"What does count as suspicious behaviour, however, is the White House’s response to the public’s legitimate interest in a political appointee’s previous job, which involved significant dealings with Russia in a context of financial risk. The White House has been accused of blocking details about Wilbur Ross’s engagement with the Bank of Cyprus and its Russian investors, thus warranting the question of why. Is this simply a power play, or are they seeking to hiding any other information that might be divulged as a result? The Trump administration’s tactics on this will be interesting to watch." x Fascinating profile of the delusional, batshit LtGen Michael Flynn. He thinks what he did was "capitalism." https://t.co/If7vIPWXj8 Ã¢ÂÂ Eric Garland (@ericgarland) June 18, 2017 Capitalism with a crony’s face … layered onto a number of intersecting social, financial, and data networks. This vile paper-money and funding system; this system of Dutch descent, begotten by Bishop Burnet and born in hell; this system has turned everything into a gamble. There are hundreds of men who live by being the agents to carry on gambling... many of the gamblers live in the country; they write up to their gambling agent, whom they call their stockbroker; he gambles according to their order; and they receive the profit or stand to the loss. Is it possible to conceive a viler calling than that of an agent for the carrying on of gambling! And yet the vagabonds call themselves gentlemen. William Cobbett, Rural Rides 1830

The International Regulation of Money Laundering

Mónica Serrano and Paul Kenny

Global Governance

Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2003), pp. 433-439[/caption] In keeping with his materialist view of history, Marx expected banking to be subordinated to the needs of industrial capitalism. Equity investment – followed by public ownership of the means of production under socialism – seemed likely to replace the interest-extracting “usury capital” inherited from antiquity and feudal times: debts mounting up at compound interest in excess of the means to pay, culminating in crises marked by bank runs and property foreclosures. But as matters have turned out, the rentier interests mounted a Counter-Enlightenment to undermine the reforms that promised to liberate society from special privilege. Instead of promoting capital investment in an alliance with industry and government, financial planners have sponsored a travesty of free markets. Realizing that income not taxed is free to be capitalized, bought and sold on credit, and paid out as interest, bankers have formed an alliance between finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) to free land rent and monopoly rent (as well as debt-leveraged “capital” gains) from taxation. The result is that today’s economy is burdened with property and financial claims that Marx and other critics deemed “fictitious” – a proliferation of financial overhead in the form of interest and dividends, fees and commissions, exorbitant management salaries, bonuses and stock options, and “capital” gains (mainly debt-leveraged land-price gains). And to cap matters, new financial modes of exploiting labor have been innovated, headed by pension-fund capitalism and privatization of Social Security. As economic planning has passed from government to the financial sector, the alternative to public price regulation and progressive taxation is debt peonage. Michael Hudson www.tandfonline.com/...

How often can one think that money laundering has no labor effects because it is the accumulated finance capital surplus being transformed and exploited.

Similarly the machinations of finance capitalism manifest themselves in indulgences like yacht racing, where there is no real relation to the sponsors from vast global neocapitalism selling fossil fuel, upscale automobiles, and computer software.

And yet there are major national elements at work representing North/South and the 1% / 99%. Now one can see how they affect significant geopolitical and demographic change as state capitalism in the post-soviet period has evolved into kleptocratic crony capitalism.

What’s more galling is how US ruling class clowns have paraded exploitation as a mass spectacle complete with security theater, demonizing immigration, the arts, and race/class/gender differences.

Debt peonage arising from the dislocating taxes from land rent and monopoly rents is a key to the current crises of social division.