The Netherlands: Is the Netherlands' Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) Racist ? - John McWhorter

Sinterklaas and Black Pete arrive in Almere

They’ve been on my living room shelf for a year now — wrapped chocolate candy figurines from the Netherlands of Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete. A friend who lived there for a while gave them to me in irony. Black Pete is a wooly-headed little “Negro” caricature, and in the Netherlands he is as cherished a part of the holiday scenery as elves are here in the U.S.

In fact, Zwarte Piets are depicted as elves, helping out Santa.

There is a growing movement over there to ban Black Pete. Predictably, there are those who think a mountain is made out of a molehill by people who just need to get a sense of humor. Judging the matter from over here in the U.S. is tricky, though. There are practices on race that most would consider repulsive in this country which, when done elsewhere, I am inclined to give a pass.

For example, Finnish friends have told me of attending parties in the ’90s where everybody dressed up as “black,” right down to blackface and wigs. Many will be reminded of stories of college fraternities here condemned for having “ghetto” parties, blacking up and lampooning life among black people in the inner city.

With America’s history as well as its messy present when it comes to race, clowning around in blackface at a party is obviously callous and ignorant.

Black Pete, then, is not the Dutch’s version of a Finnish teen bouncing to Jay-Z in an Afro wig. Black Pete in 2013 is a lame, thoughtless thing, carrying an implication that all of that slavery and servitude and imperialism was some kind of cartoon. Black Hollanders often feel the same way, in a country where blacks from former colonies are overrepresented in housing projects.

Who are we to judge, some might ask. I would say that a country with our colonialist history is no less responsible for judging such matters than other ones. We’ll never eradicate racism entirely. But surely we can do something about white men made up as “Negroes” dancing down the street at Christmastime — which would never happen even in our non-post-racial country.

EU-Digest

The Netherlands: Does the Netherlands risk losing foreign investment to Britain' if letter box companies are closed down?

The Netherlands may lose its advantage when it comes to attracting foreign investment because other countries such as Britain are making their tax regimes more attractive, says the Financieele Dagblad in one of their reports recently.

The paper bases its claim on interviews with lobby groups and tax advisers.

For example, Amcham, the American Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands, has warned deputy finance minister Frans Weekers that American firms are regularly opting for London rather than the Netherlands, the paper says.

Both new firms and existing companies such as holdings are turning to Britain.

Amcham points out that while three-quarters of the US capital which comes into the Netherlands moves out again via letterbox companies, the money which remains is more than French, German and Belgian investments combined.

Note EU-Digest: In their report Het Financiele Dagblad seems to be lobbying  for Tax Evading companies and their advisers. They fail to report that Dutch laws are completely different from British laws when it concerns tax evasion and Letter-Box companies. Letter-Box companies which are closed down can only go to Britain or any other country in the EU unless they comply with local  tax laws. Let's hope the EU Commission does not fall asleep on this issue and ends the opportunities created for multi-nationals to evade taxes through legal loopholes in the EU.

Read more: DutchNews.nl - 'The Netherlands risks losing foreign investment to Britain'

The Netherlands - while poor segments of Dutch population suffer Government still legally allowing 20,000 letter-box companies to circumvent taxation

The Netherlands harboring  more than 20.000 letter box companies

A White House factsheet in 2009 reported. "Nearly one-third of all foreign profits reported by US corporations in 2003 came from just three small, low-tax countries: Bermuda, the Netherlands, and Ireland."

Like the Queen in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' who protested that 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks,' the Dutch government hypocritically objected to the Netherlands being dubbed "a tax haven" and the White House agreed and deleted the line. 

The Dutch tax haven, has now more than  20,000 letter-box companies and in recent years even Facebook joined U2, the popular Irish rock group, to circumvent the tax system.. 

The Netherlands also hosts thousands of foreign financial vehicles. Bloomberg reports that a bookkeeper’s home office in Amsterdam also doubles as the headquarters for a Yahoo! Inc. offshore unit. 

It is a scandal that deficit-strapped Holland is raising retirement ages and taxes on the working classes while the Netherlands’ Government of PM Rutte and coalition partner Samson despite their vows to change the law continue to allow their country to be a €10.2trillion conduit on the global tax-avoiding network. 

 

Bloomberg says that attracted by the Netherlands’ lenient conservative policies and and an extensive network of tax treaties, companies such as Yahoo, Google, Merck & Co and Dell have moved profits through the Netherlands

Using techniques with nicknames such as the “Dutch Sandwich,” multinational companies routed €10.2trillion in 2010 through 14,300 Dutch “special financial units,” according to the Dutch Central Bank. Such units often only exist on paper, as is allowed by Dutch  law.

Google, IBM and Italian oil and gas group ENI head the list of companies using letter-box companies to cut their Dutch tax bills to between 0 and 5%, the Volkskrant daily said in an article.

According to theDutch  Financieele Dagblad , French state companies are also among those using the Netherlands to cut their tax bills.

In the meantime the Dutch Governmen has been dancing around the subject.  

Frans Weekers, Dutch deputy finance minister, said the controversy over the letterbox companies had damaged the Netherlands’ investment climate. “Over the past 10 years the trend has been for the number of letterbox companies in the Netherlands to keep growing. I want to turn that trend around,” Weekers told The Financial Times. “I see the Netherlands being portrayed in a bad light. I don’t want to be portrayed in a bad light."

Recently the Dutch government said tax treaties with Zambia and 22 other poor countries will be revised to allow the incorporation of anti-abuse clauses where necessary, but has not said a word about the major players which have letter box companies registered in the Netherlands and are involved in these tax evading schemes 

The European Commission has now said it will attempt to close a loophole that allows companies to cut their tax bill, a top official said on Monday, but the EU executive will first need to persuade member countries to back the change.

The commission wants rules to prevent companies setting up “letter-box subsidiaries” in countries solely to qualify for a softer tax regime and cut their bill.

Algirdas Semeta, the EU’s taxation commissioner, wants to insert an anti-abuse clause by the end of next year, allowing authorities to target artificial “parent-subsidiary” schemes that flout the spirit of the tax code.

“When our rules are abused to avoid paying any tax at all, then we need to adjust them,” he said. “Today’s proposal will ensure that the spirit, as well as the letter, of our law is respected.”

Semeta declined to name countries or companies that exploited the loophole but said that billions of euros were at stake.

EU-Digest

The Netherlands is now less creditworthy than Microsoft - by Jason Karaian

Standard and Poor’s stripped the Netherlands of its AAA credit rating today. This ignominy means that the Dutch, now rated merely AA+, are considered less creditworthy than the Germans, on a par instead with the Americans.Although considered part of the euro zone’s sturdy northern “core,” the Dutch economy has performed more like the wobbly southern “periphery” recently, with GDP set to shrink by 1.2% this year, according to S&P. The size of the Dutch economy won’t surpass its 2008 peak until 2017, reckons the ratings agency. Future growth will be weighed down by aggressive government austerity and falling house prices.

S&P also cut France’s rating earlier this month, to a notch below the Netherlands. Economist Holger Sandte of Nordea bank expects a gradual convergence of ratings among euro members, driven by French and Dutch-style downgrades rather than upgrades of lower-rated countries; Germany, Luxembourg and Finland are now the only members of the 17-nation euro zone with the top rating from all three leading credit agencies. S&P upgraded its outlook for Spain today, to “stable” from “negative,” but left its BBB- rating in place.

Not that any of this really matters. For widely held, extensively scrutinized bonds like those issued by the Dutch government, the opinion of one ratings agency doesn’t move markets much; Fitch and Moody’s, the other two big agencies, still give the Netherlands the top grade. Dutch bond spreads barely budged on the downgrade news, and continue to fetch lower yields than fellow AA+ rated America (as does AA rated France, for that matter). 

Read more: The Netherlands is now less creditworthy than Microsoft - Quartz

The Netherlands Privacy Rights: Google breaking data protection law in the Netherlands says Government

broke data protection law in the Netherlands when the ad giant tweaked its privacy policy in March 2012, says the country's privacy watchdog.

\The Dutch Data Protection Authority said on Thursday that Google had breached the country's rules because it had failed to adequately inform all its users in advance about the changes it was making to its service.

"Google spins an invisible web of our personal data, without our consent. And that is forbidden by law", said Dutch DPA chairman Jacob Kohnstamm.

The regulator said it had invited the company to a hearing. It will only decide on any enforcement action after discussions have taken place with Google.

The DPA said that, during its seven-month probe, the watchdog determined that Google burrowed deeply into the personal data of Dutch netizens by knitting together services across the web for the purposes of targeted advertising.

"Some of these data are of a sensitive nature, such as payment information, location data and information on surfing behaviour across multiple websites. Data about search queries, location data and videos watched can be combined, while the different services serve entirely different purposes from the point of view of users," it said.

The watchdog concluded that Google had not sought the consent of users before cutting and shutting its privacy policies together in order to combine personal data across its massive online empire.

Read more: Google in Dutch: Privacy changes BREAK data law, says Netherlands • The Register

Attention Geert Wilders and Marie Le Pen: Eurozone posts euro 13.1-billion September trade surplus

The eurozone posted another big 12-month increase in its trade surplus on Monday, the latest monthly data from the EU's Eurostat agency showed.

The first estimate for September gave a 13.1-billion-euro surplus (US$17.7 billion) for the trade in goods with the rest of the world, compared with 8.6 billion euros in September 2012.

A trade surplus is one of the factors of growth in an economy, whereas a deficit tends to sap growth, and so achieving a trade surplus is of critical importance to economies in crisis.

Read more: Eurozone posts 13.1-billion September trade surplus: EU

The Netherlands: The Netherlands: Health Insurers have also become too big to fail

Health insurers like banks have also become too big to fail '. That says Chris Oomen, CEO of health care provider ' Achmea.  In 2008 it received state bailout funds and today controls one third of that tmarket ',

"Assume Achmea goes down -  there will be no health care provider which is able to accept our insured in the Netherlands, because no one has enough equity to take on our 5 million customers. That requires so much capital, that you will become bankrupt immediately. We have therefore also become  'too big to fail.' says Oomen.

According to Oomen hospitals now also fall in this too big to fail category in the Netherlands.


Almere-Diges