The world is dotted with states and territories that make a specialty of providing services whose purpose is to facilitate ways to hide assets … Not all of what they do is illegal but so much of it is that the whole system needs changing.  – Transparency International Press Release

The so-called Panama Papers stolen from the Mossack Fonseca law firm specializing in shell companies has caused Transparency International to issue a press release listing three steps "to stop secret companies."

We'd rather stop Transparency International.

This outfit, the largest entity of its kind with over 100 chapters around the world,  is determined to create an international registry that will list the "beneficial ownership" of all controlling legal entities. If you want to affix your name to a document asserting ownership of assets, be prepared to have that ownership revealed.

The group was founded by a former top executive of the World Bank.

We've been writing about the organization since 2011, and it seemed to us then as now that Transparency International's idea regarding financial and business privacy was fundamentally wrong-headed. Contrary to what executives at Transparency International seem to believe, secrecy – privacy or anonymity – is an essential component of civilization.

Without privacy, authoritarianism flourishes because it is impossible to build and expand private networks that would act as a deterrent to government abuses. A worldwide transparency regime virtually guarantees abuses and corruption from those in  power.

This is a reason why the "cashless society" idea is such a bad one. When no one is able to use cash, financial histories will be easily available via electronic bank records.

Yet for reasons having to do with global power and control, it is obvious that larger elite powers are focused on generating the maximum amount of transparency possible. Individual people are to be stripped of any ability to maintain anonymity either at home or abroad.

The press release offers "3 steps to stop secret companies," citing the release of the Panama Papers.

The first is that governments should establish central, registries that publicly disclose beneficial ownership information. "This will help law enforcement, journalists, and governments to do their job and help investors and citizens know who is behind the companies they invest in or buy from."