"Dirty Money" Foundation of U.S. Growth and Empire

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue May 22 05:51:09 PDT 2001


Gregory Geboski wrote:


>Once it's on the books in a "legitimate" institution, or invested in
>a "legitimate" enterprise, is there any reason to expect "dirty"
>money (talk about your relative terms under capitalism) to have any
>special characteristics that would allow it to be distinguished from
>"legitimate" capital? Why would "dirty" money have to be balanced by
>"dirty" money?

Didn't say it had to. But the demand for imported drugs and other contraband wouldn't appear in the numbers. So saying that the inflow of dirty money on the capital account helps finance the (presumably legit) deficit on the current account assumes there's no dirty current outflow to finance. The dirty books could balance completely separately from the "clean" ones (leaving aside the fact that while money comes with blood on its cheek, capital comes dripping blood from every pore...).

Doug



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