>I'm glad you're going into this. In the 70s I found myself working on a
>case that involved offshore trusts, and got a quick look into phenomenal
>amounts of wealth wholly obscured to inquiry - especially governmental
>inquiry. Unless there were some convincing showing that the relative
>amounts have since decreased or become more available to inquiry (I've
>not kept up with this at all), I'd think there'd be a strong argument
>that attempts to measure changes over time (if not totally futile) could
>never yield better than very gross approximations.
The official numbers do more or less add up: assets roughly balance with liabilities, and the Survey of Consumer Finances wealth measures pretty well match the flow of funds data. (Both the FoF and the SCF reported household assets to be around $48 trillion in 2001.) So I'd see them as approximations, but better than "very gross" ones.
By the way, since tax rates are lower and regulation is looser today compared with the 1970s, there's less incentive to be offshore.
Doug