Where’d the Money Go? $12 TRILLION Looted by Kleptocrats
I’ll admit that in my darker hours, I despair of the idea that one person, acting alone, can have any kind of impact on world affairs, other than a negative one.
And then I read something like this - one determined financial whiz quit the big-money McKinsey consultancy to figure out the size and scope of “flight wealth” as it is euphemistically called.
That’s Jim Henry, who was a rising corporate star until he gave it all up to document illicit flows of money and the damage they do to billions of people.
Henry has been the chief economist at McKinsey & Co., arguably the world’s most influential business consultancy, and worked directly under Jack Welch at General Electric. A Harvard-educated economist and lawyer, Henry calls himself an investigative economist. His approach is simple: “Just look at the effing data and solve the puzzle” of mismatches between the various official sources.
From his home in Sag Harbor, near the tip of Long Island, Henry has painstakingly built massive spreadsheets to reveal the mismatches that indicate capital flight. He then fleshes out what the data show by interviewing bankers and bank regulators, government economists, law enforcement officials, and even some of the retainers who help kleptocrats loot the countries they rule.
Some things that jump out:
- 1/3 of the $12 trillion that has been stolen comes from Russia, China, Malaysia, Mexico, and Venezuela, thus proving that the "Oil Curse" is no myth
- The rich stick their money into expensive real estate, art and gold that is locked away in vaults, jewels and yachts - stuff that can be converted to cash by selling to other corrupt thugs
- Large-denomination notes such as the $100 or the 500-euro (sorry, I don't know how to insert that E-with-a-line-through-it icon) note contribute to this looting
No word yet on how much Bain Capital and all the other grinning, backslapping banker shitsmears contribute to this massive crime. Billions of people live in misery. The planet is dying. And all these fuckers can think to do is to buy a bigger house in Bel-Air, or a slightly longer yacht with two helipads.
I’ve been watching the TV show “Billions” recently, so maybe this is a sore subject with me. But good Christ, can we fast-forward to the part where we stick these assholes into tumbrils and chop their greedy, sociopathic heads off?