Legalised crime A couple of years ago, a teacher told me "it wasn't a problem if the bankers, the wealthy, etc engabe in tax evasion and tax avoidance because they create wealth and put it in the economy." "Perhaps the biggest problem is that tax havens mostly benefit financial elites, including some politicians and many of their donors. Meanwhile, pressure from voters for action is limited by the boring and confusing nature of the problem. Sandwich, anyone?" — (bbc online) How much of the world's wealth is hidden offshore
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51