Financial Transparency Coalition

In the words of two of my personal heroes: “Economists love incentives. They love to dream them up and enact them, study them, and tinker with them.” For good reason; incentives make the world go round. They are the reason we get up in the morning, the reason we go to work, and definitely the reason we brush our teeth. They are dictate the speed we drive, the groceries we buy, and the pace of our work. Sometimes they are negative (the prospect of getting a cavity or a speeding ticket) and sometimes they are positive (a raise, or a...

Cross-posted, with small amendments, from the Treasure Islands blog. A new report from the IMF (hat tip: Markus Henn) tallies surprisingly closely, at least in part, with what members of the Task Force have been saying for some time. Take this, for example, on the role of secrecy jurisdictions (the IMF prefers the term Offshore Financial Centers, or OFCs:)

Before the 2008–09 economic crisis, many banks and hedge funds used OFCs for off-balance-sheet activities such as the so-called special purpose vehicles or structured investment vehicles. These vehicles were typically funded in onshore financial...