|
Reader question: Please explain “follow the money trail”, as in this: “Follow the money trail” and you’ll understand politics. My comments: In other words, if you follow where all the money goes and to whom, you’ll find the root of all problems in politics today. Money is the lifeblood of politics. In western democracies, for example, no-one can get elected to public office without spending a lot of money, either their own or that of their backers to contributors. And money, as they say, is the root of all evil. Too much of it is, at any rate. In fact, perhaps just a little more than enough will do the trick. A little more than you can spend properly should suffice to put you into trouble. Take that woman, for example, who was recently arrested for gambling in Macau. She’s said to have lost more than two hundred million of yuan at the casinos. Two hundred million of yuan is not a little, to be sure but you get the idea. And, staying relevant to our topic, if someone traces where all her money have come and gone all these past few years, they’ll find out a lot. They’ll find out a lot, to say the very least. Anyways, to say that you can understand politics by following the money trail is to suggest that money is central to political life today – it is the chief propeller of much, if not all the political wheeling and dealing happening today. | 
