I told you they were naked!

There's ONE BUNCH OF 'EUROPEAN' BASTARDS who LIKE WALKING AROUND THE STOCKMARKET NAKED, waving their shorts around.

Just as I had mentioned in the summer, the British government is holding up
EU legislation against short selling, which everybody knows is toxic to markets.
The reason? The London City Corp. makes a lot of its money this way.

The King of Markets WASHes its HANDS OF THE POOR & the middle class, around the world.

by ignoring the ethical choice, they are hoping to take advantage of all the suffering and revolutions the world over.

Under the guise of statesmanship, the British PM decided to capitalise on the suffering.
As soon as Mubarak fell, the he flew over to sell more armaments.

-Costick67 ~(8^P
checkitout: 2 stories

1

Almost everyone condemns naked short selling. But not the British Treasury

The refusal to back a ban on naked short selling,
despite the risk to the economy, exposes the cynicism of the Conservatives

o Share2245 [that number's a clear message- Costick67]
Comments (836)
o George Monbiot
o The Guardian, Tuesday 15 February 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/15/condemns-naked-short-selling-not-treasury
"You think you've seen the worst of it; you haven't. Last week I wrote about how the British government, while imposing extra taxes and devastating cuts on ordinary mortals, has quietly engineered a new tax exemption for the banks and corporations, which also encourages these businesses to shift some of their operations overseas. I thought that was as bad as it got. I was wrong.

On the day I wrote that column the Conservatives were doing something just as repulsive, and far more dangerous. On Wednesday George Osborne told the House of Commons "we will make sure we learn every lesson that needs to be learned – so that this [the financial crisis] never happens again". Two days before, his government demonstrated that nothing has been learned at all. Let me first explain the context.

Most people obtain shares or bonds or other securities in the hope that their value will rise. Short sellers hope their price will fall. They might borrow, for instance, 10,000 shares and sell them for £1 a piece. Then they pray that the value collapses. If they're in luck, and the share price halves, for instance, they can buy the same number as they sold for 50p each. They return the shares to the broker who lent them, and pocket £5,000 (minus fees).

It's a controversial practice. Some people say that it helps markets find the right price for their wares. Others maintain that it exacerbates risk, as the sellers are using assets they don't possess to take on potentially unlimited liabilities (while share prices can't fall below zero, there is no fixed limit to their increase in value). Short selling also creates an incentive to try to drive down the price of securities, amplifying or even creating economic crises. An example was the Asian financial crisis of 1997, triggered by a co-ordinated attack by short sellers on the Thai baht. It destituted tens of millions.

You don't like the idea? Then take a look at naked short selling. In this case sellers not only don't own the assets they're selling, they haven't even borrowed them. They sell a promise of shares, hope the price falls, then try to obtain the shares they've sold. In the surreal traditions of modern finance they're effectively selling securities that don't yet exist (perhaps they should be called insecurities). Naked shorting may grant short sellers golden opportunities to wreck companies and economies, by flooding the market with low-cost ghosts.

Almost everyone condemns naked (also known as uncovered) short selling and wants it banned because of the huge risks it presents to the economy. It has been prohibited in the US, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and Brazil: none of which are renowned for draconian regulation. The European parliament has drafted a directive to bring it to an end within the EU. I did say almost everyone, didn't I? There's one group frantically seeking to protect naked shorting and strangle the directive: the British Treasury, and Conservative MEPs acting on its instructions.

At a committee meeting in the European parliament last week, Tory MEP Syed Kamall inveighed against the ban. When I asked him how he justified this position, he claimed that ending naked short selling "will reduce liquidity, meaning that borrowers will insist on higher returns, pushing up the cost of borrowing. This will lead to governments spending more money on servicing debt and less on state-provided public services." This, as far as I can determine, is rubbish: perhaps the polar opposite of the truth......"

2

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/feb/21/david-cameron-visits-egypt?INTCMP=SRCH

David Cameron arrives in Egypt to meet military rulers

Prime minister lands in Cairo and becomes first leader to visit Egypt since ousting of Hosni Mubarak as president
* Nicholas Watt in Cairo
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 12.06 GMT

David Cameron has flown into Cairo amid tight security, becoming the first world leader to visit Egypt since Hosni Mubarak was ousted as president in the revolution 10 days ago.
A news blackout was lifted as the prime minister landed in the Egyptian capital for a five-hour stopover that was hastily added to the start of a planned tour of the Middle East.
Cameron arrived as the second month of protests across the Arab world continued. Violence has intensified in neighbouring Libya, with the loss of hundreds of lives.
The protests began in Tunisia, Libya's neighbour to the west, in January.
The prime minister – who made clear soon after arriving in Downing Street last year that promoting British trade [new deals for arms!- Costick67] should be a top foreign policy priority – will attempt to show that he is in tune with the new times.

American politics run by coke whores, Coke whores and Koch whores

They're either snorting it,

[ibeatyou.com]
selling fizzy drinks to fat, sick people

or sucking up to big businessmen, who pay for their campaigns.
[buffalobeast.com]

In Wisconsin, the governor took a prank call which was from 'David Koch' (/coke/),
talking about how to destroy the direct democracy protests over union rights
going on in Madison Wisconsin. It was made clear to all but the clinically stupid that Walker works for the Koch bros. It actually makes the conspiracy thing all the more clear. If they do it in Wisconsin, they'll do it across the country.
The reason that Wisconsin has a budget shortfall is not the health care costs of civic workers. It's because Walker gave away 117 million bucks to big business.

Costick67 ~(8^P
checkitout:
http://www.buffalobeast.com/?p=5045

Koch Whore
Posted by Murphy On February - 23 - 2011
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker answers his master’s call

“David Koch”: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that—because we thought about that…

fight fair now!

The American government is nothing if not fair.

If it's fighting a bunch of bearded clerics with WWII weapons,

they feel that they must even things up.

One thing's for sure. The US loves to fight.
It needs to refresh its armaments,
keep its industry going,
show how its weapons work, in order to sell more

Welcome to our new showroom, in lovely Kabul!

Perhaps this is why the rumours are going around that
the American guy who killed two 'robbers' in Pakistan was a
CIA operative, and he killed those two, from Pakistan's ISI (secret police)
who were following him, because he was in contact with Al Quaida,
not to kill them, but to sell them nuclear material.

Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout:

the nice story
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/20/us-raymond-davis-lahore-cia

the not-so-nice story, from Pakistan:
http://www.defence.pk/forums/pakistans-war/94628-cia-spy-giving-nuclear-bomb-material-al-qaeda-says-report.html
"CIA spy" Davis was giving nuclear bomb material to Al-Qaeda, says report
By ANI | ANI – Sun, Feb 20, 2011 12:18 PM IST

London, Feb 20(ANI): Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found in possession of top-secret CIA documents, which point to him or the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) operating in the region, providing Al-Qaeda terrorists with "nuclear fissile material" and "biological agents," according to a report.

Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned "grave" as it appears that open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States, The European Union Times reports.

The SVR warned in its report that the apprehension of 36-year-old Davis, who shot dead two Pakistani men in Lahore last month, had fuelled this crisis.

According to the report, the combat skills exhibited by Davis, along with documentation taken from him after his arrest, prove that he is a member of US' TF373 black operations unit currently operating in the Afghan War Theatre and Pakistan's tribal areas, the paper said.

While the US insists that Davis is one of their diplomats, and the two men he killed were robbers, Pakistan says that the duo were ISI agents sent to follow him after it was discovered that he had been making contact with al Qaeda, after his cell phone was tracked to the Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan, the paper said.

Ching ching goes the balance of payments

[freerepublic.com]
If the Citizens United case means that the US politicians can be bought by
businesses, they can be bought by foreign businesses, say from Saudi.

As you know, the US has a trade balance problem. It prints money so that it
can suck the world dry of its consumer goods. Unfortunately, they've got few exports
left that anybody wants. But, every government has to balance their trade.

Well, if foreign businesses want to run the US, for their own benefit,

they have to get involved in politics
and send some of that money back in the way of
kickbacks,...ooops, ...BRIBES, oooops, campaign contributions.
They send the money back and
it gets added as an export
of a product, democracy,
and re-patriate some money.
BALANCE OF PAYMENTS GOES CHING-CHING
Nowadays, that counts as progress.
[International trade in goods]

Other US exports:
The San Fernando valley also produces porn for export.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

HOKEY-POKEY-OCRACY

A TALE OF TWO BUTTOCKS

[how-to-get-a-bigger-bum.com- I'm not lying]

"Stick your left bums in. pull your left bums out.
stick your right bums in"

This is Orlov's take on modern democracy in the US (but it could be anywhere):
As an aside, I'd like to point out that the US is not much of a representative democracy any more. It's more of a hokey-pokey-ocracy: in one election cycle, you throw your right bums out and vote your left bums in, and in the next election cycle, or the one after, you do the exact opposite. (And you shake it all around in the meantime.) The bums — the Republicans and the Democrats, that is — are perpetually locked in a loving embrace, for they truly complete each other.

Good luck to Ireland today, anyway, although I've heard they've just elected a bilderberger [more on that later].

More on democracy from Douglas Adams' book:

"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, ..."nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, ... "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford ... "of course."
"But," said Arthur, ..."why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in.

How do we survive this chaotic scene?

from Dimitri Orlov's website:

how to connect with your neighbours, out of need-
SUBGENIUS: "I also bought a LOT of unpleasant people drinks, etc. over the first few years. A few years in and a situation got very out of control and I found I had a small army backing me up, which saved me from a pretty nasty set of possibilities. Remember - neighbors are ALL. You don't have to LIKE them, but treat them with what THEY perceive as respect and they will look out for you. "
...
how women are being used to commercialise everything-
"Astyk makes the excellent point regarding the destruction of community through overwork and the herding of women out of the home and into the workplace. Women can't just be (unless they are rich) — they have to have an occupation, and the default occupation — "homemaker" — carries a bit of a stigma. Women have always been the backbone of any community, and the regimentation of women's lives was a brilliant move in the direction of totalitarian consumerism, because it allowed relationships even within the family, such as child-rearing, to be commercialized. Once all social interaction is centered around consumption patterns, community as a notion becomes little more than an advertising gimmick, and self-organizing properties of society become restricted to pursuing the latest commercial fashion."
___
It's not that I want to lock them away, but you can't do much family-wise nowadays.

Costick67 ~(8^P
checkitout:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/01/real-communities-are-self-organizing.html

for Adams:
http://wso.williams.edu/~rcarson/lizards.html

OLD MEN ARE THE LUCKIEST BASTARDS

They grew up and worked in a time when women were their servants.

The only women who were working were looking for 'fun' as well as money.

Sexual diseases were cleaned up with a shot or a pill.

They got a job for life.

They paid for a state pension, and got it.

They saved for a private pension and got it.

They paid for a cheap house and kept it.

All they had to do was cut their hair and not smoke reefer on the job.

They'll also probably die before the world goes totally to hell.

Now, everything is polar opposite of the old guys' experience.

This is why the young fellow got dressed up as an old man and hopped on a plane.

The young Asian guy probably had a sweat tooth, and the women were only looking to feather their nests.
So, he probably got more attention for his wallet than his wad.
The only problem is the old fellas are probably pissing themselves.

I can't believe I've even thought it, but it has passed through my mind. Old guys are lucky!

-Costick67 ~(8^P

8th wonder of the world is GREED

by Onion mag, and it's a biggun.

It's man-made, by bankers, and it puts them on another astral plane.

They insist on manipulating democracies into playing along with the crooked games.

They're created such a gap between themselves and the rest of society,
that soon they'll have all the money, and we'll be left exchanging old magazines
for milk and bread.

more to come

Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout:
http://www.theonion.com/

get your water. can't live without it

This is something that I've believed for a long time and not written about.

It's the ultimate in social goods, which some people have and others don't.

water
I happen to come from the country which has
25% of the world's fresh water.
We are not the biggest wasters of water, but
we're close to the US, which is.

Most of our country is uninhabited so there's plenty of
water lying around.

Why am I mentioning this?

Firstly, apparently 1 billion people don't have
easy access to clean drinking water.

Secondly, businesses use a lot of it,
and so the Americans have been eyeing our water
for a long time.
I can't blame them. Their country is almost
totally polluted.

They've tried to use economic treaties to get
their share of cross-border water guaranteed.
In other words, we will not be able to
redirect the water that they've already
budgeting for.

What reminded me is stories on maxkeiser.com
about water and industry.
China is running short of water.
American businesses are running short of water.
Wherever there isn't a flood,
there's a drought.

So, in order to keep the Americans or anybody else
from getting their hands on Canada's water,
Canada must start giving it away.

We must take tankers of the stuff to parts of the world
which don't have much access and give them fresh H2O.
Now, and as long as their is water, and the fuel to deliver
that water.
Get the UN and everybody else involved so that
the Americans cannot get their greedy hands on it
without having to fight 50 other countries.
Because, if it's 49, they'll go for it.

I think the first thing that will happen in the lower 49
is that businesses and people will start scrapping
over water rights. Unfortunately, the water companies
are almost all private now. So, they can sell water
to the highest bidder. Even though businesses don't always
need 100% clean water, they'll demand it and
give society back the water when they're done,
as EFFLUENT.
[thanks to Greenpeace for the photo]
People will have to go for bottled water at 1000 times
the cost, in plastic bottles, and get gynecomasty.
MAN BOOBS

[the 'bro]

Also, it might be a good way to keep the world from being flooded
by global warming because of the melting ice in the Arctic.
[the right to a shower]

-Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout:

letter from viewer to maxkeiser.com, on Feb.14

" On this weeks TAM you mentioned the Monckton AGW deniers. Refer them to this:
http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/
In case you haven’t seen this, Dr. Abraham meticulously takes Monckton apart point by point. It is so thorough that its almost indescribable. It deserves a “QED” on the final slide, which the professor must have forgotten to add in his rush to publish. Reserve a few hours to watch it, because it is about that long.
I am a geologist working a number of new mining projects here in the states. The biggest problem for each one of them is water supply, and one is within 50 miles of Lake Superior. Water will be fought over worldwide in our lifetime. Good call on Baikal.
B"

the decline and fall of a western nation in 10 easy steps

It can all happen in a series of moments, flashes of history.

NEO-CLASSICAL ECONOMICS in RUINS.

Let's use the USofA as an example

step 1
MINSKY MOMENT.
A Minsky moment is when investors who have borrowed too much are forced to sell good assets to pay back their loans.[1] In any credit cycle or business cycle it is the point investors begin having cash flow problems due to the spiraling debt incurred financing speculative investments. At this point, a major sell off begins because no counterparty can be found to bid at the high asking prices previously quoted, leading to a sudden and precipitous collapse in market clearing asset prices and a sharp drop in market liquidity.[wikipedia]
this happened to the US in 1966 if you read Steve Keen's Debtwatch [below]
MARIONETTE MOMENT
Ronald Reagan's election. He was mentally feeble and Bush 41, Cheney and the bankers began running the show. It was called trickle-down economics.
Debt goes sky-high, never to touch ground again
MONKEY-ARSE MOMENT
George Bush 43's election

He thought he was being one of the old Skull and Bones boys, fratting and farting with his rich buddies. Actually, he put the whole situation completely out of control
with his tax breaks for the rich, and his poluting the SEC (stock market police).
Can you say Derivatives, WMFinancialD - Warren Buffet
MYSTERIOUS MUSLIMS MOMENT
9-11, the Twin Towers, and inside job.
it's used to start foreign wars, domestic spying, and the end of free speech.
MURDOCH MOMENT
all remaining back-talk and lippiness is stopped because
the news are no longer reported. 'News' channels present the same-old-same-old
and Glenn Beck's religious ceremonies, full of Grace.

MADOFF MOMENT
When everybody is too busy making money to see whose stealing,
you get a Bernie Madoff. Oddly, he's still alive even though he stole from
Mafiosos, Greek politicians and Steven Spielberg.
MADE-OFF WITH IT MOMENT
Goldman Sachs boss Blankfein says he does God's work, as you know, you can't
jail God, no matter how many crises He causes.
God said it and it was done.
They've gotten off with losing all our real money, and leaving
our pension accounts full of IOUs, on paper napkins.
MAFIA MOMENT
When the government itself realises that it operates like a Mafia, and the populace have to pay them for protection.
If anybody stands in their way, they gang up on him, like
Glenn Greenwald [below].
MUBARAK MOMENT
Government realises that the people have by-passed the newsmedia and the placating speeches, and so they SHUT DOWN THE NET.
MOMENT OF SILENT PRAYER
before the police take you away, at the TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN DISSIDENT.
MOON RIVER MOMENT.-we get Abu Graibed
MILLENARIAN MOMENT
When government realise that their only way out of debt is to take
on a country of 1.2 billion people.
THE END OF MOMENTS
Eternal peace, for humankind, the latest dinosaur.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout: 2 stories

1

Steve Keen's Debtwatch:

Minsky himself argued that the major objective of economic management should be to maintain a “robust financial structure”:
, in order to do better than hitherto, we have to establish and enforce a “good financial society” in which the tendency by business and bankers to engage in speculative finance is constrained.
The financial instability hypothesis has policy implications that go beyond the simple rules for monetary and fiscal policy that are derived from the neo-classical synthesis. In particular the hypothesis leads to the conclusion that the maintenance of a robust financial structure is a precondition for effective anti-inflation and full employment policies without a need to hazard deep depressions. This implies that policies to control and guide the evolution of finance are necessary… (Minsky 1982, pp. 69, 112)
He asserted that the US passed from such a structure to a fragile one with the Penn State crisis in 1966.
The first twenty years after World War II were characterized by financial tranquility. No serious threat of a financial crisis or a debt-deflation process (such as Irving Fisher described15) took place. The decade since 1966 has been characterized by financial turmoil. Three threats of financial crisis occurred, during which Federal Rserve interventions in money and financial markets were needed to abort the potential crises....

2
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/11/campaigns
The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters
By Glenn Greenwald
[anonymous hactivists expose HBGary plans to use Department of Justice goons to attack Wikileaks and journalist]
.....Among the emails that were published was a report prepared by HB Gary -- in conjunction with several other top online security firms, including Palantir Technologies -- on how to destroy WikiLeaks. The emails indicated the report was part of a proposal to be submitted to Bank of America through its outside law firm, Hunton & Williams. News reports have indicated that WikiLeaks is planning to publish highly incriminating documents showing possible corruption and fraud at that bank, and The New York Times detailed last month how seriously top bank officials are taking that threat. The NYT article described that the bank's "counterespionage work" against WikiLeaks entailed constant briefings for top executives on the whistleblowing site, along with the hiring of "several top law firms" and Booz Allen (the long-time firm of former Bush DNI Adm. Michael McConnell and numerous other top intelligence and defense officials).
The report prepared by these firms was designed to be part of the Bank of America's highly funded anti-WikiLeaks campaign.
The leaked report suggested numerous ways to destroy WikiLeaks, some of them likely illegal -- including planting fake documents with the group and then attacking them when published; "creat[ing] concern over the security" of the site; "cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters"; and a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of wikileaks activities." Many of those proposals were also featured prongs of a secret 2008 Pentagon plan to destroy WikiLeaks.
One section of the leaked report focused on attacking WikiLeaks' supporters and it featured a discussion of me. A graph purporting to be an "organizational chart" identified several other targets, including former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee, Guardian reporter James Ball, and Manning supporter David House. The report claimed I was "critical" to WikiLeaks' public support after its website was removed by Amazon and that "it is this level of support that needs to be disrupted"; absurdly speculated that "without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold"; and darkly suggested that "these are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause." As The Tech Herald noted, "earlier drafts of the proposal and an email from Aaron Barr used the word 'attacked' over 'disrupted' when discussing the level of support."
...But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

Kensington & Chelsea borough is an offshore haven

Now, this is news.
Apparently the UK Uncut border control will set up a toll road, during business hours,
at all exits from Kensington & Chelsea, rich royal borough in London,
because it is full of 'non-domiciled' people
[fancy word for

'I'm here but the taxman can't see me']

whose companies,
and banks are benefitting from the offshore rules and thus are not paying tax.
Therefore, the Mercedes, Ferraris and Maseratis that exit the principality of
Kensington and Chelsea are not paying for the road that their cars are using as they
roll over to their offices in the City of London, an offshore Corporation itself.

The best way to get money out of them is to make them pay for everything they do.

I say £10 for taking a piss.
£2000 for a hooker (sorry, already surpassed)

-Costick67 ~(8^P

Main Street screws [write your street name here]

I was so supportive of Main street stores, here in the UK, because I thought
that the banks were not lending the stores enough money to stay in business.

Well, much to my surprise, there are a number of main street stores
that are wise to the big game. Many of the big names have moved offshore.
In other words, they've opened a two-by-four office in Switzerland or
some other tax haven. That means that they don't pay any company tax in the UK.

If they did, we wouldn't be in debt trouble, even with the crooked banks.

Philip Green's Topshop, BHS,
Boot's, the crooked pharmacist/chemist
Ikea
Vodafone
any bank, bailed-out, or not

[more to be added soon]

Look what the police, the defenders of the tax-dodgers, did to the UK Uncut people.
Pepper spray was used against a peaceful demonstration.

UK Uncut from Fat Rat Films on Vimeo.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

Treasure Islands

[Lord Mayor of London. Isn't that quaint? not, if you read this article]

I went to a talk at the London School of Economics and nobody was killed, or pepper-sprayed.
That's strange, because if an important person in the City of London knew what was being said there he would not have been pleased.
Nevertheless, it was told to a small audience of 300, and we don't have any friends.

who spoke? Nick Shaxson
What did he write? Treasure Islands, a book about tax havens
what did we learn? The City of London is an offshore tax haven.

You know how I say that I'm living in London? Well, all of us Londoners are bullshitters.
We live in other jurisdictions that happen to be linked geographically to the
Square Mile, the City of London.
That City has not residents, just financial business, banks, insurers, etc.
The FIRE economy (Finance, insurance and real estate)
The City has a Lord Mayor, who goes around the world drumming up
business for the FIRE.

Illegal business? No problem.
Mafia? No problemo
Despot fleecing your own country? Welcome to London.

The Lord Mayor doesn't have a 'people', he has a 'money'. He's the mayor of money.

You'da thought that the entire country of England, being as the UK is in the EU,
would also be under the laws of the UK and the EU. But it isn't.
Rich people can send their money to London, and it just goes off the tax radar.

It's an official offshore, within, or right under the nose of, the EU,
as are

Lichtenshite,
Luxemberk,
Monacle,
Have-a-cow Jersey,
Isle o' Maneaters,
Dead Man on a Gurny Geurnsey

and many of the former island colonies in the Caribbean.

of the 66 tax havens, 31 are British, in some way. 15 of the top 30 are British.
The biggest offshore is the US. Then it's Switzerland and then the UK.

Private individuals have 10 trillion stashed away, and companies have ???who knows. This costs about 250-500 billion in lost revenue to the governments of the world, every year.
This money-hiding service doesn't come cheap, but we're not talking about the postman stashing his paycheck.

His thoughts?
Something has to be done, because this undermines democracy.
He's surprised nobody had ever written such a book, ever.
The LSE is a training ground for banksters.

He had some Lord guy there, Glasman, who had stuff to say about
using our right of association to stop this. Pretty funny stuff.
He was 'mr cool'.

My thoughts, tying together old strands:
1. One reason Cyprus was put into the EU, with its hands tied, is that it was also an offshore, and Britain wanted to stop the shenanigans... from leaving its shores.

2. I now know why the US has been working so hard with the IMF, the ratings agencies and the Wall Street banksters to rob the world. They want to keep their position as top pirate on the high seas of finance. They are advertising themselves as the

baddest offshore mafia-country,

to drum up more laundering business from all the corrupt despots in the world.

-Costick67 ~(8^P

checkitout
from LSE calendar:

Speakers: Dr Maurice Glasman, Nicholas Shaxson
The City of London is an offshore island inside the British nation state, floating partly free from the democratic rules and restraints that bind the rest of us and fed by a network of tax havens around the world. Nicholas Shaxson and Maurice Glasman look at how this secretive network emerged and came to underpin the City's fearsome political and economic powers today.
Maurice Glasman, recently appointed Labour Peer and Reader in Political Theory at London Metropolitan University. He is the author of Unnecessary Suffering.
Nicholas Shaxson is the author of Poisoned Wells, the Dirty Politics of African Oil, an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and an experienced journalist.