Lawrence H. Summers a former U.S. treasury secretary believes the 500 euro note and $100 bill are such strong enablers of crime and corruption they should be eliminated. His argument for doing so is rock solid: “The fact that … in certain circles the 500 euro note is known as the ‘Bin Laden’ confirms the arguments against it,” he writes in the Washington Post. Summers makes no mention of going after actual money launderers like HSBC, which admittedly laundered a billion dollars for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and Colombia’s Norte del Valle without any of the banking execs spending a day in prison.
Boing Boing reader Nemomen says:
Larry may be right every once in a while (perhaps by accident), but given his past support for and architecting of deregulation of the U.S financial system (including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) while he was in the Clinton admin., along with support for the disastrous privatization of the economies of the Post-Soviet states that’s lead to massive human suffering and political failure, as well as running a program with directors using their policy/formation to profit from the policies they advocated in Russia, as well as gambling with Harvard’s endowment and losing the school $1.8 billion, triggering layoffs and budget slashing, I think we’d do well to find advice from those with a less predictable and disastrous track record. To be fair he was probably right when he called the Winklevoss twins “Assholes,” though. Why does this corrupt tool get attention and respect?