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The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire | The Secret World of Finance

Independent POV · documentary · Watch on YouTube

Macroeconomics & financial crisesWorld historyMedia, journalism & propaganda

What it is

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Commenters repeatedly recommend it in tax haven and offshore finance threads as an excellent, low-budget overview of British offshore finance.

  • 6 people recommended it
  • 8 different months
  • 4 strong recommendations
  • first 2019, last 2024

What HN commenters said

  1. “This is an incredible documentary about British tax havens”

    British tax havens and City of London influence on policy.

    marcusjt, 2019-10 · Strong recommendation · in “The Isle of Man is not in the UK”

  2. “The guy who behind it not only did an excellent job”

    Excellent low-budget documentary on British offshore finance.

    arminiusreturns, 2019-11 · Strong recommendation · in “Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank”

  3. “I can recommend this independently created documentary”

    How Britain's elite built a global offshore financial web.

    patrickk, 2019-09 · Recommendation · in “Review of Moneyland by Oliver Bullough (2018)”

  4. “gives a good overview of how this started.”

    Overview of how offshore financial havens began.

    zaro, 2019-11 · Recommendation · in “Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank”

  5. “an excellent documentary”

    Explores financialization through British offshore wealth secrecy.

    atweiden, 2021-03 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: NFTs legit or mania?”

  6. “80 minutes, well worth watching imo”

    80-minute film on secrecy jurisdictions and offshore wealth.

    olivermarks, 2022-06 · Recommendation · in “Low economic growth is a slow-burning crisis for Britain”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: tax havens, city of london, secrecy jurisdictions, british empire, offshore wealth

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