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Iceland prime minister resigned after public learned that he used a shell company to shelter large sums of money. The Panama Papers, which illustrate how a small class of global elites find elaborate ways to shield their wealth from tax collectors, bank regulators and police, offer a glimpse into what's driving the populist outrage that has marked this year's presidential campaign. The trove of 11.5 million leaked documents have thus far shed light mostly on foreign figures such as the prime minister of Iceland, who resigned Tuesday after the public learned that he used a shell company to shelter large sums of money while his country's economy foundered. The reaction in the U.S., meanwhile, has been relatively muted. But voters and experts say the documents validate the frustration felt by Bernie Sanders' supporters on the left, who feel hard work is no longer enough to get ahead in America, and the anger of Donald Trump partisans on the right who say it will take someone who knows the insider system to dismantle it.
"We've recently heard the startling revelations about the tax dodge that is taking place in Panama," Sanders told supporters in Wyoming Tuesday night after his win in the Wisconsin Democratic primary. "In a time of massive income and wealth inequality, how does it happen that you have large, profitable multinational corporations who in a given year pay zero, not a penny, in federal income taxes?" Retired Wisconsin high school teacher Steve Nibbe, who was voting for the Vermont senator in Tuesday's primary, said word of the documents made him "sit up and take notice." But he said he was not shocked. "It just seems that those who have wealth — and sometimes that comes with privilege — are able to do things that other people are not," said Nibbe, 60, from Verona, outside the state capital of Madison
"We've recently heard the startling revelations about the tax dodge that is taking place in Panama," Sanders told supporters in Wyoming Tuesday night after his win in the Wisconsin Democratic primary. "In a time of massive income and wealth inequality, how does it happen that you have large, profitable multinational corporations who in a given year pay zero, not a penny, in federal income taxes?" Retired Wisconsin high school teacher Steve Nibbe, who was voting for the Vermont senator in Tuesday's primary, said word of the documents made him "sit up and take notice." But he said he was not shocked. "It just seems that those who have wealth — and sometimes that comes with privilege — are able to do things that other people are not," said Nibbe, 60, from Verona, outside the state capital of Madison
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