U.S. Government Sold To Hedge Fund
by Steve O’Keefe (Published by CounterPunch+ December 26, 2021)
Evil genius billionaire, Robert Mercer, and his cohorts at the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund reached a $7 billion settlement with the U.S. Government in September after their failed takeover of the presidential election process. This is nearly twice the size of the penalty paid by the Sackler family hedge fund -- $4 billion -- for deceptively encouraging over-prescription of the painkiller Oxycontin.
That's $4 billion for the Sacklers, who are rightly pilloried by the press daily, and $7 billion for Renaissance Partners, who no one seems to have heard of. The Mercer guilty plea has not been covered by The Hill, Breaking Points, The Young Turks, or other usually reliable media outlets, much less by the mainstream media. Search Google News for Renaissance Technologies and the $7 billion fine is not included in the top 80 search results. It has been disappeared in favor of stories about the fund's above-average financial performance.
The Most Dangerous Person in the World?
Robert Mercer is the most dangerous person in the world over the past decade. Have you heard of him? He's an innovator in financial trading based on artificial intelligence. He used his ability to acquire and sort massive quantities of data purchased on the dark web or otherwise acquired through transactions of dubious legality to gain insights used to step in front of buy and sell transactions, generating a nearly risk-free fortune. The Renaissance AI is adept at identifying threats. The biggest threat to their operations is nation states deciding what they do is illegal.
Over the years, Renaissance Technologies developed a little tax problem from deliberate misclassification of income as capital gains. In 2015, they owed the IRS an estimated $6.8 billion. So they did what any super rich taxpayer would do when faced with such a big settlement: They decided it would be cheaper to buy the U.S. Government and quash the debt than to pay up. So they attempted to purchase the President.
Renaissance partner James Simmons swerved left, donating over $10 million to Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016, while Robert Mercer swerved right, donating over $10 million to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Renaissance wins either way. It's called hedging your bets. It's what hedge funds do.
At first, Robert Mercer poured millions into Ted Cruz's campaign. When Cruz's campaign imploded, Mercer moved his millions to Trump. He brought with him to the Trump campaign Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Breitbart Media, Cambridge Analytica, and a bridge to the Koch Network. Mercer's contributions were most certainly enough to swing the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, just as the AI predicted, just as he financed Brexit to victory in the U.K.
To the Mercers Go the Spoils
After Trump got elected, Mercer got everything he wanted. The IRS case against Renaissance was paused until Joe Biden was inaugurated. Many of Mercer's associates were given prime White House positions, including Steve Bannon, Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin. The IRS's budget was cut under Trump and the staff was reduced by 25% according to Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by The Hill.
No one who gave significant funds to Trump faced prosecution from his "Justice" Department or from Charles Rettig, his hand-picked IRS commissioner. Rettig owned over $1.1 million in Trump apartments in Hawaii. Criminal institutions and individuals poured money down on Trump, in effect paying to halt federal enforcement of actions against them. In a 2021 hearing before Congress, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen confirmed "the IRS has fewer auditors today than at any time since World War II."
Trump's pardon mill was just the most obvious use of his power to trade clemency for cash. Under the hood at the EPA, Treasury, Agriculture, and Energy, you see department after department sold to the companies they're in charge of regulating. The opportunist Trump sold the nation state to the highest bidders: hedge fund billionaires. Now they want to claim the agencies they paid for as assets and put them off limits from public control or review. It is the privatization of the nation state, the ultimate end game of the financial barons of the 21st Century.
Mercer Messes Up the Western World
Robert Mercer began acquiring governments a long time ago. The reclusive billionaire lives aboard a yacht, usually in international waters, supposedly immune from the nation states he tinkers with to protect his arbitrage operation from fines, confiscation and closure.
Cambridge Analytica is a 2013 offshoot of SCL Group, a nation-state-as-a-service company providing everything aspiring dictators need to take control of a population. Founded in 1993, SCL Group has assisted Moamar Qaddafi in Libya, the UAE in its efforts against U.S. ally Qatar, and to suppress student unrest in Indonesia. A recent client, Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), relied on SCL to conduct focus groups and create Vision 2030, described as "a manual for the royals to manage popular sentiment by figuring out where they should loosen their grip."
Cambridge Analytica specialized in gathering data for psychographic profiling and messaging. In 2015, it created a personality test app that was shared hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook. The app granted access to all the Facebook profiles of all the "friends" of those who took the quiz, resulting in Cambridge Analytica scraping and downloading an estimated 87 million Facebook profiles.
Cambridge Analytica first tested its enhanced messaging machine in the European Union. Mercer was a long time friend of Nigel Farage and offered Cambridge Analytica's services for the Brexit referendum. The "Leave Campaign's" Facebook ad buys were directed by yet another Mercer entity, AggregateIQ, supposedly based on analysis of the stolen profiles, according to Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie.
In 2014, Mercer, Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica first got behind the Ted Cruz campaign, a favorite of the Koch Network. When Tump won the Republican nomination, Mercer did not hesitate to ply the Orange Beast with money and staff. Kellyane Conway, Steve Bannon, John Bolton, Betsy DeVos and Mike Pence came through the Mercer pipeline. The Trump campaign was compelled to use Cambridge Analytica for data analysis.
Robert Mercer had no qualms about teaming up with Vladimir Putin or Mohammed bin Salman to destabilize the E.U. and forestall any global government network that would interfere with his arbitrage operation. Putin and Mercer teamed up during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections to create and distribute disinformation designed to destabilise the United States. In July, 2016, Cambridge Analytica reached out to WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to offer assistance distributing Hillary Clinton's stolen emails. After the election, Cambridge Analytica made a cryptocurrency "payment" to WikiLeaks, according to the person who delivered it, senior employee Brittany Kaiser.
Will Mercer-Style Moguls Ever Go Away?
Now that Robert Mercer has paid his fine and Donald Trump is out of office, will Mercer leave U.S. elections alone? No! The Washington Post reports Mercer has made his fist 6-figure donation to Trump's re-election campaign while his partner at Renaissance, James Simons, is plowing money into influencing the Biden team. Do you think Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone will lay low now that they're under indictment from the U.S. Justice Department. Hell no!
As long as there are hedge fund billionaires with tax problems, they'll be looking to hire someone for president who will forestall collection. As long as corporations face fines and prosecution for blatantly illegal acts that demonstrably harm the public, they will be looking to hire a president who will look the other way.
As long as fossil fuel companies hold reserves, they'll want a president who will prevent those reserves from becoming worthless. As long as pharmaceutical, hospital, and medical insurance CEOs make 7-, 8- and 9-figure compensation packages, they will cheerfully spend millions to keep their lucrative gigs going.
Look how Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are taking millions from corporate interests to act against the interests of their own constituents. The money is so good, they're willing to sabotage their own political futures in exchange for vast personal fortunes and family wealth.
Once politicians realize their votes on even minor matters are worth millions, and their votes on major legislation are worth fortunes, they usually stop voting their consciences or their constituencies and instead vote to grow their personal power, political network and family finances.
The Future Dark Money Envisions
The goal of Dark Money is to privatize all government services. All of them. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Housing, Weather, Space, Agriculture, EPA, NIH, CDC -- all of it sold off or leased to hedge funds to operate "more efficiently" than the federal government. All these essential services will be taken over by mobsters, milked of any value, and dumped on the next administration, leaving the public on the hook for any and all liabilities.
Dark Money envisions the elimination of any federal oversight of business at the same time they want to prohibit any individual state from independently acting against them. You can expect the polluters who dominate Dark Money donors to run wild until bankruptcy, leaving the taxpayers stuck with billion-dollar clean-ups and ecological disasters.
Erik Prince and traitor Michael Flynn are building a private CIA and mercenary military force similar to Prince's earlier Blackwater Group. The new company, called Emerdata, is also the successor to Cambridge Analytica. Robert Mercer is a director of the new company, along with disgraced Cambridge Analytica CEO, Alexander Nix. The team is getting back together again to offer developing countries rigged elections backed with military might that can guarantee commercial interests will be free to siphon off national wealth without interference.
Dark Money is absolutely opposed to any sort of global government that would require member nations to enforce a common set of standards for taxation, money laundering and law enforcement. They never want to see the world united on a climate policy, unless that policy is let the muthafucka burn. When you see how hard Dark Money has fought to break unions in the United States, you can imagine what they think of global standards for managing and compensating employees: Never!
Dark Money wants to make it illegal for you to investigate what they're doing or observe how they move money. If you come after them, you'll have to get around their private law enforcement. Billionaires are capable of buying entire police departments, entire subdivisions, whole cities, even entire islands if they need to in order to avoid arrest and prosecution. The oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a fertilizer mogul known as the "Shit King of Ukraine," is wanted by the U.S. Justice Department on racketeering charges, yet lives like a monarch in Austria as he sprinkles millions on any opportunity to stall his date with destiny.
This is rational behavior. If you were a billionaire -- not so rare these days -- wouldn't you spend millions to keep someone from confiscating your billions? Isn't millions usually enough to bribe a U.S. Senator or a U.S. Representative or a cabinet secretary or jail guard? Of course it is! With the exception of a handful of mostly-ineffective politicians, literally hundreds of other elected officials are in the pockets of hedge funds and in opposition to voters.
The Convention To Destroy the Constitution
Eventually, the voters will close in. They'll investigate the bankruptcies and level penalties and fines. To prevent this, Dark Money wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution to make it illegal to confiscate their property for any reason. Then they want to lock up the constitution by making it impossible to change it without an overwhelming super majority -- something they could never achieve for their own platform.
Under the guise of a balanced budget amendment, Dark Money is going to finance a constitutional convention to legally wall themselves off -- their finances and their operations -- from any threat of public scrutiny or confiscation. Erik Prince's private police will enforce this new constitution. Betsy DeVos's chain of taxpayer-supported private schools will teach students how unjust it is to redistribute wealth or tax the engines of our economy: the hedge funds. Charles Koch's EPA will rule all industrial accidents to be the cost of progress. Robert Mercer will run the Federal Reserve since he's been monitoring their communications for decades.
New Orleans has a lesson for what is coming for America. The Town That Care Forgot has taught her citizens that in an emergency, you're on your own. You want law enforcement? Hire Wackenhut, as many there have. You want power? Get a generator. You want flood protection? Raise your house and build a levee -- your own personal wall. Water purification? Your responsibility now. Add a sprinkler system if you want fire protection. Add a gun turret if you plan to defend your investment.
All of this because a few bastard billionaires don't like paying taxes.
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STEVE O’KEEFE is a freelance writer and author of several books, including Set the Page On Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers (New World Library, 2019) based on over 250 interviews. Steve is the former editorial director for counterculture publisher, Loompanics Unlimited. He writes for CounterPunch at https://www.counterpunch.org/author/steve-okeefe/