Category Archives: Globalization

New Zealand’s Ian Taylor: Helping Ireland’s Biggest Bankrupt To Hide Assets?

Is there a connection between New Zealand’s Ian Taylor and Sean Quinn, Ireland’s asset-hiding bankrupt? Could be…

New Zealand’s Company Register: Even More Out of Control Than You Thought

My last post on this little mess implied that there was pretty slack official monitoring of the NZ Company Register for obviously false or impermissible registration information. But one or two other sightings invite the question: does anyone in New Zealand take Para 1, Section 377 of the Companies Act seriously, any more? 377 False statements […]

New Zealand Companies Office Turns a Blind Eye to Registration Abuses

In a previous post, we looked briefly at NZ companies that have now, or have ever had, “Bancorp” in their name, uncovering a rich vein of seediness. Filter out the more-or-less legit-looking companies and the more-or-less dodgy ones that I wrote about then, and there’s more. There always seems to be more.

The New Zealand Companies Office is asleep on the job.

New Zealand’s Rogue Incorporator, Ian Taylor, Sighted in Malaysia (and UK)

In my last post on the attempts to clamp down on New Zealander Ian Taylor’s buccaneering (ahem) company registrations, which have facilitated arms-smuggling and massive moneylaundering, I wrote of his latest venture

Naturally, various official and unofficial sleuths will now be sniffing after this new firm and the “reputable Asian jurisdiction”…

One awaits the next grisly sightings of Taylor’s legacy, registered in “Asia”, or Delaware, or London, or wherever.

Will China Face a Lost Decade?

Although various commentators (including our Marshall Auerback) have raised warning flags about the long-term viability of China’s growth model, the middle kingdom’s performance during the crisis seemed to prove skeptics wrong. Never mind that creditors like China tend to suffer most in the aftermath of major financial crises, or that no country has ever sustained such a high combination of exports plus investment (over 50% of GDP) for very long. And the ongoing reports of all those vacant cities seemed to be irrelevant.

The critics have been looking less off base of late.

New Zealand’s Savings & Loans Companies: Not Like Any Banking Industry You’ve Ever Seen Before

Yet more gems from New Zealand’s Company Register: the companies that specialize in scamming Americans

New Zealand: Not Another Rogue Company Incorporator, Surely? No: Two, Actually

The trolls are multiplying in New Zealand’s Company Register

New Zealand Reserve Bank Gesticulates at Pseudobanks Run by Offshore Directors (and Registered by Offshore Company Agents)

More perfumed offerings from the New Zealand Company Register

New Zealand Company Register Facilitates Arms Dealing With Iran, Massive Money Laundering, But Will the Minders Beat the Perps?

Cleaning up New Zealand’s register of companies: how’s it going?

China Punches Back in Rare Earths Row, Claims Rising Scarcity Justifies Export Curbs

A serious simmering dispute involves China versus the rest of the world on rare earths. As most readers know, rare earths are essential to the manufacture of many high tech, defense, and “green energy” products, such as smartphones, lasers, and hybrid batteries. Even though rare earths are not rare, their extraction is an environmentally nasty business, and China, which has less than 30% of world reserves, now accounts for over 90% of global production. That is a stranglehold that China has decided to exploit.

New Zealand, Fresh From Its Service to Mexican Drug Lords, Helps Out the Russian Mafia

It appears that New Zealand’s company incorporation regime has soiled itself, lavishly, again. This time, the Russian mafia appear to be involved.

UNCTAD as the Battleground for Role of the State, Trade Policy

We’ve featured past Real News Network segments on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. UNCTAD has increasingly become a forum for struggles between advanced economies and developing economies over what the rules of the road should be in trade. UNCTAD was early to call the benefits of financialization into question, and has also been taking issue with the comparatively small take countries in the “south” get from extended supply chain production. This, needless to say, is a vision that is a direct challenge to how multinational like to conduct their affairs, so it should be no surprise that the big, rich countries are trying to bring UNCTAD to heel.

Michael Hudson: Paul Krugman’s Economic Blinders

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His new book summarizing his economic theories, “The Bubble and Beyond,” will be available in a few weeks on Amazon.

Paul Krugman is widely appreciated for his New York Times columns criticizing Republican demands for fiscal austerity. He rightly argues that cutting back public spending will worsen the economic depression into which we are sinking. And despite his partisan Democratic Party politicking, he said from the outset in 2009 that President Obama’s modest counter-cyclical spending program was not sufficiently bold to spur recovery.