Rodney Shakespeare: Global financial system serving one-percent wealthy

Rodney Shakespeare, a professor of Binary Economics from London, was interviewed by Press TV about a decision made by the European Union to set up a joint list of tax havens.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The issue of tax evasion if not tax avoidance, which seems to be the case here mostly, has been going on for ages and it’s nothing new. Now, why so much interest right now at this juncture?

Shakespeare: Exactly you pointed out, it’s been going on for decades and decades. It’s only come up to the forefront now because of the Panama Papers, which make people recognize the extent of all this tax evasion and it is evasion rather than avoidance. It’s unlawful. Now, it will improve the situation a little, but fundamentally the whole system sucks up wealth into the hands of the tiny one percent, and nothing is being done in Europe to ensure that the mass of people have the jobs and the production and the wealth going into their hands. So the gap between rich and poor is getting greater and they’re doing nothing to alter that. Indeed they’re making it worse and just pretending to do something.

Press TV: Professor a lot of people believe that the gathering of these finance ministers in Europe is nothing more than flexing muscles and a show of strength for other political consumptions. And it is true that they can’t really come to terms what the realities and do much about this phenomenon. Do you approve of that? Do you buy that?

Shakespeare: It is quite correct. This is purely a sort of critical veneer underneath it all the jobs which are coming into existence because of technological shift are only low-paid, insecure, part-time and temporary jobs. And that will continue until they decide to attack the global financial system, which creates money and does not put the money into productive capacity and it’s spreading. So what they have to do is to use the European Central Bank or the UK National Bank for the purpose of spreading productive capacity, each has free loads for public capital projects, for social housing, for small businesses, for spreading of ownership in the big businesses. And if they do not do that, the situation will get worse. And I’m saying that you’re getting a political uprising and that will continue. So this at the moment is the veneer. It’s political showmanship. It ain’t going to change the reality of everyday people’s lives…

Press TV: Not all countries in the world, not even all countries in Europe, have been affected by this leak of information by the Panama Papers. Do you think enough countries and capitals and governments have been impacted by the story to bring about or engender that political and international consensus of a world to essentially embark on a campaign to rectify this problem?

Shakespeare: I suspect that they will do only a little to rectify the problem, but the bigger problem is the grip of the global financial system and they have no intention of doing anything about that at all.

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