Friday, 10 October 2008

A modest proposal ...

Writing in today's Guardian, Richard Murphy and John Christensen argue that location of special investment vehicles in tax havens was one of the conditions leading to the present crisis and that global regulation is needed to cover the operations of tax havens. Not all of these are offshore. London is one of them.

[My title is taken from a notorious article by Jonathan Swift from 1729 proposing the eating of babies as a solution to an Irish famine. Swift was, of course, being satirical. It is likely that many in the financial community will regard Murphy and Christensen's proposal as equally outrageous, but at the time of writing the FTSE is off another 5% and less self-interested people may be beginning to realise that a root and branch rethinking of financial regulation is necessary.]

1 comment:

Richard Murphy said...

"Less reasonable people might, I fear, include the Treasury

Richard Murphy