The American Empire: The Ruler of the World

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There really isn't any doubt that some of the poorest countries in the world will be most unfairly treated in any multilateral regime for global information exchange which excludes the United States because it acts unilaterally to attain solely its own goals, with no regard for the price others must pay or the appropriateness of imposing that cost where no wrong has ever been accused much less proven.

Prof. Karen Brown wrote an important and influential article in 2002 called Missing Africa on the topic of US tax and trade policy toward developing countries in general, Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Her article starts with a quote: "We're the... United States. Do we need Africa?"' (from a former World Health Organization official who resigned over the lack of commitment to control AIDS in Africa).

Here the pattern repeats itself: even if they wanted to, many of the countries in the third map cannot forestall the present threat of economic sanctions. The United States simply doesn't need them. Yet many, many of these countries suffer far more from bank secrecy provided by the US and elsewhere than the other way around.

The unjustified and virtually-ignored perfection of US citizenship taxation is one part of FATCA's unexamined legacy, the dismantling of comity in international taxation another; so, too, the repeated exclusion of the developing world from an institutional order that is becoming increasingly unjust.