Witnesses Describe Boston Marathon Blasts - FBI Takes the Lead in Boston Probe

Published on Apr 15, 2013

An Associated Press reporter and two witnesses near the twin blasts that rocked the Boston Marathon finish line Monday describe what they heard and saw.

Published on Apr 15, 2013

The FBI is taking charge in the criminal investigation of the explosions at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 130 others. An official said 'it is a potential terrorist investigation.'

note:  Is this another 9/11 False Flag to bring Marshall law in???

Radical Change Needed in America

Imagine a few years into the future — you are returning home from a family visit over the Thanksgiving holiday when a deer runs into the road in front of you.

You slam on the brakes, but it is too late. You hit the deer and lose control of your car, which runs off the road, flips, and, in spite of your seat-belt, you die in the crash.

Your worries are over. For your survivors, the tragedy is just beginning.

In this hypothetical future, the growth of government has continued on its present course. Do you think your death was punishment enough? The State doesn’t think so.

After all the applicable estate taxes have been charged, and automatically deducted from your bank accounts and forfeited property, the real frenzy begins.

Your family gets a bill from the police who wrote up the accident report, along with surcharges for “emotional distress” due to seeing your tattered remains, and an “Obama-Care” fine on behalf of all “first responders” involved because they were exposed to potentially hazardous fumes and bodily fluids.

Your survivors are ticketed for the deer you killed without a license, and your family’s hunting weapon — one black-powder rifle per family being the only thing still legal — is confiscated for “poaching.”

Your car’s “black box” indicates you were over the speed limit by a tiny amount, so your estate is charged a fine for your speeding, as well, plus the fine is doubled because a couple of years ago when self-driving cars were made available, at great expense, you chose to forgo that new technology and keep doing the driving.

The EPA charges your loved ones the standard fee for the gasoline spill clean-up, even though your tank was almost empty and nothing spilled. Also, since there was a small fire, a fine for polluting the air is levied, as well as a fine for the bio-hazard created as your life-blood seeped into the soil, and one for littering due to all the car parts scattered around the crash site.

It gets worse. The autopsy confirms the presence of tryptophan, due to the recent turkey dinner, so your life insurance won’t pay out — it’s the law. You were “driving under the influence.”

Did you really think the zero tolerance and ever-tightening DWI laws would remain where they stood in 2013?

You may think this scenario is far-fetched. “It can’t happen here.”

It is already happening. Americans have a choice: radically change the path that is being followed, or “stay the course” to see where it leads.

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WAKE UP NOW!!!!!!            TOMORROW WILL BE TOO LATE!!!

 

How Obama Surrendered Sovereignty to the Criminal Banking Cartel

The U.S. government openly conceded that its sovereign authority to enforce its own laws is gone when Attorney General Eric Holder testified that the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute any big banks is based on anonymous “expert” opinions that prosecutions would destabilize the financial system.

This notion of “systemic importance” has been thoroughly discredited. According to Tim Geithner, it’s an intellectually bankrupt phrase.  What’s more, it’s been debunked both legally and empirically, which is likely one reason the DOJ’s (Department of Justice) “experts” wish to remain anonymous.

If it turns out that these “experts” are in fact agents of the big banks whose crimes are being immunized by the very entities whose discredited opinions the DOJ is relying on, then those “opinions” are nothing more than assertions of criminal sovereign immunity—a privilege that is legally limited to the President of the United States.

Since “the King can do no wrong”—the legal foundation of sovereign immunity—the real King here is the criminally immune cartel of banks, not the President, since real sovereigns don’t surrender the right to enforce their laws.  And following the long series of unprosecuted crimes by the cartel, in which the President’s own constituents are the undisputed victims, “surrender” is the most charitable description of the Obama’s acts before the banking cartel.

Inside The Criminal Banking Cartel

There are two very big and related clues as to the identity of the anonymous experts behind whose opinions U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder hides whenever explaining away his failure to prosecute big banks on the basis of their “systemic importance.”

The first, noted in an article last week by Golem XIV, is a list of international banks that parade under the rather obvious label of “Globally Systemically Important Financial Institutions,” or G-SIFIs. There are 28 banks in total, 9 of them headquartered in the U.S.:

Citigroup

Deustsche Bank

HSBC

JP Morgan Chase

Barclays

BNP Paribas

Bank of America

Bank of New York Mellon

Credit Suisse

Goldman Sachs

Mitsubishi UFJ FG

Morgan Stanley

Royal Bank of Scotland

UBS

Bank of China

BBVA

Group BPCE

Group Credit Agricole

ING Bank

Mizuho FG

Nordea

Santander

Societe Generale

Standard Chartered

State Street

Sumitomo Mitsui FG

Unicredit Group

Wells Fargo

This list of cartel members is updated annually by the Financial Stability Board, a collection of international organizations. The FSB is a global meta-body of bankers.

But the formal edifice, whether called the FSB or the NWO (hat tip Alex), really doesn’t matter, because, as Golem XIV states: “Guess which institutions provide the membership for all of the above international bodies? Yes, you got it—the big banks.”

These are the banks that are above the law in the U.S. In Part One, we mentioned four banks—Citigroup, Wells Fargo, HSBC, and UBS—whose massive crimes had been taxed at a de minimis rate by the Department of Justice rather than prosecuted. All four are on the list of G-SIFIs above.

So what, you may ask, that’s just a list compiled by some international convention of cokehead bankers, how do they make sure a rogue federal prosecutor doesn’t break ranks and haul a cartel member or two off to criminal trial?

Enter clue no. 2: Covington & Burling, the law firm from which both the head of the DOJ (Eric Holder) and the DOJ’s head of criminal enforcement (Lanny Breuer) were recruited. Actually, Breuer is no longer with the DOJ. Following a four-year stint in which “the enforcer” failed to prosecute a single big bank, Breuer has returned to Covington & Burling, where he will earn be rewarded with $4 million in annual compensation.

The significance of Covington & Burling lies in its list of current clients, which looks remarkably like the list of criminally immune cartel members above (particularly the more recognizable names): Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Wells Fargo, and ING Bank.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer have the financial motivation not to prosecute their firm’s clients. In Breuer’s case, it turned out to be $4 million of motivation. Per year.

Under any functioning system of law, of course, both Holder and Breuer would submit to screening procedures at the DOJ to insulate them from prosecutorial decisions involving their former clients. We're sure they did the same thing under our impotent system as well. But so what? When laws against crimes are a dead letter, who in his right mind would put any trust in a conflict screen?

Now commentators are starting to point out where the slippery slope of sovereign immunity for criminal banks will lead.  Jim Chanos, who detected the fraud at Enron well before it destroyed the company and its shareholders, notes that not only are criminal cartel members now motivated to continue cheating and stealing, they have a fiduciary duty to do so. (Speaking of the Enron-ization of the U.S., Eric Holder is working to release CEO Jeff Skilling from prison early in yet another act of prostrate submission before his real masters, the criminal banks.)

As Golem XIV points out, immunity extends not only to criminal behavior, but to assets that a cartel member bank acquires through crime: “if by doing those illegal things [the bank] makes out-sized profits for its shareholders and staff, that money, those profits are also above the law.”

Cyprus Vs. MF Global: The Rule Of Law Is Dead

Thus, anyone who thinks account confiscation a la Cyprus can’t happen in the U.S. is dreaming of a bygone republic.  Not only is account seizure possible in the U.S., or even likely, it is guaranteed.  Just ask MF Global’s segregated account holders or GM senior bondholders if you have any doubts.

In the MF Global case, Jon Corzine "brazenly took liquid assets like Treasuries and warehouse receipts, but not cash which would have been more quickly missed, from customer accounts to post as illegal collateral for emergency funding with a lender who must have known that they were receiving stolen goods." The lender, of course, turned out to be JP Morgan--a prominent international cartel member. Jon Corzine was of course one of Obama's top fundraisers and an alumnus of Goldman Sachs--a cartel member.

In the GM bankruptcy, the age-old pecking order of creditor priority was turned upside down, literally "rewriting law," when senior unsubordinated secured creditors' claims were trumped by payouts to junior unsecured creditors in a patently political sop to Obama's perceived union supporters.

In both cases, the black letter law that's supposed to gird markets with trust and predictablity was trampled in favor of Obama's political allies. Now that Obama has altogether surrendered the DOJ's law enforcement functionality to the criminal international banking cartel, those dangerous precedents turn out to have been short-sighted in the extreme: there is nothing left to stop the plunder of customer accounts in Cyprus from crashing like a tidal wave across U.S. shores. The timing depends only on the restraint that the banking cartel elects to show.

There is no remedy in sight, only more financial crime as Americans are robbed deeper into serfdom.  The Executive Branch is merely an agent of the criminal banking cartel for the reasons given. That fact, in turn, has cut the Judiciary out of the equation altogether: a court cannot try criminals who are never brought before it to face charges.

That leaves Congress, which in theory could initiate impeachment proceedings. But how likely is success when the Senate, which would try any impeachment cases, couldn’t even obtain the names of the DOJ’s so-called experts in the first place?

As noted in Part One, Senator Grassley asked the DOJ for the experts’ names in a letter on January 29, 2013. Eric Holder testified on March 6, more than a month later. The issue of the experts’ identities was thus as ripe as could be, but rather than obtaining the names, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee put on a clinic in how to conduct an incompetent examination:

Q. On January 29, Senator Sherrod Brown and I requested details on who these so-called 'experts' are. So far we have not received any information. Maybe you're going to but why have we not yet been provided the names of experts the DOJ consults as we requested on January 29? We continue to find out why we aren't having these high-profile cases.

A: We will endeavor to answer your letter, Senator. We did not, as I understand it, endeavor to obtain experts outside of the government in making determinations with regard to HSBC.

Just putting that aside for a minute though, the concern that you have raised is one that I, frankly, share. I'm not talking about HSBC here, that would be inappropriate. But I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charge — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.

Again, I'm not talking about HSBC, this is more of a general comment. I think it has an inhibiting influence, impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate. I think that's something that we — you all [Congress] — need to consider. The concern that you raised is actually one that I share.

Note that Senator Grassley asked one question: why haven’t you answered our letter? Holder doesn’t answer it. Instead, he promises to supply the names later. At that point, Grassley should have put two questions to Holder. First, answer my question by explaining why you ignored our letter. Second, when will you supply the names of the “so-called experts”?

A mediocre first-year litigation associate would’ve gotten this information within seconds. But not Senator Grassley, who earned his masters degree during the Eisenhower Administration. Here is his completely irrelevant follow-up question:

Q: Do you believe that the investment bankers that were repackaging bad mortgages that were AAA-rated are guilty of fraud or is it a case of just not being aggressive or effective enough to prove that they did something fraudulent and criminal?

Huh? Not surprisingly, Eric Holder has been in no hurry to disclose the names of the “experts” retained by Covington & Burling’s clients since dancing around Grassley like a cigar store Indian. Holder has completely blown off the Senate, which has done nothing to follow up the issue.

Frankly this disgusting charade has surprised no one who’s paying any attention, coming, as it does, from the same august body that exempted itself from insider trading laws and has failed to pass any meaningful reform legislation since the 2008 meltdown, an even worse repeat of which is on its way.

On the contrary, both Congress and the Executive Branch are now just tools of fraud used by the criminal international banking cartel against the people, who for their part are drooling iDope dreams oblivious to their own last act, proving Edward Murrow right, a nation of sheep having begotten a government of wolves.

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Department of Defense Issues Instructions on Military Support of Civilian Law Enforcement

The Department of Defense has issued an instruction clarifying the rules for the involvement of military forces in civilian law enforcement.

Soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 321st Field Artillery Regiment, XVIII Fires Brigade train last December to “respond to an escalating civil-disturbance situation caused by unhappy simulated hurricane victims.” According to an article produced by the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, the training was designed to prepare the soldiers “for their upcoming assignment as a quick reaction and rapid response force for U.S. Army North Command in support of emergencies in the United States.”

April 14th

The instruction establishes “DoD policy, assigns responsibilities, and provides procedures for DoD support to Federal, State, tribal, and local civilian law enforcement agencies, including responses to civil disturbances within the United States.”

The new instruction titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” was released at the end of February, replacing several older directives on military assistance to civilian law enforcement andcivil disturbances.  The instruction requires that senior DoD officials develop “procedures and issue appropriate direction as necessary for defense support of civilian law enforcement agencies in coordination with the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and in consultation with the Attorney General of the United States”, including “tasking the DoD Components to plan for and to commit DoD resources in response to requests from civil authorities for [civil disturbance operations].”  Military officials are to coordinate with “civilian law enforcement agencies on policies to further DoD cooperation with civilian law enforcement agencies” and the heads of the combatant commands are instructed to issue procedures for “establishing local contact points in subordinate commands for purposes of coordination with Federal, State, tribal, and local civilian law enforcement officials.”

In addition to defining responsibilities for military coordination with local law enforcement, the instruction describes circumstances in which direct participation in civilian law enforcement is permissible.  Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, U.S military personnel are generally prohibited from assisting in civilian law enforcement functions such as search and seizure, interdiction of vehicles, arrest and interrogation, surveillance or using force except for in self-defense. Though the Posse Comitatus Act originally referred only to the Army, it was extended in 1956 to include the Air Force. Subsequent DoD regulations prevent the use of the Marine Corps or Navy for civilian law enforcement functions.  In 1981, this principle was further codified in 10 USC § 375 which directs the Secretary of Defense to ensure that military activities do “not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.”

Though the Posse Comitatus Act is the primary restriction on direct DoD involvement in law enforcement functions, it does not prevent military personnel from participating in circumstances “authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.”  This includes circumstances involving “insurrection, domestic violence, or conspiracy that hinders the execution of State or Federal law” as well as actions “taken under express statutory authority.”  The DoD’s instruction includes a list of more than a dozen “laws that permit direct DoD participation in civilian law enforcement” including many obscure statutes that are more than a hundred years old.  For example, a law passed in 1882 and codified under 16 USC § 593 allows for the President to use land and naval forces to “prevent the felling, cutting down, or other destruction of the timber of the United States in Florida.”  Likewise, the Guano Islands Act of 1856 enables the President to use land and naval forces to protect the rights of a discoverer of an island covered by the Act.

Military commanders also have “emergency authority” to use military forces in civilian law enforcement functions “in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances”.  This authority is limited to actions “necessary to prevent significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property and are necessary to restore governmental function and public order” and “provide adequate protection for Federal property or Federal governmental functions.”  In fact, an enclosure to the DoD instruction describing requirements for support of civil disturbance operations states that military commanders “shall not take charge of any function of civil government unless absolutely necessary under conditions of extreme emergency.”  According to the instruction, any “commander who is directed, or undertakes, to control such functions shall strictly limit DoD actions to emergency needs and shall facilitate the reestablishment of civil responsibility at the earliest time possible.”

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Obama Approves Raising Permissible Levels of Nuclear Radiation in Drinking Water. Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket

Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket Following Radiological Incidents

The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication as soon as today, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a “new normal” for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the radiation guides (called Protective Action Guides or PAGs) allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These guides govern evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions following a wide range of “radiological emergencies.” The Obama administration blocked a version of these PAGs from going into effect during its first days in office. The version given approval late last Friday is substantially similar to those proposed under Bush but duck some of the most controversial aspects:

In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems. This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period;

• In water, the PAGs punt on an exact new standard and EPA “continues to seek input on this.” But the thrust of the PAGs is to give on-site authorities much greater “flexibility” in setting aside established limits; and
• Resolves an internal fight inside EPA between nuclear versus public health specialists in favor of the former. The PAGs are the product of Gina McCarthy, the assistant administrator for air and radiation whose nomination to serve as EPA Administrator is taken up this week by the Senate.
• Despite the years-long internal fight, this is the first public official display of these guides. This takes place as Japan grapples with these same issues in the two years following its Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“This is a public health policy only Dr. Strangelove could embrace. If this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy, then EPA is in for a long, dirty slog,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the EPA package lacks a cogent rationale, is largely impenetrable and hinges on a series of euphemistic “weasel words.”

“No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold.”

Reportedly, the PAGs had been approved last fall but their publication was held until after the presidential election. The rationale for timing their release right before McCarthy’s confirmation hearing is unclear.

Since the PAGs guide agency decision-making and do not formally set standards or repeal statutory requirements, such as the Safe Drinking Water Act and Superfund, they will go into full effect following a short public comment period. Nonetheless, the PAGs will likely determine what actions take place on the ground in the days, weeks, months and, in some cases, years following a radiological emergency.

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Lawyer: New Connecticut Gun Law Not Legal

A Branford attorney has uncovered a legal and legislative technicality that he says has rendered the state’s new gun law null and void. In an exclusive interview set to air Sunday on “Face the State with Dennis House” on WFSB-TV, Peter Sachs says state lawmakers made a key mistake in their rush to get a bill passed, that he claims will leave them no legal choice but to begin the whole process over again.

Sachs also works as a private investigator and generally remains behind the scenes, until now. He is well known to government authorities for his work in helping track down fugitive killer Adam Zachs in Mexico, who was captured in 2011 after 20 years on the run. 

Relying on a stack of documents, Sachs told me when leadership in the general assembly brought the measure to lawmakers they did so by emergency certification, which is meant to speed up the process to pass a bill when an emergency calls for it. According to Sachs, state statute requires the speaker of the house and senate president to provide the facts in writing as to why an emergency certification is needed, something Sachs says Brendan Sharkey and Donald Williams never did. 

“I believe what they (lawmakers) are going to have to do is start from scratch…the law was not valid. In my opinion the governor basically signed a blank piece of paper,” Sachs said....

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America : Freedom to Fascism - Watch The FULL Video Here

Although unproven, as most of the Elite's crimes, Aaron Russo died for producing and Submitting "America - Freedom to Fascism" He was an American entertainment businessman, film producer and director, and political activist. He was best known for producing such movies as Trading Places, Wise Guys, and The Rose.

The true enemies of liberty and all modern societies and people are the central bank counterfeiters. The largest counterfeiter in the history of the world consists of the Federal Reserve banking scheme, which counterfeits American dollars through fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.

This is the last movie he made before his untimely death.  He was a true hero that died while trying to preserve America's Freedom!

AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM...

The true enemies of liberty and all modern societies and people are the central bank counterfeiters. The largest counterfeiter in the history of the world consists of the Federal Reserve banking scheme, which counterfeits American dollars through fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.

America Freedom to Fascism exposes the fraud and deceit of the Federal Reserve Banks (Fed), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the 16th Amendment, the income tax, the Federal Reserve System, national ID cards (REAL ID Act), human-implanted RFID tags (Spychips), Diebold electronic voting machines, New World Order (globalization), Big Brother, taser weapons abuse, and the use of terrorism by government as a means to diminish the citizens' rights.

You can buy the full quality Director's cut DVD here: http://freedomtofascism.com

Full Transparency Needed to Close Down Tax Havens and Massive Fraud - Remember Iceland.....

...The amount of money hidden away in tax havens could be as much as $32 trillion. That's 10 to 15 percent of global wealth. 

Transcript:

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.

The recent release of work by a collaboration of journalists around the world about tax havens--and one estimate: the amount of money hidden away in tax havens could be as much as $32 trillion. That's 10 to 15 percent of global wealth.

Now joining us to talk about this is James Henry. He's a leading economist, attorney, investigative journalist. He served as chief economist at the international consultancy firm McKinsey & Company. He's now chair of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice.

Thanks very much for joining us.

JAMES HENRY, ECONOMIST, LAWYER, AND INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Quite welcome.

JAY: So this isn't new. I mean, anyone who's been out collecting taxes, if you work for a government, a journalist that follows this even a modicum knows that this has been happening, this tax haven thing has been happening for years. You rarely hear it talked about in official circles, all the discourse in the United States back and forth about closing loopholes, both from President Obama and even from some Republicans. You almost never heard a word about closing down individual tax havens. You heard a little bit about corporate. Not much. But this is a massive scale. So, first of all, this release of the thousands of names of people using these tax havens has given us another new glimpse into this world. But are we even yet seeing the scale of it all?

HENRY: Well, this was a good snapshot. I think it's the largest release we've ever had collectively. And the importance of it is that it spans many different countries at once. This release by ICIJ, the journalist collaborative, has brought together 86 journalists in 46 countries, last count. And they're coming up with really juicy stuff from the Suhartos in Indonesia to the daughter of Marcos in the Philippines, to Denise Rich in the United States, who actually has now become a citizen of Austria. But she had a trust worth something reportedly on the order of $144 million in the '90s. Canadian senator who, it turned out, had a Cook Islands trust.

JAY: Apparently there's 450 Canadians on this list.

HENRY: Yeah. So, all told, there's about 130,000 client accounts here and millions of pieces of data that they've been analyzing for 18 months and they're still analyzing. So for the next--.

JAY: Why aren't there more American names on this list? There's Denise Rich--Mark Rich's ex-wife is there, I think maybe a couple other names.

HENRY: Yeah. I mean, this isn't random.

JAY: [crosstalk] you're seeing from other countries.

HENRY: Right. This is not a random sample of the world's offshore haven clients. This came from two corporate registry service providers in--one of them in the BVI, another one from Singapore. So most Americans would not be using Singapore or Tortola for their offshore companies and trusts, let alone their bank accounts. As we saw in the UBS case, you know, that was a big Swiss bank, the largest Swiss bank, coming directly to the United States and recruiting very wealthy clients to go directly to Switzerland with their secret stashes abroad. So, you know, many Americans would bank more directly with banks in other countries rather than putting money in BDI or Singapore. So I don't think it's a random sample. We still have 4,000 American names that turned up on this list just for those two havens. And there's about 73, 75 offshore havens on the planet, so this should be looked upon as just, you know, relatively small sample of the total population. But it is evidence that the estimates we've been making for the size and growth of this industry have some firm support at the investigative level.

JAY: And this is--the estimates you were doing were somewhere between $22 trillion and $32 trillion [crosstalk]

HENRY: Twenty-one to thirty-two trillion of financial wealth as of the year end 2010. And it's been growing since then. And that excludes a lot of crossborder wealth like real estate, which is held often through offshore companies. I mean, you have--much of the City of London is held through British companies, offshore companies.

JAY: And many of these tax havens are actually under British control--the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Isle of Man. Britain plays a big role in all of this industry.

HENRY: Yeah. It's called the spider net among people who've been studying this, the British havens, I think, almost as a conscious policy. In 1950s and '60s, Britain had all these islands around the planet. They couldn't support them anymore from the home country. They decided, what are they going to do? Well, let's make them into tax havens and let them generate income from laundering money or setting up providing trusts and companies. So you have some of the original leaders in this industry, like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda and BVI, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cyprus, are all former British colonies. But I don't think we should ignore the fact that the other major destination havens, players like Switzerland and indeed New York also make a big living out of this enterprise. So it's a pretty competitive business, but it's a global industry that's [crosstalk]

JAY: New York being a tax haven not for Americans but for Mexicans or people from other countries.

HENRY: That's right. If you're a nonresident alien, you have the ability to live in New York up to, you know, at least three months a year. And if you're investing here in bonds or in stocks or in bank deposits, the U.S. tax law has been made very friendly. So you're not going to pay much, if anything, in the way of income tax on those offshore deposits, and the U.S. Treasury is not going to tell Mexican tax authorities. Mexico does have a worldwide income tax, but we're not going to tell them what your interest and dividends income is here.

We just signed a tax treaty, actually with Mexico that tries to--you know, promises down the road to provide more information to the Mexican tax authorities. Back in November that was signed. But it's going to take a long time before they actually start realizing any of this data.

JAY: I mean, that's part of the point, isn't it? Like, the United States has global income laws. You're supposed to declare your income from all sources and declare even if you own companies outside the United States. But if the banking institutions in the various countries that are the tax havens don't have any obligation to tell the various governments who's got their money stuck there, there's hardly any way for the IRS to know. And [crosstalk]

HENRY: Well, the U.S. has been moving toward insisting on what's called automatic information exchange by major financial--foreign financial institutions that do business here and have American clients. And so we have this kind of schizophrenic attitude. If you're a wealthy Mexican, we're not going to tell the Mexican tax authorities, but we want foreign banks that are--you know, like UBS, who are doing business in the United States to report in on what their U.S. clients are being paid. So what's going to happen now that the United States has insisted on this kind of reporting for Americans is that, as the prime minister of France just spoke up and said that he wanted that extended to all of Europe. So there would be basically the same requirement for American banks in Europe. It's called the FATCA requirement. So a European FATCA is probably on the horizon here. In general, we need to do much more in the way of automatic information exchange across countries to make sure that this income on all this offshore wealth is not falling through the cracks, because it's really unfair given the fact that most of it belongs to a tiny fraction of the world's population. We're talking about the top 0.1 percent of the world's population owning most of this offshore capital.

JAY: I mean, if countries were to try to claw back the taxes that should have been paid on all of this wealth, one would think it'd go a long way to paying down deficits and debt.

HENRY: Well, the U.S. Treasury estimates they lose about $100 billion a year of revenue just to individual offshore tax evasion. On the corporate side, we also see major players like Google and Microsoft and Pfizer, you know, offshoring their intellectual property to places like Bermuda and dramatically reducing corporate income tax. So if we get those practices under control, I think it's worth at least a couple of hundred billion a year, potentially, to the U.S. Treasury. And even a fraction of that would help us with the--you know, avoid things like sequestration, you know, which is worth about $85 billion this year. So, yeah, we're talking about an activity that does need more attention on the part of the G20 and the G8. Both of those are meeting in the next three months. I think all these titillating cases are wonderful entertainment, you know, to find out that someone had a foreign bank account. But basically at the end of the day it's kind of the same old story. And we know enough--we've known enough, actually, for a very long time to come up with some very specific policies that fix this problem.

JAY: Now, if the IRS is saying $1 billion they're losing in tax revenue as a result of offshore tax havens--.

HENRY: Hundred billion.

JAY: A hundred billion.

HENRY: Yeah.

JAY: Well, if it's $100 billion, is that mean that's $150 billion of fraud? Because if you're an American, you're supposed to be declaring it.

HENRY: Well, as Dennis Healey once said, the difference between tax evasion and avoidance is the width of a prison wall. I mean, these games that people are playing are in most cases, I think, clearly illegal. You know, it's illegal for Americans to have foreign bank accounts and now offshore companies without declaring them to the IRS. It's illegal not to pay income tax on your worldwide income. And so, you know, there's really no such thing as an offshore trust for an American that doesn't owe income tax. So, you know, this is--I think the journalists involved here have been reluctant to say that what the people they've identified are doing is illegal, but that's probably for libel reasons. I think in general most of this activity does involve outright illegality where the home country has a worldwide income tax, like we do have in the United States, like Mexico has, like Greece has. So that's a pretty clear situation.

JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, James.

HENRY: You're welcome.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

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