Will Grigg's Liberty Minute

February 27, 2008

During the 1930s, the tiny principality of Liechtenstein joined Switzerland in enacting banking secrecy laws that protected the assets of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.

Today, under Chancellor Angela Merkel, a supposed conservative born and raised in Communist East Germany, the German government imposes tax rates as high as fifty percent.

Not surprisingly, some Germans of means have transferred assets to secret accounts in Liechtenstein in order to escape their country?s punitive and confiscatory tax system. This prompted Germany?s BND intelligence service to use $7.3 million in taxpayer funds to bribe banking officials in Liechtenstein to provide them with information on Germans who used that country as a tax haven.

The BND operation was not only illegal, it was an act of aggression against a peaceful neighbor. And as April 15 approaches, this episode offers a timely and pointed illustration of the criminal means governments employ to plunder the productive on behalf of politically favored parasites.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.