Banksters saved by drug money?

[oddlots]

I guess this shouldn't surprise us:

Vienna-based UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an interview released by Austrian weekly Profil that drug money often became the only available capital when the crisis spiralled out of control last year.
"In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital," Costa was quoted as saying by Profil. "In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor."

http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/...L-UN-DRUGS.php

[World Traveler]

Re: Banksters saved by drug money?

Catherine Austin Fitts has been pointing out for years the importance of illegal cash flows, including drug money, in the banking system.

Another example is the trouble Bank of New York got into a few years ago, laundering money illegally siphoned out of Russia during the Yeltsin years.

Richard Grasso, head of the New York Stock Exchange, flew down to Colombia in 1999 to meet with FARC, the Colombian guerrilla group. It is well-known that FARC makes a lot of money via the drug trade. A strange event indeed.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- It was an unusual pitch by the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, delivered in Colombia's steamy southern savannah to a senior commander of the hemisphere's oldest and largest leftist insurgency: Make peace and expect great economic benefits from global investors.

Grasso stressed that his visit was "in the spirit of a private sector exchange" but told reporters he nevertheless hoped it would "mark the beginning of a new relationship between the FARC and the United States...


http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/-nyses-grasso-met-colombias/story.aspx?guid={571A6F96-E694-4D58-A7A9-F5DBFF132F4A}