Already Pollack had recorded the official statistics and written separate game stories sent by Western Union to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Associated Press and United Press.
For example, right now, the wire transfer industry is dominated by monolithic firms like Western Union.
As a practical matter, Moscow's ability to attract interbank deposits, renew short-term credit lines and secure Western loans has been sharply curtailed by the Soviet Union's non-creditworthy status and its massive arrearages to Western firms.
In the mid-1980s, American intelligence discovered a huge missile- detection and -tracking radar being built by the Soviet Union near the Western Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk.
But all that cash, handed over in crumpled wads by calloused hands, has made Western Union a tempting target for regulators, politicians and advocates for the indigent.
The Western Union deal was engineered by First Data veteran Charles Fote, 55, who rose to chief executive two years ago.
Many banks have also eyed the wire-transfer market with envy, but Western Union has fought back by opening a slew of new outlets in recent years.
By year-end more than 80, 000 Western Union agent locations are open in over 140 countries.
Services by First North Western were left in tatters on Tuesday after union members began the first of three one-day strikes.
WikiLeaks itself faced a financial blockade coordinated by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Bank of America and Western Union that deprived it of the majority of its donation sources for more than a year.
FORBES: Bulgarian Banks Threaten To Crush WikiLeaks' Most Successful Copycat Site
Following a massive release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables in November 2010, donations to WikiLeaks were blocked by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union on December 7th, 2010.
Its membership has slumped by a third in the past decade to 2.7m and its status as Germany's (and the western world's) biggest union is being challenged by a new service-sector union expected to embrace some 3.2m workers.
Western Union disclosed in February that the Department of Justice, joined by "several" states, is looking into the company's "contractual relationships" with the agents.
Inevitably, there will be strenuous efforts made by the Bush Administration, other Western governments and numerous private banks to stampede the former Soviet Union into a commitment to secure all debt obligations beyond the very limited rescheduling of principal payments already agreed for 1992.
According to a paper by Bruce Western of Harvard and Jake Rosenfeld of the University of Washington, published in 2011, private-sector union membership among men fell from 34% to 8% between 1973 and 2007.
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