Goblincookie, you're skipping so many steps there it sounds like you have read the source code. Because, you know, money does actually exist in adventure mode, there's no telling if the site generator doesn't place that money on the person of the embezzler until we see it in action
Japa, I think the issue with the economy is more or less that entities aren't good at updating their available resources, so the kind of changes in those resources that are caused by trade(like a fort exporting a billion mugs to the mountain homes) aren't able to be processed by the entity(dwarven caravans and traders should now have hundreds upon hundreds of mugs available...).
Embezzlement might however be able to happen without interacting with that system. If a human civ has 5 million coins, and a human in that civ has a budget of 100, embezzles 30, then the human civ doesn't care, there's still 5 million coins in the civ. Similarly, if your bookkeeper or manager is corrupt, and your clothier is churning out socks, manages to make masterwork pair, then there's a good chance your bookkeeper is -mysteriously- able to aquire those despite all odds, and it would not have to interfere with the resources available to the fort. So the abuse of power is possible to be there without worrying about the economic side effects (Though, having economic side effects might make it a little bit more Fun to the player to have a corrupt bookkeeper).
This would however not really work over different entities(because, they can't really update their resources, right?), so maybe we won't see it in play at all beyond a generic notion of 'so-and-so did this in the past, and now someone can blackmail them'. Gambling might have a similar issue, in that it would very much need to happen over different entities(the fort government and the entities that the tavern visitors are part of).
Unless I am completely wrong about the blocking issue of economy and the problem has only been stacking of currency all along :p
EDIT: Oh man, can we nickname the next release the melodrama release? "Urist, why did you give that Goblin our artifact axe?" "I couldn't help it, he was going to reveal that I embezzled a masterwork plump helmet roast and had an affair with the Queen!"
EDIT2: I am going through all the FotF threads to check what else was up with the economy. One of the other major things beyond stockpiles and stacking is that civs aren't smart enough to demand anything. That is, they don't really understand what they consume. I'll make a separate thread with all the quotes, because 'wan economy???' seems to be one of the most common questions.
EDIT3:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172681.0