CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

358 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
All forms of criminal, corrupt, and commercially tax-evading money.
If it’s illegal coming out of here, we would like the knowing receipt
of such money to be illegal arriving there. Surely this is not too much
to ask, that is, if we are together serious about resolving this debt issue.
Please make this adjustment to your laws. If it’s illegal out, then
it’s illegal in.
Weighing Claims
In my punch-up with the Italians, I estimated that they owed my company
twice as much as we owed their company. This got their attention and contributed
to resolving the issue.
Do poor countries have any claim on rich countries? Do weak states
that have been and often continue to be corrupt have any claim on westerners
who facilitate the corruption and add to the plunder?
Severely and moderately indebted borrowers owe about $1.5 trillion,
and this is almost certainly lower than the amount of money that has
passed illegally beyond their borders into foreign accounts. A rough estimate
was offered in Chapter 4 of such accumulated illegal resources
outside developing and transitional economies at perhaps $5 trillion.
There is no way to come up with a figure of illegal money abroad as low
as $1.5 trillion.
Neither I nor anyone else knows how to compare their illegal and corrupt
behavior to our knowing cooperation in their illegal and corrupt behavior.
They stole it, but we helped them steal it, and we willingly received their
stolen property. Does that make them twice as guilty or equally guilty or
some other measure of culpability as compared to us? Whatever it does, it
does not make us in the West innocent of some measure of accountability
for staggering sums of money that have passed illicitly out of poorer
economies into our economies. We were neither passive nor naïve. We knew
what we were doing. And we’re still doing it.
The point is not that the indebted countries have a claim that can be
documented against the West. I don’t know how to compile such a number.
The point is that I don’t think the West has a solid claim against the indebted
countries. Lenders have obligations to borrowers, the least of which
is not to undermine the capacity of the borrower to repay. When lenders go