
Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America - clumsysmurf
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kleptocracy-came-to-america/580471/
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Hidden in this article is perhaps an explanation for the monstrous
hyperinflation of house prices that has occurred since the early 2000s. (The
housing bubble corrected in 2008 but has since at least partly re-inflated, so
it never really ended.)

What is that you might ask?

The PATRIOT act's KYC/AML regulations didn't apply to real estate!

As a result loads of dodgy money flooded into real estate. Most of the direct
money laundering activity was at the high end but I'm sure it affected the
whole market. It also probably helped inspire the creation of those
collateralized bundles of real estate debt that banks marketed so aggressively
in the 'oughts and that had the follow-on effect of causing a market-wide
housing bubble. It was a way for banks to indirectly use real estate to
receive dodgy money and skirt AML requirements.

This is important because real estate hyperinflation is one of the things
destroying the middle class. Perhaps closing the KYC/AML loophole around real
estate would go a long way toward fixing the problem. I wonder if this might
be an even easier (and federal level) thing to accomplish than local and
regional YIMBY activism, though the latter is obviously also important in some
metro areas.

I also think this kind of dodgy money largely explains the cryptocurrency
bubble and why cryptocurrency continues to float at absurd valuations in spite
of declining interest and increasing skepticism from the greater tech and user
community. A lot of people think it's fraud on the part of things like
Bitfinex/Tether, but I wonder if the money isn't largely real. It's just dodgy
and dirty money.

