Hidden Economies

You may be aware of the concept of unofficial economic activity, that which isn’t calculated into the formulas because it’s illegal, black market, or in some other way underground and unreported. There are some good estimates and some bad ones, and it’s hard to know just how much of the actual economic activity is off-the-books.
I’ve said before the coming economic collapse won’t stop TPTB. First, most of them have skimmed off huge amounts of productivity and socked it away somewhere. They won’t be broke. On top of that, however much unofficial economic activity may be going on, here in the US much of it is actually the work of the CIA and other clandestine agencies. Ever hear of Iran-Contra?
That was the nasty bit of work where the CIA was trading arms secretly with Iran to buy back some hostages. The money for the trade came from arms and drug smuggling between the US and the Contra Guerrillas in Nicaragua. More than one exposé has been published showing the CIA has long been involved in drug smuggling. The job of the DEA is to keep the competition under control so the CIA has a free and open market, but somebody forget to explain that to the DEA. That’s why the CIA bombed that Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, because a relatively honest DEA agent on that plane had the goods on CIA drug smuggling in the Middle East.
One of the best books explaining how our foreign policy blunders were almost entirely the result of CIA drug trafficking is The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy. Virtually the entire mess of the Vietnam War was all about keeping the Asian heroin supply in the hands of the CIA, or at least a sizable portion of the profits. It also explains almost all the MIAs and POWs we left behind there. They almost surely knew about this nasty business, and would have spilled the beans back here in the US. It was cheaper than assassinating them.
Perhaps you can extrapolate quite sensibly from the Mena Incident and CIA smuggling of cocaine detailed in the book by Gary Webb, Dark Alliance, and why he was found assassinated, through the current troubles in Mexico with their drug cartels. DEA agents have been severely disciplined when they insisted on inspecting various mass cargo vehicles (such as rail cars) coming out of Mexico. About all they are permitted to catch are symbolic shipments and small timers competing with the CIA.
Do not make the mistake of thinking the worst activities of our government will be curtailed by an economic crash. You and I may well starve, but the CIA will continue as if nothing happened. If anything, their market will be improved and they can gouge the prices at will. And do you suppose one of the reasons we sent troops to Afghanistan was to set the farmers free to grow heroin, which the Taliban had not allowed? There are surely plenty of other reasons, but this one counts large in our policy planning.
I reiterate my conviction TPTB will always have enough money for whatever it is they wish to do. They own The Fed, all the largest banking and investment houses, everything on Wall Street that matters, control all the government agencies they need, and if they need money, it’s as simple as snapping their fingers. When the economy goes down, it will be our economy, not theirs. You shouldn’t imagine it would mean bringing the troops home or anything like that. All the wars, drugs, petroleum, and everything else they like will continue apace until something fundamental for them breaks.
That’s a little farther down the road, just yet.
Addenda: After posting this, I ran across an outstanding summary here at LRC Blog. If any of this post interests you, you’ll want to pursue the blog post at LRC and the links to more information to the primary actors in this nasty business of the narcotics ghost government.