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Squillions: How money laundering won

lrb.co.uk

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Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#111

Post by cucumber3732842 »

laszlojamf wrote: post #18

" Bullough gives the example of a Mexican drug dealer who smuggles product across the border to the US. The drug in question would once have been marijuana, then cocaine, and is now likely to be fentanyl, which is cheap to manufacture and easy to conceal. The drugs are sold in the US for cash, which is used to buy, say, agricultural equipment. " Wouldn't the person buying the tractor in the US for $$$ have to show wh…

These people aren't walking into the dealer. They have tractor dealers in Mexico.

They're paying cash for a 20yo bulldozer that leaks enough to be a liability, loading it on a trailer and sending it home.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#112

Post by nout »

cyberax wrote: post #30
photios wrote: post #29

In this day and age "money laundering" just means "not bending over and letting the state tax you to oblivion". TFA is just scare mongering. People need to learn about Bitcoin.

> People need to learn about Bitcoin. Indeed. Bitcoin is now a major player in the money laundering business. NFTs are so much better than fake pocelain!

That's not true. Most money laundering is in USD and then stablecoins (USDT, etc). NFTs are a thing of the past and the big majority was not on bitcoin anyway. So no, bitcoin is not a major player. If you would completely eradicate bitcoin (which is not possible), you would solve (I'm guesstimating) 0.3% of money laundering.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#113

Post by bdr »

seanhunter wrote: post #42

Aside: The author of this article wrote a fantastic novel that not a lot of people know about called “The Debt to Pleasure”. One of the best instances of the “unreliable narrator” I’ve ever read.

I enjoyed it too, a long time ago, and some sentences have stuck with me. This is the first time I’ve seen someone mention it. Felt inspired by Pale Fire.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#115

Post by UltraSane »

tasuki wrote: post #114

I guess I don't really understand it. I understand how a bank robbery leads to dirty money - the bank has the serial numbers. In what way is money from selling drugs "dirty"? Why does it even need laundering?

Dirty means it comes from illegal activities. You need to create a plausible clean source of the money before you can safely spend it.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#116

Post by anticorporate »

buran77 wrote: post #107
humoctopus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My business needs to insure cash that we keep at the shop in case we get robbed, but that amount is much much less than we pay in credit card fees. In other words, we would much prefer customers to pay with debit or cash.

What about the extra costs of handling cash, the practical effort to count it, prepare it for transport (including bags, counters, and so on), transporting to the bank, increased security, possibly more cash registers, counterfeit detectors etc.? Overall is it usually more expensive to take credit cards than cash or just in particular cases?

Retailer here: Most of these costs are fairly fixed. We have to have a safe, bags, armored transport, staff training on counterfeit detection, etc. whether the percentage of our sales in cash is 8% or 80%. The few costs that are variable are still far, far less than the processing fees.

It's also worth noting there are also huge fixed costs for credit card transactions. We're currently upgrading our pinpads and it's been an absolute nightmare to get the right parts in just for physically connecting the damn things to our counters, we lost almost a whole day of backend POS access for our vendor to push a required update, and I'm looking at more fees to be able to support other types of cards which require POS certification.

We strongly prefer our customers use cash.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#117

Post by UltraSane »

reconnecting wrote: post #67

The true crime is involving a multinational corporation in a transaction between two private individuals at the local market. I like cash because it's direct, and where possible I avoid paying by card because I don't want the merchant to pay fees to third parties. In Europe, most of the time, using cash doesn't imply avoiding taxes on the transaction, but having cash is essentially sovereignty .

I use a credit card that I pay off in full every month and I get 2% cash back paid for by interest other users pay.

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#118

Post by [deleted] »

UltraSane wrote: post #115
tasuki wrote: post #114

I guess I don't really understand it. I understand how a bank robbery leads to dirty money - the bank has the serial numbers. In what way is money from selling drugs "dirty"? Why does it even need laundering?

Dirty means it comes from illegal activities. You need to create a plausible clean source of the money before you can safely spend it.

[deleted]

Re: Squillions: How money laundering won

#120

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #9

Alternative to archive.ph Disable Javascript and CSS For example curl https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n09/john-lanchester/squillions \ |sed '1s/^/ /' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm There are also Firefox add-ons that can do this as well Or use a text-only browser links https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n09/john-lanchester/squillions links -dump https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n09/john-lanchester/squillions

To be clear, there are Firefox add-ons distributed at addons.mozilla.org that allow the user to add/modify/delete HTTP response headers and bodies

One can use these to insert a Content-Security-Policy, either via HTTP header or tag, that disables Javascript and CSS

Personally, I use a local forward proxy to insert HTTP response headers, not a browser add-on, for experimentation and learning

As a matter of practice, I read HTML with a customised text-only browser that does not auto-load resources, nor does it interpret Javascript or CSS. There is no DNS prefetching or other nonsense. As such, a "Content Security Policy" is not necessary

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