European summit on bank secrecy looks like more empty rhetoric

All the talk in Europe about ending decades of bizarre bank secrecy rules aimed at protecting trillions of dollars hoarded by the world's richest families is only that -- more talk. Sunday's international conference in Luxembourg is designed to create the impression of progress, even though the holders of all that wealth have no intention of being exposed nor of paying taxes on more than a tiny portion of it. The conference brings together the finance ministers of Switzerland, the world's leader in secret offshore accounts, and Luxembourg and Austria, the European Union secrecy leaders, according to the Reuters international news service. Ministers from Lichtenstein, a longtime money secrecy haven that recently embraced transparency, and Germany also are expected to attend. "This meeting will chiefly be about tax evasion and how to tackle it cross-border," a person with knowledge of the agenda told Reuters. "It will be about bank secrecy, but there is no common position as yet." Germany has joined with the United States in efforts to crack the bank secrecy wall to increase government tax receipts. Of course, it would be a lot more reassuring if the countries could agree on bank transparency because it's the proper thing to do, and regard the increased tax collections as a secondary -- although substantial -- benefit. If ordinary people have to pay taxes every year on their holdings, why should the super-rich be able to hide behind archaic secrecy rules to escape their share? They are, after all, the largest beneficiaries of laws and traditions protecting private ownership. Then again, doing away with these secrecy regimes will by implication peel away the senseless protection enjoyed by the perpetrators of one of modern society's greatest evils -- the confiscation of wealth from countries all over the world by the Nazis in World War II. Until the banks are willing or are forced to reveal what happened to all of that wealth -- or, if it's gone, who made off with it -- protestations about reining in secrecy laws won't amount to anything worthwhile.

Hypocrisy's new name -- Benedict defends the indefensible

One way to tell it's Christmas time in Rome is when Vatican leaders start overdoing the eggnog! How else to explain Pope Benedict XVI's decision to push Pope Pius XII toward sainthood before opening the records of his papacy to scrutiny, and with the pope's World War II-era participation in the Hitler Youth in Germany still a matter of controversy? Of course, this issue comes up because of statements today from a Vatican spokesman defending Benedict's decision, according to the New York Times. Benedict spoke of the "heroic virtues" of Pius XII and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, the next step in advancing both men to sainthood if it is found that they performed miracles. The spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, responded to criticism from Jewish groups who allege that Pius XII, who was the Vatican's ambassador to Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, did not try to prevent or stop the Holocaust before or after he became pope and helped many former Nazis escape to South America after the war, the Times said. Pius XII was pope from 1939 to 1958. Advancing Pius toward sainthood "should not in any way be read as a hostile act against the Jewish people, and we hope it will not be considered an obstacle in the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church," Lombardi said. But how could it be seen as anything but? And how else to see the decision to beatify Pius XII before opening the church's extensive document archive from his papacy than a blatant attempt at obfuscation? Let's not forget that Benedict, the first pope with a Nazi background, still has a lot of explaining to do about his decisions to lift the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop and to not mention the Nazis or Germany in remarks he gave at a visit to Israel's Holocaust memorial earlier this year.