Financial Transparency Coalition

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post criticizing the philosophies of Dan Mitchell, a libertarian scholar from the Cato Institute. I asked for a “thoughtful discussion” and I got it—both from the comments section of our blog and from Dan himself. On his own blog, Dan replied with a thought-provoking point-by-point critique of my piece. Dan made several interesting points in his rebuttal. As much as I’d like to take on the whole post right now, my reply would be far too long and I don’t think our readers would appreciate a blog post that resembles...

WASHINGTON, DC – The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Initiative (IBAHRI) today announced the formation of a international task force charged with investigating the linkages between illicit financial flows, poverty and human rights violations. Chaired by Global Financial Integrity Advisory Board member and Yale University Professor Thomas Pogge, the task force consists of prominent academics, tax experts, and lawyers from around the world.

Is it a coincidence that the UN’s International Anti-Corruption and Human Rights Days follow on consecutively. (Friday 9 and Sat 10 December)? Possibly not. After all, human rights abuse and corruption are linked. Not least by opaque corporate ownership structures that can prevent legal redress

This post is part of our series from speakers at the Task Force's 2011 annual conference, taking place in Paris October 6-7. For more information on the conference and to view live webcasts of the presentations in English and French, click here. You can also follow the conference on Twitter and submit questions for the presenters at #TFConf2011, or #TFConf2011fr for French. Large inequalities, both of income and wealth, have been steadily rising since the 1970s and 80s. Today, the top 20 percent of the population holds 70 percent of the total income. Inequality is far...