing the impact of this guy's crime(s) to that of the plundering banksters is laughable.

Visiting the biggest bookshop in the city today, I was amazed to see a sizable display in the foyer featuring dozens of copies of this book:



It was already brought out last Wednesday, 6 April, by the big & pretty reputable German publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch. The book is 352 pages long and has obviously been many months in the planning, and indeed in the writing. The authors are Bastian Obermeier and Frederik Obermeyer, two young journos from the Süddeutsche Zeitung. There is, for some reason, no index (!), so it's impossible to know exactly what or who is "exposed" in it (if anyone) without buying the damn thing. The only person actually named by name on the cover, or anywhere in the chapter titles, is (guess who?) Vladimir Putin, or rather -- much less damningly -- "Putin's closest inner circle" (on the cover) and "Putin's Mysterious Friend" (title of Chapter 2).

I was in a hurry so I only took a very quick look at this product. The main things that struck me were the "raciness" of the style (especially in the chapter headings) and the inexcusable absence of an index. Can't say any more about it than that.

For German-speakers, a link to the Amazon page, where you can read the first 20 pages or so:

http://www.amazon.de/Panama-Papers-Gesc ... dp_product

Wow! Hmmmm. Already digested and everything! I guess it's something I need to read now.

One way or the other it is a "psy-op" in the way that everything, no matter what, psychologically affects one. Hands down, this hoopla was meant to elicit a response either privately or publicly. It's all shit we already implicitly knew.

Obermeier and Obermeyer? Really?

Just ran across this.


We are the U.S. McClatchy reporting team working with the ICIJ to report on the Panama Papers. Ask us anything!
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ ... m_working/

Dayum! Already double-digit page thread count...

One of the quick comments that jumped out at me:

Kevin: We continue to work on some names that might be larger, time will tell. And most of our searching has been on names and people and places, and less on complex financial entities with global tentacles. as the more obvious places are addressed, we and partners can then look at more complex relationships. As you can imagine, it would take more than a lifetime to read every doc here so we have to be humble about what we think we know.

Tweedledum & Tweedledee you're thinking?

I'm well behind the curve on this.....imbroglio - the Cameron ensnarement is interesting (vey possibly just collateral damage methinks)
- but the continuing (& almost farcical) demonisation of Putin is one of the scariest things i see. The orchestration is so blatant,
so....enduring (this must be getting on for 3 yrs by now) and pervasive (is it global? - i gather its at least pan-European in terms of
magazine covers/news headlines)

I'm lead to believe that some people who have looked at these things recognise press & 'cultural' demonisation of an 'enemy'
is often a prelude to something.......worse

- like war, perhap?

The orchestration is so blatant, so....enduring

As SLAD pointed out elsewhere, weapons sales are going through the roof. All those humble folk attached to industrial death praying for war even as they shudder piously at the thought of it. There's yer cold warriors, waiting to die but not before a last conflagration or two.

Smash the mafia elite: we should treat offshore wealth as terrorist finance

Amid the cobbled passageways and tumbling tenements of the Italian city of Perugia, it’s possible to daydream you are in the middle ages. You are surrounded by medieval art and architecture. And then you think: hold on, what happened to the Renaissance?

Sure, there are some imposing private palaces from the period 1300-1500, and sure Raphael left half a fresco in a tiny chapel. But it’s not Florence. The money was clearly here at some point but, some time after 1300, the artistic, cultural and scientific riches moved somewhere else. By 1500, the city was “smaller, poorer and politically narrower” than 200 years before, writes historian Sarah Rubin Blanshei.

Why? Because the rich did not pay their taxes. The Perugian elite became a closed stratum of mafiosi, earning their money from mercenary work abroad, jealously guarding their family inheritance, stifling social mobility. Sound familiar?

As David Cameron’s fiasco over the Panama Papers collides with George Osborne’s over the budget, the danger is that we frame these merely as political scandals.

In fact, the Panama Papers point to a deeper sickness. Globalised capitalism has become an organised and legalised form of corruption, in which the work of the manager, the inventor and the entrepreneur come second to that of people whose wealth “works for them” – preferably in a jurisdiction nobody can see.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/a ... ce-perugia

From CNBC:

Swiss banker whistleblower: CIA behind Panama Papers
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/12/swiss-ba ... apers.html

Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he'd be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.

Birkenfeld, an American citizen, was a banker working at UBS in Switzerland when he approached the U.S. government with information on massive amounts of tax evasion by Americans with secret accounts in Switzerland. By the end of his whistleblowing career, Birkenfeld had served more than two years in a U.S. federal prison, been awarded $104 million by the IRS for his information and shattered the foundations of more than a century of Swiss banking secrecy.
Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS banker, speaks during an interview at Schuylkill County Federal Correctional Institution in Minersville, Pa., on Tuesday, April 27, 2009.
Bradley C. Bower | Getty Images
Bradley Birkenfeld, a former UBS banker, speaks during an interview at Schuylkill County Federal Correctional Institution in Minersville, Pa., on Tuesday, April 27, 2009.

In an exclusive interview Tuesday from Munich, Birkenfeld said he doesn't think the source of the 11 million documents stolen from a Panamanian law firm should automatically be considered a whistleblower like himself. Instead, he said, the hacking of the Panama City-based firm, called Mossack Fonseca, could have been done by a U.S. intelligence agency.

"The CIA I'm sure is behind this, in my opinion," Birkenfeld said.

Birkenfeld pointed to the fact that the political uproar created by the disclosures have mainly impacted countries with tense relationships with the United States. "The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don't see one U.S. name. Why is that?" Birkenfeld said. "Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation."

Asked why the U.S. would leak information that has also been damaging to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, a major American ally, Birkenfeld said the British leader was likely collateral damage in a larger intelligence operation.

"If you've got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this," Birkenfeld said. "But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn't hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That's wrong. And there's something seriously sinister here behind this."

The public relations office for the CIA did not immediately return a message for comment.

Birkenfeld also said that during his time as a Swiss banker, Mossack Fonseca was known as one piece of the vast offshore maze used by bankers and lawyers to hide money from tax authorities. But he also said that the firm that is at the center of the global scandal was also seen as a relatively small player in the overall offshore tax evasion business.

"We knew that firm very well in Switzerland. I certainly knew of it," Birkenfeld said.

But Mossack Fonseca was just one of a number of firms in Panama offering such services, he said. "The cost of doing business there was quite low, relatively speaking," he said. "So what you would have is Panama operating as a conduit to the Swiss banks and the trust companies to set up these facilities for clients around the world."

tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ...

any day now, those Western names, western bankers, western billionaires connected to Soros, Deutsche, Goldman, HSBC, will appear ...

any day now ...

tick ... tock ...

smiths » Wed Apr 13, 2016 3:20 am wrote:tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ...

any day now, those Western names, western bankers, western billionaires connected to Soros, Deutsche, Goldman, HSBC, will appear ...

any day now ...

tick ... tock ...

...and then what?

NeonLX » Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:58 am wrote:

smiths » Wed Apr 13, 2016 3:20 am wrote:tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ...

any day now, those Western names, western bankers, western billionaires connected to Soros, Deutsche, Goldman, HSBC, will appear ...

any day now ...

tick ... tock ...

...and then what?

A solution that on the surface appears as if it will benefit "we, the people."