up the sluices of the financial industry so that they
could destroy the productive part of the world
economy. The key string puller of the economy
is now the shadow banking system which is
controlled in order that it can be used to
manipulate governments.
chuckle away: the SCOTSMAN
Gordon
Brown: Beyond The Crash (Simon & Schuster)
Published
on 10 Jan 2011
Iain
Macwhirter
...
The other failing of this book is more profound. Brown presents himself always
as the man with the “moral compass”
who could do no wrong. His particular vanity is to have us believe that he is above politics, above crude commercial
interest. But as Nicholas Shaxson points out in
Treasure Islands: Tax Havens And The Men Who Stole The World – an
absolutely riveting book about how the shadow banking system came into being – Chancellor Brown was one of its
principal architects[HOLY F%$^^K!! Author-author?-Costick67]. It was his “light touch” regulation that let the banks go wild. The City of London, cheered on by Brown, turned into a giant tax
haven, at the centre of a web of financial deception and evasion which radiated
out through Crown Dependencies like Guernsey and Jersey, and on to Overseas Territories
like the Caymans, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Gibraltar.
The whole business is devised to allow
international business to be conducted under the counter and beyond the
reach of any tax authority.
This
is why a third of Britain’s
top 700 companies paid
no tax at all in 2007. It is why banks like RBS could hide billions of dodgy debts in offshore “special-purpose
vehicles”. It is why people like the US investment guru, Warren Buffett, found he was paying less
tax than his domestic staff. Tax, as they say on Wall Street, is for little people. The wealthy
use all the devices permitted by Brown to avoid tax, recycle cash, launder drug money, play countries against each other, and realise trillions of pounds of wealth
without paying any tax at all.
Brown, we know, is an obsessive micro-manager, so he can’t plead ignorance
here. He knew what was going on, helped devise the system, praised the City of London for its “financial
innovation”. Until politicians like him
understand their complicity, there can never be the ethical renaissance in
global finance that he calls for.
---
[Gordo UNDERSTANDS. HE’S LYING.YOU DON’T
UNDERSTAND. you can't handle the truth] AhaahaaAHAHAhAaahahAh
