by William Greider
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0624-23.htm<snip>
The political influence of bankers tops all other sectors, I learned as a young reporter. Regardless of party or ideology, politicians seek their friendship. So the United States has created a truly bizarre banking code that legalizes--and keeps secret--vast flows of ill-gotten gains. For what purpose? Terrorist financing, yes, but that business is dwarfed by the drug trade profits, insider looting of corporations, offshore tax evasion, securities fraud, plain-vanilla fraud, and other uses.
The American dollar is lingua fria for illegal commerce and Congress protects the sanctity of its privacy, even allows it the criminal proceeds to flow freely through government-chartered and regulated financial institutions. This shady business is not an inconsequential profit center for banks (a bit like pornography for Microsoft).
The monitoring system described by the Times seems unexceptional to Blum. Indeed, his complaint is that it's so narrowly focused that it mostly harvests empty information. "Meanwhile, the biggest purveyor of terrorist money, as everyone knows, are accounts in Saudi Arabia," Blum observes. "Nobody will deal with it because the Saudis own half of America." An exaggeration, but you get his point.
Blum knows the offshore outposts where US corporations and wealthy Americans dodge taxes or US regulatory laws. Congress could shut them tomorrow if it chose. Instead, it keeps elaborating new loopholes that enable the invention of exotic new tax shelters for tainted fortunes. The latest to flourish, he says, are shell corporations-- freely chartered by states...
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