Panama Papers Offer More Evidence That Free Trade Isn’t Really Free

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/13/panama-papers-offer-more-evidence-free-trade-isnt-really-free

You might wonder what the connection is between a friendly game of golf last summer in Martha’s Vineyard and the Panama Papers. Read on.

As anyone who hasn’t been in a cave – or otherwise away from the Internet — knows, last week the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, working with more than a hundred publications around the world, broke news of the biggest data leak in history, from an anonymous source tapping into the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca

Using eleven and a half million documents sent to them via encrypted files, the reporters are revealing the dark secrets of offshore tax havens and phony shell companies favored by the mega-rich and powerful – from plutocrats and politicians to movie stars and professional athletes – who use them to hide and hoard their fortunes, even as billions live and die in poverty.

But what about the United States – why haven’t our usual suspects, the parade of moneybags we’re used to seeing flaunt their wealth even as they do their best to conceal vast portions of it – made an appearance in the leaked data? Let’s go back to that golf game in Martha’s Vineyard.

It was a sunny August afternoon at the Farm Neck Golf Club, described by Golf Digest as “a jewel on the Vineyard” where 18 holes during summer prime time currently cost $170 a head. The players: President Obama, former President Bill Clinton, their mutual friend, inside-the-Beltway wheeler-dealer Vernon Jordan, and former US Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

[merrily]

1. We needed more evidence than 2008? Tough room!

[HughBeaumont]

2. How these fuckers aren't closer and closer to getting frog-marched . . .

. . . . tells me that the system is indeed, NOT broken . . . but FIXED.

You want to invade something? Let's start with the Cayman Islands. Oh, sorry, that means taking the handlers to task. Can't do THAT, can we??

[KG]

3. listen, workers in Brunei will get a minimum wage. don't be such a nationalist