mean-green@hushmail.com posted:
As Dot-Coms Go Bust in the U.S., Bermuda Hosts a Little Boomlet By MICHAEL ALLEN
[...]
Plenty of dot-coms are asking themselves the same question these days. Undaunted by their industry's growing ranks of flameouts and hoping to emerge as one of the profitable few, dozens of them are popping up in tax havens around the world.
One of the interesting, and to my mind odd, things is that they *aren't* "popping up in tax havens around the world". They are popping up in little islands that are formally or effectively under British colonial rule, if not actually occupied by the British army. Britain has a good track record of supporting business in its little island colonies & ex-colonies - most notably Hong Kong which at one time had a GDP larger than that of the rest of China by some measures - but does anyone seriously think that if businesses located in those places were ever seen as a threat by the UK government/establishment/military, or by their US handlers, they wouldn't just move in and close them down? Even some of the ex-colonies rely on Britain or (especially in the the Caribbean) the USA for foreign aid and military protection (that could be "protection" as in "protection racket") and their governments aren't in a position to stand up to either the Mother Country or her Bigger Brother. And, on the whole, their ordinary citizens (never mind resident aliens) don't even have the legal rights they would in Britain, and nothing like those of the USA. The very fact that such business are allowed to flourish is a Big Clue that they aren't really causing the US or UK governments any hassle. They are quite happy to have most people at home paying tax & a few overseas not paying tax but doing business. But if they ever really wanted to get an individual or a business, they would. The sun still doesn't set on the British Empire (not while we have Pitcairn!), London is still the heart of darkness, it is is still the place where the money is (most of the money in the world, by orders of magnitude, is in meaninglessly large dollar accounts in databases owned by London banks, representing currency trades), and if you think you can trust these guys to do anything other than act in the interests of their own profits you are making a big mistake. Ken