Introduction

This chapter continues the ‘Onshore/Offshore’ comparison by examining the assertion that the USA – like the UK – manifests many of the traits of an ‘Offshore Finance Centre’. It has been suggested that ‘New York, London and Tokyo control between them nearly 60 per cent of the global market for offshore banking and capital markets.’ To put this chapter into context, ‘industry accounts for only 16 per cent of jobs in America’, but there is in excess of US$1.7 trillion of foreign money on deposit in US banks. On the other hand, ‘J. P. Morgan Chase estimates that $650 bn of profit earned abroad by US companies over decades has never been taxed by the US’. Other figures indicate that, as at September 2003, there was in excess of US $2.3 trillion of foreign funds in US banks. The figures indicate that more than 50 per cent comes from the UK and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, 2003 was a record year for US banks, generating US $120 billion in profit – US$17.9 billion of which was made by Citibank alone.

Reference has been made to ‘the structural anarchy in America's supervision of its financial institutions’. The supervisory structure is not straightforward – not least because there are so many regulators involved – and, when this is the case, there is inevitably an overlap – as the article went on to explain.