Black Marketing ~ 1944 US Office of War Information; World War II (Patreon)

more at http://quickfound.net/

'Great 1940s gangster film. Great shots of mobsters in the country and doing black market business with butchers. Great courtroom scenes with prosecutor delivering speech to jury...'

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_market

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A black market, underground economy or shadow economy, is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal. Parties engaging in the production or distribution of prohibited goods and services are members of the illegal economy. Examples include the drug trade, prostitution (where prohibited), illegal currency transactions and human trafficking. Violations of the tax code involving income tax evasion constitute membership in the unreported economy.

Because tax evasion or participation in a black market activity is illegal, participants will attempt to hide their behavior from the government or regulatory authority. Cash usage is the preferred medium of exchange in illegal transactions since cash usage does not leave a footprint. Common motives for operating in black markets are to trade contraband, avoid taxes and regulations, or skirt price controls or rationing. Typically the totality of such activity is referred to with the definite article as a complement to the official economies, by market for such goods and services, e.g. "the black market in bush meat".

The black market is distinct from the grey market, in which commodities are distributed through channels that, while legal, are unofficial, unauthorized, or unintended by the original manufacturer, and the white market, in which trade is legal and official.

Black money is the proceeds of an illegal transaction, on which income and other taxes have not been paid, and which can only be legitimised by some form of money laundering. Because of the clandestine nature of the black economy it is not possible to determine its size and scope...

Black markets flourish in most countries during wartime. States that are engaged in total war or other large-scale, extended wars often impose restrictions on home use of critical resources that are needed for the war effort, such as food, gasoline, rubber, metal, etc., typically through rationing. In most cases, a black market develops to supply rationed goods at exorbitant prices. The rationing and price controls enforced in many countries during World War II encouraged widespread black market activity. One source of black-market meat under wartime rationing was by farmers declaring fewer domestic animal births to the Ministry of Food than actually happened. Another in Britain was supplies from the US, intended only for use in US army bases on British land, but leaked into the local native British black market.

For example, in the Parliament of the United Kingdom on February 17, 1945, members said that "the whole turkey production of East Anglia had gone to the black market" and "prosecutions [for black-marketing] were like trying to stop a leak in a battleship", and it was said that official prices of such foods were set so low that their producers often sold their produce on the black market for higher prices; one such route (seen to operate at the market at Diss in Norfolk) was to sell live poultry to members of the public, and each purchaser would sign a form promising that he was buying the birds to breed from, and then take them home for eating.

During the Vietnam war, American soldiers would spend Military Payment Certificates on maid service and sexual entertainment,[citation needed]. Also if a Vietnamese civilian wanted something that was hard to get, he would buy it at double the price from one of the soldiers, who had a monthly ration card and thus had access to the military stores.[citation needed] The transactions ran through the on-base maids to the local populace. Although these activities were illegal, only flagrant or large-scale black-marketeers were prosecuted by the military...