Calling out
around the world; time to put on you’re made in Ecuador Panama hat and
frantically start dancing to the ultimately limited hangout leak.
And if you
believe in the purity of intentions of the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) at the center of the leak, I’ve got a made in
Shenzhen Panama hat to sell you (disclosure: I never was, and never will be, a
member of the ICIJ).
The Washington-based ICIJ gets its cash and its “organizational procedure”
via the Exceptionalist-based, Orwellian-named Center for Public Integrity. The
funds flow mostly from the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment, the
Rockefeller Family Fund, the Kellogg Foundation and the George Soros-owned Open
Society.
Then there is Eastern Europe-based partner organization OCCRP, an even more
Orwellian outfit self-styled as playing some sort of progressive, alternative
media role. OCCRP is funded by Soros and USAID.
And finally, there’s this
fictional land named Panama – a certified U.S. vassal. Absolutely nothing of
real substance happens in Panama without a green light by the United States
government. Or, as an international tax lawyer told me, “you have to be an
idiot to stash money in Panama. You cannot flush a toilet there without the
Americans knowing about it.”
This sets the scene for the Panama Papers leak – a massive hoard of 11.5 million documents allegedly leaked from someone
inside offshore heavies Mossack Fonseca to the center-left, NATO-friendly
Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich and then shared by the ICIJ with
selected mainstream media partners…….
(Full text at link below)
Offshore bank accounts
are not intrinsically illegal. Quite a few though involve dodgy money or at
least provide the euphemistic “low-tax environment” fundamental to the very
wealthy.
It’s not an accident that the Panama Papers unveil connections to several
dozen firms and individuals who are prominently featured in U.S. sanctions
blacklists. That configures the Panama Papers as even more of a limited
hangout; the real
Papers would be the Cayman Papers or the Virgin Island Papers. That’s where
most of the in-the-know park their money (not to mention Luxembourg). Adding to
the hilarity factor, David Cameron suddenly
woke up to the need to stop British overseas territories – and Crown
dependencies – being used by the wealthy to park their untaxed fortune.
It’s never going to happen. The so-called international banking/financial
system is a demented casino. It’s not only 8 percent; Hong Kong players tell me
as much as 50 percent of global wealth may currently be parked, undisturbed, in
untaxable offshore havens. If a fraction of these astonishing funds would be
taxed, governments right and left would be paying their debts, investing in
infrastructure, launching round after round of sustainable growth, and a
productive spiral would be in motion.
And that leads us to the cherry in the corruption
cake; how come there are no Americans in this limited hangout leak? Of course,
there are none. Panama is for suckers. Too obvious. Too rakish. Too crude.
Ergo, forget about The Cayman Papers.
As for foreigners
in-the-know, we just need to go back a mere three months ago to this Bloomberg
piece, where Andrew Penney, Managing Director of Rothschild & Co., spells
it all out; the U.S. “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world.”
The circle is finally
squared; Panama is revealed as the patsy – mere collateral damage in this
limited hangout Monster Truck operation. Domestic tax haven providers, such as
Rothschild, are the real deal. Make America great again? It already is – as the
top tax shelter for hardcore dodgy money had to be…a monster Panama:
Exceptionalist itself. Now dance, suckers.
Full text at: The
Limited-Hangout Leak - LewRockwell