Money Laundering: A Quick How-To-Get-Away-With-It

On Wednesday, May 29, 2013, the Washington Post called the Liberty Reserve "one of the biggest laundering operations in history."  Liberty Reserve stands accused with laundering six billion dollars.  For certain definitions of big, this statement could be considered accurate.  In the real world, this is like called a house sparrow one of the biggest birds in history.  HSBC was accused with laundering an estimated two hundred fifty billion dollars for Iran, as well as failing to properly monitor another six hundred seventy billion dollars of wire transfers and almost another ten billion in purchased US Dollars.

Let's put those amounts in numbers:
Liberty Reserve: 6,000,000,000
HSBC:              930,000,000,000

Hey, that's a lot of zeros.  Let's strip these down and ask an eight year old which is bigger.
Genius Nephew, which of these two numbers are bigger: 6 or 930?
* Not pictured, my nephew laughing at me, calling me silly, and pointing at 930.

Seven people have been arrested in the Liberty Reserve case.  Not one person has been arrested relating to the HSBC laundering case.  Let's go back to my Financial Investigator, my eight year old nephew:
Genius Nephew, which of these two numbers are bigger: 7 or 0?
* Not pictured, my nephew laughing at me, calling me silly, and pointing at 7.

The lesson is quite clear.  If you're going to launder funds, go big or go to the big house.  Laundering money is fine as long as the amounts involved are staggering, and you use the profits to expand your business into credit cards and other types of loans.

You might think that I am an anarchist advocating that the government shouldn't bother prosecuting cases like this in the new age of the internet, the greatest social experiment yet, but I'm not.  I am a progressive with some mild anarchist tendencies, usually only expressed while inebriated, advocating the radical idea that governments apply their laws to everyone, not just the conveniently prosecuted.

I'm also disappointed with the Post for the lazy reporting.  Calling Liberty Reserve "one of the biggest" when HSBC was two* orders of magnitude larger is ludicrous.  $6 billion is chump change compared to $980 billion.  Even the Republicans wouldn't argue too much over six billion in a budget debate, but nine-hundred eighty billion gives anyone pause.  To put that in recent news perspective, that is more than 2,940 massive Powerball jackpots.  Imagine if three people won 300+ million dollar jackpots every day for the next two and a half years.  Just ludicrous.

* Thanks, Pinko

Debate Club

For the record, I didn't start this conversation, and I tried to stay out of it.  This was a work function for Lady Chemistry, and I was on my Best-Regular behavior.*  I remained calm and quiet while the Raging Conservative Tool repeatedly said, "I hate Obama."  The host said, "hate is a really strong word, with lots of connotations..."  "I hate Obama," repeated the RCT.  I politely continued the conversation about whatever I had been discussing with my dinner neighbor.

Despite all my attempts to remain calm and talk about something else, I was dragged into a conversation about politics.  When pressed about why I support Obama, I said that I could not conscience voting for a couple men who insist that women be second-class citizens.  The RCT, a woman, laughed this off.

I tried to keep it reasonable, and give her something we could agree on, and talk about how Congress used to compromise to get things done.  She credited this all to Reagan, and Clinton moving to the center.  I refrained from saying that Clinton wouldn't have had to move to the center if the Republicans would be willing to compromise anything.  I was trying to defuse the conversation so we could go back to talking about fun stuff.

I tried to tie in the previous topic to the fact that it doesn't really matter what the Presidential candidates want to do domestically because of the deep divide and lack of compromise.  The only important aspect of any Presidential candidate is how they can handle foreign affairs, but she said that the whole issue really comes down to what the role of government is.

"The government's only role is to protect us from foreign invaders," she claimed, with a hint of victory in her voice.  I completely disagreed, as the Constitution clearly states otherwise.  She claimed that "if you really read it, that is all it says."  She could point out no specific phrase to support her view.  I then threw manners out the window, and said, "well, let's get rid of the Bill of Rights because that has nothing to do with protecting us from foreign invaders."  She shrugged.  Let's toss out all the laws that prevent the poor from kicking in your door, killing you, and stealing your stuff.  That has nothing to do with protecting us from foreign invaders.  If that is the sum total of any government's role, then let's go for it.

She then claimed that it doesn't matter what she thinks because she can retire tomorrow and be set for the rest of her life.  She's out, and nothing will prevent her from living in luxury for the rest of her days.  It doesn't really matter to her who wins because she is done.  I said, "no wonder you like Paul Ryan, he has the same ideals.  He is set for life thanks to Social Security, so let's get rid of it."

The final thing that I held back from saying, for only the sake of making Lady Chemistry's worklife easier, was if she is truly done, and it doesn't matter to her comfort who wins, THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU VOTING?

* I shouldn't need to explain this, but there are varying degrees of best behavior.  Best-Chuckles (for blogging, being funny, maybe a little insightful), Best-Regular (for regular, non-Genius, non-chuckles levels of best), Best-Genius (for seriously bringing it hard and smart).

A Last Blog From This Phone...

...Before I get a new, refurbished smart-ish phone. The bus is almost as fast as a cab at this time of night. Few are riding which results in less pulls of the stop request cord, and few are waiting resulting in less stops per block. I still wonder what the point was in having three stops in sight of each other. There is at least one two-block section of this route where the stops are less than a block from each other. No wonder the bus is always late, or off the schedule, there are stops every twenty feet.