Watching Joe Conason on Shuster

[malaise]

He had an excellent opinion piece this week
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/03/23/big_clawback/index.html
<snip>
So rather than continue arguing over chump change, it is long past time for the United States, with its international friends and allies, to demand accountability from the long list of tiny countries and principalities, from Andorra and the Cayman Islands to Singapore and Switzerland, where corporations, wealthy clients and unrepentant evildoers hide their assets.

The big claw-back will reach into quaint islands and mountainous principalities, because the same banks, hedge funds and private equity firms responsible for the world financial meltdown keep their profits in those "secrecy spaces" -- alongside the ill-gotten gains of numerous drug dealers, dictators and delinquents of every description.

According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly all of America's top 100 corporations maintain subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens. As the GAO notes, there could be reasons other than avoiding the IRS to set up branches in places such as Singapore, Luxembourg and Switzerland, where taxes are light or nonexistent and keeping clients' illicit secrets is considered a matter of national pride.

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The GAO Report (pdf)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/launder/haven/2008/12GAOReport.pdf

[aquart]

1. Name three of those "other" reasons. Two? One? Half?