Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism

 

Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism

An eye-opening account of offshore finance: a secretive system making the rich richer while corroding democracy, capitalism, and the environment.

How do the rich keep getting richer, while dodging the long arm of the law? From playboy billionaires avoiding taxes on private islands to Russian oligarchs sailing away from sanctions on their superyachts, the ultra-rich seem to live in a different world from the rest of us. That world is called offshore. Hidden from view, the world’s ultra-rich can use offshore finance to escape tax obligations, labor and environmental safety regulations, campaign finance rules, and other laws that get in their way.

In Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism, sociologist Brooke Harrington reveals how this system works, as well as how it degrades democracy, the economy, and the public goods on which we all depend. Harrington spent eight years infiltrating this secretive world by training as a wealth manager, traveling from glossy European and North American capitals to developing countries in South America and Africa, to islands in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean, and South Pacific regions.

Through interviews with dozens of wealth managers in nineteen countries, Harrington uncovered how this global network of offshore financial centers arose from the remnants of colonialism and has created a new, hidden imperial class.

This engrossing deep dive reveals what offshore finance costs all of us, and how it has colonized the world―not on behalf of any one country, but to benefit a largely invisible empire of a few thousand billionaires, who help themselves to the best society has to offer while sticking us with the bill. As politicians struggle to address the deepening economic and political inequality destabilizing the world, Harrington’s exposé of the offshore system is a vital resource for understanding the most pressing crises of our time.

This event is hybrid. 

About the Speaker

Brooke Harrington, is an Economic Sociologist studying the offshore financial system and the professionals who operate within it. Her research addresses both political and economic inequality, as well as globalization and the professions.

Who creates change in markets and other financial institutions? Harrington explores how financial systems function by examining the daily activities of social actors and how their actions collectively shape the macro-level dynamics of financial markets, culture, and political institutions. Her work intersects with the fields of political economy, anthropology, social psychology, and behavioral finance.

Since 2007, Harrington has focused on the offshore financial system, conducting research from the inside after earning a wealth management credential. This was followed by six years of global fieldwork, engaging with practitioners in 18 offshore financial centers. The findings from this ethnographic research contribute to scholarship on inequality, political economy, and the professions. The resulting book and articles from this ongoing study are linked below.

Previously, Harrington investigated the effects of deception and fraud in financial markets, as well as the influence of diversity on the performance and decision-making processes of investment groups.