SBF, the Bernie Madoff of this era, remains a featured speaker at The New York Times DealBook Summit
NOTE: A full audio recording of this essay can be found behind the paywall.
The extremist movement in America is fueled by the hypocrisy and corruption of the most powerful institutions in the country. They are as obtuse as they are corrupt.
The political crisis in America was not made better by the election results of 2022. Though disaster was averted, the situation will continue to deteriorate as American politics grows more extreme, unstable and detached from reality. Everything is driven by the total and absolute collapse of trust between the American people and nearly every important institution in the country.
The crisis of trust is rooted in its breach by the most powerful and wealthiest Americans. They have shattered the American social compact, while engorging themselves at the expense of the overwhelming majority of Americans — 40 per cent of whom have less than $400 in savings and tens of millions have no access to mainstream financial institutions. These Americans are called “unbanked.” They are viewed as a growing market by the payday lending industry, which salivates at the vast profits to be made by charging usury rates that would make any half-way honest Capo blush at the audacity of his loansharks if they attempted the same.
The scale of political corruption in Washington, DC, is the invisible story of our time — not because of the cleverness of the politicians who do as they please in broad daylight — but rather because of the protection they are afforded by their business partners.
A perfect example would be the marquee The New York Times DealBook Summit, scheduled for November 30, 2022, and sponsored by Accenture. They have come together in partnership to monetize the gathering of the notorious Sam Bankman-Fried (commonly referred to as “SBF”), who was referred to by crypto players as the “J.P. Morgan of their times.” He was featured on the August 1, 2022 edition of Fortune magazine and celebrated as likely to be Earth’s first trillionaire.