'Our bankers? Our CEOs? Our statesmen? Bought. All of them.'

From John le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor Is About Money Laundering, But It May Be His Scariest Novel by Jesse Kornbluth, The Huffington Post

Spies used to operate on the margins, at checkpoints, in lonely towns with names you can't pronounce. Then they were soldiers in the Cold War. Now, le Carré tells us, they exist for much darker purposes.

Of all of le Carré's novels, this is the one that makes me feel like a child. I mean, I know we're all under surveillance now. Photographed often. Every keystroke, every e-mail, every Tweet saved -- illegally, but saved. At any moment, the President can declare an American citizen an enemy combatant, a threat to the security of the Republic, and without judicial review or formal charge, he can order that American to be killed. But although I know all that, I hadn't quite realized that when large amounts of money are involved, none of the old words -- honor, truth, empathy -- matter at all.

What le Carré is telling us here is that there is something that might be called the country of money. It has no boundaries. There are no "sides." The government of Russia has made a pact with the Russian Mafia -- or is it the other way around? -- so criminal fortunes are appropriately shared. (When things go wrong, blame the Chechens.) And the cash-starved West? Our bankers? Our CEOs? Our statesmen? Bought. All of them.

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