Jews in the Economy and Finance

Paul Singer and the Universality of “Anti-Semitism”

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One of the most fundamental positions for White advocates concerned with Jewish influence must be the conviction that antagonism against Jews lies in Jewish behavior rather than solely the cultural pathology or psychological tendencies of non-Jews. A major testing ground for this position is the necessity for anti-Jewish attitudes to be present among geographically, racially, and culturally diverse peoples, and for the reasons behind this antagonism to be fairly uniform. In Separation and Its Discontents Kevin MacDonald argued that a social identity theory of anti-Semitism is highly compatible with supposing that anti-Semitism will be a very common characteristic of human societies in general. Reasons for this pervasiveness lie in Jewish cultural separatism leading to the perception of the Jewish group as an alien entity; inter-group resource and reproductive competition; and finally, the fact that Jews are, for cultural and genetic reasons, highly adept in resource competition against non-Jews. Additionally, Jews are adept at influencing culture and creating and influencing intellectual and political movements which often run contrary to the interests of the host population. Wherever these behaviors and circumstances are present, they contribute to the arousal of hostility in a host population.

Despite overwhelming evidence in support of our position, the vast majority of Jewish historiography and apologetics continue to argue something quite different. Our opponents have successfully disseminated the view that anti-Semitism is a peculiarly Western phenomenon, rooted more or less in a cocktail of evil Christian theology, the implicit frustrations of capitalist society, the despotic nature of the Western family, and even repressed sexual desires. A key aspect of maintaining this narrative has been to downplay non-Western (mainly Muslim) anti-Semitism, or attempt to give it different features. However, as MacDonald has noted, “the remarkable thing about anti-Semitism is that there is an overwhelming similarity in the complaints made about Jews in different places and over very long periods of historical time.”[1] Of the universal themes noted by MacDonald, the theme of resource competition and economic domination is perhaps foremost. Read more

Jews and Moneylending: A Contemporary Case File, Part 3 of 3

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Part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3

Conclusion

Josephus, the first-century Jewish “historian,” anticipated many of his co-ethnic apologists in Against Apion, his two-volume defense of Judaism. In it, Josephus contested the early reputation for Jewish economic unscrupulousness, arguing that robbery “is alien to us, as are wars for enrichment, since we delight not in merchandise or the world of trade.”

Two thousand years later, Abraham Foxman would write another blanket denial of reality in Jews and Money: Story of a Stereotype. Although only spending about 5% of the book even discussing the nature and impact of Jewish wealth (the remainder predictably advocating harsh restrictions on free speech), Foxman makes the ridiculous claim that “Jews are just another ethnic minority, with both winners and loser in the race for economic success.”[1] As a true reflection of the nature of Jewish economic activity through the ages, this clearly leaves a lot to be desired. Thus, although separated by two millennia, Josephus and Foxman both have the same basic exhortation: “Move along. Nothing to see here.”

But of course there is something to see here, and that “something” is the story of the Jewish quest for the “rainless crop” — for the money to be made from money, from coin-shavings, or from air. Time and again, as many of these people have admitted or even boasted, Jews have been at the forefront of innovations in debt. Loans for monarchs, knights and peasants in England. Credit for alcohol in deepest Russia. Expensive credit and the instalment plan for cheaply made goods in Germany. Pawnbroking in Chicago. The stated income loan across America. Online moneylending throughout the West. Online gambling around the globe. They pioneered and expanded these spheres of economic activity and they remain its largest beneficiaries. I’ve established with ease that those billionaires who sit at the very top are loyal to those of their own ethnicity and comparably heartless to the millions of their customers who aren’t members of their impeccably moral tribe and “Light unto the Nations.” Jewish financial conduct, as well as reactions to it from within the Jewish community, are rife with ethnocentric cooperation and the age-old practice of dual ethics. Read more

Jews and Moneylending: A Contemporary Case File, Part 2 of 3

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Part 1 of 3.
Part 3 of 3.

Jews and Moneylending: A Contemporary Case File

One of the standout stars of the online moneylending business is Al Goldstein, a Jew from Uzbekistan who arrived in America with his family in 1988. Goldstein is the co-founder and CEO of AvantCredit.com, one of America’s fastest growing online providers of consumer loans. After securing more than $1 billion in funding, AvantCredit was the most funded company in Chicago in 2014. The company has issued more than 100,000 loans operating in 46 U.S. states and in the United Kingdom where it has operated under the brand SpringCoin.co.uk. But these aren’t the only strands in Goldstein’s web. A major trait of these Jewish moneylending mega-operations is that they start off with a single company and then spawn innumerable new branches and brand names over time. In such ways, the ownership and liabilities for these companies quickly becomes obscured. For example, Goldstein was also co-founder, President and CEO of CashNetUSA, which then changed its name to Enova International, from 2004 until 2008. Enova trades under several more company names in Canada (Dollars Direct), Australia (Dollars Direct Australia), and Great Britain, where it operates as QuickQuid, Pounds to Pocket and also On Stride Financial. As for where Goldstein might put some of his “rainless crop,” I note that Goldstein is an “active member” of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Unlike most White Americans, who look on with horror at the declining fortunes of the American middle class, Goldstein sees opportunity in it. In 2009 he started Pangea Properties in order buy thousands of foreclosing properties. This Uzbek Jew now owns more than 10,000 homes previously in the hands of debt-saddled Americans. Enova has been recorded boasting that “demand in the consumer segment we serve has been influenced by several demographic and socioeconomic trends, including an overall increase in the population and stagnant to declining growth in the household income for this segment.” It touts a recent National Bureau of Economic Research survey in which nearly half of U.S. consumers said they couldn’t come up with $2,000 in emergency funds even if they had a month to do so. They predict more and more citizens will be turning to them for financial “assistance,” and Goldstein’s operation has been described as “ideal” by Dan and Bob Wolfberg, the co-founders of another Chicago-based loan firm, PLS Financial Services Inc. Another increasingly influential player in the American online moneylending game is LendUp, founded in 2011 in San Francisco by Sasha Orloff and Jacob Rosenberg.

Read more

Jews and Moneylending: A Contemporary Case File, Part 1 of 3

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“Interest on debts grows without rain.”-Yiddish Proverb

Some things never change, and one of these things seems to be the Jewish connection to usury. During a recent conversation with a good friend who now finds himself at the sharp end of the financial downturn, he mentioned having been forced to turn to the ‘services” of what has become known as a “payday loan” company. The relatively small, short-term, unsecured loans offered by these companies, to those struggling to hold onto the socio-economic ladder, very often come with eye-watering rates of interest. As the conversation continued, my friend despondently informed me that because of the rate of interest on his current loan, when the end of the month came he was in all likelihood going to be facing the prospect of paying off his loan only to have to immediately take out another.

He was trapped. Looking at this younger man, who also has a baby on the way, I offered to cover the totality of the interest on this particular loan on one condition: that he avoids at all costs taking out another loan. He gratefully accepted my offer, but I couldn’t help but feel that it won’t be long before the allure of quick (but expensive) cash begins to tug at him once more.

Cicero once remarked on “how large an income is thrift,” and I would also echo the sentiment that thrift is a matter of character more than of economics. But more immediately pressing to me in this case was the fact that although my young friend believed he was dealing with a fairly small-scale operation, with a “down-home” feel, he was in fact becoming ensnared in an international web that thrives and feeds on people just like him — the hard-working but economically weak victims of “the system.” The small storefront instant loan operations in your hometown, or the comforting names of the seemingly small-scale online lender, are simply the extremities of this web. Sitting at the feast table of this feeding frenzy on the working poor are a large number of businessmen who hail from an ethnic community which has a long, rich, and unbroken history in precisely this line of work. Regardless of those screeching cries of ‘stereotype,” this history is a well-documented one, and with the publication of this article I hope it will be documented better still. Moreover, I might add, despite the obfuscations of those with obvious bias, this particular tribe has more often than not engaged in this trade out of choice. After all, unlike crops which require toil, sweat, rootedness and, yes, rain, interest grows simply and incessantly with the tick of the clock. Read more

Tory funding scandal explodes in the UK: The ethnic angle

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It is not very surprising that rich people use secret Swiss bank accounts to hide their fortunes from the taxman.  Nevertheless the political implications of the biggest bank leak in history at HSBC ensure that it will ricochet around the world for some time to come.

The accounts of over 100,000 wealthy clients have been opened to scrutiny by a whistle blower and show that the Swiss branch of Britain’s biggest bank was dealing not only in industrial-scale tax evasion but, apparently, money laundering as well. While holding a Swiss bank account is not illegal, hiding income from the taxman is, and traditionally that is the only reason someone would have a Swiss account  — unless they worked in that country.

All kinds of wealthy flotsam have bobbed up — Middle Eastern royalty, hedge fund owners, politicians, industrialists, Belgian blood diamond smugglers, Israeli arms dealers, African dictators, fashion designers, international models, entertainers and many more. Fresh revelations are revealed practically every day.

The fallout has been biggest in Britain where the ruling Conservative elite has ended up with egg on its face after seven of its largest donors were exposed as beneficiaries of HSBC’s Swiss tax arrangements. The Tories received £5 million from those HSBC Suisse account holders. Read more

“The Wolf of Wall Street” — the Movie

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As we recently saw with my review of Jordan Belfort’s bestseller The Wolf of Wall Street, there are many pronounced Jewish themes in the memoir. Frankly, I’d never noticed the book, but this year I did get the DVD of the film based on the book, and that alerted me.

Begin with this howler: As the diminutive Jewish stock fraudster Jordan Belfort, director Martin Scorsese chose none other than six-foot-tall, (sometimes) blond-haired Leonardo DiCaprio. This has to go down as one of the most egregious miscastings in Hollywood history.

Why did it happen?

I will argue that this is a classic case of Hollywood deceiving the public, and I have plenty of evidence for this.

In the film, at exactly five minutes into the story — just after DiCaprio’s character has snorted cocaine with a hundred dollar bill and done a little trick by making us think “this shit” (cocaine) will make you invincible, when it fact he means the money he is using as a straw — he launches into a speech as he enters his busy trading floor:

See, money doesn’t just buy you a better life — better food, better cars, better pussy — it also makes you a better person. You can give generously to the church, or political party of your choice. Save the fuckin’ spotted owl with money.  [emphasis added]

“To the church.” In his memoir from which the film springs, Belfort is refreshingly forthright that he is Jewish — and that all but one close associate is Jewish — as are the majority of his traders. Now in the film — which “happened” to open on Christmas Day 2013 — we are informed that rich people like DiCaprio’s Belfort can give “to the church,” not synagogue or ADL or Jewish think tank. It is this kind of subtle deception that would, in my view, prevent the vast, vast majority of Gentile viewers from understanding that these financial criminals are Jewish. Read more

“The Wolf of Wall Street” — the Book

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How many times have you heard about financial crimes and frauds perpetrated by people who happen to be Jewish? How many times have you heard about the association of Jews and Wall Street? For most TOO readers, these themes should be amply familiar.

Now let’s consider yet another instance of the above. Just before the economic meltdown of 2008, an important book about Wall Street appeared and became a bestseller. It was stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s first book about his crimes called The Wolf of Wall Street and was published in 2007 by major publisher Bantam Dell, a division of Random House.

Let’s allow an official overview to set up the tale:

By day he made thousands of dollars a minute. By night he spent it as fast as he could, on drugs, sex, and international globe-trotting. From the binge that sank a 170 foot motor yacht, crashed a Gulfstream jet, and ran up a $700,000 hotel tab, to the wife and kids who waited for him at home and the fast-talking, hard-partying young stockbrokers who called him king and did his bidding, here, in his own inimitable words, is the story of the ill-fated genius they called … “Wolf of Wall Street.” In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess no one could invent — the extraordinary story of an ordinary guy who went from hustling Italian ices at sixteen to making hundreds of millions. Until it all came crashing down.

Refreshingly, throughout the book Belfort openly and explicitly notes his marked Jewish identity and that of all of his close co-conspirators. It amounts to a fascinating look at the inner workings of a corrupt Jewish financial organization — and Belfort succeeds magnificently in narrating the rollicking affair. No wonder one newspaper called it “A cross between Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Scorsese’s GoodFellas. The comparison to Wolfe is apt, but rather than Scorsese’s GoodFellas, Belfort’s tale should be compared to Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because it shares the same non-stop extreme adventure and use of mind-altering drugs. Read more