“Offshore is not just a place, an idea, a way of doing things, or even a weapon for the finance industries. It is also a process: A race to the bottom where the regulations, laws and trappings of democracy are steadily degraded, as one arrangement ricochets from one fortified redoubt of finance to the next jurisdiction, and the offshore system pushes steadily, further, deeper, onshore. The tax havens have become the battering ram of deregulation.”

~ Nicholas Shaxson, Treasure Islands