The Last Line by Anthony Shaffer Page B

public thought little about the Federal Reserve and knew even less. Hell, people’s eyes glassed over when Walker told them what he did for a living—and that was okay. He didn’t want attention, not directed toward the Federal Reserve, and especially not directed toward him.
    As for the public, well, these things always were best kept out of the public eye. Someone once had noted that people should never watch how sausage or laws are made, and the same, Walker was convinced, was true of the federal banking system.
    Deliberately designed to be independent within the government, Fed did not need to have its decisions ratified by either the president or by Congress. The seven members of the Board of Governors were chosen by the president and ratified by Congress, which also maintained oversight, but most decisions were made by a handful of wealthy and powerful men who did not answer to politicians, to political parties, or to ideologies. The federal banking system was, in essence, responsible only to itself, and that included its need to show a profit.
    The public at large, Walker thought, would be distressed indeed to see how the government used the Fed to manage both the nation’s economy and its own profitability—too often to dismal effect.
    It had taken Directo a México to prove to Walker once and for all just how thoroughly corrupt the system had become.
    Four years ago, he’d been given the task of overseeing the remittance program, which was growing increasingly controversial. More and more members of the general public had become aware of it as journalists and editorialists wrote about it, criticized it—and right now the Federal Banking System didn’t need to be in the glare of that kind of harsh spotlight.
    Directo a México had been launched in 2003 under the U.S.-Mexico Partnership for Prosperity, a joint operation by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Banco de México. Under the program’s provisions, people of Mexican descent could wire money to their families south of the border, using U.S. commercial banks and credit unions to transfer the money directly. The controversial part was that they could make those transfers using only a matrícula consular, an ID easily obtained at any Mexican consulate. Since they weren’t even required to provide a Social Security number, any immigrant, citizen or noncitizen, with or without documentation, could use the service.
    The banking fees attached to each transaction were generously low. Supporters of the program pointed out that more money sent to Mexican citizens still living in Mexico might help cut the tide of illegal immigration north.
    Which, of course, Walker knew, was complete and utter bullshit. The Mexican government had long been actively encouraging its more impoverished citizens to emigrate to el norte, so that more and more immigrants would send yet more and more money to Mexico. The so-called remittance program was now completely out of hand. Last year, almost twenty-five billion dollars had been sent south across the border. Mexico was addicted to that river of cash; money from el norte was the country’s second-largest source of income after oil. Critics of the program pointed out that U.S. tax dollars were being used to support illegal immigration, and as the recent recession had deepened, people had begun questioning whether the United States could afford to support Mexico’s poor.
    Of course, when Walker had taken charge of the project, things hadn’t seemed all that bad. Banking, after all, was just business. A business was required to make money, to show a profit, and, as Preston had just pointed out, Directo a México was completely legal.
    Lately, however, James Walker had become aware of the Program’s other aspects.
    Anyone could get a matrícula consular. No one checked up on the applicant’s identity. Legal or illegal, it didn’t matter. The drug gangs and cartels that were