World Bank Study Shows How Anti-Money Laundering Rules Hurt the Poor

I’ve complained many times about the pointless nature of anti-money laundering laws. They impose very high costs and force banks to spy on their customers, but they are utterly ineffective as a weapon against criminal activity. Yet politicians and bureaucrats keep making a bad system worse, and the latest development is a silly scheme to [...]

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Financial Regulation, the Red-Tape Nightmare, and Anti-Money Laundering Laws

I’ve periodically written about the overall cost of regulation, and I’ve also highlighted the onerous costs of proposals such as the Dodd-Frank bailout bill. This blurb from the IFC Review may give readers a sense of the regulatory onslaught facing financial institutions. Banks and other financial services firms had to deal with 60 regulatory changes each working [...]

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Barack Obama’s Bank Adventure

Feel free, of course, to insert the name of another politician if you’re an Obama fan. ================================================================ President Obama walks into the Bank of America on Martha’s Vineyard to cash a check. As he approaches the cashier he says “Good morning Ma’am, could you please cash this check for me”? Cashier: “It would be my [...]

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Are Tax Havens Moral or Immoral?

Being the world’s self-appointed defender of so-called tax havens has led to some rather bizarre episodes. The bureaucrats at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development threatened to have me thrown in a Mexican jail for the horrible crime of standing in the public lobby of a hotel and giving advice to low-tax jurisdictions. On [...]

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It’s Wrong to Steal…Even When the Government Does It Using Asset Forfeiture

As a grumpy libertarian, I routinely get agitated about taxes, spending, and regulation. As far as I’m concerned, much of government is a racket that uses coercion to reward interest groups with unearned wealth. But there are degrees of evil. So if you asked me to pick the most reprehensible thing that government does,  “asset [...]

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Giving Cops Bad Incentives to Harass Victimless Behavior

The Washington Post has an interesting report about the huge amount of money that Fairfax County spends to go after gambling. The story cites critics who ask “why law enforcement spends valuable time and money on combating sports gambling. The answer is obvious – and explicit in the story: “…police in Virginia are allowed to [...]

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Tax Havens Are Not Money Laundering Centers

Demagogues such as Senator Carl Levin, as well as many other politicians and journalists, often assert that low-tax jurisdictions are havens for dirty money and terrorist financing. From a theoretical perspective, this does not make sense. So-called tax havens have a big incentive to avoid scandal since they are much more vulnerable to reputational risk. [...]

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Talking to the French about Tax Competition, Tax Havens, Money Laundering, and Obama’s Fiscal Profligacy

In this short video produced by the French free-market website, Un Monde Libre, I wax poetic about the need to restrain the greed of the political class.

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