www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/technology/caroline-ellison-sam-bankman-fried-trial.html
-
If you are really interested in developing an understanding of the complexities of the events in Israel and Gaza, you should listen to this and read an editorial from an Israeli newspaper.
Note: While it is tempting to listen to the first part and not the second, prerecorded interview about law, don’t do it. The second interview is relevant to the question of the establishment of the Jewish state.
-
Videos and Images
- The terror evident in the videos and images feeds into widespread support for any Israeli action. The fear is that this will legitimate Israeli actions that will merely feed the terror and violence.
- Ayman Mohyeldin (on MSNBC) has argued that the Israeli government has essentially been given permission to do anything they want in Gaza and elsewhere. It is this permission structure, aided by the West (and especially the U.S.) which has created the situation we are currently experiencing.
- (Note: Mohyeldin covers more interesting and relevant information in 10 minutes than the rest of the hosts do in hours).
-
Tuesday 10 October 2023
Netanyahu
- It is obvious that the priorities and policies of the Netanyahu government have contributed to creating the situation in Israel.
- Hell bent on “neutering” the judiciary in Israel, the Netanyahu government had expended time and energy pushing a right-wing (anti-democratic) political agenda.
- In addition, it is argued that the people along the Gaza border were forced to fight for their own lives, without any law enforcement or military help because the Netanyahu government had moved troops east to assist in installing settlements in the West Bank.
- When corporate news media anchors ask about the internal dissent over Netanyahu’s authoritarian tendencies, they almost invariably make it sound like the problem is the dissent, not the authoritarian pressure being exerted on one of the few democracies in the Middle East.
- The protesters did not cause the dissention, they merely reacted to it. Netanyahu (while he was not criming) was forcing these changes through.
- It is impossible to see how the Israeli people cannot hold Netanyahu responsible. From the TV coverage, it appears that the government is not even now communicating with the families of the victims of the kidnappings.
- The families of missing held a press conference this morning, some complaining that the Israeli government and the American government have not contacted them.
-
Monday 9 October 2023
The death count in Israel is now almost 1500.
Israel is saying that they will cut off all food, water, and electricity to Gaza. This promises to be a humanitarian disaster following the initial humanitarian disaster.
Hamas is threatening to execute hostages and release the videos.
Israel has called up reservists.
Republicans
Nowhere is the depravity of the Republican Party more evident than in the use of the situation in the middle east to score cheap political points.
- Biden has caused the attack by releasing (which they have not in fact yet done) frozen Iranian funds.
- The southern border represents the same situation as the Gaza border.
- Trump is saying that the attacks are the result of the U.S. being seen as “weak.”
- Rhona McDaniels was saying in a speech what a good “opportunity” the situation was for the Republican candidates politically.
-
The situation in Israel is so overwhelming, so heartbreaking, so infuriating, I am having a difficult time even commenting on it.
We have, probably like most people, spent three days now, glued to the TV, listening to everybody and anybody, trying to make sense of the situation. Unlike most social issues, I have no fixed position on this one. I know almost nothing about the Middle East and the situation is so complex and of such long standing that I cannot for the life of me see a clear way out of it, or response to it.
So, as usual, I am trying, like everybody else, to make sense of the world one step at the time.
I am grateful to have followers along for the ride.
-
apple.news/AB8pc2czASNSaS2FK8hCzvQ
Excerpt:
The tab was $7.7 billion, a Wall Street Journal analysis of company disclosures and legal filings shows. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and senior staff spent customer funds on technology investments, luxury real estate and political contributions, among other things.
The missing funds are at the heart of Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial, which kicked off in Manhattan federal court this week. Top lieutenants of FTX and its sister company, Alameda Research, have pleaded guilty to fraud and looting customer funds.
The firm spent over $2 billion on payments to top brass including Bankman-Fried. Usually, execs would pay themselves through personal loans that they never repaid.
MARKETS MAIN
Here’s How FTX Executives Secretly Spent $8 Billion in Customer Money
Billions went to personal loans, luxury real estate and donations
The crypto exchange FTX went bust last year after executives spent billions in customer funds they had promised to safeguard.
The tab was $7.7 billion, a Wall Street Journal analysis of company disclosures and legal filings shows. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and senior staff spent customer funds on technology investments, luxury real estate and political contributions, among other things.
The missing funds are at the heart of Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial, which kicked off in Manhattan federal court this week. Top lieutenants of FTX and its sister company, Alameda Research, have pleaded guilty to fraud and looting customer funds.
Customers say they had $16 billion in funds on the exchange before its collapse. So far, FTX’s new management has found $7.3 billion that could go toward paying them back.
FTX’s customers likely won’t be fully repaid. The Wall Street Journal’s analysis shows insiders spent $7.7 billion using commingled customer funds.
So where did all the money go?
FTX spent big on investments in technology startups. For example, FTX paid $1.15 billion to acquire around 20% of Genesis Digital Assets, a crypto miner that ran a number of mining facilities in Kazakhstan.
The firm spent $243 million on real estate in the Bahamas…
…and around $86 million in political donations and charitable contributions that could be clawed back.
The firm spent over $2 billion on payments to top brass including Bankman-Fried. Usually, execs would pay themselves through personal loans that they never repaid.
There’s still around $1 billion of missing customer money that isn’t accounted for, and which could have been used by FTX to fund bad trades at its affiliate hedge fund, Alameda.
Venture capital investments: over $5 billion
Much of the $5 billion-plus that FTX invested in tech companies was financed through misappropriated customer funds, according to lawsuits filed against senior executives.
M any deals haven’t paid off. FTX bought the trading platform Embed for $236.8 million in September 2022, planning to use it to roll out stock trading for FTX customers, legal filings show. No buyers are willing to pay more than $1 million for the company now.
FTX has sued Embed’s former shareholders, including Y Combinator and Bain Capital, to get the money back.
Bankman-Fried invested $700 million of FTX money in the venture-capital firm K5 Global in 2022. K5’s co-founders, Bryan Baum and the former Hollywood agent Michael Kives, each received $125 million payments as part of the deal, according to court filings.
FTX’s new managers have been trying to claw back those funds and have said the investments were “vastly overvalued.”
Direct payments to company insiders: $2.2 billion
FTX insiders paid themselves over $2 billion with suspected customer funds. Executives also made personal investments with customers’ money.
B ankman-Fried and FTX’s chief technology officer, Gary Wang, both took out personal loans through the hedge fund Alameda to acquire almost 8% of the trading platform Robinhood Markets in May 2022. They bought $546 million in Robinhood shares, according to lawsuits filed against Bankman-Fried.
The FTX executive Nishad Singh used a personal loan from Alameda to buy himself 44 million shares of FTX in November 2021, worth $477 million at the time.
In addition, Bankman-Fried took around $10 million from an Alameda account and directed it to an account owned by his father, Joseph Bankman. FTX lawyers said in court papers that Bankman has “been using this gift to finance Bankman-Fried’s criminal defense.”
Bankman-Fried, Wang and Singh haven’t repaid a penny of those loans and never intended to do so, FTX’s new management said.
Bahamas real estate: $243 million
FTX’s founders moved their headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas for the Caribbean jurisdiction’s laws favorable to crypto. The company used customer funds to buy units at a luxe Bahamas resort called Albany, according to court documents.
One $30 million purchase was a five-bedroom property known as the Orchid Penthouse, where Bankman-Fried lived with some other employees before FTX’s collapse. It was also where he was taken into custody before his extradition to the U.S.
Donations: $80 million to politicians and charities
FTX customer money helped Bankman-Fried rise from relative obscurity to one of the biggest donors in U.S. politics.
B ankman-Fried donated over $28 million of his money to a political-action committee called Protect Our Future. The PAC gave the crypto entrepreneur Carrick Flynn $10 million. He lost his U.S. House Democratic primary race in Oregon in May 2022.
As a company, Alameda contributed to Democratic politicians including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Rep. Jim Costa of California. Both have said they would return or donate any funds contributed by Bankman-Fried. The FTX founder also made a number of his donations on a personal basis, some of which were made with customer funds, according to federal prosecutors.
Several charities benefited from FTX’s donations.
Alameda gave a $500,000 grant to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit think tank for meat alternatives. The company said it had spent the FTX funds it received.
Bankman-Fried’s brother, Gabe, received $35 million from FTX accounts for his charity Guarding Against Pandemics.
FTX estimates that there is still around $80 million of charitable and political donations that the company could recover to repay customers.
“These contributions were disguised to look like they were coming from the wealthy co-conspirators, when in fact the contributions were funded by Alameda with stolen customer money,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, last year.
Write to Alexander Saeedy at alexander.saeedy@wsj.com and Danny Dougherty at danny.dougherty@wsj.com
The Sam Bankman-Fried Trial
Coverage of the crypto exchange’s collapse and the trial of the FTX founder
What’s Happening at the Bankman-Fried Trial
Can Someone Lose Track of Billions of Dollars?
The SBF Trial: How We Got Here
Meet the Star Witness at the SBF Trial
Crypto Could Be a Mystery to Jurors in SBF Case
It’s Their Job to Put Sam Bankman-Fried in Prison
-
7 October 2023 News Notes
MSNBC
- Jean Harmon was on MSNBC earlier today, maintaining that the Israelis had completely moved out of Gaza and left it to the Palestinians. A later quest contradicted her. He said that there was a removal of Israeli military forces from inside Gaza, but not an attempt to pull out entirely. Israel just moved the prison guards further away from the prison. Jean Harmon was criticized.
- “The absence of violence is not peace, it’s the deliverance of justice.”
- The Oslo Agreement was a land for peace deal. Palestinians were not seeking land, but freedom. There is a widespread failure to understand the problem in the Middle East.
- People in Gaza have nothing to lose. That’s why they voted for Hamas in the first place.
- Ali Velshi did a great job today in explaining the complexities of the situation and having Ayan as a guest. They both commented on the “push back” they get when they try to cover the Palestinian issue from the Palestinian side, or an objective side.
- The complex sea, air and land attack has “stunned” the security establishment.
- 2:15 PM
- This will not be good politically for Netanyahu since his administration allowed this to happen, but usually when attacked, countries move toward the right? Will the Israelis see that the right-wing approach to the Palestinians will not work, is not working.
- 10:44 PM
- I thought the news yesterday was depressing. Today out does that.
- Ayman on MSNBC, I think has given the best coverage, especially when he was on with Velshi this morning.
The Cats
- We have a little Russian Blue formerly feral cat (he maintains that he is not Russian). But, anyway, he has something wrong with his foot. He turned up lame a week ago. We took him to the vet and the (substitute vet) x-rayed his legs and found nothing.
- Now we go back Monday to see the real doctor who we should have waited to see in the first place.
- The little knot on his back foot is larger, and he is still having problems walking on it.
- Since he is in a weakened state, the other male cats have decided to take out all their previous animosity towards him. Karma’s a bitch. He’s the smallest male cat in the house, but one of those guys who if he fights, you will have to kill him before he will give up, and HE NEVER ADMITS HE’S WRONG.
- So, everybody’s getting back at him for all his oppressive behavior before he became lame. “Oppression breeds resistance.”
- Or, as my friend Patrick Skinner says about his cats: “I’m sure it will all work out.”
Night all. What a couple of days to be a news obsessive. I bought several books about writing and painting at the library sale this weekend. Maybe I can get myself to read them instead of Foreign Affairs.
Law, Power, and Justice 