Oliver Bullough | The Awful Consequences Of Moneyland Are Compounding

So is money land an inevitable consequence of globalization? So if countries with no competitive advantage to speak of look out into the market and have no way to really generate an income for themselves, is using financial plumbing to create one an inevitability?

Yes.

I suppose it's an inevitable consequence of the combination of globalization and greed.

The core problem, I think, with the way the world is organized or the way the world has come to work is that Money operates internationally, but the laws that restrain money, whether that is taxes or limits on money laundering or financial crime or whatever, those laws only work nationally or, you know, at best.

regionally.

And so if you own enough money to move it around, if you can afford to move your money between countries, then you have an inevitable advantage over everyone else because you can move your money to a place where no one can find it.

Now, you know, as, you know, as it were to get ahead of the people who will inevitably write in to tell me, that I should be more sympathetic to the needs of refugees and so on.

Yes, this is true.

There are certain people who, as it were, have a need to move their money places where the authorities can't get it.

Switzerland dined out for decades on the fact that it had supposedly and rather spuriously helped Jewish refugees hide their wealth from the Nazis.

Which it may or may not have done to a small extent, but it certainly was a no hurry to give it back afterwards.

It is of far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far greater significance that tax dodgers, particularly very wealthy citizens of Western countries and kleptocrats and cartels and mafia groups are able to take advantage of financial security to move their wealth around, to hide it from the authorities and therefore... to evade any accountability for the crimes they have committed.

That's the really big deal here.

Essentially, there is an inbuilt advantage for the owners of wealth who can afford the services of expensive lawyers, accountants, and so on, to move their money outside the reach of their authorities.

And this is corrosive to democracy, it's corrosive to accountability, it's corrosive to everything that we like.

So, yes, to answer your question, Moneyland, what I call Moneyland, which is this sort of, as it were, virtual country where the wealthy can keep their wealth.

Moneyland is an inevitable side effect of the combination of partial globalization, which is globalization for money, but not for legislation, along with greed.

And that isn't just greed of the owners of wealth.

It is also greed of their advisors, what I call their butlers in my second book.

Because often, although it's the offshore centres like the British Virgin Islands and so on, Switzerland, that get criticised for accepting this wealth and hiding this wealth, they often don't do it of their own accord.

They often get, at the very least, advised by foreign professionals of how to do it.

And in the case of quite a lot of offshore centres, the legislation was in fact entirely written and grafted onto their countries by foreign foreign advisors, whether that's lawyers from the UK or the US or wherever.

So yeah, there's a whole system.

And basically, to cut a long story short, it means that if you're rich, you can get away with stuff that you can't if you're not.