What could we do with $18 billion?

So the US and Swiss governments have come to an agreement on the Swiss bank accounts held by Americans that the US government believes might be avoiding taxes. The Swiss, negotiating on behalf of its largest bank, UBS, have agreed that the bank will hand over the details of 4450 accounts held by its US customers.

These accounts have held as much as $18 billion in assets at one point. Some of them have been closed, no doubt in anticipation of the deal struck between the two governments. Earlier this year UBS admitted to tax fraud in the US and agreed to pay $780m to settle charges that it helped thousands of US clients use Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes.

The US justice dept had originally requested information on some 52,000 accounts held by US customers. You have to wonder what staggering amounts of money must be stashed away in Swiss banks alone when 4450 accounts held as much as $18 billion. This is wealth stolen from the workers of the world, from child miners in Bolivia, the women in the industrial centers of Bangladesh to the call centers of the US and India.

A few years ago a report estimated that there was $11.5 trillion stashed away in offshore accounts in order to avoid taxes; this $11.5 trillion, about one fifth of global GDP at the time, belonged to wealthy individuals, it did not include corporate money. The capitalist class, whose existence is maintained by organized theft, does not appreciate this sort of behavior; there must be honor among thieves.*

I also heard on the news last night that banks in the US hold about 700,000 properties, foreclosed properties that they won't put on the market. It would be bad for business you see. It would lower prices and make a neighborhood look bad to have so many properties vacant. Its an insane situation given that there are thousand homeless and millions more about to join them or who are moving in with children or relatives after being removed from their shelter by sheriffs at the behest of moneylenders.

Like workers throughout the world, here is California, workers are facing unprecedented cuts as public services are being savaged. The potentially powerful transit Unions could have initiated an offensive in the past few weeks by building for a work stoppage that could have drawn public support with a platform of demands that went beyond their immediate workplace and addressed issues affecting all workers. Other public sector Unions, notably the teachers, has also allowed another opportunity to slip by as Union leaders scramble to help the thieves walk away with the loot echoing the corporate politician's mantra that there has to be "shared sacrifice".

The role of the Union leaders here has delayed any serious fightback. The propaganda of the employers that there is no money is not really accepted. What is not so easy to overcome is the view that there's nothing we can do about it. But overcome it we must, and overcome it we will.

*Tax Justice Network, The Observer Sunday March 27, 2005