Follow the money for all sorts of danger
Sunday, January 29, 2006 at 5:10PM BOX: "The Most Likely Fake Bills Are C-Notes," by Ted Evanoff, Indianapolis Star, 29 January 2006, p. C1.
ARTICLE: "Flu's spread foretold, by George: Web site that tracks money may help scientists forecast how disease will spread," by Alicia Chang, Associated Press, Indianapolis Star, 29 January 2007, p. A22.
I tell the story of traveling through China on our adoption trip, with $10,000 stuffed into a special belt-like groin pack, all of it in $100 bills and all uncirculated, because nothing less than clean bills are acceptable in many Chinese venues--especially official ones. The reason why? Up to one-third of the paper money circulating in China, both foreign and domestic, is fake. And the number one provider of such fake bills (especially in neighboring China) is Kim Jong Il's criminal regime in North Korea.
The North Koreans, this article reports, "acquired a $10 million press in 1989 and most llkely paid it off years ago." It is estimated that the exporting of counterfeit currency nets the Pyongyang regime a solid $15-20 million a year.
Follow the bad money back to the Gap's worst actors.
Follow the money in general, and you find business travelers, and that helps you find where pandemics spread, most rapidly by international air travel (interesting how jetliners figure so prominently in so many System Pertrubations, or shocks to the global system, yes?).
Old advice, but good advice, because money is the most fluidly connective tissue in the global economy.
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