CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

Capitalism’s Achilles Heel 339
is no way to effectively curtail some forms of dirty money while at the same
time rolling out the red carpet for other forms of dirty money.
More than 60 sovereignties sell their laws to criminal and commercial
buyers. Well over a million dummy entities exist for the purpose of subterfuge
and evasion. Much of the world’s money passes through systems and
sites designed to handle illicit proceeds.
Corporations ask their people to indulge in what may be criminal offenses,
without ever batting an eye or informing them of possible risks. The
point is not that employees may be caught. The point is that they may be
criminals without ever knowing it, so normalized have become the abuses to
trade and financial transactions. When corporations do it, they lend support
to drug dealers, human traffickers, smugglers, arms merchants, and even terrorists
who step easily into the same channels.
I left Part I with a very simple question. Can the case be made that it is
worth it?
Illicit proceeds, the first station I have addressed along the continuum
threatening to capitalism, morphs straight into poverty and inequality for
billions of people, the second part of the continuum. The money that illegally
passes out of developing and transitional economies into western accounts
is two to three times the total amount of money available to the
poorest 20 percent of the world. Dirty money causes disaster for millions
and deprivation for billions. No other economic condition generates so
much harm for so many people. A system that continues to support such
massive illegal flows, sustaining poverty, and contributing to historically
high levels of global inequality, requires fundamental rethinking.
I have repeatedly called attention to the 70 to 90 percent of global income
that accrues to the richest 20 percent of the world’s population.
This is the biggest threat to capitalism, the concentration of income at
the top that, unless dramatically altered, can bring the system down. But
capitalism is seductive; when it makes us rich we lose our criticism of its
shortcomings.
Many people believe we can ignore the gap between rich and poor and
let trickle-down economics and other natural forces narrow global disparities
over time. This is tantamount to betting the capitalist system on some
future changes that are not now apparent. What are far more evident are
processes at work that worsen the gap or forestall its moderation. Under
current conditions, global economic convergence is hardly foreseeable.