CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

countries, amassing to trillions of dollars lodged in the most advanced nations’
repositories, arrive at a punishing cost. What we have sown in the century-long
business of moving corrupt and commercial dirty money we now
reap in the inflow of drug, criminal, and terrorist money.
CHALLENGE
Magnitudes and Misunderstandings 205
I have referred to the annual flow of roughly a trillion dollars of dirty money
and the mechanisms and structures that facilitate such a flow as the biggest
loophole in the free-market system. Yet, it is a loophole that many people, particularly
in western private sectors, particularly in countries that receive most of
this money, want to maintain. Now it’s time for these people to step forward
and make their case for dirty money. The first of my three challenges, focusing
on the pervasive illegalities that characterize global capitalism, is as follows:
Memorandum
To: Western Business and Banking Communities
From: Capitalism’s Achilles Heel
Subject: Challenge: Case for Dirty Money
Assume any reasonably developed estimate of illicit financial flows
passing (1) globally and (2) specifically out of developing and
transitional countries into western countries. Make the case that the
benefits of such flows or any part of such flows outweigh the costs. In
appraising such costs, take into consideration the impact that dirty
money has on what are generally considered to be major global
concerns, including: drugs, racketeering, human trafficking, illegal
arms dealing, transnational crime in other forms, terrorism,
corruption, tax evasion, poverty and failed states, plus the potential
criminalization of corporate personnel. Produce the requested study
for western countries in general or for your country in particular.
The challenge calls for works supporting the idea that dirty money or
any part of it is good for the West or any country in the West. If the implicit
cost–benefit analysis can hold up—that many forms of dirty money are
good for western economies—then it is time for adherents to this view to
present it as an explicit cost–benefit analysis. Make the case that the costs are
worth the benefits.