Come on back! I miss your thorough and thoughtful comments on Mexico. When the 'fake recovery' is over, we may be headed that way, I'm afraid.

Antifa and others made a point about big banks assisting in legitimizing drug lord income. Here's a story from Bloomberg on just that.

Excellent summary. Legalizing marijuana would take a huge chunk out of the cartels revenue stream. But, as for the rest of the problem, we're pretty helpless other than behaving like a good neighbor and avoiding helping anyone down there fix elections. That's a tall order too.

This will be an issue in 2012 because it ties into the xenophobia, as you correctly pointed out. It will be interesting to see how the Democrats handle this. Latino citizens here are focused on their lives just like any other citizens. But they are attuned to the overt and covert prejudice. I truly hope the Mexican people come up with their own solution before the COIN drops.

California holds the key to a portion of Mexico's problems. If legalization passes and jumps the hurdle of federal interference, that will kill off a big chunk of the illegal market. I wasn't aware that Mexican marijuana ended up in dispensaries. In that case, the solution is part of the problem, on multiple levels.

Drugs is really big money. Witness how Wells Fargo/Wachovia just got their wrist slapped for laundering $375 billion in drug funds over the past few years. They were so exceedingly stupid and sloppy about their methods that the Feds were forced to give them a 1% fine and make them vow to be better people in future. Woop de doo. Their offices were all open the next morning at 9 AM as usual.

Every bank, hedge fund, pension fund -- Wall Street itself is full of drug money. It cannot go anywhere else than into and through the banks or it can't move. It has to be "deemed" honest cash in order to be turned into electronic digits that can be wired around the world.

The banks do this "deeming" (laundering) under rules they wrote for themselves and had Congress okay late at night. These rules are in fact the most efficient way they could devise to move huge amounts of cash into the system with a fig leaf of plausible deniability. This fig leaf is what you are witnessing when you see a couple million dollars an hour being submitted by long lines of anonymous Mexican peasants at any one the many hundreds of little corner 'cash transfer' shops in little towns and villages in Mexico. Each peasant keeps their deposit under $10K so it is not reported.

The government and banks and Treasury are well aware of how much money Mexican "citizens" send to their "relatives" in America every day. But they choose to not follow the money. They do not look into how a Mexican citizen whose entire net worth is maybe $35 sends $9,999 to "relatives" in the USA over and over and over again.

It is "deemed" legal.

By the laws passed in America, there is no need for reporting or investigating the $9,999. It is deemed too small an amount to possibly be drug money, so it is clean on arrival. By the rules the banks wrote for themselves.

Drug monies helped stabilize Wall Street through this recent bubble collapse, as did our other national business -- war.

The larger problem is that what is happening in Mexico is inevitably going to happen here in America in due course, since there is nothing to keep the actual drug business from expanding into our own streets.

The governments of both countries want the money more than they want to follow the money. Therefore they will get the whole shit sandwich.

"Any manifest error on the part of an enemy should make us suspect some stratagem."
~ Niccoló Machiavelli

I should have mentioned stopping money laundering as one of the U.S. contributions. Where does the money go? Here, there and anywhere there's a willing bank. In the era of deregulation, as you so well pointed out, the big banks see new opportunities everywhere. Heaven forbid we actually do something about this to help Mexico.

Some over the counter medications are a true menace, as you point out. Coricidin contains a dissociative DMX, a true party drug. It's well known as an easy-to-get item for drug abuse, yet it's out there. Restricting meth precursors is logical but not done. Why?

Actually, this is being done. In OR, pseudophed is only available by prescription. In CA, you can only buy one small box at a time. Reportedly, this has reduced meth crime, at least in OR.

They don't care what we want, they care about what they need and war is a very good business. The lines of supply might be more manageable. Obama is at 49% negatives. That means he'd have to do something major for the people to turn things around. Is that possible?

and as for the flood of people waiting to get in...

The flood already happened. They're here now, just about everyone that wants to be. I'd guess at least 3/4s of the small town I lived in, either the people I knew or their subsequent offspring live in the United States. The new people crossing borders are primarily youngsters, born in recent years.

On the other hand, Mexico is ripe for a civil war. Allow someone like Venezuela's Chavez to assume power and watch Mexicans from Northern States, backed by their offspring here in the US, rise up in arms.

I don't think such a war happens immediately, but after a few years of heavy handed state control in a time of dwindling resources that don't get fairly allocated to Northern regions, it could happen.

Mexico's North is not unlike the red states of our own country. They produce the food and integral goods and don't share in the wealth or political power.

We too are ripe for an outbreak of civil unrest, but that seed is just beginning to germinate. It's quite a bit farther along in Mexico.

I did inhale.

One item on which all Mexicans can agree is that they have a poor opinion of Gringos.

Invading Mexico would invite 110 Million people, all along the Southern US border, to unite against the invader.

And maybe sent some real terrorists north.

Those are interesting scenarios. There's too much money that the cartels have to offer to disrupt their existence. Keep in mind that the president who negotiated NAFTA, Salinas, had a brother who was drug involved in a huge way. This current situation is just more chaotic than before.

The solution that makes sense is someone in the military who is a patriot, and they are there, simply taking over and rounding up the cartel leaders. When new leaders emerge, doing the same. The leader would need the demonstrated support of the people. This would be very violent and messy politically but would cut the snake's head off. Short of that, it will be some of this and some of that until things evaporate altogether.

I did inhale.