Financial and political power are two sides of one coin.

We all know the rich are getting richer, and the super-rich are getting super-richer. This reality is illustrated in the chart of income gains, the vast majority of which have flowed to the top .01%–not the top 1%, or the top .1% — to the very tippy top of the wealth-power pyramid:

Though all sorts of reasons have been offered to explain this trend–I’ve described the mechanisms of financialization here for years–two that don’t attract much mainstream media attention are money laundering and control fraud, i.e. changing the rules of what’s legal so what was illegal yesterday is legal today–presto-magico, illegally skimmed wealth is now “legal.”

Correspondent JD recently submitted an excellent summary of the progression from Money Laundering 1.0 to Money Laundering 2.0:

Money laundering 1.0 is making dirty money legal, control fraud is manipulating the ‘legal’ options, and money laundering 2.0 is making sure that ‘legal’ fortunes are not taxed and cannot be clawed back.”

Conventional money laundering works by shifting ill-gotten gains into legitimate banks and/or assets. Ill-gotten gains can be laundered quite easily by buying homes or businesses (in the U.S., Europe, etc.) with cash. The home or enterprises can then be sold and the net is now legit.

Another kind of money laundering opens shell accounts in U.S. states with no income tax or offshore tax havens and then transfers intellectual property or other income-producing assets into the shell accounts.

As JD pointed out in his email to me, control fraud is a profoundly insightful concept presented by author William K. Black, the essence of which is that those with control/ power in centralized institutions can defraud the institutions and their users/citizenry by modifying the rules of what’s legal/allowable, and do so legally, i.e. within the letter of the law if not the intent of the law.

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