Tuesday, Nov 19th
Last update05:20:13 AM GMT
Economic Glance
US corporate giants such as Apple, Walmart and General Electric have stashed $1.4tn (£980bn) in tax havens, despite receiving trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, according to a report by anti-poverty charity Oxfam.
The sum, larger than the economic output of Russia, South Korea and Spain, is held in an “opaque and secretive network” of 1,608 subsidiaries based offshore, said Oxfam.
A U.S. watchdog agency is preparing to investigate whether the Federal Reserve and other regulators are too soft on the banks they are meant to police, after a written request from Democratic lawmakers that marks the latest sign of distrust between Congress and the central bank.
Ranking representatives Maxine Waters of the House Financial Services Committee and Al Green of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations asked the Government Accountability Office on Oct. 8 to launch a probe of "regulatory capture" and to focus on the New York Fed, according to a letter obtained by Reuters.
Retailer Macy's Inc. announced the elimination of more than 4,500 jobs and the closure of 36 stores after disappointing sales during the holiday season.
It said Wednesday it would initiate "a series of cost-efficiency and process-improvement measures" by reducing the workforce at each of about 770 Macy's and Bloomingdale's stores, closing other stores, and offering a "voluntary separation opportunity" to some senior executives. The downsizing actions are set to begin early this year.
James Schnurr, just two months into his job as chief accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, stood before a packed ballroom in Washington last December and upbraided a little-known regulator.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, oversees the big firms that sign off on the books of America’s listed companies. And the board was “moving too slowly,” Schnurr said, to address auditing failures that in recent years had shaken public confidence in those firms.
The Federal Reserve Board approved a rule Monday prohibiting the government from extending emergency loans to "too big to fail" companies.
The practice of intervening with loans was essential during the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, but was formally abandoned Monday to keep within the confines of the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010.
No invention of modern capitalism so enrages the public as does the tax haven. When giant corporations and very rich people choose not to pay their taxes, and government turns a blind eye, faith in the state crumbles.
The decision of the American drugs giant, Pfizer, to merge with Dublin-based Allergan, thereby “relocating” its headquarters to Ireland is not because some wizard potion has been discovered in the hills of Connemara. It is to dodge tax. The same has applied to Starbucks, Amazon, Google and countless other global companies.
When Antonio Peña Arguelles opened an account in 2005 at Citigroup’s Banamex USA, the know-your-customer documents said he had a small business breeding cattle and white-tailed deer, ranch-raised for their stately antlers. About $50 a month would come into the account, according to the documents.
A week later, Peña Arguelles wired in $7.09 million from an account in Mexico, allegedly drug money from Los Zetas, a violent cartel founded by former Mexican soldiers, documents in his money-laundering case in Texas say. In all, Peña Arguelles shuttled $59.4 million through the account, according to a confidential report by banking regulators that berated Banamex USA in 2013 for its failure to comply with anti-money-laundering rules.
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