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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Apropo of the discussion below, I decided to look into these oft-repeated claims about Jewish overrepresentation in certain sectors of the economy. So I decided to look at the banking industry. I looked at the top executives of the 25 largest US banks by total assets; anyone listed on the bank's website under "leadership team" or some other such designation counts as a top executive, usually between 10 and 25 people for each bank. As far as determining who's Jewish, I mostly went by last names, although if someone was obviously black or Asian I skipped the name entirely. The results? Of 414 total executives, I found 19 Jews, or about 4.3%. Considering that only a little over 2% of the country is Jewish, this is significant overrepresentation. Or is it?

The first problem is that I had to rely on names to determine if someone was Jewish as that isn't the kind of information included in most corporate bios. And most of the names I came across weren't Cohen and Leibowitz but generic names like Weiss and Stein or something else that's German or Russian-sounding. For my purposes I assumed all these people were Jewish unless their bio specifically mentioned working for a Christian charity or something (like Jason Schugel), so I probably overestimated the total number of Jews by a few, though on the flip side there are Jews with gentile names I may have missed. And then there's the fact that a significant number of these Jews were women. In addition to the whole problem of married names, the stereotypical image of a Jewish banker is not a woman. Additionally, a lot of these executives were general counsel, or HR execs, or were involved in some other aspect of the business not directly related to banking, but I didn't bother to account for this because they're still obviously influential and are top executives at large banks, but one could make the argument that they shouldn't be counted.

Methodological issues aside, though, the more salient point is that while 4.3% may be a significant overrepresentation in a strict statistical sense (it's about double the expected number), this isn't the kind of overrepresentation most people have in mind when they talk about Jews and banking. It's hard to make the argument that at 4.5% Jews in any way control the industry, or even have any significant impact on it as a group. Relatively speaking, this is about half the number of Christians in Egypt. When you look at the individual banks, 11 of them, or nearly half, don't have any Jews in top leadership positions. An additional 10 have 1, and the remaining 4 have 2. The most Jewish bank on the list is Goldman Sachs at number 5, with 2 of 9 top executives, including the CEO, being Jewish. In other words, even the most obviously Jewish big bank in the country still has 80% gentiles in top leadership positions.

Is my methodology off? Probably. I limited myself to the top 25 banks because that's what I had time for, but I doubt that including the top 100 would have made much difference considering that below that you start getting into regional banks from areas where the Jewish population isn't particularly high and US divisions of foreign banks. But it's still something to look at. I could have included more people than the top executives, though any cutoff is arbitrary; I'm sure if you go all the way down to including branch employees the number of Jews would thin considerably. You could use boards of directors instead of executives. I don't know what kind of effect this would have but I avoided boards because they don't concern themselves with the day-to-day operations of the company and their members aren't necessarily in the banking industry at all, but you can make the argument. Whatever you think about my methodology, though, if you're going to challenge it, at least do the work. Don't just tell me my methodology is bad and you're just sure if I had used a different methodology I would have found that the whole industry is totally dominated by Jews. Because this is what people have been doing for years, and it's obviously bullshit. People have been talking about Jewish domination of various industries in the United States for years, but as soon as I take a cursory look at the most stereotypical Jewish business this "dominance" doesn't even crack 5%.

Instead of looking at individual banks you should look at the most important parts of the banking and finance sector. Jewish prominence is clearest in the leaders of each sector. Disney leads in entertainment, the New York Times leads in information. Facebook leads in its class of social media. Google leads in search. All are led/co-led by Jews.

Blackrock leads in finance. They hold about $10 Trillion in assets. They set standards for the financial world. ESG was their invention. They've been referred to as the informal 4th branch of the US govt, on par with the legislative and judiciary branches. This is because they were given the job of conducting massive 500 billion dollar bond and debt buybacks during COVID. They are the largest shareholder of major companies like Apple, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, J. P Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank.

BlackRock states these shares are ultimately owned by the company's clients, not by BlackRock itself – a view shared by multiple independent academics – but acknowledges it can exercise shareholder votes on behalf of these clients, in many cases without client input.

You can see that Blackrock enjoys considerable influence over the most important companies on the planet. Larry Fink is chairman, founder and CEO. Robert S. Kapito is President. Both are Jewish.

The US Federal Reserve is possibly the biggest decision-maker in the world economy. They effectively control the price of the US dollar. The current president, Jerome Powell, isn't Jewish but the last three were. That takes us back to the late 1980s.

Let's look at raw political power. Donald Trump was perhaps the biggest cheerleader of Israel of any US president. He was actually Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel, a ritual which really sounds like something a vassal state does to show homage to its overlord. He made these rather mask-off comments about how 10-15 years ago, Israel rightfully controlled Congress and now that control is slipping. Then he went on to complain about how Jews weren't voting for him, despite doing so much for Israel when he was in office.

"The biggest change I've seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress — you understand that — 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it's almost the opposite," Trump told the conservative Ari Hoffman Show.

You've got the US secretary of state, Pompeo, saying: "There is no more important task of the Secretary of State than standing for Israel and there is no more important ally to the United States than Israel. There is much more work to do."

I would've thought that advancing US interests was the role of the Secretary of State. Perhaps countries like Australia or the UK (who actually fight alongside the US in wartime, unlike Israel) would be more important, valued allies. The UK doesn't make a habit of selling US technology to China. Australia doesn't undermine the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or drag the US into toxic territorial squabbles. But no, Israel gets extremely generous aid and unconditional US support, often going to development of indigenous Israeli weapons like the Merkava tank rather than just purchasing American technology.

You've got Nancy Pelosi saying things like: "If this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are"

Who were the biggest individual political donors to Biden in 2020? Mr Sussman, Mr Simons, Ms Simon make up the top 3. All three are Jewish (Simons is the multi-billionaire founder of Renaissance capital, Sussman founded another finance company and and Simon is a real estate heiress).

Other notable spenders in the election were Bloomberg and Steyer, who ran failed electoral campaigns of their own. Steyer is half-Jewish. Bloomberg is Jewish. On the Republican side we have 'kingmaker' Sheldon Adelson, who was the largest Trump donor in 2016 and probably 2020. Jewish. We've got Uihlein, Griffin, Mellon, Ricketts & Eyechaner non-Jewish. Dustin Moskovitz, Jewish. Paul Singer, Jewish (he supported Republicans but also tried to get them to support LGBT). And then there's Soros whose exact donation figures are hard to discern due to it mostly being dodgy websites that discuss it, though probably very large if not the highest of all. Zuckerberg provided hundreds of millions for election offices, which is vaguely political. I can't believe it doesn't buy influence, especially in conditions where the format and methods used were in a state of flux due to COVID.

I observe a general trend where extremely rich Jews support Democrats and LGBT - their fortunes mostly from finance. There's Adelson who's on the other side of course. In contrast, we have gentiles who usually support Republicans and are fairly right-wing. This is from reading their wikipedia blurbs. Of the twelve 2020 megadonors CNN described as 'white', 7 are Jewish. 6.5 depending on how you class Steyer.

I think we can safely conclude that there's vastly disproportionate Jewish influence in finance, vastly disproportionate Jewish-Israeli influence in US politics. Just look at anti BDS laws, laws designed to obstruct people boycotting Israel! Despite most Americans opposing such laws, they've been passed in 35 US states. If anyone wants more proof or citations, I can provide excerpts from Mearsheimer's Isreal Lobby or provide links.

ESG was their invention.

No, it wasn't. I remember a few years back, they refused to participate in stuff like that, after most of their peers have succumbed.

I guess 'invention' is a strong word. But they were certainly ideologically committed to it, which clashed with their pursuit of profit somewhat.

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/missouri-pulls-500-mln-blackrock-over-asset-managers-esg-push-2022-10-18/

Missouri State Employees' Retirement System had asked BlackRock to abstain from proxy voting at companies on its behalf, but the asset manager refused its demand, Fitzpatrick said. Proxy voting is done by asset management firms on behalf of shareholders.

They certainly have chutzpah, refusing to vote as customers wish.