Managing a free market is expensive.

Billion Dollar Whale (2018)
Authors: Tom Wright & Bradley Hope

The world has all the resources to feed Man but not his greed. Going through the book, it is evident that the world only caters for the high-heeled.  Try borrowing a couple hundreds of bucks from a banking institution or transfer some money. The paperwork and the confusing legalese jargon that one has to go through would make the borrower feel like a criminal.

All these formalities remain so, formalities, when it comes to the megarich. Rules are purposely made to rein and ruin the poor.  Money flows seamlessly from the rich to the rich, across borders and without sureties. Compliance procedures are ignored. Standard practices take a back seat. The hidden forces from unknown places show their presence. The rest of the public, being oblivious or choosing to stay ignorant just join the gravy train.

The whole establishment seems aware of everybody's misconduct around the world. Adequate laws have been enacted to curb any wrongdoing. Still, crime happens. Doing business has become so competitive, and people have grown impatient to be on top of their pile of cash and pot of gold that they bend the rules. They do mind getting caught as the long arm of the law takes a mighty long time to pin them down. Members of their legal teams are getting increasingly smarter to get them off the hooks on technicalities. Whatever loss is made, the bankers still reward themselves handsomely. By the time their foolhardy comes to light, they are long gone, and the tracks have disappeared long ago. The international laws are all impotent at best in preventing wrongdoings or at retrieving the laundered money to laymen, people of the country, upon whose shoulders the brunt of the economic downturn falls.

The establishments have accepted the fact doing business is risky and losing money to cheats and running afoul with the law are part and parcel of doing business, especially with the leaders of tyrannical governments of the third world. Money linked with developed countries are so regulated that it cannot be moved at it, With developing countries, their leaders are given carte blanche to treat their kitty and the national coffers as one and the same bottomless pit.

When the cat is belled, the mice come out to play!

With excellent skills of investigative journalism, these two Wall Street Journal reporters (Wright and Hope) explore the events of how a young punk cajoles the royalties of Saudi and Emirates, the Malaysian Government via its investment company 1MDB, the Hollywood fraternity and the whole banking network to finance his mega projects and to sustain his decadent party-popping and extravagant lifestyle. Jho Low, a Penangite and a Wharton graduate, set into motion an elaborate scheme to move unprecedented amounts of money from one shell company to another to confuse investigators. His evil act is a learning experience to demonstrate how modern fraud is conducted. The scale of the heist is a record of sorts and manage to topple the ruling Malaysian Government.

If one were to look carefully at most of the shady dealings that happened here, it is evident that the laws are there, but most people either decided to close one eye or crumbled to the lure of a big windfall. So, the fault is not the legislation but the human factor itself. They say the free market will correct itself. I suppose this is what meant by remedying itself - that the wrongdoers will be purged from the system, the system finds new grounds, only to be assaulted by new tricksters, correct and the cycle continues. This must be the basis of the free market.

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