6 October—A good friend of mine in England has a daughter called Pandora. Her sisters are Scarlett and Portia. All that’s irrelevant to my indictment and inditement (look it up) of this week’s Pandora Papers travesty, but a cute hook.

For the benefit of those few readers who haven’t yet sated their abundant curiosity about what the super-rich and ultra-powerful do to preserve their wealth and financial privacy, the Pandora Papers are some 11.9 million leaked documents that prurient journalists from all around the world have published to expose secret offshore accounts of three dozen current and former world leaders, as well as over a hundred billionaires, business leaders, and other celebrities.

To no one’s surprise, following the time-honored practice of the trade, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists—ICIJ, the people responsible for the massive, largely irresponsible invasion of privacy—hasn’t revealed its source or sources for the leaked documents. Hopefully, that information will be leaked before too long.

Even though no claims have been made that any of the offshore—i.e., outside the country where the money had been made—accounts were or are unlawful tax evasion, as opposed to entirely lawful tax avoidance, most of the embarrassed account holders, caught totally with their figurative pants down, have reacted defensively, as if they have to justify what they do with their wealth.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using onshore or offshore tax havens, trusts, corporations, LLCs (limited liability companies, which even all too many financial gurus mistakenly call corporations), partnerships, or other means of preserving wealth and privacy when the preservation is done within the laws of the countries affected. In fact, tax, business, and estate laws of most countries implicitly encourage taking advantage of all the loopholes built into the codes for that express purpose. (We won’t speculate on the motivation of the politicians and experts who craft the laws and codes.)

And you don’t have to be rich or powerful to take advantage of every legal means open to you in order to keep and grow your wealth for yourself and your heirs. And, of course, to keep your affairs (financial and otherwise) as private as possible.

So what the ICIJ has done really stinks. But it’s fascinating reading. And I’d never have guessed that Tony Blair, the former British Labour Party leader and PM, and his wife, Cherie, a real left-leaning harpy in public, were so wealthy. Surprising not to find the Clintons in the Pandora Papers . . .