I'm inclined to think of George Orwell and F. A. Hayek at the same time. Both showed great courage in writing the truth, undaunted by the consequences awaiting them. Both valued freedom, though they understood it differently.
Orwell, a man of the "left," could not remain silent in the face of the horrors of Stalinism. Twice—during the Spanish Civil War and again at the dawn of the Cold War—he refused to permit his comrades to blind themselves to where their collectivism had led and could lead again. For his favor he was called a conscious tool of fascism, a stinging accusation considering he had gone to Spain to fight fascism. (But for a few inches, the bullet that penetrated Orwell's neck in Spain would have denied us the latter warnings, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. We would have never known what the fascists had cost us.)
Hayek, a man of the "right," risked ostracism and worse in 1944 by publishing The Road to Serfdom, in which this Austrian-turned-Briton, writing in England at the height of World War II, warned that central economic planning would, if pursued seriously, end in a totalitarianism indistinguishable from the Nazi enemy. That couldn't have been easy to write at that time and place—central planning was much in vogue among the intelligentsia. While a good deal of the reception was serious and respectful, a good deal of it was not. Herbert Finer, in Road to Reaction, called Hayek's book "the most sinister offensive against democracy to emerge from a democratic country for many decades"; it expressed "the thoroughly Hitlerian contempt for the democratic man."
Orwell's Review
Not surprisingly, it was The Road to Serfdom that brought Orwell and Hayek together in print. Orwell briefly reviewed the book along with Konni Zilliacus's The Mirror of the Past in the April 9, 1944 issue of The Observer. The man who would publish Animal Farm a year later and Nineteen Eighty-Four five years later found much to agree with in Hayek's work. He wrote:
Shortly, Professor Hayek's thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism, and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them, especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty. By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it. Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the left-wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second. The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security. In the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of.
But true to his left state-socialism, Orwell could not endorse Hayek's positive program:
Professor Hayek is also probably right in saying that in this country the intellectuals are more totalitarian-minded than the common people. But he does not see, or will not admit, that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter.
…Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics.
Short Shrift
It's disappointing to see Orwell give such short shrift to Hayek's positive thesis. He is glib and dogmatic, which is unbecoming a serious intellectual such as Orwell. His ignorance of economics leaps from the page.
"[A] return to 'free' competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State." It's hard to believe that someone so familiar with Stalinism could have written that. Even without knowing much economics, could he really have thought that what goes on in market-oriented societies, even during depressions, could be worse than the famine Stalin inflicted on the Ukrainians, the show trials and executions, or the labor camps in Siberia?
"The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them." In a market producers compete to better serve consumers. The losers in that competition are not exiled or executed. They find other ways to serve consumers, just as producers are trying to serve them.
"Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led…." Where has monopoly arisen without the aid of the State? We find no market-generated monopoly in England or the United States. There, major business interests actively promoted protectionism and other interventions precisely to tamp down competition and protect their market shares. Of course, for many people, Orwell presumably among them, that is capitalism, a topic I return to below. (I should note that Hayek forswore laissez faire in his book, but that is a topic for another day.)
"[T]he vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment…." But that's a false choice. Slumps and unemployment, as Hayek and his mentor Ludwig von Mises taught, are products of central-bank manipulation of money and interest rates, that is, of government not of the free market. The Great Depression, which must have been on Orwell's mind, was no exception. The real choice is between freedom and security (including mutual aid) on the one hand, and State "regimentation," slumps, and unemployment on the other.
I must pause here to focus on Orwell's disgraceful use of the word "regimentation." I say "disgraceful" because he committed the sin he himself so eloquently condemned in his justly famous essay "Politics and the English Language": the sin of euphemism. In that great essay he wrote:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so". Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."
Regimentation is the least of what goes on under a totalitarian regime.
Capitalism versus the Free Market
"Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war." I think that part of the problem for Orwell is that a truly free market is not among the possible options. For him and many others, the choice is between a system run for employers and one run for workers. (The preferable alternative is not obvious.) In this view, the former is capitalism, sometimes dressed up as "the free market," and the latter is socialism. We shouldn't be too hard on Orwell for thinking this way, for many defenders of the market are just as careless when they write about mixed economies such as the one in the United States. Despite pervasive government intervention, we often hear business conduct defended because "under capitalism" consumers have the power to punish firms that ill-serve them. Tell that to consumers who chose not to buy GM and Chrysler cars. Tell that to people who lost land through eminent domain so that a big-box chain might prosper. Generations of business-inspired intervention to some extent must have rigged the market against consumers and workers. If not, what are the economists complaining about?
As for his inclusion of war in his list, let it be said that the scramble for markets and other economic objectives cannot be a sufficient condition for war. War requires the State, that is, the socialization of costs through taxation and conscription.
One wonders how Orwell avoided despair. He couldn't accept (state) capitalism, and he saw the totalitarian tendencies of socialism up close. Yet he could write, "There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is restored to politics." (Emphasis added.)
Hadn't he just read Hayek's Chapter 11, "The End of Truth," in which Hayek described how a serious commitment to central planning must produce "contempt for intellectual liberty"?
The word "truth" itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, which has to be believed in the interest of unity of the organized effort and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it.
The general intellectual climate which this produces, the spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth which it engenders, the loss of the sense of even the meaning of truth, the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry and of the belief in the power of rational conviction, the way in which differences of opinion in every branch of knowledge become political issues to be decided by authority, are all things which one must personally experience — no short description can convey their extent.
But of course Orwell had experienced those things in Spain and knew how it was in Russia. He certainly put a heavy burden on that word "somehow." How restoring the concept of right and wrong to politics would make central planning either decent or practical is a mystery no one has solved. (Of course, Mises had long before shown that socialism could not be practical because without prices arising out of the exchange of privately owned means of production, the socialist planner could not make rational calculations with respect to what should be produced, in what manner, and in what quantities.)
To end on a partly optimistic note, though Orwell presumably would not agree, central economic planning is not on the modern agenda. The threat today is not state socialism. It's bureaucratic corporatism dressed up as progressive democracy.
Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman, where this article originally appeared.
January 10, 2024 – Beth Israel Lahey Health will open the doors of the former Compass facility that abruptly closed last June, leaving hundreds of patients high and dry, some desperately seeking to find out where their physicians went.
Town Manager James McGrail said Beth Israel is expected to open on March 1, providing primary care services. Beth Israel is expected to expand to include urgent care and specialty services.
"We thank Sen. Marc Pacheco and Beth Israel Lahey Health for their work on this arrangement," Town Manager McGrail said. Many people in Middleborough and nearby communities were affected by the Compass Medical closure and we are grateful that a healthcare practice will provide a new and important resource for residents. We look forward to welcoming Beth Israel Lahey Health to Middleborough," McGrail said in a prepared statement.
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“I am extremely pleased new healthcare services will be coming to the Town of Middleborough. Following the abrupt closure of Compass Medical this past summer, Beth Israel Lahey Health has announced they will be opening a new practice at the location previously operated by Compass.” said Dean of the Senate, State Sen. Marc R. Pacheco, D-Taunton.
“Ensuring my constituents in the Third Bristol and Plymouth district have access to high-quality medical services has long been a top priority for me throughout my tenure as State Senator. Many thanks and congratulations Beth Israel Lahey Health and all those at the local level working hard to facilitate the establishment of this new healthcare resource for our region,” Senator Marc Pacheco said in a prepared statement.
Beth Israel Lahey Health is part of a healthcare system with a staff of nearly 40,000 and affiliated with a dozen hospitals including Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital–Plymouth (BID). The hospital is 18.7 miles from the town’s center.
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Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center took over Jordan Hospital in 2014 that began as a 12-bed rural hospital in 1903 and has grown to a 170-bed, acute care community hospital.
The hospital was originally named for its first benefactor, Eben D. Jordan, a summer resident of Plymouth who had generously offered to give the sum of $10,000, which he later doubled to $20,000. One of the first acts of the directors was the purchase of the land on Sandwich Street, where the hospital still stands. In December of 1903, Jordan Hospital opened its doors to the first patients and has remained a community hospital ever since, according to BID.
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The 36,000-square-foot facility at 8 Commerce Boulevard opened to great fanfare in 2011 after the doors of St. Luke’s Hospital in the downtown had been shuttered for over 20-years. Compass slammed the doors closed June 1, 2023, without any warning to patients, while doctors on staff were told patients would be given a month’s notice before closing. Beth Israel is expected to open on March 1.
Many right wingers embrace BLAZE, this warped site and post links to it.
Right wingers are incapable of scrutinizing their sources of DISINFORMATION!
The Blaze's Jason Whitlock rages against women's suffrage: “Not everybody has to have a vote”
JASON WHITLOCK: They have recreated this history that oh God, it was all just sexism, and we didn’t have the right to vote until Susan B. Anthony and the women’s suffrage movement and I will defend life before suffrage. Because a vote used to represent the family. When we were a culture that really valued family and really understood the natural order that God intended, man serving God, woman following man who serves God, man and woman developing and nurturing children.
You only needed one vote per household because that vote was about the entire family as they have destroyed our family structure and made this all an individual pursuit. Not everybody has to have a vote and everybody has to have an agenda that a lot of times has nothing to do with family.
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no
Burning Books and Destroying Education on the Path to Fascist Dictatorship
From Nazi Germany to the Pinochet regime in Chile, global parallels with where this type of repression leads should set off alarms.
CHUCK IDELSON
Feb 28, 2023Common Dreams
Widening the lens on the escalating assault on education and those who teach it offers chilling thoughts on the future of U.S. democracy.
From book bans to classroom demonizing trans youth and LGBTQ lives, to eradicating the real history of the U.S. and its ongoing legacy on racial and gender oppression, to the intimidation of educators and purging those who don't toe the line, global parallels with where this repression leads should set off alarms.
Chile provides a case study. After the 1973 coup, led by Augusto Pinochet with U.S. support against democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende, "the military seized control of campuses and swept out those they felt sympathized with Allende rule," as the Christian Science Monitor put it.
Active-duty generals were appointed to run the universities and primary and secondary schools were placed under the rule of mayors appointed by Pinochet to promote full government control of classroom instruction.
Targeting educators was a priority with strict penalties imposed on what could be taught, leading to the firing of thousands of university professors and teachers, while others were forced out by sweeping cuts in educator pay.
Privatization, sharp cuts in public education funding, and corporate control of curricula was a major goal, including the elimination of political science and sociology in favor of vocational and business programs, and banning of texts.
The cuts and restrictions "sharply increased economic discrimination in higher education," said Allende's former education superintendent IvΓ‘n NΓΊΓ±ez, producing a privatized, corporatized school system that became more elitist. Implicit was the recognition that an egalitarian education system produces generations of young people who study the society they live in, think critically, and pose a major impediment to dictatorial rule. It would take 17 years until democracy finally was restored in Chile.
Comparisons with Nazi Germany are always fraught with overstatement. But it is worth emphasizing Hitler's reign started not with death camps, but with an onslaught on education and those it deemed as undesirables. Just weeks after Hitler's rise to Chancellor in 1933, Germany enacted a Civil Service law that as historian Jarrell Jackman wrote in The Muses Flee Hitler, immediately "forced over 1,000 scholars from their academic positions as either 'politically unreliable' or 'non-Aryan'."
On May 10, 1933, Nazi student groups carried out book burnings in 34 university towns across Germany.
Comparisons with Nazi Germany are always fraught with overstatement. But it is worth emphasizing Hitler's reign started not with death camps, but with an onslaught on education and those it deemed as undesirables.
On the bonfires went some 25,000 "un-German" books especially those by Jewish writers from Albert Einstein to Sigmund Freud, socialists, and communists, like Bertolt Brecht, August Bebel, and, of course, Karl Marx, literary and political critics of fascism and the Nazi regime, and foreigners considered advocates of social justice, such as Helen Keller targeted for championing rights for women, workers, and the disabled.
Speaking at the largest boon bonfire in Berlin, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels would declare that "Jewish intellectualism is dead" and he endorsed the students' "right to clean up the debris of the past." In the prescient words of banned, 19th century Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people."
"Nazi mentality," wrote Jackman, "held that only a small segment of humankind belonged among the chosen citizenry" and that the 'undesirables' should be '"segregated from the rest of society." Those defined as "non-Aryan" or undesirables—which would also include people of color, lesbians and gays, the disabled, Gypsies, socialists, communists and any other opponents of the regime "were linked together in one form of conspiracy to destroy the purity of the German Volk."
"Since everyone was either supportive of German purity, or too scared to speak up for fear retribution, the Nazi Party could push any policy they wanted," writes Julia Rittenberg, calling it "a necessity for dictatorial control. Fascist leaders seek to crush any thoughts that might encourage resistance to their regime."
U.S. history is stuffed with examples of racial and gender oppression, repression of those viewed as "undesirable," censorship of education and history, and book banning, all intended to suppress any perceived threat to the dominant political class and white supremacy. In the wake of Trump's demagogy and attempted coup, the past two years illustrate the most dangerous illustration of those attacks on democracy.
Last year alone, more than 1,600 books were banned from school libraries, involving 138 school districts in 32 states, according to a report from PEN America.
Books sympathetically portraying diversity, especially featuring LGBTQ individuals and works, including children's books, describing struggles against racism by Black, Latino and civil rights figures, and human sexuality lead the list.
In Tennessee where one school district notoriously banned the graphic novel series "Maus" about the Holocaust, Rep. Jerry Sexton, sponsor of a bill to police school libraries, said he would burn books he considered inappropriate. A Texas school district official told educators if they kept books about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they would be required to offer "opposing" viewpoints to comply with a new state law.
Since January, 2021, reportsEducation Week, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism; 18 states have imposed the bans and restrictions either through legislation or other avenues.
After heavy criticism from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely leading candidate for President in 2024, the national College Board on the first day of Black History Month this February released an official curriculum for its new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies that stripped key parts of its content.
On top of the DeSantis' infamous "Don't Say Gay" and "Stop Woke Act," bills, a bill introduced in late February would bar colleges and universities from spending any money to fund educational programs or activity that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion, and could eviscerate programs on African American, gender studies, and other vulnerable curriculum.
Historian Robin D.G. Kelly describes these moves as "attacking the whole concept of racial justice and equity. It's an ongoing struggle to roll back anything that's perceived as diminishing white power. They want to convince white working people… if they can get control of the narrative inside classrooms, their lives would be better. Racism actually damages all of our prospects and futures."
As in Chile and Germany, educators are a major target. Multiple bills have threatened teachers with discipline, including termination, fines, criminal penalties, and loss of their teaching credentials for perceived violation of the laws, including the complaint of even one parent.
In Texas, Republican officials have called for criminal charges against school officials who make certain books available to young adults.
In New Hampshire, a conservative mom's group is offering a $500 bounty to catch teachers who break a state law prohibiting certain teachings about racism and sexism.
A high school English teacher in Missouri lost her job following parents' complaints that one of her assignments taught critical race theory after assigning a worksheet titled "How Racially Privileged Are You?" as prep material for reading the school-approved book "Dear Martin," a novel about a Black high school student who is physically assaulted by a white police officer.
In Tennessee, a teacher was fired after telling her class that white privilege is a fact. In Texas, a Black principal lost his job after parents accused him of promoting critical race theory based on a letter he had written more than a year earlier, calling for the community to come together and defeat systemic racism in the days following the murder of George Floyd.
DeSantis and Florida are again leading the charge. A substitute teacher in Jacksonville, was fired after posting a video to Twitter showing rows of empty bookshelves at the school's library.
DeSantis insisted the video was fake, even though in Duval County Public Schools administrators also instructed faculty to cover or remove their classroom libraries, mentioning the felony risk in a video on how to comply with the new law.
Another teacher near Naples, FL was fired after a classroom discussion prompted by LGBTQ students asking if they could create art expressing their own sexualities and identities.
DeSantis has also gone after teacher unions, seeking to defund them, along with other restrictions, and the newest bill would allow a faculty member's tenure to be reviewed "at any time."
Activists across the country are fighting back. In Indiana, for example, a coalition of organizations mobilized to defeat two anti-critical race theory bills after a Republican state senator urged teachers to be impartial on "isms," and a history teacher went viral for saying he refuses to be impartial when teaching Nazism.
And, in New Hampshire, a group called Granite State Progress boasted wins in all 34 of the school board races where it supported candidates who pledged to resist pressure to restrict the teaching of the history of racism.
"The history of Nazi book burning is one of the most obvious antecedents to the censorship of books in the U.S.," notes Julia Rittenberg. "While book banners and censorship supporters paint their concerns as specific to contemporary issues, it's a common way to consolidate power."
In a commentary in the New York Times, prominent historian, educator Henry Louis Gates cited the work of historian Carter Woodson, pioneer in 1926 of what has become Black History Month. Woodson was "keenly aware of the role of politics in the classroom," said Gates, "if you can control a man's thinking, you do not have to worry about his action."
There’s only one thing more dangerous than the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, being charged with (and admitting to) five criminal felony counts by the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014 and a host of other fraud charges by federal regulators. What is more dangerous is having government officials look the other way at this recidivist history of crime at the nation’s largest bank.
In May, federal banking regulators allowed JPMorgan Chase to get even bigger, despite its unprecedented crime wave, by handing it the failed First Republic Bank in a sweetheart deal.
Yesterday, we learned from online documents that the Comptroller of New York State has turned over a vast amount of the financial affairs of the fourth largest state in the country to this banking house of crime. (See related articles below.)
The New York State Comptroller is Thomas DiNapoli, who has held this no-term-limit position since February 7, 2007 – a span of 17 years. DiNapoli’s job description reads as follows: “The comptroller is the chief financial officer of the state government and the head of the Department of Audit and Control. The comptroller’s responsibilities include managing the state’s pension fund, auditing the spending practices of all state agencies and local governments, reporting on state finances, and serving as the custodian of unclaimed funds.”
As it turns out, JPMorgan Chase has a 7-year contract with the Comptroller’s office to serve as the custodian for the securities held in the New York State Common Retirement Fund for state workers. As of September 30, 2023, the Common Retirement Fund had a value of almost a quarter of a trillion dollars, or $246.3 billion to be exact.
But the Comptroller does not want the public to know all of the granular details in its contract between JPMorgan Chase and itself. Numerous paragraphs are blacked out in the document.
According to the Common Retirement Fund’s Annual Report, JPMorgan Chase – not the Comptroller or the Fund’s auditor – calculates the rate of return for the fund. That return was indicated as “negative 4.14 percent, gross of certain investment fees” for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023.
How large is this custodial business at JPMorgan Chase, which holds so many securities for other parties?
On November 24, 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the federal regulator of national banks, fined JPMorgan Chase $250 million for “failure to maintain adequate internal controls and internal audit over its fiduciary business.” That business includes its custodial business. The OCC Consent Order related to that fine revealed the following:
“The Bank maintains one of the world’s largest and most complex fiduciary businesses with total fiduciary and related assets of $29.1 trillion, including $1.3 trillion in fiduciary assets and $27.8 trillion of non-fiduciary custody assets.”
To put that $29.1 trillion into the proper perspective, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reports that as of September 30, 2023 there were 4,049 commercial banks in the U.S. The total assets of those 4,049 banks was $22.2 trillion. But, somehow, just one of those banks has attracted $27.8 trillion of assets for which it serves as custodian.
Is there some secret sauce that JPMorgan Chase has going for it to attract all of that money?
In September 2020, when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released a bombshell investigative report about money laundering for criminals at some of the largest Wall Street banks, it had quite a bit to say about JPMorgan Chase. (The ICIJ investigation was based on secret documents leaked from FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit of the U.S. Treasury.)
According to the ICIJ report, JPMorgan Chase was involved in moving illicit funds for the fugitive, Jho Low, involving the notorious looting of public funds in Malaysia. Jho Low has been accused by multiple jurisdictions of playing a key role in the embezzlement of more than $4.5 billion from a Malaysian economic development fund, 1MDB. JPMorgan Chase moved $1.2 billion in money for Jho Low from 2013 to 2016, according to the report.
The ICIJ report also found that JPMorgan “processed more than $50 million in payments over a decade…for Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for President Donald Trump. The bank shuttled at least $6.9 million in Manafort transactions in the 14 months after he resigned from the campaign amid a swirl of money laundering and corruption allegations spawning from his work with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.”
Equally troubling activity at JPMorgan Chase includes the following, according to ICIJ investigators:
“JPMorgan also moved money for companies and people tied to corruption scandals in Venezuela that have helped create one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. One in three Venezuelans is not getting enough to eat, the UN reported this year, and millions have fled the country.
“One of the Venezuelans who got help from JPMorgan was Alejandro ‘Piojo’ Isturiz, a former government official who has been charged by U.S. authorities as a player in an international money laundering scheme. Prosecutors allege that between 2011 and 2013 Isturiz and others solicited bribes to rig government energy contracts. The bank moved more than $63 million for companies linked to Isturiz and the money laundering scheme between 2012 and 2016, the FinCEN Files show…”
Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase are legally required to follow the “KYC” rule (Know Your Customer) in order to avoid moving money around for criminals. But the ICIJ investigators reveal that JPMorgan Chase paid little attention to that rule.
Less than six months ago, JPMorgan Chase settled two separate federal lawsuits against it for actively participating in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors enterprise by turning a blind eye to glaring red flags and failing to file the legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) as Epstein took upwards of $40,000 to $80,000 in hard cash monthly from his accounts at the bank over a decade. In return, Epstein referred ultra wealthy clients to the bank according to court documents.
JPMorgan Chase previously admitted in 2014 to two criminal charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice for banking Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme for decades (that devastated the finances of thousands of retirees) and ignoring its legal obligation to file SARs with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The settlement with the Justice Department included a penalty of $1.7 billion in restitution to Madoff victims and a promise to reform its anti-money laundering compliance programs.
The text of JPMorgan’s contract with the New York State Comptroller to custody assets for the Common Retirement Fund indicates that the New York State Comptroller found the bank to be a “responsible” entity.
Yesterday, we emailed the press office for the Comptroller and listed the nature of the five felony counts the bank has admitted to since 2014. We inquired if the Comptroller was aware of these charges. The response was that there would be no comment from the Comptroller’s office to our questions.
