Recommended reading on the Panama Papers

I’ll admit, the Panama Papers issue is a teensy bit over my head. Fortunately the internet is full of smart intelligent people, and we’ve all got our own areas of expertise – so I humbly direct you to two excellent pieces of writing on the matter.

At Corner Politics: A note on the Panama Papers

Effectively most of the world is in slavery – forced to work for low wages, no benefits, no holidays, no education because apparently companies cannot afford to pay them.

Don’t forget that by spending up to 90% of our income on goods and services, we are enabling these people to horde incredible amounts of wealth. Those born into this wealth will never have to work as hard as we do and we will forever be chastised for not working hard enough and for being jealous and envious.

And at Scoop, Gordon Campbell writes on the political tokenism of the government’s response to the Panama Papers

Let me make a wild guess. When he reports back on June 30, we can be pretty sure that Shewan will find that there is much to admire and few causes for concern in the New Zealand rules to do with foreign trusts. Let me also bet that Shewan’s analysis will limit itself entirely to the formal framework – it will be an “on paper” evaluation – and will not examine how the system works in practice. How the system actually works is the sort of thing that can emerge only if and when a public inquiry was held, and people were invited to come out of the woodwork.

Click on through and read both posts in full.