Convenient Untruths: The False Narrative That Offshore Finance Is A Cause Of Widening Inequality In The UK

Convenient Untruths: The False Narrative That Offshore Finance Is A Cause Of Widening Inequality In The UK
Webinar

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Thomas Piketty’s "Capital In The Twenty-First Century" had the good fortune to popularise wealth inequality as a policy issue at a time when austerity dominated western fiscal policy following the global financial crisis and where policy makers have been happy to distract and divert attention from policy failings by pointing at the bogeyman of offshore finance.

Offshore finance as the cause of widening global wealth inequality is an emotional and seductive narrative. Its premise and accompanying facts have been accepted with very little critique. So seductive the cause, so self-evident the case, that the facts go unchecked, data unverified and unreconciled. The 'evidence' of the tax campaigners is repeated ad nauseum, without critique. 'Facts' are whatever campaigners deem them to be.

Improved prescriptions in social policy is not served by a false diagnosis and thus the motivation to set out a true presentation of the facts.

Speaker:

Dr Andy Sloan is a Non-executive director, economist and advocate of climate finance; his experience of global financial, fiscal and regulatory policy spans three decades. He was Chief Economist for Guernsey’s government until 2013, then international policy director for Guernsey’s financial services regulator, and then deputy Chief Executive, and Director of Strategy, of Guernsey Finance, the promotional body, which he left in 2021 to establish the International Sustainability Institute, an initiative to develop sustainable research and thought on global financial and fiscal issues as they relate to the offshore finance community. As well as fiscal papers, in the last year the ISI has published several reports on sustainable finance including, ‘21st Century Fiduciary Duty. A three-step framework for private wealth’ and ‘TCFD, Climate Risk and Private Capital. What relevance public disclosure rules to private markets?’

Date
Monday, 10 July 2023

Time
11:00 - 11:45 BST

Cost
Free