From the New York Post, March 26:
As the global economy craters, as the gap between the haves and have-nots is now one of life and death, the one percent is playing to type and doing what they do best: profiteering.....MORE
Just days after billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman went on TV to tearfully declare “hell is coming” — thanks, but New York City already has one panic-stricken middle-aged excuse for a man in our feckless mayor Bill de Blasio — we learned that Ackman was, at that very moment, eyeballing his own bet against the markets, one that netted him $2.6 billion.
Net!
Now this may not technically, legally constitute market manipulation, but rational people can agree: It’s soulless and disgusting nonetheless.
The same thought occurs to me at least once a day now: The days and weeks and months after 9/11 brought out the best in people. This crisis is bringing out the worst, especially among people of means: smart, sophisticated, wealthy, connected. The ones perfectly positioned to do real acts of kindness, charity and philanthropy, to help those most afraid and in need.
The ones, in short, who should know better and do better.
Or at least, for propriety’s sake, fake it.
Instead, we have Treasury Secretary and human facsimile Steve Mnuchin (net worth $300 million) actually state that current unemployment numbers, a record 3.3 million and climbing, “are not relevant,” because three weeks from now, all those people will be getting $1,200 checks from the government.
Now we know the U.S. Treasury Secretary knows nothing, less than zero, of how most Americans live.
Then we have the four senators, including the legendary Dianne Feinstein, who in total offloaded hundreds of thousands in stocks after a Jan. 24 top-secret briefing on the coronavirus — three Republicans and one Democrat, proving nothing is as bipartisan as greed.
And as The Post exclusively reported, 84-year-old billionaire investor Carl Icahn bet $5 billion against U.S. malls — a bet made last summer, to be fair, but one that will pay off much more substantially solely due to this crisis.
But what is profiting off our nation’s pain if you can’t gloat about it? So Icahn, who lives on a private Miami island known as “the billionaire bunker,” went on CNBC to talk about his excitement over the grim fate of commercial real estate.
“You’re going to have this blow up, too, and nobody’s even looking at it,” Icahn said. He then predicted the coming collapse will be worse than the 2008 housing market crash — the kind of feeling that, for people like him, money just can’t buy....
By the same writer, March 19:
‘We should blow up the bridges’ — coronavirus leads to class warfare in Hamptons
