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19 - Can the problems be identified?

from PART III - The future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2009

Hilton McCann
Affiliation:
Financial Services Commission, Mauritius
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Summary

One of the most dangerous errors instilled into us by nineteenth century progressive optimism is the idea that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite.

Introduction

Previous chapters have shown the extent to which the global ‘Offshore’ environment has been the focus of substantial attention in the recent past. Why should there be so much interest all of a sudden? After all, ‘Offshore’ is nothing new, so why should it arouse so much attention and action just at the time it did? Were there new issues – or have the old issues assumed greater significance? Or is this bout of attention stirred up by paranoia – or what?

What are the issues?

It seems that, in respect of at least three areas of the global economy, ‘Offshore Finance Centres’ are considered to be material. The three areas are:

  • global financial stability;

  • money laundering; and

  • tax evasion.

Some comments about each follow. But, before that, it has to be recognised that much of the blame attaching to ‘Offshore Finance Centres’ derives from the fact that, until quite recently (say, within the last twenty years), regulation was light, cross-border cooperation was not general and transparency was limited in these jurisdictions. (To place this into context, there was no banking legislation in the UK until 1979. Therefore, things may not be so extreme as they first appear.) That said, as this text has demonstrated, many things have changed in the intervening period.

Type
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Offshore Finance , pp. 422 - 432
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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