Word: long
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...conceal their assets for purposes that are completely legal, or dubious at worst, the systems set up for their convenience can be perversely efficient at helping drug barons launder as much as $100 billion a year in U.S. proceeds. "It is hard to understand why we failed for so long to institute adequate controls," says Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, chairman of the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations. The state of regulation is "so lackadaisical," says Kerry, "it's almost damnable...
What makes enforcement so difficult is a financial murkiness that has long frustrated tax collectors as they search for dirty money afloat in the world's oceans of legitimate payments. The multibillion-dollar flow of black money, the profits from criminal enterprise, moves through the world's financial institutions as part of a vastly larger quantity of gray money, as bankers call it. This dubious, laundered cash amounts to an estimated $1 trillion or more each year. Often legitimately earned, this money has an endless variety of sources: an Argentine businessman who dodges currency-control laws to get his savings...
...spend-and-borrow era of the 1980s, the gusher of flight capital into the U.S. from Latin America helped finance America's deficits. As in Hollywood, not many politicians were concerned about where the money was coming from. Alarmed by the tide, House Democrat John Bryant of Texas has long pushed for legislation to require disclosure of the identity of foreign investors. But for years, the Reagan Administration refused to go along, claiming that such openness might scare away capital...
George Bush normally distrusts "big moments," and this one did not last long. His chummy session with Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta restored momentum to U.S.-Soviet relations and gave a boost to what Bush called his "new thinking" about the changes in the Communist world. Yet the President had barely left his joint press conference with Gorbachev when he encountered serious questions about his plans to encourage perestroika and to deliver on his promises in time...
...batteries. Reuse bottles, containers and shopping bags, or at least choose paper bags over plastic at the supermarket. And do not be fooled by the BIODEGRADABLE label on some new plastic products. They may not in fact break down, and those that do may take as long as 500 years. When something tears, wears or breaks, repair it instead of replacing...