Correct. I'm just restating it because I find it amazing given what that implies for grey market and white collar crime.

It is basically a public admission that the Government is completely ineffective with anything vaguely resembling a competent criminal. It makes me question if we are allocating law enforcement resources correctly.

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Edit due to rate limit:

> I know that sounds far-fetched. Our government employs many smart, capable people in FBI and SEC that could certainly stop it.

I'm honestly not sure it is as far-fetched as it sounds. Resources appear to be allocated to "narcotics" and "terrorist" buckets very heavily with little regard to the impact on less glamorous investigations. My concern is this allocation may have opened very large holes around threats that are unlikely to create headlines.

Smart, capable people can only do so much if they lack the resources to investigate people with serious and competent OpSec.

> I'm just... paranoid... that the Le Roux case means bigger things might be going on that would do way more damage than addicts getting drugs reliably.

Honestly, I don't think you are paranoid. I think if something like that happened the current investigatory capability of the various agencies appears to be unable to do much if such a plot was competently executed.

That said, I think it is unlikely anyone would attempt to execute an action on such a scale because he clearly had to flee to another country.

I think legal means are more effective on a risk-adjusted basis in terms of financial costs. The critical slice of people whose opinions can be shifted between candidates seem vulnerable to advertising and rhetoric. Truth remains malleable enough that sufficient funds expended can create it during the election cycle and that is the only real control that matters.

> You'd think that with this level of incompetence a few banks could straight up foreclose on millions of mortgages cooked up Enron style. Hell, they might one-up Paul Le Roux by buying or installing a Treasury head. At this rate, you'd think they'd cut a deal for immunity while keeping lots of money due to less recklessness. They might even use the complexity of their operations to negotiate for more money to prevent fall-out coming back on everyone else. Might cost $1-6 trillion dollars in such a scenario.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure our system has largely legalized bribery via campaign contributions and the fact they can keep them on retirement.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/campaign-finance-senators-hou...

> Turns out that despite strict Federal Election Commission rules, Bayh and other exiting elected officials do have ways to keep unspent political contributions.

So I'm not sure I'm the best person to talk to about this. I'd just reinforce your paranoia since I think you are largely correct on the political side.

On the commercial side, I think that is honestly why we have so many problems like LIBOR fixing that go unnoticed:

http://archive.is/vMZV5

> Simply put, then, it seems the misreporting of Libor rates may have been common practice since at least 1991. Although the difference between the reported rate and the actual rate might seem small, the total amount of money involved is material, given that Libor rates affect contracts worth hundreds of trillions. Also important is what such misreporting says about the culture.

I think this misallocation has led to alot of the recent banking scandals, honestly, and its disturbing to see further evidence in a secret-now-public criminal case that is unrelated.