Well, because he is a man of probity and is writing in the UK, where the standards for libel are much lower than in the US, former Barclays CEO Martin Taylor does not use the F (fraud) word, but that is precisely the behavior he describes.
I know it is fashionable to depict the investment banking industry as ever and always dishonest (as former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt pretty much does today in the New York Times, indirectly), but differences in degree are differences in kind. It is one thing to nick your clients occasionally, when they might not notice, or when they are making so much money they wouldn’t mind all that much if they did figure out the bankster had arranged for a bigger cut than usual. It is quite another to take every one every way you can at every available instance. While neither is honest, one is petty cheating and pilferage, the other is rape and looting.
This is the nut of Taylor’s piece in the Financial Times, which is worth reading in its entirety:
City people have always been paid well relative to others, but megabonuses are quite new. From my own experience, in the mid-1990s no more than four or five employees of Barclays’ then investment bank were paid more than £1m, and no one got near £2m. Around the turn of the millennium across the market things began to take off, and accelerated rapidly – after a pause in 2001-03 – so that exceptionally high remuneration, not just individually, but in total, was paid out between 2004 and 2007.
Observers of financial services saw unbelievable prosperity and apparently immense value added. Yet two years later the whole industry was bankrupt. A simple reason underlies this: any industry that pays out in cash colossal accounting profits that are largely imaginary will go bust quickly. Not only has the industry – and by extension societies that depend on it – been spending money that is no longer there, it has been giving away money that it only imagined it had in the first place. Worse, it seems to want to do it all again.
What were the sources of this imaginary wealth? First, spreads on credit that took no account of default probabilities (bankers have been doing this for centuries, but not on this scale). Second, unrealised mark-to-market profits on the trading book, especially in illiquid instruments. Third, profits conjured up by taking the net present value of streams of income stretching into the future, on derivative issuance for example. In the last two of these the bank was not receiving any income, merely “booking revenues”. How could they pay this non-existent wealth out in cash to their employees? Because they had no measure of cash flow to tell them they were idiots, and because everyone else was doing it. Paying out 50 per cent of revenues to staff had become the rule, even when the “revenues” did not actually consist of money.
Now the real question is: why is anyone indulging this “talent” myth, the idea that the banksters ever deserved their outsized pay? And worse, they insist on their fraudlenty level of compensation as a new normal that must continue. Now I know some like the Epicurean Dealmaker get angry, and insist that Some Were Honorable, but let us face it: a credit tsumani lifted ALL boats, and people in fee businesses like M&A would have gotten far fewer deals done, and at far lower prices, were it not for the mania on the funding side.
We all need to start using the F word a lot more, because a great deal of what went on was criminal and needs to be described in those terms.
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Great stuff there Ms Smith!
It is curious why IRS and FASB (DOJ, FBI, SEC, FTC, etc) and especially Homeland Security were so slow in becoming involved in any sort of investigations related to the “F’ word. There was never a hint of curiosity associated with regulations or impropriety related to the “F’ word within any American agency during the Bush Reign — and now in the Obama Era, the “F” word has been relegated to the point of being a meaningless acronym.
As to the reason why this corruption was global and the reason behind the lack of financial regulation anywhere simply suggests that we live in a time of chaos. To think otherwise, would be to miss the reality of the impacts related to Trillions of bucks evaporating — however, history does provide many examples of the shit that happens when Fascism takes root in a country …. ash the folks in Japan, Italy and Germany how that all worked out for them and then ask yourself if that’s the kind of change your looking for!
If I started resonating any stronger with this comment, light bulbs would be in danger.
Doc
in ’04 the Bureau went to the White Hse: ‘good news, bad news’. Good news: they had evidence (hundreds of cases) of mortgage fraud. Bad news: they (FBI) didn’t have sufficient resources to prosecute; can we have some more, please?
they were rebuffed (Bush family has had strong connections to financial svcs industry for decades). and that was it.
over the most recent cycle, there would have been trillions of $ of mtge fraud. at this point in the S&L crisis (early ’90’s) dozens of crims arraigned, tried, convicted (Keating Five, remember them?)
2002-2007: will anyone EVER be taken to account?
Yves,
You ask why anybody is indulging the “talent” myth.
The preliminary question is who is buying the myth? My bet is that this is a U.S.-based phenomenon.
If I’m correct, that changes the answer to your why question.
The U.S. is a dying empire. It doesn’t have to be, but it is, and the reason why is that we have a set of managers trying to pretend that a mature industry remains a growth industry. As a result, the managers demand growth to justify their continued tenure as managers.
The banksters have been able to sell the “talent” myth to justify their outsized pay because they are the only ones able to deliver the type of GDP growth the U.S. economy needs in the short term, even if that kills the U.S. economy in the long term. You’ll be gone, I’ll be gone.
We need a set of managers who accept the fact that the U.S. economy is a mature economy and treat it accordingly. Sustainable growth is the key because explosive growth is no longer attainable.
I have said similar things for years. Banks cost of capital (COC) calculations are wrong. Their cost accounting stinks. They are frauds which exist to pay their senior executives big salaries, not make money for shareholders. Banks “guarantee” accounting stinks. Without FDIC insurance, their COCs would soar and their net “capital destruction” might be exposed. I could go on and on. Taylor, welcome aboard.
What’s the point of laboriously adding value through a long career of work, thrift and self-denial if you can just plunder and get rich immediately? Wouldn’t you be a fool? Isn’t it better to be Ghengiz Khan than some hard-working farmer, builder or trader in mediaeval Samarkand? Ghengiz looted and wrecked the place, than moved on to the next. He and his Mongols took everything and created nothing, and they did very well for themselves. And they knew how to party!
More directly, what is the reason for having a job, skill or profession, or going into business? To have a respectable career, raise a nice family, pay your taxes and eventually retire in comfort? Or is it simply to get rich? If the latter, why play games? Fraud, drugs, intimidation, political fixing, gun-running, all are likely to make you richer faster than anything honest will do, and many of them are either legal or unchallengeable if you know the right people. Our modern Mongols don’t follow the yak-tail standards into battle, instead they follow the example of people like Al Capone.
Maybe instead of agonising over the state of macroeconomics it would be more worthwhile to look in detail at Al Capone’s Chicago, and try to draw some conclusions about what holds societies together and how they can collapse socially, not only environmentally.
Gordon,
Your question–“Isn’t it better to be Ghengiz Khan than some hard-working farmer, builder or trader in mediaeval Samarkand?”—recalls another historical example:
But Columbus himself did not belong to the tradition of Reconquista. As a Genoese, settled in Portugal and then in southern Spain, he was a representative of the Mediterranean commercial tradition, which had begun to attract Castilians during the later, Middle Ages. His purpose was to discover and exploit the riches of the East in association with a State which had conferred its protection upon him. For this enterprise he could draw upon the experience acquired by Castile in its commercial ventures and its colonization of the Canaries. But unfortunately for Columbus, Castile’s mercantile tradition was not yet sufficiently well established to challenge its military tradition with any hope of success. While he saw his task essentially in terms of the establishment of trading bases and commercial outposts, most Castilians were accustomed to ideas of a continuing military advance, the sharing-out of new lands, the distribution of booty and the conversion of infidels. Inevitably the two opposing traditions—that of the merchant and that of the warrior—came into violent conflict, and in that conflict Columbus himself was defeated and broken. It proved impossible for him to compete with the deeply ingrained habits of a crusading society…
J.H. Elliott–Imperial Spain: 1469-1716
I concur with Elliot, but I’d like to add to the mix the fact that in America, the biology was on the side of the military conquest approach. The Europeans brought a large number diseases with them, causing severe population loss. In fact, the epidemics seem to have caused mortality rates well above 20%, in some cases even above 50%.
Large disease mortality destroys the very fabric of a society affected by the epidemic, causing it to be quite unstable. In particular, military invasion becomes much more feasible, and commercial activity more or less stagnates.
By any reasonable measure of private value added without government intervention, investment banking has had (has) enormously negative productivity. The “talent” was (is) negative. Ordinary bankruptcy would have fully revealed this. And, the purely private consequences from such bankruptcies would have unleashed a raft of lawsuits exposing “F” behavior. Bail-outs substituted yet more bonuses and moral hazard in the stead of private retribution. As a nation, unfortunately, we agreed to that Faustian bargain in return for safety from manufactured economic bugbears in October of 2008.
The other day I saw Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice again. Somehow, the main character, Shylock the ruthless Jewish moneylander, reminds me of our average bankster in this country.
I am not anti-semitic and I have many Jewish friends in medicine (but none in finance), but if I were Jewish, and working in banking this would be the time I would read the Merchant of Venice carefully. Your Jewish lobby has skewed America’s policy to serve only the interests of your genocidal nation of Israel, your Jewish-controlled banking system has destroyed the lives of tens of millions in this country alone, and your Jewish-controlled media has turned this entire country into a nation of immoral chumps.
But don’t be so sure about your grip on power now. As the Bible’s writings of Solomon state, “Pride cometh before fall”. You’ve just about maxed out on pride, arrogance, greed, violence, and torment of other human beings, as you have throughout your history, in fact. Read the Merchant of Venice after you finish counting your money.
Vinny
Vinny,
I too have a number of Jewish acquaintances. But unlike yourself, I find some of them to be the salt of the Earth, and others to be unrepentant scumbags.
What you are spouting is pure, unadulterated bigotry.
Take the following assertion, for instance:
You’ve just about maxed out on pride, arrogance, greed, violence, and torment of other human beings, as you have throughout your history, in fact.
“In fact”? In fact there is no historical basis whatsoever to justify making such a sweeping, blanket condemnation of the Jewish people.
PBS Frontline yesterday aired an absolutely outstanding program, “From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians,” that tells the epic story of the rise of Christianity:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/watch/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=proglist&utm_source=proglist
Christianity, in its inception, was an entirely intra-Jewish phenomenon, a sect that existed completely within but on the fringe of mainstream Jewry. Jews lived under the brutal regime of Roman imperialism. Granted, Christ was very much in the vanguard in the fight against Roman oppression. But Jesus’ teachings were not that distant from those of mainstream Jewry, especially in regards to revolting against grievous Roman rule.
The schism between Christianity and Jewry grew over time, but the complete split between the two took centuries. And granted, one of the Christians’ complaints was that those higher up in the Jewish hierarchy acted as mere handmaidens for the Roman rulers (can anybody say Barak Obama?). But remember, this was Jew on Jew criticism.
By the turn of the fourth century, Christianity had grown to become the dominant religion of the Roman Empire and was officially recognized as so under the emperor Constantine. The growing drumbeat of Jewish demonization was an exigency of 1) the final split of the Christians with the Jews and 2) the adoption of Christianity as the official, mainstream religion of Rome.
One interesting question the program raises is what factors led to Christianity’s rise. Early Christian doctrine not only advocated liberation and social justice, but with its doctrine of “good works” also strived to provide a social safety net for those who fell on hard times. By offering a hand in the hour of need, this gained Christianity many loyal converts. But as Frontline pointed out, all this was part and parcel of the Jewish tradition and the Jewish experience, and not the Roman-Pagan tradition.
Of course when Christianity became the official religion of the Romans, it had to change its spots and stop promoting liberation and revolution. Instead of attacking Roman rule, it had to legitimize it. And thus the Christian tradition that comes down to us today is a very mixed one, as, I might add, is the Jewish one.
Yep. There are jews, and then there are Jews. Take it from a Jew.
I’m amazed (and I use term pointedly referencing Biblical text) that you bring the Front Line series up. I don’t have the time to comment fully on this series or the topic, but if anyone is seriously interested in delving into Christianity’s roots, this is the place to go. Pauline Christianity, is the survivor of a hodgepodge of early Christian sects and beliefs (perhaps because it was most appealing to the bulk of converts, the gentiles).
It is most unfortunate that the works and thoughts of Ebionists (the Poor Ones, a name that is most significant in itself), Nazareens and the other early Christian interpretations are lost or been destroyed (some argue deliberately in the purification of church doctrine) as they would have provide better insight into the conceptual underpinnings of Christianity.
You may want to check-out the Gospel of Thomas if you haven’t already, who I believe has been authenticated as an early recorder of dialogs between ‘Jesus the Teacher’ and his followers. The obscure verbal gymnastics of ‘two’ and ‘one’ should give pause for thought alone.
I’m not going to dance on the head of a pin when there is a ballroom with a big elephant in it. There are legitimate issues that need discussed without accusations of bigotry. Common ethic groups have always had the tendency for tribal self interests. It worked that way with the Irish and it works that way with others.
There is an indisputable common denominator on Wall Street. Many of the firms and the big players are both ultra rich and Jewish and members of the Israel Lobby. There is no question the lobby has lots of power, and extreme wealth and they won’t hesitate to use it against any official that opposes their agenda. The lobby is in place to advance both Israel and the influence and interests of the members, including but not limited to keeping them wealthy and minimizing government interference.
Why was Bernie Madoff never aggressively investigated? Was it because he was seemingly a nice guy or because he had influential friends in Congress, government and the lobby?
This entire issue of bankers seemingly having immunity after creating the debacle and profiting immensely from it is outrageous enough. Now they want to walk away with more bonuses at the expense of future generations of average taxpayers with ever declining income. There are more questions than answers but all aspects need openly discussed. We need answers regardless of the players and there needs to be full accountability.
Actually, it is far easier to be convicted of libel in the UK – the writer must prove what they wrote is accurate to be let off, in the US the plaintiff must prove the writer knew what they wrote was false to convict.
Yet you’re right broadly in that the UK papers are more likely to call a spade a spade (I’ve been a journo in both places, the difference in the tone of coverage is stunning). I’ll put this down to the squishy concept of culture – the journalists are more aggressive, and sources more likely to talk.
I think culture probably plays a big role in compensation as well. It’s probably not coincidence that the rise of mega-bonuses in the City coincided with the rise of US banks in London.
Oh C’mon Vin. There were lots of nice Protestant boys in on the fun, and lots of girls too with daggers for souls, and Americans from Chinese, Korean, Irish, German and Lithuanian ancestry. And the Brits, look at what they did. And look at the 1920s, mostly Waspy types. And then there’s Iceland, those Jews, ha hah. The J word is only a distraction from the F word. Total FAILURE of regulators, politicians, academics, executives, traders and speculating three-card Monte two-house-and-a-condo-on-your-credit-card-mortgage borrowers. It’s like in Oedipus Rex when the guy realizes he screwed his Mom and whacked his Dad. And Oedipus is still King somehow, even today, and he’s still Blind to real sight. It’s all a failure of the human condition. And throwing around the J word is just one more failure. I’m not Jewish, I’m a Magonian Disciple from the Church of the Holy Logos, but I had a Jewish girlfriend once and she was hot stuff, believe me. LOL.
Oh yeah, I had a Jewish girlfriend too before I got married. She was hot too. But I’m happy with my Greek and very traditional dentist wife.
And yes, as a psychoanalytically-minded shrink, I tend to blame a lot on the Oedipus Complex. I’ll say, there are a lot of mother-fuc*ers out there… Many of them Jewish bankers…:)
cheers,
Vinny
You’re lucky to have a dentist wife. I just shelled out $6 grand on a tooth implant, from neglect of a root canal I should have had. Glad all the other teeth are in good shape. I will never ignore dental visits again. Ha ha.
You should look into doing that work abroad. For 6K you can almost rebuild a whole mouth in Greece or Eastern Europe. Implants run about $800 each. They use the same materials (or better, because most are from Germany), and they’re very good clinicians.
My wife still has a dental surgery in Greece, and once we’ll be ditching America for good, we might do a little dental tourism too.
Vinny
Hey Vinny,
While you’re passing on reading suggestions to those “Greedy Jews”, I have one for you: Spend some time catching up on your Greek mythology…specifically Circe…you know the nymph goddess of all those Greek whores.
Nah…I’m just messin’ with you Vinny Freud. I’m not Anti-Hellenic or anything. In fact, I even have some Greek friends (and some black ones too!)
It’s just that Western Civilization really has serious problems these days. And for this, I blame the ones who started it all: Those damned Greeks.
I am not Greek. Just my wife is.
I do get tired of their nationalism and backwardness quickly, though. But it’s a good place to settle in after you can no longer keep up with the rat race. And a pretty good place to raise a kid.
Vinny
Here’s the argument they make: These bankers are responsible for the creation of tons of wealth, and there is no way to generate that wealth without them. So their pay is justified.
Suppose that pay were structured such that it didn’t incentivize crashing the entire banking system. Then I could see justification for very high compensation if the massive amounts of wealth they generate (and, forget that they just cost us trillions of dollars) were distributed to the hoi polloi. But it’s not; so much of it goes to those in the bankster-class.
I agree we must use the fraud word a whole lot more, if the history of this crisis is to be properly understood. As it now stands, lawmakers are already writing their own version of revisionist history, and it too is not surprisingly ~fraudulent!
Take for example, a few weeks back at Bernanke’s 1st Senate confirmation hearing, lawmakers were categorizing everything as just “mistakes” to be fixed, not “fraud” to be criminally prosecuted. It was appalling to anyone’s common sense. Lawmakers are simply co-conspirators in this grand fraud.
And if you want another dose of the fraud out of mouth’s of lawmakers, listen in on Bernanke’s reappointment hearing this Thursday.
Excellent writing.
Vinny – as a psychology honours graduate, I used to look on your comments with just that tad extra of an appreciative eye. I respectfully suggest before you analyze your patients, you analyse yourself – assuming you’re actually competent enough to do so.
I really am not anti-Semitic, and have many Jewish friends, in fact.
Also, I do appreciate the writings of Jews like Freud (both, father and daughter), Klein, Mahler, and even some of the more recent ones. I also appreciate their traditions from where much of this thought originated.
But it is undeniable that much of the finance and media is Jewish-controlled, this with disastrous consequences for the entire country if not the world.
By the way, I also teach medical and graduate students. Some of my most obnoxious, arrogant, impertinent, and backstabbing students were Jewish. They are a total nightmare. Not all, but many of them. Last year I filed official investigative reports against 4 such students for such unacceptable behavior, 3 were thrown out of the school, and all 4 were Jewish. They also came from families of doctors, and somehow thought the word owed them something. I guess it owed them their current job at Mickey D’s…
As far as my going into analysis, given the current lack of funds for mental health, “analysis” nowadays means 10 sessions or less, so I figured I better not start that until there’s more money flowing into the field, because I certainly can’t afford to pay out of pocket… :)
Vinny
Vinny,
There are lots of things one cannot say even when they are arguably supported by evidence. Do you plan on saying all of them?
I like the concept, call fraud fraud! Yet the reach of the fraud is stunning and that circumstance appears to be the impediment to prosecution. Too many other heads will fall.
On the other hand, if we do not say fraud when fraud is present, when we do not prosecut fraud when it is identified, we then invite more fraud.
Let me see….unrealised mark-to-market profits on the trading book, especially in illiquid instruments; ….profits conjured up by taking the net present value of streams of income stretching into the future…not receiving any income, merely “booking revenues” I seem to remember another case like this about 10 years ago. It was ENRON, it was fraud and now Jeff skilling is sitting in jail for 25 years. Something for bankers to think about.
What a concept, crime and punishment. I retract my ‘blanket amnesty’ note. Let’s furlough the cannabis farmers to make room for the fraudsters, the malefactors with true victims.
We must have real penalties and enforcement to have any deterrent in the future. Obama has (apparently) forgotten this, in violation of his constitutional vows.
What a conundrum, fraud so systemic and widespread it has become “that which must not be named”. To call it fraud, to call torture and targeting of innocents a “war crime”, is to threaten the very edifice of “civilization”.
When it all collapses, as it must, a ‘truth and reconciliation’ commission with blanket amnesty for all the perps may be the only practical solution. But going forward, I think we must then burn the current 6,0000-plus page loophole code and insist on a truly progressive tax structure (pre-JFK) that taxes not work but speculation, concentrated and inherited wealth, and capital gains.
No individual or community can face squarely the fact that they do make themselves the center of their universe; this idolatry is too devastating for any of us freely to admit. Hence, says Niebuhr, we deceive ourselves that what we do is right, in fact our moral or religious obligation. Anxiety is the engine of deception and self-interest. Nations and peoples go to war mainly for self-interest; and though that be the fundamental ground, they will argue that they are really defending God, their sacred tradition, or, in our secular day, peace, order and democracy. This claim, that what they do for themselves they really do for “values,” makes it very difficult both for individuals and their communities to admit their driving self-interest. If they do, they seem to be denying all that is of value in the community, tradition, or religion.
–Langdon B. Gilkey
Another absolutely fantastic quote, not just about self-deception but about war. Most people still believe the U.S Civil War was about abolishing the cruelty of slavery! People astonish me. Conflicts may be about values, but war is about money. Wars have to be financed, and the people who finance wars expect to have a positive ROI. If there weren’t any money in it, the financing would quickly dry up and with it, the war.
By the way, the quote from Niebuhr about hypocrisy yesterday was also great. I wish I had time to read more from the original sources you cite. Amazing insight and great writing.
Unfortunately, many countries go broke pursuing war, if not financially, then morally (are the two different? – this post suggests otherwise).
I occurs to me that the U.S. is also in that flock; interventions justified by grand cause built on fallacy, the alpha and omega of failure. Is the financial aparatchik (or Nomenklatura, a term I like which, as many from the Soviet era, succinctly describes aspects of our situation today) fated also to the trash heap, despite the best efforts of the Man of the hour, Ben Bernanke?
Stay tune to this channel.
I think America will fall so hard, and on such a permanent basis, a ‘truth and reconciliation’ commission may take the shape of a Nuremberg trial. I expect the place will look like a bad version of Max Max.
To me, America has been resembling a malignant tumor for at least 30 years now, sapping this planet of resources and giving nothing good in return (except Coca-Cola and Big Macs, of course). I tend to view the planet as a living organism, and like any organism it seems to have built-in immunological systems to deal with malignant tumors… even those tumors that from afar may appear TBTF.
As Eliza Doolittle would put it, “America: we can all muddle through without you; Somehow we’ll do bloody well without you!”
Vinny
Vinny – “some of my (best) friends are Jews”.
Now where have I heard that before….?
“Some of my most obnoxious, arrogant, impertinent, and backstabbing students were Jewish. They are a total nightmare.”
You see? You can’t stop yourself going from the specific to the general. Give yourself a good, hard look Vinny – I’d guess there’s a decent person in there bursting to get out.
Yeah, must be my inner child I’m repressing here. But I better keep him there a little longer, because by today’s clinical standards, he was a real ADHD nightmare with conduct disorder…
Hmmm, I wonder if my inner child were Jewish, after all… :)
Vinny
By the way, you wrote that you’ve read my prior posts. If so, you must have noticed that last week I was bashing on the Dubai “Emirati” Arabs for treating their foreign workers like slave laborers. Does that make me an anti-Arab?
Why then should we not also point out injustice and outright theft perpetrated by the Jews who are running this nation’s financial system (i.e., Ben Shalom Bernanke, Times Magazine’s latest “[criminal] Man of the Year”).
I think we need to shed light on injustice and scams wherever they occur, regardless of who causes them. Lame excuses such as, “we were victims of the Holocaust, so now we’ll rob you blind” just don’t do the trick anymore. These bankers are hurting real people, and the fact remains, the vast majority are Jewish, led by a Jewish “man of the year.”
Think of me as an “Equal Opportunity Injustice and Scam Basher,” my friend…
Vinny
“the fact remains, the vast majority (of -these- bankers) are Jewish, led by a Jewish “man of the year.”
Ok Vinny, I could say “there you go again”, but perhaps you’re not a man to throw words around all the time, so give us the names of ALL, I repeat ALL the bankers (it could be a long list but obviously you know them all and their all-important religion) and show us the Jewish majority…. no wait, show us the VAST Jewish majority.
Gosh, Vinny. “Jews who are running this nation’s financial system”?
You’re beginning to sound like the Afrocentrists who plagued Black Studies programs in America’s universities some years back. (Or maybe they still do. I’ve been out of the trenches so long that I don’t know what’s going on today.)
There was Dr. John Henrik Clarke who denounced what he called “the Jewish educational mafia.”
Then there was Michael Bradley who in The Iceman Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man’s Racism, Sexism and Aggression argued that Jews are the worst people on the earth because they were once the “ ‘purest’ and oldest Neanderthal-Caucasoids.”
It seems barely credible that American Jews, who were at the forefront of the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans in the 1960s, should have become the targets of anti-Semitic attacks by a new generation of blacks, gulled by teachers like Leonard Jeffries into believing in the historicity of hate-texts like that durable Czarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Professor Jeffries, chairman of the black studies department at the City College of New York, elaborated his theories about the “ice people” and the “sun people.” The whites, he argued, were forged in the Ice Age and thus bred for cruelty and aggression; blacks come from tropical climes, which made them intuitive, loving, and nice (like Jeffries himself perhaps).
Anthony Martin, who teaches in Wellesley’s Department of African Studies, taught a course on African-American history in which one of his texts was The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. Khallid Mohammad, on his university speaking tours, also carried around and proclaimed the book to be the “Previously Untold Truth.” The book purports to prove that Jews “kidnapped Black Africans disproportionately more than any other ethnic or religious group in New World History.”
Africa, Islam and Europe all participated in black slavery, enforced, it, profited from its miseries. But in the end, only Europe (including, here, North America) proved itself able to conceive of abolishing it; only the immense moral and intellectual force of the Enlightenment, brought to bear on the hideous oppression that slavery represented, was able—unevenly and with great difficulty—to bring the trade to an end.
But, as Robert Hughes explains:
Naturally this is a problem for Afrocentrists, especially in the context of the black Muslim ideas that many of the espouse. Nothing in the writings of the Prophet forbids slavery… A big lie is needed to neutralize this inconvenient truth. Consequently one of the best-sellers in the American black community at present is an official publication of the group known as The Nation of Islam (whose head is the arch-bigot Louis Farrakhan), entitled “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” a compilation of pseudo-history which pretends to disclose the “inordinate” role played by Jews in creating “slavery and the black holocaust.” Its allegations—such as the fiction that Jewish merchants “frequently dominated” the slave trade to America and the Caribbean—have been painstakingly refuted, point by point, in a response by the historian Harold Brakman…
–Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint
Aha, obviously time for a link to Mearsheimer and Walt’s “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”:
http://web.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=3670
Didn’t you used to post as Vinny Goldberg?
You probably married the dentist, and dated the Jewish girl for the same reason, the jokes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythrdCsOFJU
And no, it doesn’t offend me as a Jew, it offends me as a comedian.
So lets say Vinny is wrong and all the bankers are not Jews. Is there agreement that they are the credible front for the rich in our class war? Can you say class war? Sure, I knew you could.
Now what?
We need our regulators to regulate that is the problem. Regardless if what the “banksters” do is by mistake they still need to be punished. That is the only way we can prevent this from happening again.
we can’t prevent this from happening again specifically because the administration, congress, and the banksters, not necessarily in that order, are doing everything they can to assure it does in fact happen again.
Although all generalizations that begin with ‘I have friends who are Jewish, Black, whatever …’ are suspect, for proof of the domination of Jews over American life through our ‘elected’ and well paid for if not totally bought ‘representatives’ check Naomi Klein. Klein was required to defend her well researched ideas regarding Israel and their extravagantly financed Iraeli lobby in Washington with the retort that Jews are the only group who tolerate no political criticsm whatsoever. Their response to any such criticism is always that you are anti-semitic, a chilling and effective control on anyone in media.
That’s where the rubber meets the road between MSM and blogs –for now. What was unthinkable regarding control of the Internet now seems inevitable given the persistant erosion of our rights, our liberties, and ability to make a decent living (emphasis on ‘decent’).
The Jews invented politically correct speech through their Anti Defamation League thereby contributing much to the destruction of free speech in America. Freedom is now just another word for commerical use such as Verizon Freedom Plans used by them since 9/11.
It is one thing to defend one’s group from abuse. It is quite another thing to CHILL any criticism whatsoever against a POLITICAL group such as the Israelis or gays or Blacks or Jews or unionists for that matter; together with their lobbyists when they are a POLITCAL group they should/must be openly scrutinized, debated, and their power challenged without fear of retribution which Jewish media kingpins invented.
And, by the way, it is the liberalism and humanism of Jews that gave me my first break in Wall Street and protected me from predators, not without extracting their own cruelties I might add.