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I'm not sure the comments so far are really about what's germane in the discussion of this article - namely, it's talking about the government document[0] which

I'm not sure the comments so far are really about what's germane in the discussion of this article - namely, it's talking about the government document[0] which is an obvious nod-and-wink to the City[1], that they are free to go ahead and exploit loopholes in international and national law, and continue enabling the criminal system of tax evasion and political and social corruption, without the interference of regulators. Anyone reading the headline statements in the document can see the implied meaning. For instance, the Chancellor of the Exchequer: "I want to ensure that the government - working with our world-class regulators - takes an agile and dynamic approach, one which enables those in the financial services sector to evolve and thrive as they embrace the new opportunities of the future." [0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/998102/CCS0521556086-001_Mansion_House_Strategy_Document_FINAL.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [1] The 'City of London' in this context should be understood as the rough equivalent of 'Wall St' in US terms

tcldr 5y ago
If the penny hasn’t dropped yet for anyone who was still wondering, this is what Brexit was always really about. Shameful.
- patrickk 5y ago
  There was also some dodgy goings on with Farage and some hedge funds, where they placed large bets on the pound dropping in value: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/brexit-pollster-faces-scrutiny-over-secret-political-operations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/brexit-po... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-big-short-how-pollsters-helped-hedge-funds-beat-the-crash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-bi... So some insiders were able to profit off the outcome of the referendum in shady circumstances.
  - retube 5y ago
    No one _knew_ what the outcome would be (how could they have done?). Hedge funds routinely risk capital to bet on outcomes of events like this based on their own research (it's what they do); some would have got it right, some not. There's no conspiracy here.
    - akimball 5y ago
      Placing bets is investing. Placing bets with a conspiracy attached is activist investing.
- jonwinstanley 5y ago
  I agree that some of the very wealthy will benefit from Brexit due to this, and they may have spent money trying to ensure it happened but the reason the vote was won by the leave campaign was for very different reasons.
  - rusk 5y ago
    It was a few different reasons, along with a lovingly nurtured swing from the centre, planted in racism and watered with dark money, all gathered together and reined by a cabal of cynics, crooks, and their cronies.
- retube 5y ago
  In what way? Brexit has generally been extremely costly for london finance - having to establish and capitalise EU entities, loss of regulatory equivalence etc. There was more provision for fishing (<0.1% GDP) in the brexit agreement than there was for finance (10%+) which has largely been left to fend for itself.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    EU is implementing reporting requirements for banks UK noped out
    - rawling 5y ago
      These ones? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/50168357 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/50168357 > But the rules are, in fact, all already part of UK law. A small number of them will not come into effect until 1 January [2020], but that would have happened anyway whether or not the UK was a member of the EU.
      - rusk 5y ago
        I wouldn’t be quoting the British propaganda agency
        reillyse 5y ago
        It’s funny how few people realize that’s what the bbc is.
    - retube 5y ago
      what reporting requirements? The UK hasn't "noped" out of anything, all EU directives were imported wholesale, as is new regulation so we can pursue equivalence. The PRA will not deviate from Basel even slightly.
      - altcognito 5y ago
        What kind of enforcement?
- fmajid 5y ago
  Quite the opposite. Brexit has removed the UK government's ability to veto EU regulation on tax shelters.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    The UK would be happy to have the EU regulate tax shelters. That would allow them to take in all the tax shelter customers that are currently in Ireland, Luxemburg, and Switzerland.
    - fmajid 5y ago
      That's not how it works. Ireland and Luxembourg have a seat at the table, and can veto their states being put on the list of non-cooperating jurisdiction. The British Virgin Islands no longer have that protection, nor does London for that matter.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > this is what Brexit was always really about The City was hit hard by Brexit, a stupid decision the U.K. bumbled into. Nobody benefited in the long run. That our societies can walk off a cliff with nobody in charge is scary, so we try to attribute the decision to hidden forces. But sometimes, as in this case, there simply isn’t anyone at the wheel.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    There have been plenty of specific, named, public people pushing for this to happen, many of whom are still in government. There very definitely are people at the wheel.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  No it wasn't: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028 Do you think all those east-midlands counties voted on behalf of London Finance?
- vmception 5y ago
  City of London fought hard against isolation from European capital centers during Brexit negotiations the following years after the vote.
- rsync 5y ago
  "If the penny hasn’t dropped yet for anyone who was still wondering, this is what Brexit was always really about." No, I don't think so ... rather, it is things like this that allowed Brexit to be plausible. Which is to say, if you hunted around for backup plans, "global financial hub" was always first on the list. It appears that it may be backfiring, however, as financial services and banks, etc., are decamping to Frankfurt ...
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > it may be backfiring The City was and remains overwhelmingly anti-Brexit [1]. The plan didn't backfire because there was no such plan. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/2980dbd4-ecf6-11e8-8180-9cf212677a57 https://www.ft.com/content/2980dbd4-ecf6-11e8-8180-9cf212677...
- elzbardico 5y ago
  "While the Tories, the Whigs, the Peelites — in fact, all the parties we have hitherto commented upon — belong more or less to the past, the Free Traders (the men of the Manchester School, the Parliamentary and Financial Reformers) are the official representatives of modern English society, the representatives of that England which rules the market of the world. They represent the party of the self-conscious Bourgeoisie, of industrial capital striving to make available its social power as a political power as well, and to eradicate the last arrogant remnants of feudal society. This party is led on by the most active and most energetic portion of the English Bourgeoisie — the manufacturers. What they demand is the complete and undisguised ascendancy of the Bourgeoisie, the open, official subjection of society at large under the laws of modern, Bourgeois production, and under the rule of those men who are the directors of that production. By Free Trade they mean the unfettered movement of capital, freed from all political, national and religious shackles. The soil is to be a marketable commodity’ and the exploitation of the soil is to be carried on according to the common commercial laws. There are to be manufacturers of food as well as manufacturers of twist and cottons, but no longer any lords of the land. There are, in short, not to be tolerated any political or social restrictions, regulations or monopolies, unless they proceed from “the eternal laws of political economy,” MARX, Karl Free Trade and The Chartists Written: on August 2, 1852; First published: in the New-York Daily Tribune, August 25 1852.
blitzar 5y ago
> continue enabling the criminal system of tax evasion and political and social corruption, without the interference of regulators. I think the nod and wink is to enable the perpertrators from outside the UK to 'invest' here, and let us have a cut, rather than enable UK citizens to engage in these activities.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >to 'invest' here, and let us have a cut Who's "us"?
  - blitzar 5y ago
    The people doing the nodding and winking.
    - samstave 5y ago
      Who is Us? The people doing the nodding and winking! Who is doing the nodding and winking? They are! Who are they? THEM!
      - rusk 5y ago
        They wouldn’t be so foolish as to reveal their identity would they! But we see their cronies front and centre on the political stage.
- beardyw 5y ago
  I agree but I wonder who the "us" is in "let us have a cut". I think it may be quite a small us. Perhaps I should be glad I won't benefit.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Officially we oppose foreign dictatorships, unofficially we help them stash their money. Every corrupt Russian official will buy realestate in the west, London if he's rich, some smaller EU country if he is a 'pleb'
- _hilro 5y ago
  That money from corrupt officials goes straight to the US real estate market. Miami.
  - stinkytaco 5y ago
    Whoa, whoa, let's not get carried away with such broad accusations. After all, sometimes it's New York.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Or London.
    - nico_h 5y ago
      I thought it was Vancouver?
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        Vancouver may be big for China, but for Russian citizens it's too far and irrelevant. Toronto is much more attractive in that regard as a potential emigration direction.
ByThyGrace 5y ago
Whenever a bureaucrat speaks the words "agile and dynamic", I prepare for the worst. It's a stateman catchphrase which stands for "We're going to do things over including those things that have been working well and present no need for changing them."
pibechorro 5y ago
Bookmark this, the Pandora papers, etc when the dumb argument that crypto is used for money laundering.it happens, but the vast majority of graft is happening in London and Wall st.
Lammy 5y ago
RE your {1} for anyone else who didn’t always know that the City of London and the city of London are different entities: https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feab...
- pas 5y ago
  Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c
vmception 5y ago
What i don’t understand is why does the article act like this clearly public government document was found/leaked in the Pandora Papers The article seems more like a lobbying piece, how many more times can the author write “shady” edit: Nicholas Shaxson (@nickshaxson) is a staff writer for the Tax Justice Network and a co-founder of the Balanced Economy Project, an antimonopoly organization. He is the author of “Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World” and “The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer.” This is an article geared for people to agree with it because it matches what they want to read

tcldr 5y ago

If the penny hasn’t dropped yet for anyone who was still wondering, this is what Brexit was always really about. Shameful.

patrickk 5y ago
There was also some dodgy goings on with Farage and some hedge funds, where they placed large bets on the pound dropping in value: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/brexit-pollster-faces-scrutiny-over-secret-political-operations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/brexit-po... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-big-short-how-pollsters-helped-hedge-funds-beat-the-crash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-bi... So some insiders were able to profit off the outcome of the referendum in shady circumstances.
- retube 5y ago
  No one _knew_ what the outcome would be (how could they have done?). Hedge funds routinely risk capital to bet on outcomes of events like this based on their own research (it's what they do); some would have got it right, some not. There's no conspiracy here.
  - akimball 5y ago
    Placing bets is investing. Placing bets with a conspiracy attached is activist investing.
jonwinstanley 5y ago
I agree that some of the very wealthy will benefit from Brexit due to this, and they may have spent money trying to ensure it happened but the reason the vote was won by the leave campaign was for very different reasons.
- rusk 5y ago
  It was a few different reasons, along with a lovingly nurtured swing from the centre, planted in racism and watered with dark money, all gathered together and reined by a cabal of cynics, crooks, and their cronies.
retube 5y ago
In what way? Brexit has generally been extremely costly for london finance - having to establish and capitalise EU entities, loss of regulatory equivalence etc. There was more provision for fishing (<0.1% GDP) in the brexit agreement than there was for finance (10%+) which has largely been left to fend for itself.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  EU is implementing reporting requirements for banks UK noped out
  - rawling 5y ago
    These ones? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/50168357 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/50168357 > But the rules are, in fact, all already part of UK law. A small number of them will not come into effect until 1 January [2020], but that would have happened anyway whether or not the UK was a member of the EU.
    - rusk 5y ago
      I wouldn’t be quoting the British propaganda agency
      - reillyse 5y ago
        It’s funny how few people realize that’s what the bbc is.
  - retube 5y ago
    what reporting requirements? The UK hasn't "noped" out of anything, all EU directives were imported wholesale, as is new regulation so we can pursue equivalence. The PRA will not deviate from Basel even slightly.
    - altcognito 5y ago
      What kind of enforcement?
fmajid 5y ago
Quite the opposite. Brexit has removed the UK government's ability to veto EU regulation on tax shelters.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  The UK would be happy to have the EU regulate tax shelters. That would allow them to take in all the tax shelter customers that are currently in Ireland, Luxemburg, and Switzerland.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    That's not how it works. Ireland and Luxembourg have a seat at the table, and can veto their states being put on the list of non-cooperating jurisdiction. The British Virgin Islands no longer have that protection, nor does London for that matter.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> this is what Brexit was always really about The City was hit hard by Brexit, a stupid decision the U.K. bumbled into. Nobody benefited in the long run. That our societies can walk off a cliff with nobody in charge is scary, so we try to attribute the decision to hidden forces. But sometimes, as in this case, there simply isn’t anyone at the wheel.
- pjc50 5y ago
  There have been plenty of specific, named, public people pushing for this to happen, many of whom are still in government. There very definitely are people at the wheel.
Chris2048 5y ago
No it wasn't: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028 Do you think all those east-midlands counties voted on behalf of London Finance?
vmception 5y ago
City of London fought hard against isolation from European capital centers during Brexit negotiations the following years after the vote.
rsync 5y ago
"If the penny hasn’t dropped yet for anyone who was still wondering, this is what Brexit was always really about." No, I don't think so ... rather, it is things like this that allowed Brexit to be plausible. Which is to say, if you hunted around for backup plans, "global financial hub" was always first on the list. It appears that it may be backfiring, however, as financial services and banks, etc., are decamping to Frankfurt ...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > it may be backfiring The City was and remains overwhelmingly anti-Brexit [1]. The plan didn't backfire because there was no such plan. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/2980dbd4-ecf6-11e8-8180-9cf212677a57 https://www.ft.com/content/2980dbd4-ecf6-11e8-8180-9cf212677...
elzbardico 5y ago
"While the Tories, the Whigs, the Peelites — in fact, all the parties we have hitherto commented upon — belong more or less to the past, the Free Traders (the men of the Manchester School, the Parliamentary and Financial Reformers) are the official representatives of modern English society, the representatives of that England which rules the market of the world. They represent the party of the self-conscious Bourgeoisie, of industrial capital striving to make available its social power as a political power as well, and to eradicate the last arrogant remnants of feudal society. This party is led on by the most active and most energetic portion of the English Bourgeoisie — the manufacturers. What they demand is the complete and undisguised ascendancy of the Bourgeoisie, the open, official subjection of society at large under the laws of modern, Bourgeois production, and under the rule of those men who are the directors of that production. By Free Trade they mean the unfettered movement of capital, freed from all political, national and religious shackles. The soil is to be a marketable commodity’ and the exploitation of the soil is to be carried on according to the common commercial laws. There are to be manufacturers of food as well as manufacturers of twist and cottons, but no longer any lords of the land. There are, in short, not to be tolerated any political or social restrictions, regulations or monopolies, unless they proceed from “the eternal laws of political economy,” MARX, Karl Free Trade and The Chartists Written: on August 2, 1852; First published: in the New-York Daily Tribune, August 25 1852.

blitzar 5y ago

> continue enabling the criminal system of tax evasion and political and social corruption, without the interference of regulators. I think the nod and wink is to enable the perpertrators from outside the UK to 'invest' here, and let us have a cut, rather than enable UK citizens to engage in these activities.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>to 'invest' here, and let us have a cut Who's "us"?
- blitzar 5y ago
  The people doing the nodding and winking.
  - samstave 5y ago
    Who is Us? The people doing the nodding and winking! Who is doing the nodding and winking? They are! Who are they? THEM!
    - rusk 5y ago
      They wouldn’t be so foolish as to reveal their identity would they! But we see their cronies front and centre on the political stage.
beardyw 5y ago
I agree but I wonder who the "us" is in "let us have a cut". I think it may be quite a small us. Perhaps I should be glad I won't benefit.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Officially we oppose foreign dictatorships, unofficially we help them stash their money. Every corrupt Russian official will buy realestate in the west, London if he's rich, some smaller EU country if he is a 'pleb'

_hilro 5y ago
That money from corrupt officials goes straight to the US real estate market. Miami.
- stinkytaco 5y ago
  Whoa, whoa, let's not get carried away with such broad accusations. After all, sometimes it's New York.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Or London.
  - nico_h 5y ago
    I thought it was Vancouver?
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      Vancouver may be big for China, but for Russian citizens it's too far and irrelevant. Toronto is much more attractive in that regard as a potential emigration direction.

ByThyGrace 5y ago

Whenever a bureaucrat speaks the words "agile and dynamic", I prepare for the worst. It's a stateman catchphrase which stands for "We're going to do things over including those things that have been working well and present no need for changing them."

pibechorro 5y ago

Bookmark this, the Pandora papers, etc when the dumb argument that crypto is used for money laundering.it happens, but the vast majority of graft is happening in London and Wall st.

Lammy 5y ago

RE your {1} for anyone else who didn’t always know that the City of London and the city of London are different entities: https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feab...

pas 5y ago
Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ROpIKZe-c

vmception 5y ago

What i don’t understand is why does the article act like this clearly public government document was found/leaked in the Pandora Papers The article seems more like a lobbying piece, how many more times can the author write “shady” edit: Nicholas Shaxson (@nickshaxson) is a staff writer for the Tax Justice Network and a co-founder of the Balanced Economy Project, an antimonopoly organization. He is the author of “Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World” and “The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer.” This is an article geared for people to agree with it because it matches what they want to read