8-26-96. FiTi: "Cleaning up the global economy. Policymakers must ponder the effects of money laundering." Is money laundering - as opposed to the crimes which produce it - necessarily such a bad thing? As Vito Tanzi notes in his IMF paper, the fact that money launderers are not fussy about economic fundamentals can help governments continue to pursue lax fiscal and monetary policies if they are equally unfussy about the origin of capital inflows. A pact with the devil, perhaps. But for many countries it may seem more attractive than signing up to a global financial market equivalent of Neighbourhood Watch. + Money Laundering and the International Financial System, IMF working paper, May 1996. ----- http://jya.com/clenup.txt (7 kb) CLE_nup