SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: arun gera who wrote (21091)8/12/2007 8:53:51 AM
From: Slagle  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 218083
 
Arun,
Could I illustrate any examples? Of course I could, and I could put names and faces with them, but I won't for reasons I think you could understand.

Remember I come from an old Georgia political family and one branch of the family is still very active in Georgia politics on a statewide basis and connected to Washington through the Clinton machine and also through the administration of a US President from Georgia.

As far as I know, these political cousins are honest and are not participating in the off-shore money grab, as so many others are.

I know of individual local politicians encouraged by developers through the off shore conduit. This would include folks I know on a personal basis.

I know of state wide politicians, through the cousins and on a second hand basis, guilty of the same thing. Likewise I have heard the same thing about particular national politicians.

There is one particularly interesting case where a Georgia mayor, a guy I know well, got a twenty year federal sentence back in the 1990's. The event which triggered his federal charges was him getting caught bring several million dollars in cash back from Grand Cayman, but the case was really a sort of "Al Capone" prosecution, in that what they were really after him for was for other things which I will not mention here and all they could charge him with was fraud and IRS charges. He was in jail a while and then out on appeal, being helped along by Clinton insiders. During Clinton's last year in office he had his charges dropped by the justice department, but in return a former high ranking statewide and national politician, who was heavily indebted, had his debt burden removed, with Saudi money and through the former mayor. This one is a VERY complicated web, going back several decades, and involving several countries.

I don't claim that Republicans are any less guilty of this than Democrats.

Many years ago when I was in the Philippines I got the idea that I wanted to try to trade the local stock market, which was hot at the time. I had an account with one of the leading Philippine banks, so I go to the main branch to see the head guy in charge of brokerage accounts. This guy, right away, got the idea that I was from a US political family, and that I was there looking for a hidey place for hot money. And he was oh so willing to help with this anticipated fraud, telling me all about advantage of conducting this crime through the Philippines rather than elsewhere. I thought this was SO funny.

Lots of this stuff is out in the open. Years ago a minor congressional committee, trying to chase down some vanished funds from a US savings and loan that had disappeared into the Aruba bankers maze, was going to investigate funds flows into Aruba. A who's who of the Essenpee 500 and the Clinton administration came down on them like a ton of bricks and shut down the inquiry.

Or course we pay the dictators like Musharraf and Mubarak, Dr. Roberts has written about this. But is it CIA funds, or is it the transnationals doing it? Could be Walmart and GE.

How about Gorbachev? Who bought his Italian villa for him?

ANd there is the interesting case of Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, who tore off to Kuwait on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Philippine papers covered this in great detail.

Democracy, or anything like it is dead unless we can fix this problem. And there is a solution, a very simple one.
Slagle