C.R.E.A.M. (Small Stuff)

Sweat the Small Stuff

On Details and Why they Matter

Nº 2: A (Non-)Dickensian Aspect

I love The Wire, but Season 5 kind of pissed me off.Considering that early 21st century Baltimore is – surprise –not the same place as mid/late 19th century England, why was absolutely everything in the show suddenly so “Dickensian”? Was it ever really “the best of times” for our characters, or just the worst, worst, worst of times?

Here, I want to explore a more Shakespearean (or Notorious BIG-ian) aspect of The Wire. If only because it would’ve given us more quality-time with Stringer Bell in who-the-fuck-were-we-chasing mode, I wish the show had spent 15 more minutes addressing the following: What do you do when you make more money than you can afford to keep? That is, if you ran a lucrative-yet-illegal, cash-only business, how logistically would you deal with your (massive) income? How would you move it? How could you use it? Where could you launder it?

Because I’m not a drug dealer and you’d rather go eat [Generic Winter Festival] dinner than read my dribble, I’m going to pass the mic to experts on this one: the people at Planet Money. Put out by NPR News /This American Life, this fantastic podcast has focused on many of questions above numerous times for different reasons. Below are links to an hour-or-so of amazing reporting you can listen to when the turkey is gone and you need to get away from your crazy aunt. I’ll set up the relevant episodes, below, but you should really just click the links.

Episode 266: Freeway Rick Ross

The first and most directly relevant episode is this one. In an attempt to vet economists’ theories regarding the effects of legalizing drugs, Hamsterdam-style, the Planet Money-ists turned to a real-world Avon Barksdale: “Freeway Rick Ross” from South Central, LA. There are a bunch of fascinating details about the machinery of the drug trade in these 20 minutes, but two choice-quotes that reveal the scope of the mo’-money-mo’-problems problem are:

The most I ever made in one day is $3 million…I was sure to make $200K [profit] off every million, often-times $400K.

Counting $3-400K can be time-consuming…Money became a chore…I hired a couple girls and it was their job to count money all day…And then you gotta worry about if they’re stealin’, because it’s the underground.

Three million is a lot of dollars to handle in a day. I wonder how much it weighs…

Episode 418: Operation Dinero, or The Trouble with Mattresses…

We know the scale of things: maybe $300K in cash-money per day, mostly in $1-$20 bills. Of course, you can’t put this in a bank (or can you…): depositing even $10K in notes is highly suspicious, and you would have to do this 30 times a day to move your take. Thus the need for safe-houses, etc. Yet, keeping cash is not only dangerous (as Omar has shown us) but also extremely burdensome. There are two huge issues: first – as you will hear – millions of dollars in physical cash weighs a lot. Assuming a “good” scenario (all $20 bills), $1M works out to ~ 110 lbs. In a “less-good” scenario where everyone paid in fives, this of course rises to over 400 lbs. According to DEA agents, this problem – “unique to illegal industry” – can become “astronomical”.

Second, as is well known, keeping money in cash is bad for your business: not only does it accrue no interest (which, at 3% off a $1M principal, lands you $30K in extra income after one year) but it causes your net-worth to fall with inflation. Indeed, this is why banking was invented: it converts clumsy currency to streamlined numbers and insures you against inflation via interest payments.

Because of its advantages, many illegal drug dealers must constantly be looking for “discreet” (i.e., off-shore) banking opportunities. In this episode, Planet Money explores what happened when Pablo Esocobar grabbed one such opportunity...without checking to see if the bank was secretly run by the DEA. (Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit…) In the only recorded incident of the US Federal Government firing on all cylinders (almost to the detriment of itself), life mirrors art mirrors life mirrors Lester Freamon.

Episode 420: High Profits

The banking question has recently become especially relevant and slightly more complicated as, last month, Colorado and Washington legalized the open sale of marijuana, a practice is still illegal in the eyes of the federal government. The thing is, these are the guys who put the “F” in FDIC. Hence, if your bank wants to keep its deposit insurance, it can’t accept even your legal, hi-end, boutique, locally-sourced, (but still mostly) drug money. In this final episode, Planet Money talks to one entrepreneur who, though the owner of an extremely successful enterprise, cannot even write a check. Apparently, although this is America, you don’t gotta let ‘em play.

Editor's Note: When I asked Louis for a Wire-themed bio, this is what I got: 

- Louis Abramson (AKA Gangstar, AKA Extra-GalCracktic, AKA Lou-Lou-the-Jew-Jew , AKA Sweet) splits his time between Outside-Compton and Chicago’s South Side.  He will get you cosmologically high for $46,000, but never does the shit himself.

He also added:

It's drug themed, though not identifiably Wired.  LEt me know if ok.  PS - I'm pretty drunk right now.

Get this man a bathrobe.