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Quote by Naomi Klein

“We must always remember that the fossil fuel era began in violent kleptocracy, with those two foundational thefts of stolen people and stolen land that kick-started a new age of seemingly endless expansion. The route to renewal runs through reckoning and repair: reckoning with our past and repairing relationships with the people who paid the steepest price of the first industrial revolution.”

Book:On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal

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On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal

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Author

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and activist recognized for her work on social justice and environmental issues. Born on May 8, 1970, she has authored several influential books that have gained international acclaim. more

“After long years tolerating tax evasion by their fellow members of the ruling class, the political leaders of the big Western economies had been forced by the cost of the bank bailouts, the subsequent recession and increasingly widespread hostility to cuts in public services to go after those missing tax revenues. Hence the Americans' pursuit of UBS, Credit Suisse, BSI and the rest. But the City was in a different position. It was not the UK Treasury that the City's clients were primarily cheating. It was everyone else's. And there was one more fact, so huge and so obvious that everyone ignored it the way only problems of such magnitude could be ignored. Tax evasion deprived governments of revenue. Money laundering was the other side of the same coin. Like tax dodging, it was a subversion of money's role as a token of reciprocal altruism that allowed large and diverse societies to function. But while tax evasion sucked money out, money laundering pumped money in. If you could stop yourself thinking about its origins, those inflows of dirty money from around the world were just another source of investment into otherwise declining economies.”

Taxes Corruption Taxation Oligarchy City Of London Kleptocracy Money Laundering Tax Evasion Financial Sector Credit Suisse

Book:Kleptopia How Dirty Money is Conquering the World & The Looting Machine By Tom Burgis 2 Books Collection Set

Source: Kleptopia How Dirty Money is Conquering the World & The Looting Machine By Tom Burgis 2 Books Collection Set

“It was to Blair that Nazarbayev turned for counsel at this delicate moment. The information blackout on Zhanaozen had been insufficient to prevent the basic details leaking out. It was as though someone had spoken aloud a forbidden truth: for the kleptocrat, ruling by licensing theft rather than seeking consent, money can achieve most of what needs to be done. For everything else, there is violence. And so, as he arrived in Cambridge, Mecca of the rational, to deliver his speech, Nazarbayev resolved to follow Blair’s advice. For these Westerners, anxious after years of war and terrorism and, lately, the financial crisis, he would be the bringer of stability to a troubled world.”

Corruption Oligarchy Kleptocracy Tony Blair Nazarbayev

Book:Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

Source: Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

“BSI’s London office lay equidistant from the Bank of England and St Paul’s, bang in the centre of the City of London, the aorta of the global financial system. The unremarkable building stood on Cheapside, the City thoroughfare laid down by the Romans, where medieval merchants sold sheep’s feet and eels. The Stocks Market at its east end became known for the appalling stench of rotting fare. Around the corner was the Lord Mayor’s residence, the Mansion House. There Tony Blair had leavened a speech about unjust global trade with a reaffirmation that the City ‘creates much of the wealth on which this British nation depends’. From the start, the Swiss financiers who created Banco della Svizzera Italiana, or Swiss-Italian Bank, saw their task as helping money cross national borders. Construction of what was then the world’s longest tunnel, through the St Gotthard massif in the Alps, was under way. It would carry a railway to connect northern and southern Europe. When the work was completed, the Swiss president declared that ‘the world market is open’. The Italian-speaking Swiss city of Lugano lay on the new railway’s route. It was there that BSI’s founders opened a bank in 1873, to capitalise on the new trade route. They did well, expanding in Switzerland and sending bankers abroad. The bank came through one world war. In the second, BSI’s bankers did what many Swiss bankers did: they collaborated with the Nazis. At the same time, they did what they would start to do for their rich clients: they spun a story that reversed the truth. As Swiss bankers and their apologists told the tale, the reason that Switzerland made it a crime to violate bank secrecy was to help persecuted Jews protect their savings. In fact, the law was first drafted in 1932, the year before Hitler came to power. The impetus came not from altruism but self-interest. It was the Great Depression. Governments badly needed to collect taxes.”

Corruption Nazism Hitler Switzerland Oligarchy City Of London Kleptocracy Tony Blair Bsi Bank Efg Bank

Book:Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

Source: Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World