FRANCE & BRITAIN ASK OECD TO FIND WAYS TO TAX GLOBAL PLUTOS:
It is clear that France and Britain have had enough with mobsters (aka tax cheats). The governments there are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, that makes their alliance all the stronger. Alliance? Were not they trying to eviscerate each others’ budgets recently?
Conservative PM Cameron has realized that austerity alone does not work (as many have pointed to him with relish). British GDP numbers are worse than in the 1930s “Great Depression”. To relaunch the economy, Cameron reduced top tax margin from 505 down to 45%. Yet, Cameron is running a terrible deficit, he has to increase revenue.
Can taxes be augmented in France? The newly elected Socialist French government knows it has taxes as high as they can get without having the Sans Culottes take over. Indeed the Constitutional Court barred the proposed 75% proposed top tax margin rate (throwing the law out, although it had passed!). Then the Council of State followed on March 21 2013 by declaring that the top rate ought to be no more than 66%.
(The USA has neither a Constitutional Court, nor a Council of State, but it has a Supreme Court that plays with the constitution, when plutocracy is at bay, contrarily to, well, the constitution.)
So both the French and British government discovered the only solution: get those who pay no taxes to contribute, by force.
There are two main types of those: 1) multinational plutocrats, 2) multinational corporations.
So Mr. Osborne, the UK finance minister and his French colleague, Mr. Moscovici, sent a check to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, based, in Paris, France). They asked this economic organization of the 34 most developed countries to find out how to tax multinational corporations.
there for a decade or so, The head a OECD an ex Mexican finance minister, Mr. Gurria partly educated in the USA at Harvard. On Saint Patrick day, march 17, 2013, he flatly declared on Tele5Monde (French speaking world TV): “les multinationales ne paient pas d’impots” (“multinationals do not pay taxes”). And he added in no uncertain manner that this had got to change. He is very happy with the Franco-British checks. And
So even Osborn is determined to tax an entire category of international plutocrats and corruptocrats. Gurria insisted that it was Osborne the Conservative, and not Moscovici the Socialist, who launched the initiative.
MAKING AN EXAMPLE OF PLUTOCRAT ASSAD:
For me, plutocracy is, first of all, the rule of the Dark Side without any overwhelming justification from the Light Side.
This being said, Assad’s family is filthy rich in the traditional sense, having stolen We The People more than quite a bit. His shop-alcoholic wife used to support London’s luxury stores, and now she has fled to Moscow, one of Assad’s cornucopian source of weapons (the other being Iran, thanks to Iraq). She and Putin can commiserate of the fate of their funds in Cyprus, I guess.
To make their meaning clear, that the days of arrogant plutocracy are numbered, France and Britain announced they will ship soon to Syrian rebels absolutely lethal French and, or, American anti-aircraft missiles. The Americans do not even have to agree, because the French Mistral are even faster and more deadly than the American Stingers.
The essence of the matter is to make revolutionary secular forces win the war, because otherwise Russian inspired, or Salafist inspired, plutocrats will surely win, and establish their terror, strong as they will be after killing a million or so. Not intervening in the Spanish Civil War had been the fundamental mistake of France, Britain, and the USA in 1936. OK, intruth American plutocrats were fully on the fascist side (with fuel, ammunition, weapons, and Texas oil). At least, this time, those three are no as inert.
CYPRUS ULTIMATUM:
Cyprus’ banks invested heavily in Greece, while paying, year after year, interest rates between 5% and 9%, for years. Cyprus’ banks need immediately 17 billion Euros to keep on operating.
The Eurogroup (mostly the finance ministers of France and Germany) agreed to give ten billions, if Cyprus found the rest. As the Greek church is part of the state there, it could easily sell part of itself, and find the money. Another solution is to tax plutocrats. There are 8,000 (mostly Russian) plutocrats in (nominal) residence in Cyprus.
The European Union gave a banking ultimatum to Cyprus. I saw that one coming. Cypriots had a good run. Money from their tax haven. Hush money. Who protects the tax haven from, say, Turkey? Franco-British military force. Do Cypriots pay for the Franco-British military establishment? Now they will.
Moscovici agreed to lift the limit of reimbursement to 100,000 euros. (I don’t see why, as those accounts made huge money in the last few years!) That means the Plutos will be taxed at an even higher rate. 25% has been suggested.
There can be NO run on the banks, as all accounts have been blocked in Cyprus. Even the smallest ones. Plutocrats are given a choice: be taxed, or go bankrupt.They can’t even escape, because of capital controls. The days of Cyprus as a tax haven are over. Let all other tax havens join them at the bottom of the sea.
The problem with plutocracy is not just the plutocrats themselves, and the institutions that serves them. It’s also the general mentality that crimes pays, and the more criminal, the more paid one is.
That psycho mechanism, that crimes pays best, has to be broken at some point, and the point is now. Otherwise one would down in the sort of catastrophe that affected Germany. Nietzsche screamed in writing, by the 1880s, that Germany’s mood was turning from ugly, to criminal, and even mass criminal. Nietzsche even explicitly accused Kant. Indeed, Eichmann in Jerusalem, tried for the assassination of more than one million people, brandished Kant’s moral system as his justification.
Nietzsche was not listened to by Very Serious Germans. Why? Because Germany was a successful, run-away plutocracy, ever more fascist to fight the socialists. When Bismarck, no shrinking violet, nor fanatical socialist, finally understood a monster was born under his loins, he was thrown out, and Nietzsche’s prophecy, the destruction of Europe by Germany, proceeded.
We now have the same situation, on a world scale.
Plutocracy, fascism and depletion of resources (including climate) are all entangled. if we did like the Romans, and let our civilization go down, we would not have, like the Romans, a plan B. For the Romans, plan B, as it turned out, was the Imperium Francorum.
What is therefore needed, immediately, is to traumatize plutocracy. In all sorts of ways. Exploding the island tax havens is a good start.
It’s a new paradigm. Common financial commentators in the USA whine to high heavens that trust has been breached, never to be seen again. Quite the opposite, a new trust has been established. It’s all about trust. Put your money in a tax haven, TRUST the European Union to tax it.
Spare nought. Cyprus today, Monaco tomorrow.
Of course, it’s traumatic. Voltaire gave a moral order:”Il faut ecraser l’infame!” (“One ought to crush infamy“) Traumatizing infamy comes before crushing it thoroughly. What else?
So it’s very simple: give an ultimatum to every single tax haven. The truth about these havens is that they are a modern form of piracy. Their relationship to the West is even more abusive than that of Rome’s pirates to Rome. Indeed, they are just another face, another interface, of Western plutocracy with the the weak it’s abusing.
The exact charge against Sarkozy is “abus de faiblesse” (“abuse of weakness”). It’s highly symbolic
In the case of Cyprus, it can submit, or be kicked outside of the Eurozone, to join the fishes at the bottom of the sea. Against the Russian mafia, a greater force has to be employed, and examples made. After years of tremendous interest rates, Cyprus’ parliament has stupidly decided to be greedy in the line of fire. Excellent.
Patrice Ayme
