Getting back the bad guy’s loot

(New York Times): One year ago, the eyes of the world focused on Tunisia as its ruler, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country, allegedly with millions of dollars in gold and assets on his airplane. The government of Tunisia is now working with the international community to recover Ben Ali’s ill-gotten gains.The process will be slow, complicated, and multijurisdictional, but it will lay down a marker for future dictators.

ABC News produces empty and biased story on Mitt Romney and tax havens

Exactly 10 days ago, I predicted that the press would attack Mitt Romney for using tax havens. In that post, I wrote that, “…based on the questions, it appears that the establishment media wants to hit Romney for utilizing tax havens… As far as I can tell, none of these reporters have come out with a story …But I think it’s just a matter of time.”

Politics, governance and transparency

At the Cayman Business Outlook 2012 Conference the panel is asked to discuss “Politics, Good Governance and Transparency – What Does the Cayman Islands Report Card Say?”
“Politics”: a name for activities that some find unappealing, even disgraceful. But they go on in all real democracies. They are necessary for democracy, they are part of democracy.

Tale of two small countries

(The Washington Times): Cayman is rich, and Belize is poor. Why? Both are small Caribbean countries with the same climate and roughly the same mixed racial heritage, and both were English-speaking British colonies. Belize (the former British Honduras) received its independence in 1981, while Cayman is still not fully independent but is self-governing at the local level, with its own currency, laws and regulations.

Hedge funds playing chicken with Greek debt

(Slate): The political drama has long since moved on to Italy, but the details still haven't been worked out over the question of Greek debt and hedge funds are a big part of the reason. The issue, as you may recall, went like this. Greece was genuinely honest-to-God insolvent and couldn't cover its debts. It needed to default. But European governments didn't want Greece to default since a default would trigger a wave of credit default swap contracts.

SOPA: What if Google, Facebook and Twitter went offline in protest?

(TIME Magazine): Can you imagine a world without Google or Facebook? If plans to protest the potential passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) come to fruition, you won’t need to; those sites, along with many other well-known online destinations, will go temporarily offline as a taste of what we could expect from a post-SOPA internet.

Avoiding the threat of Caribbean cyber colonisation

(Jamaica Observer): The Internet and related technologies play an increasingly significant role in the development of the Caribbean. Yet, as countries in the region make necessary investments in information and communications technologies (ICTs), there is a real risk that we may be unwittingly ceding control of critical elements of our technological and intellectual security. In so doing, we may be missing out on a significant opportunity to take a leading role in the digital economy and surrendering our place in the emerging knowledge-based society.

Offshore savers can kiss confidentiality goodbye

(Telegraph): An employee of the one of the major Lichtenstein banks recently sold details of all their account holders to the German and UK tax authorities. Employees of various Swiss banks have done something similar. I can imagine it’s very lucrative work. On top of that, the US and the UK have persuaded the Swiss authorities to roll back their banking secrecy and allow details of account holders to be passed to them, while many Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs) have signed Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) with onshore countries.

Hobson’s choice

I thought I would set myself a goal to try and write a commentary on the markets and not use “Europe”, “periphery” or “debt”. As you can see I just failed, which is a good thing as this commentary would be decidedly short if I hadn’t.  The past couple of weeks haven’t been a good time to be a prime minister. Having seen two go, Greece’s Papandreou and Italy’s Berlusconi, there must surely be a bit of unease being at the top. 

A change is gonna come

It’s been a long time coming, but a change is gonna come. So sang Sam Cooke in his classic hit, released shortly after his untimely death in December 1964. The song has always  been associated with the  momentous changes in American society  that were  to result  from  the actions of ordinary citizens (mostly non violent) who were  willing to confront the  inequity of racism through the collective action of the civil rights  movement over the remainder of that decade.

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