Democracies, kleptocracies, and Swiss bank secrecy laws

Public rescue of private financial institutions in the midst of a globally spiraling banking meltdown underscores the dirty “little” secret of neo-liberal global economic order: privatize profits / nationalize losses.

It is not for nothing that finance capital was and is the primary orchestrator, cheerleader, and beneficiary of neo-liberal restructuring of national and global economies that unfolded over the last three decades.  The out of court settlement of the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit to force the Swiss banking behemoth UBS to disclose the names of 52,000 account holders suspected of hiding their assets from the IRS brings into relief the not-so-secret symbiotic relation of banks with dirty money.

Tectonic Shifts and Global Orders

Though the news media is often given to hyperbole, it is rare to find the metaphor “tectonic shift” used in two separate stories in the same paper on the same day. On June 16, The New York Times, while reporting on the Yekaterinburg summit meeting of Brazil, China, India and Russian, stated that the four countries, “a group referred to as the BRIC group, will surpass the current leading economies by the middle of this century, a tectonic shift that by this reckoning will eventually nudge the United States and Western Europe away from the center of world production and power.” On the same day, reporting on European banks’ new inroads in Wall Street, the Times declared, “as tectonic shifts reverberate through the banking industry, their overseas rivals are edging into some of the most lucrative corners of American finance.”

Letters, Fragments, and Lineages of “Globalization”

On Saturday, June 13, 2009, an envelope from an 1873 letter bearing an Abraham Lincoln stamp fetched $431,000 at an auction in New York City. The letter had been sent by a New England merchant to his ice warehouse in Calcutta, India. Markings on the envelope show that it had traveled by ship across the Atlantic, by train through Germany and Italy, again by ship to Egypt and from Suez to Bombay, and finally by train across India.

This letter brings to mind another letter. One written in 1132 A.D., by Abraham Ben Yiju, a Jewish merchant living on the Malabar Coast of Western India, to Khalaf ibn Ishaq, his business partner based in Egypt. This letter was apparently hand-carried from India to Palestine by Ben Yiju’s Indian slave/business agent.  A fragment of this letter, discovered in a Cairo Genizah in the 19^th Century, now sits in the British Museum.  The celebrated anthropologist and novelist Amitav Ghosh pursues the story of this letter in his remarkable book In an Antique Land (Vintage 1994).

Pirates in the Parliament!

Elections were held a week ago for the European Parliament.  The 736-member body represents 500,000,000 Europeans, making these the largest transnational elections in history.  While most commentators focused on low voter turnout all across Europe, a significant development went largely unnoticed.  In Sweden, the Pirate Party garnered 7.1 percent of the popular vote – entitling it to take up one of Sweden’s 18 seats in parliament. 

The Swedish Pirate Party has a three-pronged platform: abolition of the patent system (particularly for pharmaceutical products), radical reform of the copyright system, and protection against increasing state surveillance.  The Party has 47,000 members; average age 26-27.  It received more votes from those under 30 than any other Swedish party.  It has emerged as the third largest party in Sweden after the governing Conservatives and the Social Democrats.  It plans to run for office in the 2010 Swedish parliamentary elections.

 Three recent developments in Sweden appear to have contributed to the growing popularity of the Pirate Party.  

Learning to Live with Outsourcing

I agree with Laurel Oates’ earlier post that outsourcing legal work is here to stay.  Despite the belief by some that the financial downturn may have lessened the growth of LPOs, quite the opposite seems to be the case.  For example, the largest sourcing firm in India, Pangea3, had one Mumbai office with about 100 attorneys when Laurel, Mimi Samuel, and I visited there in January 2007.  Pangea3 now has three Mumbai offices and 240 attorneys.

The Goldman Case Part II: The Limits of International Law, Hypocrisy, and Best Interests

Yesterday, I was thinking about the Goldman case in terms of what might be best for Sean and his psychological needs. Today, I would like to continue to contemplate that issue as a response to criticisms launched against Brazil, generally, for not following the Hague Convention and Sean’s stepfamily, specifically, for a speech the family patriarch  allegedly gave chastising parents who engage in child abductions.

The Goldman case represents the limits of international law. Having nation states come together in the name of addressing issues of global interest is an excellent idea—in theory. The problem is with the practice. Nation states want the ability to confront the issues of their citizens in a way that fits the specific narrative constructed around the case. Such narratives can and do conflict with the theoretical rules of international law. Brazil may have run afoul of the theoretical ideals of the Hague Convention, which requires the immediate return of a child to its nation of residence,  in the Goldman case as well as in sixty other cases, but I am quite confident that the narratives constructed around these cases offer compelling rationales.

The Goldman Case, Part I: The Rights of the Child

Teaching Comparative Family Law in Rio de Janeiro for the past few weeks has given me the opportunity to meet family law judges here in Brazil, and naturally, to think globally about how to conceive of the Goldman case. The Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision yesterday certainly moved the case closer towards resolution in a way that most Americans see as not only the most reasonable, but also required.

In 2004, Sean’s mother brought him to her native Brazil for a two week vacation. Shortly after arriving, Bruna Bianchi informed David Goldman that she did not intend to return to the United States. Goldman won custody in New Jersey. Bruna won custody in Brazil. When Bruna died last August from complications in childbirth, Goldman expected that Brazil would return the child to him. Instead, the court awarded custody of Sean to his step father, Lins e Silva.

Brazil’s Supreme Court declined the conservative Progressive Party’s attempt to block the return of Sean Goldman to his father. Last week, a federal court judge in Rio de Janeiro ordered the return of the boy only to have the decision stayed by one member of the Supreme Court. The full court ordered the federal court of Rio de Janeiro to hear the stepfather’s second appeal.