It’s a sad day for me. I was listening to The 1A, an NPR talk show run out of WAMU in Washington, DC. The interview was of Tom Burgis, a brave investigative journalist who has connected the dots to show how the US real estate market has been a primary source to launder the money skimmed out of the African, South American, and former Soviet states whose citizens have been stolen from by elected kleptocrats and their henchmen. The brains and persistence of Burgis are why this post is tagged as inspiration. Burgis shows how the only way to get by in such societies is to become a criminal and refuse to relinquish power. He also shows how our current president was used to launder this type of money. New York real estate, in a country ruled by law, is a preferred investment for all the bad actors. Our current president, furthermore, is trying to make it easier for these types of transactions by working to eliminate the remaining law that the USA has used to restore stolen funds to the citizens of countries all over the world. We really seem to be teetering on the edge of a cliff, where the experiment in European led democracy could easily tip into a complete failure, leading to the ongoing violence toward and poverty of all but a few.
Read about the interview, or listen to it here, to see where we’re headed if we don’t wake up:
https://the1a.org/segments/kleptopia-tom-burgis-dirty-money/
Once a country slips down that hole, it’s a long, steep, painful, doubt filled climb back out. Just ask the the inhabitants of Kazakhstan.