Bankman-crickets / Musk-endlessly fascinating

[temporal1]

t1,
Good find, and whilst Democrats were busy holding January 6 hearings and prosecuting Trump about a gift of a coffee mug,
a major Democratic campaign donor stole $10 billion (and counting) from his bank’s depositors.

From the moment reading about U.S. Congress being empowered to sign off on multiple TRILLIONS in spending, i anticipated we would soon witness TRIVIALIZING the concept+reality of “billions” in gov spending and finance.

In my view, “multiple TRILLIONS” is a euphemism for: ENDLESS SPENDING WITH ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY OF ANY KIND

Presently, “millions” have become petty cash/slush fund numbers, barely worth anything beyond slow news days.

Of course this magnificent level of corruption has direct impact on U.S. elections - long before physical votes, regardless of manner or day of voting. For Sam Bankman-Fried, by his own words, throwing elections was his primary motivator -but- of course he’s not the only billionaire with political motivations! The world’s premiere POLITICAL BUSY-BODIES are billionaires.

Years ago, i recall Bloomberg chatting/gloating with David Letterman one evening about his personal satisfaction at throwing a Chicago election. The entitlement. But, of course this would be the mentality. (i was never able to locate that clip.) Fancy that.

Corruption is as old time. Worship of self as god.

[temporal1]

Coincidentally, about financial schemes, another thread was just updated (by stateofteglobe) with the following video:

P.4 / Nathan Peachey
http://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php ... 4&start=30

“The time right wing conspiracy fraudsters thought I stole the loot: The Nathan Peachey story PART 1” / 22min

For anyone interested, part 1 of that documentary on Nathan Peachey (and my involvement with him) is live:



Would love to hear what you all think.

I must say, personally dealing with this man has been an absolute whirlwind.
Also cutting through some of the quasi-"law" Sovereign Citizens preach is a handful.

Description:

A group of Sovereign Citizen grifters stole $13 million from their own supporters.
So I milked them for details, and here's what I discovered about their massive operation.

[temporal1]

Coincidentally, about financial schemes, another thread was just updated (by stateofteglobe) with the following video:

P.4 / Nathan Peachey
http://forum.mennonet.com/viewtopic.php ... 4&start=30

“The time right wing conspiracy fraudsters thought I stole the loot: The Nathan Peachey story PART 1” / 22min

For anyone interested, part 1 of that documentary on Nathan Peachey (and my involvement with him) is live:

https://

Would love to hear what you all think.

I must say, personally dealing with this man has been an absolute whirlwind.
Also cutting through some of the quasi-"law" Sovereign Citizens preach is a handful.

Description:

A group of Sovereign Citizen grifters stole $13 million from their own supporters.
So I milked them for details, and here's what I discovered about their massive operation.

^^fyi. i know nothing of Nathan Peachey or stateofteglobe. maybe in time more will be known.

[temporal1]

More creepiness.

“Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes jailed for fraud”
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in her blood testing start-up that was once valued at $9bn (£7.5bn).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63685131

The former Silicon Valley star falsely claimed the technology could diagnose disease with just a few drops of blood.
Holmes, 38, who is pregnant, tearfully told the court she felt "deep pain" for those misled by the scam.

She was found guilty in January after a three-month trial.

Everything in this report is awful.

E Homes was a Stanford University dropout, Sam Bankman-Fried is the son of two Stanford U. law professors.
Serious heart issues may be the norm rather than the exception in these rarified circles.


Elizabeth Holmes: From tech star to convicted fraudster

Holmes is expected to appeal against the sentence, which was handed down on Friday in a California court.

Once hailed as the "next Steve Jobs", she was at one time said to be the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

She launched Theranos after dropping out of Stanford University at age 19, and its value rose sharply after the company claimed it could bring about a revolution in the diagnosal of disease.
But the technology Holmes touted did not work and - awash in lawsuits - the company was dissolved by 2018.

She has a child and is expecting another.

[temporal1]

“SEC charges former FTX CEO with defrauding crypto investors”
https://www.aol.com/finance/sec-charges ... 29840.html

“Bahamian jail for SBF?”
Next up, “likely” extradition to the US
https://www.ft.com/content/b3f398c8-83e ... a1282703c5

[Bootstrap]

Doesn't sound like crickets to me. Bankman is getting plenty of attention.

[Ken]

According to coverage I have read, only about 2% of the customers of FTX were Americans, the remaining 98% were foreigners. No doubt many of them unsavory characters like Mexican drug cartels and Russian oligarchs looking to use crypto to launder their ill-gotten billions. One has to wonder how many of them are apoplectic that an American "techbro" has vaporized all their investments. I expect those are not enemies that one wants to make.

FTX itself isn't an American company either. It is based in Bahamas to avoid US taxes and regulatory oversight. If it needs bailing out, let the Bahamans do it. Fortune Magazine did an article recently about the life that Bankman was living with his ill-gotten billions: https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/22/s ... lifestyle/

The palatial compound known as Albany is not your typical tropical paradise. The 600-acre property, located on the Bahamian island of New Providence, attracted the likes of Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake for its grand opening in 2010, and homes sell for tens of millions of dollars. There is an 18-hole golf course designed by Ernie Els, a 71-slip mega yacht marina and eleven closed-to-the-public restaurants. Wealthy residents can gaze at a perfect replica of Arturo Di Modica’s “Charging Bull” statue and send their children to a boarding and day school spread across two campuses. Albany likes to call itself a “private community.”

Albany is the type of place where, if you show up to its front entrance in a taxi and ask if you can come in, the guard replies with a smirk and tells your driver, “You should know better.” It’s the type of place where if you station yourself a bit down the road to take some pictures of the sign, an unmarked car shows up within minutes to ask what you’re doing.

It’s also where Sam Bankman-Fried—a man who once told an interviewer, “I’m not that much of a consumer, exactly”—calls home. The disgraced head of FTX moved there in 2021 when Hong Kong became too hot to run an apparent international cryptocurrency casino. He lives in a $30 million penthouse in the compound’s seaside Orchid residence, where he and nine confidants ran a Bernie Madoff-like empire, living a pampered life where employees ordered toenail clippers on-demand.

I got a taste of Albany last week when I went to the Bahamas in a futile attempt to knock on Bankman-Fried’s door. In the course of the trip, I came to learn of the rife hypocrisy and dark secrets that compose the crypto tycoon’s island world.

As one Bahamian financier told me, “In 1706, the Bahamas got designated as a pirate republic. Nothing has changed except for the design of the suits they wear.”

And of course the whole "effective altruism" charity he seems to be involved in also seems to be something of a scam. They recently bought a $20 million dollar estate in the English countryside so the can hold "conferences". Right...



And if you want to square the circle on the subject of this thread, it seems that both Bankman and Musk are caught up in this same "effective altruism" venture

The truth about Elon Musk, Sam Bankman-Fried, and effective altruism: Inside the billionaire class’s latest idea to save the world https://www.fastcompany.com/90784622/th ... e-altruism

[HondurasKeiser]

I've been hearing and reading about 'Effective Altruism' for about a year now - mostly from Scott Alexander's blog (he is a cautious fan). The more I read though, the more it seems like a New Age-y kind of cult.

[Ken]

I've been hearing and reading about 'Effective Altruism' for about a year now - mostly from Scott Alexander's blog (he is a cautious fan). The more I read though, the more it seems like a New Age-y kind of cult.

I don't know if it is a cult so much as a way to make really extremely rich people feel good about themselves and another way for them to feel superior to the rest of us.

I'm sure they do some productive things with their money and it isn't all a cult or scam. But I hugely doubt that it is more effective or efficient than ordinary small-scale development projects like CAM, MCC, and other organizations that depend more on hands-on teaching and the hard hands-on work of development workers than parachuting cash into places.

The developing world is littered with the skeletons of high-priced schemes and projects foisted on them by first world "experts" that turned out to be complete failures for an infinite variety of reasons not understood by the experts who brought them. I'm sure you know that much more than me. I recently heard about some project where software engineers were going to do junkets to remote villages in the western highlands of Guatemala to teach Mayan villagers how to code. Maybe that is the missing key to addressing poverty in rural Guatemala. But I somehow doubt it. It sounded a lot more like feel-good "development tourism" to me.

[Pelerin]

I recently heard about some project where software engineers were going to do junkets to remote villages in the western highlands of Guatemala to teach Mayan villagers how to code.

When all you have is a hammer…