Vicky Ward

Grifters in the White House

Well, the title pretty much says it all, and journalist Vicky Ward backs it all up in a book that exposes the American royal couple for whom they really are. As famous writer of the underbelly of American life called it: The Grifters. Ward packs a lot into this compact volume, sourcing her narrative with personal interviews and statements of record. She reminds us of stuff we’ve forgotten, understandable when dealing with people and an administration that churns show more out more dross in a day than most highly visible people do in a year, or maybe even a lifetime.

Ward adds expansive flesh to many critical stories about the couple, and particularly Jared’s out-of-sight dealings. For instance, Ward details extensively Jared’s and his father Charlie Kushner’s behind the scenes maneuvers to refinance their New York City trophy building, 666 Fifth Avenue. Questionable dealings involved salvation from Deutsche Bank and big money Middle Eastern investors, especially Qatar. The linkage here to the blockage of Qatar is quite disturbing and the very essence of why government officials must divest themselves of all business holdings and any involvement in their businesses, the standard practice before Trump and his family arrived in Washington. The suspicion is strong that Jared had a hand in the blockage because the Qataris turned him and his father down on 666. This action seriously disrupted interrelations in this volatile part of the world and continues to this day. Jared also worked to bollox American diplomacy by engineering the weakening and dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. (Remember him? It was just last year that Trump canned him.) It’s a sorry story, indeed.

As for Ivanka, whose efforts to insert herself into meetings here and abroad have become the brunt of jokes, has proven herself ineffectual both in moderating her father’s worst traits and instincts and in gaining support for her political agenda centered on women and families. She has been very effective, however, in pursuing her own personal business interests, the most visible of which is her accumulation of Chinese trademarks. Of the two, though, Jared has proven the most dangerous to U.S. international relations.

Ward does a good job of helping us understand why Jared and Ivanka are not only self-absorbed and completely out of touch with average American life and issues, but also why they breeze through life as if rules don’t exist, and if they might, certainly don’t apply to them. This is because of their families, how they operate, and how they inculcated the children with the chutzpah to disregard all the norms of government and society. Most don’t know much about Charlies Kushner. He is a convicted felon, very crafty, and known not only for gaming the system but for being abusive to associates and family.

Today, Trump and his associates has made it de rigueur to attack, discredit, and otherwise demonize journalists, so a little about Vicky Ward. Ward was educated at Cambridge. She’s written and edited for the likes of Vanity Fair, CNN, The New York Post, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, and many others. She’s also the author of two other investigative books, one about the implosion of Lehman and the other about a devastating big time real estate deal, The Devil’s Casino and The Liar’s Ball, respectively. In other words, she’s seasoned, credible, and to be believed. show less

A fascinating look at the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank that went bankrupt as a result of hubris and wild speculation in the real estate market and the people that rose and fell with it. I have read numerous books about the tragic effects of credit default swaps and other speculative financial “instruments” that, while the market continued to go up, made spectacular fortunes for people who came to believe they could do no wrong.

The author had access to the notes show more and journals of Joe Gregory (who ironically refused to be interviewed,) the company’s president. He began the journals in 2003 by encouraging executives to write up they perceptions of the history of the firm. He discovered a huge disparity (as any historian could have predicted) in their accounts and abandoned his goal of writing a history. Those piles of notes proved invaluable to the author.

The company, under its CEO Dick Fuld, who had worked his way up and was with them his whole forty year career, developed its own lavish lifestyle. "As a Lehman wife, you raised your kids by yourself. You had your babies by yourself in the hospital. And then you were supposed to be happy and pretty and smiling when there was an event, and you really would have liked to strangle somebody,” a senior executive's wife explained. Executives were told what to wear, what charities to donate to, how to spend their time, it was a nice little capitalistic oligarchy. " Lehman was the last of the Wall Street firms to go casual on Fridays.” They were extremely competitive and cutthroat. That single-mindedness lead Time to labeled Fuld as one of 25 executives in the country most responsible for the collapse of 2008.

Many people blame the catastrophe on the repeal of Glass-Steagal which had prohibited banks from speculating with their customer’s assets. That’s probably overly simplistic and hardly mentioned in this book that focuses more on the personalities than the precise speculative strategies that inevitably ballooned into an unsustainable bubble. All of Wall Street conspired to create more and more ways of loaning money and then turning those high-interest, often sub-prime, loans into ways of betting money. As long as prices went up everything was rosy; the collapse was spectacular.

The section on Paulson and Geitner’s roles in the “bail-out” is quite interesting. It probably won’t change any minds on whether Lehman should have been bailed out, too or not. And that’s probably my biggest complaint. I would have liked to see conclusions from the author (with evidence for or against) for whether it indeed should have been done. But then again, the book was more about Lehman and that would have widened the scope. It’s a fun, breezy, cautionary book about a sad time that hurt a lot of people but probably not those who should have been hurt. It was published in 2010 so don’t expect the longer view which I need to read.

The blame, however, ultimately belongs to all of us. We all want and need the stock market and Wall Street to thrive and support pension funds, etc., without which we would all be in terrible shape. That said, a return to more regulation would be in all our best interests.

And who said the monarchy was dead. It thrives in the business world. Trump should know. show less

Grifters in the White House

Well, the title pretty much says it all, and journalist Vicky Ward backs it all up in a book that exposes the American royal couple for whom they really are. As famous writer of the underbelly of American life called it: The Grifters. Ward packs a lot into this compact volume, sourcing her narrative with personal interviews and statements of record. She reminds us of stuff we’ve forgotten, understandable when dealing with people and an administration that churns show more out more dross in a day than most highly visible people do in a year, or maybe even a lifetime.

Ward adds expansive flesh to many critical stories about the couple, and particularly Jared’s out-of-sight dealings. For instance, Ward details extensively Jared’s and his father Charlie Kushner’s behind the scenes maneuvers to refinance their New York City trophy building, 666 Fifth Avenue. Questionable dealings involved salvation from Deutsche Bank and big money Middle Eastern investors, especially Qatar. The linkage here to the blockage of Qatar is quite disturbing and the very essence of why government officials must divest themselves of all business holdings and any involvement in their businesses, the standard practice before Trump and his family arrived in Washington. The suspicion is strong that Jared had a hand in the blockage because the Qataris turned him and his father down on 666. This action seriously disrupted interrelations in this volatile part of the world and continues to this day. Jared also worked to bollox American diplomacy by engineering the weakening and dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. (Remember him? It was just last year that Trump canned him.) It’s a sorry story, indeed.

As for Ivanka, whose efforts to insert herself into meetings here and abroad have become the brunt of jokes, has proven herself ineffectual both in moderating her father’s worst traits and instincts and in gaining support for her political agenda centered on women and families. She has been very effective, however, in pursuing her own personal business interests, the most visible of which is her accumulation of Chinese trademarks. Of the two, though, Jared has proven the most dangerous to U.S. international relations.

Ward does a good job of helping us understand why Jared and Ivanka are not only self-absorbed and completely out of touch with average American life and issues, but also why they breeze through life as if rules don’t exist, and if they might, certainly don’t apply to them. This is because of their families, how they operate, and how they inculcated the children with the chutzpah to disregard all the norms of government and society. Most don’t know much about Charlies Kushner. He is a convicted felon, very crafty, and known not only for gaming the system but for being abusive to associates and family.

Today, Trump and his associates has made it de rigueur to attack, discredit, and otherwise demonize journalists, so a little about Vicky Ward. Ward was educated at Cambridge. She’s written and edited for the likes of Vanity Fair, CNN, The New York Post, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, and many others. She’s also the author of two other investigative books, one about the implosion of Lehman and the other about a devastating big time real estate deal, The Devil’s Casino and The Liar’s Ball, respectively. In other words, she’s seasoned, credible, and to be believed. show less

Lots of credible gossip with a few glaring mistakes.

Ward's bias and social status are clear, so it's easy to understand how she made some very basic mistakes about the right wing. Like most in the "journalist class" on the left, her sources wouldn't have a basic understanding of the how the digital part of the 2016 campaign took place. She also treats Obama like his word is that of a benevolent demi-god. LOL no.

However, I found it easy to believe what she had to say about Javanka. I've seen show more their class and social status (lived in the Hamptons) up close and yeah, that's how they operate. Jared's father is just sleazy AF. Trump has always behaved solidly as nouveau riche, with his hands in many things and a silver spoon up his nethers. So, yeah, most of it was believable.

Oddly, she gives most of Trump's staff a fair shake, some of which (IMO) is deserved, some, not so much. show less