The big cartels launder money straight to the banks. Drugs are a huge business, 10% of global GDP by some estimates. The banks are all involved, they have to be. HSBC got caught laundering $670 billion. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge...
While I don't know about the exact numbers, I do recall that HSBC was actively coaching the drug cartels (and hezbollah) on tricks to alter their names on forms so they wouldn't get picked up by watch lists.
At which point the exact dollar amounts are irrelevant, and the fact that nobody was criminally charged over this is what concerns me more than anything.
Sure - but we're all here to learn more, so numbers which we're basing discussion on should have some factual basis :).
If you're really interested in this stuff you should read up on some of the material from William K Black of UMKC. He was a regulator during the S&L crisis and has some great perspective on financial and control fraud.
The numbers are a secondary item, nitpicked by the commenter above.
The original parent was discussing how the banks were involved. I was attempting to bring the discussion back around to the original comment, rather than have the discussion be de-railed by a sidebar about exact amounts.
It's interesting, and I am interested, but this whole conversation does nothing but to take away from what the first person was trying to express.
If we wanted to put a dent in this kind of thing, we'd put people in jail, and fine individuals. But we don't do that, so we must not want to stop it. I suppose the fines are just our cut.
True, still I think - at least where I live, crimes of said losers are sometimes not punished hard enough compared to crimes "winners" commit. If you want to spend 5 years in a German prison, you can either steal money from your company [0] or literally kill a guy (if you did not intend to do so) [1]. The first one is a danger to the system, the second one probably had a difficult childhood. Still I think life should be valued much, much higher than money. The US might have the opposite problem.
I disagree about the money. Money is basically a measurement for human labor. Money is human life time. We should sentence people proportionally to how much they steal, which should really cut down multimillion dollar thefts.
For example in California grand theft (misdemeanor) is 1 year max in county jail (not even a prison), and 4 additional years if you stole more than $3.2 million. So in the very worst case you get 5 years.
How long does it take you to make $3.2M? For the average US person with the median income of $37,679 before taxes it will take 85 years, not counting the taxes.
I think crimes like this should definitely be punished with hefty fines and some years in prison, so even the super rich care about them.
But it is just money. Money is not lifetime. Money is just a number central banks can control. You can insure yourself against losing it. It cannot even be lost, it is just somewhere else. The criminal can repay it. Time working for money is not lost. Time being dead, because you got murdered, is lost. Your mother or your children will not cry, because somebody took some money from you.
I would even go further: Yeah, making $3,2M will take me a while, but I guess I would prefer to have to regain $3,2M than to cope with psychological or physiological damages of a really violent crime. If I were to lose $3,2M, it would partially be my fault, because clearly my business was lacking some control mechanisms. If two guys come after you from behind, there is really nothing you could have done.
An NPR story on an explosion at an apartment building in Silver Spring talked about how many of the immigrants living there kept their life savings in cash, which was destroyed. Money can be lost.
I think for most people in the developed world, it is much easier to prevent that than losing your life. Also the money in a sense is somewhere else now, since there is less of it, everyone else's money is now worth very slightly more.
Money is life time. People exchange their life time for money. How money is introduced into the economy is a red herring.
The rest of your argument is red herring as well, you just switched to talking about violent crime, which has nothing to do with our conversation. I was talking specificzlly about misdemeanor theft, not robbery or felony theft.
It is not and it does not become it by you repeating that claim. Lifetime spent working is not gone. You still live while working, thus it accounts to your lifetime. There are even people who very much enjoy their time spent working. Lifetime spent dead, in or near a coma is gone.
> How money is introduced into the economy is a red herring.
It is not, it is the explanation, what money actually is (not lifetime, by stating that central banks cannot create lifetime for you). You are just claiming what you think it is, I was describing what it actually is. You are welcome to back up your claim, too.
> you just switched to talking about violent crime, which has nothing to do with our conversation.
Since you originally answered to my comment comparing the punishments for violent crimes and embezzlement, yes it has everything to do with our conversation.
I am saying life is more valuable than money, so punishments for violent crimes should be harsher. You then first claimed that crimes involving money are actually about lifetime (and thus life). I argued against that point and now you have gone full circle and claim that we aren't even talking about violent crimes. Why do you try to pull misdemeanor theft on a level where it can be compare to violent crimes then, by introducing lifetime as a currency?
> It is not and it does not become it by you repeating that claim
Yes it is, and it does not not become it by you repeating that claim.
Most people would not be working where they work if they didn't need money. They would do what they actually enjoy. The percentage of people who love their jobs is tiny.
> It is not, it is the explanation, what money actually is
No, it's the explanation of how money is introduced, not what it "actually is". Money is the measure of human labor. You clearly can't comprehend the difference.
I clearly described why lifetime is not money (because it is not traded, you still live) and what money is (it is not only the mechanism of how it is introduced, but also how it's value can be changed afterwards and so on).
> Most people would not be working where they work if they didn't need money. They would do what they actually enjoy.
Just a claim. Even if this were true, lifetime is still not lost.
> The percentage of people who love their jobs is tiny.
People like to be needed. Also just a claim.
I think at this point the discussion makes no sense. I will stop writing this over and over again now, as long as you do not answer my main argument: When someone gives human labor and gets money, he does not give away lifetime in the way a murderer takes away his lifetime. He still lives while working.
A more plausible explanation is that the CIA needs "dark" money (untraceable) in order to operate their shady activities, and that the drug trade is an ideal means for obtaining this money. This is no conspiracy theory but backed up by solid journalism and research - many books by respectable authors have been written on the subject. The CIA has been involved in drug trafficking for decades.
