At The Nation, David Dayen writes—How Banks Want To Make It Easier To Launder Money. An excerpt:
The persistent whistling you’re hearing around financial centers in Manhattan is coming from contented bank executives. Since the election of Donald Trump, their companies’ stock prices have soared, amid expectations of regulatory abandonment. Their former colleague ex–Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn is setting policy inside the White House, and their former lawyer Jay Clayton plans to blind the SEC to their money-making schemes. If Republicans can get their act together on major legislation, bank executives will be rewarded with a triple bounty of tax cuts: on their corporate taxes, their individual rates, and the Obamacare taxes that fall entirely on the wealthy.
But what’s the old saying about giving someone an inch and their taking a mile? Instead of smiling at their good fortune and getting down to the business of ripping off clients for profit, the world’s largest banks want to do less to stop drug lords, tax cheats, and terrorists from moving money through their institutions—at precisely the moment when the regulators are poised to walk off the field themselves.
The ask comes in the form of a report the Clearing House Association, a financial-industry trade group, released last week. The report proposed numerous reforms to the anti–money laundering (AML) compliance process, complaining that “the nation’s financial firms are effectively deputized to prevent, identify, investigate, and report criminal activity.”
Financial firms are forced into this duty because of a federal law, the Bank Secrecy Act, in place since 1970. Since banks, you know, perform banking transactions, they are uniquely positioned to detect when a drug lord or a sketchy hedge fund is trying to wash illicit money through legitimate channels. When transactions are larger than $5,000, or have hallmarks of terrorist financing, tax evasion, or money laundering, they must file a suspicious activity report (SAR) and deliver them to federal regulators. This provides raw data for law enforcement to connect the dots on criminal activity.
The report would have you believe that these SARs are so burdensome (“carefully crafted, highly detailed”) that they cost the industry more than it takes to fund the FBI. So to be clear, here’s what’s in a SAR: the subject of the transaction’s personal information, the date of the transaction, the name of the bank where it occurred and its contact information, and a written description of the activity.
That’s it. [...]
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
“Slowly, however, the truth is dawning upon women, and still more slowly upon men, that woman is no stepchild of nature, no Cinderella of fate to be dowered only by fairies and the Prince; but that for her and in her, as truly as for and in man, life has wrought its great experiences, its master attainments, its supreme human revelations of the stuff of which worlds are made. That woman has been but a "silent partner" in the building of the outer temples of thought and action during the ages when she has been denied the tools of self-expression in art and science, in literature and politics, is no proof that her contribution has been small even in these lines. It is an old error of man to forget to put quotation marks where he borrows from a woman's brain!”
~Anna Garlin Spencer, Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—Super PACs got 25% of their cash from just five donors:
In the immortal words of California's Jesse "Big Daddy" Unruh, "Money is the mother's milk of politics." This year, billionaire donors have turned it into cream. Just five of the ultra-wealthy have contributed a fourth of all the money received by Super PACs that are having a powerful impact on the elections.
Individuals are limited to $2500 direct contributions to a candidate's campaign. But there is no limit on contributions to Super PACS. These aren't supposed to coordinate with the campaigns, but that is a joke.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin rounds up news from the livelier town hall meetings, plus thoughts on shared values, the Milo crash, and Trump’s penchant for generals. The 4th Circuit upholds Maryland’s assault weapons ban. And an in-depth look at just WTF Comey was up to.
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