Offshore Banking System: M. Hudson and S. Schafer

This is an excellent interview of M. Hudson who cogently explains how the international banking system relies on the "flight" capital of corporate tax cheats, criminals and drug traffickers, and makes honest tax payers indebted to tax avoiders:

An Insider Spills the Beans on Offshore Banking Centers
Standard Schaefer interviews Michael Hudson

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HUD403A.html

<MH: Offshore tax havens enable multinational companies to give an impression that they do not earn any income on business done in countries where taxes are levied at European and North American rates. The reality is that U.S. companies make a lot more money than they report. However, offshore banking centers free them from having to pay taxes on this income, or on capital gains. That's why we're running such high budget deficits today...<snip>

<...the neoliberals have placed their own ideological administrators in these agencies, men who have bragged to me that they simply refuse to regulate to "kill the beast," that is, government, which is supposed to be the economy's guiding brain. Their non-action has corrupted the national legal and regulatory system by disabling it. Power is being wielded by campaign contributors whose wealth has convinced politicians to give tax evaders the right to blackball any regulatory agency who shows himself or herself to be too conscientious in applying the law, above all the tax code.<snip>

<A choice is indeed being forced. If these tax-cheating havens are not closed down, the only people left to tax will be the middle class and employees.>

Thanks for posting it-
You should post it in the Economic Issues forum too!
BHN

I'll do that. This interview interested me because I came across this subject in a Center for Public Integrity book published in 2001 which didn't go as deeply into the economic and historical significance of capital flight.

"Who Elected the Bankers?"
Loius W. Pauly / Cornell University Press

BHN