More crooked banking

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Thanks to a complex publishing exercise by the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde and other newspapers in Europe and around the world, a huge data leak has shed light on the owners of £80bn held in thousands of accounts in one of Switzerland’s foremost banks, Credit Suisse. They include people involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering and other serious crimes. They include kleptocrats spiriting their wealth away from the people they supposedly serve.

Why did the bank give such individuals a place to hide their cash? Credit Suisse says the information published from the leak is selective and not a fair representation of its current business conduct. (oh, really? Ed)

Nonetheless, the story highlights one of the most glaring problems in the world today: the ease with which vast sums can be diverted by corrupt individuals away from societies that desperately need the wealth. Financial crime is a serious issue of global public interest. When it involves corruption in the developing world, the impact on the planet’s poorest people can be profound.

Deciding to publish these stories was a balancing exercise. On one side: personal issues of privacy, confidentiality and data protection. On the other: the public’s right to know about wrongdoing. And our duty to reveal it. Our previous reporting on offshore secrecy – the HSBC files, the Panama, Paradise and Pandora Papers – has spurred global action in favour of fairer, more open banking. This investigation looks like it will have significant impact too.

Investigations like these are always risky, because of the feathers they ruffle. But on this occasion, there was an additional hazard to consider: any journalist who falls foul of Switzerland’s renowned 1934 banking secrecy law risks a five-year prison sentence.

About five years ago, Switzerland broadened its banking secrecy law so that it applies not just to bankers but to anyone who may have access to bank data and who shares it. Journalists fall into that category. For this reason, The Guardian has no media collaborators (on this project) in Switzerland. The risk was considered too high (imagine if the biggest story to hit your country in years came out – and none of the domestic newspapers felt they could cover it!)

“The Swiss press are enraged that this is a huge story and no Swiss publication has been able to be part of it,” Paul said. “Opposition leaders are already calling for reform of banking secrecy laws.”

Fortunately Swiss readers can – and are – reading the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Le Monde today. The truth will out. (The Guardian 22 Feb 2022)

My comment: I fear that this type of corruption has too many (paid-off) supporters in high places. Bravo and thanks to the brave newspapers, doing their job of uncovering crooked dealing. Epicurus would approve. But it’s a dangerous kind of life the journalists are leading, bless them.

Gerrymandering the vote

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“55 million Americans live in states that restricted their voting rights last year. And we know more harmful laws are coming this year that will threaten the stability of our election system. We need a federal response.

The comprehensive Freedom to Vote Act has provisions that would improve election administration, election security, redistricting, campaign finance rules, as well as establish a new Office of State Democracy Promotion. The legislation would protect voting rights by requiring automatic voter registration, increasing voting access for people with disabilities, and lowering wait times at the polls.

Without voting access for all and thoughtful election reform, the promise of our democracy remains unfulfilled”. (Rachel Deitch, The Humanist, Feb 2022).

My comment: The undermining of universal voting rights in a country once regarded as the modern beacon of democracy is utterly shameful, reminding me of one or two boys at school who, if they couldn’t win at something shamelessly cheated, and regrettably got away with it with confident arrogance, having convinced themselves and those around them of their general “superiority” of character and intentions. Drove me crazy, but I fear that this posture can begin early in life and is seldom effectively checked by adults, who are lazy, just want peace and quiet or are scared of fight-back.

It has to be a joke

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News from London

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Lord Frost’s spiritual successor in his new role as minister for Brexit opportunities, has a novel approach. He told the Sun last week that he is bypassing the civil service to ask if anyone else in the country has any ideas about “Brexit benefits”. Sun readers are invited to write to him with suggestions and he will see what can be done. But that too is revealing. One of the first tests officials apply to new ministers is to ask if they know what they want and to assess whether they have the ability to communicate that to them.

I am afraid that Rees-Mogg has not passed this test, which is all the more surprising as he had plenty of time lounging on the government frontbench, listening to suggestions from Brexit-supporting Tory MPs. (The Guardian, 15 Feb 2022)

My comment: Brexit was always going to be a confidence trick. Bypassing the civil service to ask if anyone else in the country has any ideas about Brexit benefits? Incredible!

The bankruptcy of ideas so soon after the fact of EU exit makes the ridiculous situation even more laughable. Huge damage has been done to the reputation of Britain, solely to appease the little Englanders. Ask Sun readers for ideas? You have to be joking. For non-British readers: The Sun is a propaganda vehicle for backwoodsmen and oglers of scantily dressed young women. That’s fine, if you have the inclination, but you can’t run a country based on prurient interest in half-clad teenagers. It will be fun seeing what the readers come up with!

Touching on ancient Epicureanism

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In answer to a reader who, some while ago, sought a feel for daily life among the ancient Epicureans: There are so. any aspects of life about which we are ignorant. But we *do* know that Epicureans did not pool their assets all together, in any communal fashion, as other philosophical groups actually *did*; the argument was that such a practice would either indicate or, worse yet, foster mutual suspicion.
 
It is hard to define such terms as “job” in the context of the ancient world; “Old Money”, Athenian patricians –men only, of course– were landed gentry, and looked down on the dirty business of actually *making* money; many (most?) members of the large, mercantile class were “metoikoi”, i.e. resident-aliens, Greeks usually, but non-Athenians, who had significant monetary/economic power but no political, citizen rights; craftsmen and artisans were yet a rung lower; farmers, lowest of all.
 
The short version of my answer is a call to caution, lest we seek to superimpose *present*-day concepts on a socioeconomic reality long, long gone.
 
It is also difficult, if not impossible to impute our modern sense of “tuition” in Greek antiquity. Suffice it to say that teachers of all sorts (philosophers, sophists, etc.) *did* customarily receive some sort of payment or other “for services rendered”. There appears to be some evidence that Epicurus was somehow “paid”, albeit probably very modestly, and that he disposed of his modest possessions with generorosity both prodigious and judicious. After all, he was totally committed to making do with less than most other people.
 
It is hard to imagine what “normal jobs” other Epicureans would/could have had: Athenian women were notoriously under their husbands’ thumbs. Paradoxically, the permissive Athenians were scandalized by the hyper-macho, militarist Spartans, whose society they (the Athenians) derided as “gynekokratia” , i.e. Women’s Rule: with men in the barracks from the cradle to the grave, Spartan women took care of just about everything in that city’s everyday life. But Athenian women were tightly tethered, and domesticated to a fault. The only notable exception would have been prostitutes, and we do know that Epicurus allowed *those* in his microcosm, much to the shock and disapproval of everyone else in his society at large.
 
Slaves were a special case, and one particularly hard to fathom, due to lack of documentation: some were modestly “educated”, although of course not in the fullness of the liberal arts, reserved for free-born citizens alone; they may have caught a glimpse of reading/writing skills, looking over their masters’ shoulders. Epicurus’ reliance on rote memorization may have had a practical tie-in with the low level of literacy anywhere below the upper crust of Athenian society.
 
It is plausible that the Garden was more a *meeting* place than some sort of a “full-time residence”. Again, Athenians were (and we still are! 😉 notoriously outgoing: early in the 20th (!) century, a literary tourist wrote that “these people are like cats in midsummer”, always strolling about, stopping to chat with whoever might have been in the Agora (still extant, albeit in ruins), spending the bare minimum of time in their *own* houses. I get the strong impression that “home” for ancient Athenians meant little more than “a place to sleep”. Free-born Athenian men were the quintessential roaming tomcats; domesticity, and love thereof, is distinctly a *Roman* sentiment.