7 ms·

There's no such thing as money laundering, it's a recently engineered legal construct that was hoping to help reduce actual crime (the proceeds to launder). It

by nnx 6y ago

There's no such thing as money laundering, it's a recently engineered legal construct that was hoping to help reduce actual crime (the proceeds to launder). It totally failed. Prosecute the actual crime (be it illegal drug distribution, illegal weapons dealing etc) and do old-school police work infiltrating such networks, or even work on the tax evasion angle if needed... instead of increasingly orwellian surveillance on everyone for increasingly small value transfers. The whole AML/KYC experiment has completely failed and has caused billions of damage in added costs for small businesses and people excluded from banking system all over the world [1] Similarly to the war on drugs... it's time to give up on all that craziness and get back to the basics of prosecuting and investigating the actual crimes, not the money transfers... [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1725366 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2020.1...

obenn 6y ago
It's still a crime though right? You can't launder money for a criminal and say you did nothing wrong.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  It's worse than that. You can't engage in financial transactions with another person without probing into the details of their life (and reporting everything upstream to the state), or you're a criminal too. The Stasi worked this way.
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    You don’t report upstream, you don’t probe into their lives and you are not a criminal if you miss something. What you do is to create a process for KYC where you check against lists of threats like known terrorists or sanctioned persons, companies and governments. For example you check if your client lives in Crimea or Cuba, if so the dealings with them need to be limited in accordance of the jurisdiction trade in. You also need to look out for suspicious transactions and block or maybe report those, for example if a local barbershop business is moving a lot of gold, you are supposed to catch that. There are a lot of companies and startups in the area who make tools to streamline this process. Since there’s no standardization across the globe, you need to build systems that can catch names that went through multiple transliterations or create statistical models to detects unusual activity and so on. Source: I know people in the business. I'm sorry to disappoint you but the governmental organisations don't have the thigh grip on citizens that Facebook or Google have on their users. This citizen control business is made of thousands of organisations that often work against each other. Significantly more vibrant space than the internet of 2021, a lot of userbase shifts are happening all the time. Lock-ins are softer than those of Google, visas and migration agreements give space to a lot of user flow between those. There's no monopoly or central organisation to stream peoples lives to.
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      I've been subject to KYC checks, and the bank very much probed into intimate financial details for weeks, with its employees gaining proprietary knowledge of things like investment strategies. If I hadn't complied, I would have not received banking services, and would have been unable to do things like pay taxes. Anti-money laundering laws 100% turn the presumption of innocence on its head. You are presumed guilty, and forced to surrender your privacy, until you prove yourself innocent.
      - mrtksn 6y ago
        Yes, if you are into cash intensive business or from a country with a lot of mafia/armed conflicts you might be put through some checks if you want to do business in a place that is actively hostile to the stuff going on in that region. The western world is a bureaucratic hell for people from Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Irak etc. If you are from country A that doesn't share data with country B and you want to live/work/do business in country B, the bureaucracy can also be heavier since it's going to be harder asses your situation. You might be asked to explain what you do, why do you want to use their services and even prove your claims if you want to be accepted as a customer. That's something that no one likes. Banks like making money and yo don't make money by refusing work, so they will do the bare minimum to cover their asses but sometimes the cover needed can be quite large.
      - adaml_623 6y ago
        You chose to use societal infrastructure to make money through the finance system (backed up by the legal system) and then complain because you hadn't researched that it came at the cost of your privacy.
        EricE 6y ago
        Yes, guilty until proven innocent is such an efficient way to run a society - so easy to ask "why are you complaining?" if that's all you care about.
        6y ago
whatever1 6y ago
Of course you can choke crime if you make the earnings useless. Same way as painting the cash in a vault in case of theft.
- KirillPanov 6y ago
  Exploding paint capsules cause no collateral damage to the innocent. AML/KYC causes massive collateral expense and frustration to small businesses. This vastly eclipses the crimes it is claims to help thwart. Of course if you're a gigantic business like Amazon or Paypal, this is a Good Thing.
thu2111 6y ago
I used to view things exactly like you did. I was a big Bitcoin user as well. I read Treasury's War and it sickened me. AML is indeed a parallel quasi-judicial system except without the good bits of the actual judicial system, and poses many civil liberties concerns. However, I learned with time that it's not as ineffective as it looks. Governments around the world have adopted AML laws, and with less pressure from the US than is commonly believed. They aren't all stupid. These laws are not a total failure and do raise the bar for organised crime significantly. If you look at the stories of some of the world's highest profile crime lords, they do in fact struggle significantly to launder their money, often in ways that make it appear unclear what their planned end-game was (perhaps they didn't have one). Here are two examples: 1. Ross Ulbricht, poster child of the AML-free world. Ran a major drug market online. When arrested he was Bitcoin-rich and dollar poor, living like a student in San Francisco. He had been able to convert very little of his gains into real-world wealth that a crime lord might want, like houses, planes, boats, or whatever it is people plan to do with the proceeds of crime. 2. Paul le Roux. A much more successful gang leader than Ulbricht, yet when finally captured it was discovered most of his wealth was in the form of balls of precious metals under guard. He lived in fear of his guards turning on him and stealing his wealth. IIRC there was some evidence this happened, and he reached a point where he couldn't physically reach the safe houses anyway. Again, although powerful, he was not actually living the high life in the ways that might make doing such crimes attractive to most people. And there is no really good way to convert large amounts of precious metals into more useful forms of wealth without attracting a great deal of attention. Money laundering is like any form of crime fighting. It raises the bar. Ransomware exploded after cryptocurrency came on the scene because cryptocurrency makes AML much harder. You didn't see people regularly being held to ransom via PayPal, did you? In fact blackmail/extortion for physical cash is quite rare because obtaining the money always involves walking into a police trap. One of the many reasons I eventually got tired of the Bitcoin community was their absolute and total refusal to consider the physical safety issue: having lots of crypto just is not safe, in the sense that kidnapping your wife or kids to extract the coins from you is an actually viable strategy, whereas trying to extract money from a rich guy via a credit card or wire transfer is just a joke, it will never happen. You'd be caught immediately.
- baybal2 6y ago
baybal2 6y ago
> The AML push has succeeded in stamping out the most pernicious practices, such as using shell banks (those with no real customers) in sunny places to launder suitcases stuffed with drug money. But criminals haven’t been forced to get particularly creative The practice of somebody shady needing just to buy a bank to hide his money is still very much around. I believe it is still the primary mean which at least Russia criminals use. Baltics, Cyprus, much of South-East Europe, even Germany are places where semi-morbid micro banks are sold in weeks for symbolic amounts of money.
opportune 6y ago
It’s not only about crime but about economic warfare. Sanctions against countries and individuals, and bans on taking terrorists’ money, help countries meet their geopolitical goals. Also it doesn’t cost countries much to pass these laws (they do have to pay people to enforce them). The majority of the cost is an invisible tax on consumers and shareholders.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  "terrorists" It should be noted that many legitimate (democratically elected) government agencies and political figures are deemed "terrorists" by the US gov
rolandog 6y ago
Back when I was single and had more disposable income, I remember being very upset after not being able to purchase songs for one of the Rockband games on my PlayStation 3 (that I had bought in the US) while living in Mexico (either through PayPal or directly). I had to wait until I went on vacations to exchange Mexican pesos for dollars so I could buy some PS cards and then think hard about the songs I wanted to download. It puzzled me that I was able to buy stuff on Amazon (back when they only shipped books and DVDs directly to Mexico), ship it to an importer who would take care of import taxes and other stuff, and import the products while paying with my Mexican credit card, but I wasn't able to download songs directly or through PayPal for a game. This was mainly because Sony didn't allow migrating your account to another country, so if you had created your account in the US, you were out of luck and would have to lose your nickname and trophies.
- blendergeek 6y ago
  This likely has nothing to do with KYC/AML and everything to do with region-locked copyright.
  - skeeter2020 6y ago
    yes, it's the same reason your Netflix catalog will change when you're travelling.
  - rolandog 6y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I still don't understand why that is a thing, though. As a consumer, I want the least amount of friction to buy stuff... As a gamer, I care---if I spent time and money in 'unlocking achievements'---that that history and identity is portable (also friends, guilds, etc.). Also, this might be a pet peeve of mine, but because I know other languages, I prefer to hear and listen to the original voice actors in both movies and games. Back then, I also owned an Xbox (US-bought), and I had also played the first couple of Halo games in English... so I wasn't really interested in the translated versions[0]. So, now that I have moved to a third country, I haven't considered buying any gaming consoles, as I feel that they were trying to pigeonhole the things I was able to buy with my account (that can't be migrated to different countries). [0] https://youtu.be/Zt8JABbwoHQ?list=PLav7HQ457Pc9rIIjMe0fUzJ7Gmip07OWn&t=57 https://youtu.be/Zt8JABbwoHQ?list=PLav7HQ457Pc9rIIjMe0fUzJ7G...
kukabynd 6y ago
Couldn’t agree more. Better spend resources on things that actually matter. Pros of a free global banking system heavily outweigh the cons of money-laundering. Plus, nowadays there’s no real barrier stopping banks/financial institutions to verify international clients (Mercury, TransferWise are good examples).
- georgeecollins 6y ago
  But the point is that sometimes it is easier to go after bankers than crooks. If the bankers know they are profiting off criminals why shouldn't they be responsible. It sounds great to say, why not just go after the criminals? The practical reason why not is that people who launder money create an incentive for crime. Every thief knows how much they are likely to get from a fence. As an ethical matter, why shouldn't we punish people who knowingly profit from people committing crimes-- often horrible crimes?
  - kukabynd 6y ago
    I need to state that both methods are evil. One is just better for lots of normal people (my case). Punishing bankers sounds good but in reality all of the fines I’ve seen are nothing but slaps on the wrist. So if that’s the case, then it doesn’t work, no?
    - georgeecollins 6y ago
      I think it is bad that white collar crimes seem to only result in fines and that should be addressed. But if it only is fines that still makes the price of doing business higher. I really recommend reading "The Billion Dollar Whale" because it is a good book and shocking. It is about an individual who really just stole billions of dollars from the Malayan government and then tries to hide it. Every year his fund has a reputable auditor, but every year it is a new auditor, for example. Goldman Sachs facilitated the crime by making huge transfers with very little diligence. They asked for huge fees, not just relative to the amount, but on a percentage basis. Probably because they knew something was shady and they figured they would get sued. Also, they were aiding a crime but as you say, it all will be just a fine no charges. GS admitted guilt and is paying almost a $3b fine for this. And IMO they should.
mam2 6y ago
i thought it was for the taxes
cowpig 6y ago
When I look at the cryptocurrency economy vs a regulated economy, it's almost night and day in terms of criminal activity. The crypto world is rife with scams, schemes, extortion, fraud, etc. Why do crinimals choose to use cryptocurrency if AML/KYC is so ineffective? I also think this is an extremely dangerous thing to be wrong about. Look at how international war is waged these days: it's primarily economic. Consider the carnage that defined human existence before WWII[1]. I would argue that a big part of the reason all of our lives are so violence-free now is that nation-states fight over abstractions for power rather than physical power. If it becomes impossible for countries to sanction each other because we've torn down the AML/KYC apparatus, will the world plunge back into physical warfare? Unfortunately, I believe this idea has really taken hold lately because owners of crypto are incentivized to believe it. It's pretty hard to convince someone of the dangers of something they're benefiting from financially. I don't think this is an exception. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU
- m463 6y ago
  On the other hand, not all governments regulate their monetary systems well on behalf of their citizens, often inflating the money supply and devaluing their currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe But yes, US dollars are a reasonable currency.
- hacker_newz 6y ago
  I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here since the article references cryptocurrency once. And you do know that there are regulated cryptocurrency exchanges, right?
- herbst 6y ago
  There arent any crime dangers for individual investors.Not more than with cash that is
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  > Consider the carnage that defined human existence before WWII[1]. That carnage would have still existed today if not for WMDs. There just isn't much you can do when countries can just nuke each other.
anm89 6y ago
While I completely agree with you in terms of what I believe, I think society is moving in the polar opposite direction. I expect drastically more of these regulations moving forward, not less. That's because in the same way the war on drugs isn't really about making people do less drugs, this isn't really about regulating the banking system. They are both generalized systems of control and data collection that have a wide array of benefits to the parties that enforce them. I don't see them going anywhere unfortunately.
voisin 6y ago
^This x 100. Exhibit A: FATCA & FBAR. Costs worldwide are easily 100x the recovered money being hidden from the IRS and causing untold losses in associated issues for Americans living abroad being prevented from pushing the American agenda outside its borders.

by nnx 6y ago

obenn 6y ago

It's still a crime though right? You can't launder money for a criminal and say you did nothing wrong.

stickfigure 6y ago
It's worse than that. You can't engage in financial transactions with another person without probing into the details of their life (and reporting everything upstream to the state), or you're a criminal too. The Stasi worked this way.
- mrtksn 6y ago
  You don’t report upstream, you don’t probe into their lives and you are not a criminal if you miss something. What you do is to create a process for KYC where you check against lists of threats like known terrorists or sanctioned persons, companies and governments. For example you check if your client lives in Crimea or Cuba, if so the dealings with them need to be limited in accordance of the jurisdiction trade in. You also need to look out for suspicious transactions and block or maybe report those, for example if a local barbershop business is moving a lot of gold, you are supposed to catch that. There are a lot of companies and startups in the area who make tools to streamline this process. Since there’s no standardization across the globe, you need to build systems that can catch names that went through multiple transliterations or create statistical models to detects unusual activity and so on. Source: I know people in the business. I'm sorry to disappoint you but the governmental organisations don't have the thigh grip on citizens that Facebook or Google have on their users. This citizen control business is made of thousands of organisations that often work against each other. Significantly more vibrant space than the internet of 2021, a lot of userbase shifts are happening all the time. Lock-ins are softer than those of Google, visas and migration agreements give space to a lot of user flow between those. There's no monopoly or central organisation to stream peoples lives to.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    I've been subject to KYC checks, and the bank very much probed into intimate financial details for weeks, with its employees gaining proprietary knowledge of things like investment strategies. If I hadn't complied, I would have not received banking services, and would have been unable to do things like pay taxes. Anti-money laundering laws 100% turn the presumption of innocence on its head. You are presumed guilty, and forced to surrender your privacy, until you prove yourself innocent.
    - mrtksn 6y ago
      Yes, if you are into cash intensive business or from a country with a lot of mafia/armed conflicts you might be put through some checks if you want to do business in a place that is actively hostile to the stuff going on in that region. The western world is a bureaucratic hell for people from Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Irak etc. If you are from country A that doesn't share data with country B and you want to live/work/do business in country B, the bureaucracy can also be heavier since it's going to be harder asses your situation. You might be asked to explain what you do, why do you want to use their services and even prove your claims if you want to be accepted as a customer. That's something that no one likes. Banks like making money and yo don't make money by refusing work, so they will do the bare minimum to cover their asses but sometimes the cover needed can be quite large.
    - adaml_623 6y ago
      You chose to use societal infrastructure to make money through the finance system (backed up by the legal system) and then complain because you hadn't researched that it came at the cost of your privacy.
      - EricE 6y ago
        Yes, guilty until proven innocent is such an efficient way to run a society - so easy to ask "why are you complaining?" if that's all you care about.
        6y ago

whatever1 6y ago

Of course you can choke crime if you make the earnings useless. Same way as painting the cash in a vault in case of theft.

KirillPanov 6y ago
Exploding paint capsules cause no collateral damage to the innocent. AML/KYC causes massive collateral expense and frustration to small businesses. This vastly eclipses the crimes it is claims to help thwart. Of course if you're a gigantic business like Amazon or Paypal, this is a Good Thing.

thu2111 6y ago

I used to view things exactly like you did. I was a big Bitcoin user as well. I read Treasury's War and it sickened me. AML is indeed a parallel quasi-judicial system except without the good bits of the actual judicial system, and poses many civil liberties concerns. However, I learned with time that it's not as ineffective as it looks. Governments around the world have adopted AML laws, and with less pressure from the US than is commonly believed. They aren't all stupid. These laws are not a total failure and do raise the bar for organised crime significantly. If you look at the stories of some of the world's highest profile crime lords, they do in fact struggle significantly to launder their money, often in ways that make it appear unclear what their planned end-game was (perhaps they didn't have one). Here are two examples: 1. Ross Ulbricht, poster child of the AML-free world. Ran a major drug market online. When arrested he was Bitcoin-rich and dollar poor, living like a student in San Francisco. He had been able to convert very little of his gains into real-world wealth that a crime lord might want, like houses, planes, boats, or whatever it is people plan to do with the proceeds of crime. 2. Paul le Roux. A much more successful gang leader than Ulbricht, yet when finally captured it was discovered most of his wealth was in the form of balls of precious metals under guard. He lived in fear of his guards turning on him and stealing his wealth. IIRC there was some evidence this happened, and he reached a point where he couldn't physically reach the safe houses anyway. Again, although powerful, he was not actually living the high life in the ways that might make doing such crimes attractive to most people. And there is no really good way to convert large amounts of precious metals into more useful forms of wealth without attracting a great deal of attention. Money laundering is like any form of crime fighting. It raises the bar. Ransomware exploded after cryptocurrency came on the scene because cryptocurrency makes AML much harder. You didn't see people regularly being held to ransom via PayPal, did you? In fact blackmail/extortion for physical cash is quite rare because obtaining the money always involves walking into a police trap. One of the many reasons I eventually got tired of the Bitcoin community was their absolute and total refusal to consider the physical safety issue: having lots of crypto just is not safe, in the sense that kidnapping your wife or kids to extract the coins from you is an actually viable strategy, whereas trying to extract money from a rich guy via a credit card or wire transfer is just a joke, it will never happen. You'd be caught immediately.

baybal2 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago

> The AML push has succeeded in stamping out the most pernicious practices, such as using shell banks (those with no real customers) in sunny places to launder suitcases stuffed with drug money. But criminals haven’t been forced to get particularly creative The practice of somebody shady needing just to buy a bank to hide his money is still very much around. I believe it is still the primary mean which at least Russia criminals use. Baltics, Cyprus, much of South-East Europe, even Germany are places where semi-morbid micro banks are sold in weeks for symbolic amounts of money.

opportune 6y ago

It’s not only about crime but about economic warfare. Sanctions against countries and individuals, and bans on taking terrorists’ money, help countries meet their geopolitical goals. Also it doesn’t cost countries much to pass these laws (they do have to pay people to enforce them). The majority of the cost is an invisible tax on consumers and shareholders.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
"terrorists" It should be noted that many legitimate (democratically elected) government agencies and political figures are deemed "terrorists" by the US gov

rolandog 6y ago

Back when I was single and had more disposable income, I remember being very upset after not being able to purchase songs for one of the Rockband games on my PlayStation 3 (that I had bought in the US) while living in Mexico (either through PayPal or directly). I had to wait until I went on vacations to exchange Mexican pesos for dollars so I could buy some PS cards and then think hard about the songs I wanted to download. It puzzled me that I was able to buy stuff on Amazon (back when they only shipped books and DVDs directly to Mexico), ship it to an importer who would take care of import taxes and other stuff, and import the products while paying with my Mexican credit card, but I wasn't able to download songs directly or through PayPal for a game. This was mainly because Sony didn't allow migrating your account to another country, so if you had created your account in the US, you were out of luck and would have to lose your nickname and trophies.

blendergeek 6y ago
This likely has nothing to do with KYC/AML and everything to do with region-locked copyright.
- skeeter2020 6y ago
  yes, it's the same reason your Netflix catalog will change when you're travelling.
- rolandog 6y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I still don't understand why that is a thing, though. As a consumer, I want the least amount of friction to buy stuff... As a gamer, I care---if I spent time and money in 'unlocking achievements'---that that history and identity is portable (also friends, guilds, etc.). Also, this might be a pet peeve of mine, but because I know other languages, I prefer to hear and listen to the original voice actors in both movies and games. Back then, I also owned an Xbox (US-bought), and I had also played the first couple of Halo games in English... so I wasn't really interested in the translated versions[0]. So, now that I have moved to a third country, I haven't considered buying any gaming consoles, as I feel that they were trying to pigeonhole the things I was able to buy with my account (that can't be migrated to different countries). [0] https://youtu.be/Zt8JABbwoHQ?list=PLav7HQ457Pc9rIIjMe0fUzJ7Gmip07OWn&t=57 https://youtu.be/Zt8JABbwoHQ?list=PLav7HQ457Pc9rIIjMe0fUzJ7G...

kukabynd 6y ago

Couldn’t agree more. Better spend resources on things that actually matter. Pros of a free global banking system heavily outweigh the cons of money-laundering. Plus, nowadays there’s no real barrier stopping banks/financial institutions to verify international clients (Mercury, TransferWise are good examples).

georgeecollins 6y ago
But the point is that sometimes it is easier to go after bankers than crooks. If the bankers know they are profiting off criminals why shouldn't they be responsible. It sounds great to say, why not just go after the criminals? The practical reason why not is that people who launder money create an incentive for crime. Every thief knows how much they are likely to get from a fence. As an ethical matter, why shouldn't we punish people who knowingly profit from people committing crimes-- often horrible crimes?
- kukabynd 6y ago
  I need to state that both methods are evil. One is just better for lots of normal people (my case). Punishing bankers sounds good but in reality all of the fines I’ve seen are nothing but slaps on the wrist. So if that’s the case, then it doesn’t work, no?
  - georgeecollins 6y ago
    I think it is bad that white collar crimes seem to only result in fines and that should be addressed. But if it only is fines that still makes the price of doing business higher. I really recommend reading "The Billion Dollar Whale" because it is a good book and shocking. It is about an individual who really just stole billions of dollars from the Malayan government and then tries to hide it. Every year his fund has a reputable auditor, but every year it is a new auditor, for example. Goldman Sachs facilitated the crime by making huge transfers with very little diligence. They asked for huge fees, not just relative to the amount, but on a percentage basis. Probably because they knew something was shady and they figured they would get sued. Also, they were aiding a crime but as you say, it all will be just a fine no charges. GS admitted guilt and is paying almost a $3b fine for this. And IMO they should.

mam2 6y ago

i thought it was for the taxes

cowpig 6y ago

When I look at the cryptocurrency economy vs a regulated economy, it's almost night and day in terms of criminal activity. The crypto world is rife with scams, schemes, extortion, fraud, etc. Why do crinimals choose to use cryptocurrency if AML/KYC is so ineffective? I also think this is an extremely dangerous thing to be wrong about. Look at how international war is waged these days: it's primarily economic. Consider the carnage that defined human existence before WWII[1]. I would argue that a big part of the reason all of our lives are so violence-free now is that nation-states fight over abstractions for power rather than physical power. If it becomes impossible for countries to sanction each other because we've torn down the AML/KYC apparatus, will the world plunge back into physical warfare? Unfortunately, I believe this idea has really taken hold lately because owners of crypto are incentivized to believe it. It's pretty hard to convince someone of the dangers of something they're benefiting from financially. I don't think this is an exception. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU

m463 6y ago
On the other hand, not all governments regulate their monetary systems well on behalf of their citizens, often inflating the money supply and devaluing their currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe But yes, US dollars are a reasonable currency.
hacker_newz 6y ago
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here since the article references cryptocurrency once. And you do know that there are regulated cryptocurrency exchanges, right?
herbst 6y ago
There arent any crime dangers for individual investors.Not more than with cash that is
heavenlyblue 6y ago
> Consider the carnage that defined human existence before WWII[1]. That carnage would have still existed today if not for WMDs. There just isn't much you can do when countries can just nuke each other.

anm89 6y ago

While I completely agree with you in terms of what I believe, I think society is moving in the polar opposite direction. I expect drastically more of these regulations moving forward, not less. That's because in the same way the war on drugs isn't really about making people do less drugs, this isn't really about regulating the banking system. They are both generalized systems of control and data collection that have a wide array of benefits to the parties that enforce them. I don't see them going anywhere unfortunately.

voisin 6y ago

^This x 100. Exhibit A: FATCA & FBAR. Costs worldwide are easily 100x the recovered money being hidden from the IRS and causing untold losses in associated issues for Americans living abroad being prevented from pushing the American agenda outside its borders.