Thanks to my good colleague & brother Carl Sachs for pointing out this story.

More to think about in the war on drugs as a war against the average citizen when banking institutions are allowed to do business with the “enemy” and face only a fine worth five weeks of profits. We need our prisons for all the black folks doing crack, and all the brown folks doing marijuana, and all the white folks doing meth. Ain’t got no time for the bankers that help launder the money of the big cartels. Ain’t got no time for that, I said!

This bears repeating: in order to more efficiently move as much illegal money as possible into the “legitimate” banking institution HSBC, drug dealers specifically designed boxes to fit through the bank’s teller windows. Tony Montana’s henchmen marching dufflebags of cash into the fictional “American City Bank” in Miami was actually more subtle than what the cartels were doing when they washed their cash through one of Britain’s most storied financial institutions.

Read the full BS @ Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke | | Rolling Stone.