Regimeology is not just the art of interpreting the official pronouncements from the managerial elite, but it is also for interpreting their actions. Nothing they say can ever be accepted at face value, so nothing they do is on the level either. It is all signaling back and forth to communicate between nodes of the collective. If the regime happens to do something useful for the people, it is a happy accident. Most of what they do is about the internal dynamics of the regime.
The Sam Bankman-Fried story is a good example. At this point everyone understands that this is not a corporate financial scandal. There is little chance that the sophisticated people involved with this guy and his partners were unaware of the nature of his business. The entertainment people hired to shill for the company had no idea, as hey are stupid people, but the sharps putting important people in touch with this weird looking goblin of a man were not fooled.
The one thing we know is it was a money laundering operation to move cash into the pockets of politicians and connected people in the regime. To no one’s surprise, there is a Ukraine angle here. Apparently, Ukraine was taking money handed over by Washington and putting some of it into crypto accounts on the FTX exchange, allegedly to pay their own people. The absurdity of that claim is obvious. Most likely it was quietly shifted to other accounts and ended up in other pockets.
They say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but there is nothing that says you cannot teach a new dog old tricks. The heart of the issue is one of the oldest tricks in democratic politics. The politician makes a deal with a favored vendor, who then hires friends and relatives of the politician. Some portion of their salary ends up as expensive gifts to the politician. Alternatively, the vendor rewards the politicians with gobs of campaign cash.
In this case, that old political grift was updated to the digital age. Ukraine put funds into the FTX exchange, which Sam Bankman-Fried then used to buy friends in Washington, making sure those friends were friends of Ukraine. Those friends then made sure Ukraine was getting as much cash as possible. Given that so much was happening in crypto, no one was going to try and follow the money. As long as FTX stayed solvent, his scam could go on forever. Whoopsie!
Of course, we will never know where the money went as the regime sent in one of their best fixers to handle the liquidation of FTX. John J. Ray III is no doubt a competent and honest man, but he is being paid one thousand dollars an hour to clean up the mess, so he is not going to be biting the hand that feeds him. You read that right. He is billing one thousand dollars per hour for his services. The one guy who is assured of getting rich off FTX will be the man liquidating its remaining assets.
They can scrub the books and make sure the content creators in the media tell the right story, but that still leaves the main players. The “polycule” that was running this scam is too colorful to ignore. If these people looked like a Chuck Schumer family photo, they could possibly get a pass, but this group is simply too absurd. The two principles, Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, the woman who looks like a turtle, are household names now, so the regime has to deal with them.
That is where regimeology comes into play. The Clinton crime family sent Jamie Gorelick into work with Turtle Girl. Gorelick, for those too young or depressed to remember the 1990’s, was the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae, which she ran into bankruptcy, while creating the mortgage crisis. She walked away from the disaster with close to $30 million. Now she is the lawyer for Turtle Girl, who did to FTX what Gorelick did to the mortgage industry.
The reason they sent in Gorelick is to make sure their interests are protected, which probably means they helped her get a deal with the Feds. She keeps her mouth shut about the family business and she avoids a long prison sentence. That helps the Feds shape the charges against Bankman-Fried in such a way that leaves the Clinton family business out of the courtroom. Maybe it helps Mr. Bankman-Fried recall specific shenanigans with enemies of the family.
The fact that they let him out on bond, rather than send him to Epstein’s old holding cell, suggests he is playing ball. Most likely he had to agree to not do anymore media events until his case is resolved. The one thing everyone in the regime can agree upon is they do not want this guy running his mouth in public. On the other hand, if he suddenly commits suicide or decides to get his fifth Covid booster, then we can assume the regime did not want to roll the dice with him.
Of course, like all of the Ukraine grifting, we will never get an honest accounting of what happened with this caper. The only thing we can know is the regime is getting reckless, because they simply do not care enough to be careful. Now that we are fortified for democracy, they can do as they please. As long as the economy keeps chugging along and there is no major crisis, they can steal as much as they can carry. America is one big FTX now. What could go wrong?