USA: Den Of Thieves?

Hey, it’s not me saying it, but the New York Times! Finally waking up to the obvious. That’s courageous, as the greatest, and wealthiest of all the dens of thieves in the world, Plutocracy Central, is New York City itself.

John A. Cassara, a former special agent for the Treasury Department, wrote in the New York Pravda: Delaware, Den of Thieves? November 1, 2013:

“OUTSIDE of crimes of passion, criminal activity is typically motivated by greed.

As a special agent for the Treasury Department, I investigated financial crimes like money laundering and terrorism financing. I trained foreign police forces to “follow the money” and track the flow of capital across borders.

During these training sessions, I’d often hear this: “My agency has a financial crimes investigation. The money trail leads to the American state of Delaware. We can’t get any information and don’t know what to do. We are going to have to close our investigation. Can you help?”

The question embarrassed me. There was nothing I could do.

In the years I was assigned to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or Fincen, I observed many formal requests for assistance having to do with companies associated with Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. These states have a tawdry image: they have become nearly synonymous with underground financing, tax evasion and other bad deeds facilitated by anonymous shell companies — or by companies lacking information on their “beneficial owners,” the person or entity that actually controls the company, not the (often meaningless) name under which the company is registered.

Our State and Treasury Departments routinely identify countries that are havens for financial crimes. But, whether because of shortsightedness or hypocrisy, we overlook the financial crimes that are abetted in our own country by lax state laws. While the problem is concentrated in Delaware, there has been a “race to the bottom” by other states that have enacted corporate secrecy laws to try to attract incorporation fees.”

The hypocrisy has, indeed, been colossal. The Clintons, for example, on the face of it, are among the planet’s most corrupt politicians. Just watch their fortune. Try to explain the difference with the king of Zimbabwe.

Yet, thanks to relentless propaganda, the Clintons are among the most admired American citizens. Why so? Because the same propaganda machinery  that make Clintons thrive is the one that makes made in USA plutocrats thrive, and if one can one’s soul grovel for the former, one sure will for the later.

This week we learn for example that the owners Google, Oracle and their kind would come down from the sky, and make Obamacare work. Saved by plutocrats again! So now, whatever good Obamacare is capable of doing, the indelible impression will be left, that the world’s richest men saved it. Verily those thieves are philanthropists!

The USA is plutocracy central. It can be seen in many ways. Not just the profusion of legal tax evasion and “optimization”. It can be seen statistically.

Consider this. France, or Germany, have a percentage of millionaires comparable to that of the USA. But the USA has, by far, a much greater number of multi-billionaires than France. Actually the USA has the greatest density of billionaires in the world.

It’s not that Americans are more industrious: otherwise French multimillionaire density would be lower. It’s that (legal) tax evasion is much greater in the USA… and it kicks in mostly for the hyper rich (who literally own the country and its politicians).

Many are the tricks, for example borrowing (against stock collateral; not taxed), instead of earning (taxed). Those tricks are tolerated, or even instigated, by the very political and propaganda machinery that the plutocrats control.

In truth the USA is the world greatest tax haven for the global plutocracy, and not just because of the foundation law and countless tax write-offs for the hyper rich inside the USA, to profit American multibillionaires. The USA also behaves like a philanthropic organization for worldwide multi-billionaires. The USA is plutophile.

The idea is simple. By allowing global plutocrats to evade taxes in the USA, then they will enrich the United States, and help further their American colleagues by reciprocating exclusive, mutually benefiting arrangements. That’s why formal requests for help from foreign IRS are blocked in the USA. Ultimately, the Pentagon and the intelligence system of the USA (NSA, CIA, etc.) protect Plutocracy Global.

The USA is the blackhole at the center of the worldwide galaxy of tax havens. That’s exactly why no light comes out. Of those worldwide tax havens USA billionaires themselves profit, through specially written tax laws (watch Apple, Amazon, and other major corporations paying only 2-3% tax, whereas the local bookstore pays 35% tax). Everybody knows about it, but don’t expect Obama Wealth Care to talk about it. Or Sugar Bowl’s Pelosi to evoke it.  When sitting on a branch, do not talk about saws. Or why the plutocrats who lead us by the nose don’t like to talk about equality.

Here is Mr. Cassara again:

“The Financial Action Task Force, an international body that sets standards for the fight against money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the international financial system, has repeatedly criticized America for failing to comply with a guideline requiring the disclosure of beneficial ownership information. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with which the task force is affiliated, has championed international standards for financial transparency, but cannot compel compliance.

Watchdog groups like the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Global Financial Integrity and Global Witness say that anonymous companies registered in the United States have become the vehicle of choice for drug dealers, organized criminals and corrupt politicians to evade taxes and launder illicit funds. A study by researchers at Brigham Young University, the University of Texas and Griffith University in Australia concluded that America was the second easiest country, after Kenya, in which to incorporate a shell company.”

Now that Switzerland has been domesticated, it is high time to handle Delaware and Wyoming! Or, more generally, the entire tax code of the USA. However, there will be resistance.

Many behave as if New York City was the universe. And it’s all too true. Yet, let see what happens after we cut finance supreme down to size. From 25% down to 8% that is. Right now, finance is 25% of the profits of the economy in the USA. Historically, the average stands below 8%.

25% of the income of the state of Delaware comes from protection money paid by corporations.

Why has globalization become such a bad thing? Around a century ago, problems arose mostly from the excesses of exploitative colonialism. Exploitative colonialism, at its worst, caused the extermination of most of the natives of entire continents. That was as diabolical as diabolical can be, so it fully deserves to be described as rabid plutocracy.

After the termination of colonialism the old fashion way, complete with its more or less civilized imperial administrations, a much leaner form of exploitation arose. Old style administration chained the plutocrats: they had to play by the rules. After the departure of transnational (“imperial“) administrations, there were no more rules. Or, more exactly, the plutocrats made the rules. And here we are.

Cassara: “Domestic law enforcement agencies are as stymied as foreign ones. In one case I worked on, American investigators had to give up their examination of a Nevada-based corporation that had received more than 3,700 suspicious wire transfers totaling $81 million over two years. The case did not result in prosecution because the investigators could not definitively identify the owners.

Anonymous corporations are not only favored tools of criminals, but they also facilitate corruption, particularly in the developing world. A recent World Bank study found that the United States was the favored destination for corrupt foreign politicians opening phantom companies to conceal their ill-gotten gains.”

That’s what we are at.

Globalization has become plutocratization. Time for a global correction. And that means striking where the head of the snake is. In the USA. Not just in Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada.

The top Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee, proposed legislation requiring United States corporations to disclose to the Treasury Department their beneficial owners. British Prime Minister Cameron, going further, announced that a planned national registry of companies’ true owners would be open to the public, not just to law enforcement.

Global plutocracy, especially of the Anglo-Saxon sort, was the force that made the difference with Nazism. Why? Because plutocracy rotted the head of Western civilization. The body stayed vigorous, and more than one million young Western soldiers courageously died on the battlefield… Civilization was saved, but is again encountering problems, actually the greatest ever. Yes, ever. Never was the biosphere in question before.

Not really understanding how that war was a racket (as the head of army of the USA, Major General Smedley Butler had put it eloquently years before the Second World War).

Right now mysterious kabuki wars against foreign co-conspirators have been replaced by an outright War Against The Poor. It’s all very simple. To get out of it, let’s treat Delaware as if it were Switzerland, a few years back.

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Patrice Ayme

Tags: Cassada, Delaware, Den of Thieves, Hypocrisy, Nevada, Tax Havens, USA, Wyoming