Ignorance and Knowledge, Wisdom and Lord Beaconsfield

When I sat down to write my first blog essay in early February of 2005, I set out a couple of hard and fast rules for myself: never review a book I had not read nor a movie I had not seen; never pass off as fact that which is truly fiction; never write about a subject, situation or scenario I have not, to the best of my ability, researched as best I can. And above all, never fear admitting ignorance . . . there is always time to learn from someone who can help fill in the gaps. These rules of the road can best be summed up by the greatest of all second-rate English novelists, who would also become Prime Minister of the British Empire: Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), a.k.a. the Earl of Beaconsfield. For he once wrote, “To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.”

The author of at least 17 novels (the best-known of which were Coningsby, Sybil (also known as “The Two Nations”) and Tancred, Disraeli was the son of Isaac D’Israeli, a distinguished literary critic and historian, and Maria (Miriam), née Basevi, Sephardic Jews whose families had emigrated from Italy to England in the mid-18th century. Although raised and educated at London’s Sephardic Bevis Marks synagogue, Benjamin was baptized at age 12. Conversion to Christianity (a religion which he never in fact practiced) permitted him to enter polite British society and eventually politics as an adult. Throughout his career, he was the target of innumerable anti-Semitic barbs and jabs. As Queen Victoria’s Prime Minister, he was finally asked “What religion are you?” to which he quickly (and quite brilliantly) replied, “I am the blank page between the Hebrew and the Christian Bible.”

The above serves as a prolegomena to why I have never written on certain subjects . . . like computer technology, anything containing the word algorithm, the U.S. Internal Revenue code, the rules and strategies of any non-American team sport, and the worlds of hedge fund management, value investing, leveraged buyouts and, last but not least, cryptocurrency. In brief - and following Lord Beaconsfield’s sage advice - I am wise enough to know what I cannot grasp, and find nothing demeaning in admitting that fact . . . and then searching for experts who hopefully can teach me about that which I do not know.

Over the past couple of years, a handful of the more business savvy members of our family - as opposed to the academic types - have been urging me to get into cryptocurrency. I must admit up front that despite having read quite bit about that realm of cyber-business and learning that people have actually made “killings” in it, I still don’t have the foggiest notion of what it is all about. Oh sure, I can read, cut and paste a definition of it . . . I’ve read Kaspersky until I’m blue in the face. But somehow, I just never trusted the whole crypto currency thing. It struck me as being a bit of a cult; something which QAnon addicts who just naturally mis- or distrust big business turn to in order to make their fortunes.

Then came the utter bankruptcy of Sam Bankman-Fried (known as SBF) of FTX.

Once considered a financial wunderkind, Bankman-Fried now faces legal battles, possible extradition and bankruptcy in a sudden shift from his previous high-profile status as a mythic entrepreneur, political funder and philanthropist heralded for saving other struggling crypto firms. In short, the saga may have cost some investors their life savings.

The crash of Bankman-Fried’s disgraced empire comes as FTX, the company he founded and led as CEO, (along with Alameda Research, the exchange’s trading arm) until his recent resignation, grapples with a solvency crisis. Established in 2018, FTX was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges until it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month. Within a single day, November 8, 2022, his net worth plummeted an estimated 94 percent to $991.5 million on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This devastating fall represents the largest one-day drop in the index’s 10-year history. Commentators say his personal assets may now stand below zero.

This unfolding drama reads like a Hollywood blockbuster in the making. It comes complete with a meteoric rise from obscurity and subsequent fall from world renown, not to mention tremendous financial donations, a mea culpa issued on social media and a class action lawsuit naming headline legends — all within a rapid span of four years.

The suit, filed by Florida lawyer Adam Moskowitz, alleges billions of dollars in damages and names NFL quarterback Tom Brady and billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, as well as Larry David, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry, and Shaquille O’Neal among celebrities who could be liable for crypto endorsement. Investors rushed to rapidly withdraw their investments while advisers have reportedly struggled to locate both cash and crypto amidst the ruins. Noting poor internal oversight and record keeping, critics are drawing unsavory parallels between FTX’s implosion and that of Lehmann Brothers, Enron Corp. and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

SBF’s financial collapse raises broader questions about the crypto industry, which the entrepreneur entered following a stint at Jane Street Capital. Soon after, he established Alameda Research as a quantitative bitcoin trading firm. What makes this plot twist even more complicated is that SBF drew attention for his commitment to “effective altruism,” his membership in an organization called Giving What We Can, in which wage earners dedicate 10% to effective charities, and his public pledge to give away his fortune over his career.

According to Open Secrets, which tracks campaign finances, SBF donated about $40 million to the US midterm election campaigns for many candidates supported by pro-Israel groups, including the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and United Democracy Project, an AIPAC-affiliated super PAC. SBF also donated $250,000 directly to DMFI PAC last May. And in the 2020 election campaign, he was among the top donors to Joe Biden’s campaign, with a personal contribution of $5.2 million.

I’ve got to tell you: since the collapse of FTX and SBF’s cryptocurrency empire, I have not asked the family financial barons how they’re doing . . . or if they suffered significant losses. Why? Partly because if they don’t want to open up, it’s none of my business; mostly though, because I do not want to come close to engaging in schadenfreude . . . German for “gloating at the misfortune of others.”

OK, so I don’t really understand how FTX and Alameda Research worked, and what ultimately caused it to collapse. I certainly don’t own a crystal ball that will tell me what long term danger it represents to the world of investments . . . let alone individual investors. What I do know - and what scares the living daylights out of me - is that anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists are going to start tying a gigantic tail to SMF and his family. With the staggering growth in worldwide anti-Semitic traffic, this is the worst possible time for Sam Bankman-Fried to become the name and face of a gargantuan international banking crash . . . even one as relatively unknown to the masses as crypto.

The fact is this is the worst possible time for Sam Bankman-Fried’s name and vast failure to become page-one news. Consider that this is coming on the heels of two notorious anti-Semites (“Ye” and Nick Fuentes) dining with FPOTUS at Mar-a-Lago; newly-minted Twitter CEO Elon Musk reopening the Twittersphere to the most virulent hate speech; and NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving directing his hundreds of thousands of online followers to a link introducing anti-Semites to a notorious film - “From Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” - which revives age-old lies about the “true” origins of the Hebrew people. (In keeping with my pledge not to review a book or movie that I have neither read nor seen, I direct your attention to a summary review posted on the ADL website on December 3 of this year.)

For generations without end, whenever the tireless ebb and flow of society’s mysteries and mutations becomes too difficult to grok or decode, fingers of blame all too frequently come to the fore. We are, alas, living in one such generation; fingers of blame are once again being pointed at Jews for being both the source and the cause of societal change. We’ve heard -and suffered from - it before. The charges are mostly old, even if the names change:

Jews control the media, banks, and governments;
Jews were at the heart of the slave trade to the early America;
As recently as March 2018, a Washington D.C. city council member claimed that the Rothschild family was “controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities.”
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (who will likely play a significant role in the House come January 2023) implicated “Rothschild Inc” in connection with a deadly forest fire that, she wrote, was started using laser beams from space. Greene has also frequently amplified the QAnon theory that George Soros, a Hungarian-American Jewish billionaire and mega-donor, is an enemy of the people.
“Replacement theory” - the conspiratorial notion that Jews and other non white people are consciously engaged in “replacing” white protestants with Hispanic immigrants who have a much higher birth rate in order to take power from “real” Americans. This nonsense can be heard frequently on Fox News, News Max, and One America News.
That in addition to the above, Jews are also heavily engaged in such anti-American movements as “ANTIFA” and “Black Lives Matter,” as well as being perpetrators of “Critical Race Theory.”

I repeat: this is the worst possible time for the Jewish community in America . . . and indeed around the world . . . to have yet another villain added to the list of predatory conspirators. Don’t be overly surprised if someday soon, someone doesn’t unearth a quote from one of Disraeli’s long-forgotten characters (Sidonia, an ardent Jewish nationalist who is likely a cross between Lionel de Rothschild and Disraeli himself) hidden in the pages of Coningsby. For deeply buried within its pages, Sidonia informs Harry Coningsby, the penniless Lord Chancellor that “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

So who are these “different personages?” The Rothschilds? August Belmont? George Soros? Michael Bloomberg? Sam Bankman-Fried? Just ask “Ye,” Nick Fuentes, the newly-bankrupted Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene . . . for they, among many others, are just ignorant enough and evil enough to speak of things they know virtually nothing about.