Treasure Islands

Small businesses are the lifeblood of local economies

The U.S. government and many others have allowed tax havens to proliferate because the elites who use them are the world’s most powerful lobbyists

Offshore connects the criminal underworld with financial elites and binds them together with multinational corporations and the diplomatic and intelligence establishments.

The negotiator was wrong: Spencer was being disloyal only to offshore interests on Wall Street.

Tides of financial capital flow around the world in response to small changes in these kinds of tax and secrecy incentives. The U.S. government needs foreign funds to flow in, and it attracts them by offering tax-free treatment and secrecy. This is offshore business, Spencer explained, and it had become central to the U.S. government’s global strategies for financing its deficits.

It has taken me a long time to understand,” explains Joly, “that the expansion in the use of these jurisdictions [tax havens] has a link to decolonization. It is a modern form of colonialism.

Elf Aquitaine has since been privatized and is now part of the Total group, which has an utterly different character from the old Elf.

On an Elf credit card she had bought him gifts, including a pair of hand-made ankle boots from a Paris shop so exclusive that its owner offered to wash customers’ shoes once a year in champagne.

France needed to install the right president: an authentic African leader who would be charismatic, strong, cunning, and, when it mattered, utterly pro-French.

No: these things are only for les grands—the people who matter.