Daily Archives: May 26, 2017

Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth Madoff and Robert De Niro as Bernie Madoff in The Wizard of Lies. (Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/HBO)

Back in 1990 director Barry Levinson gave us Avalon, his epic masterpiece on the American Jewish community. In that classic film Levinson skillfully examined the Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their often tumultuous encounter with the complexities of American culture and the assimilation process. It presented the fraught confrontation of Old World values with the brash and exhilarating world of 1950s America and its fast-paced lifestyle and Suburban sprawl.

We were able to see the generational clash and the shock of the new, but in a way that warmly remembered the struggles and disappointments of the immigrants and showed how their children moved on from the past.

It is this debilitating process which becomes the underlying subject of Levinsons chilling examination of the Bernie Madoff story.

In The Wizard of Lieswe see the pitfalls of Making It in America and how the Jewish community has reconfigured itself at the end of a very tumultuous century. The film is currently being screened on the HBO network

Expertly played by Robert De Niro in a dazzling performance that hearkens back to the iconic roles of his 1970s and 80s peak, Madoff is a reckless nihilist whose debased Long Island/Palm Beach 1%-er values mirror the excesses that we continue to see in the disaster that is Donald Trump.

Madoff is a truly nasty piece of work who relentlessly browbeats his family and associates as he remains completely oblivious to what it is that he is actually doing to his clients.

The movie notes the many ways in which Madoff ascended to the very apex of the financial services industry and became the idol of not only his investors, but of the institutional system itself.

He was held in awe by SEC and NASDAQ officials as a pioneering leader who helped to craft the laws regulating the industry. This idol-worship blinded regulators to the malfeasance that he perpetrated under their collective watch.

His insider knowledge of the system helped him commit his shocking fraud which parasitically shifted massive amounts of money from one place to the other as he eventually ran out of cash to continue to generate unrealistic returns for his clients.

While massively enriching himself and his unsuspecting family, Madoff was bilking his clients out of their life savings, eventually leaving many of them penniless.

Central to the story is the 2008 Wall Street collapse which was the beginning of the end of his demonic Ponzi scheme.

We will recall the process which began with the vile Ronald Reagan and ended with George W. Bush that sought to empower a feckless financial services industry at the expense of the internal coherence and stability of our economic system.

Prior to this collapse the movie shows us the Madoff world in full debauchery: expensive houses, vacations, lavish social gatherings, the very best shopping sprees, and the fast lane of American elite society.

The Wizard of Lies, brilliantly written by Sam Levinson, Sam Baum, and John Burnham Schwartz, is based on New York Times reporter Diana Henriques book (she also plays herself in the movie), and is structured using her prison-house interviews with Madoff as the framework of a series of intense flashbacks which present the sorry tale in revealing fragments; a similar structure to the one used in Avalon.

The film poster for Avalon.

Levinsons presentation focuses on the most basic human elements of the story which reminds us of the Avalon immigrants and their own complex dealings with the American economic system and the pluralistic social universe of their new homeland.

After many decades of engagement with America, Jews like Madoff felt entitled to game the system in a way that displayed a shocking lack of basic moral values.

Exploitation became the key to Madoffs scheme to enrich himself by bilking the unsuspecting investors.

But as De Niro/Madoff says in the movie, those investors including prominent Jewish figures like Elie Wiesel and many religious charities chose not to examine the suspiciously secretive way in which Madoff worked, and never questioned why it was that their returns were consistent as the market continued to fluctuate so wildly.

The Wizard of Lies is an implicit indictment not only of the American economic system, which has since the 1980s become an out-of-control train careening from one crisis to another, but also a critical examination of the debased mores of the 1% with a strong Jewish component in the social process.

The Krichinsky family in Avalon famously sits down to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with the full Turkey and trimmings, while the Madoffs entertain lavishly on the ritzy Long Island shore with Steak, Lobster, and Champagne.

The physical contrast between the humble Baltimore row houses in Avalon with the often obscene wealth of Madoffworld could not be more telling as we process the dramatic changes in the American Jewish community over the course of time.

Avalon sought to question the base materialism of the new generation by juxtaposing it to the thrift and humility of the immigrants.

The Wizard of Lies shows us the process completed in a way that removes the moral values of the Old Country and replaces them with degenerate greed and smug elitism; a process that manifests a revolutionary shift in values.

The Madoffs live high on the proverbial hog and have forgotten the most basic elements of life and of the essential dignity of the human being.

The film poster for Wizard of Lies

Bernie Madoff is a man who only sees his own well-being and remains oblivious to the pain he is causing others. He surrounds himself with yes-men and sycophants who cater to his every wish and desire. In one of the movies critical scenes he is shown tyrannically berating a group of workers setting up a meal at one of his lavish social affairs, showing no respect for their essential human dignity.

Madoff saw human beings as inert instruments to exclusively serve him and his interests. He showed no respect or consideration to his own family and to those who trusted him as their financial counselor.

The cruelty that he exhibited to his wife and children is often harrowing and truly unspeakable; their suffering is the manifestation of an inhumanity that represents evil in its most primal manifestation.

We have seen a similar narcissism and megalomania in Donald Trump whose own financial malfeasance also speaks to the explosion of ego and a blatant disregard of socio-political norms.

The connection between Madoff, a very uncaring Jew who thought nothing of using his elevated financial status to exploit his own community, and the larger institutional Jewish world is an important element in the story. The Madoff scandal prompted much soul-searching and hand-wringing in the Jewish world, as we see in a 2009 article by Jonathan Tobin from Commentary magazine. A 2008 New York Times piece by Robin Pogrebin quotes numerous rabbis and Jewish leaders attacking Madoff as a shanda, which is a Yiddish word that means shame or disgrace.

But the current Jewish embrace of Trump and his degenerate values shows that perceived financial self-interest continues to overshadow morality and ethics. In spite of the rise of Alt-Right Trumpworld Anti-Semitism and the numerous ethical violations coming from the White House, the institutional Jewish community continues to strongly back the president.

The Madoff personality-type remains central to contemporary Jewish identity. We have seen the ascendance of an Ashkenazi Jewish culture which has rejected the values of Religious Humanism and adopted a cynical, alienated stance that is deeply rooted in selfishness, materialism, and cruelty.

The Jewish community today is all about getting the upper hand and stomping out the little guy. Our leadership presents a smug superiority which revels in its economic success and assumes that wealth engenders honorific status and socio-political control.

The Wizard of Lies presents indelible scenes of the elites in their native habitat, reveling in their luxurious lifestyle which in turn has served to eviscerate their humanity.

In this toxic context there is little if any room for the most elementary religious concerns, as it is money and the things it can buy that have become the central defining factor in American Jewish life.

We have seen how this nefarious process works in David Brooks New York Times column The Orthodox Surge. Five years after the Wall Street collapse and in the looming shadow of Madoff, Brooks vigorously applauds Orthodox Jewish materialistic values and the lavish lifestyles that he saw in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Midwood. Brooks does not once refer to Madoff and his shenanigans, but he does proudly mention his tour guide Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, an individual who is at the forefront of Republican-Conservative Jewish politics and who is a committed enemy of the Sephardic tradition. We should recall that Madoff was beloved in the Modern Orthodox community where he was seen as a veritable Messiah. As Elie Wiesel put it: We thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands.

It is of course said that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and we have seen how Jews continue to engage in dubious financial behavior.

The 2016 Platinum Partners scandal extends the Madoff legacy to the present and speaks to a continuing culture of excess and corruption inside the Jewish community, which is so expertly detailed by Levinson in The Wizard of Lies with its many scenes of revelry and carnival-esque celebrations.

As we saw in Avalon, there was a dark side to the rampant assimilation and its attendant materialism: The abandonment of traditional values as understood within the framework of Religious Humanism produced an internal corruption that has led to the rot of The Wizard of Lies and a system that lionizes degenerates like Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump.

And so it is that we continue to see the collateral human damage that has been generated by a socio-economic system that famously produces people like Bernie Madoff.

In the masterful Wizard of Lies, a deeply striking work of historical reconstruction, we are able to process how all this works: the cheating, the arrogance, the cruel barbarity, and the materialistic excess all function as markers of a debasement of humanity that has untethered contemporary Jewish culture from its most important ethical values. It is a transformational motion picture which forces us to confront the demons among us.

It is thus critical that we again look carefully at the life of Bernie Madoff and rethink what is happening in our Jewish community before it is too late.

Our lives truly hang in the balance.

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From 'Avalon' to Madoff: What 'The Wizard of Lies' reveals about contemporary American Jewish identity - Mondoweiss

Opposition activists holding candles protest against the deaths of 43 people in clashes with the police during weeks of demonstrations against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Caracas,May 17. VWPics/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

Francesc Badia: The accelerating deterioration of the situation in Venezuela is a matter of global concern. We are witnessing extreme political polarization, and it is important to know what hope is left of finding a common ground, for preparing a solution to this situation - whether it be an orderly transition, or an agreed electoral calendar -: a solution that can bring some hope in these difficult moments. Meanwhile, the economy has gone down...

Orlando Ochoa: Yes, indeed. Whatever form a political way out takes (an election timetable, President Maduros resignation, an agreed transition), we must leave all doors open. We have been experiencing a period of very rapid economic deterioration over the last four years, but particularly in the last three. Gross Domestic Product, total and per capita, has fallen from 4% and 7% in 2014 and 2015, according to the official figures which are unreliable, because of political pressures on the board of the Central Bank to 18% and 21% last year (2016), according to unofficial figures provided by the same Central Bank. The accumulated GDP fall over the last three years is at least 30%. An economic collapse such as this happens only in countries at war. In the case of Venezuela, two things not war - are currently happening. One, runaway inflation, which is in the hundreds (again, it is hard to check the figures): estimates range from 500% to 800% last year, with salary adjustments by presidential decree lagging behind and covering less than half at the very best. There is thus an impoverishment of the population, basically due to the fall in purchasing power. On the supply side, moreover, Venezuelan industry and agriculture are not getting supplies - imported or from basic state-owned companies. They do not get supplies because there is no foreign currency to pay for them. And there is no foreign currency because there are exchange controls, because the price and the volume of oil exports have fallen, foreign currency reserves are exhausted, and exports other than oil have been disappearing because of the economic distortions and expropriations of the Hugo Chvez governments.

What we have had in the last three years is a very fast impoverishment process.

In this context of deterioration, where agricultural and industrial production are falling due to lack of supplies, there is the added problem of the distortion of the exchange rates, which are controlled by some ministers and are affected by extensive corruption. This has led to large public imports, basically of foodstuffs, medical drugs and some other items, leaving out all other elements of modern life, which the private sector has been able to import sometimes, at risk of being persecuted for price fixing at black market exchange rates, and therefore repressed. Hence, the intermittent supplies of basic goods and black market prices rising to levels even higher than the average inflation. In short, what we have had in the last three years is a very fast impoverishment process.

FB: How does this fast impoverishment affect the search for a political way out? What impact does time pressure have?

OO: The time to look for a political solution could indeed be calmer, notwithstanding the pressures of the politicians. But the speed of the socioeconomic deterioration, the fact that it is linked to macroeconomic problems, to the rate of inflation, to the way in which the fiscal deficit is financed (through the Central Bank), to the existence of a dysfunctional exchange rate, high corruption, and a declining private sector, produces a situation where time is not on our side, and therefore the search for a solution to this problem has to do with timely political change - a political solution. For there are strong ideological and populist elements embedded in the causes of all these socio-economic problems.

The radical left ideological element, and the classic - left or right-wing - populist element, which consist in subsidizing the voters to include them in a state patronage network, and in having an argument to defend national sovereignty before the traitors of the motherland, with its strong polarizing effect, always tend to present the situation as a battle in the class struggle, in the traditional 20th century Marxist-Leninist sense. So, the economic problem is first and foremost contingent on a political solution and the abandonment of an anti-market and de facto undemocratic ideology.

There are strong ideological and populist elements embedded in the causes of all these socio-economic problems.

FB: Let me then ask you about the attitude of the opposition. We know that the government is on the defensive, isolated, trying to weather the storm, but the opposition has a very determined agenda and is trying to unlock the situation. The opposition is made up of several parties the so-called G-4, or G-4 + 5, or G-9 -, which have adopted a strategy of street protests that, on the one hand, weakens the government, but on the other hand introduces an element of additional tension which is not only quite unbearable, but also quite dangerous stability-wise, and makes things even more complicated. What do you think the opposition should do?

OO: The opposition is aware of the difficult situation generated by the socioeconomic deterioration, and one of the main points it is demanding in order to proceed with the agenda the country needs is for the government to acknowledge this emergency situation. This could lead to the establishment of a humanitarian channel, to opening the door to humanitarian aid, which has already been offered for special medical drugs and nutritional support. It is a painful situation. On the other hand, the opposition - which consists of what you have rightly called the G-4 (four major parties) and the G-9, including five other small parties - has an essential coordinating task to do, and this means that sometimes some differences arise, and so they should - it is quite normal. The opposition has tried to negotiate with the government when the national and international perception was that they should be talking to each other and, today, it tries to reach an agreement on an electoral timetable - in short, it is saying: we are going to comply with the gubernatorial elections, then the mayoral elections, and finally, if possible, early presidential elections.

FB: Why?

OO: Because this is an unheard-of crisis situation, at least since the beginning of the 20th century. In more than a century of data on Venezuela, you cannot find anything like it. This is a crisis that we can define as endogenous, produced from within, for self-inflicted political and economic reasons - no external conflict and no civil war. Faced with this situation, the oppositions task is a complex one: it must focus on finding a political solution in order to be able to focus, then, on how to deal with the critical socio-economic situation. On the other hand, the international community has discussed how to approach the situation in Venezuela from the OAS and the UN, which has already adopted a more active position in several fields, to Mercosur and the European Union.

This is a crisis that we can define as endogenous, produced from within, for self-inflicted political and economic reasons.

FB: We are clearly facing a multidimensional conflict, the way out of which will have to be worked out on different fronts, right?

OO: Yes. I think we can talk about three dimensions to the conflict: one, in the streets (the oppositions mobilization); another, in the international community; and the third in the economic-financial sphere (where the critical situation is, unfortunately, self-inflicted). The government, by ignoring the National Assembly, has been left without a budget and a public credit law, and without them there is a real risk that financial operations in the future will be unknown. In this, the constitution is categorical: it states, as in practically all parliamentary systems, that the budget laws must be approved by parliament. So, in the financial field, the government has an added problem: debt servicing on government bonds and the state-owned oil company (PDVSA), in addition to the servicing on other important debt, including debt contracted with China, which is heavy, particularly after 2018. It lacks liquidity to guarantee basic imports, equipment supplies for the oil industry, gasoline (Venezuelan refineries are not currently working well), and thinner for extra-heavy oil, which is very expensive. So, this is a government harassed on several fronts.

FB: You have already mentioned it, but I would like to dwell on the role of the international community in the current conflict. Do you think the multilateral actors have a role to play, considering the positions adopted by different countries?

OO: The discussions on Venezuela, the international resolutions of the different agencies, the exhortation messages of the different governments, the messages of the heads of state in direct talks with the Venezuelan head of state, all this has created a climate in which Nicols Maduro's government feels pressured. They are being scrutinized on questions which, when Chavismo came to power, were very dear to them: interest in social issues; respect for human rights; democratic legitimacy; and international recognition of Venezuelas very active role and influence, in Hugo Chvezs first years, on politics and sectors on the left in several countries. The effect of international pressure has been twofold. On the one hand, it has encouraged the protests in the streets: international recognition and following-up of these protests, along with their tragic dimension, has spread through all the means technologically available, which have made it possible to witness, practically live, young men falling during confrontations with the police, to see the symbols of both sides in the conflict, and let them be known globally. But international pressure has also hit public finance. When a government with a public credit law has problems with debt maturities, it can do a so-called rollover - it can re-finance the debt. But Nicols Maduro's government cannot, for it lacks that law. Financial institutions, seeing that agencies such as the OAS have defined the situation in Venezuela as a breach of the democratic order, have been falling back on financial agreements. They have also felt that this not only entails a reputation problem for the financial institutions involved, but poses also a serious risk of non-payment all of which has meant a good deal of anxiety on the part of the government, an anxiety which it does not show in public, but which economists are well aware of. Faced with these three dimensions - confrontation in the streets, international pressure, and financial realities -, what we have is a besieged government.

We are talking here about a deficit of gigantic proportions. And yet, what we are thinking of is redesigning institutions, in the midst of a crisis and with a totally polarized country.

FB: But this pressure does not seem to be giving results in terms of progress or openings.

OO: What happens is that the governments ideology leads it to entrench itself. And now it is proposing to convene a National Constituent Assembly, which not only seems a mechanism to elude the electoral timetable, but is something like a "nuclear bomb" for the existing institutions, to the extent that it opens the way, through a procedure that has been questioned by both the opposition and several countries, to redesign all public powers, suspend the existing powers and put together something new - all of which entails economic costs. And this at a time when the Venezuelan public sector deficit, measured as a percentage of the size of the economy, has been in the last five years between 15 and 21/22 percent of the GDP. We are talking here about a deficit of gigantic proportions. And yet, what we are thinking of is redesigning institutions, in the midst of a crisis and with a totally polarized country.

FB: I would like to ask you a question about the day after.Let us imagine that the political crisis has been left behind and that the conditions for macroeconomic stabilization and the carrying out of the necessary social measures are finally there. What is the roadmap for a stabilization plan to move forward?

OO: We can scarcely fathom the political solution to this crisis. But whatever it is - elections, resignation of the president, transitional government, whatever... -, immediately after finding a way out, the very next day, the problem will be how to stop the economic downfall, the social mess and the suffering related to it. How to recover the huge fall in oil production, how to reset Venezuela's financial obligations and be able to answer the question of how we are going to pay back our creditors. And then, also, how we are going to set up and carry out a stimulus and - literally - reconstruction plan of the private sector of the economy (industry, agriculture, services, infrastructures) and the big public enterprises (steel, aluminium, electricity, petrochemicals and the companies that were nationalized by the governments of Hugo Chvez. Some are currently in a state of near paralysis or, in some cases, are operating at between 5 or 10% of their productive capacity and a maximum of 30 to 40%. The deterioration of social conditions requires, in addition, a social emergency plan. Of course, we are now thinking and weighing ideas to see what can be done. But it should not be a plan designed exclusively by the opposition: it should be a national plan, it should be inclusive - even the political way out could be, and should be inclusive. A country still in conflict would find it so much harder to have a credible economic emergency plan.

A country still in conflict would find it so much harder to have a credible economic emergency plan.

FB: So, what should be done?

OO: Start with a stabilization plan. Lower inflation, stabilize the exchange market, order it with a single rate - which requires ordering public finances -, and devise a plan to gradually close the public sector deficit. But we also need a plan for Venezuela's core activity, oil production, since the private sector has virtually disappeared from exports. Twenty years ago, non oil-related companies, public and private, accounted for almost 25% of the country's exports; now it is down to only about 4%.

A macroeconomic plan and an oil plan, and a financial plan to cover the needs of the macroeconomic plan and the oil plan - that is, our export activity to generate foreign exchange. To this must be added a social plan, which has to be financed and which should therefore be part of the plan to reduce the fiscal deficit. Finally, we need a sectoral incentives plan for the recovery of the private sector.

In order to work, however, these plans must be simultaneous. Venezuela would require funding to carry them out and, for that, the first thing that comes to mind are, of course, multilateral mechanisms. There are institutions which exist to help stabilize, others to finance infrastructures, and others to help with projects for the private sector.

FB: But Venezuela possesses a strategic resource that will necessarily be part of the financing solution: hydrocarbons. How should it be used?

OO: Venezuela has an obvious special muscle: oil. Practically half of the oil production is in the hands of joint ventures between Petrleos de Venezuela and foreign partners; the other half is entirely in the hands of Petrleos de Venezuela: it is our own production. Addressing oil production would require an effort to reorganize this relation and to get the necessary financing to get on with production. But for producing oil and stimulating investment on the part of our partners who are already here, and the new ones who could be coming in, you need the foreign exchange market to work, because the costs of producing oil at the official (overvalued) exchange rate are enormous. But for the foreign exchange market to work, we must have a fiscal, monetary and financial plan. There is clearly an interaction in all of this, which means that Venezuela's recovery plan is going to be the most complex one in our history: it has to be simultaneous, and it must also have all the political support possible, for it is actually the country's central short term objective. Everything is intertwined: economic recovery, social plan, oil plan, financial plan, and also sectoral policies, which begin to make sense once stabilization gets going.

It will be a complex challenge of coordination and execution, but it can, and should, be done.

FB: So, you are optimistic?

OO: I am optimistic to the extent that I believe we can do it. There are interdisciplinary teams working on it. But this is a task that will really begin the day after and, of course, getting the right political climate would be most convenient. Not a divided, in-fighting country, not what we are currently witnessing. It will be a complex challenge of coordination and execution, but it can, and should, be done.

See the rest here:

Venezuela, the day after - Open Democracy