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Conservative Hudson Institute Discovers the Klept, Gets Worried [1]

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Date: 2023-02-21  

Wherein neoconservatives begin to suspect they just might be the useful idiots of Wall Street.

Having learned nothing from the first Gilded Age, neocons are now discovering we’re in the second Gilded Age. Better late than never.

Did you Kossacks realize there is a global crime ring of kleptocrats, plutocrats, banks, and secretive law firms exacerbating income inequality, evading taxes, selling weapons to warlords, keeping developing nations from developing while pillaging their resources, undermining democracy and the rule of law, destroying the environment with wild abandon, and facilitating the global drug and sex trades? This is FOR REAL, peeps.

The very serious Journal of Democracy, courtesy of Johns Hopkins U, just published in their January edition a book review by the former Executive Director of the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, Charles G. Davidson. The book is Invisible Trillions: How Financial Secrecy Is Imperiling Capitalism and Democracy—and the Way to Renew Our Broken System, by Raymond W. Baker.

As Davidson relays to us, “Vladimir Putin may be the world’s richest man person,” but nobody really knows cuz he hides his dirty money all over the world via a “financial-secrecy system!” Who could have thought this would happen after a neoliberal approach to Russian political and economic development was applied following the collapse of the Soviet Union? What a surprise.

“Light has been shone on this system and it is now staring us in the face, flouting the rule of law and the social contract of democracy. The kleptocrats, criminals, and far too many dishonest wealthy people who escape into this system have effectively abdicated from society and from paying the taxes needed to sustain it. What Baker denounces here is part and parcel of democratic decline: The financial-secrecy system has undermined social consensus and public trust, sparking anger and polarization across the West. […] That this problem has progressed largely unnoticed should not be surprising.”

It’s all quite a revelation. We had no idea and Davidson even refrains from sounding pompous about it. Thankfully, the Hudson Institute is coming to our rescue. Rightwingers understand that financial crime is a very bad problem. By God! It’s even a national security threat.

Now, in all seriousness my dear Kossacks, did I mention that Bill (William P.) Barr is a “distinguished fellow” of the Hudson Institute? Even the neocon-adjacent don’t like this guy anymore.

I tell you, it’s almost as though these conservatives and former neocons aren’t really even trying.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/21/2154180/-Conservative-Hudson-Institute-Discovers-the-Klept-Gets-Worried

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