Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

Obviously, I find this interesting.

In fact, I have a good friend who is a partner in one of Panama's largest law firms, and he has given me his thoughts on this situation.

I also don't mind Northside's efforts in updating the thread with news. I have interns who do similar work for me. Yes, that's appreciated.

Still, I find the obvious level of excitement while copying and pasting amusing.

 

Global tax inequality in a nutshell, and how it can kill:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/mass...just-a-small-slice-of-offshore-banking-world/

 

Great, glad to help

 

As long as the facts are vague, we should not assume that anyone has done anything illegal just because their name shows up in connection to this.

In fact, the intern has already started jumping to conclusions regarding David Cameron. First of all, it was his late father who set up the accounts, secondly, all of that may be perfectly legal and have nothing to do with bribery, corruption, the mafia or anything.

Also, Mossack Fonseca has offices in 24 countries. Most of the companies mentioned in connection with this are actually incorporated outside of Panama.

 

I have not jumped to conclusions about David Cameron. It is a fact that he refuses to answer a question related to his father's late fund. It is a fact that a Conservative in his own party called for more transparency in his tax politics (nevermind the Labour party!). It is a fact that Cameron ironically called for more transparency on taxes. I have not alleged that there were any crimes committed, I have merely presented the facts.

I directly said it was his father who set up the fund.

You want to be a politician that calls for higher ideals and being transparent about tax matters? Maybe you should lead the charge.

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Do you think the facts related to the Iceland case, the FIFA case, and now the Front National are in any way "vague"?

Most of the companies incorporated are in countries known to have opaque financial structures/lax tax regimes, most of them in the British Virgin Islands. The fact that they were incorporated in countries separate from Panama has little to no bearing in this thread beyond the fact that I suppose, now, that Panama is forever tainted for offshore.

https://panamapapers.icij.org/graphs/

 

Yes.

Or are you claiming to be an expert on Icelandic laws. Have any laws been broken, yes or no?

 

Yes, I make a living setting up Panamanian money laundering operations for third world politician-gangsters.

Can you and Northside Storm do us all a favor and prescribe the appropriate reaction to these massive BOMBSHELLS that keep going off?

You know the ground-breaking stuff, like hey, "Vladimir Putin might not totally be on the up and up" or "top leadership in FIFA may be a bunch of kickback taking laughably inept turbo-crooks" or "That Mubarak family might be a bit shady!'

Even the "200 Americans" that MacNorthy keeps promising don't exactly include Bernie Sanders or Sarah Palin, rather it's a bunch of random jerks you've never heard of, or if you have heard of them, it's generally because most of them have been investigated/jailed for....you guessed it, tax frauld

What is the appropriate level of reaction to this "further confirmation that man bit dog a few years ago" type story?

Retire to the fainting couch? Use 72-point font? I'm very curious.

 

Are you aware that in politics you can be forced to resign for much less? I did not allege that he broke laws. I did say there was a hidden conflict of interest--and that hidden conflict of interest sure pissed off Icelanders.

Are you familiar with no-confidence votes and how the Icelandic parliament works?

 

You could take a cue from your boy B-O and "reform international tax laws".

If you wanted my personal opinion, I think automating corporate lawyers/bankers with natural language processing would help prevent a lot of crap and save a lot of costs in the system, but hey, that may just be me.

It is time for open data and algorithmic regulation.

http://beyondtransparency.org/chapters/part-5/open-data-and-algorithmic-regulation/

You'll notice that at the very least, that requires open data to begin with.

 

I saw that on the news. A few thousand Icelanders got pissed off. The prime minister looked shady in his reaction. Mildly interesting, yes.

"Familiar"? Like any of us would be familiar with any of that before we read about it yesterday - what kind of a dumb question is that?

 

Yeah, because natural language processing works so great already.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/30/microsoft-racist-sexist-chatbot-twitter-drugs

 

I don't know, about as dumb as asking me if laws were broken in Iceland when I didn't allege they were.

 

Conflating two issues here--Tay is actually a great demonstration of how NLP works. Garbage in, garbage out, but the garbage was read properly.

 

Give us more pearls of wisdom like:

 

Sure, Tim O'Reilly does it better.

http://beyondtransparency.org/chapters/part-5/open-data-and-algorithmic-regulation/

http://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/report-ai-will-transform-legal-world

 

Great ideas, I endorse them all. 6 stars.

 

hey man, I can teach you the basics of Python and building data pipelines with Pandas, playing with basic machine learning in scikit-learn, and going through the basics of NLP modules with NLTK if you're feeling a bit worried. It could actually help in a lot of ways, and the standard sample for practice are the Enron emails, which will probably help make the material more relevant.

thanks for the endorsement otherwise!

 

I like that you edited this post, dropping a bunch of ML terms in there - now it's WAY MORE INTIMIDATING than back when you just had Python and Panda.

I'm skeered.

 

Pandas son.

http://pandas.pydata.org/

Sorry, I'm a geek, and I like what I work on

Thank you for seeing the need for change after these revelations have revealed hidden conflicts of interest, money laundering, corruption, and bribery across the globe, both expected (Russia) and unexpected (Marine le Pen's closest circle, Iceland's prime minister).

 

I think he wants to give working class people more of a chance and that the system is stacked against them. I don't think he believes all our problems will be solved by gov't, but that gov't can play a role.

Gov't is certainly wasteful, but it also is successful and our gov't has allowed for amazing things from a strong military (talk about waste), NASA, the interstate system, etc. We have a severe issue with the middle class under pressure as well as illiteracy and poverty. I think gov't can and should play a role in helping alleviate the impact these problems are having by dragging down our economy in a competitive global environment.