Forbes
This March two of the world's biggest investors became believers in a company with next to no revenues and $352 million in losses over three years. Funds run by billionaires George Soros and John Paulson invested a combined $175 million in NovaGold Resources. Both Soros and Paulson are seriously bullish on gold, but why did they bet on a Vancouver mining company with an unimpressive history?
They were following the lead of Thomas Kaplan, 47, a little-known New York City billionaire investor who thinks gold's bull run is far from over. An Oxford-trained historian, Kaplan believes that the last 40 years, when gold was not the world's reserve currency, were an aberration and that gold will revert to the top store of value as it was for 5,000 years. He means it: Kaplan's family office, Tigris Financial Group, manages close to $2 billion in gold assets. [...]
This March two of the world's biggest investors became believers in a company with next to no revenues and $352 million in losses over three years. Funds run by billionaires George Soros and John Paulson invested a combined $175 million in NovaGold Resources. Both Soros and Paulson are seriously bullish on gold, but why did they bet on a Vancouver mining company with an unimpressive history?
They were following the lead of Thomas Kaplan, 47, a little-known New York City billionaire investor who thinks gold's bull run is far from over. An Oxford-trained historian, Kaplan believes that the last 40 years, when gold was not the world's reserve currency, were an aberration and that gold will revert to the top store of value as it was for 5,000 years. He means it: Kaplan's family office, Tigris Financial Group, manages close to $2 billion in gold assets. [...]
Kaplan is responsible to havoc in klal Yisroel created by Tropper. Kaplan was standing smiling doing nothing while Tropper was revoking conversions, forging documents, and blacklisting Modern Orthodox rabbis he did not like.
ReplyDeleteHe was warned on this blog that his name will be dragged into the gutter if he continue to support the menuval.
Now, every future article about Kaplan will mention this scandal.
In the Tropper’s tapes, aside from the "juicy" stuff, menuval Tropper tells about Malcolm Hoenlein asking him to be seated next to Kaplan, does anybody know if Hoenlein got his wish ?
He launched a big effort to conserve species of wildcats and backed a group seeking to standardize Jewish conversions--dealt a setback when the rabbi in charge got embroiled in a conversion-for-sex scandal.
ReplyDeleteA setback ? does it mean that the EJF is not finished ? so Kaplan and Tropper (and Roni) are going to be back ?
OY,
TO DL:
ReplyDeleteTom Kaplan is not responsible for other individual's action...He is a generous sponsor for an ideal cause which he felt would bring KLAL Yisroel unity in a controversial age old issue as well as save our people from total extinction of identity since the numbers of assimilation were growing astoundingly. Knock it off with your exxagerated false rhetoric !
Tom Kaplan is not responsible for other individual's action...
ReplyDelete=========================================
Of course he does!, he financed Tropper and his servants (which may include you!) for many years.
He chose to ignore warnings from people that Tropper is an evil person and corrupted individual. Now let him wash the shmoots from his clothes.
Tom Kaplan no more understood what Tropper was doing any more than his critics understand how the gold market works.
ReplyDeleteThe first lesson of a well disciplined investor is to know when to get out of the market.
Kaplan knew what Tropper told him. I also suspect some of the 'gedolim' who said nothing spoke with him as well.
Tom Kaplan knew exactly what he was doing with tropper. He is a risk taker, and he lost in this case.
ReplyDeleteKaplan is a high flier and politician at his stage of his wealth. As a risk taker, he dances along the line of what is legal and he becomes embroiled in civil suits, too. He wanted a holy man to vouch for his impeccable character when necessary. All politicians have their high profile clergy.
The safest way to gain loyalty was to take a nobody orator, a Torah scholar with 100% ambition and no moral fiber, and build him up from nothing into a household name. That's what he did with tropper. Helping him become the one authority on Orthodox conversions makes tropper a very important witness and character reference at that time when a couple of billion dollars might be at stake. Nobody would care that it was Kaplan who gave tropper that position.
But Kaplan became embroiled with Guma and tropper followed suit. tropper was an easy target for Guma, because tropper is a sadist, a pervert, and amoral.
So far tropper has only been involved in a scandal in the Orthodox community. He has not been brought up on charges or even sued by anyone he has hurt. Kaplan can afford to wait and see what happens.
In the meantime there is havoc in Monsey NY as the the Rabbonim there are deadlocked about the Tropper case. Tropper has been sued to stay away from the yeshiva kol yaakov he founded and he then counter-sued signalling that he intends to return. Tropper also pocketed every last cent and looted the yeshiva's bank accounts and has shipped off a couple of his present talmidim to the chaim berlin yeshiva in Brooklyn for R Aron Schechter to babysit during the storm while potential new talmidim are staying way clear of kol yaakov and Tropper because of the rotten name it now has about it all.
ReplyDeleteTropper signed documents (later published online) that he would leave Monsey before the summer of 2010 but then backed off (what else to expect from the arch manipulator) claiming that because the UNSIGNED kol koreh against him was also released online that the the deal for him to quit kol yaakov and leave Monsey and leave Monsey forever was off. Tropper found a new outspoken blind-ally in Rabbi Shlesinger in Monsey. This outraged the Monsey-area Rabbonim head by posek Rabbi Dovid Ribiat who have been been trying to purge Monsey of Tropper once and for all and they condemned Rabbi Shlesinger as well.
In the meantime everything is in limbo as a scary pall of silence has fallen over the entire Tropper fiasco while Tropper is taken to court and he counter-sues. Rabbi Nochum Eisenstein has also remained suspiciously silent as there were rumors about videos about him too in hotels and as for Guma Aguiar he is still evidently languishing in a mental hospital in Israel.
It is one big bloody mess, as the main actors of EJF are under masses of rubble from the destruction they unleashed, and this is what Tom Kaplan contributed to. What a disgrace and unparalleled chillul Hashem!
here is a comment by Warren Buffet,when asked why he never invests in gold? he answered,because i never understood this whole gold business,
ReplyDeletefirst we hire and pay people to dig holes in south africa and take the gold out of the ground,then we refine it and shape them into shiny square bars,then we put them on planes and fly them to the US and Europe,and then we hire again workers to start digging again and dig underground vaults and then we put these same bars back into the ground again,does this make sense to anyone?
[this is a classic by Warren Buffet]
chaim
The holy UOJ wrote these words back in 2007: (that was also when the Bataz wrote their first letter)
ReplyDeleteI'll come after you as an exterminator goes after poisonous rats! I'm on to you and your pathetic scam!You're going down - BIG!
tp://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2007/11/leib-tropper-and-his-ejf-eternal-jewish.html
After that someone posted Kaplan email ( kaplan5000@aol.com ) and asked people to contact him and let him know who the real Tropper . Kaplan received those email and ignore them.
So do not tell me that Kaplan did not know.
Which European beis din is converting members of this Conservative temple in Madrid which are then accepted by the local orthodox community?
ReplyDeleteI hope it's not R' Abba Dunner's as something doesn't seem kosher here.
http://www.masortiworld.org/molami/kehilla/spa2
The renewal of the agreement between the Orthodox and our Congregation took place at the beginning of 2009.
This agreement was initially signed in June 2003 between Bet El and the Orthodox Community of Madrid (C.J.M.).
The agreement signed with C.J.M. allows all members of the congregation who have converted through the European Beit Din to be accepted as active members of C.J.M.
All of the conversions, marriages, Bnei Mitzva and Brith Mila that should take place at Bet El are registered by the C.J.M.
The C.J.M. was one of the founders of the Federation of Spanish Jewish Communities (F.C.J.E.) and is the current Bet El ‘s designated speaker on behalf of all local and national entities.
C.J.M. as full member of F.C.J.E. represents Bet-El and all the others five
orthodox synagogues settled in Madrid.