Now that a variety of factions have harvested the planet for trillions of dollars in the latest round of financial pump and dumps, the questions remains how to launder the money into real assets quickly.
The first big asset that is the target of such efforts is inevitably land and real estate. How to get huge positions in land and real estate that can be developed quickly?
Disaster capitalism is so profitable. You buy the land cheap and then someone else pays for your improvements while you get to keep the equity capital gains. Given how much money is sitting in offshore havens, however, there are not enough hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes to tee up sufficient opportunities fast enough.
So how do we come up with a way that buys up places, launders big money fast and generates a new round of construction contracts while maintaining the socially attractive brand we need to add in government redevelopment deals and stick the cost to the local citizenry?
In situations like this, the first thing that happens is a round of creative conversations by “admired” academics and think tanks looking to attract lots of people who are eager to transform our situation.
Think I am being harsh? Check out a recent description of Paul Rommer “new idea:”
“He [Paul Romer] proposed that developing countries could invite experienced governments such as Finland… to have administrative (and perhaps democratic control from afar) to create new instant cities for 10 million people. As Stewart Brand wrote about Romer’s talk “They would enrich the country where they are built as special economic zones while also rewarding the distant government that makes the investment of building the new city state and installing a set of fair and productive rules. Over time, as with Hong Kong, the new city is turned over to the host country.”
As Bill King says, “you just could not make this stuff up.”