So... was looking on an angle that would make the Panama Papers relevant

[nadinbrzezinski]

to my local audience. FOUND IT. San Diego is the 9th most expensive city to live world wide. Los Angeles is behind us, my pals up in San Jose and San Fran are up there in the list. Funny but I did not find New York in the list.

I know that San Diego is an extremely expensive market and if I were to buy my home today I could not afford it. Hell, rent on an apartment of this size in a decent area of town is way out of reach. One of the reasons for this is... drum roll... foreign buyers for properties that have driven the coast of property up though the roof in place like London or my beloved city.

We have had stories of this. In San Diego it is Chinese investors, for some years now.

The Panama papers have provided a huge dot to this. And I do not think many middle and working class Americans (or for that matter Britons and Australians) will find this funny. These revelations are just going to deepen the populist moment we are in. It should be fun. Oh and when Thomas Picketty did publish "On Capital" housing was one of the items that he mentioned.

But when you are super wealthy how many homes do you need to really own around the world? They want to own everything... and damn it, they are well on their way. One more thing. The money parked in these off shore accounts. Not that it fully remains static, is to the tune of 35 Trillion. That is about the size of the size of the United States Federal Budget. If all these people paid their taxes... do you think we could afford single payer, extending education to PhDs, fixing my and your roads, getting publicly funded museums, fixing the IRS problem... etcetera? I think we could. I think we could even fund silly things like minimum living pay for people who for whatever reason cannot work, or can find work.

These are not going away and people are going to get very, very angry. This was partially what drove Occupy Wall Street. And with a few exceptions here, you are not in that club, nor do they want you in that club. And I am taking the word of posters who claim to be part of that club, to actually be members of that club.

[tblue37]

1. How many homes? Remember when John McCain was asked in 2008 how many homes he owned, he

couldn't even remrmber! When mocked for that, he said the reason he couldn't remember was that they were just investment properties.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I know and he is a bit player in that world

for the record, so are the Clintons and many of our politicians.

[pkdu]

6. a little Bernie Bias there I think. For shame . Nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Many folk have been mentioning him

so PM Cameron is a bit player, President Mecri of Argentina is a bit player. better? They are useful bit players, but really, this world is the world of Carlos Slimm and Bill Gates, not Clinton or Mecri or Cameron, or grandma down the road.

[pkdu]

9. So why mention " the Clintons" in previous post? Nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. What part of posters have been mentioning and hoping they are named in this document

leak are you purposefully missing? Though I am sure, they do have these kinds of financial arrangements. People in their social class generally speaking do. Nor are most of them against the law either, (which incidentally is part of the problem).

[pkdu]

11. "Posters" , yep, thought so. There is nothing wrong with your post as long you are no longer

Pretending to be a neutral journo.All good.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Look posters here have been hoping

for the record, that is a nice personal attack right there, I ain't bothering to alert since the system is as broken as American Elections. Ok maybe a little less.

[daleanime]

15. ......

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. At this point I think it is almost a pavlovian response

[upaloopa]

3. We sold our house in Lompoc, CA this year. We got several cash offers from China site unseen.

We did not take any more of them.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Anecdotally I am far from surprised

by the way, Lompoc is not downtown. We have a few towers that were built on speculation, The price for a flat, 1 million bucks, starting. They are still building more.

One of the NPR stories a few years back mentioned that middle class Chinese citizens using brokers, were looking for property in El Cajon, not precisely a town I would like to have a vacation home at. Old stock, most houses really do not have AC, and it is HOT in the summer, and the town has been in a serious crisis for some time. Those were sight unseen as well.

Those are not the ones truly driving the prices up that hard. It is the towers like the ones downtown

[dreamnightwind]

4. Interesting, what is the connection to the Panama Papers though?

Sorry if I just missed it, wasn't obvious to me. Just the tax evasion? If so that seems like a pretty indirect link. But this is a real problem, Panama Papers or not.

In our area, after the '08 crash (we were hit really really hard, many foreclosures everywhere) people like Berkshire/Hathaway (Warren Buffett) swooped in and bought many homes at rock bottom prices. Obama even worked with them and others like the Blackrock Group (IIRC) to streamline them making such purchases, ostensibly to get the glut of foreclosed homes off the market. Now this market is artificially inflated again, ripe for another bubble to pop. Pop go the weasels.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Real estate has gone though the roof due to specualtion

So you cannot afford a home, because they will buy these properties for the sky is the limit in some cases.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. And I forgot to mention this, Blackrock does work with many of these trusts

as well as BerkshireHathaway

I have not come across either of those two names, but would not surprise me

[dreamnightwind]

24. I'm getting the bigger picture here, thanks to everyone who responded - eom

[Kensan]

14. It's a way to stash "cash"

Foreigners buy real estate with cash. It is an asset that generally does well in terms of returns on investment (not counting the bubble from 2008). But even better, buying this asset with cash means there is no bank involved that would be cross-sharing financial information between countries.

A U.S. person now has reporting requirements when they own assets in other countries. They are also obligated to file a report with the US Treasury that lists their foreign bank accounts. For years, many wealthy U.S. taxpayers blew off these disclosures because they didn't want to report the foreign income on their 1040's. The UBS scandal blew the lid off slightly. Many were at least prompted to voluntarily report for several prior tax years. The penalties for non-filing were significantly beefed up, especially since there was a deadline for the voluntary disclosure grace period.

However, I can guarantee you the UBS list of clients was not complete. There is no way "connected" persons had their accounts revealed. The IRS was happy to receive the back owed taxes from the small players who voluntarily disclosed, but these were small fish in a much bigger pool.

Many foreign countries are behind in tracking these types of activities, which is why foreign persons can effectively use these schemes. There is a growing consensus amongst countries to share this type of information to catch tax evasion, but it only works if the responsible parties in the financial system play fair. As the Panama Papers will reveal, the game has always been rigged.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. BRAVO!!!!

[Dustlawyer]

26. Another thing to remember, this law firm was only the 4th largest in this type of business.

Just because someone's name or company doesn't pop up doesn't mean they are innocent of this practice. Maybe they are, or maybe they used another firm.

I spoke with a 1% person who said he and all of his wealthy friends pay no taxes. His money comes from a trust which receives income through 20 shell companies before it gets to him. Our tax code is like this because wealthy Donors paid the politicians to write and pass these tax laws, just like they do for everything else they want.

Leona Helmsley was speaking the truth all of those years ago when she said that, "Only the poor pay taxes."

[Kensan]

33. Precisely...

Our tax system depends a lot on voluntary disclosure. If taxpayers have income generating assets overseas, they won't receive a Form 1099 from a foreign source. The scare tactic has always been the penalties assessed if caught. Unless you lose at the game of audit roulette, there's never that "come uppance" moment. The IRS is woefully understaffed, and the field agents are not even in the same league as the prominent attorneys and accountants who devise these strategies.

That doesn't even consider various strategies that take advantage of tax treaties and certain foreign tax credits. It's a circular game to run income through multiple entities in different countries with zero or 5% tax treaties. The trick is to find the right combinations of countries along the chain, since each country has negotiated their provisions independently. But they usually have at least one "sweetheart" country they team up with (very convenient, no?).

For cash inflows into the U.S., it's easy to circumvent so-called money laundering provisions. You could make $9,500 deposits every 2 weeks, which appear like earnings from employment. It's less than the $10,000 bank reporting threshold. Now do this in 20 different banks, and you can amass a tidy fortune to purchase that prime real estate investment. Due to the FDIC deposit insurance being only $250,000, it is actually sound policy to split the money into multiple banks until you have use for it.

[Dont call me Shirley]

20. Because of David Cameron...

"Even before the leak of the Panama Papers this week, we knew it was happening. So widespread is the use of central London property as a safe haven for the spoils of the world’s elite that the government had already promised to do something about it. The problem is, it promised so little.

Last year, speaking in Singapore, David Cameron was forced to acknowledge that foreign investment in British housing stock was damaging to the housing market and provided a cover for illegal activities. He agreed to crack down on individuals and organisations using the mask of offshore companies to invest in the UK property market as a means to launder what he called “dirty money”. He described how London property was being snapped up with “plundered and laundered cash” and promised that the UK should not be a “safe haven for corrupt money”. But it wasn’t enough.

In making the speech, Cameron was responding to a growing realisation that, in ushering in foreign investment, the government had also welcomed in a wealthy elite that objected to transparency in its financial dealings. Did we really know what, or who, we were dealing with? More importantly, did we understand how significant an effect their secret spending with the global luxury real estate brokers of Mayfair was having on everyone else, right down to the family trying to buy a modest two-bedroom semi in Chelmsford?

Even Donald Toon, director of economic crime at the National Crime Agency, said the use of ‘corporate wrappers’ and other tactics to launder money had “skewed” the property market. “Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK, ” he said last year.

UK property valued at a total of £170bn is held by overseas investors. Of course, not every purchase made by a company registered offshore is an attempt to launder dirty cash or conceal illegal activity. But buying a home through an offshore company structure is one way of escaping the taxes and costs of ownership which the rest of us all have to bear."

more

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-a6971341.html

[dreamnightwind]

23. Excellent info, thanks

That explains it to me in more detail.

[Warpy]

38. It's how people in China have managed to get millions out of the country

(Oddly enough, the Chinese government has kept the lid on any news at all about this, so people there are in the dark unless they're rich)

Since the maximum any Chinese citizen can take out of the country is $50,000, they "hire" shell corporations and fake people to do it for them, a practice called "smurfing." That's how they can afford million dollar crack shacks in Vancouver. Unless cities start taking this stuff a little more seriously, most big cities on the west coast are going to turn into ghost towns of empty plutocrat owned real estate.

Other cities around the world have seen their prices driven up by multinational 1%ers who have simply run out of places to invest their ill gotten gains, London being a prime example. With all the prime real estate being snapped up by billionaires, more pressure is placed on other areas of the city to house citizens and the whole city is becoming unaffordable for the people who make it work. London, Paris, NYC, the US west coast, all are being slowly choked to death by people with too much money emptying them out of the people who provided the goods and services that built them.

Part of me would love to see this played out all the way, the billionaires needing urban property for bolt holes when their respective governments finally wake up and finding there's nobody to keep the lights on or haul their garbage away. Most of me hopes all countries start to wake up to what a horrible thing allowing wealth to concentrate into so few hands has been for the human race.

[TroubleMan]

40. See how it relates to Miami real estate from this article:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article69248462.html

In the same way it's affecting some of California and New York.

[dreamnightwind]

43. Thanks, that article is excellent

Wow, a much bigger problem than I realized. And the article is an example, from the Miami perspective, of what Nadin is talking about doing for the San Diego area.

[Dont call me Shirley]

16. This seems relevant...

“If the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts.”

-George H.W. Bush

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. very

But there is something to be said about this house of cards coming down sooner or later.

This article is extremely relevant.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014

[Dont call me Shirley]

21. He is correct.

[2naSalit]

22. They are also buying up

everything around Yellowstone and other parks too, buying the resorts as those who built the tourist communities are retiring and their offspring don't ant to stick around and the Chinese pay cash, always. And if they aren't buying it, it's two corporations looking to snap up everything they can get too.

[FailureToCommunicate]

25. Much of Harvard Square, Cambridge has been bought up (and stores booted and stand empty)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/04/04/hong-kong-real-estate-mogul-buying-harvard-square-property/M0ej07PLaW9Y46LwtnU8vM/story.html

https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/05/02/meet-boston-invisible-billionaire/y7QS6m7SniIqsED91iS9oO/story.html

[hopemountain]

27. according to 'some', oregon, washington, alaska,

and most of california already belong to china per some deal made by corporations and government leaders. the 'some' are my neighbors in the valley here.

but, now, with the panama papers, there may be some truth what 'some' say.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Both Chinese citizens and Saudis (as well as Qataris, and Russians)

have been buying property world wide.

Realize that Mossack Fonseca is just one of the many players in this. We are getting a good idea of what is going on.

[hopemountain]

29. do you think these

revelations will be able to significantly diminish the corruption, money laundering and greed that are destroying governments and the planet?

i like to believe in the laws of physics - find the points of tension and bring it all down 1-2-3-4- etc..

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. I think long term it will

but how we get there might not be pleasant.

We just started to see the annoyance of the American people with Occupy for example.

By the way I am going to buy this one on a lark. Heard the author on NPR today, and damn she is relevant to this discussion

http://www.amazon.com/Thieves-State-Corruption-Threatens-Security-ebook/dp/B00L4HAXDM/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=

[hopemountain]

31. as long is there is light..

thanks. i will check it out.

[shadowmayor]

32. Not dear old Uncle Warren

You mean that "nice" man from Nebraska? As Carlin said, it's a BIG club and you and I aren't a part of it. They want it all and they'll get it too!

How many Americans are more worried about ISIS landing in their back yards and haven't given a moment's thought about this stuff? Amazing. Turn on the news and it's 24 hours of goddamned primaries. As I remind my friends, there's a new word (kinda like the opposite of Jon Stewart's "squirrel&quot - Fukushima. When's the last time we were told anything about Fukushima??? The fawning corporate media will "Fukushima" this story ASAP.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. Well cnn covered it in passing. CNN-I has

Now their coverage on terror reverses. That is far from a coincidence

[shadowmayor]

35. Yep

The fallout for now is too much to ignore. Cameron in the UK is up to his arse in alligators, Iceland moved quickly. But soon, I fear, the fallout will be like Fukushima - the spewage continues and the news media walks away. Who knows? More leaks like these could make a bunch of rich Americans very nervous. Stay tuned as they say . . . And thanks for your original post - lifting the carpet is where you find the real dirt and I think your point is important.

[grasswire]

36. nadin, there was an article here in the last week..

..about Panama Papers and the real estate markets in Portland and San Francisco.

So somewhere.....someone is on the same trail you are.

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. Good

[rhett o rick]

39. We are headed the way of Haiti. The rich and powerful will buy up all the land and we will be serfs

Vote for change, vote Sanders.

[MrMickeysMom]

41. DAMN IT, YOU ARE SO FUCKING RIGHT, NADIN!!!!!!

Of everything I've tried to read in the week or so about the Panama Papers (cause I sure the fuck couldn't get anything beyond Al Jazeera or The Guardian), I've remember "35 Trillion".

And... SO RIGHT that it's the size of federal budget.

Here's the DOT TO CONNECT, which infuriates me (since I phone bank and stay polite in the background of recent comments of the "unrealistic things" that could be done for Americans from people that I realize are just ignorant)... We bloody well could afford single payer, public education K through Bachelors programs and Vocational Education, infrastructure and minimum wage.

But, look at all the suppression of this information. It's almost unbelievable. This news must be spoken... must be understood... In fact, this was where OWS left off. There's unfinished business for all of us.

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. Take into acount, that is the global money

but imagine all the stuff we could do in Mexico, Mozambique, oh England for that matter, or the US, if those funds paid taxes in their home countries.

And while we are having a policy discussion of sorts...

That said, you can find the info here.

https://panamapapers.icij.org/

They also have been linking to stories that have come from their reporting.