Wealth Creation Strategies

I am guessing that this qualifies as a big fucking deal:

A study by James S. Henry, former chief economist at McKinsey & Company, estimates that wealthy individuals have $21 trillion to $32 trillion in private financial wealth tucked away in offshore havens---roughly equivalent to the size of the U.S. and Japanese economies combined.

Even as the world economy has stumbled, the offshore world has continued to grow, said Henry, who is a board member of the Tax Justice Network, an international research and advocacy group that is critical of offshore havens. His research shows, for example, that assets managed by the world’s 50 largest “private banks”---which often use offshore havens to serve their “high net worth” customers---grew from $5.4 trillion in 2005 to more than $12 trillion in 2010.

As you might expect, America's job creators are well represented:

Among nearly 4,000 American names is Denise Rich, a Grammy-nominated songwriter whose ex-husband was at the center of an American pardon scandal that erupted as President Bill Clinton left office.

A Congressional investigation found that Rich, who raised millions of dollars for Democratic politicians, played a key role in the campaign that persuaded Clinton to pardon her ex-spouse, Marc Rich, an oil trader who had been wanted in the U.S. on tax evasion and racketeering charges.

Records obtained by ICIJ show she had $144 million in April 2006 in a trust in the Cook Islands, a chain of coral atolls and volcanic outcroppings nearly 7,000 miles from her home at the time in Manhattan.

Since there's likely no way this problem ever gets rectified in full---it would take a multinational treaty, and even then there'd probably be ways to cheat it---I really hope they publish the names of every single person in those leaked e-mails. If we can't repatriate their money, we can at least shame them publicly. Small consolation, obviously, but it's about all we can realistically expect in our time.

---Baron V