Treasure Islands - Nicholas Shaxson [160]
13.A description of the Bank Franchise Tax, Delaware Department of Finance, http://finance.delaware.gov/publications/fiscal_notebook_09/Section07/bank_franchise.pdf.
14.“New York Banks Urged Delaware to Lure Bankers,” New York Times, March 17, 1981, http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/17/business/19810317BANK.html?&pagewanted=1.
15.Nagengast, Pierre S. Du Pont IV, Governor of Delaware, 1977–1985, p. 110.
16.Author’s interview with Swayze, Delaware, November 24, 2009.
17.See “Consumers Turn to Plastic as Home Loans Slow,” Reuters, September 11, 2007. Credit card debt stood at $907 billion, and this would rise to $975 billion by December 2008. From “US Credit Card ABS: 2006 Outlook,” Barclays Capital, January 26, 2006; and Mark Furletti, “An Overview of Credit Card Asset-Backed Securities,” Philadelphia Federal Reserve, December 2002; and “Fed Report: Consumer Credit Card Balances Keep Plummeting,” http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/federal-reserve-g19-consumer-credit-december–09–1276.php.
18.This research was undertaken by myself and Ken Silverstein of Harper’s magazine in Delaware in 2009. As far as I know, nobody has ever deeply explored this Delaware episode and linked it to its wider impacts, apart from the early New York Times article cited in this chapter. For Geogheghan quote see Thomas Geoghegan, “Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy,” Harper’s, April 2009.
19.Paul Tucker, “Shadow Banking, Financing Markets and Financial Stability,” remarks by Mr Paul Tucker, Deputy Governor for Financial Stability at the Bank of England, at a Bernie Gerald Cantor (BGC) Partners Seminar, London, January 21, 2010, http://www.bis.org/review/r100126d.pdf.
20.From Biondi interview and David S. Swayze and Christine P. Schiltz, “Keeping the First State First: The Alternative Bank Franchise Tax as an Economic Development Tool,” Delaware Banker (Fall 2006), http://www.pgslegal.com/CM/FirmNews/Fall%202006%20Delaware%20Banker%20Article.pdf.
21.See, for example, JP Morgan CDO Handbook, May 29, 2001, p. 31; and Scott E. Waxman, “Delaware Statutory Trusts,” Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP, 2010, http://www.potteranderson.com/news-publications–0–127.html. Biondi did not say he was involved in the Delaware Statutory Trust Act.
22.Scott E. Waxman, Nicholas I. Froio, Eric N. Feldman, and Ross Antonacci, “Delaware: The Jurisdiction of Choice in Securitisation,” Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP, May 19, 2004, http://library.findlaw.com/2004/May/19/133435.html.
23.David S. Swayze and Christine P. Schlitz, “The Evolution of Banking in Delaware,” published by Parkowski, Guerki & Swayze, http://www.pgslegal.com/CM/FirmNews/evolution-of-banking-in-delaware.asp.
24.See John Dunn and Prem Sikka, “Keeping the Auditors in the Dark,” Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs, 1999, http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/dunn&sikka.pdf.
25.The UK Companies Act of 1948, for example, required this.
26.Author’s interview with Konrad Hummler, November 4, 2009.
27.Jim Cousins, Austin Mitchell, and Prem Sikka, “Race to the Bottom: The Case of the Accountancy Firms,” Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs, 2004.
28.David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else (New York: Penguin, 2003), p. 15.
29.From the UK Companies Act of 1989.
30.From author’s interview with Southern, March 13, 2009.
31.“Voter Turnout,” International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2010, http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout_pop2.cfm.
32.“Offshore Hazard: Isle of Jersey Proves Less Than a Haven to Currency Investors,” Wall St. Journal, September 17, 1996.
33.A letter in October 1996 from Colin Powell, Jersey’s Chief Adviser, to Pierre Horsfall, President of Jersey’s Finance and Economics Committee, suggests the uncertain official position at the time. “Some might hold the view that there is nothing wrong with States members being directors of local companies,” the letter read. “Indeed,