Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Bain Capital' is associated with 7 posts.

Heads We Win, Tails You Lose: The Fascist Philosophy Behind Private Equity’s Leveraged Buyout of Everything

It’s been the same head­line for months now:
* April of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires have got­ten $280 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic
* May of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $434 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* August of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $637 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* Sep­tem­ber of 2020: U.S. bil­lion­aires got $845 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the pan­dem­ic/Wealth of US bil­lion­aires ris­es by near­ly a third dur­ing pan­dem­ic
* Octo­ber of 2020: US bil­lion­aires saw their net worth rise by almost $1 tril­lion between March and Octo­ber — Jeff Bezos remains the rich­est, a study says.

From near­ly the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic it’s been clear that the pub­lic health dis­as­ter was­n’t a dis­as­ter for every­one, with the wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als being not only large­ly insu­lat­ed from the eco­nom­ic lock­down but in many cas­es well posi­tioned to prof­it from it. The pan­dem­ic was turn­ing into a giant upward trans­fer of wealth. And as we’re going to see, giant upward trans­fers of wealth are essen­tial­ly what the pri­vate equi­ty indus­try is all about. The rise of ‘sup­ply-side’ eco­nom­ics in the 1980s coin­cid­ed with the rise of pri­vate equi­ty and that’s no coin­ci­dence. The phi­los­o­phy behind the pri­vate equi­ty move­ment is the phi­los­o­phy of sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics. An anti-New Deal phi­los­o­phy, where ruth­less­ness is a virtue, that fueled a 40 year giant fas­cist lever­aged buy­out of soci­ety.


FTR #799 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

The future of health care in soci­eties sub­ject­ed to the doc­trine of “Aus­te­ria” may be seen with the appoint­ment of doc­tri­naire neo-Nazi Makis “The Ham­mer” Voridis as Health Min­is­ter of Greece. Fas­cism is surg­ing in a Europe sub­ject­ed to Ger­man-man­dat­ed aus­ter­i­ty, as evi­denced by the recent EU Par­lia­men­tary elec­tions. Much of the pro­gram high­lights fas­cism march­ing under the decep­tive ban­ner of “free­dom” and/or lib­er­tar­i­an­ism. Bit­coin con­tin­ues its march toward monop­oly, with the mys­te­ri­ous Ghash.io con­trol­ling 51% of the mar­ket. Gun-wield­ing fas­cists sup­port­ive of “lib­er­tar­i­an” (read “white-suprema­cist”) Ron Paul gunned down police in Las Vegas, while so called “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens” shot up police in Cal­i­for­nia. “Cliv­en Bundists” (sup­port­ers of Cliv­en Bundy) have declared them­selves exempt from Bureau of Land Man­age­ment reg­u­la­tions in Neva­da, as the GOP ramps up anoth­er gov­ern­ment shut­down to foil Oba­ma’s cli­mate change leg­is­la­tion. At the same time, the very high-tech giants that com­plained so loud­ly about Oba­ma’s fail­ure to pro­tect indi­vid­ual pri­va­cy are surg­ing ahead with pro­grams and tech­nol­o­gy to oblit­er­ate that very con­sid­er­a­tion.


Hashing Out Bitcoin Ownership

In our ongo­ing cri­tique of Bit­coin, we’ve not­ed that it appears to be an “op,” exe­cut­ed by Siemens spin­off Lan­tiq, which was cap­i­tal­ized by Gold­en Gate Cap­i­tal (staffed by alum­ni of Bain Cap­i­tal, Mitt Rom­ney’s firm.) In a reprise of a pre­vi­ous and appar­ent­ly ongo­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of Bit­coin, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an “Armaged­don” in the Bit­coin world pro­duced by con­cen­tra­tion of own­er­ship looms. Once again, the GHash.io min­ing pool is at the cen­ter of the plot. Because it had gar­nered 50% of the Bit­coin mar­ket, it could “dou­ble-sell” coins and com­pro­mise the integri­ty of the entire net­work.


Bitcoin Accepted for Political Contributions

If you thought that cam­paign finance had become a sticky wick­et in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon deci­sions, you might be bit­ter­ly amused by the lat­est devel­op­ment in the lubri­ca­tion of the wheels of democ­ra­cy. The Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion has giv­en the nod to accept­ing Bit­coins as cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions. Fans of Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon will be thrilled to know that the top tenth of one per­cent of Bit­coin own­ers con­trol 50% of the total of the cur­ren­cy in exis­tence.


FTR #770 Bit[coin]burg, Part 3: Fool’s Gold

Pre­sent­ed as an alter­na­tive to the exist­ing mon­e­tary and fis­cal par­a­digms, bit­coin is–in fact–as bad, or worse, than what it is designed to replace. Sub­ject to a wide vari­ety of crooked machi­na­tions, bit­coin also lends itself read­i­ly to con­cen­tra­tion of ownership–get ready for the “bit­coin 1%.” The bit­coin milieu increas­ing­ly over­laps that of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook and “The Paulis­tin­ian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion.”


FTR #764 Bit[coin]burg, Part 2, The Snowden-Inspired, Bitcoin-operated Online Murder Incorporated

NB: this descrip­tion con­tains infor­ma­tion not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast. In FTR #760, we exam­ined the tech­no-lib­er­tar­i­an, Lud­wig von Mis­es milieu-affil­i­at­ed nature of the bit­coin phe­nom­e­non. Quite pos­si­bly devel­oped by ele­ments of Ger­man intel­li­gence and the Under­ground Reich, bit­coins are not only vul­ner­a­ble to “tape-paint­ing,” but can be stolen by hack­ers. Some­one oper­at­ing under the name “Kuwabakatake San­juro” has begun a bit­coin-fund­ed, online assas­si­na­tion con­sor­tium called “The Assas­si­na­tion Mar­ket.” His project was inspired by the “dis­clo­sures” of Snow­den.


Free advice for a multimillionaire, Part 2: Lies, damned lies, and surrogates

Are you run­ning for pres­i­dent? Do you find your­self in a bit of a Bain-bind? Is life start­ing to feel like a con­vo­lut­ed mess? Then we have just the advice for you.