Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Money Laundering
I'm sitting here with my Sunday morning coffee checking the news on line and watching the talking heads and wonks in DC debate the current financial crisis.
I'm listening as Hank Paulson makes the rounds on all three networks this morning describing the need for stabilizing the market, and that the Government had no choice but to step in. Many people are screaming that this smacks of socialism.
I know all this, but really, I mean instead of socialism, aren't we just enabling money laundering on a scale that's almost incomprehensible? And no one but the taxpayers pay the consequences of that?
Wikipedia defines money laundering in part as..."any financial transaction which generates an asset or a value as the result of an illegal act, which may involve actions such as tax evasion or false accounting."
Well, the US Government is about to provide a massive financial transaction which is certain to generate an asset and a value to the banks and insurance companies as the result of what could certainly be construed as false accounting by many of these banks.
I was listening to NPR the other day, and the commentator was saying that these sub prime mortgages had been "bundled" into products in such a way that no one really knew what they were buying because the complexity of the "bundles" prevent almost anyone from truly understanding what's in them. They're like onions of bad deals, with layer upon layer of overvalued asset hiding in every ring.
That's a pretty poor excuse for fiduciary mismanagement bordering on the criminal - don't you think?
