(Zionist manipulation of Wall st. cont'd)
The biggest fish caught in the Wall Street scandal, however, was super billionaire Michael Milken, the "junk bond king," who was charged with racketeering and mail and securities fraud. Milken single-handedly threatened to fulfill in real life the most profound of traditional anti-Semitic nightmare fantasies. A former Milken associate, notes Jewish journalist Connie Bruck, saw in Milken "the force of ... obsession, the megalomania, the conviction of a cause so just that the end justifies the means and, finally, the conceptualization of the corporate vehicle as a means of extending control nationwide -- and then worldwide." [BRUCK, p. 358] "Many billions of dollars were at his command," notes Bruck, "capital, as Milken had been saying and proving for a long time, was not a scarce resource. The only limits to his power, it seemed, would be the limits of his fertile imagination." [BRUCK, p. 359] Milken, sometimes present at Simon Wiesenthal functions [BRUCK, p. 313], was well-known for being able to assemble billions of dollars overnight to aid corporate takeovers. At a yearly Milken-centered conference of the world's leading corporate takeover specialists, affectionately called the Predator's Ball, a close Milken associate, Donald Engel, arranged for high-priced prostitutes to service the gathered "predators." [BRUCK, p. 15]
The goal of Milken and his predatory cronies, says Leon Black of Drexel Lambart (the company that was ostensibly Milken's employer) was to finance "the robber barons who would become the owners of major companies in the future." [BRUCK, p. 149] (Black's father, Eli, was the "rabbinically-trained corporate chieftain of United Brands" who in 1975 jumped out a skyscraper window when it was revealed that he was paying bribes to foreign governments). [BRUCK, p. 65] Among the players in this scenario, Black particularly noted robber barons Carl Icahn, Henry Kravits (who guided a $6.2 billion buyout of the Beatrice company), Samuel Heyman (chairman of GAF who bid $6 billion for Union Carbide), Ronald Perelman, and a lone Gentile, Rupert Murdoch (who was financed by Milken to take over Metromedia). [BRUCK, p. 245] "By ... 1985...," says Connie Bruck, "Milken was moving his players across the M&A [corporate mergers and acquisitions] field as though it were a chess board." [BRUCK, p. 106]
Ron Perelman's rise is typical. Closely associated with Milken, his mentor's junk bonds supported a variety of Perelman-inspired corporate invasions. Perelman seized a resistant Revlon with a company one-eighth its size, Pantry Pride. (In 1991 he installed Jerry Levin to head it). He also took over a group of tottering Savings and Loans for $315 million, suddenly controlling $7.1 billion in assets. In 1982 Perelman faced a lawsuit in his takeover of Technicolor. "Taken as a whole," says Connie Bruck, "the complaint painted a picture of Perelman allegedly using deceit and secret deals -- money here, position there, whatever it took -- to buy off the necessary people and get the company." [DEALY, p. 308] In Perelman's hostile takeover of Revlon, he tried to bribe the CEO of that company, Michel Bergerac. [BRUCK, p. 194]
Another key Milken crony was Fred Carr (born Seymour Fred Cohen), head of the Beverly Hills-based First Executive Corporation, described by Benjamin Stein as "the largest insurance catastrophe in the history of the United States." [STEIN, B., p. 86] Others who made use of Milken junk bonds to build illusorily business empires include Perry Mendel and Richard Grassgreen of the conglomerate Enstar (in Montgomery, Alabama). Enstar eventually went bankrupt, becoming, notes Benjamin Stein, "a source of rage, frustration, and loss for the people of Montgomery. They were taken, and taken badly." [STEIN, B., p. 111] Mendel and Grassgreen were convicted of fraud in 1991.
Milken has had a powerful hand in a wide range of other attempted corporate takeovers. "He would cause frightened managements," says Bruck, "to focus on short term gains and elaborate defenses rather than research and development that makes for sustained [corporate] growth. It would cause the loss of jobs, as companies were taken over and broken up." [BRUCK, p. 19] Milken aided, for further example, Eli Jacobs' acquisition of the Memorex Corporation in 1986. And during the banking Savings and Loans scandals of the 1980s, Columbia Savings had a branch office one floor above Milken's own office; Columbia CEO Thomas Spiegel eventually purchased about $4 billion of Milken's junk bonds. [DEALY, p. 307] In the early 1980s Saul Steinberg, with Milken financing, had attempted a hostile takeover of the Disney corporation. "Steinberg got calls from friends, Jews and non-Jews alike," notes Joe Flower, "warning him, saying, as Steinberg later characterized it, 'Saul, it's going to be you -- and with the name Saul Steinberg it's clear where you are and what you are -- taking over another white Anglo-Saxon Protestant company. In all the little towns of America they're going to say, 'That Jew took over Walt Disney. What would Walt say?' But the warnings did not make Steinberg hesitate. 'They just made me angry.'" [FLOWER, p. 112]
In 1969 Steinberg had tried to take over one of the most important banks in America, the $9 billion Chemical Bank. "Those who ... combined against him," noted Connie Bruck, "included not only the director and management of Chemical, but most of the banking business, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and the legislature of New York state, and members of the Federal Reserve Board and the Senate Banking and Currency Committee." [BRUCK, p. 36]
Although Milken eventually agreed to accept a six felonies conviction and pay $600 million (a sum larger than the yearly budget of the Securities Commission that sought to prosecute him) [p. 16], the prosecution of fabulously wealthy Milken was no easy matter. There was, for all intents and purposes, no money limit to his personal defense. He and his firm, Drexel, planned to spend up to $650 million to fight his conviction. [STEWART, p. 347] This included a massive $140 million public relations campaign to change his public image from criminal to hero, an effort "revolving around the theme that [he and his company] help[ed] to raise money [that] benefited every American." [STEWART, p. 346] The public relations firm Milken hired referred to him as a "national treasure." [STEWART, p. 377] In an effort to control public discourse about himself, Milken even bought the rights to photographs of him at all the news wire companies. [STEWART, p. 372] In February 1986 he even offered to pay journalist Connie Bruck to not finish, and publish, a book she was working on about him and his associates. [STEWART, p. 381] Expecting a significant Black presence in the New York City jury that would try him, Milken hired an expert on public relations in the Black community; the wealthy financier suddenly had an interest in the underprivileged and paid for 1,700 ghetto kids to go to a Mets baseball game. [STEWART, p. 400] Milken clients and sycophants even took out full page ads in major papers, including the New York Times, proclaiming, "We Believe in You." [STEWART, p. 418]
Milken ended up spending only a little over two years in prison, a small sacrifice for the staggering amount of wealth he accumulated. He was sentenced, notes Jewish scholar Norman Cantor, "by a Gentile woman judge who was married to a prominent Jewish lawyer. Eventually she found grounds for sharply reducing his sentence ... The skill of some Jewish billionaires in skirting the limits of the law but somehow emerging unscathed, with the aid of high-priced Jewish attorneys, and a compliant press, was remarkable." [CANTOR, p. 404] Milken court fines alone eventually amounted to $1.1 billion. Still on probation, in November 1997 the New York Times noted that "evidence of further illegal behavior since his release might well cause the government to request further sanctions against Mr. Milken, including even his return to prison." Since prison, Milken has been busy collecting tens of millions of dollars, "counseling" the MCI Communications Corporation, advising principal players in the Time-Warner-Turner Broadcasting mass media merger, and working with financier Ronald Perelman. In 1996 the New York Times noted Milken's presence in Israel in negotiations with a company called the Eisenberg Group. "The Milken Group," said the Times, "might invest in Israel Chemicals, of which the Israeli government owns 48.5%." [NYT, 8-14-96] The Eisenberg Group at the fore of all this is headed by Shaul Eisenberg, the richest man in Israel, who, "says Alan Vorspan, "[is] the shadowy Israeli billionaire who had been brokering Israel defense technology to China for more than ten years ... 'Arms merchant of the world' is not synonymous with a 'light unto the nations.'" [VORSPAN, p. 31] "The arms business," note Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, "was and remains central to [Eisenberg's] operation." [COCKBURN, p. 17] Other holdings include everything from chemical factories in Korea to projects in Central America. [COCKBURN, p. 12-13]
Dennis Stewart, a non-Jew and an editor at the Wall Street Journal, came under fierce attack for "anti-Semitism" for his book about Milken and the Wall Street scandals, the Den of Thieves (a title taken from this New Testament verse: "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the table of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves. And say unto them, it is written. My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." [MATHEW, 21:12-13])
A lawyer for Milken, a man we have run across before, Alan Dershowitz, tried to use the now standard Jewish defense argument -- an accusation of anti-Semitism -- as a tool to spare his criminal client jail time. Dershowitz published editorial pieces in the Wall Street Journal attacking Stewart. He also paid $45,000 for a full page ad in the New York Times the next day to outline his accusations, and half-page ads in other papers, everywhere charging anti-Semitism. In a letter to the New York Times Book Review section Dershowitz attacked both Stewart and the Review's reviewer of Den of Thieves, Michael Thomas, (a "money" columnist for the New York Observer) for alleged anti-Semitism. "Both," Dershowitz wrote, "seem preoccupied by Jews."
In defense, Thomas (whose novel Hanover Place and its free exploration of Jewish corruption on Wall Street has also been called anti-Semitic) said:
"If I point out that 9 out of 10 people involved in street crime are Blacks,
that's an interesting sociological observation. If I point out that 9 out of
10 people involved in securities indictments are Jewish, that is an anti-
Semitic slur. I cannot sort the difference." [HOYT]
When business journalist Connie Bruck published The Predator's Ball, a volume about Milken and the junk bond world, a Drexel lawyer (where Milken worked) accused her of anti-Semitism. "I remember a lawyer at Chas Gordeon and Reindel screaming at me and accusing me of anti-Semitism," said Bruck later, "And I'm Jewish, so that made it more unpleasant. It all comes from Milken. Milken told friends of his, who repeated it to me, that he believed the government's investigation was fueled by anti-Semitism." [HOYT]
"If Stewart is guilty of anything," wrote Allen Sloan of Newsday, "it's breaking the Cohen Rule when dealing with ethnic groups. It's only safe to identify a person ethnically or racially in a positive context ... Down deep we all understand the rules. But these rules shackle journalists and muffle the truth. They amount to censorship ... By blasting Stewart (a full page ad, for crying out loud!) for doing nothing more than stating the truth, Dershowitz has attempted to discredit his reporting by besmirching his character -- and, in the process, making Milken seem a victim of religious bigotry. Dershowitz's accusations, beside the point and below the belt, is a form of scapegoatism that comes perilously close to what it purportedly condemns." [HOYT]
Across the ocean, England had its own very publicized Jewish financier scandal at about the same time -- sometimes known as the "Guinness Four" affair. It was, noted the (London) Independent, "the most notorious insider dealing fraud of the Eighties," a plot to boost the share value of the Guinness corporation. [BRAID, p. 1] On trial were Gerald Ronson (head of Heron International), Ernest Saunders, Jack Lyons, and Anthony Parnes. They were all convicted, but each received reduced, short-term jail sentences. "All four defendants," noted the Times (of London), "... are Jews ... Any attempt to incite anti-Semitism because of Jewish financial misbehavior has to be deplored and opposed. But any attempt to minimize or excuse the offenses is also unacceptable ... In folk prejudice the 'Jewish banker' is an unkind cliché, but herein lies the problem. He exists ... Quiet voices are to be heard that such [beat the system] attitudes are more common than ought to be any Jewish financier. And recognizing that such a malady exists is the first condition for curing it." [LONGLEY, 9-1-90]
Only a few years earlier, in the 1980s too, was the case of yet another prominent Jewish American entrepreneur, Marc Rich (father's name originally Reich). "In the shadowy, secret world of commodities trading," noted John Ingham and Lynne Feldman, "Marc Rich had no peer ... Appellations for Marc Rich have included 'ruthless tycoon,' 'vengeful businessman,' and 'scheming marketeer.' Often called the most corrupt man in this fraternity of free booting capitalists, Rich was also among the most secretive." [INGHAM/FELDMAN, p. 550] Rich even managed to profit off millions of barrels of oil from Iran during the Iranian hostage crisis. In 1983, he and associate, Pinky Green, fled to Switzerland to avoid a warrant out for their arrest. (Rich has deep ties to Israel and has been involved over the years in "negotiating the return of captured Israeli soldiers and Jewish dissidents. In a controversial move, President Bill Clinton pardoned Rich's crimes as he left the White House in 2001. "Several Israeli officials wrote Clinton in support of [Rich's] pardon.") [MSNBC, 2-2-2001]
Perhaps Rich had occasion in Europe to run into fellow white collar criminal Gerald Goldwell. Goldwell, notes a volume entitled Organized Crime in Europe, epitomized those involved in "extensive international fraud ... making use of several shell companies and of insolvent firms ... The leader of one of the largest such organizations was Gerald Goldwell, a well-known American fraudster, whose career of 15 years in business crime made him one of the most experienced crime entrepreneurs in his field." [DUYNE, p. 12] Based in Amsterdam, Goldwell's criminal scope included Bermuda, Dutch Antilles, the Bahamas, Canada, Luxemburg, Germany and Panama. |
