The past comes up to strike me like a rake
Stepped on in taxing innocence.”
Davos making Trumps and other rich ali babas and kleptomaniac cryptocurrency thieves great again ...
Corporation tax breaks kept secret to avoid 'harsh criticism': FOI documents
62% of senior staff at HMRC over 50 years old ... ATO is not much younger
Tom Coomer has retired twice: once when he was 65, and then several years ago. Each time he realized that with just a Social Security check, "you can hardly make it.
Americas reluctant septuagenarian workforce
The role of accountancy firms in Carillion’s collapse is bigger than we thought Left Foot Forward. Dowsers, this is really bad. And who (well you will see “who”) would be dumb enough to be an “outsourced internal audit manager”? That is a prescription for eating huge amounts of liability, particularly since you are at risk of adverse selection.
George Soros calls Facebook and Google a ‘menace’ to society and ‘obstacles to innovation’ in blistering attack Business Insider
Dark Money, Not Russia, May Be the Best Way to Explain Trump’s Win Vice. Nice to see Ferguson in a popular venue (and see alsoNC, 2018-01-12). Includes an interview with Ferguson. This caught my eye:
All my Slavic friends are homeless
They do not even have tents
Were I to seek a safe place
I would run nights lost
Ice pelting my face
Sent the wrong way
Whenever I ask —
Afraid to run back,
Each escape the last
Corporation tax breaks kept secret to avoid 'harsh criticism': FOI documents
Amazon Scores Two More $5+ Billion Bids
More
grifting, Amazon-style.
A non-blogging friend points me to the
announcement today of Maryland’s
subsidy bidthat puts Montgomery County into one of the 20
finalist slots. Shockingly, Governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) put
in a bid that would pay Amazon almost the entire cost of its facility,
depending on what you think a proper discount rate should be now (hint: low).
62% of senior staff at HMRC over 50 years old ... ATO is not much younger
Tom Coomer has retired twice: once when he was 65, and then several years ago. Each time he realized that with just a Social Security check, "you can hardly make it.
Americas reluctant septuagenarian workforce
Trend Reversal of Old-Age Labour Force Participation in Germany
Why has workforce participation increased among older age groups in Germany? Follow the money.
Inquality and Wealth Distribution in Germany Der Speigel. “I’d rather be in the bottom in Germany than here for sure.”
Nine in ten of all Australian businesses are small businesses, accounting for 33% of Australia’s GDP and employing over 40% of Australia’s workforce. What may surprise some, is that one third of Australian small businesses are owned by migrants.
- Unanswerable case for a land value tax (26 Jan 2018)
- Ireland 'robs other EU states of tax revenues' (26 Jan 2018)
Ireland is a tax pirate stealing the base from other nations, says Dutch MEP (26 Jan 2018) Labour serious about `Robin Hood tax´ on City financial transactions - McDonnell (26 Jan 2018) - McDonnell takes aim at “big four” accountancy firms (26 Jan 2018)
- <>HMRC relaxes 'wrapper' rules on Reits and offshore investments (26 Jan 2018)
- I would make it a criminal offence for accountants to set up offshore tax havens (26 Jan 2018)
- 62% of senior staff at HMRC over 50 years old (26 Jan 2018)
- Nearly a quarter of estate agencies would not pass anti-money laundering spot checks, claim (26 Jan 2018)g
George Soros calls Facebook and Google a ‘menace’ to society and ‘obstacles to innovation’ in blistering attack Business Insider
The Netherlands' spy service has broken into computers used by a powerful Russian hacking group and may be sitting on evidence relating to the breach of the US Democratic National Committee, according to Dutch media reports.
Davos 2018: The liberal international order is sick Martin Wolf, FT. “[Princeton’s John Ikenberry] summarises: ‘The crisis of the liberal order is a crisis of
legitimacy and social purpose.'”Economic worries surface at Davos Handelsblatt. Big pulled quote from Rogoff on debt. Grifters gotta grift…Trump’s big choice at Davos Larry SummersWhen it comes to Davos, it’s inequality, stupid Pepe Escobar, Asia TimesThe Davos non-paradox Stumbling and Mumbling
Dark Money, Not Russia, May Be the Best Way to Explain Trump’s Win Vice. Nice to see Ferguson in a popular venue (and see alsoNC, 2018-01-12). Includes an interview with Ferguson. This caught my eye:
Who were these people taking a chance on Trump when he looked doomed in the polls? That infusion of money, even after re-reading your report, is hard for me to make sense of.I think it’s one of the greatest out-of-the-money options in world history, basically, and they thought they could pick it up cheap. And they’d at least take a flier on it. By comparison, Silicon Valley looks almost sedate next to some of the private-equity guys
- The role of accountancy firms in Carillion’s collapse could be bigger than we thought (25 Jan 2018)
- Google CEO: we're happy to pay more tax (25 Jan 2018)
- Australia Unions target Coalition marginal seats in multinational tax avoidance campaign(25 Jan 2018)
- Paradise Papers: Davos panel calls for global corporate tax reform (25 Jan 2018)
Glenn Murray: Brighton striker arrested over £1.1m tax fraud (25 Jan 2018) - Hey Davos, how about a tax on business class airfares? (25 Jan 2018)
- Tax havens retain allure for US tech (23 Jan 2018)
- Is the Disney/Fox deal actually tax-free? (25 Jan 2018)
- Scottish Labour's new tax guru drew up plans for a 20% one off tax on everyone with cash and assets of more than £1million (25 Jan 2018)
- The case against an offshore property register (25 Jan 2018)
- UK banking watchdog defends anti-money-laundering oversight (25 Jan 2018)
- The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem(25 Jan 2018).
- Corruption: Drawing a Line in the Grey Zone (25 Jan 2018)
- Explainer: More US states eye donations to evade Trump tax changes (25 Jan 2018)
- US Budget deficit could jump whopping $154 billion if five states do end run around Trump tax law (25 Jan 2018)
- The role of accountancy firms in Carillion’s collapse could be bigger than we thought (24 Jan 2018)
- Paradise Papers firm worked for bank linked to terrorist financing and organised crime(24 Jan 2018)
- Ikea boss says it pays fair share of tax (24 Jan 2018)
Sugar tax on soft drinks may increase alcohol consumption, study reveals (24 Jan 2018) - World must 'wake up to threat from tech giants'(24 Jan 2018)
- Life in Tax Haven UK: Nearly half of all children in London, Birmingham and Manchester live in poverty, finds study (24 Jan 2018)
- Here's why the Carillion scandal will last for decades (23 Jan 2018)
“Our new report about the state of inequality in the world reveals how our economy is delivering unimaginable rewards for those at the top by exploiting millions of ordinary workers at the bottom…Last year saw the biggest increase in billionaires in history, one more every two days. This huge increase could have ended global extreme poverty seven times over. 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, and nothing went to the bottom 50%. Dangerous, poorly paid work for the many is supporting extreme wealth for the few. Women are in the worst work, and almost all the super-rich are men. Governments must create a more equal society by prioritizing ordinary workers and small-scale food producers instead of the rich and powerful.”
“The inequality crisis is worsening. 82 percent of the wealth created last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity got nothing. Our broken economy is widening the gap between rich and poor. It enables a small elite to accumulate vast wealth at the expense of hundreds of millions of people, often women, who are scraping a living on poverty pay and denied basic rights.”
See also The New York Times – The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem
See also the Washington Post – Why it costs so much to be poor in America
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny arrested as thousands protest against Putin
Strava just published details about secret military bases, and an Australian was the first to know
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny arrested as thousands protest against Putin
Strava just published details about secret military bases, and an Australian was the first to know
Remember Piers Morgan? Well, he too was in Davos
Veni, vidi, vici ("I
came, I saw, I conquered"), Julius
Caesar wrote the Roman Senate in 47 BC after a military
victory. For British talk host Piers
Morgan it was more like "I came, I saw, I sucked up"
in 2018 as he interviewed President
Donald Trump.
Stephen Colbert
had his opening Monday monologue essentially written for him as a result of an
interview conducted in Davos, Switzerland, by Morgan, the onetime failed Larry King successor
at CNN who is now back in London as star host of "Good Morning
Britain" on ITV. And while Colbert's fodder were the many factual errors
(or outright falsehoods) Trump spewed (including on global warming), there was
also the similarly cocksure journalistic modus operandi of Morgan.
As Ed
Power of the Daily Telegraph put
it a few hours earlier, "Piers Morgan’s world exclusive interview with
Donald Trump (ITV) was a towering feat of journalism, yielding scoops by the
platterful and revealing the Commander-in-Chief to be thoughtful, humane, witty
and a shoo-in for the manager’s job at Arsenal."
"Don’t take my word for it — just ask Morgan who, not
satisfied with cornering Trump for a 45-minute chinwag at the Davos World
Economic Forum, was also considerate enough to furnish his own running
commentary on how the interrogation was going."
Yes, for starters, " 'Some remarkable revelations here … he
tweets in bed,' went a breathless Morgan voiceover." Power aptly
referred to this encounter between "Twitterdom’s two great
self-publicists" and informed (at least for us ignorant souls across the
ocean) that it been marketed to the hilt given "the many blockbusting
revelations Morgan had supposedly inveigled from the President."
And not that this would remind us of any U.S. television host —
can you imagine! — but Power said that the air of occasional tough-mindedness
aside, "Morgan had come to gild as much as to grill." There was
mention of Morgan himself appearing on "Celebrity Apprentice" in 2008
and having found his subject tough but fair. Yes, the big suck-up.
And then there was this line, which does
unintentionally suggest that big-time TV interviews can exhibit a certain
ego-driven common denominator in this fashion: "The interview in truth
revealed more about Morgan than the President, who radiated his usual
forcefield of bluster."
Morgan has cut a tough-guy, no-holds-barred image as a morning
show host — figure a beefier Chris
Cuomo with a Brit accent — and apparently just loves
"his Mr. Nasty image." But, as even just the clips Colbert
played last night let on, it was "a persona he appeared to have left on
the luggage carousel at Davos airport."
Perhaps it was the rarified and genteel air of the elite
gathering surrounding them, but Morgan morphed from "the
jackhammer-tongued villain of breakfast telly" into a "fine-tuned
flattery-dispensing machine."
"He looked a bit like one of those novelty nodding bird
toys as Trump outlined what he described as the record breaking performance of
the U.S. economy office since he took office. 'A lot of people don’t want to
give you credit,' growled GMB’s vicious attack dog. “ 'But] a lot of that
is indisputable.' "
So, too, the groveling, with its own inherent reminders of the
pathways to success in the TV business for a slice of our most prominent
practitioners. Morgan was a two-legged vessel for fake news, which is perhaps
perfect for this confusing era. Colbert spliced together a spoof of Morgan,
with him seemingly interviewing Trump, calling it an "Exclusive
Fake Interview."
It almost made one
yearn for Larry King, if not Julius Caesar.