6 ms·
Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor (2009)
- zarriak 8y agoEvery time I read about this it makes me think back to the video of the cartel depositing perfectly sized boxes at a HSBC bank.
- vfclists 8y agoWasn't that Wachovia bank, or was Wachovia a subsidiary of HSBC? The $352 billion seems quite close to the $400 billion laundered by Wachovia.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- liftbigweights 8y agoWell HSBC ( Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation ) was created by the british after the opium wars to launder opium money out of china to the west. If any bank is adept at procuring drug money, it's HSBC. It's a shame how little we are taught about the opium wars in the US. It fundamentally changed the world. Some historians describe it as the greatest wealth transfer in human history. The capital extracted from china is what funded some of the largest banks in the world today, the industrial revolution in the US/britain and political dynasties well into the 20th century. Of course it left china in shambles, but the opium trade was the true gold rush of the 19th century. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret-history.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-s...
- infinity0 8y agoCan you put some numbers on that? How much money was transferred, in today's dollars?
- liftbigweights 8y agoIt's impossible to say. We can realistically only see the broad strokes of history. 1. We know that the west was running a significant trade deficit with china. To such a degree that we finally decided war was the only option. We know that soon after the first opium war, china started running a trade deficit with the west. 2. We know that economic impact was so significant it collapsed much of chinese society and led to the greatest catastrophe in the 19th century. Up to 30 million people died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion Putting that into perspective, up to 20 million chinese during ww2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties 3. We know that half of the largest western banks were founded in the mid 1800s ( HSBC, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Santander, Deutsche Bank, Toronto-Dominion, Royal Bank of Canada, Societe Generale, etc ). Doesn't mean that all the banks were financed by opium money but that immense capital accumulation occurred in the west making it possible to found a large number of banks. 4. We know enough capital was accumulated in the west to heavily industrialize. Though we credit britain with starting the industrial revolution in the early 1700s, it didn't become significant until the mid 1800s when britain and primarily the US went on a major industrial campaign. 5. On the flip side, we know that china didn't have the capital or stability to industrialize. 6. We know opium money produced at least two US presidents in short time. As for getting a specific number. I don't know how we'd even get that. We know it was significant enough that it completely tilted the world in favor of the west and ruined china for 100 years.
- acct1771 8y agoSources on the Presidential funding? Not that I'm in disbelief or even mildly surprised.
- booblik 8y agoSomeone watched Ozark?
- denzil_correa 8y agoOzark is a 2017 TV show while the article is dated to 2009.
- ebullientocelot 8y agoYea but they mention this in Ozark, so parent might have meant someone saw the show and looked this up.
- booblik 8y agoYep
- hippich 8y agoyep :)
- beamatronic 8y agoImagine if access to banking was a fundamental human right
- eveningcoffee 8y agoIn a world moving away from the paper money, it should. I suspect that banks should be also very strictly controlled about what they can do with the data they collect about the transactions.
- fgheorghe 8y agoImagine if british banks would be prosecuted for all the crime they help finance.
- marcosdumay 8y agoWell, access to transactions is not the same as access to financing.
- wallace_f 8y agoAccess to secure and just banking should probably be classified as a desirable positive (not to be confused with the more important negative rights) human right. What I mean by secure and fair is what Krugman talks about here[1]. The idea would be similar to saying that people should have secure and fair access to water (in other words, not polluted, and not horded by nestle). As it stands, our banking system is not secure (as the '08 fin crisis demonstrated) and it is certainly not fair (as banking execs, bureaucrats and plutocrats made out fine while taxpayers and money-holders were left on the hook for the fallout, bailout, and the bursen of 4+ trillion in what is basically free helicopter'd money for wall st). 1-https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10krugman.html?assetType=opinion https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10krugman.html?as...
- dmix 8y agoA good way to end up with 5 mega banks and zero competition from smaller firms. Oh wait, that already exists and it's getting worse and worse every decade.
- nimbius 8y agomy armchair finance question isnt whether this is good or bad, but is it going to work again during the 2018/2019 recession? Call me paranoid, but I fully subscribe to the inverted yield curve theory of recession. A big question is cannabis earnings...With canada's legalization, and most of the worlds decriminalization of cannabis, the drug trade cant be operating at the levels of 2009 profit. heroin and harder drugs are not as popular as cannabis and i suspect the earnings curve is flat as is evidenced by the increased introduction of carfentanyl in the supplychain.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThe article only makes sense with a certain, fixed view of money. Money is a social contract, it's worth whatever we want it to be, and we can change the value of it at any time. The credit crises is not a issue of money, it's an issue of confidence in the system. No confidence, no credit, no system. During this time, any government can play magic with the balance sheet and do as they please. This is what TARP etc. was about. The issue is really just about 'who wins and who loses' in a centrally planned game of money magic. The drug industry mightn't have been too affected, by the downturn, and 'confidence' in their economy just kept on trukin'. But any 'crash' in a post financially literate age that is not due to a true existential shock (like an earthquake that destroys nations) ... then we should be able to handle it ourselves without the crunch. The real issue just comes down to how we're going to divide up the pie when we wave our magic money wand, and it more than likely ends up benefiting the bankers more than others.
- simonh 8y ago>The real issue just comes down to how we're going to divide up the pie when we wave our magic money wand, and it more than likely ends up benefiting the bankers more than others. I suspect the problem is whatever strategy you use to manipulate the money system to avoid a downturn, it’s going to benefit somebody. The banks are just very well informed, and in a position to do pretty much anything anybody else might do, so however you carry out the intervention they will have the tools and resources to ensure they benefit from it somehow. So how do you manipulate the money supply without going through banks?