The global financial crisis has many calling for reform in the United States, but “demanding more regulation onshore won’t do any good if you can’t regulate in the same way offshore,” Rachel Keeler writes for Dollars & Sense. Keeler reports that “seventy five percent of the world’s hedge funds are based in four Caribbean tax havens: the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas.”
Calls for reforming the offshore tax havens have been getting louder recently, with political leaders including Barack Obama joining the chorus. “Tax havens,” according to Keeler, “have become the perfect embodiment of suddenly unfashionable capitalist greed.” So far, however, regulations have been woefully lacking, and global financiers, tax haven governments, and their lobbyists are sure to fight regulation every step of the way.
Source: Dollars & Sense
