10 years on from the crisis, ICRICT calls for urgent regulatory action

A decade on from the Global Financial Crisis and just blocks from Wall Street, the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation met in New York last week to highlight the urgent need for financial reform.

Commissioner Joseph Stiglitz said corporations drive down wages because they have rewritten the global rules in their favor. They know it and invest in lobbying to maintain it. The antidote is people demanding a different set of global rules.

Despite financial deregulation playing a key role in the crisis, many economists are disturbed by the continued lack of regulatory safeguards to prevent a future crisis. Last week The Economist raised these concerns a high profile Editorial titled “The world has not learned the lessons of the financial crisis.”

The Commissioners also highlighted how tax competition between countries has led to a harmful race to the bottom, and has allowed 10% of global gross domestic product (GDP) to be held in tax havens. The offshore secrecy system has created the very opacity that undermines corporate and financial regulation.


Since its founding by PSI and other partners in 2015, ICRICT has expanded to include prominent economists Gabriel Zucman and Thomas Piketty and former Australian Treasurer Wayne Swann.

Speaking at the meeting, Swann said “Dealing with inequality is the preeminent issue of our time. It isn’t just a question related to good social policy. It’s essential to good economic policy as well.”