Articles
Sunlight replaces shadows as pressure grows for more corporate transparency
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Memo to accountants: In the future, there are going to be fewer shadows and more sunlight in your world. Even investors are fed up with the opaque system in which you’ve thrived.
For much of the past 10 years, a mixture of espionage, intrepid journalism and political pressure has exposed financial practices that thrived in the dark but don’t do nearly as well when made public. Tax minimization schemes. Deals with low-tax governments. Complex legal structures that obscure ownership.
Now, a mixture of investor activism and public shaming is turning the international tax and financial system, which all but invites companies to move and stash money all around the world, into an agenda item for federal regulators, lawmakers — and perhaps prosecutors — in the coming years.
Read more: Sunlight replaces shadows as pressure grows for more corporate transparency
US-Mexico Labor Mobility
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Today we launch a detailed proposal for a new era of collaboration between the United States and Mexico: bilateral regulation of temporary, lawful labor mobility across the border. I join with a diverse, five-star group of experts from both countries—chaired by Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico and Carlos Gutierrez, the US Secretary of Commerce under George W. Bush (as featured in the New York Times)—to say that it is time for a new vision of the shared future at our shared border. We offer specific ways to get there.
Can we see signs of positive developments?
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The left sometimes has problems in seeing the positive dimension of the news. True, the overall reality of today certainly does not look rosy. Inequality keeps growing, unemployment keeps rising, neoliberalism certainly is not dead. And right-wing populism continues to rise, while even some left-wing forces now seem to be convinced to follow the road of nationalism and protectionism.
Yet, there are signs something might be changing positively.
Trying to become owners of life
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‘Five-Alarm Threat to Our Food Supply’: Monsanto-Bayer Merger Advances
Chemical and GMO giants agree on takeover offer worth $66 billion; mega-merger to be reviewed by antitrust agencies worldwide
Monsanto accepted Bayer’s $66 billion takeover offer—the largest all-cash deal ever—on Wednesday morning.
UNCTAD 14: A mirage of distorted mirors
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People not versed in the complexities of the diplomatic world of distorted mirror images in Geneva or Accra or Nairobi may wonder in awe at the agreements negotiated in their name by their representatives in multilateral forums like UNCTAD. But, truth be told, UNCTAD is in no position to deliver the mandate that it got in Nairobi.
