On Mon, 21 May 2001, Doug Henwood wrote:
> DMJ wrote:
>
> >This is originally from La Jornada (http://www.jornada.unam.mx/), and
> >translated in narconews (http://www.narconews.com). The claim here seems
> >to be pretty sweeping -- any of you economists care to comment?
> >
<snip>
>
> Coupla things.
Hey, you're a journalist, not an economist. <<grin>>
> The numbers do seem very big - and since the official
> U.S. numbers on balance of payments and suchlike pretty much add up,
> it's hard to see where all this money's going. Maybe the inflow of
> dirty money more or less matches the outflow (capital inflows from
> bigtime narcotics merchants to offset the outflows of cocaine and
> heroin buyers?).
Maybe. That would make sense given that the U.S. is the world's junkie.
On the argument regarding the importance of dirty money to the U.S. economy: I'd guess that the argument would be that the balance of payments would be that much worse -- what the writer calls 'unsustainable' -- if not for money laundering. Money laundering would then be a way of repatriating money 'lost' to foreign producers.
Meanwhile, with drugs still illegal, there's plenty of excuses to punish the domestic working class as well as doing fun things with the military in Colombia, Bolivia, etc. But we knew that already.
> Also, while most lefties would be skeptical about
> the claims of cops and bankers on many other matters, why this
> eagerness to believe them on this?
The numbers come largely from somebody named Raymond Baker, a guest scholar (or something like that) at the Brookings Inst. He spoke before the Senate Subcommitte on Investigations in 1999 on the topic. There's an article on the topic in a recent Z mag. Is he a cop or banker?
-david