Ferris Bueller’s economics teacher needs a lesson on ISIS economics. Ben Stein, former speechwriter for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford who became famous as a droning economics professor in the classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, doesn’t seem to realize that the terrorist group is well-funded thanks to a combination of oil revenues, bank looting, and ransoms. Stein and I disagreed on Fox News about the extent to which money is helping finance their reign of terror from the Middle East to Brussels to Paris.As CNN’s Jose Pagliery reports, ISIS is “the wealthiest terrorist organization on the planet”: ISIS buys bombs and pays fighters with the billions of dollars it makes from the oil fields, mineral mines, and banks under its control. ISIS also imposes taxes on the people living inside its territory in Iraq and Syria.ISIS raked in $2 billion in 2014 alone.CNNMoney has interviewed military scholars and financial investigators, and it has reviewed dozens of reports from ISIS, the U.S. Treasury, Defense Department, United Nations, British government, and several terrorism research institutes.Together, they show why ISIS is so powerful. It ditched Al-Qaeda’s old model of relying on rich donors in the Arabian Gulf. Instead, the Islamic State is a self-funded powerhouse. Looks like next time I might…
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