Political Cynic on ‘The Panic Of The Elites’, Financial Times style!
Oct 22, 2024
Headline: What Croesus wants from Trump
Sub-headline: Rather than turning to Harris, US billionaires are again backing the man they once condemned
https://www.ft.com/content/1698fc6f-fc2d-49d9-afd1-84b33367fc98
I recall Mr. Luce’s ‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism’ of 2017 , and it’s preface that chronicled his 1989 trip, to take part in the fall of the Berlin Wall. That quotes the mendacious political fraud Francis Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History’, Hegelian Historical kitsch as prescient. This a landmark of sorts of Luce’s particular brand of political commentary.
Yet his latest essay attacks the very core readership of The Financial Times: those Billionaires and their many allies, whose politics are based in the singularity of profit, that seems to be axiomatic, at the least!
Luce names the culprits that is reminiscent of a Papal Excommunication, yet the political historical distance of Croesus, takes part of the sting out of Luce’s veering into Anti-Capitalist territory? Luce Oxbridger education has it uses.
Editor: Luce’s cast of charters : Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone, Elon Musk, Nelson Peltz, a Florida-based hedge fund owner, Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma oil billionaire, Timothy Mellon, scion of the Pittsburgh-based dynasty, never wavered on Trump, Miriam Adelson, widow of the late gaming magnate Sheldon Adelson, crypto enthusiasts, such as Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnick. This paragraph is about the ‘Panic of The Elites’ exemplified by Luce’s question:
What, then, is driving the rich back to Trump? The missing piece is psychology. When you are as rich as Croesus, paranoia about losing it all takes hold. Your sense of reality changes. In 2010, Schwarzman likened Barack Obama’s plans to close the so-called carried interest loophole — which allows private equity owners to pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, in Warren Buffett’s words — to the Nazi invasion of Poland. Neither accounting expertise nor historical knowledge could explain his bizarre analogy.
Editor: This paragraph makes clear that the ‘Panic’ is real!
Other billionaires and many executives have donated to Harris. Her near $1bn fundraising in the last quarter alone exceeds Trump’s tally since January 2023. Maybe her donors place more value on democracy. But they could also be motivated by asset protection. The inflationary effect of Trump’s planned global tariff war and his threat to the Fed’s independence would hit everyone’s bottom line.
Political Cynic
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