I think it's important to call out that 'base rate' means very different things to people who have taken an introductory Stochastics class. When you can bring in the memorylessness property of the exponential distribution, Poisson distributions and gamma distributions you can get some non-intuitive results.
Base rates work pretty well, at least for all cause mortality... hurricane counts per year, and financial markets (over very short time periods). I was using the Good Judgment project as motivation to practice R programming for a while, until one day I saw that literally EVERY person forecasting the ending value of the Hang Seng index tied to my probabilities. Therefore, EVERYONE was calculating base cases from historical market data and entering those results.
I do not think I could distinguish any difference in the NYC of the 1850's vs 1910's (before cars were popularized). Electricity was available for the first time in 1890, but the first application was textile mills. The first skyscraper was 11 stories in 1890? I don't think 1 person in a thousand could distinguish those time periods.
I have multiple ACAMS certifications (the trade group that certifies all of us Anti-Money Laundering personnel who work at banks). And no, the public can't apply for membership.
1) Search WallStreetOnParade.com and read all of the articles about laundering.
2) Read the Mary Erdoes and Jamie Dimon depositions about Epstein involvement. JPM was putting Epstein's bribes through to the Governor of USVI. JPM was 'forgetting' to file the mandatory SAR notices on the $5MM in cash that Epstein was withdrawing each year for victim payments.
3) The Yakuza (as written in Tokyo Vice - the book) use privacy laws to prevent any of their businesses from being tied to them.
4) Read Butler to the World: How Britain Helps the world's worst people launder money.
I would say that PETTY criminals have difficulty moving money around electronically. Criminals with LOTS of money do not have any difficulty finding an investment bank to handle money movement. i.e. Epstein JPMorgan, WireCard, Lloyds
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/lloyds-says-it-faces-money-...
1) Float. Every dollar that is held in limbo 'for checking' is interest income to the bank.
2) Rabid identification requirements lower the risk of new account fraud (which is paid by the bank).
3) Information on who you're sending payments to is usable by the bank for prospecting and risk analysis.
4) If you read anything about regulatory capture, it explains how regulation is used by incumbents to discourage competition. i.e. No new banks have opened in the U.S. since 2009, when new regulations to prevent banks from getting bigger were passed. <- And now, the biggest banks are MUCH larger.
An interesting read, insofar as what it says about nativist vs immigrant tensions, and how those align with Fourth Turnings. While I'd heard that peak globalism/immigration accompanied the Roaring [19]20's, I was unaware that the same tensions existed in 1850.