[W]hile New York remains the dominant global-exchange center, we have  been losing ground.... In 2005 only one out of the top 24 IPOs was registered in the U.S., and four were registered in London. London is gaining ground in other areas too, but it is not only London we need to worry about. Next year, more money will be raised through IPOs in Hong Kong than in either London or New York.

We cannot ignore these warning signs."

That was the conclusion reached by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer in a recent op-ed they jointly penned for the Wall Street Journal. But if New York loses its position as the center of global trading, what financial center will replace it? In this week's FP List, we take a look at some of the front runners.

It's not even coming out for another two months, yet the film "Blood Diamond"  is already generating controversy.  The movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, and Jennifer Connelly, is about how rebels in Sierra Leone seized diamond mines in the 1990s used the proceeds from the sales to buy weapons which they used to slaughter civilians. Today's L.A. Times has a story about how the film's December release has the diamond industry on edge. De Beers, which controls most of the diamond industry, is worried that moviegoers may stop buying diamonds after watching the movie and has issued pre-emptive press releases explaining how they purchase gems to avoid buying conflict diamonds.

For an amazing story on the rise of De Beers in the diamond industry, read my friend Nick Stein's award-winning story which appeared in Fortune five years ago. And to learn more about blood diamonds, see former Washington Post West Africa bureau chief Douglas Farah's book, "Blood From Stones," about how al Qaeda was involved in the diamond trade. Farah is also co-author of an article that will be published in the November/December issue of FP, so watch this space in the next couple weeks.  And, of course, FP published a fantastic photo essay last year, "A Trail of Diamonds," from mines to showrooms.

MORE PHOTOS AFTER THE JUMP.

Hat tip: FishBowlDC 

According to a recent U.S.Congressional investigation, for every dollar paid by honest American taxpayers, seven cents is stashed away by big companies and wealthy individuals in offshore tax havens. There's an estimated $11.5 trillion parked in tax havens worldwide, with much of it coming from money launderers, criminals, and elites in the impoverished developing world. But the 70 or so tax havens worldwide may not be all bad. Harvard and Michigan economists have shown that not only do tax havens flourish, they stimulate economic growth in nearby countries as well.

Regardless of their merits, tax havens are in bad shape. In June 2000, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released a list accusing 35 jurisdictions worldwide of engaging in harmful tax practices. Since then, all but five have agreed to clean up their acts and cooperate with international authorities. After 9/11, the U.S. joined the crackdown on tax havens as part of the war on terror. And politicians everywhere are closing legal loopholes that have for years allowed companies to save billions by moving their profits offshore.

Tax havens may be on the decline, but they still hold a lot of the world's treasure. In this week's list, FP looks at six of the world's leading tax havens to find out whether their future is more stashing - or just crashing.

On Saturday night I picked up a friend of mine at New York's JFK Airport. He's a Canadian citizen who lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. When I met him at the airport, he spent a good 30 minutes giving me a tongue lashing over America's "Soviet-style tactics" of photographing and fingerprinting foreign tourists as they come into the country. I had some sympathy for his gripes. I was dubious of the "US-VISIT" program when it was announced.

But, four weeks out from the fifth anniversary of 9/11, news that 11 Egyptian men are "missing" in the United States makes me wonder if there isn't some wisdom in the program. The men were admitted into the U.S. 10 days ago to study language and other subjects in Bozeman, Montana. But they never showed up for classes. FBI spokesman Special Agent Richard Kolko released the following statement around 5:30 p.m. last night:

The FBI, in conjunction with our ICE partners at DHS, issued a BOLO (be-on-the-lookout) for eleven Egyptian students that arrived in the U.S. at JFK Airport on July 29, 2006.  The FBI and ICE would like to locate these eleven students in order to speak with them.  At this point all they have done is not show up for a scheduled academic program and their student visas have been revoked.  We do not know of any association with any terrorist or criminal groups.  There is no threat associated with these men.  We have simply asked law enforcement’s assistance in locating them so that the FBI and ICE may interview them.  If anyone has information on their whereabouts, they are requested to contact the FBI or ICE. 

Forget the stalled Doha round of international trade talks. The biggest trade story of the last several years will happen tomorrow, when the Japanese government is expected to announce that it will resume imports of U.S. beef. Combined with record high oil prices that are helping drive demand for ethanol, this decision means that U.S. farmers and ranchers are having a pretty good summer. Japan is traditionally the largest importer of U.S. beef, but has banned imports since 2003, when bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) was found in Washington state. The U.S. had threatened to smack Japan with $2.7 billion in sanctions if the ban on U.S. beef was not lifted by mid-August.

While Americans were busy barbecuing and fire-working to celebrate 230 years of independence, a couple of South American leaders got together on July 4th to celebrate a new union of their own. Argentine President Nestor Kirchner joined hands with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez yesterday to celebrate Venezuela's official entrance into MERCOSUR, South America's expanding customs union. Venezuela has now tied a knot of sorts with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, forming an economic club that accounts for 78% of South American GDP. 

Is this a move by Chávez to expand his influence south, or are his neighbors simply trying to reign him in by getting him to commit to MERCOSUR's standards on such things as tariffs, foreign relations, and conflict resolution? Or could it be a little bit of both? For now, it's a little bit of neither. Venezuela has up to four years to adopt MERCOSUR standards. 

A South American version of the EU may still be a long way off, but let's not forget that the Brussels behemoth also started out as a customs union. And while South American integration is young - MERCOSUR just turned fifteen - it's moving at a healthy clip. 

I have plenty of issues with Microsoft and Bill Gates: a general dislike for his necessary but dysfunctional software that I use every day, and an annoyance at some of his strong-armed business tactics. But the Microsoft founder just announced that in two years he's going to step down from a day-to-day role at his company and devote himself full-time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

That's good news for those working to improve global health and education. It wasn't that many years ago that people accused Gates of not contributing to society with philanthropy, even though he's the richest man in the world. To his credit, Gates has certainly more than stepped up to the challenge. His foundations have donated more than $6 billion to the eradication of neglected diseases, as Erika Check describes in her story "Quest for the Cure" in the upcoming issue of FP. Some scientists, who can't get funding from pharmaceutical companies or governments, are using Gates's money in very creative ways to get medications to those who need it the most. It's good to hear that Gates will spend his twilight years focusing on these issues 24-7.

In the Washington Post's Outlook section today, Foreign Policy editor-in-chief Moisés Naím writes that it is time to rethink our traditional notions about borders. Technological and economic innovations, as well as illicit activities, have rendered geographic borders far less important.

Governments and citizens are used to thinking of a border as a real, physical place: a fence, a shoreline, a desert or a mountain pass. But while geography still matters, today's borders are being redefined and redrawn in unexpected ways. They are fluid, constantly remade by technology, new laws and institutions, and the realities of international commerce -- illicit as well as legitimate. They are also increasingly intangible, living in a virtual and electronic space.

Herra Jumala!  The Finnish heavy metal band Lordi has won the Eurovision competition. Conan O'Brien must be so proud.  If you haven't already (and I'm sure you have), check out the website: eurovision.tv. It must be seen to be believed.

Yes, the land of the midnight sun, naked saunas, salty licorice, and Santa Claus (not to mention home of the Air Guitar World Championships and the Wife-Carrying World Championships) has pulled a major upset and beaten out the rest of the continent. If you've spent any time in Finland, you'll know what a glorious victory it is for ALL non-Indo-European-language-speaking Finns, not just the ones who wear leathery satanic masks; sport long, stringy wigs; glare with bloodshot demon eyes; clad themselves in reindeer fur and capes; and spend a lot of time around smoke machines. Just imagine the national pride....ahhhh, sigh!  (Just for the record, having spent a year as an exchange student in Finland as a teenager, I tease, because I love.) Onneksi olkoon!  Hyvää Suomi!

Sunday, the Baltimore Sun published the kind of story that makes my mouth water.

Fifteen years ago, Steve Phillips, of the Phillips Foods company, was looking for a way to add more crab to his restaurant menus. The trouble was, harvests of the beloved Maryland blue crab were in decline because of over-fishing and environmental strain. So Steve set out for Asia, seeking the Blue swimming crab, rumored to be just as tasty as the Maryland variety. What he found was more crab than he could sell. Thai fishermen were more than willing to sell off a catch they considered to be junk, so Steve launched an aggressive marketing campaign in the U.S. to create demand for his new, inexpensive "Maryland style" crabmeat.

Today the blue swimming crab, fished from the waters of Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere outnumbers Maryland crab on U.S. dinner plates upwards of 3 to 1. It has exploded into a $300 million globalized industry that has changed the landscape, threatened the environment, and padded the fortunes of many Asian fishing villages.

Sun reporters Gady A. Epstein and Stephanie Desmon asked a local Thai seafood broker, Somsak Choeyklin, what he thinks of the blue crab now:

[He] raises up his arms - his left wrist adorned by a diamond-encrusted gold Rolex that matches his wife's; his right wrist encircled by a solid-gold chain inscribed with a Superman-style S - and he declares triumphantly, "The [blue] crab is god!"

So if you're hungry for the best authentic Maryland crab you can buy anywhere, here's my vote: Cantlers Riverside Inn in Annapolis, Maryland.