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Wednesday, May 4th, 2016

How the Kleptocrats’ $12 Trillion Heist Helps Keep Most of the World Impoverished

Author:     David Cay Johnston
Source:     The Daily Beast
Publication Date:     05.02.16 9:00 PM ET
 Link: How the Kleptocrats’ $12 Trillion Heist Helps Keep Most of the World Impoverished
Stephan:   David Cay Johnston is one of the economists whose thinking I follow closely.  He is meticulous in his research, has guts, and speaks truth to power again and again. So I take his report on the work of Jim Henry very seriously, and I read it as yet another scathing assessment about the bone deep corruption of international banking. The people of Africa and Asia, have been beggared by kleptocracy, the United States has seen its society devastated by corporate financial maneuvers. Although I will vote for her if she gets the nomination -- how can an ethical person vote for Donald Trump -- my major objection to Hillary Clinton is her closeness to international banking which has made Hillary and Bill Clinton centa-millionaires. I just find it very hard to believe she will turn on the hand that shoveled money into her pocketbook, and changed her life.
MOney compositeAn investigative economist has crunched 45 years of official statistics to discover just how much kleptocrats have plundered from 150 mostly poor nations.

For the first time we have a reliable estimate of how much money thieving dictators and others have looted from 150 mostly poor nations and hidden offshore: $12.1 trillion.

That huge figure equals a nickel on each dollar of global wealth and yet it excludes the wealthiest regions of the planet: America, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

That so much money is missing from these poorer nations explains why vast numbers of people live in abject poverty even in countries where economic activity per capita is above the world average. In Equatorial Guinea, for example, the national economy’s output per person comes to 60 cents for each dollar Americans enjoy, measured using what economists call purchasing power equivalents, yet living standards remain abysmal.

The $12.1 trillion estimate—which amounts to two-thirds of America’s annual GDP being taken out of the economies of much […]

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2 Comments

  1. lightworker22.com on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 3:38 am

    Thanks for this brilliant piece.

  2. Damien McLeod on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 4:49 am

    Kleptocrats, a new word for me, I like it, but I wouldn’t l limited a beautiful word like that to dictators and poor nations. Surely the Koch Bro’s, the 1%ers , the Global Capitalists, etc, would fall into that category.