Greed is good gordon gekko

This editorial from Slate last weekend has stuck with me. Author Anne Applebaum argues there are two forces at work (I’ll get to those in a second) and that more crises like the Crimea are inevitable unless governments change.

That tacit decision to accept all Russian money at face value has come home to roost in the past week … Putin and his colleagues can do what they want, whether in Ukraine, Georgia, or London, because everyone knows that whatever the Westerners say, they are all for sale in the end.

Those two forces: corruption and greed.

The personification of greed and corruption is a guy like Jordan Belfort — The Wolf of Wall Street. I read his book this week and watching a video of the reformed Jordan Belfort. The biggest lie, he says, is that greed is good. He loves money as much as ever but says that passion and enthusiasm are good. Doing what you love is good and money will inevitably follow.

A society that allows unbridled greed inspires corruption; and a society that allows rampant corruption inspires greed. America and Russia are the pinnacles of greed and corruption and each tolerates the worst of the other. Together they’ve built a negative feedback loop that allows criminals to pay their way out of any problem.

Applebaum argues the solution starts with rooting out the offshore enclaves where the greediest, most corrupt money is hiding. But how likely is that?