脱税天国キプロスの破産、大富豪は、脱税に走る
OPINIÓN
El trauma de la isla del tesoro
Paul Krugman 24 MAR 2013 - 00:00 CET
OPINION
The trauma of Treasure Island
Paul Krugman 24 MAR 2013 - 00:00 CET
A couple of years ago, the journalist Nicholas Shaxson published a fascinating book called Treasure Islands and disheartening (Treasure Island), in which he explained how international tax havens, which are, as the author stated, "jurisdictions banking secrecy "in which many rules do not apply-weak economies worldwide. Not only income swindled some cash-strapped governments and facilitate corruption, but distort the movement of capital, which helps feed financial crises ever larger.
However, one issue that does not delve too Shaxson is what happens when a bank secrecy jurisdiction goes bankrupt. That's the story of Cyprus right now. Whatever the outcome for himself Cyprus (hint: probably not going to be happy), the mess of Cyprus shows how reform remains the global banking system, nearly five years after the global financial crisis began.
For Cyprus: You may wonder why anyone cares a small country with an economy not much larger than the metropolitan Scranton, Pennsylvania. However, Cyprus is a member of the eurozone, so that the events taking place there can lead to infection (eg, bank runs) in larger countries. And another thing: although the Cypriot economy is tiny, Cyprus is a surprisingly important financial player, with a banking sector four or five times larger than would be expected if one takes into account the size of its economy.
Why Cypriot banks are so big? Because the country is a tax haven where foreign corporations and wealthy put their money safe. Officially, 37% of deposits in Cypriot banks come from non-residents, the true number, once you post to expatriates and wealthy people who are resident in Cyprus only in name, is probably much higher. Basically, Cyprus is a place where people, especially, but not only, the Russians hide their wealth both tax collectors and regulators. Whatever we want to give luster, is basically a matter of money laundering.
The rich continue to use free tax havens to avoid paying taxes like ordinary people
And the truth is that much of the wealth never moved, just became invisible. On paper, for example, Cyprus became a huge investor in Russia, much larger than Germany, whose economy is hundreds of times greater. Naturally, this was in fact only "round trips" to the Russians who used the island as a tax shelter.
Unfortunately for Cypriots, went really enough money to fund some really bad investments because their banks bought Greek debt and loans granted to a huge housing bubble. Sooner or later, things were bound to go wrong. And so it proved.
Now what? There is a strong parallel between the situation in Cyprus at the moment and Iceland (an economy of similar size) a few years ago. As far Cyprus, Iceland had a huge banking sector, inflated by foreign deposits, it was simply too big to be rescued. Iceland's answer was basically let banks go bankrupt and destroy these foreign investors, while protecting domestic depositors, and the results were not too bad. In fact, Iceland, with an unemployment rate well below that of most of Europe, has weathered the crisis surprisingly well.
Unfortunately, the answer to the crisis of Cyprus has been an absolute disaster. This reflects, in part, that no longer has its own currency, making it dependent on those responsible for making decisions in Brussels and Berlin, which have not been willing to let banks fail outright.
But it also reflects the unwillingness of Cyprus itself to accept the end of his money laundering business, its leaders are still trying to limit losses to foreign depositors in the vain hope that they can resume normal, and they were so eager to protect the very wealthy who have tried to limit losses of expropriating foreign nationals to small depositors. In the end, however, ordinary Cypriots have expressed outrage, the plan has been rejected and, at this point, nobody knows what will happen.
I guess in the end Cyprus will adopt a solution similar to Icelandic, but unless the end he was forced to leave the euro in the coming days-a real possibility-you may first spend too much time and money on half measures to avoid face reality while incurring huge debts to rich countries. We'll see.
But stop a minute to think about the amazing fact that tax havens like Cyprus, the Cayman Islands and many more continue to function more or less as it was before the global financial crisis. Everyone has seen the damage out of control bankers can inflict, but even so, much of the global financial business is channeled through jurisdictions that allow bankers to dodge softer regulations we have established. Everyone laments budget deficits, but despite this, the corporations and the rich continue to use free tax havens to avoid paying taxes like ordinary people.
So do not cry for Cyprus, and weep for us all, we live in a world whose leaders seem determined not to learn from the disaster.
Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics at Princeton and Nobel, 2008
© 2013 New York Times Service
Translation of News Clips
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