A lot of - well probably most of - tax dodging and money laundering proceeds from an entirely incorrect premise.
Firstly, you will encounter this idea and attitude that 'oh, well, if I only just didn't have to pay this tax, I'll then have enough and be satisfied and have the money that I want to have...'
And once again this is the same kind of flawed thinking that even people like Ben Bernanke indulged in when he was Chairman of the US Federal Reserve - namely, that money is static.
Money is always moving.
There is no such thing as having the money you want to have - there is only possession of the continuous real capacity to buy the broadest variety of things.
Secondly, there is an attitude of resolving the past; 'if I can but avoid what in essence is already fixed as a fact as owed - then I will be happy and satisfied and have enough.'
So the incorrect premise is that of attempting 'to fix' a past static fact.
We are witnessing in the recent press, stories concerning several banks' involvement with money laundering and tax dodging for cocaine dealers and criminals and celebrities and all kinds of people. And the mechanisms were said to have involved 'secret accounts.' Of course it is clear now that the banks had no such a thing as a truly 'secret' set of client accounts.
People, and corporations are regularly disenfranchised by the regular competing interests in human power - namely, political sources, psychologically impaired administrators and officials, other people seeking power, wives, mistresses, and Lagerfeld's famous 'expensive' friends!
Society is not co-operative. That is why banks cannot be trusted to remain secretive about their clients. Banks will co-operate with the immediate most important 'client,' rather than the counterparty to any past agreement.
Real money laundering and tax dodging are automatic processes not involving retained counterparties.
Here is a scene in the French Charente:
You should note it in respect to the picture in the immediate previous blog entry in which I showed a picture of an old French stone building in the Cognac district of the Charente.
Now, you can see all over the internet, experts' opinions and reviews of Cognac, great and ordinary, and even the industry itself's discussion about the differences between descriptions - VSOP, OP, XO, and so on.
But this is what you must know about Cognac, if you are to know it in truth - a great Cognac, like a great woman, ought not to be attempted to be opened in anything under um thirty, even thirty-five years. And you cannot, if you are one of these modern day marketeers and commercial operators, make money from waiting around for thirty-five years!
Consequently, you are unlikely to have ever encountered an actual Cognac in the style of the Napoleonic Era - regardless of how much you paid, what the brand name is, or any other thing.
You... are unlikely... to have ever tasted a proper Cognac. Full Stop. (Or period, as the Americans say).
Now here is a picture of the Irises, but it is not the same as the painting hanging in the Getty Gallery:
But people want to see what they want to see, rather than what is real. And that is why fools still use banks like HSBC and UBS and so on.
Do not be a fool yourself.
Tax dodging and money laundering are not about the money you think is there, or was there - it is about things which have not happened yet.
What has not happened yet, however, is more real than what has already happened and has drifted into the past - but this is not something readily explained to ordinary people.
Money never changes. But the banking system and banks do, and so do governments and even government systems. I suppose the most amazing thing about money is that when it comes to guarantees, the future is more guarantee-able than the past. Again, not an idea that has currency among those who just lost several billions hoping that HSBC knew what they were doing! And you know what, still they will not get it.
While idiot governments and criminals pretending to be watchers over our safety and security hug closely the money they believe is in their grasp, the world of money itself, has wandered away...