Jul 222012
 
 July 22, 2012  Posted by at 12:22 pm Finance

 





Image: Secret Safe Books

The Tax Justice Network just issued a report that shines a revealing light on secret funds of the earth's wealthiest. Indeed, if these funds were added to the official wealth of the 139 countries investigated, these would turn from debtors (to the tune of $4.1 trillion) to creditors (worth $10.1-13.1 trillion).

Revealed: global super rich has at least $21 trillion hidden in secret tax havens

At least $21 trillion of unreported private financial wealth was owned by wealthy individuals via tax havens at the end of 2010. This sum is equivalent to the size of the United States and Japanese economies combined.

There may be as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets held offshore by high net worth individuals (HNWIs), according to our report The Price of Offshore Revisited, which is thought to be the most detailed and rigorous study ever made of financial assets held in offshore financial centres and secrecy structures.

We consider these numbers to be conservative. This is only financial wealth and excludes a welter of real estate, yachts and other non-financial assets owned via offshore structures.

The research for the Tax Justice Network (TJN) by former McKinsey & Co Chief Economist James Henry comes amid growing concerns about an enormous and growing gulf between rich and poor in countries around the globe. Accompanying this research is another study by TJN, entitled "Inequality:You Don’t Know the Half of It, which demonstrates that all studies of economic inequality to date have failed to account properly for this missing wealth. It concludes that inequality is far worse than we think.

Other main findings of this wide-ranging research include:

• Our analysis finds that at the end of 2010 the Top 50 private banks alone collectively managed more than $12.1 trillion in cross-border invested assets for private clients, including their trusts and foundations. This is up from $5.4 trillion in 2005, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 16%.

• The three private banks handling the most assets offshore on behalf of the global super-rich are UBS, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. The top ten banks alone commanded over half the top fifty’s asset total – an increased share since 2005.

• The number of the global super-rich who have amassed a $21 trillion offshore fortune is fewer than 10 million people. Of these, less than 100,000 people worldwide own $9.8 trillion of wealth held offshore.

• If this unreported $21-32 trillion, conservatively estimated, earned a modest rate of return of just 3%, and that income was taxed at just 30%, this would have generated income tax revenues of between $190-280 bn – roughly twice the amount OECD countries spend on all overseas development assistance around the world. Inheritance, capital gains and other taxes would boost this figure considerably.

• For our focus subgroup of 139 mostly low-middle income countries, traditional data shows aggregate external debts of $4.1 trillion at the end of 2010. But take their foreign reserves and unrecorded offshore private wealth into account, and the picture reverses: they had aggregate net debts of minus $10.1-13.1 trillion. In other words, these countries are big net creditors, not debtors. Unfortunately, their assets are held by a few wealthy individuals, while their debts are shouldered by their ordinary people through their governments.

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Revealed: global super rich has at least $21 trillion hidden in secret tax havens

 

Home Forums Super Rich Stash At Least $21 Trillion In Secret Tax Havens

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  • #8461

      Image: Secret Safe Books The Tax Justice Network just issued a report that shines a revealing light on secret funds of the earth's wealthie
    [See the full post at: Super Rich Stash At Least $21 Trillion In Secret Tax Havens]

    #4789
    jal
    Participant

    I disagree!

    Our analysis finds that at the end of 2010 the Top 50 private banks alone collectively managed more than $12.1 trillion in cross-border invested assets for private clients, including their trusts and foundations. This is up from $5.4 trillion in 2005, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 16%.

    Now you know … that is the primary reason not to let the banks go bankrupt.

    The banks need the cash flow from the gov. to hid the fact that most of that $12.1 trillion does not exist.

    The ponzi is bigger than you ever imagined.

    Imagine if B. Madoff had not confessed and if the gov. had keep supplying him with a cash flow.

    hehehe

    The number of the global super-rich who have amassed a $21 trillion offshore fortune is fewer than 10 million people. Of these, less than 100,000 people worldwide own $9.8 trillion of wealth held offshore.

    What would happen if those 10 million people suddenly were told that their fortunes had been mal invested?

    Yep!

    HEADS WOULD ROLL.

    #4790
    Golden Oxen
    Participant

    The amount seems rather large to me, but who knows, it could be more I suppose. Whatever the case exaggerated figure or not the deflation argument has just gotten a lot weaker in my view.

    #4791
    Nicole Foss
    Moderator

    A lot of that ‘wealth’ is financial assets that constitute excess claims to underlying real wealth. Most of the supposed value is virtual and will disappear quickly in a credit collapse. It does nothing at all to weaken the deflationary case, in fact it is a symptom of exactly the problem we are facing.

    #4793
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    jal post=4454 wrote: I disagree!

    Our analysis finds that at the end of 2010 the Top 50 private banks alone collectively managed more than $12.1 trillion in cross-border invested assets for private clients, including their trusts and foundations. This is up from $5.4 trillion in 2005, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 16%.

    Now you know … that is the primary reason not to let the banks go bankrupt.

    The banks need the cash flow from the gov. to hid the fact that most of that $12.1 trillion does not exist.

    The ponzi is bigger than you ever imagined.

    Imagine if B. Madoff had not confessed and if the gov. had keep supplying him with a cash flow.

    hehehe

    The number of the global super-rich who have amassed a $21 trillion offshore fortune is fewer than 10 million people. Of these, less than 100,000 people worldwide own $9.8 trillion of wealth held offshore.

    What would happen if those 10 million people suddenly were told that their fortunes had been mal invested?

    Yep!

    HEADS WOULD ROLL.

    Excellent article Ilargi and excellent reply, jal.

    I’d like to add that this is almost assuredly *public* information. I bet lots of wealth is kept off the books somewhere.

    Also, note how they use people as the denominator.

    How about “related families?”

    How about “related families those with close interpersonal and business ties to the related families?”

    Now we are getting pretty close to the Big Finance Capital club and their management class of minions.

    Do the math – it isn’t that big of a number. Add in the hidden wealth these politically connected people are able to hide without threat of government intervention and, wow, we’ve been played for chumps.

    If you really want to see how badly we’ve been beaten black and blue, how about count “assets under control.” For example, one might own 10% of something, BUT THEY MAY CONTROL 100% OF THE ASSET.

    George Carlin, The Owners of America (caution – language, but well worth ignoring the language for the message, IMHO!)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY4WlxO6i0

    Remember, their monetary net wealth is our monetary net debt – BY DEFINITION (except coinage)! Get this – if $1 is lost to a fire, then the net debt is impossible to pay back no matter what! What a system!

    It is IMPOSSIBLE for our debt to be paid unless they give us all their money – and then there would be no money with which to transact business outside of coinage!

    Collapse if you do, collapse if you don’t.

    BTW, guess which group of people don’t allow Debt Dollar Tyranny?

    That’s right – those scary Muslims. Guess what happens when the Debt Dollar Tyrants trick the American chumptocracy that another Muslim nation needs to be “peace bombed?”

    Libya all about oil, or central banking?

    https://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD14Ak02.html

    Oh, and Big Finance Capital Monsanto gets to force their produce on commercial farmers in the new “freedom:”

    The Real Victor in Iraq: Monsanto

    https://www.thepanelist.net/opinions-culture-10084/1252-the-real-victor-in-iraq-monsanto

    #4794
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    Golden Oxen post=4455 wrote: The amount seems rather large to me, but who knows, it could be more I suppose. Whatever the case exaggerated figure or not the deflation argument has just gotten a lot weaker in my view.

    Golden, the self interest of the psychopaths with all this money is to collapse everyone else in order buy up planet Earth for pennies on the dollar. The more they hoard debt receipt “money,” the more bailouts their business interests get, the faster everyone else goes bankrupt and pukes up their indebted real assets.

    It’s actually the highest Art of War in action… war is all about deception, the best warrior doesn’t have to fight, if you want to bankrupt the nation, create an endless war on terror, load your treasury with bailouts while impoverishing your ignorant enemy.

    Lord Action warned us…

    The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
    ~Lord Acton

    This issue is being fought right now before our eyes – and one side has NO CLUE that there is even an issue, let alone that they are being used to mop the floor.

    It isn’t net wealth that’s important, it is RELATIVE wealth that is important. If Big Finance Capital loses have their wealth, but society loses all of it and then is permanently indebted through fraudulent Debt Money Tyranny… well… Rockefeller’s wet dream will have come true – to dominate you and everyone else in society…

    “We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years……It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
    ~David Rockefeller

    They are transparent about it, too.

    Search “UN bill of rights”

    Go to Article 29 (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

    IOW, if the Big Finance Capital controlled United Nations corporate front doesn’t like you, YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS!

    Freedom is truly slavery.

    #4824
    SidDAvis
    Member

    All this tells me is that taxes are too high, i.e., we have much too much government. Of course people with the ability will seek to avoid the plunder and control of predatory institutions.

    And now that the economy is in the tank partly as a result of the developing collapse of the unconstitutional, predatory, unstable, unsustainable, fractional reserve monetary system imposed on us via the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, what has government done but to seek to take even more of our wealth and control us to an even greater extent.

    Government has become the destroyer of freedom, which really is its nature anyway, so I for one applaud anyone who seeks to remain free to the extent that he can by using offshore corporations, banks, and brokers to avoid the plunder of these psychopaths, sociopaths, and outright criminals who occupy the seats of power.

    #4835
    steve from virginia
    Participant

    Latched to the fancy past, marching in lock-step to the abyss:

    “Super Rich Stash At Least $21 Trillion In Secret Tax Havens”

    What are they to buy with it? What will be ‘worth’ anything?

    When their world is gone they will be gone with it.

    #4837
    skipbreakfast
    Participant

    steve from virginia post=4500 wrote:

    “Super Rich Stash At Least $21 Trillion In Secret Tax Havens”

    What are they to buy with it? What will be ‘worth’ anything?

    When their world is gone they will be gone with it.

    Everything. They’ll be able to buy everything.

    The smart ones–and most of them are smart with their money and ahead of the rest of us–will turn it into real assets, including farmland, water resources, oil resources and so on, before the Dollar vanishes into the annals of history.

    The difference in our forecasts is that I don’t see an immediate “event horizon” between this barely-inflationary world and the hyper-inflationary one. I do see some window of deflation in which $21 trillion will be easily spent (keeping in mind we’re still living in a $700 trillion world when factoring in credit). I think the likes of Mish Shedlock agree with you that all fiat, no matter what the sovereign denominator, could vanish in a single blow–he’s a fan of Gold Money. But I continue to be unconvinced we go from a world where dollars are worth “everything” (i.e., oil and food) to a world where dollars are worth “nothing” overnight. The super rich might only need a window of 12 months of massive deflation to convert that paltry $21 trillion (in comparison to the current overall supply of money and credit, which will begin vanishing at an exponential pace).

    I expect that those rich folks who are too slow will, as you say, vanish along with their money. But as long as there is some money around to be traded with, humans will continue to trade it until we reach a sort of Minsky moment where we just say to heck with it, it’s too hard to get any dollars and I’d rather have a tuna, so I’m just gonna reject dollars altogether. In the meantime, they’ll keep their billions safe for the upcoming rainy day.

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