He could have written a check and paid off Zaire's $7 Billion foreign debt. I suspect the same could be said of most dictators who have been in office for years.

3. Immigrants: If they can't legally work in their adopted country, they are automatically assigned to the underground economy. This is as true of Indonesians fleeing to Malaysia as it is of Hondurans fleeing to Guatemala. The best guess is that there are probably between 18-20 million undocumented workers in the United States. All are members of the underground economy.

4. American Citizens: In the USA, you are only unemployed as long as you are drawing unemployment benefits. Thereafter, you no longer exist at the U.S. Dept of Labor. In the past few years, six million workers have disappeared from the U.S. Dept of Labor unemployment statistics. I suspect that many have joined the underground economy.

The U.S. Government estimates there are 25 million underground economy entrepreneurs. Some are homeless collecting aluminum cans and crowding day labor halls. Some are merchants at Ebay, which has 40 million merchants, who do Internet sales that aren't reported. The smarter ones take a clue from the Owlhooters of the 1950s and 1960s and go to a local Junior Colleges and learn marketable skills.

5. Employed Americans: Trade-persons, professionals and almost anyone with a useful skill often do side work for which they are paid in cash. Business owners often don't report all their income. Most traditional workers directly or indirectly earn unreported income. These people have one foot in the traditional economy, the other in the underground economy.

6. Sophisticated Investors: These people, from almost every country, realize that putting all of their eggs in any one economic basket is a bad bet against the future. They go offshore to their country of residence to increase investment income and reduce taxes.

Governments, including the United States, are anxious to recruit these investors to build their national economies. This group controls trillions of dollars of investment capital.

Whether caused by taxes, excessive regulations, ineffective law enforcement, corrupt government or bad laws, it is clear that government is the prime cause of the growth of the underground economy. I see that growth as a piece of evidence for the steady increase in the probability that our children will meet the Mother of All Depressions. A study of the underground economy during the Dark Ages might prove to be a useful manual for generations to come to come.


He has been the Managing Director of Beowulf Investments [http://home.earthlink.net/