Friday, March 3, 2017

Is Obama Attempting A Coup D’Etat?

The clip below has some interesting theorizing by former adviser to Bill Clinton, Dick Morris.

But things are much more complex than this.

The major backer of President Trump during the presidential race was Robert Mercer.

Mercer is the billionaire co-CEO of the hedge fund Rentech (formerly Renaissance Technologies).

There is a major battle within Rentech between pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces.

Zero Hedge reports:
[F]or Renaissance partner and research scientist David Magerman, Mercer’s support for Trump’s anti-immigration policies and his associations with white-nationalist fellow travelers was too much to take."

A quick bit of background: Magerman makes millions each year, drives a Tesla and says he gives more than $10 million in charity annually. A research scientist, he is one of 100 partners at the firm, but he isn’t one of Renaissance’s most senior executives. Magerman, a 20-year Renaissance veteran who helped design the fund’s trading systems. He has concluded that every new piece of code he developed for Renaissance helped Mr. Mercer make more money and gave him greater ability to influence the country.

In recent months Magerman - a registered Democrat who calls himself a centrist, and who had complained to colleagues about Mercer’s role as a prominent booster of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign - started to become a more vocal at the office about his disdain for Mercer’s activities, which resulted in this awkward phone call with his boss, as reported by The Wall Street Journal:
Magerman says he was in his home office in suburban Philadelphia earlier this month when the phone rang. His boss, hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, was on the line.

“I hear you’re going around saying I’m a white supremacist,” Mr. Mercer said. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Those weren’t my exact words,” Mr. Magerman said he told Mr. Mercer, stammering and then explaining his concerns about Mr. Trump’s policy positions, rhetoric and cabinet choices.

“If what you’re doing is harming the country then you have to stop.”
Following such a rather "uncomfortable" phone call with his billionaire boss, as well as the real possibility of getting fired, one would think the democrat would have prudently decided to keep his mouth shut. But Magerman did no such thing. In fact, he ramped up his efforts to show Mercer that he’s not going to stand by and let the politics of Breitbart News ruin the country. There were more phone calls:
Magerman says he first spoke with Mr. Mercer in January, when Mr. Magerman, who donates to local schools, called Mr. Mercer to ask for the opportunity to reach out to Rebekah Mercer to offer the administration help on education policy. During the call, they talked politics, disagreeing about some of the administration’s early steps. After airing his concerns with others at the company, Mr. Magerman received the second call from Mr. Mercer two weeks ago.

The conversation grew strained. After telling Mr. Mercer to stop harming the country, he said Mr. Mercer responded that his goal had been to defeat Mrs. Clinton and that he wouldn’t remain very involved in politics.

“How can you say you’re not involved?” Mr. Magerman said, citing an outside group Rebekah Mercer was involved in that was aimed at boosting Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Not content with keeping the matter internal, Magerman then broke the cardinal rule of hedge funds - and certainly the most secretive hedge funds in the world, one founded by a former codebreaker - he went public.
As the WSJ says "until now nobody within the tight-lipped hedge fund has gone public with a grievance." The changed when Magerman contacted Zuckerman to tell him that Mercer's “views show contempt for the social safety net that he doesn’t need, but many Americans do." Speaking to the WSJ reporter at the Dairy Café, a kosher restaurant he owns in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., Magerman said that “now he’s using the money I helped him make to implement his worldview” by supporting Mr. Trump and encouraging that “government be shrunk down to the size of a pinhead.”

He has also tried to get to the source of his angst: those closest to Trump such as Jared Kushner:
To try to counteract his boss’s activities, Mr. Magerman says he has been in touch with local Democratic leaders and plans to make major contributions to the party. He says he called Planned Parenthood to offer his assistance and contacted Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, to voice his concerns about Ms. Conway and Mr. Bannon. He says he failed to reach Mr. Kushner.
Failing to generate traction, Magerman decided to use the nuclear route: use political connections to hurt his own employer:
Mr. Magerman has one idea that would reduce the power of people like Mr. Mercer. He said he was thinking about reaching out to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to craft proposals to reduce speculative trading, which presumably would curtail Renaissance’s profits.
Needless to say, such a dramatic attempt at corporate self-destruction would hardly be smiled upon by either by the republican Mercer, or RenTec's democratic founder, Jim Simons, who has invested his entire career into creating the world's most secretive, and successful, quant fund.
What happened next? Apparently, the self-loating employee thought that letting his conscience speak - quite publicly - would have no consequences.
In conversation at his cafe, Mr. Magerman said he hoped his public statements wouldn’t cost him his job. But if he does get fired, he said, he would have more time to devote to politics and other causes. “This is my life’s work—I ran a group that wrote the trading system they still use,” he said. “But I feel relieved I’m now doing something, and if they fire me, maybe it’s for the best.”
Unfortunately for Magerman and his idealistic universe, in the real world there are real consequences, and as the WSJ concludes:

On Thursday morning, after an online version of this story appeared, Mr. Magerman received a new phone call from Renaissance. A representative told Mr. Magerman that he was being suspended without pay and no longer could have contact with the company.
But this is only Act 1.

Another major anti-Trump player is at Rentech

Billionaire Jim Simons is RenTec's founder (in 2015 alone he made $1.7 billion). He donated some $10 million to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Got the picture? One billionaire donating heavily to Trump, the other donating heavily to Hillary.

So we have a major league battle at Rentech between Trump forces and anti-Trump forces. Both sides clearly willing to spend big money to support their side. It is a 21st century version of the movie Trading Places that should be called Trading Presidents,

It should be noted that although Simons has retired from Rentech, he remains its non-executive chairman and adviser. His offices, however, are located in a separate location. He occupies most of   160 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Which brings us back to Obama and a coup d'etat.

Obama was spotted outside Simons' offices in New York City at 160 Fifth Avenue late last week:



Game on?

   -RW

2 comments:

  1. It blows me away that people clever enough to become billionaires still argue politics on so asinine a level.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dick is turning into a giant lemon!

    ReplyDelete