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Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens Paperback – September 4, 2012
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A thrilling ride inside the world of tax havens and corporate masterminds
While the United States experiences recession and economic stagnation and European countries face bankruptcy, experts struggle to make sense of the crisis. Nicholas Shaxson, a former correspondent for the Financial Times and The Economist, argues that tax havens are a central cause of all these disasters.
In this hard hitting investigation he uncovers how offshore tax evasion, which has cost the U.S. 100 billion dollars in lost revenue each year, is just one item on a long rap sheet outlining the damage that offshoring wreaks on our societies. In a riveting journey from Moscow to London to Switzerland to Delaware, Shaxson dives deep into a vast and secret playground where bankers and multinational corporations operate side by side with nefarious tax evaders, organized criminals and the world's wealthiest citizens. Tax havens are where all these players get to maximize their own rewards and leave the middle class to pick up the bill.
With eye opening revelations, Treasure Islands exposes the culprits and its victims, and shows how:
*Over half of world trade is routed through tax havens
*The rampant practices that precipitated the latest financial crisis can be traced back to Wall Street's offshoring practices
*For every dollar of aid we send to developing countries, ten dollars leave again by the backdoor
The offshore system sits much closer to home than the pristine tropical islands of the popular imagination. In fact, it all starts on a tiny island called Manhattan. In this fast paced narrative, Treasure Islands at last explains how the system works and how it's contributing to our ever deepening economic divide.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Griffin
- Publication dateSeptember 4, 2012
- Dimensions8.25 x 1 x 9.2 inches
- ISBN-100230341721
- ISBN-13978-0230341722
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“This book is a vigorous and well researched polemic against financial deregulation…” ―Richard Cooper, Foreign Affairs
“Shaxson's story of offshore banking is nothing short of Shakespearean, a drama full of secrecy, treachery and corruption in which wealthy countries, companies and individuals collude to horde wealth in a complex global network of largely unregulated tax havens. To realize this end, they install corrupt leaders, exploit indigenous populations and, ultimately, deny both developed and developing nations of vital tax dollars. There is much here that should generate outrage…An admirable job of both arguing the consequences of offshore banking and providing a succinct history of the practice.” ―Kirkus
“A blistering account of the role that tax havens play in international finance. . . brilliant.” ―London Review of Books
“Perhaps the most important book published in the UK so far this year.” ―George Monbiot, The Guardian
“Shaxson provides a fascinating narrative that is both analytically compelling and rich in institutional detail.” ―New York Times Economix blog
“A useful critique.” ―Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
“Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson's excellent book on the global offshore tax system.” ―FT Alphaville
“Treasure Islands has prised the lid off an important and terrifying can of worms.” ―Literary Review
“Shaxson shows us that the global financial machine is broken and that very few of us have noticed.” ―New Statesman
“In this riveting, well-written expose, Shaxson goes deep into the largely unexamined realm of offshore money. In the process, he reveals that this shadow world is no mere sideshow, but is troublingly central to modern finance, with the US and the UK as leaders. The resulting abuses are widespread, ranging from tax revenue stripping from African nations to individuals and corporations escaping enforcement and accountability. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the hidden reasons why financial services firms have become so powerful and impossible to reform.” ―Yves Smith, creator of Naked Capitalism and author of Econned
“Treasure Islands shines the light on some very dark places. It reads like a thriller. The shocking thing is its all true.” ―Richard Murphy, co-author of Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works
“At last, a readable – indeed gripping – book which explains the nuts and bolts of tax havens. More importantly, it lays bare the mechanism that financial capital has been using to stay in charge: capturing government policy-making around the world, shaking off such irritants as democracy and the rule of law, and making sure that suckers like you and me pay for its operators' opulent lifestyles.” ―Misha Glenny, author of McMafia: A Journey through the Global Criminal Underworld
“Trade and investments can play a profoundly productive role on the world economy. But so much of the capital flows that we see are associated with money laundering, tax evasion, and the wholesale larsony (sic) of assets often of very poor countries. These thefts are greatly facilitated by special tax and accounting rules or designed to "attract capital" and embodying obscure and opaque mechanisms. Shaxson does an outstanding and socially valuable job in penetrating the impenetrable and finds a deeply shocking world.” ―Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist for The World Bank
“The real challenge to America's economy comes not from China – but from the Caymans, the Bahamas, and a whole hot-money archipelago loosely under the control of the City of London. If only as a civics lesson, read this astonishing book to find out the true political constitution of the world.” ―Thomas Geoghegan, author of Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
“Far more than an exposé, Treasure Islands is a brilliantly illuminating, forensic analysis of where economic power really lies, and the shockingly corrupt way in which it behaves. If you're wondering how ordinary people ended up paying for a crisis caused by the reckless greed of the banking industry, this compellingly readable book provides the answers.” ―David Wearing, School of Public Policy, UCL, London's Global University
“An absolute gem that deserves to be read by anyone interested in the way contemporary globalization is undermining social justice. Give it to your sons, daughters, families, favorite legislators and anyone else needing stimulation of their thought buds. This masterpiece illuminates the dark places and shows the visible hand of governments, corporations, banks, accountants, lawyers and other pirates in creating fictitious offshore transactions and structures and picking our pockets. This financial engineering has enabled companies and the wealthy elites to dodge taxes. The result is poverty, erosion of social infrastructure and hard won welfare rights and higher taxes for ordinary people. Tax will be the decisive battleground of the twenty-first century as no democracy can function without it, or provide people with adequate educations, healthcare, security, housing, transport or pensions. Nicholas Shaxson has done a wonderful job in lifting the lid off the inbuilt corruption that has become so naturalized in the western world.” ―Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting, University of Essex, UK
“Over my holiday last week, I read Nick Shaxson's book – Treasure Islands. I would go as far as saying this book is the No Logo for a new century” ―Sunny Hundal, Liberal Conspiracy
“Shaxson has undertaken a big task with the book Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World. But the task is well worthy of examination, as it is so vital to the shadowy infrastructure of the global financial system… provides an easily digestible overview of the labyrinthine nature of the world of offshore finance.” ―Seeking Alpha
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin (September 4, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0230341721
- ISBN-13 : 978-0230341722
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 8.25 x 1 x 9.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #420,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11 in International Taxes (Books)
- #18 in International Tax Law
- #263 in Banks & Banking (Books)
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Treasure Islands does a really incredible job in shedding light on an arcane, complex international financial system that has evolved mainly over the past 100 years. Like most people, when I heard the term tax haven, I would think of a few rogue Caribbean islands who helped a few rich people and crime lords launder money or hide it from taxation. Shaxson turns that conception on its head. While the term tax haven sounds like it specifically refers to taxes, Shaxon defines it more broadly: "Tax havens can be loosely described as a jurisdiction that seeks to attract money by offering politically stable facilities to help people or business entities get around the laws, rules, and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere."
Using that definition, Shaxson aggregates the international network of such jurisdictions under the label "the offshore system". In this book, he investigates the three main components of the offshore system, which may surprise you. While the small island states are integral fortifications of the offshore system, the main poles are actually the United States, London, and a grouping of states in continental Europe (mainly Luxembourg, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and the Netherlands). Considering that about one half of world trade passes through tax havens, they are integral to the current global system. Also, while terrorists and crime lords are significant users of the offshore system, the primary beneficiary and architect is the financial services industry. The bankers on Wall Street and in London have constructed a system to help them undermine democracy, drastically boost profits, destabilize the global markets, shape international regulation to their liking, and evade taxes, and this very same infrastructure enables the financing of international terrorism, corrupt third world rulers, and greatly facilitates the illegal drug trade. One key takeaway from the book is that all of these phenomena have their roots in the same underlying financial network, and none of them can be addressed without confronting the offshore system.
The main services that tax havens provides are secrecy, tax evasion, and freedom from unwanted regulation. A very important consequence of such a system is the creation of a race to the bottom in terms of regulatory environments. Shaxson examines this process both in the United States and internationally. While the US is an international tax haven (offering secrecy to foreign donors, allowing banks to accept proceeds from criminal activities as long as they were committed abroad, offering tax breaks to foreign investors), there is also a tax haven network at the state level. States such as South Dakota and Delaware, in an effort to attract corporations to incorporate in their states, abolished interest rate caps, giving birth to the credit card industry in the 80s. Delaware also has a long history of offering the most permissive rules of corporate governance, giving maximum power to corporate managers. Barack Obama criticized the Caymans, where he alleged that there was a building where 12,000 corporations supposedly had business offices. Well, there is an office building in Delaware with about 219,000.
Internationally, the offshore system allows banks to exercise this deregulatory leverage at the national level. The city of London, which has long maintained an extremely lax regulatory environment for fascinating historical reasons detailed in the book, began attracting massive amounts of business from US banks chafing under the Bretton Woods system of capital controls and Glass Steagall regulations separating commercial and investment banking. London had no such controls, so US banks were able to begin doing business there and use the threat to relocate to London to eventually force the US to deregulate in the late 90s and 2000s. As we know, this was a crucial development in setting the stage for the financial crisis of 2008. In addition, the unregulated markets that were based in London allowed banks to set up investment vehicles that were free of reserve requirements, allowing them to issue massive amounts of debt.
A final theme discussed in the book is the devastating effects of the offshore system on poor countries. For every one dollar of foreign aid that has flowed into developing countries over the past 30 or so years, TEN dollars have left the country and into the offshore system, building the portfolios and secret accounts of corrupt ruling elites. The offshore system creates a neocolonial dynamic where western countries back corrupt leaders and their allies, and provide the international financial infrastructure for these corrupt elites to steal their country's wealth and hide it abroad, free of tax. As pernicious as that is, the real consequence to that is that poor populations are saddled with the debt (the proceeds of which the rulers stole), which then of course requires the IMF to come in and radically undermine democracy by imposing harsh structual adjustment programs that mainly benefit rich investor countries and cause great pain to average people.
In summary, this book details the most important aspect of the global economy that you probably never knew existed. If you are interested in understanding poverty, inequality, development economics, international terrorism and the drug trade, and how corporations have amassed such great political power, you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle if you don't read Shaxson's epic work.
Although I think that this book has a political agenda(His organizatin, the Tax Justice Network is intimately involved in changing the status of tax havens), that is exactly what I find redeeming about his book. This topic rarely gets seen enough through normal political channels and is usually dismissed as too arcane or boring to look at more closely. Shaxson dismisses this notion and passionately argues how the whole system could be transformed through better global cooperation. More democratically agreed upon tax laws and accountability are at the top of the agenda. The "race to the bottom" for the least taxes and regulation are led by offshore havens such as Jersey and the Caymans, US States such as Delaware and South Dakota, and to the ultimate onshore that has become offshore within London itself, the Corporation of London or "The City" as it is often known. The author, born in one of the world's ultimate tax havens for years, Africa, does not like the system he has seen develop there and hopes to prevent the rest of the world from becoming more like that. His country of birth, Malawi, is still one of the poorest countries in the world.
I didn't read this book from an academic perspective (ie needing to understand the details about everything inside), but I think I understand enough about how the system works to have a more informed discussion with others and to better understand events in the news as I see them unfolding. This is the kind of book that everyone should be reading, talking about and acting upon. Organizations like the Tax Justice Network and Global Witness provide guidance for future action. Indexes like the Global Financial Integrity Index (measuring corruption) provide a more sobering view of developed countries system of politics than the standard tables (usually providing a broad separation between developed and developing countries when it comes to corruption). This index provides a more holistic view of the how corruption happens, taking into account the effects of unaccountable capital flows, their beneficiaries and the places that make them go. Proposed law amendments such as the White House Interstate Lending Amendment provide an issue to rally around as well as a direction to keep looking, regardless of the comprises that are made in the meantime.
It is a fine book in my estimation and perhaps one of the most important to be written since the 2008 financial crisis has shown the widening cracks in the global financial system that ties together our fragile global economy.
Top reviews from other countries
There seems to have arisen an implicit professional conspiracy involving lawyers, bankers and accountants, due to a common attitude of greed and selfishness. Offshore Banking is the last refuge of the medieval aristocrats, who believe only they deserve any real rewards. Few experts, including most economists, are unaware of the methods and negative impacts of offshore banking. The author's recommendations are repeated because this tragic situation is fixable: but it will need political will. This review helps to expose these criminal activities to a wider audience to hopefully end this world-wide EVIL. Many readers will try to skip reading this review, believing one must be an economist or accountant to understand or such international banking activities do not impact them. They are wrong on both counts, both the book (and this review are written for the general reader) because these activities are so global that they impact everyone on the planet, as the recent crises demonstrated.
My view would be that these people, although they don't pay much tax like you or I, spend a fortune on homes, education, fancy cars, going out, household staff etc etc They DO contribute considerably to the country of convenience. This is why countries compete to attract these people much like some families compete to host wealthy international students. I think the author needs to relax about things - the world has never been different and to pretend it has - is to be a bit of a silly schoolboy.
I am enjoying the book but the evasion of corporate tax is important. Corporations give people stable jobs. They collect income taxes and sales taxes at no charge to society. That is a miracle. They also pay business rates & give to charity. Companies should not have to pay any more taxes so I am glad to see they use transfer pricing. The assumption that the state has an unlimited claim on the profits of a private company is essentially how dictatorships are governed; North Korea, Nazi Germany, China, Russia, Narco-states etc etc. I think we should be relieved that The City's spider web remains the no.1 place for laundering dirty money - at least British intelligence will have some chance of seeing what is coming if it can rummage through the laundry bins on Grand Cayman. I look forward to reading more of the book and developing my view of it - at the moment the underlying premise seems a little naive but it is superbly written so I am giving Mr S a fair hearing & I do believe the Kleptocrats who buy London properties should be told to leave the UK and the money form the sale of their homes returned to their countries of origin. The offshore world should remain offshore - The City has meant an overvalued pound for many years - we'd be better off without it. Its effects are pernicious - you have essentially leased out London as a playground for the international elite - there are very few British people who can afford to live in London nowadays.
Faisons un rêve, imaginons qu'il n'y ait plus de paradis fiscaux, plus de dettes, des états plus riches, des services publiques des vrais....
The only flaw is the style is very heavy. The author makes a big mess by moments making it a bit tedious. That's why i don't give it 5 stars. Because of the structure within each chapter. The general structure of the book is very well worked.
Apart from that, the content, the research and the explanations are excellent. Awsome. If you really want to know about the offshore industry, and the purposes its serves... nothing compare to this book.




