This story resurfaced in my RSS feeds today, I remember it passing like indigestion through the media in December, it was soon forgotten, momentary discomfort followed by lots of meaning less diarrhea. This seem like the perfect time to resurrect the story and maybe even prosecute some criminals. The politicos and the press are looking for economic scandal, but maybe this one is just too hot to handel.
Read entire articleDrugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions
Rajeev Syal
The Observer, Sunday 13 December 2009
Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
The United States continues to move toward the hollow state scenario, the opening of the corporate flood gates by the Supreme Court in election financing continues the process of making citizen voices weaker and weaker by comparison. How can a politician not consider the Billion $ Steam Rollers and what they want, if they don’t follow the Corporate Masters recommendation, those deep pockets will just buy a different candidate.
From Global Guerillas
The modern nation-state is in a secular decline, made inevitable by the rise of a global market system. Even developed nations, like the US, are not immune to this process. The decline is at first gradual and then accelerates until it reaches a final end-point: a hollow state. The hollow state has the trappings of a modern nation-state (“leaders”, membership in international organizations, regulations, laws, and a bureaucracy) but it lacks any of the legitimacy, services, and control of its historical counter-part. It is merely a shell that has some influence over the spoils of the economy. The real power rests in the hands of corporations and criminal/guerrilla groups that vie with each other for control of sectors of wealth production. For the individual living within this state, life goes on, but it is debased in a myriad of ways. The shift from a marginally functional nation-state in manageable decline to a hollow state often comes suddenly, through a financial crisis. This crisis typically has the following features:Read entire article
- Corporations and connected individuals systematically loot the nation-state of financial assets and natural resources through a series of insider/no cost deals. These deals are made to “save” the nation’s economy or financial system from collapse.
- Once the full measure of the crisis is known, the nation-state’s currency falls precipitously, it’s debt becomes expensive, and it is forced to submit to international oversight/rules.
- The services the state provides rapidly evaporate as its bureaucracy is starved for cash/financing. This opens up a window for the corruption of government employees unused to deprivation.
