Financial Transparency Coalition

It’s not often that the G20, the summit of the leaders of the world’s biggest economies, is merely a preamble to a European meeting. But this week it is. When the world’s leaders met in Los Cabos, Mexico they had one thing on their mind: Europe. And while the leaders of the G20 had a lot to say about the European debt crisis, the real test, and the real action, will happen in Brussels next week, where we expect the European Council to agree to an action plan. In Mexico, European leaders hinted at how this plan might look: a...

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) today called upon G20 leaders meeting this week in Los Cabos, Mexico to tackle the issue of tax haven secrecy and the illicit financial flows it facilitates as a necessary means to ensuring stability in the international financial system.

This morning, Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Clinton and former top economic advisor to President Obama, wrote that European austerity is holding back economic growth, which is making their sovereign debt problem worse, both in individual countries passing austerity budgets and on a continent-wide basis.

Greece's problems are so deep and structural that we there is no one cause or aggravating factor that you can point to and solve the problem by eliminating. However, there is plenty that we can do for Greece. We make it too difficult for Greece to track down corrupt money and either prevent it from fleeing the country or from being brought back home.