Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Money Laundering Overview

A good, concise overview of money laundering:

Money Laundering in A Changed World by Sam Vaknin.

2 comments:

  1. In the first place, the law has loopholes because rich people write the laws with the intention to exploit them for private gain.

    Thus no plutocracy will ever eliminate dirty dealing - because its elite will always want to practice dirty financial deals!

    "Why is It a Problem?

    Criminal and tax evading funds are idle and non-productive. Their injection, however surreptitiously, into the economy transforms them into a productive (and cheap) source of capital. Why is this negative?

    Because it corrupts government officials, banks and their officers, contaminates legal sectors of the economy, crowds out legitimate and foreign capital, makes money supply unpredictable and uncontrollable, and increases cross-border capital movements, thereby enhancing the volatility of exchange rates."

    The above justification is propagandistic to the point of silliness.

    The government officials are already corrupt.

    The applicable proverb here is "Don't steal, the government hates competition."

    Money laundering is hated because organized criminals are just competing states. See St. Augustine: "Without justice, what are kingdoms but gangs of robbers?"

    "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

    "A corporation is a legal structure for private profits without private responsibility."

    Etc.

    And let us not forget that the government most concerned with dominating the planet's monetary transfers has just handed over most of its spare trillions of dollars to Wall Street insiders. How is it that the tangle of monetary webs between lobbyists, politicians, regulatory agencies, and plutocrats is not examined?

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  2. Note that in the More Guerrilla Healthcare post, money laundering, on the one hand, and the popular support network, on the other, are intertwined.

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