4 ms·

HSBC got away with paying a fee of under $2 billion for not monitoring $60 trillion worth of wire transfers. They made a profit of something like $15 billion du

HSBC got away with paying a fee of under $2 billion for not monitoring $60 trillion worth of wire transfers. They made a profit of something like $15 billion during that year, so their fines barely even touched their profits. The moral of the story here is if you're going to launder money, you should launder a whole shitload of it. Because then you only have to pay a tiny percentage worth in fees. If you don't launder enough, you'll end up broke and in prison. Imagine if this kind of logic applied to other crimes. You could have a sex slave operation with one prostitute and get caught and go to jail for the rest of your life. But if you run a massive sex-slave industry with tens of thousands of slaves (children for the hell of it), and made $10 billion a year, you'd occasionally get a fine of 10% of your profits that year and be allowed to continue on as if nothing happened...?

taliesinb 13y ago
> if you're going to launder money, you should launder a whole shitload of it Yes. Or rather, if you're going to launder money, make sure you're making healthy campaign contributions, hiring ex-politicians and their staffers as lobbyists, oiling the great lobbying machine, etc... For those who haven't read it, Lessig has written a rather nice book on exactly how this kind of "soft corruption" works: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433 http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/...
- contingencies 13y ago
  For a more visual equivalent (lower attention span required) check out http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/money-lobby/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/money-lobby/
wnight 13y ago
Go out in the desert with one captive and torture them and we'd try to stop you. Enslave a few million and successfully arm yourself against potential rescuers and you meet all the accepted standards of a sovereign nation.

taliesinb 13y ago

> if you're going to launder money, you should launder a whole shitload of it Yes. Or rather, if you're going to launder money, make sure you're making healthy campaign contributions, hiring ex-politicians and their staffers as lobbyists, oiling the great lobbying machine, etc... For those who haven't read it, Lessig has written a rather nice book on exactly how this kind of "soft corruption" works: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/dp/0446576433 http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress/...

contingencies 13y ago
For a more visual equivalent (lower attention span required) check out http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/money-lobby/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/money-lobby/

wnight 13y ago

Go out in the desert with one captive and torture them and we'd try to stop you. Enslave a few million and successfully arm yourself against potential rescuers and you meet all the accepted standards of a sovereign nation.