JPost reports:
In the wake of what police believe to be a $50 billion Ponzi scheme engineered by Wall Street insider Bernard Madoff, a flood of anti-Semitic comments have deluged the internet, being posted on various mainstream and extremist websites, the Anti-Defamation League reported.
"Jews are always a convenient scapegoat in times of crisis, but the Madoff scandal and the fact that so many of the defrauded investors are Jewish has created a perfect storm for the anti-Semites," Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said in a press release published by the organization on Friday. "Nowadays, the first place Jew-haters will go is to the Internet, where they can give voice to their hateful ideas without fear of repercussions."
"Blogging and social media sites are changing the way people communicate their reactions to events in the news and interact with each other," Foxman continued. "More people are online than ever before, and many more Web sites offer users the ability to comment immediately and anonymously. Those who harbor anti-Semitic beliefs feel most comfortable expressing themselves in cyberspace, where they can provoke a reaction from others or find like-minded individuals to affirm their beliefs."[...]
Question: When Bear Stearns and other huge investment houses recently went under, when tens of thousands lost their jobs, and tens of millions of people irretrievably lost hundreds of billions of dollars in stock values and investments that went up in smoke, why did the world and the media take that in stride somehow?
ReplyDeleteWhen FreddieMac and FannieMae went bankrupt from bad mortgages (essentially bad loans that could not be repaid) that were written off to the tune of hundreds of billions and the stock market essentially crashed from its high flying days, and they and the USA were saved from even worse catastrophe by the largest US government intervention and bailout to rally the stock markets and save not just the US's but the world's economy from another 1920s era drama (although it did serve as Obama's final free ticket to victory), they were not held accountable, but when an investment house run by one notable Jew goes under, under the same conditions and during the same time time frame as Bear Stearns, FreddieMac and FannieMae, and other big names like this, it's suddenly called a "ponzi scheme" and the man is called a crook and ganef.
Why is he being scapegoated when right now there are thousands of executive bankers and big shots just like him, if not worse, who cumulatively lost their clients and benefactors hundreds of millions if not trillions of precious dollars, and have almost brought the USA to ruin and the world's economy to the brink of collapse?
Imgagine for a moment, just for the sake of analogy, that if mismanaging money by big money managers, chief executives and high finance bankers could be tried as top Nazis were tried in Nurembourg, then Mr. Madoff would not be the only one on trial, yet the media sure makes it looks so, and that's a big shame and perversion of the truth and equal justice.
So as mega financial and economic failures, collapses or misdeeds go, every last executive who has been entrusted with tens of billions, actually trillions, that has gone up in smoke these last six months or so is just as big a crook and ganef as Mr. Madoffis being called.
The so-called "Big 3" car makers are on the verge of bankruptcy and noone knows why they have not been able to show a profit and where all the money they make has gone (well we know its the executives and the unions who have gobbled up any returns that should have gone to stockholders who invested in these companies in the first place for decades), yet their disgraced heads are allowed to plead for clemency and relief and taxpayer-financed bailouts (read: more printing of fake money by the US Treasury for them and the people Umcle Sam takes a shine to) and the "top 3" (top 3 losers, because Japanese and German automakers have wiped them out) have the temerity to come to Congress and be honored and receive some redress and they are not called bumblers, incompetents and thieves, but treated like people an in emergency room deserving of triage before anyone else, so why not Mr. Madoff who should also be able to come and ask for a "bailout" given that corrupt bankrupt banks and snivelling outdated auto-makers get the same hearing, if not relief?
There is a double standrd at work. No doubt about it.
Who in the media and in the public can really explain all the workings of a sophisticated corporation and complex business as run by Madoff, that even paranoid Swiss Banks invested in, to really understand what he and his investment company was doing and what really went wrong in a labrynthine investment bank that handled tens of billions of dollars (not as a simplistic depiction of a "Mr. Ponzi" would have it.)
It seems that suddenly the media has found a new whipping boy and his name is Madoff when everyone in Wall Street who has been around when billions, if not trillions of dollars have been evaporating under mysterious circumstances are no less guilty or liable than he is.
The man deserves his day in court and he, like anyone else who has not been proven and sentenced in a court of law should be dan lekaf zechus.