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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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So it appears that JP Morgan may have allowed Jeffrey Epstein to continue using their financial services, so of course the Times leads with the most bombastic possible version of this claim. One could imagine an alternative headline like How JPMorgan Conducted its Usual and Customary Business. Probably there are intermediate versions of this headline that are closer to neutral.

Headlines aside, right wing media is picking it up because all the Epstein stuff draws lots of clicks but I'm wondering (and hopefully I'm not alone) whether this is fundamentally about getting upset when banks don't drop unpopular clients even when their relationship has nothing to do with the clients' bad behavior.

That is to say, contra the Times, JPMorgan didn't enable Epstein's crimes in anything but the most useless sense of the world. Sure, he used money from the banks to pay people -- but I'm sure lots of criminals withdraw money from a Chase ATM in the commission of a crime, which hasn't (till recently) been laid on the bank.

The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order. It's not money laundering or fraud to pay for underage hookers -- it's child prostitution which is illegal in its own right.

Ultimately where this seems to end is back to a place where banks rightly fear that they are gonna be next on the Times' hitlist because they didn't drop a client fast enough.

I don't think people should be debanked at all except for organised crime and terrorism. Even then I would expect justice dept or fintrac officials to make that call and not the banks or credit card companies themselves.

It should be know your client > report suspicious activities to the authorities > authorities ask judge for approval to debank > banks debank.

Not lobby group lobbies visa/mastercard > banks debank or even politicians ask banks to debank for expedient political reasons (Canada Truckers) > Banks debank.

Banks are like power and water utilities. Its not something you cut off in a modern society without very good reasons.

I don't think people should be debanked at all except for organised crime and terrorism. Even then I would expect justice dept or fintrac officials to make that call and not the banks or credit card companies themselves.

I think banks or credit card companies should be free to do business with who they want.

However, I feel that it's annoying when people expect banks and credit card companies to be moral arbiters on their behalf. I also feel annoyed the extent to which governments strong-arm financial companies into doing their bidding on their behalf. This includes the Canadian trucker situation, but I'd be more than down to extend this for organized crime and terrorism.

That being said, the usual caveat of My Rules > Your Rules Applied Evenly > Your Rules Applied Unevenly (the general "you").

It should be know your client > report suspicious activities to the authorities > authorities ask judge for approval to debank > banks debank.

I understand you're just proposing as a thing, but there is literally no analog for a court to adjudicate this. You'd be inventing a new kind of judicial process for this.

What differentiates this procedurally from, for example, the processes surrounding temporary restraining orders or the impounding of weapons based on various red flag laws?

Red flag laws are bad too. As are many TROs. But this is worse than those. It's more like if there was a conspiracy among gun shops to decide who they would and would not sell to, with government regulators making 'suggestions' backed by thinly veiled threats of losing their FFLs if they didn't play along.

Well there was that one time ATF pressured FFLs to knowingly sell guns to otherwise ineligible buyers.

Was that "Operation Forward Trace"? They got FFLs to sell guns to cartels, then crowed about how Mexican cartels were buying guns in the US?

I was thinking of Fast and Furious, but maybe it's been done other times:

Several gun dealers who cooperated with ATF told CBS News and Congressional investigators they only went through with suspicious sales because ATF asked them to.

Sometimes it was against the gun dealer's own best judgment.

In April, 2010 a licensed gun dealer cooperating with ATF was increasingly concerned about selling so many guns. "We just want to make sure we are cooperating with ATF and that we are not viewed as selling to the bad guys," writes the gun dealer to ATF Phoenix officials, "(W)e were hoping to put together something like a letter of understanding to alleviate concerns of some type of recourse against us down the road for selling these items."

ATF's group supervisor on Fast and Furious David Voth assures the gun dealer there's nothing to worry about. "We (ATF) are continually monitoring these suspects using a variety of investigative techniques which I cannot go into detail."

Two months later, the same gun dealer grew more agitated.

"I wanted to make sure that none of the firearms that were sold per our conversation with you and various ATF agents could or would ever end up south of the border or in the hands of the bad guys. I guess I am looking for a bit of reassurance that the guns are not getting south or in the wrong hands...I want to help ATF with its investigation but not at the risk of agents (sic) safety because I have some very close friends that are US Border Patrol agents in southern AZ as well as my concern for all the agents (sic) safety that protect our country."

Those are focused on the fear of specific, articulable harm.

It's not something like "this business is dodgy and we don't want to take a risk that they welch on their debts and leave us to make all their customers whole at our expense".

Right, but wasn't @CertainlyWorse arguing that debanking should be done via the courts specifically to ensure that it is only done to prevent specific harms as described by law rather than being left up to the whims of the banks and the social pressure others can exert on them?

Pretty much. I'm sure they could figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time, which is to create due process to protect against debanking due to social pressure, but still allow for banks to freeze accounts for defaulting and dodgy business practices.

For political requests it gets a bit thornier and requires some nuance. How do you seperate 'illegitimate' govt requests (eg Trucker protests) vs 'legitimate' govt requests (eg financial sanctions on Russia)?

For political requests it gets a bit thornier and requires some nuance. How do you seperate 'illegitimate' govt requests (eg Trucker protests) vs 'legitimate' govt requests (eg financial sanctions on Russia)?

Indeed. And a third category is "predictive" in the sense of Epstein give that he was apparently in government favor until a point where his line went out and then they hung him out to dry.

In some sense, this is kind of the worst of all worlds: dump a politically connected guy today and get flamed by his friends. Keep him and then the moment he's out you'll be smeared along with him. No business wants to be in flapping in the political winds like that.

I think the majority of those decisions aren’t social pressure, they are vanilla business decisions based on risk.

When does a regular credit decision become a judicial matter?

I don't think people should be debanked at all except for organised crime and terrorism.

I would further limit it to people who are out of the country or otherwise unreachable. Otherwise debanking becomes an end run around due process. If you think someone should be punished, arrest him and put him on trial. If you don't have the evidence to put him on trial or if he hasn't done anything you can try him for, then you aren't supposed to be punishing him.

Banks are like power and water utilities. Its not something you cut off in a modern society without very good reasons.

Plenty of people get power or water cut off for non-payment, which falls a long way short of organised crime and terrorism. Plenty of people have credit bad enough that they can only get power with a prepayment meter. The equivalent is a basic bank account which can't be overdrawn (and therefore doesn't come with a cheque book, only a debit card - with the shift to zero floor limits the number of places that debit card can't be used is now quite low). You can't run a business with a basic bank account, and you can't run a business with electricity off a prepayment meter - in both cases this is both against the rules (the social contract that says regulated businesses can't shun dirty poors only extends to consumer services, not business ones) and impractical given the lack of credit.

The vast majority of business debankings are for credit control reasons, both of the "new information means this business is no longer considered creditworthy" and of the "new information means that this business is of a type which we do not bank because we lack the special skills needed to assess its creditworthiness" types.

The level of protection the banking system offers to normies who are victims of dodgy businesses (including but by no means limited to credit card chargebacks) is only possible because the system tries to keep dodgy businesses out.

You can keep denying it, but the evidence is quite clear that political debankings have been and are being done under the cover of financial reasons.

This is right, but it does then raise the obvious next question of how we can actually operationalize a distinction between the two.

I agree with you that the number of political debankings strictu sensu (i.e. a banking relationship is ended because the bank finds the client's political views, as opposed to the nature of the client's business, obnoxious) is probably greater than zero. But it is rare, unless you count "debankings" by Paypal. Debanking of disfavoured industries is absolutely a thing, and normally involves a combination of financial and political considerations - they are hard to separate in practice given the modest positive correlation between "chooses to make a living running an antisocial business" and "inclined to dishonesty in their financial dealings" and between "industries my staff don't want to bank" and "industries my non-evil customers don't want me to bank." Sometimes it involves improper regulatory pressure - Operation Chokepoint was very much a thing, and the Biden-era Fed unsuccessfully tried to do something similar with the fossil fuel industry.

The point I am trying to make in my posts is that if you are going to legislate about debanking, your legislation needs to get the common cases right. A law which puts a burden of proof on banks which end a client relationship is, regardless of the sponsors' intent, primarily a law about credit risk management - namely that banks have to do it upfront at the point of account opening. The main impact would be to make it harder for people who are not already rich to open business bank accounts.

It’s stricto sensu

Pesky fourth declension, confusing bad classicists since someone put their hand on their knee.

Darn fourth declension always messing things up…

Perhaps I’m totally off-base here but to my mind the main service that perhaps 75% of people need from a bank is to serve as a trusted ledger who can take transactions, update a stored value, and make transactions. This is absolutely necessary because it is now broadly impossible to live a cash-only life without seriously constraining your activities.

Given that the software has to be developed at scale anyway for purpose of dealing with standard customers, it is my further understanding that providing these services to any client or business (with all standard regulatory oversight) is essentially free. If you remove the ability to run an overdraft, there is basically no risk.

Am I am wrong about either of these things? If not then what reasons are there, if any, for not legislating that banks must open super-basic accounts for any person or group who asks and must continue providing that service unless the client or the government says otherwise?

This is not true. The financial industry provides normie customers will significant protection against various kinds of frauds in a way that is incompatible with allowing credit risks to continue to bank. It is not a ledger, it is a ledger with a complicated system of dispute resolution w.r.t entries on that ledger and the implicit line of credit that covers the total potential cost of those disputes.

You could imagine an "all transactions are absolutely final no matter what" kind of a financial system, akin to a blockchain. This is broadly incompatible with current expectations regarding fraud and disputes. It's also broadly illegal (see CFPB Reg E) to offer to consumers in the US. And having reasonable experience in adjacent fields, I'm pretty sure it's not a great idea.

I see. I don’t have much to say except thank you very much to you and @MadMonzer for your detailed replies. I will go away and think about it some more.

For individuals, requiring banks to offer basic accounts to anyone who isn't on a blacklist of people convicted for bank fraud would be a plausible regulation - it is definitely something that exists in the UK. The question is whether you can make a basic account which is both safe for a bank to offer to dodgy people and useful enough that dodgy people will use it rather than continuing to rely on cheque cashers and prepaid debit cards. (And in any case, a rich person whose account was downgraded to basic status would probably consider themselves debanked and complain to the press about it - as Nigel Farage did)

Given modern technology, you can set up an account that is almost impossible to overdraw with outgoing payments - the problem is overdrafts caused by reversal of incoming payments. Incoming cheques can bounce for all the usual reasons. Bouncing cheques typically bounce within a week, but in the US there is no legal limit on how late a cheque can bounce. If you protect yourself against bouncing cheques by putting a week's hold on incoming cheques (incidentally, illegal in the US although that rule could be changed) then the typical low-credit-score customer will go to their local cheque casher to avoid the hold. ACH payments and wires are reversable for alleged fraud, again with no time limit, so for a customer who is a sufficiently high fraud risk can't be banked safely at all.

For businesses, the risk of reversed incoming payments are a lot higher (particularly if you accept credit/debit cards which are subject to chargeback, but also because businesses don't get most of their income from payroll and government welfare, which are the least likely payment streams to involve NSF cheques or reversals for alleged fraud. An account which won't let you accept card payments and puts a 5-day hold on incoming personal cheques is basically useless for a business, and even if it was a business there is still a risk to the bank if the business disappears after receiving a bunch of allegedly fraudulent electronic payments. There isn't a "basic business bank account" which is actually useful for businesses and which can safely be offered to dodgy people.

We're right now in a situation where being a family member of someone who starts a right-aligned social network is reason enough to be debanked. Your protestations that there's no way to avoid that without putting undue pressure on banks to accept deadbeats is... unconvincing.

It'd be a different situation if banking weren't such a heavily regulated industry, with high barriers to entry and a small pool of people who can actually do it. But it is, and that doesn't look to change.

I think the heavy regulation is not working in the direction you imagine: that regulators decided (for better or worse) that the tradeoff would be that consumers are protected from deadbeats and that banks would eat those costs.

More comments

I don't think people should be debanked at all except for organised crime

Epstein would fit with sex trafficking and child prostitution rings.

The bigger issue here is that we don't want banks deciding on their own who is and who isn't guilty. That being said the Epstein case is easier given he was convicted of some rather serious crimes and it still took them years to drop.

Sure, he used money from the banks to pay people -- but I'm sure lots of criminals withdraw money from a Chase ATM in the commission of a crime, which hasn't (till recently) been laid on the bank.

There's a big difference between the ordinary JPM customer who has an account with $5,000 in it and who barely interacts with anyone at the bank, and a high net worth client who has private bankers and gets personal attention from higher ups.

Saying those are the same is like equating purchasing Nike shoes with being sponsored by Nike. Or wearing a Cartier watch with being provided a custom Cartier watch at reduced price for promotional reasons. If the Charlie Kirk assassin wears a suit from Polo, I don't know that anyone will notice.

JPM didn't just let Epstein open a checking account at a branch without anyone being aware of it. They extensively courted, discussed, facilitated Epstein's business at the bank.

I also don't think that we've ever gotten a really good explanation for where Epstein's money came from. @2rafa et al put it as "Epstein got an extraordinary deal with Les Wexner and got all his money from there and he didn't have any other clients and case closed." But no one ever puts Epstein in a class of similar people. To my knowledge, there is no class of similar people, there are no other cases that are remotely similar. No other billionaire gave all his money to one rando with no real qualifications and made that guy a billionaire for no apparent reason. No other billionaire signed power of attorney over to some guy. Despite a plethora of gay billionaires, no one ever signed everything over to his boy toy. So "Epstein got all his money from Les Wexner" isn't really a conversation ender to me, it's the start of another more interesting mystery.

There's a big difference between the ordinary JPM customer who has an account with $5,000 in it and who barely interacts with anyone at the bank, and a high net worth client who has private bankers and gets personal attention from higher ups.

Sure. My claim wasn't that he's treated like me, only that JPM was customarily in the business of private banking HNW individuals. That's one of the services that they offer in their normal and usual course of business.

JPM didn't just let Epstein open a checking account at a branch without anyone being aware of it. They extensively courted, discussed, facilitated Epstein's business at the bank.

Sure, but did they do so in a way that was different from other similar private banking clients? Did he use those services in specifically criminal ways (beyond using money from their bank to pay for criminal acts, which is not sufficient grist) such as using it to launder money or commit fraud? As far as I understand, the answer to both of those questions is no.

So "Epstein got all his money from Les Wexner" isn't really a conversation ender to me, it's the start of another more interesting mystery.

Indeed, and I think that deserves its own thread that is independent of whether we should blame the bank for not cutting him off.

There is plenty of evidence regarding Wexner, but because he is still alive, un-charged and very, very rich, and because much of it is hearsay, it is rarely laid out explicitly. In any case, it is hardly unsurprising for even extremely sophisticated, highly intelligent investors to be duped, seduced (platonically) by charismatic con men and adventurers for fortune, and Epstein was both. Here’s a great story about one of the most sophisticated, intelligent fund managers of the last twenty years getting conned by an already-notorious conman just because he was charismatic. And the victim in the above story, unlike Wexner, was actually in finance. Madoff had plenty of intelligent victims. Wexner didn’t even ‘lose’ his or his clients’ money unlike the above, he just made less than he might otherwise have. There are countless private bankers, macro hedge fund managers and late stage VCs who likewise spent the last 15 years (and the 1990s before them) getting fat off the bull run with minimal effort other than client relationship management.

This is before you go into the other aspects of the case, like Wexner’s previously confirmed bachelorhood and various 80s and 90s NYC rumors that are hard for any legitimate journalist to discuss without getting sued. (Nick Denton, who is obviously gay and was in the NYC scene through the 90s, hinted toward it many years ago).

In any case, it is hardly unsurprising for even extremely sophisticated, highly intelligent investors to be duped, seduced (platonically) by charismatic con men and adventurers for fortune, and Epstein was both.

Do we have other examples of billionaires signing over power of attorney to their finance guys?

Wexner didn’t even ‘lose’ his or his clients’ money unlike the above, he just made less than he might otherwise have.

Isn't there some insane stat about how a vast majority of managed funds do worse than the S&P 500?

Yes, in generally virtually none of the managed/hedge funds outperform the S&P 500, but thats not the point of most of them. Their point is to offer returns uncorrelated with how the S&P500 is doing, hence the term "hedge". In the long run, having a portion of your assests sufficiently diversified from the rest will return higher overall yields.

No other billionaire gave all his money to one rando with no real qualifications and made that guy a billionaire for no apparent reason.

Just reading the barebones Wikipedia article on Epstein, it seems to be a combination of:

(1) Guy was charismatic in some way, he managed to charm a lot of people; he seems also to have been smart, with talents in music and maths.
(2) He had some amazing luck at the beginning - he managed to get a teaching gig in a private school that was run on sort of hippy-dippy principles (which meant he could get a job there where a conventional school wouldn't have hired him due to lack of credentials, and again seemingly by managing to charm the guy in charge) and one with a ton of well-heeled and connected parents, and he worked those connections as hard as he could (before getting bounced from the school for perhaps being a leetle too friendly with the girl students).
(3) By virtue of those connections, he wangled a job at Bear Stearns. This gave him vital exposure to the world of high finance, experience, and more networking/connections he could later call on (again, he seems to have been able to manage the high-wealth clients well, which would involve being able to create a personal relationship with them: "Jimmy Cayne, the bank's later chief executive officer, praised Epstein's skill with wealthy clients and complex products.")
(4) After being let go from Bear Sterns, he set up his own consulting firm and managed to position himself where he worked with/on behalf of wealthy, connected, and important people. Connections, connections, connections: this seems to really have been Epstein's strength.
(5) Gets hired on by another guy for a firm that morphs into a corporate raider and when this all explodes later on, he managed to walk away without criminal charges for investor fraud. Another combination of luck, talent, and charm.
(6) Set up his own financial management firm while working at (5), and once more his luck meant he landed a really big fish. Indeed, one might even say, a whale. Was indeed competent at the job and sorted out the finances, which means more trust, more personal relationship, more connections. Not to be diagnosing someone when I have no information but it honestly does seem like the guy was deeply closeted gay and so gave over way more control over his finances to Epstein than would have been usual. Epstein used this opportunity to make hay, and while he seems to have been smart enough not to kill the golden goose by robbing him blind, he was able to more or less act as if the wealth was all his (" In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein full power of attorney over his affairs. The power of attorney allowed Epstein to hire people, sign checks, buy and sell properties, borrow money, and do anything else of a legally binding nature on Wexner's behalf").

Epstein made a tidy fortune managing Wexner's affairs, worked his connections with other wealthy people to the maximum, and was careful to keep up his old networking with figures in Bear Sterns and elsewhere, plus he seems to have been genuinely capable with money (so long as he could resist any temptations to get involved in dodgy deals). So how wealthy was he really, as aside from appearances? Probably nowhere near as much as he liked to let on, but in those circles appearances are what count (see other stories of successful cons of the rich and famous by someone pretending to be part of that environment).

It's absolutely amazing to me that you quoted my question, then regurgitated the same talking points I said I wasn't convinced by. This explanation just papers over all the weird stuff by saying "IDK he was really charismatic or something."

But unless Epstein was literally the most charismatic man of all time, there's a lot of charismatic people out there, but Epstein's arrangements were extraordinary. There's no other examples I've ever seen of a billionaire handing over PoA to his finance guy, when it comes up the normal tone industry people use about it is that it's shocking and they never saw anyone else do that. Maybe Wexner was gay, but once again, we don't have any other examples of wealthy gay men getting conned at this scale by a man who, however handsome, didn't even live with Wexner and must have been much too busy to schtupp him very often.

You just pass over every extraordinary and weird aspect of Epstein's life by saying he was charismatic or gay. Ok, there are a lot of charismatic gay men out there, yet there's only one Epstein.

This reminds me a lot of Reza Aslan's biography of Jesus, Zealot, in that Aslan constantly used historical accounts of other Jewish messiahs and assumed Jesus must have been exactly the same as them. Except that, you know, Jesus was different. You can tell because his name and his likeness are everywhere, and the other Jewish messiahs are mostly only remembered in reference to Jesus.

I think Epstein was charming, in that con artist way, because he seems to have had a track record of convincing people to give him a break, to get him introductions to jobs, to let him manage their money, etc. It wasn't just Wexner, he was just the biggest fish Epstein hooked.

The whole reason Epstein is such a big deal is because he had a laundry list of famous contacts, which has now blown up as the alleged paedophile/underage sex scandal. How did he get all those people to come to his parties, let him meet them in their own environments, fly out on his plane to his island? Yeah, Ghislaine Maxwell probably was very helpful in getting access to the likes of Prince Andrew, but Epstein had established himself already when he met her. He was charming, he was plausible, he seemed to have money or connections to money.

You can theorise all you like about "he must have been run as an intelligence agent by some agency or government that set it all up for him" but that alone won't do it; nobody is going to Jim The Spy's party if Jim is boring and dull.

But unless Epstein was literally the most charismatic man of all time, there's a lot of charismatic people out there, but Epstein's arrangements were extraordinary.

You don't have to be the most charismatic man in the world, you just need to find the one person who thinks you are. It's a pretty fine distinction but most yucks are somebody's yum, we've all seen incredibly mismatched couples and so on.

Right, and @FiveHourMarathon says there’s no precedent. There are examples of billionaires handing over their fortune to be managed by others, although the small number of billionaires and fact that these kinds of private financial affairs would usually never be reported on unless there was either a famous legal case or high profile scandal / crime surrounding the arrangement affects visibility.

But if you look more generally, Epstein had been around super rich people to some extent for more than ten years when he met Wexner in the 80s. He had met a large number. All he needed was one. And he had a very good record of charming rich people. He charmed Ace Greenberg as a teacher. He charmed Bear Stearns’ rich clients. He was very good at charming even wealthy women, obviously.

Lauren Sanchez married one man who became a billionaire, then seduced (as a middle-aged woman!) one of the richest men in the world, convinced him to leave his wife in an extremely costly divorce, had herself made the figurehead of his yacht, and got a nine figure wedding out of it all. In total she cost Bezos dozens of times what Epstein made from Wexner.

99.9th percentile charisma people exist, you’ve probably met one or two. Most are harmless and most of the harmful ones are relatively powerless, but coupled with intelligence a few standard deviations above the norm and extreme personal ambition (as noted by Greenberg and others) and what Epstein is alleged to have done with Wexner really isn’t so impossible.

I am reminded of a supposed fact about scammers - that they will often have deliberate inconsistencies, typos, and so on because it helps them not waste time. They filter out the people who will notice and ask questions.

To me this seems absurd, who would fall for that?

But people do, and the mechanisms of that don't always match our intuitions.

See: Lauren Sanchez, as you mention.

The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order.

If Epstein was as rich as he claimed to be without any of the wackier conspiracy conspiracies being true, he got the money by embezzling from Les Wexner. If any of the wackier conspiracies were true, he had a lot of foreign income he was being dishonest about the source of.

I personally think that Epstein's finances were above board and he simply wasn't as rich as he claimed to be (his lifestyle was consistent with the amount of money he could have made scummily but legally by charging Wexner 2-and-20 without providing alpha). But if I was the Feds I would have been going over his finances with a fine-tooth comb.

I don't think he embezzled from Wexner, even the most besotted suitor would have noticed millions drained away. But he did have a lot of control over Wexner's money and was able to spend it as if it were his own, in turn enabling him to present the façade of really, really wealthy guy (rather than just guy in charge of really, really wealthy guy's wallet).

I agree that, like a lot of the high-flying financial types of the time, it was all a house of cards and a downturn, bad luck, or close scrutiny would have shown that the emperor had no clothes. He genuinely had the most amazing luck in getting clear of the Florida sex abuse charges (as well as the dropped ball by the prosecution, as another commenter posted explaining the case in detail on here) and that is what motivates all the conspiracy theories about "was he really an intelligence asset? was he blackmailing people?"

Wikipedia does have a good précis of it all - lies, charm, connections and luck:

Although it took 12 years to deliver the story, as Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times tells it JP Morgan banker Jes Staley and CEO Jamie Dimon had a falling out over Staley's client Epstein sometime around 2012, after in October 2011 the General Counsel of the bank, Stephen Cutler, complained to Staley and others that Epstein was "not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client." At the meeting between Staley, Epstein and Cutler, the last was assuaged when Epstein lied to his face and trotted out for character reference Bill Gates. The bank would not discard Epstein until, facing increased pressure from federal regulators, it did in 2013 coincidentally the year of Staley's departure from the bank. Thereafter Epstein moved his trade to the American affiliate of Deutsche Bank.

According to Forbes in 2025, the great majority of Epstein's wealth between 1999 and 2018 came from $490 million in fees, (most of that from two billionaires, Leslie Wexner, $200 million, and Leon Black, $170 million) with the remaining $310 million reported as income during that period by his companies as being from investment returns, and was worth $600 million when he died.

But he did have a lot of control over Wexner's money and was able to spend it as if it were his own, in turn enabling him to present the façade of really, really wealthy guy

Which in turn would let him get more private finance business.

After all, when choosing finance guys, it's an important indicia of competence that the guy himself isn't broke.

Of course, this can be gamed -- lots of those guys are in deep debt to fund an appearance of wealth that they wish to parlay into business opportunity. And many are indeed a house of cards.

I personally think that Epstein's finances were above board and he simply wasn't as rich as he claimed to be (his lifestyle was consistent with the amount of money he could have made scummily but legally by charging Wexner 2-and-20 without providing alpha). But if I was the Feds I would have been going over his finances with a fine-tooth comb.

Indeed, and that also explains why the banks (in particular JPM) were so keen to maintain his business, because he did nothing with the money except hand it to them to ride the booming 90s equity market, so everybody got their cut. The private wealth division at JPM was making huge fees from Wexner (the kind of billionaire who would usually have a more shrewd family office) for pretty much nothing.

In Maxwell’s recent testimony they asked her about the house (legally transferred for almost nothing) and at last there was an answer there, too, namely that it was in lieu of “fees”. Epstein seduced Wexner, “invested” his money (unlike the Madoffs of the world for the kind of boring, safe returns best suited to that task) and then charged hedge fund fees. Why didn’t Wexner measure his returns against the market? Hard to say, maybe he was in too deep, didn’t care, assumed Jeffrey was a genius, liked the attention and friendship, was a little in love, or was just under the thumb of an overbearing and domineering mother (which is the historical record) and didn’t really think of it much.

But either way, a combination of a couple hundred million in fees from Wexner, reinvesting his own money, some shrewd early-90s real estate purchases in Manhattan (a few apartment buildings, as I recall) and the $170m from Leon Black (Epstein’s only other “client” even though he never managed his money and the one case where I suspect blackmail is possibly central) and his fortune is easily explained even with some blunders along the way.

Why didn’t Wexner measure his returns against the market? Hard to say, maybe he was in too deep, didn’t care, assumed Jeffrey was a genius, liked the attention and friendship, was a little in love, or was just under the thumb of an overbearing and domineering mother (which is the historical record) and didn’t really think of it much.

Yeah, I'm just reading bits and pieces but it does seem to be that Epstein did a genuinely good job of sorting out Wexner's finances, was smart enough not to milk the cow too hard, and probably was a 'friend' (not sexual) for someone who didn't have a lot of friends due to all you describe. Plus, if Epstein was already hosting and/or arranging the kind of parties he later threw, then it would have done no harm (and maybe a lot of good) to Wexner's public image to be seen in the society pages with attractive twenty-something women on his arm. Nobody would expect him to be seriously dating those girls, but to be 'out and about' in public with them would have helped as cover for "oh, Wexner is too much of a playboy to get married yet" if there were rumours about his sexuality.

Wexner owned Victoria’s Secret before he met Epstein. He definitely wasn’t relying on Epstein to procure girls for him - the reverse seems more likely.

Oh, Epstein certainly used that connection to his advantage, but there's a difference between "guy has to hit on models who work for his business" (rather creepy and sleazy, low-class) and "guy who meets attractive young women at parties in the right social circles" (eligible bachelor).

The impression I'm getting - and admittedly this is all at second- and third-hand - was that Wexner was socially awkward/dominated by his mother enough that he couldn't manage this kind of thing (unlike Trump who had no problem hanging around the Miss World pageants or whatever). So having a fixer who can make sure photos of you with appropriate arm candy end up in the gossip columns and who manages your public profile, amongst other things, is very convenient and useful.

This profile from 1985 is fascinating; it's a guy who at age 48 still has Mommy very clearly holding on to the apron strings, he's a guy from Ohio who is now a big cheese in New York (and probably aware that he doesn't fit in with the circles he is now moving in - see that little line about "he doesn't pronounce 'La Grenouille' or even 'entrepreneur' right and it doesn't matter").

Wexner is what used to be known as a “confirmed bachelor”. He doesn’t feel alone. He doesn’t seem to want a child and, despite what he says about the perfect woman – Ali McGraw as she was in Love Story, someone who is “very, very pretty” and not aggressive – he seems to be waiting to achieve some mystical harmony and balance in himself first. “A lot of people think because I am not married I am asexual or homosexual, but I enjoy a relationship with a woman,” he says sometime later, hating to discuss this, known for keeping this part of his life very tucked away. Of course, like his social absence, this increases his mystery and allure. Only Alfred Taubman, among his friends, still constantly tells him to get married, but Wexner, whenever asked, says, “Me and the pope.”

So someone like Epstein, charming and comfortable with that kind of society, who could help Les manage his social life, or manage it for him? Worth his weight in gold. Even setting aside any gay attraction, the important thing is that Epstein too was Jewish (and his Jewish heritage seems to be very important to Wexner) so that automatically makes him someone Wexner feels he can trust, someone with the same cultural identity, someone who gets it. Let Jeff manage the money while Les moves on to things he finds more important (new business deals, art and philanthropy) and, so long as profits are being made, what's to question?

(The irony about the perfect woman being someone who is not aggressive is that he ended up married at age 56 to a lawyer. Maybe I'm stereotyping lawyers, but that seems like the aggressive type to me!)

(The irony about the perfect woman being someone who is not aggressive is that he ended up married at age 56 to a lawyer. Maybe I'm stereotyping lawyers, but that seems like the aggressive type to me!)

His preference was probably "not aggressive [romantically/toward him]" rather than "not aggressive [in general]", given the combination of socially awkward and "dominated by his mother".

Or they were naturally friends due to common interests.

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