海角大神

Never having been a financial journalist, I must confess that news like the 鈥淧aradise Papers鈥� released Monday can be tough sledding. Wealthy people and corporations hide gobs of money offshore. Is that a news flash?

The answer is that maybe it should be. The Paradise Papers aren鈥檛 about brazenly illegal schemes. Instead, they offer mind-numbing detail on a core fact: If you have money, there鈥檚 a gigantic industry that exists to help you avoid paying taxes.

There are arguments in favor of this. Putting money offshore certainly helps business. What the Paradise Papers are all about, really, is transparency. When you see offshore practices up close, it鈥檚 hard not to at least consider the ethics.

Take the craft-selling website Etsy, which isn鈥檛 even in the Paradise Papers. A few years ago, it took steps to move its intellectual property to Ireland,聽. The move is legal and makes sense to lower taxes. But Etsy prides itself on being transparent and socially responsible 鈥� and the move caused an uproar.

The stories detailed in the Paradise Papers are orders of magnitude more complex and murky. And in that way, they force a conversation over how we want transparent and socially responsible money management to look.

Today, our five stories look at a new shift in American politics, a portrait of why stability is so hard in the Middle East, and the end of a groundbreaking presidency in Africa.聽