Does Anyone feel like Bailing

[classicman]

Bank secrecy moves may force wealthy back onshore

Wealthy people who have stashed cash in undeclared accounts in Switzerland and other offshore centers may now seek ways to legitimize their money after Berne and other tax haven governments relaxed bank secrecy laws.

In landmark statements, bank secrecy strongholds Switzerland, Luxembourg and Austria offered on Friday more cooperation on tax evasion than ever before to avoid being blacklisted by G20 countries as unco-operative tax havens.

The decision, which comes on the heels of similar moves in other offshore centers, will not eliminate the principles of banking secrecy that have allowed the $7-trillion offshore industry to thrive, and the countries will offer help only on limited cases of suspected tax evasion.

"It is not an open door policy. It is an easing of access to information in respect to tax crime," Swiss President and Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz said on Friday.

But Berne is already looking for a transitory solution to help its client come onshore, and did not rule out the option of negotiating tax amnesties with other jurisdictions.

"This is not a fantasy. It is more than appropriate to talk about amnesties," Merz told a news conference.

Liechtenstein, a tiny Alpine tax haven that also committed to more tax transparency on Thursday, has said it wants a legal solution to help its clients bring undeclared money onshore to stem the massive client withdrawals its banks have been suffering since a tax spat with Germany.

"Tax amnesties are the most attractive solution for banks and bank clients to get out of a problem," said Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, an analyst with Bernstein Research, who says the changes on the tax arena are coming at a faster pace that the industry originally anticipated.

"But it's not in Switzerland's hands to determine them."

There are a lot of people who have inherited undeclared money from their parents," he added. "The younger generations wants to use the money and they cannot do it if the money is not clean."

Swiss tax lawyers say it has become more and more difficult for holders of undeclared accounts to benefit from these as the money cannot be moved and can only be spent in Switzerland.

"This is dead money. It is money that burns under your fingers," said a tax lawyer who declined to be named.

Very interesting.

[classicman]

nah - its all Bush's fault. He teleported into all those meetings and created this "entitlement" mentality. . . yeh thats it.

[sugarpop]

I do now.

[sugarpop]

Gee, I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Hormones?

[sugarpop]

ummmmm...

[classicman]

AIG, Larry Summers and the Politics of Deflection

The issue is over AIG announcing it was obligated to pay its traders in its high-risk London unit a sales bonus totaling $165 million for the year. Obama Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner has announced a novel strategy for ‘justice.’ AIG will ‘reimburse’ the taxpayers up to $165 million for bonuses the company is giving employees. AIG will pay the Treasury an amount equal to the bonuses, and the Treasury will deduct that amount from the $30 billion in government (taxpayer) assistance that will soon go to the company. But he said that the Obama administration hasn't given up on efforts to recoup the money from the employees who got the bonuses. Good luck.

Larry Summers is the man directly responsible for the mess. As Clinton Treasury Secretary from 1999-January 2001 he shaped and pushed the financial deregulation that unleashed the present crisis. He was Treasury Secretary after July 1999 when his boss, Robert Rubin left to become Vice Chairman of Citigroup, where Rubin went on to advance the colossal agenda of deregulated finance directly.

As Treasury Secretary in 1999, Summers played a decisive role in pushing through the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 that was instituted to guard against just this kind of banking abuses taxpayers now are having to bail out. Not only Glass-Steagall repeal. In 2000 Summers backed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that incredibly mandated that financial derivatives, including in energy, could be traded between financial institutions completely without government oversight, ‘Over-the-Counter’ as in where the taxpayer is now being dragged. Credit default Swaps, at the center of the current storm, would not have been possible without Larry Summers and the Commodity Modernization Act of 2000. He is now the White House Economic Council chairman, mandated to find a solution to the crisis he helped make along with Tim Geithner, his friend who is Treasury chief. Foxes should never be asked to guard the henhouse.

There is an awful lot of interesting stuff in this article.
Anyone know anything about the author - F. William Engdahl?

[sugarpop]

No classic, but the more I hear Larry Summers speak, the more full of shit I believe he is. I'm thinking Obama may have to replace some of his financial team.

[TheMercenary]

Consider the source.

[lookout123]

I love it when nutters refer to themselves in the third person.

[classicman]

And refuse to hold both parties to the same standard,

and refuse to answer the question,

and just go off on tangents to change the subject,

and keep posting the same ole dribble year after year...

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by classicman

And refuse to hold both parties to the same standard,

and refuse to answer the question,

and just go off on tangents to change the subject,

and keep posting the same ole dribble year after year...

Mate, if we stop that kind of behaviour, we'd lose 85% of the cellar posts!

[TheMercenary]

And now this lovely little man makes billions off of others misfortune. How special. Wonder what he had to do with us getting in this mess in the first place.

'I'm having a very good crisis,' says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession

A hedge fund manager who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been 'stimulating' and the culmination of his life's work.
George Soros, who predicted the global financial crisis twice before, was one of the few people to anticipate and prepare for the current economic collapse.
Mr Soros said his prediction meant he was better able to brace his Quantum investment fund against the gloabal storm.

But other investors failed to take notice of his prediction and his decision to come out of retirement in 2007 to manage the fund made him $US2.9 billion.
And while the financial crisis continued to deepen across the globe, the 78-year-old still managed to make $1.1 billion last year.
'It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,' he told national newspaper The Australian.

Soros is one of 25, top hedge fund managers from across Wall Street who have defied the credit crunch crisis to reap a total of $11.6billion (£7.9bn) last year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...recession.html

[sugarpop]

I think hedge funds should be illegal. And short selling. And a lot of other things that have been done over the past 10 years.

There are some people who predicted this back in 1999, when Glass-Steagal was repealed.

[classicman]

really? Who did that?