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it's hard enough to get people to go to war over oil,  I'd have thought that declaring war over the non-compliance with banking regulation 37c would be a nightmare. and those press barons , with all their money salted away in the cayman islands to avoid tax wouldnt exactly make it easy or popular.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Fri Sep 26th, 2008 at 10:25:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Last time I checked it was incredibly easy to go to war, even over completely made up and obvious lies. So how hard can it be to start a war when there is a real reason to do it?

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Fri Sep 26th, 2008 at 10:40:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Well Oposition parties would argue that it wasn't a real reason, and most offshore banking havens are hardly run by maniac dictators.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Fri Sep 26th, 2008 at 12:04:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Most of the time you won't need to actually go to war. If you control their seas and airspace, there is a whole range of sanctions and gunboat diplomacy that fall short of war.

If, for instance, a government were to DOS - say - the Cayman Islands' internet grid, do you really think the public would object? If a government sabotaged their phone lines? If a government "accidentally" jammed their radios and satellite uplinks?

History doesn't suggest that the public will mind at all. Of course, I'd wish that we had a public that did mind. But then again, if we had that, we probably wouldn't have a big problem with tax havens in the first place.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Sep 28th, 2008 at 09:50:48 AM EST
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