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.

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Philip Weiss on Jewish Power

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Not for the first time (see here and here), Philip Weiss has expounded on Jewish power, this time as it relates to Netanyahu’s speech (“Netanyahu’s speech and the American Jewish condition“).

The fear [of persecution] blinds Jews to our power, in Israel and the United States. It is hard for Jews to think of ourselves as powerful because of a historical and collective memory of persecution. Yet the world regards us as powerful. It sees the Jewish state as a nuclear armed country with a huge army, and it sees Jews as an elite in the United States with a ton of clout. “Why is the American Jewish community so determined to convince itself that we are living in 1938?” the late Tony Judt asked nine years ago. “Why does the most successful, the most well integrated, the most culturally and politically influential, the most socially and economically well situated Jewish community since the late years of the Roman republic, why is it so worried about the demon of anti-Semitism?”

We are as I like to remind readers the wealthiest American group by religion and we took over many establishment perches in the last generation. We are three of the four Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court, and whenever I turn on the news, I see influential Jews. Andrea Mitchell the wife of Alan Greenspan interviews Kenneth Pollack, Matt Lauer interviews Lorne Michaels. Last night I watched a panel on CSPAN about the Charlie Hebdo murders at the French-American Foundation and it appeared that all four speakers were Jewish.

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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

Zwei Beispiele jüdischer Doppelmoral: Wie sich Moral innerhalb der Gruppe von der Moral gegenüber Außenstehenden unterscheidet

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German translation of “Two ingroup morality items,” by Thora

Wie auf den Seiten von TOQ schon oft festgestellt wurde, propagieren Diaspora-Juden im Westen  ständig Einwanderung und Multikultur als unverzichtbare Werte und moralische Ideale, die nicht in Frage gestellt werden dürfen, während die gesamte Politik des Staates Israel darauf gerichtet ist, dessen jüdischen Charakter zu bewahren.

Das jüngste Beispiel war die Verschiffung von Dutzenden afrikanischer Flüchtlinge, die in Israel lebten, nach Schweden. Patrick Cleburne hat in seinem Bericht auf der Seite VDARE die Schluß­folgerung daraus zusammen­gefaßt: Aus der Ähnlichkeit von Schweden und Israel bezüglich Größe und ethnischer Zusammensetzung ergibt sich: daß Afrikaner nach Schweden geschickt werden, ist nur dadurch erklärbar,  daß den Schweden die Bewahrung ihrer schwedischen Identität gleichgültig ist, während Israel sich zutiefst darum sorgt, ein jüdischer Staat  zu bleiben.

Die Regierungspolitik  der USA steht in bezug auf Einwanderung und Multikultur im Gegensatz zu den Interessen der verwurzelten westlichen Bevölkerung, insbesondere der Arbeiterklasse (wie Cleburne anmerkt, ist zu erwarten, daß viele dieser afrikanischen Flüchtlinge schließlich in den Vereinigten Staaten auftauchen), während sich die israelische Regierung für das eigene Volk ein­setzt: Innenminister Gideon Sa’ar sagte,  er sei wenig beeindruckt vom „Geschrei und Gejammer der Firmeneigentümer, deren Mitarbeiter streiken – bei aller berechtigten Rücksicht auf die Inhaber der von der Krise betroffenen Restaurants und Kaffeehäuser, oder die Reinigungsfirmen, deren Beschäftigte nicht zur Arbeit erscheinen – dies wird nicht die nationale Politik Israels bestimmen. Im Gegenteil – wir sollten an die Israelis denken, die ihren Job [an Wanderarbeiter] verloren haben.“ Read more

Moshe Kantor’s Campaign to Stalinize Europe

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Moshe Kantor has a dream — a dream of a Stalinist Europe:

Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), said that Europe is on the cusp of “a New Dark Ages” during the opening of the Fourth International “Let My People Live!” Forum, held in Prague on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Recent atrocities in Paris, Brussels and Toulouse are visible manifestations of the deep structural problems embodied in European society today,” Dr. Kantor said. “This, coupled with the continuing electoral successes of extremist parties in Europe, demonstrated in recent elections across the continent, shows that unfortunately, Europe is on a dangerous path. We need practical solutions and so we have prioritised the adoption of the European Framework National Statute for the Promotion of Tolerance.”

This Model Law, drafted by leading European experts and legislators, and supported by the EJC, defines the limits of tolerance, which is the demand for security. This is intended to be a pan-European law that for the first time deals with not only the general commitment to tolerance, but defines the values that need preserving and the limitation of tolerance towards minority groups who risk the security of other minorities and of their host countries. …

“In the immediate term, intelligence-gathering and sharing across Europe must increase. It is now well known that all of the perpetrators of the attacks in Paris were on the radars of intelligence and police officials. The question of prevention must be readdressed, because the current paradigm is simply not working,” Dr. Kantor said. “Police and law enforcement also need to be strengthened. This includes actively enforcing laws against incitement and anti-Semitic speech, and taking a firmer approach against those who promote hate and violence.

“Never before, has Europe’s intellectual elite joined with the continent’s senior political leadership and top-legal experts within the same conference to genuinely address the very real threats faced by all Europe’s citizens. Now we must transfer these important words into real action.” Kantor said. (EJC President Moshe Kantor: Europe on the Cusp of ‘New Dark Ages’ at Forum to Combat anti-Semitism, Racism and Radical Jihadism, European Jewish Congress website, 28th January 2015)

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“Nearly all the leaders of the liberal opposition [in Russia] are either fully Jewish or have Jewish background”

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It’s obvious that there is a strong Jewish influence in the West opposed to Russia, particularly noticeable among the Israel Lobby and the neocons — Victoria Nuland‘s family ties and her role in the Ukrainian revolution come to mind.

There are many reasons for this, certainly including Russia’s alliance with Iran and Syria at a time when Israel and the Israel Lobby are doing all they can to promote war with both. Quite simply, Jewish hostility stems from the fact that Russia under Vladimir Putin has proved to be far more nationalistic than is good for the Jews or for Israel.

An article in The Jerusalem Post, excerpted below, notes the very prominent role of Jews within Russia in opposing Putin — Putin refers to the opposition as a “fifth column” in Russia. But, in addition to foreign policy differences, there are also overtones of festering resentment about the role of Jewish oligarchs under Yeltsin in looting the country. Nemtsov, as noted in the article, was second in command to Yeltsin. Read more

White Britons Oppose Jews and Muslims over Animal Slaughter

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Thanks to the British brilliant organisation Animal Aid (AA) which has secretly made the above film, the assertion that animals are pre-stunned in many halal abattoirs is exposed as a deception in graphically traumatising images.

The scene is Bowood Yorkshire Lamb halal slaughterhouse in Thirsk, in the north of England, the tenth abattoir in which Animal Aid’s hidden cameras have filmed undercover since the charity’s ongoing investigation into UK slaughter practices started in January 2009.

What is significant is that Bowood is also the first halal slaughterhouse filmed by AA, which – as always – didn’t know what it would find. It didn’t know, for example, that it was halal. And so, the first halal abattoir investigated happens by sheer chance to be one of the few – so it is claimed – that don’t stun animals before the killing. Read more