Valentino Rossi is a very successful,
well-compensated motorcycle
racer and winner of numerous Grand Prix World Championships. He is under
investigation by Italian authorities for tax evasion, which
The Doctor allegedly accomplished in part by relocating to London and possibly taking advantage of the
Non-domicile classification [
link to google cache to avoid registration] for tax purposes. According to UK authorities, in 2003, for instance, his
declared income was £650. Even a priests is becoming
vocally upset at Rossi and the public's reaction. On a far larger scale, the UK was earlier this year identified as an Offshore Financial Center in an IMF
white paper [
34 page PDF]and there are those who think the purported
tax-haven monster should be confronted. The Norwegian government
agrees and wants to "facilitate the recovery of assets illicitly stacked away in tax havens" by way of a global coalition, of which the UK is not part.
posted by preparat
on Sep 3, 2007 -
12 comments
The Trade Surplus and the Olive Tree The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has seen its loan portfolio drop 73 per cent since 2003. Nobody seems to be defaulting on their loans lately, and there hasn't been a
big bailout since 2001.
The IMF's summit this week in Singapore will look at this issue and how to better the world
balance of trade betweed the developing world and the industrial economies of the west. But is there really a
place (warning: PDF) for the IMF in the trade agreements between
China and the
US?
posted by parmanparman
on Sep 15, 2006 -
7 comments
Choose your own adventure! "The following imaginary scenario attempts to picture what would happen if the
IMF did not exist. It tells the story of a businessperson in a fictional developing country that is suffering from a shortage of foreign exchange. In the scenario, there is no
IMF to turn to in order to resolve the currency crisis. You will soon come to realize the difficulties of carrying on international trade in that imaginary world without the
IMF."
posted by livii
on Jul 15, 2004 -
21 comments
I.M.F. Report Says U.S. Deficits Threaten World Economy
With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund. Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world. The report warns that the United States' net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years--"an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country," according to the fund, that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.From The Brookings Institute:
Sustained Budget Deficits: Longer-Run U.S. Economic Performance and the Risk of Financial and Fiscal Disarray (Full Report
PDF)
posted by y2karl
on Jan 8, 2004 -
60 comments
How to Reform the Global Financial System by Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz--a noted economist and author--takes a look at the recetn history of economic and currency crises, and suggests a novel (but not new) approach: reviving the SDR (special drawing rights) concept originally envisioned by John Maynard Keynes.
[more inside]
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly
on Aug 7, 2003 -
6 comments
Argentina Didn't Fall on Its Own. (Single-page, printer-friendly version
here.) I don't normally read long articles on economic subjects, but this one is riveting, because it links Argentina's collapse to larger issues of how the world of money works today.
"The time has come to do our mea culpa," Hans-Joerg Rudloff, chairman of the executive committee at Barclays Capital, said at a conference of bank and brokerage executives in London a few months ago. "Argentina obviously stands as much as Enron" in showing that "things have been done and said by our industry which were realized at the time to be wrong, to be self-serving."
...It is like "a bizarre AA program in which you remove booze from the homes of people who are reducing the amount they drink and put it into the homes of people who are drinking more every day," Pettis said. "This is probably not the best way to reduce drunkenness."
posted by languagehat
on Aug 3, 2003 -
7 comments
Oops! IMF Admits Failed Policies
International financial integration should also help countries to reduce economic volatility, the study said, but in reality this has not happened.
"Indeed, the process of capital account liberalization appears to have been accompanied in some cases by increased vulnerability to crises," the report said.
"Globalization has heightened these risks since cross-country financial linkages amplify the effects of various shocks and transmit them more quickly across national borders."
In the last 10 years, developing countries from Thailand and Russia to Argentina, have seen their economies collapse, even though many of them were trying to follow IMF-prescribed open market policies.
So does this mean corporate facism harms the world's poor?
posted by nofundy
on Mar 19, 2003 -
25 comments
TRAPPED, CUFFED & BUSSED Two Diamondback (Univ. of Maryland student newspaper)reporters covering the IMF-World Bank protests were arrested Friday morning and manacled for 23 hours. Surrounded by hundreds of protesters in Pershing Park, Washington Metropolitan Police circled and arrested the entire group. Jason Flanagan and Debra Kahn were there as impartial observers, and despite the newspaper's efforts to release them, they were stripped of all their possessions - even their shoelaces. What follows is a first-person account of their arrest and detention.
posted by Ty Webb
on Oct 2, 2002 -
71 comments
The street where my office is will most likely be fenced off and guarded by police when I roll in tomorrow morning. Conventional wisdom in D.C. for tomorrow is: a) Don't try to drive b) Don't try to take the Metro, either. Great.
posted by GriffX
on Sep 26, 2002 -
76 comments
Boston is having a real brouhaha over grass-roots efforts to return to
rent control. Here in D.C., some folks
aren't happy about a massive vending machine in Adam's Morgan. Meanwhile, D.C. braces for
protests surrounding the upcoming meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
Is there, in this day and age, a debate raging about the equity, and even the efficacy, of
capitalism? Is
Marxism still a viable vein of thought in the modern age? Are free markets as self-policing as
some folks argue? Or does industry require a
more arduous watchdog?
posted by NedKoppel
on Sep 13, 2002 -
33 comments
Did you hear about the
Trash Bloc? Some anti-authoritarians are planning a bloc for the weekend of the IMF/World Bank protests that would go around Washington DC neighborhoods and pick up trash. I think we can all get down with that.
posted by sudama
on Aug 20, 2001 -
4 comments
No way but to decommission the World Bank and IMF -- BusinessWorld columnist Walden Bello explains why the policies of these two institutions have magnified world poverty and inequality, and traces the opposition movement from its origins in the Global South, to Seattle, Prague and beyond:
"The historic Prague Spring of 1968 spelled the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire. Will Prague, the site of the World Bank-IMF annual meeting for the year 2000, join Seattle in December 1998 and Washington, D.C. in April of this year as one of the catalytic events ushering the beginning of the end of hegemony of corporate-driven globalization?..."
posted by johnb
on Sep 26, 2000 -
8 comments
