Hedge Funds, Democrats & the Financial Crisis

While posting about the Chelsea Clinton Wedding, I came across some links about Clinton/Democrat corruption, and our current financial crisis. Here are some of the more interesting bits:

Bridegroom's Father is Ex-Congressman & Convicted Felon

[...] It Runs in the Family

Edward Mezvinsky was convicted of fraud for shady business deals that had prosecutors calling him a "one-man crime wave." Prosecutors claimed that in 20 years of doing business between 1980 and 2000, every single deal he consummated displayed aspects of fraud. After his indictment in 2001, he pleaded guilty to 31charges of bank fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. He tried to raise a defense of diminished capacity due to his suffering from bipolar disorder, but the judge disallowed it.

His rip-off of almost $10 million got him seven years in the hoosegow. Ed Mezvinsky got out of the federal lock-up in 2008. By then, his son Marc was dating Chelsea Clinton. Both children of politicos attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where they studied finance. They became friends at Stanford, and the friendship ripened into a romance sometime around 2007.

Post-Palo Alto, while Marc decided to enter the more venerable profession of investment banking, Chelsea opted to join a hedge funds. She eventually got a job with the Avenue Capital Group, big campaign donors for both her parents.

Hedge funds as they are now constituted were illegal from 1933 to 2000, as their type of activity was outlawed as it was considered as destabilizing speculation that helped cause the Great Depression. In the year 2000, her papa bear Bill Clinton turned his back on 67 years of proven financial regulation and signed a bill legitimating speculation. Mama bear Hillary was running for the U.S. Senate in the State of New York, Moloch's Big Town, and needed the big bucks from the free-booting financiers.

Baby bear Chelsea is doing very nicely as one of the parasitical class that has turned the United States into an economic and financial casino. A "casino" economy and stock market is a state of affairs which economists considered to be the antithesis of a well-managed economy well into the 1990s, when the hustlers took over and began to brazenly rule the roost. [...]

Of course, you aren't hearing any of this from the MSM, as they gush, and gush, and GUSH over the $3,000,000 dollar Clinton wedding. After all, as they keep telling us, the Clintons are political ROYALTY. And isn't that what America's all about? Worshiping Royalty?

Unfortunately, the corruption continues. Lest you think this is all in the past, it's tentacles most definitely reach into the present:

The Soul of the Democratic Party Sold

[...] Hedge funds have been major financial backers of Democratic candidates ever since Bill Clinton made like Abe Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, and set them free. Chelsea's mother Hillary received mucho hedge fund loot during her 2008 bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Hedge fund managers hedge their bets, and they also heavily backed Barack Obama, who rewarded them with a watered down "financial reform" bill that left hedge funds unmolested and hedge fund mangers' incomes taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate.

Former Goldman Sachs trading desk honcho Rahm Emmanul is President Obama's chief of staff, whilst his recent Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, worked as a paid "adviser" to the financial power house. Goldman Sachs is what J.P. Morgan and the House of Morgan and Paul Mellon and the Mellon Bank were to Republican Administrations in previous years, the marionette master who pulls the strings.

As predicted by naysayers, within seven years of Clinton legitimating financial speculation, hedge funds and other speculative financial schemes helped bring the U.S. economy back on its knees in the worse political catastrophe since the Great Depression.

Since it was Bill Clinton's "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council that sold the soul of the Democratic Party to Wall Street, it is fitting that Chelsea Clinton should be marrying the son of a convicted felon who works for the titan of Wall Street, a firm that engages in legal robbery. It recently got off easy from double dealing in the subprime mortgage market with a half-billion-dollar fine. [...]

Remember when the Goldman-Sachs executives were hauled before Congress to testify? It was just a dog-and-pony show for the cameras. Sachs went along with it, and in return were basically getting a bail-out.

Bill Clinton's administration occurred during one of the most prosperous times in American history, but he had little to do with it. He was riding the coattails of prosperity set into motion by previous Republican Administrations. Clinton's spending was held in check by a Republican dominated Congress, so Clinton didn't over-spend. Where the Republican's failed, was in going along with Clinton's "Centrist" financial reforms and his expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1997, which was then used by "activists" and "community organizers" (like Obama?) to coerce lending institutions to make millions of bad loans.

When there were signs that the melt-down was coming, some Republicans tried to make corrective reforms, but they were blocked by Democrats. Thus, the inevitable happened.

Now, what can we do about it? Remember in November.


Also see:

The roots of the financial crisis
     

Chelsea Clinton's "interfaith" marriage

From a Rabbi's blog, earlier this month:

Why Chelsea Clinton's Wedding Matters & the Celebrity Double-Standard

I'm hesitant to write about Chelsea Clinton's upcoming wedding to Marc Mezvinsky, who was raised in Conservative Judaism, because I want to respect the private lives of the bride and groom. However, when the bride is the daughter of the 40th President of the United States, I suppose she is classified as a celebrity and her wedding is fair game as a topic for discussion.




This marriage will spark conversation in the Jewish world about two main issues: How intermarriage affects the Jewish community; and, whether there is a double-standard in the Jewish community when it comes to the intermarrying ways of celebrities.

[...]

Some interesting questions surrounding the Chelsea Clinton wedding should make this even more interesting:

* The wedding will take place on Shabbat (July 31, 2010), so how will this affect whether observant Jewish (shomer Shabbat) guests will attend. Even if they stay within walking distance of the Astor mansion, according to Jewish law weddings are not to take place on the Jewish Sabbath.

* If Chelsea does convert before the wedding, will her conversion be disputed publicly by the Orthodox who will claim that a Conservative (or Reform) conversion isn't "kosher." And, many will question her commitment to Judaism -- didn't she do this only for the sake of marriage and how much preparation and deliberation did she put into this?

* If Chelsea doesn't convert, how many of the Bill and Hillary's Orthodox friends will attend the wedding anyway? Will their attendance at an interfaith wedding (and on Shabbat to boot) signify an endorsement? And what about Conservative rabbis who are technically not supposed to attend interfaith weddings? Will some make an exception for such notable nuptials?

* Finally, might this high-profile interfaith wedding turn the tides and lead to greater acceptance and sensitivity toward interfaith marriage? After all, as Gibson writes, "The main body of Conservative Judaism [CJLS] voted to allow interfaith families to be buried in Jewish cemeteries, and in March, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America hosted a two-day workshop "sensitizing" students to "issues of intermarriage and changing demographics." There is even talk of allowing Conservative rabbis to attend the interfaith weddings of friends -- and this just four years after the movement adopted an official policy emphasizing the importance of converting a non-Jewish spouse. [...]

I would question, just how much of a religious conservative the groom is, because of the things mentioned above. He doesn't seem very "observant" of some things. Just because he may have been raised to be strictly observant, doesn't mean he chooses to continue to be, especially if he's going to marry a shiksa. Or are some observances being overlooked due to the "celebrity" factor? Anyway, time will tell what's up with them. I won't be losing any sleep over it, and they don't look worried about it either:




Now that the wedding has happened, here are some more details on the interfaith aspects of the wedding from Rabbi Miller's blog.


Also see:

Who is Marc Mezvinsky? Chelsea Clinton's Husband is Invesment Banker at Hedge Fund

Bridegroom's Father is Ex-Congressman & Convicted Felon
     

Threats made over Chelsea Clinton Photo?

Chelsea Clinton Photo Causes NYC Ruckus

(CBS/AP) The days may be numbered for a photo of Chelsea Clinton posing with the owner of a popular Italian restaurant. That's because Chelsea's dad has weighed in.

Former President Bill Clinton sent a letter to Osso Buco proprietor Nino Selimaj, demanding that he take down the picture from the walls of his Greenwich Village restaurant.

"I was surprised to get the letter because the picture has been there a few years," Selimaj told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "She's eaten here a few times."

The Sept. 18 letter from the office of William Jefferson Clinton says Chelsea is a private citizen and that although she may have eaten at the restaurant "this does not serve as an endorsement."

The letter, signed by Clinton counselor Douglas J. Band, says Chelsea "was not consulted prior to this picture being displayed, and thus, her permission was not given for you to do so."

"We reserve the right to exercise any and all options available to us if you refuse to comply," the letter says.

Selimaj notes that celebrity photos in New York restaurants are common: He also has pictures on his walls of him posing with former mayor and GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and New York Yankees star Derek Jeter.

"A photo of a celebrity in New York is as common as a hot dog vendor," he said.

Selimaj says the letter came as quite a shock. [...]

I'm not shocked or surprised. I could personally care less about this, but it IS a bit curious, from a Public Relations perspective. With Chelsea's mom running for president, why make a fuss, sending threatening letters from lawyers about a photo in a restaurant, especially when celebrity photos are so common in NYC?

The Clintons seem to have a habit of acting needlessly heavy-handedly.

Also in this article, was another photo. On the left, you see Dorthy Rodham, Hillary's mother:



It's the first time I've seen her. She's often kept out of the public eye. The following link is a bit of a puff piece about Rodham, but does provide some curious details:

Clinton's Mother Remains A Mystery