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[Parsely]

He cited evidence?

Did he not link to some high profile examples of corruption in the US government? That's the proof against your claim here:

You seem to be saying that the US president and congressional leadership are personally concerned with money squirreled away in a bank account in Iceland illegally by themselves or someone who is taking care of them. That they care more about such accounts then their office and responsibility.

The truth is that politicians can be selfish and that they do indeed risk their positions for promises of money rewards. William J. Jefferson is a US congressman currently serving a 13-year sentence for receiving and paying bribes.

[mainiac]

The truth is that politicians can be selfish and that they do indeed risk their positions for promises of money rewards.

They sure can.

Did he not link to some high profile examples of corruption in the US government? That's the proof against your claim here:

You seem to be saying that the US president and congressional leadership are personally concerned with money squirreled away in a bank account in Iceland illegally by themselves or someone who is taking care of them. That they care more about such accounts then their office and responsibility.

He listed six congressmen.  Which is hardly all of the congressmen to ever resign in disgrace.  He listed zero members of the congressional leadership and zero presidents.

[Parsely]

The truth is that politicians can be selfish and that they do indeed risk their positions for promises of money rewards.

They sure can.

Did he not link to some high profile examples of corruption in the US government? That's the proof against your claim here:

You seem to be saying that the US president and congressional leadership are personally concerned with money squirreled away in a bank account in Iceland illegally by themselves or someone who is taking care of them. That they care more about such accounts then their office and responsibility.

He listed six congressmen.  Which is hardly all of the congressmen to ever resign in disgrace.  He listed zero members of the congressional leadership and zero presidents.

Why does it have to be all of them? That evidence proves that it's possible for leaders to be involved in illegal finances.

[mainiac]

Why does it have to be all of them? That evidence proves that it's possible for leaders to be involved in illegal finances.

But that's not evidence about leaders.  None of those men had the power to control the congressional agenda and decide whether or not a crack down on corruption happened.  Certainly their position mattered, but it didn't matter that much.  And none of them was president who has broad unilateral discretion to get crackdowns on corruption to take place thanks to his oversight of the justice department.

[Parsely]

Why does it have to be all of them? That evidence proves that it's possible for leaders to be involved in illegal finances.

But that's not evidence about leaders.  None of those men had the power to control the congressional agenda and decide whether or not a crack down on corruption happened.  Certainly their position mattered, but it didn't matter that much.  And none of them was president who has broad unilateral discretion to get crackdowns on corruption to take place thanks to his oversight of the justice department.

It's not up to Congress whether or not their members get indicted. Public corruption is the FBI's job. Separation of powers and all that.

If you're trying to argue that the greater someone's position, the greater their immunity to corruption, then I'm saying you're wrong. There's no correlation.

[mainiac]

If you're trying to argue that the greater someone's position, the greater their immunity to corruption, then I'm saying you're wrong.

No, we've had a president who committed treason after all.  But high ranking politicians in democracies tend towards venereal corruption then being off shore bank accounts. There are much better routes to money.  Their corruption tends to focus around campaign contributions and social connections that let them maintain power and influence.

[Shadowlord]

This is really long. The sections for George W Bush and Ronald Reagan are especially long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scandals_in_the_United_States

[nenjin]

One would think the solution begins somewhere in our banking regulation requirements we pose on foreign transactions. It'd seem allowing transactions with an institution that:

knew the identities of the real owners of just 204 of 14,086 companies it had incorporated in Seychelles

Would be bad. Setting stricter standards on foreign transactions and more transparent reporting from banking institutions would, if nothing else, provide scrutiny to these transactions where they've largely been in the dark before. Sadly I agree with maniac though. The difficulty posed even by legitimate reporting and investigation of said reports would be enormous. Setting up shell companies 3 deep as a name on a form isn't technically illegal. How does one regulate a transaction like that, or choose when it's acceptable to interdict it? How does one even "verify the identity of the real owner?" Do we just tax the shit out of everyone doing foreign transactions as a form of "We can't stop you so at least we'll get our's", and wreck trade for everyone else? How do you even deal with privacy and confidentiality? And that's just domestically. Internationally a solution is pretty much up there with world peace in terms of feasibility.

[smjjames]

If you're trying to argue that the greater someone's position, the greater their immunity to corruption, then I'm saying you're wrong.

No, we've had a president who committed treason after all. 

Which one was that?

[Frumple]

Setting up shell companies 3 deep as a name on a form isn't technically illegal.

More than not being illegal, subordinate companies and whatnot (if not quite shell ones) stacked however deep are often kinda' really damn helpful in regards to bookkeeping, local support and adaptation, etc., so on, and so forth. Things probably should be reworked so there's no tax-related incentive or whatev' to do so (so far as I can recall, there's several), but it's also not something that would be particularly good to get rid of. There's a good handful of fairly substantial organizational and administrative advantages to the practice.

[mainiac]

Sure was.

[Sheb]

That sounds like a very difficult tax to make work.

So I tried to look a bit at that Caiman tax, and from what I gathered, it allows our local IRS to tax revenues of foreign entities founded or owned by a Belgian person (including companies in juridisction where they would pay taxes of less than 15%) as if those were the revenues of the person. I'm sure there is still a bajillion ways around it.

[PTTG??]

That was fast.

Out he goes.

[sprinkled chariot]

I am wondering, if some persecution like giant fine for tax evading will follow that guy.

[wierd]

This kind of thing is the rule rather than the exception.  Proper recusal for holding interests in market players by politicians would result in the politicians recusing themselves so regularly that they could not function properly. The money needed to be a career politician requires that they have such holdings to be able to run for office.

it's a catch 22.

This guy tried to liquidate his holdings by selling them to his wife. This is a fair sight better than many politicians who do aboslutely nothing to remove thier stakeholder interests in entities they will be regulating the market for by being part of the executive or legislative (or judicial) processes.

Unless you want to introduce random appointments to public offices, with all the warts that has, this problem has no solution.