It was supposed to be the end of the world.
In 1980, the U.S. government issued a paper saying that we were going to start having an economic recovery, and the Federal Reserve started to increase the money supply, the amount of money that the government had to print.
But then things got a little dicey.
In the summer of 1980, in response to the U-2 bombing, Congress passed a law making it a crime to intentionally endanger the lives of Americans.
The law had a long history of making things like financial fraud, insider trading, and money laundering illegal.
But when the Reagan administration put it into effect, it didn’t have a very clear definition.
So the Federal Bureau of Investigation set up a task force, the Financial Crime Task Force, to develop guidelines to guide the use of those law enforcement powers.
They set out guidelines that would apply to any financial crime, not just financial fraud.
They didn’t include the criminal penalties for the most egregious financial crimes like money laundering.
And they didn’t define the criminal behavior as being in direct conflict with federal criminal laws.
So for example, you could have an employee of your financial institution, a bank, making a deposit into your account, and then in the same bank you could take the same deposit and take the money out and make a loan.
So they didn