Sunday, September 27, 2020

Revenge of the Money Launderers — Matt Taibbi

The "FinCen Files" story reveals: getting caught not only doesn’t stop the world's biggest banks from moving dirty money, it may encourage them
Substack (subscription may be required)
Revenge of the Money Launderers
Matt Taibbi

5 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“ Money Launderers” = figurative language

Peter Pan said...

Honey Launderers are a real problem where I come from.

lastgreek said...

"The "FinCen Files" story reveals: getting caught not only doesn’t stop the world's biggest banks from moving dirty money, it encourages them"

Of course it encourages it them. It's also free advertising to attract future rich clients.

"“ Money Launderers” = figurative language""

Matt, can you please directly state what you are trying to say as well. :)

"Honey Launderers are a real problem where I come from."

Maple syrup launderers where I come from :(

Matt Franko said...

My larger point is that these people are trained in employment of the figurative to represent the literal and that trained methodology is improper for use in administering our real material systems..,

Science people are alternatively trained in employment of abstractions to represent the real and this is by far the better methodology to use in administering our real material systems..,

Tom Hickey said...

What you are missing is that the stuff you are referring to is aimed at a popular audience, some at high level and other at a general level. The whole point of popular presentation is to communicate by dumbing down the technical so people can understand and, moreover, will be receptive to the communication.

That means for a general audience, no real science and especially no math. For a higher level, the communication may be sophisticated, but the higher level audience mostly realizes that it is still dumbed down and for the real deal one has to read the scientific material along with all the equations.

n fact, one could say that a lot of popular rightly is really a sort of propaganda for a particular view. That most not be the case so much for natural science or life science, but it is in social science and especially in relation to "policy science" which econ, and especially macro, is represented as by the profession.

Hopefully, when scientists and technical people are working operationally they are using their technical tools and not the popular. I think we can assume that in the case of physical and life sciences, but I am not so sure in the social sciences and especially the policy sciences.