The Drug War Saved the System?
Charlie Stross talks about liquidity:
What we’ve just seen, hidden in the euphemism here, is a confession that drug cartels and other organized criminals have gone on a $352Bn asset-buying spree — and the banks and regulators, world-wide, turned a blind eye to this because the alternative was to allow the banks to collapse. And the corollary is that these investments are now in the system, laundered, whitewashed, and legit. These narcodollars aren’t neatly bundled up inside the mattress any more; they’re in the system, doing their owners’ bidding.
A third of a trillion dollars is a lot of money; it’s enough to fund the US military invading another country halfway around the world, or a manned Mars exploration program. Obviously, there’s no single Mr Big here, no Blofeld investing SPECTREs ill-gotten billions in an ambitious bid to go legit.
But one wonders whether the “organised criminals” have been investing in anything innovative. (Politicians, if they’re smart.) And what the long-term consequences are going to be …
It won’t be Stross’s next novel, but it might be Ben Bernanke’s. Or Larry Summers, whose latest foray into fiction is here.
It wasn’t the drug war that saved the system, it was the drug dealers!
Now, if we use the perjorative “narco-terrorists” in place of “drug dealers” and then shorten that term, we can say that it was the terrorists who saved the system.
addictive consumption saved the system!
Not on message…….
Summers: Job Growth By Spring
December 13, 2009 10:10 AM
The President’s top economic advisor, Larry Summers, told me that “by spring employment growth will start turning positive.”
During my “This Week” interview, Summers said that “everybody agrees that the recession is over,” but he did not say when the unemployment rate could be expected to drop further.
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Top Economic Adviser: ‘Of Course’ Recession Isn’t Over
December 13th, 2009
Politico: Asked by moderator David Gregory if the recession were over, [White House economic adviser Christina] Romer shot back: “Of course not. For the people on Main Street and throughout this country, they are still suffering, the unemployment rate is still 10 percent.”
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@save_the_rustbelt,
Your comment is totally on message! You just have to do what Larry Summers is doing and confine the “everybody” who agrees to drug dealers and bankers.