Follow the money

Detective Lester Freamon in The Wire

Money flows shed light on the entanglement of economic and political power. So following the money can reveal a lot about how the world works.

That’s why Follow the money is the name of Brad Setser’s blog and a Dutch research journalism website.

Here’s a great example of where following the money can take you. Economists at the World Bank have looked at aid granted to poor countries. By comparing disbursement dates with statistics from the BIS, they found that part of the aid money ends up in offshore havens.