The thread title is pretty much all I have, other than this Twitter link. Effectively over 11 million leaked banking and other records have been released and (it appears) analyzed, with the report (?) being released on Sunday, October 3rd, at 12:30pm Eastern.
Shattering news? Overblown hype? Both? We will see!
Nothing seemed to have come from the Panama Papers. I’ll vote ‘overblown hype’.
I’ve heard that the Panama Papers went nowhere in large part because the stuff being revealed wasn’t generally actually illegal. Is this the case? If so, these would have to reveal actual activities against the law in home countries for this to have a bigger impact.
“The Pandora Papers”? Did Martin Amis guest-write an Adrian Mole novel?
I was thinking Robert Ludlum myself, but that works too…
Well, the Washington Post thinks this is a big deal. I just sat down and haven’t read a thing, but they are running a minimum of eight stories about this, two of them today:
Putin has a secret child which he has supported (and kept secret) by offshore money
The King of Jordan was likely using US aid money to purchase US property for himself.
The link is to WaPo’s Executive Editor saying why they support this investigation, followed by links to the various stories.
The Guardian, The Washington Post, the BBC, Le Monde… over 600 journalists all over the world have received a stash of over 6 Million documents and over 1.2 Million e-mails with information about the off-shore dealings of some rich and mighty people.
What kind of information do you expect from such a trove and what would you really like it to include?
(I am not sure wether this belongs in Great Debates, Politics & Elections, MPSIMS or The Pit, so feel free to move it if appropiate)
Existing thread here:
So, nothing but tabloid fodder and irrelevant improprieties. I gossip sells magazines and news papers but even with my low expectations they seem to be failing to even meet them.
Next up they’ll have the steamy financial details of Bezos’ divorce.
There are competing interests.
Citizens of various countries–voters of various countries, legislators in various countries–have a legitimate interest in structuring taxes in a fair way.
Taxpayers have an interest in paying as little in taxes as possible.
Wealthy taxpayers have figured out methods to hide their wealth from their governments, legally or illegally. In any case, they have a strong interest in hiding not only their wealth, but the means of hiding their wealth. The ultra-wealthy have become very, very good at hiding both.
That desire of the ultra-wealthy must be weighed against the public interest in assigning tax burdens fairly among those who benefit from the government and the society that elected the government.
That’s a damn sight more than tabloid fodder. If the king of a struggling nation is enriching himself off the backs of his citizens, don’t they at least desrve to know?
I have no doubt that the corruption in Jordan or Russia is well known to the people living there. The fact that Putin has a bastard that he is paying for off the books or that aid to the middle east is going to enrich the top merits at best a shrug.
In both cases the person writing the laws is doing it primarily to benefit themselves. If this surprises you I’m surprised.
Spiffy! I have serious doubt that the specifics of the corruption are known, and serious expectations that the opponents of these oligarchs will use this information to hold their feet to the fire.
What you’re saying is not only an argument against any reporting about corruption in a society cynical about its leadership, but is also a far cry from your original dismissal of these reports as “tabloid fodder and irrelevant improprieties.”
Hardly. The putin story is only a story because of the bastard him hiding money off-shore is well known and reported. There is zero chance that Putin’s feet will be held to the fire in any way this story has the same power as the picture of Putin riding a horse shirtless.
If they were breaking a story about billionaires in a country that would hold them accountable it might be news worthy but based on their lead stories I’d place more money on Bezos or Gates hiding money from their ex wife than anything that will be remembered by the end of November.
In countries where the rich and powerful are not held accountable, these sorts of things have a cumulative effect. This may not be the outrage that sends the citizenry to the barricades, but eventually something might, and it’ll be because reports like this helped prepare the ground.
That the wealthy are using the system to benefit themselves is, sadly, not news, although the scale of it continues to be horrifying.
I’m guessing the main impact might be when the time comes to consider foreign aid from the West to some of these countries; it will be harder to justify it if we know that the rich are skimming millions off the top.
Also, finding out about his massive tax avoidance isn’t going to do anything for Tony Blair’s already abysmal public image.
Looks like the parts of this that are important were already well-known, and the parts which are new are unimportant. I mean, even if I were a Russian, I wouldn’t much care that Putin is secretly supporting a bastard. If anything, it’s more admirable than siring a bastard and then leaving him to fend for himself, which would have been my default assumption.
And “rich people hide money offshore to avoid taxes”? Yeah, that’s something that we should care about, but who in the world didn’t already know that? And I imagine that the relevant people already know all of the details about exactly how they do it, too.
wasn’t one of the things in the Panama expose that a lot of the famous people had no idea that their accountants were saving them money this way?
How is item #2 just tabloid fodder? Sounds clearly suspicious if not illegal. Any aid given by the US should surely have a stipulation that it cannot be used for personal gain by the leaders of the receiving nation. If there’s no such rule then we ought to scream loud at our congress and make it clear that if you don’t change this, you don’t get a vote.
Tony Blair doesn’t help himself. I can’t think of other leaders who were really popular in office but totally shredded their public image in retirement.
Not tabloid fodder at all, that is an irrelevant impropriety. The US gives aid to Jordan to support their government, military and economy. There are specific rules in place already and even people to audit them but in every country we give aid to large amounts are skimmed off the top. Think of it as a bribe to allow us to aid their people we won’t cut off aid or prevent them from taking their cut.
How many phone calls to your congress critter is this revelation going to inspire? Think it’ll even get to one?