On Sun, 8 Feb 1998, William Kirk wrote:
> When we see the way the gangster of late, the late R. Maxwell, and how he
> had a clear run to accumulate hundreds of millions, leaving millions of
> people without pensions, it makes you wonder. He is not the only one. The
> department in the UK that deals with serious crime or gangsterism does
> not do al all well, and it is not through lack of effort. Trailing
> electronic money is a nightmare; to regulate it in a way that prevents
> gangsterism hinders 'free trade'.
> If money systems were made smaller, and were based on the exchange of
> goods, then I tend to think the problem would be reduced. Any comments on
> the fragmentation issue?
Actually, it's not that hard to track all that money; computers do that
constantly, and the superrich know exactly how much they're worth and
where they're investing, otherwise they don't stay superrich for very
long. The real problem isn't chasing electrons, it's Chase Manhattan
Bank and its ilk -- all that liquidity ultimately ends up in some form of
interest-bearing or dividend-paying instrument (cash by itself, even in
electronic form, just sits around and gets devalued by inflation). So you
have to go after the bond markets, the foreign exchange markets, and the
foreign direct investment markets -- which means taxing the hell out of
the giant multinationals, taxing Wall Street punters via a tax on
speculation (a "Tobin tax", so named after the Keynesian economist who
suggested it in the Seventies), and taxing large-scale capital via a
Swiss-style wealth tax.
-- Dennis