Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-23-Speech-4-515"
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"en.20090423.71.4-515"2
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"Madam President, tax evasion is not our main problem when the world economy is being shaken to its foundations. It is true that we live with tax fraud throughout Europe, in the US and throughout the whole world, in fact. It is true that we have tax havens around the world where wealthy people and companies can put and leave money. However, that is not our main problem today. Focussing on this is a way of escaping our responsibility.
What we need to do now, if we are to have any tax bases left at all in the future, is to get to grips with the financial crisis. Why do we find ourselves in the situation we are in now? It is due, above all, to the fact that we now have ownerless capitalism. In practice, the financial undertakings, the large banks and the majority of the large companies are run by officials and these officials can introduce bonuses, severance payments and pensions that are all dependent on the profits of the company that these people manage. There is nothing in this world simpler than to increase profitability in the short term and thus the profits that these companies make. It is just a matter of increasing the risk. There are numerous studies of ‘Taleb distributions’, as we often call them, where, if you increase the risk substantially, you can count on profits rising dramatically and everyone can be given these bonuses and other benefits, in other words these ‘perks’. Then, of course, the risks start to become reality, but then those leading the company have already left or will have to leave. They get to buy chateaux in France or play golf in Spain. We should not feel sorry for them, but the system is quite simply unsustainable.
Moreover, none of the players have any incentive to prevent this development. The credit rating agencies are dependent on getting customers, but they will have no customers if they say that their customers are not credit-worthy. Depositors know that there are deposit guarantees, and so do not need to worry about which bank they put their money into. Other players know that they can come to an agreement with the other party and count on the fact that they are too big to fail, while the taxpayer always picks up the bill. This means that the states must say at the outset that they will not take all the risks. It is an extremely difficult thing to do, but it must be done. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the European Parliament will cooperate on this, but I would recommend to everyone in this Parliament that they do so."@en1
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