Author(s): Murphy Richard

Economics

The revelations from the Panama Papers show unknown levels of secret money- how the superrich hide their wealth from the rest of us. Dirty Secrets uncovers the extent of the corruption behind this crisis and exposes the failures of those in power to control this rampant greed. Tax havens are part of the global architecture of capitalism. It is claimed that they provided the freedom from regulation that was necessary to really make markets work and so we all actually gained from them. In this sense they are the ultimate expression of neoliberalism. But this argument and that philosophy has now failed. Furthermore democracy itself is being threatened by the political fall-out from the mistrust this regime has created. The result is that tax havens are now a threat to the very system that supposedly spawned it. Dirty Secrets is the most revelatory examination of the crisis by a leading expert, but also offers solutions on how governments can regulate havens and what the world might look like without them.