Tag Archives: economy

Who Thinks Thinking is Unthinkable and Why

Jewish “social critic” James Howard Kunstler has specialized in ridiculing suburbia while paying relatively little attention to the non-White immigration, non-White sociopathy, and forced integration motivating Whites to flock there. The disproportionately jewish race-hustlers, developers, and financiers enriching themselves in the process also get a pass. Kunstler’s made a living hyping a variety of threats, like Y2K and depleted uranium, and warning most recently that “peak oil” will cause a “long emergency”. The effect, if not intent, has been to direct attention away from the more immediate and more substantial problems for more Americans, especially White Americans – the displacement and dispossession caused by genocidal levels of immigration and systemic financial fraud, each fueling the other.

Lately Kunstler has been keeping a nervous eye on a particular facet of the fraud. In Thinking the Unthinkable he writes:

How bad is the situation ‘out there’ really? In my view, things are veering toward such extreme desperation that the US government might fall under the sway, by extra-electoral means, of an ambitious military officer, or a group of such, sometime in the near future. I’m not promoting a coup d’etat, you understand, but I am raising it as a realistic possibility as elected officials prove utterly unwilling to cope with a mounting crisis of capital and resources. The ‘corn-pone Hitler’ scenario is still another possibility – Glen Beck and Sarah Palin vying for the hearts and minds of the morons who want ‘to keep gubmint out of Medicare!’ – but I suspect that there is a growing cadre of concerned officers around the Pentagon who will not brook that fucking nonsense for a Crystal City minute and, what’s more, would be very impatient to begin correcting the many fiascos currently blowing the nation apart from within. Remember, today’s US military elite is battle-hardened after eight years of war in Asia. No doubt they love their country, as Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte loved theirs. It may pain them to stand by and watch it dissolve like a castle made of sugar in a winter gale.

I do believe it might pain Kunstler to watch israel dissolve. It certainly doesn’t pain him to watch and snark at “the morons” while it happens to America. Does he think what Goldman Sachs and friends have been doing is unethical, unfair, unjust, immoral, illegal, indefensible, or just plain slimy? Maybe. But for sure he’s concerned how the rubes will react when they find out. He’s afraid it might be bad for jews. And he thinks that’s unthinkable.

This isn’t the first time Kunstler has expressed such fears. Hunter Wallace (formerly Prozium) wrote about Kunstler in Cornpone Nazism toward the end of July, linking to a Kunstler essay titled Evil Syndicated. I’ll excerpt a few bits to illustrate how Kunstler recognizes Goldman is creating a problem, but that the real problem is the potential backlash.

By now, everyone in that fraction of the world that pays attention to something other than American Idol and their platter of TGI Friday’s loaded potato skins knows that Goldman Sachs has been caught at another racket in the stock market: front-running trades. What a clever gambit, done with the help of the markets themselves – the Nasdaq in particular – in which information on trades is held back a fraction of a second from public view, while the data is shoveled to the computers of privileged subscribers who can execute zillions of programmed micro-trades before the rest of the herd makes a move. This allows them to vacuum up hundreds of millions of dollars by doing absolutely nothing of value.

Don’t mistake Kunstler’s accurate description here for disapproval. If anything he sees it as a “clever” way to shear “the herd”.

In any sensible society – i.e. a society with an instinct for self-preservation – it would be against the law and the people doing it would be sent to prison.

Maybe the larger question is: since when did we become a society lacking the instinct for self-preservation – that is, a society bent on suicide?

Yes, a sensible society would have stopped Madoff and Hasan too. Whites have an instinct for self-preservation. We express it all the time, even though doing so has long been pathologized and is becoming increasingly criminalized. Since when? It’s been getting worse ever since jewish emancipation. The proper word for what’s happening, by the way, is genocide, not suicide. It’s done over our objections. Jews like Kunstler aid and abet the crime by hyping symptoms rather than causes, and misdirecting blame. They see “anti-semitism” everywhere because they’re not suicidal.

I think the larger question for Kunstler is: what’s best for jews? The larger question for me is: when will Whites take note of this jewish obsession with themselves and their own interests? And when will we see through the dissembling of jewish “social critics” who ridicule and pathologize everything we do to resist what they misrepresent as “suicide”?

As we turn the corner toward autumn, President Obama looks increasingly like a dupe, a tool, or a co-conspirator of Goldman Sachs.

What bothers me is that, sooner or later, the conduct of Goldman Sachs will lead the growing ranks of the unemployed, foreclosed, disentitled, and hopeless into the hands of a savage right wing seeking mindless vengeance, for instance, against “the Jews,” (as represented by Goldman Sachs), or brown-skinned people (as embodied by a vilified president).

“It’s that brown-skinned guy’s fault! Blame him!”

What bothers me is that Kunstler is saying that blaming the group who is responsible is “mindless”, because he’s acutely mindful that it might be bad for “the jews” and “brown-skinned people”. Note however that even as Kunstler does this he feels perfectly free casting aspersions on Whites (as represented by “the savage right wing”), and white-skinned people (as embodied by the “evil syndicated”/”cornpone nazis”). What we have here is a conflict of group interests. Rather than addressing it honestly Kunstler tries to obscure and caricaturize it, advising those who already have their hands on “the growing ranks of the unemployed, foreclosed, disentitled, and hopeless” how to best manipulate them.

Readers of this blog know I’m allergic to conspiracy theories. But surveying the scene out there, it is hard to not conclude that Goldman Sachs has become the “front-runner” of a criminal syndicate defrauding US taxpayers.

Kunstler knows it’s hard because he’s tried. Now he’s trying something more familiar and easier: scapegoating Whites.

In the meantime, the US economy gives the illusion of recovery – but to what? Back to a “consumer” credit card shopping orgy? Another house-buying fiesta?

There you go. One last kick in the nuts for the evil morons. Pay no mind to the hedge fund managers who might be called to account for ripping off the evil morons, if only in Kunstler’s nightmares.

Kunstler’s not the only “social critic” who’s thinks it’s important to suppress/redirect the backlash.

Oy! Noam Chomsky Compares Right-Wing Media To “Nazis”:

The memory that comes to my mind — I don’t want to press the analogy too hard, but I think it’s worth thinking about — is late Weimar Germany. There were people with real grievances, and the Nazis gave them an answer. ‘It’s the fault of the Jews and the Bolsheviks and we’ve got to protect ourselves from them, and that will take care of them.’ And you know what happened…

[…]Germany in the 1920s was at the peak of Western civilization. A decade later, it was at the pits of human history.

Chomsky’s characterization of those two decades is from a jewish point of view, which is likely the opposite of how a contemporary native German would have described them.

Unless an answer can be given to these people, unless they can be led to understand what’s really happening to them, we could be in for trouble.

“We” could be in for trouble? Me and mine are already in trouble. We are ruled by a corrupt and illegitimate regime whose highest priority is to drown us in “people of color”, each and every one of which is afforded special rights over Whites. To even question this is considered a crime. Why should we care about the trouble the fraudsters and the “social critics” spinning excuses for them might suffer? They don’t care about our troubles.

The UNo

UN wants new global currency to replace dollar – Telegraph:

In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises.

It added that the present system, under which the dollar acts as the world’s reserve currency , should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration.

Although a number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the UNCTAD report is the first time a major multinational institution has posited such a suggestion.

In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving.

So much for that old amero “conspiracy theory”. Globalists, demonstrating how to not waste a crisis, are now openly proposing a global currency. And even if this radical proposal goes nowhere it helps make the relatively less radical amero (which will remain a “conspiracy theory” right up until it or the UNo becomes reality) that much more likely.

More Fraud Hiding Behind Religion and Philanthropy

The news and commentary below could easily have been appended to Jewish Supremacists Bribing Politicians and Laundering Proceeds of Criminal Activity or Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Two weeks ago I really had no idea how common jewish fraud was. Now I find a simple news search for “rabbi” regularly turns up more.

Money-Laundering Rabbi Case in Los Angeles Echoes N.J. Scandal – Bloomberg.com:

In Los Angeles, U.S. prosecutors charged Naftali Tzi Weisz, grand rabbi of a Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish group, seven other people and five charities with a scheme to evade taxes through use of phony donations. Weisz and four other defendants are scheduled to plead guilty today.

The case may prove a window onto New Jersey’s scandal. Defendants in California were charged with tax fraud, an accusation not yet made in New Jersey, and prosecutors in Los Angeles have targeted 100 more co-conspirators. Later indictments in California also provided enhanced details of illegal methods and of people and banks involved.

“The 2007 charges were the beginning of a much larger case we’re investigating,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel O’Brien, who is overseeing the Los Angeles case.

The organization charged has worked with related religious groups “to move money internationally,” he said.

The window this scandal provides is onto the tip of an iceberg of jewish fraud. Here’s how a jewish charity facilitated tax evasion:

Even after paying Spinka a 20 percent commission, a donor in a 30 percent tax bracket would come out ahead, keeping $80,000 of a $100,000 donation in cash and getting $30,000 because of the offset of the tax deduction.

NY-based rabbi pleads guilty in LA fraud case – San Jose Mercury News:

Naftali Tzi Weisz, 61, entered his plea to one count of conspiracy and could face up to five years in prison at his scheduled sentencing on Nov. 16.

Others who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges were Yaacov Zeivald, 44; Yosef Nachum Naiman, 57; Alan Jay Friedman, 45; and Moshe Arie Lazar, 62, all of Los Angeles. They are scheduled to be sentenced in November.

Spinker Tzadick – Here is one of the best articles w/pictures! « Heimisheh Scandals, dated 18 months ago, has more details about the Spinka rabbi-criminal cabal:

While [assistant U.S. attorney in the major frauds section Daniel J.] O’Brien said he has documentation that the Spinka institutions took in about $750,000 through the scheme — then writing receipts for $8.7 million — in 2007 alone, the assistant U.S. attorney believes the fraud has been going on for decades: “I believe this goes on beyond living memory,” possibly for generations.

This is certainly not the first time an ultra-Orthodox sect has been accused of attempting to break the laws of the secular government — aramos, or schemes, were perpetrated over the centuries in the shtetls of Europe. In the last decade, arrests have occurred in religious communities in Brooklyn, Lakewood, N.J., and upstate New York.

However, this particular case has shocked Los Angeles’ ultra-Orthodox community, not only because Los Angeles had largely been exempt from such cases in the past, but also because some of the city’s prominent members have been charged as being at the center of the scheme.

As a result, the case has sparked a fierce debate about the type of behavior that is acceptable for observant people and what type of religious community Los Angeles would like to be. But there’s also debate about the laws of a moser, an informant, because one person who was not charged was the primary source of information for the federal case — though he allegedly started out as one of the perpetrators.

The article offers some samples of this “fierce debate” (my emphasis toward the end):

CRIME IS NOT SO BAD

“There are a million ways that religious institutions defraud the government,” said one Brooklyn accountant who asked that his name be withheld. However, it’s not just the Jews, he claimed, “churches do the same thing.” Churches and synagogues are exempt from filing tax returns — although many do — and the government usually does not audit unless it has probable cause. As a result, this can make fraud easier.

In the last decade or so, a number of Chasidic institutions on the East Coast have been charged with such crimes, including the 1997 case against the Skverer Hasidim in Rockland County, N.Y., where four men were found guilty of defrauding the government of millions of dollars in federal Pell Grants. But in the Orthodox community, many defended them, despite the crime, because the money was used to support needy yeshiva students.

“Nobody here owns a yacht,” a resident reportedly said, and the feeling then — as with many such institutional fraud cases — that if the money is used to help the community and not line someone’s pockets, it’s not so bad.

That, in fact, is a pervasive attitude these days in Brooklyn, where the Spinka case raised fewer eyebrows than in Los Angeles, because the attitude is everyone does something. This kind of discussion has been a hot topic on many Internet blogs that discuss the ultra-Orthodox community.

“The government are thieves, what gives them the right to take 40 percent to 50 percent of someone’s income? Anyone who can save yiddishe gelt from going down that toilet is doing a mitzvah,” one contributor wrote on the Vosizneias (Yiddish for “What Is News?”) blog.

The blog comments, though, seem to be about evenly divided between two camps: On one hand are those castigating the government or the bloggers posting the news for spreading gossip; on the other are those demanding that the community finally put a stop to criminal behavior.

One particularly poignant plea came from New York white-collar defense attorney Joel Cohen, in an essay published in 2006 titled, “Jewish Felons: The Problem of Criminality in Observant Communities.” Cohen described witnessing a disturbing rise in crime among Orthodox and Chasidic Jews.

“The problem in the observant community, however, is not merely occasional, nor does it often make headlines. Daily, in metropolises around the country, yarmulka-wearing criminal defendants appear before the bar of justice,” he wrote.

Some prisons — especially in New York, Los Angeles and Miami — have daily minyans, visiting rabbis, kosher food, classes and Shabbat meals, Cohen wrote. “The most common charge is fraud: against businessmen and run-of-the-mill citizens alike, most frequently involving victims outside of the Jewish community, against the government, against insurance carriers, against banking institutions, health care fraud, money-laundering and stock-swindling.”

Here’s another criminal rabbi. Ex-Chicago rabbi indicted in tax-fraud case arrested in Israel — chicagotribune.com:

A former Chicago rabbi and nine of his family members and associates have been indicted in connection with a tax-fraud ring that allegedly used the stolen identities of thousands of federal prisoners to file bogus tax returns.

Marvin Berkowitz, 62, who fled to Israel to avoid a tax fraud case in 2003, was arrested in Jerusalem on Sunday night, federal authorities said. Berkowitz allegedly recruited members of the conspiracy to travel to federal courthouses to gather information about prisoners to use in the scheme.

The ring, broken up by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, submitted fraudulent documents using the stolen identities seeking $35 million, and caused $4 million in refunds to be issued to bank accounts it controlled, authorities said. Berkowitz then allegedly directed $800,000 to be paid to his family members.

It was unclear when Berkowitz might be returned to Chicago, where in the late 1980s he also was convicted of stealing documents from the U.S. attorney’s office in yet another fraud case. He eventually was sentenced to 5 years in prison for that crime.

More criminal rabbis. Unorthodox-Jew A Critical View of Orthodox Judaism: Jewish Felons: The Problem of Criminality in Observant Communities:

There is no shortage of high-profile Jewish crime. Take the infamous New Square scandal, in which four Hassidim were convicted for defrauding the government of $11 million by setting up a fictitious yeshiva to receive federal student aid money. Or the case in Williamsburg, New York, in which the rabbi of a Jewish day school stole 6 million dollars from the Board of Education over several years by falsely identifying more than eighty individuals as school employees.

Here’s some classic anti-anti-semitic apologia for jewish fraud. Z Magazine – Bernard Madoff – Wall Street swindler inadvertently strikes powerful blows for social justice? James Petras turns reality on its head in two separate ways:

Point number nine is that Madoff struck a severe blow against anti-Semites who claim that there is a “close-knit Jewish conspiracy to defraud the Gentiles,” laying that canard to rest once and for all. Among Madoff’s principle victims were his closest Jewish friends and colleagues, people who shared Seder meals and frequented the same upscale temples in Long Island and Palm Beach.

Madoff was discriminating in accepting clients, but it was on the basis of their wealth, not their national origin, race, religion, or sexual preference. He was very ecumenical and a strong backer of globalization as he defrauded the Anglo-Chinese bank HSBC of $1 billion, the Dutch arm of the Belgian bank Fortes of several billion, the Royal Bank of Scotland, the French bank BNP Paribas, the Spanish bank Banco Santander, and the Japanese Nomura of a total of $1.4 billion—not to mention hedge funds in London and the U.S., which have admitted holdings in Bernard Madoff Investment Securities.

Can’t you just see Petras smiling smugly to himself and wiping his hands after writing “once and for all”?

First is the typical anti-anti-semitic canard that the long list of indictments and convictions of close-knit jewish conspiracies to defraud non-jews is a “canard” concocted by “anti-semites”. Why would somebody attempt to so blatantly not just deny reality but invert it? For one thing it justifies seeing the prosecution and reporting of jewish crimes as “anti-semitic”, which in turn allows talmudic scholars to rationalize that jewish crime is not really criminal.

Second is the patently false kneejerk assertion that the fraud of close-knit jewish conspiracies has nothing to do with jewishness. With the criminal rabbi cases I’ve cited the central role of jewish networking is crystal clear. In Madoff’s case, his closest jewish friends and colleagues were generally the earliest ones in on the pyramid scheme, the contributions were relatively small and their payouts relatively early. Many knew or suspected what was going on, which is why they called it The Jewish Bond. The big international funds came later, bringing in largely non-jewish money (as opposed to “yiddishe gelt”) which was paid out largely to earlier “investors”, like Madoff and his closest jewish friends and colleagues. In the end Madoff kept his mouth shut and went to jail claiming only he knew. I’m sure the jews who lost money have names for what Madoff did. Moser isn’t one of them. Madoff’s real crime, according to the many very vocal jews who obviously don’t think jewishness is irrelevant, is the supposed damage he did to jewish “philanthropy”. There are similar laments from extremely self-conscious and thoroughly self-interested jews concerning their ever more numerous criminal rabbis.

A natural and healthy response from a secular government to the revelation of this pattern of fraud posing as religious philanthropy would be to subject all jewish charities to extra regulation and scrutiny. Such a response would undoubtedly be crimped if not completely stymied by the older, even stronger pattern of jews uniting to decry, pathologize and punish such normal, healthy responses as irrational jew-hate.

By continuing to treat each incident of jewish financial fraud as an independent case of religious philanthropy gone bad media and government both commit their own fraud. Whether motivated by sympathy, fealty, or fear the behavior is inexcusable, but not inexplicable. The government’s duty to prosecute crime conflicts with it’s special self-appointed “need to combat anti-Semitism”. The government’s drive to defend jewish interests is so strong that it manifests as anti-Whitism. This arises in part from the canard-inverting propaganda discussed above, in part from jewish lobbying, and as a result of jewish political contributions. It is reasonable to also suspect the kind of graft the syrian criminal rabbis are accused of using. When philanthropist-plutocrats talk, politicians listen.

The bottom line is that the more jews are convicted of grubbing too much too blatantly, the louder and more urgent the cries to criminalize “anti-semitism” become. Meanwhile, in contrast, jewish “philanthropy” continues unmolested. This is not at all a coincidence.

John Robb’s Global Guerrillas

Via John Robb on Tribalism at The Occidental Quarterly I followed a link to Robb’s blog Global Guerrillas where he focuses on:

Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures.

Here’s his About page.

I’m not sure what to make of Robb, but here’s what I think so far. His analysis of globalism is broad, incisive, and critical, and comes from a technologically informed point of view outside the false dichotomy of partisan politics. He provides interesting opinions and links, though his writing is larded with jargon. Only cryptically, by reading between the lines, can he be understood to recognize the tribal jewish influence that so dominates the West’s politics, finance, and media. He seems a typical deracinated White, for whom even a keen interest in tribalism and communities and opposition to globalism appears not at all motivated by an overt awareness of or sympathy for his own tribe.

His essay Containing Chaos (unfortunately no longer freely visible in it’s entirety) begins:

We are now engaged in a conflict that will dictate whether we succeed or fail in the 21st century. Our adversary in this conflict is, in short, the threat posed by globalization.

and concludes (my emphasis):

Disruptions that result in societal and economic chaos occur most readily in societies where the health and vigor of a society has decayed. In other words, the social and economic system that the nation-state administers must be seen as fair and just, and it must deliver tangible results to the greatest number of people possible. Anything less than this and societal breakdown becomes extremely likely should disruption occur, since the allure of participation in oppositional groups, from black-market crime to guerrilla/terrorist groups, will outweigh outcomes available through participation in the status quo. In short, the nation-state will lose its legitimacy with large subsets of its population.

Here’s an example of not delivering results: The incomes of the bottom four-fifths of Americans have fallen 10 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the last three decades, despite massive improvements in worker productivity. For an example of not being just and fair, we need not go far: Self-dealing financial elites defrauded markets and the government of trillions of dollars realized during the 2008 financial panic, and not one of them went to jail.

In order to retain legitimacy at a level that allows some freedom of action, the government must endeavor to deliver real economic progress to its constituents. That means that every policy should be slaved to increasing incomes in line with increases in worker productivity, and improving the long-term financial wealth of the greatest number. (The best way to measure the success of government efforts in this regard are increases in the median incomes of individuals.) One method of achieving this, already mentioned above, is to remove barriers to community resilience. Community resilience has the potential to substantially improve the incomes and quality of life for the greatest number by reducing end-user costs, creating jobs, and spurring massive leaps in innovation.

The greatest threat to achieving this outcome lies in the potential for parasitic interests to gain control of government function, since one of the quickest routes to illegitimacy is through the appearance of corruption. This unfortunate outcome was evident in the 2008 financial meltdown, as special interests proved capable of snaring trillions in subsidies from the public treasure for no apparent improvement in the lives of most citizens.

Robb’s analysis is clouded by his conflation of both pro-globalist “self-dealing financial elite” tribalists and anti-globalist al-qaeda-like tribalists (mentioned earlier in his essay) as “parasitic interests”. While Robb sees the jihadi threat clearly enough he seems unwilling or unable to confront the implications of his own analysis regarding the “parasitic interests” who control finance and drive globalism. That their fraud going unpunished implies not the potential to gain control of government function, but that they have already gained it. That this control goes unheralded and uncriticized in the mainstream media implies that the “parasitic interests” also effectively control media function.

The “parasitic interests” who illegitimately control the Eurosphere’s government, finance, and media have made it clear that their most feared and detested enemies are White tribalists. For us repression and punishment are considered normal and deserved, especially in response to opposition to the “parasitic interests” whose genocidal immigration policies are swamping our homelands with hostile non-White tribalists.

UPDATE 16 July 2009: A bit more of Robb’s essay Containing Chaos is available at The Occidental Quarterly Online, including this paragraph:

News in the age of the global supernetwork is often startling. It features an endless procession of crushing financial panics, unexpected food shortages, sharp commodity price spikes, brazen terrorist attacks that have shut down major cities from New York to Sao Paulo to Mumbai, and much more. These extreme events form a pattern of behavior that should serve as an alarm. They are an indication that the system we have come to rely upon, the global supernetwork that connects us to each other and all manner of goods and services is entering a period of extreme turbulence, where we careen from crisis to crisis at an increasing rate and incremental severity. At worst, it may even be an indication of a looming catastrophic failure of indeterminable duration.

Green Shoots and Goldman Sachs

Media moguls rediscover scepticism:

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp, said the business outlook for the next three to five years was “unanimously bearish”.

Deal talk, once the sport of choice, was nowhere to be found among the gathered media moguls at the conference, which is sponsored by Allen & Co. It was replaced by hand-wringing and cynicism over social media, an interesting but revenue-challenged section of the business.

“A lot of people are doing very well making very little money,” quipped Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony, speaking of social media. “It’s not a club I want to join.”

Twitter, the extremely popular online service that allows users to broadcast short text messages, was forecast to be the belle of the ball.

But any chatter about the micro-blogging service, which played a pivotal role in the dissemination of news in the recent Iran elections, soon turned to how it was unlikely to make money in the near future.

“Everyone is talking about it. I don’t know if it is monetisable,” said John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media. His sentiment was echoed by a panel of media executives that included Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC, the internet group.

Evan Williams, chief executive of Twitter, sat quietly as executives puzzled over the financial future of his company, and shied away from reporters for most of the week.

When Mr Murdoch, the consummate dealmaker whose 2005 purchase of MySpace helped burnish his image among the digerati, was asked whether he would be interested in Twitter, he had a one-word answer.

He said: “No.”

It would be bad enough if one group of influential people saw economic prospects are bleak and will be for some time, while another saw “green shoots” everywhere. Here we can see that many of the former employ or lend a megaphone to many of the latter. Something to keep in mind the next time a talking head tells you that now is a great time to buy.

The poor media moguls must be pickled with envy when they look at the financial moguls at Goldman Sachs. In the middle of the “failure” of the financial “industry” that got “fixed” by a bum rush bailout that put taxpayers on the hook for multiple trillions of dollars, Goldman Sachs partners somehow ended up swimming in money from selling stock (at bargain prices, because they, like their media mogul cousins, don’t swallow the “green shoots” swill) and awarding themselves record bonuses (because otherwise they’d be tempted to leave and use their big brains to wreak havoc in another “industry”).

So what’s keeping the media moguls, especially in their current desperation, from succumbing to the temptation to exploit the “monetisable” popular resentment that even the finance moguls recognize?