#1010 Offshore Shrugging

There’s this book that experiences a resurgence of popularity every time we elect an administration that seems to want to stick it back to the exploitive rich.
(Not all the rich mind you. Lots of the rich actually funded Obama’s campaign.)
The book is “Atlas Shrugged” and it’s by a lady variously called Ann or Ain Rand. Her name is spelled A-y-n-. Note to self: keep name easy if you want to be famous—or get famous enough it doesn’t matter.
The thesis of the book is that all the rich people tell governments to take a hike and then they, the rich people, take a hike, form their own island nation, and deny the world the benefits of their money-making expertise.
Neener neener poor people.
We don’t want to play your communist everybody gets a turn basketball. You want to tax us and make us share, we’re taking our rich balls and going home.
Of course, the cautionary tale neglects some key elements of the struggle for wealth. The rich person may own the ball but it takes a working team to make all the baskets.
And more importantly, in these Enron and Wall Street times, when a lot of wealth is speculative, how you gonna make money if you don’t have someone to screw out of it? If it hadn’t been for the 401ks of the small investor, if it hadn’t have been for the shaky loans taken out but little guys both fair and foul, if it hadn’t been for the honest schmucks believing they needed to invest every last dime in the stock market to have a decent retirement from, yep you guessed it, the labor force, then the fat cats wouldn’t have had any money to play dirty tricks with.
Money those same fat cats are already moving to private islands. Offshore tax shelter islands to be exact. In the Caymans alone, a notorious tax shelter and drug money-laundering haven, Bank of America and Citigroup have 149 subsidiaries hiding money and not paying any taxes on it.
Maybe that answers that one question—“Where did all the bailout money go?”
When asked, Bank of America shrugged.
Ayn Rand would be proud.
America, ya gotta love it.