Neoliberalism's World of Corruption
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- Published on Tuesday, 12 April 2016 03:15
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1245 .... April 12, 2016
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Neoliberalism’s World of Corruption
Phil Hearse
The Panama Papers’ revelations about the rich and powerful hiding untold billions in ‘offshore’ tax havens may be shocking, but it's hardly a surprise to anyone who knows the first thing about the way that big business works. We are living through a blitzstorm of allegations and controversy about corruption. In the few years alone we've had:
* The revelations in the Panama Papers that hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals, including 72(!) present or former heads of state, hid their fortunes offshore. The names so far revealed include associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and numerous members of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
* The ‘Lux leaks’ revelations about the Grand Duchy of... Luxemburg conspiring with big business to launder profits through tax-minimal Luxemburg and how major companies like Amazon and Starbucks shift their British profits to Luxemburg and pay little or no tax.
* Revelations that bankers in Britain conspired to fix the ‘Libor’ rate -- the inter-bank lending rate -- so their banks could profit from trades by giving the impression they were worth more than they actually were.
* Repeated allegations of corruption in sport -- including athletics, tennis and cricket -- either in terms of result-fixing or unfairly influencing results through drug use.
* Accusations that prominent politicians, including South African President Jacob Zuma and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, used vast amounts of public money to build huge residences.
* British bank HSBC was discovered in 2012 to have received at least $880-billion in investments from the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel.
A lot more could be added to this list. The world seems to be awash with corruption. So what is it really all about?
The highly sanitized versions on the BBC would give you the impression that there's a few bad apples out there who are giving the international business and finance communities a bad name. Nothing could be further from the truth. Corruption is endemic in neoliberal capitalism. It is fundamental to the whole way the system works, and it is the method by which trillions are stolen from the poor and given to the rich. Here's why and how.