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Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by cm2187 on Saturday February 09, 2019 @08:11AM (#19122074)
I'd keep in mind three things.

First, the direct consequence of tightening controls on payments to prevent money laundering is that you are tightening the control of government on anything happening in a society. I don't think any libertarian leaning people at least should be ok with this level of control. Like how would cannabis would have ever been legalised if a parallel, illegal market didn't exist to the point that the consensus moved toward legalisation.

Second, as a private company, how to you go about ensuring that every single one of your customers is legit. Any paper you are given can be forged. Any explanation can be made up. You don't have police investigation powers. A car salesman has no way to check that you are not buying a car with profits from a ponzi scheme. Banks are becoming increasingly invasive in term of questions and documents they require, but this is an impossible task. Even auditors don't spot fraud every time (see Patisserie Valerie in the UK for a recent example).

Third, in a 200,000 employees organisation, how do you ensure that every single one of your employees is honnest. At that scale it is just statistically impossible to not have a fraud somewhere. So how do these calls to bankrupt the company with fines if anything wrong happens (that I read in other comments) makes sense?

Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by kazagistar on Saturday February 09, 2019 @01:29PM (#19123772)
It's easy. The same 1% rule applies here, in the sense that most of your customers never have seen the sort of money that laundering would involve. But of course, banks are tripping over themselves to make their short list of richest customers happy, when these are the shortlist that need the most scrutiny. It's a case of perverse incentives.
Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by someguydave on Saturday February 09, 2019 @09:00PM (#19125955)
If you make a deposit of $10,000 in cash that's considered suspicious money laundering. That's one third of the median US salary. I would hardly consider that kind of surveillance to be limited to the 1%.
Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by someguydave on Saturday February 09, 2019 @09:03AM (#19122306)
Agreed. Regulating “dirty money” is equivalent to regulating speech, and is therefore unconstitutional.
Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by mindslight on Saturday February 09, 2019 @04:53PM (#19124870)
The parallels are strong:

- Lazily creates an appearance of addressing a problem by going after a sometimes-associated activity

- Collateral damage to activities that aren't necessarily wrong, but that upset some group

- Only affects the little guy (to the major players, it's just a cost of doing business)

- Creates a purportedly-neutral cover on what is essentially political persecution

- Based on the God delusion that assumes some ambient authority is capable of passing correct judgment on every situation

Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by someguydave on Saturday February 09, 2019 @08:57PM (#19125945)
Don't forget:

- Rationalizes the creation of a massive bureaucracy to control (and centralize) what beforehand was considered normal and local in scope.

- Rationalizes universal surveillance by unaccountable individuals in federal bureaucracies against the entire population. This can and has been abused in the case of bank disclosures required by anti-money laundering laws: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-arrests-treasury-...

(Note that the so-called "suspicious activity reports" she leaked were merely transactions that met some criteria like being above a threshold amount).

Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by chatmasta on Saturday February 09, 2019 @05:20PM (#19125040)
This brings to mind an article, "Money Laundering is Financial Thoughtcrime." [0]

[0] https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/money-laundering-is-f...

Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by ur-whale on Saturday February 09, 2019 @10:23AM (#19122690)
Assuming you're not being sarcastic: Hear Hear.
Re:The Cost of Dirty Money by someguydave on Saturday February 09, 2019 @09:01PM (#19125962)
No I'm not being sarcastic, I'm amazed that Americans put up with the level of government intrusion in our financial lives.