FTX: Is It A Metaphor For Something?
If you’re at all like me, the years since the day Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator seems like a spiraling descent into surreality. A lot of things seemed to be in bad shape—after all, we were just coming out of the eight Obama years, that saw weaponized government corruption on a massive scale. And yet the reaction to Trump—before and after 2020, because after 2020 is the scramble to cement anti-Trump into place—has exposed depravity, corruption, dishonesty, and sheer evil on a scale that few of us had quite imagined. And it’s just so in your face, with the addition of organized MSM censorship and rigged narratives. And now FTX, which is all of the above. My best guess—and I’m far from an insider—is that the whole scheme looks like it was purpose designed to be an upgrade to the Prog money laundering machine. Beyond that, I have to suspect that the people who argue that Bitcoin as a concept was designed by the Intel Community on an international basis to both track money movement by knuckleheads as well as to launder payments to IC supported organizations/insurrections around the world.
Larry Johnson today suggests that the collapse of FTX may spell the demise of the Deep State:
SAMUEL BANKMAN FRIED MAY HAVE STARTED THE DEMOLITION OF THE DEEP STATE
Logically Johnson is absolutely correct—in any relatively normal world the demolition of the Deep State should follow, because the connections are too obvious to ignore.
The unfolding scandal and fraud surrounding the collapse of FTX, is not just some minor financial disaster. This is global and is going to ensnare many seemingly smart people who mistakenly believed that if you engaged in cyber currency transactions you could hide from law enforcement. Whoops!! They apparently did not take the time to understand block chain. The security of block chain will be their undoing.
Again, he’s absolutely correct. Vast as the scale of this fraud is, it should basically be a no-brainer for law enforcement to break it down. The problem, of course, is: What LE agency do you trust to do this, given that on the federal level they all seem utterly compromised by politics? Senate or House hearings? Not a serious possibility, because even in the GOP House I assume that the DC establishment will allow any investigation to be stiffed without consequences—call in Bluto Barr and John BS Durham!
Conrad Black paints the picture of where we are now as a nation, with a Ruling Class in permanent revolt against the We The People:
The Nov. 8 midterm elections were a watershed in modern American history. …
That the Democrats and their lock-step allies in the national media succeeded in putting across the colossal smear that former President Donald Trump is a supporter of violence and a threat to the constitutional system could be interpreted as a long step toward the national suicide that Abraham Lincoln foresaw is the only way in which the American project could perish.
Former CIA Director John Brennan called Trump a traitor; former National Intelligence Director James Clapper declared as a matter of settled fact that Trump was a Russian intelligence asset. The corruption of the FBI and the intelligence agencies in the dissemination of the infamous Steele dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign as authentic intelligence … the profound dishonesty of former FBI Director James Comey in white-washing Clinton’s alleged destruction of subpoenaed evidence and his recourse to surveillance granted in response to false affidavits while attempting to destroy the Trump presidency have escaped legal retribution by the somnambulant Durham investigation, and there will be no retribution for any of it.
… The Russian collusion hoax was the most monstrous defamation ever inflicted on a U.S. president. The spurious impeachment of him, for an innocuous telephone call to the president of Ukraine about the commercial activities of the Biden family in his country—now notorious but probably a matter of political suppression of the normal working of American justice—was in the same category of misuse of the political system for the lowest and most destructive partisan ends.
If Johnson’s optimism is warranted, we have a lot to look forward to—getting reacquainted with all the usual suspects:
As investigators unravel this web of corruption do not be surprised if Hillary and Bill Clinton, and some of their acolytes, emerge as key players in the deception and fraud.
You think that Bill Clinton hanging out with Samuel Bankman Fried is just a coincidence? If you believe that, please contact me. I have a great investment opportunity for you.
Karl Denninger does a nice job today, capturing the absurdity, the hiding in plain sight nature, of this whole farce:
KD covers a lot of the same ground (with the same links) that Johnson covers, but with his own style and emphasis. He starts by alluding to James Howard Kunstler’s description of the FTX family pedigree. That alone tells you all you need to know about the reality of the political and Deep State connections—it doesn’t happen otherwise:
How does a so-called "company" wind up as the ball of string that is FTX?
Let's go down a few things.
First, lineage. What are the odds that by random chance the parents of the two protagonists (who were sleeping together, incidentally, while running "divisions" of the whole -- a rank violation of good governance by any measure) were on the one hand both attorneys, major "bundlers" for the Democrat party and ran two non-profits that did "voter registration" drives but since they were clearly Democrat bundlers too this is illegal; you can only do that on a non-partisan basis.
…
Kunstler is not the only one who's noticed all this. Brownstone has as well, and given that they were directly targeted for alleged "misinformation" that was in fact both correct and proved up over time they have more of a bone to pick than most. I particularly like this passage:
I think you get the idea. This is all a racket. FTX, founded in 2019 following Biden’s announcement of his bid for the presidency, by the son of the co-founder of a major Democrat Party political action committee called Mind the Gap, was nothing but a magic-bean Ponzi scheme. It seized on the lockdowns for political, media, and academic cover. Its economic rationale was as nonexistent as its books.
How about the other side of the bed and their professional and political links? Well, her father has as a colleague Gensler, who is now the head of the SEC! Gee, no conflict there, right? Never mind the evidence that FTX was in fact lobbying the SEC to leave them to do whatever, which we now know included claiming to be an exchange while at the same time in fact being one in name only when it came to the most-important components of what it certainly looks like they actually did, a major part of which appears to include gambling with customer funds.
Then there's the fact (and is evident through public record) that this ball of string handed out money to politicians on both sides of the aisle. Yes, more were Democrats than Republicans but that's a difference in degree but not kind. The fact of the matter is that it would be hard to not consider these bribes directly aimed at lawmakers, and we're not talking about small-ball here either.
This video (below) does a good job of illustrating how ridiculous this whole thing was, including the absurd lack of documentation. As the new CEO in bankruptcy, John Ray, says at considerable length, there was pretty literally no record keeping going on at FTX (“complete failure”), despite the fact that FTX did have some brushes with government entities that would ordinarily demand to see records. Wow—how does that happen? Don’t try that yourself, but if you have powerful backers … Speaking of which:
FTX Reveals Top 50 Creditors Are Owed $3.1 Billion, Seeks To Keep Their Names Confidential
That wouldn’t happen for you.
Anyway, the video is slow paced, but the first half or so is worth your time for the picture it provides of the people involved (including Tom Brady):
What does the video presentation mean by saying that the scandal may be even worse than we thought? It happens to be true, because FTX ties in very directly to what looks like another crypto scam—Tether. Sorry if that sounds redundant.
This is a bit complicated, but:
Sound crazy? Sound interesting? Strap in, it’s about to get wild.
USDT, or Tether, is what is known as a “stablecoin.” A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that, instead of fluctuating in value, is intended to hold to a consistent price. Tether is a USD stablecoin — each Tether is supposed to be equal in value to one U.S. dollar. While most cryptocurrencies are wildly speculative and backed by essentially nothing, each Tether is supposed to be backed directly by a U.S. dollar, or an extremely liquid, reliable investment like a U.S. treasury bond.
These USD stablecoins are used on cryptocurrency exchanges to conduct on-the-blockchain trades in lieu of using actual U.S. dollars. Without stablecoins like Tether, the current crypto ecosystem simply would not exist. There are multiple USD stablecoins, but Tether is by far the most popular. According to coinmarketcap.com, Tether has the third highest market cap of any crypto currency at $66 billion, trailing only Bitcoin and Ethereum. Today, fully half of all bitcoin trades globally are executed using Tether.
…
Earlier this year, Protos shed light on that mystery by reporting that just two companies, Alameda Research and Cumberland Global, were responsible for seeping roughly two-thirds of all Tether into the crypto ecosystem.
Did that last sentence set off any alarm bells? It should have. Alameda Research is the quantitative trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried and his partner in crime, Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, allegedly propped up their trading firm by plundering FTX customer accounts.
The inner workings of Tether remain remarkably opaque. New Tethers are supposed to only be minted, and added to the crypto ecosystem, when somebody gives Tether Limited dollars to create them. And if that’s how it all worked, Tether would be fine.
But there is no evidence Tether actually works this way. We repeat: There is no proof that Tether stablecoins are backed by the store of tangible assets that is supposed to justify their value.
Yep, could be mind bogglingly huge. And not just in terms of money.
There are a number of questions that I certainly look forward to seeing answered.
First, will this turn out to be simply too big to be covered up? Never say never, that’s what I say. The MSM is doing a pretty good job for now. Covering up.
Second, are there forces that want this all out in the open? FTX and Tether were both tight with Davos, so Tom Luongo figures the Fed is pleased with what’s happening. Maybe so.
On the other hand, read this NYPost article on how FTX unraveled overnight. I’m not disputing the accuracy of that account, but I am suggesting that the Chinese government—and other governments aligned with China (think: Russia) could also be pretty pleased right now. If the US is in an economic war on the rest of the world to maintain dollar hegemony, well, this fits in pretty well. It’s pretty inconceivable to me that ChangPeng Zhao would have no ties to Chinese intelligence.
So, buckle in.
Apropos of nothing in particular …
Conrad Black is right on when he labels what the Democrats are doing as "A Step Toward National Suicide?" But his answer is to condemn Trump the victim, stating "Trump knew what desperate and sleazy people he was dealing with, and he doesn’t have a credible excuse for being so reckless."
Actually, he did not know. None of us knew. The adage "Politics stops at water’s edge" no longer rings true. He ends off with "the Republican Party doesn’t need, and the American public doesn’t wish for, an internecine war on the scale that would rage if Trump sought another presidential nomination. But another candidate plausibly pledged to the enactment of the Trump program and supported by Trump but not stigmatized by him, could lead the desperately needed national political purgation." Unfortunately an internecine war, hopefully won by ballots and not bullets, and on a tremendous scale, is called for if we are ever to re-establish a government of, by and for the people. If Trump is the only one committed to this, then he is our only hope.
The key question was left unanswered: who or what agency is going to truly investigate FTX, etc? Who here doubts that SBF and sweet Caroline skate off into the sunset never to be heard from again?