How Financial Secrecy Undermines Democracy

Abstract: The expansion and sheer enormity of the financial-secrecy system is undermining democracy to an alarming extent. This system has distorted capitalism and its elites' relationship to taxation and the public realm to such an extent that powerful vested interests are now attached to a financial system that a) conceals kleptocracy, crime, and foreign interference, and b) exacerbates inequality to a degree unrecognized precisely because of the system's secrecy. The state of the public realm shows that capitalism with a secrecy system has become increasingly hard for a democratic polity to hold accountable. Understanding the architecture of the financial-secrecy system, one can identify how to conduct its deconstruction.