Hearing Offshore Tax Evasion Panel 1 Witnesses from a Swiss bank and the U.S. Department of Justice testified on efforts to collect unpaid taxes from offshore bank accounts. *The transcript for this program was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning. People in this video Cole, James M.Deputy Attorney GeneralDepartment of JusticeCerutti, RomeoGeneral CounselCredit Suisse GroupCoburn, Thomas "Tom" A. M.D.U.S. Hosting Organization Senate Committee Homeland Security and Government Affairs | Investigations More Videos From Offshore Tax Evasion Related Video Senator Levin on Offshore Bank AccountsSenator Carl Levin (D-MI) talked with reporters after a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on… U.S. U.S. Clips from This Video 10 minutes177 views 5 minutes127 views cs levin3 hours73 views 6 minutes25 views
the capitalist network that runs the world - physics-math - 19 October 2011 AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable. The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). "Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. The Zurich team can. So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. 1. (Data: PLoS One)
Exhaustive Study Finds Global Elite Hiding Up to $32 Trillion in Offshore Accounts Guests James Henry economist, lawyer, board member of the Tax Justice Network, and author of the report, "The Price of Offshore Revisited." He is former chief economist at McKinsey & Company. This is viewer supported news Donate A new report reveals how wealthy individuals and their families have between $21 and $32 trillion of hidden financial assets around the world in what are known as offshore accounts or tax havens. This is a rush transcript. AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new report that reveals how wealthy individuals and their families have between $21 and $32 trillion of hidden financial assets around the world in what are known as offshore accounts or tax havens. The inquiry was commissioned by the Tax Justice Network and is being touted as the most comprehensive report ever on the "offshore economy." Welcome to Democracy Now! JAMES HENRY: Thanks very much, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. AMY GOODMAN: You talk about pirate banks. JAMES HENRY: Right. SEN.
Why the 1% should pay tax at 80% | Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled, from less than 10% in the 1970s to over 20% today (pdf). A similar pattern is true of other English-speaking countries. Contrary to the widely-held view, however, globalisation and new technologies are not to blame. Other OECD countries, such as those in continental Europe, or Japan have seen far less concentration of income among the mega rich. At the same time, top income tax rates on upper income earners have declined significantly since the 1970s in many OECD countries – again, particularly in English-speaking ones. For example, top marginal income tax rates in the United States or the United Kingdom were above 70% in the 1970s, before the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions drastically cut them by 40 percentage points within a decade. So, the evolution of top tax rates is a good predictor of changes in pre-tax income concentration.
The Financial Crisis Was Foreseeable … Thousands of Years Ago Economists, Military Strategists and Others Warned Us … Long Ago We’ve known for 4,000 years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this. We’ve known for 2,500 years that prolonged war bankrupts an economy. We’ve known for 1,900 years that rampant inequality destroys societies. We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse. We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system. We’ve known for hundreds of years that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands is dangerous for free markets. We’ve known for centuries that companies will try to pawn their debts off on governments, and that it is a huge mistake for governments to allow corporate debt to be backstopped by government. We’ve known for 80 years that inflation is a hidden tax.
6 Things You Should Know About the $21 Trillion the World's Richest People Are Hiding In Tax Shelters Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com July 25, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. $21 trillion. While governments slash spending and lay off workers, citing a need for “austerity” because of the slow economy, the ultra-rich—fewer than 10 million people—have stashed an amount equal to the US and Japanese economies combined away from the tax man. James S. There's a lot of information to wade through in this report, so we've broken out 6 things you should know about the money the world's richest are keeping from the rest of us. 1. “By our estimates, at least a third of all private financial wealth, and nearly half of all offshore wealth, is now owned by world’s richest 91,000 people– just 0.001% of the world’s population,” the report says. Who are those people? 2.
Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators: Nick Hanauer It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop. Trouble is, sometimes the things that we know to be true are dead wrong. For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false. I’m a very rich person. Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. Theory of Evolution When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. It is unquestionably true that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can’t have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. More Shoppers Needed
We Have Forgotten What the Ancient Sumerians and Babylonians, the Early Jews and Christians, the Founding Fathers and Even Napoleon Bonaparte Knew About Money Mike “Mish” Shedlock has repeatedly pointed out that we have reached “peak credit” – and there will not in our lifetimes be as much credit as we saw from 2000-2008. I noted last year: Michael Hudson is a highly-regarded economist. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Mesopotamian economic thought c. 2000 BC rested on a more realistic mathematical foundation than does today’s orthodoxy. And Hudson wrote last year: Every economist who has looked at the mathematics of compound interest has pointed out that in the end, debts cannot be paid. No economy ever has been able to keep on doubling on a steady basis. Hudson calls for a debt jubilee, and points out that periodic debt jubilees were a normal part of the Sumerian, Babylonian and ancient Jewish [and Christian] cultures. That is what our money system is.
Global Elites Are Hiding More Than $4.5 Trillion In Tax Havens By Alan Pyke on April 15, 2014 at 8:17 am "Global Elites Are Hiding More Than $4.5 Trillion In Tax Havens" CREDIT: Shutterstock The world’s wealthiest people have long relied on Swiss bank accounts and international shell corporations headquartered in tax haven countries, but the total amount of money they’re hiding from the world’s tax officials has always been hard to pin down. One economist thinks he’s figured it out: Rich families are hiding at least $4.5 trillion offshore, according to Gabriel Zucman, and the real figure is probably closer to $6 trillion. The estimate is based on global data on cross-border financial transactions that have always presented a puzzle to economists. For scale, $5.9 trillion is nearly twice the annual federal budget of the United States and more than a third of the country’s total debt. The new estimate comes alongside a report that 40 percent of the world’s population lives on a budget of between $2 and $10 per day.
Conservative fantasies on the miracles of market Austin, TX - A central doctrine of evangelicals for the "free market" is its capacity for innovation: New ideas, new technologies, new gadgets - all flow not from governments, but from individuals and businesses, allowed to flourish in the market, we are told. That's the claim made in a recent op-ed in our local paper by policy analyst Josiah Neeley of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think-tank in Austin. His conclusion: "Throughout history, technological advances have been driven by private investment, not by government fiat. There is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon." As is often the case in faith-based systems, reconciling doctrine to the facts of history can be tricky. The initial research-and-development for all these projects so central to the modern economy came from the government, often through the military, long before they were commercially viable. So I called Neeley and asked what innovations he had in mind when he wrote his piece.
The New Totalitarianism: How American Corporations Have Made America Like the Soviet Union Photo Credit: Viajar24h.com July 15, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The great power struggle of the 20th century was the competition between Soviet-style communism and "free-market" corporatism for domination of the world's resources. There's a small problem with this, though. It's not just that the corporations have taken control over our government (though that's awful enough). With tongue only somewhat in cheek, here are a few ways in which Americans are now becoming a new lumpenproletariat, subject to the whims and diktats of our new Soviet-style corporate overlords. Reduced Choice and Big-Box Censorship We see it most evidently when we go to the store. Now, every Macy's in America carries the same dozen or so lines of bland, middle-of-the-road women's clothing.