Kodak Shifts Into Drug Production With Help of a $765 Million U.S. Loan - WSJ archive.is/7CEKg
Recipes for creating cash have been curated & handed down from one generation to the next. This marks the upward arc of American white collar crime - every generation plays it better.
Recipe #1 - procure loans versus inventory that doesn’t exist.
Recipe #2 - use corporate balance sheet to procure assets for personal use, then encumber those same assets to create personal cash. The John Rigas 2 step. He learned it from the Crazy Eddie play.
Recipe #3 - charm the US Government into printing the money for you.
Meet Clark Clifford, the Greek God of White Collar Money Getting.
How’d he do it? 1st step was Mr. Clifford formed a bank, BCCI. 2nd step was BCCI used the World Bank as a money mule.
In short, Clifford saw an opportunity to harvest money without messing around inside appropriations from Congress to agencies. That’s very difficult to do. But @WorldBank isn’t under the thumb of Congressional oversight. A door opened. ⬇️
First to go to harvest for the fruits of this BUILD Act structure was Ivanka Trump.
The BUILD Act was signed & the #WGDP initiative was born with $350mm in funds Congress appropriated to 7 federal agencies reprogrammed by the stroke of daddy’s Sharpie.
WGDP is a bald faced fraud. In its 3rd year it has hauled in $350mm of funds reprogrammed (a polite word for seized) each year from federal agencies. No financial statements, no grant level disclosures. Identifies of private investors/firms remain hidden.
Give them some credit. Before Javanka DC was just Hollywood for ugly people. We’ve been wildly entertained.
But we also have them to thank for laying a foundation for the Biden admin to get & stay animated to deconstruct the entire apparatus of American white collar crime. /end
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The Superbad Heresy in New Hanover County - what I learned on the plights of the indigenous American men-of-a certain-age, deep fried chicken livers & the 44 year-old black male Trump voter.
🧵 drop, & sorry seems to be the hardest word.
Every schoolboy wants to be cool. In my era every schoolboy needed a well worn pair of Jodhpurs boots to be like Mick, Keith in the Stones or George Harrison.
And as we learned from the Kavanaugh hearings, the idiocy of male teens youth in the 80s was cool like Jeff Spicoli vs.
not cool. In our minds our dreams are real for a short while.
These were, of course, the imaginary worlds of boyhoods.
Sometimes, discomfort is very uncomfortable. Anybody can get occasionally tired of it, and then it can change fast, where it's comfort that disturbs you.
- Jim Harrison
I’d never been to New Hanover Co, NC or canvassed for a campaign prior to this week.
Last recap:
Why New Hanover County?
Not an arbitrary choice; NH is the 11th largest county in NC, ~quarter million votes, has had close POTUS election results each time since 2008 in a state which has also had close election results each time.
It is arguably the swingiest county in NC.
It is also a county with a wild mix of very wealthy beach towns, midsize city life & decidedly more working class towns further inland.
We surveyed a wide spread & I kept a diary with notes b/t visits that advanced to longer conversations & invited home visits. Ds, Rs & Indies.
Sometimes there are times when it is easy to be cynical & feel discouraged. At times, today was like that…we canvassed majority working class/white collar hardscrabble middle class slices of New Hanover Co, NC.
Notably younger, decidedly more Trump true believers.
I don’t live in an imaginary world - I realize & accept there are Trump true believers, regardless of all else.
But I started the day earlier than planned because I had a rough time last night on reflections from Day #1. I wanted to touch base early w/ 1 woman I’d met yesterday.
7:30am is too obnoxious to knock or ring, but I sighted her watering plants in front.
Oh, you again.
Yes.
She’s 77. I said delighted to meet & thanks for the hospitality yest, but I’m stuck on something: could I mention your story, sans personal deets, to others when I canvas?
Quick 🧵 on a few tax policy gotchas for laypersons to look for tomorrow night.
First, every politician promises tax cuts for the working class. That’s just political lollipops & pony rides.
Second, every politician has a policy that will (supposedly) make you happier.
Well…
No. Just no.
Neither of these 2 candidates are credibly going to offer you, Mr. & Mrs. Average Hard Working American Layperson, a meaningful tax advantage + then deliver on it.
That won’t happen.
Instead focus selfishly on WHAT YOU WANT at the buffet line. Health care, child
tax credits, more (or fewer) agrarian economy or clean energy subsidies?
There’s something you want. Next consider it costs something & the federal government has to pay for it via tax revenues.
So what is the real problem we all share? It is obviously that the public equities
THE PROJECT 2025 INITIATIVE MODULE ON THE FEDERAL RESERVE
Finally. The foundational🧵s 1 through 4 established how & why the modern Fed is an apolitical, independent & high functioning unit of the federal govt.
Project 2025 attempts to contest this framing.
In quick sum, the Project 2025 module critical of the Fed is the very definition of a partisan political policy institute white paper.
It’s authors + 3 named contributors are well known conservative movement economists & academic theorists.
None of the 4 have any background experience in the financial sector or in the federal public service at the OMB, Treasury or Fed.
Most of the citations in the 2 page bibliography circle to other conservatives policy institute think pieces, most notably Cato Institute & AEI.