Quotes of the day: Luxembourg and Austria

Has Luxembourg's Finance Minister been smoking something?

On the subject of automatic information exchange:

"I am still surprised that both G20 and OECD have so far failed to establish this standard internationally."

(Yes, Mr. Frieden: that's because countries such as yours have until recently been fighting against it, tooth and nail.) Hat tip: Markus Meinzer

The tax havens, in a panic, are uttering crazy statements.

Meanwhile, in Austria:

"Automatic sharing of account data "is a massive intrusion of privacy."

How dare governments try to find out information about their criminal tax evaders!  Rich people have a right to break the laws, and to make everyone else pick up their tab!

And if you want a flavour of the sheer state of denial that is evident in tax havens, take a look at the parochial, "we did nothing wrong" comments underneath this story from the British Virgin Islands, the source of all the latest hullabaloo.

BVI admits to ‘isolated’ leak of financial services information, launches probe.

"If a bvi islander do something like this it is treason."
"Less talky, more do-y, let’s find and plug the source of the leak."
"It must have been a vindictive and angry local."

And so on. No mention anywhere of the gigantic harm transmitted worldwide by this sordid activity.