Why Did They Order SBF’s Arrest?

Questions for Biden’s Justice Department [The Daily Reckoning] December 14, 2022 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Why Did They Order SBF’s Arrest? - Why arrest SBF now?… - The good news and the bad news for SBF… - Then Jeffrey Tucker shows you why the FTX scam perfectly captures the economic and financial hypocrisies of our time… [Emergency Crash Alert Issued!]( Due to an aberration in the market… An emergency crash warning is set for Wednesday December 14th at 2 PM. I know that’s not a lot of time, but I’ve included a specific action for you to take. One that could pay off immensely if you act in time. As a former advisor to the CIA and Pentagon... And as someone who loves his country... I wanted to make sure you were prepared. [See My Specific Instructions Here]( Annapolis, Maryland December 14, 2022 [Brian Maher] BRIAN MAHER Dear Reader , We note — with eyebrows rather raised — the curious arrest of Mr. Sam Bankman-Fried. Bahamian authorities collared and jugged the disgraced former FTX chief and aspiring Madoff on Monday. The collaring and jugging were executed at the request of the United States government. The business transpired hours before he was scheduled to (remotely) appear before the United States House Committee on Financial Services. His arrest canceled his appearance — and whatever testimony he may have shoveled up therein. “A shocking turn of events,” Fortune labels it. Yet is it? Your editor is a man suspicious by nature. As the tiger is anchored to his stripes and the leopard is anchored to his spots… your editor is anchored unalterably to his suspicion. Thus he is suspicious about the timing of this arrest, and plentily so. If you are prosecuting a case for the United States government… why not cage him after you have handed him the opportunity to incriminate himself? This fellow likes to talk. Why not let him? Mr. Jonathan Turley, crackerjack defense attorney: This is the first time that I can recall where prosecutors moved aggressively to stop a defendant from making self-incriminating statements. His testimony would have been entirely admissible and likely devastating at trial… So why would the Justice Department move to stop the self-inflicted damage? You have a major target who was about to voluntarily testify for hours. That is ordinarily a dream for prosecutors, but the Justice Department moved quickly to prevent that from happening… Most prosecutors would sit back, make popcorn and watch this unfold… This is the first time that I can recall where the prosecutors, rather than defense counsel, moved effectively to muzzle a defendant. Mr. Turley’s questions are our questions, his puzzlement is our puzzlement. More: If he had testified… Bankman-Fried could not only have made any criminal defense more difficult but he could have potentially tripped the wire for allegedly false or misleading statements under oath. It was a target-rich environment for Congress — and a potential bonanza for prosecutors. Bankman-Fried was in a dangerous free fall. Despite his legal team, Bankman-Fried seemed to be praying for someone to “stop me before I speak again.” Someone just did. Yet who… and why? Speculation runs amok. SBF — as he is widely referenced — was the second-largest campaign contributor to Democratic campaigns this election cycle. The fellow’s mother recently professed law at Stanford University. Incidentally… or not… she presides over a significant Democratic campaign war chest. Might his testimony have proved embarrassing for the administration? Might they have instructed the Department of Justice, so-called, to have him jugged before he can testify? Moreover: Rumors swirl that he facilitated the transfer of Ukrainian relief funding to Democrat candidates in the recent midterm elections. That is, he was “laundering” money. This money would require a good washing to scotch the fish stench emanating therefrom. A money laundering operation would naturally constitute another compelling reason to keep his mouth taped. Our spies report various whispers, yet they cannot confirm them. Nor, obviously, can we. Perhaps the United States Department of Justice had him jugged because it feared he presented a substantial flight risk. The abovesaid Turley even allows the possibility that the Justice Department was out to prove it was acting aggressively against him — to demonstrate that his Democratic links will not cushion him from justice. Again, we simply do not know. Yet long experience inclines us toward the silencing theory. Please revisit Mr. Turley’s comments above. They sway us toward the silencing theory… the theory that admittedly affirms our natural suspicion of government. Meantime, a Bahamian court has denied SBF bail. He will remain behind the bars until Feb. 8 — at minimum. Here is the good news for the young Madoff: He will be incarcerated with others of his kind to whom he can relate. That is, the correctional facility housing him is reportedly through and through with rats and maggots. Yet with the honey come the aloes. Here is the bad news for him: His case will fall within the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York. Upon extradition to these United States, he will likely be cooped at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. That of course is the same Metropolitan Correctional Center where a certain Jeffrey Epstein was cooped in 2019… until his mysterious “suicide.” We certainly hope — for the young man’s sake — that the security cameras do not fail this time… [Image 1] Below, Jeffrey Tucker shows you why nothing exposes the financial and economic hypocrisies of our time like SBF and his FTX scam. Read on. Regards, [Brian Maher] Brian Maher Managing Editor, The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: Jim Rickards said in his book Aftermath that… The next financial crisis would be caused by something on the scale of a global pandemic, and that it would happen with “100% certainty” within the next few years… He said in his book The New Great Depression that… The lockdowns won’t work and they go down as one of the biggest policy blunders in the history of the world… He said late last year that… Russia invading Ukraine would happen with 90% certainty, long before that prospect was on anybody’s radar… And now Jim’s saying, because of what happened at 2pm today… What comes next for America may be [the greatest economic calamity of our lifetime.]( He’s even putting his own money in [this trade]( to prepare. Would you like to join him? If you are ready and eager to see what you need to do to protect and even grow your wealth in this coming crisis… Then simply [click here now.]( Jim will show you everything he recommends you do. You don’t have long though… because at midnight, we are taking this warning down. [Go here now]( before the clock strikes midnight — literally and maybe metaphorically. [Crypto millionaire James Altucher just revealed the cryptocurrency he’s piling into now… and it’s NOT Bitcoin…]( [Click here for more...]( He reveals exactly what it is on this page predicts 8,788% returns. However, events are happening RIGHT NOW in the cryptocurrency space that could swallow up this opportunity forever. If you missed the first crypto boom… do NOT miss this one. This could be your last chance for easy profits. What is James recommending now? [Click Here To Find Out]( The Daily Reckoning Presents: “Nothing exposes the economic and financial hypocrisies of our time as much as this FTX caper”… ****************************** The Rise and Fall of a Colossal Fraud By Jeffrey Tucker [Jeffrey Tucker] JEFFREY TUCKER Sam Bankman-Field of FTX, who seems to have stolen and otherwise misdirected billions from his own crypto scam, was invited to speak at a New York Times event called DealBook on Nov. 30. A seat in the audience cost $2,499. He had been booked for the gig long before because he was a darling of the left, having thrown around many millions to back Democrats in the midterms. He was also loved for running the second-largest crypto exchange in the world while babbling left-wing prattle about effective altruism and pandemic planning. He advertised himself as the world’s most generous billionaire at a mere 30 years old! With his disheveled look and halting speech patterns, he struck many as a genius. One would have to let go of all normal intuition to believe that, but here is where we are today. The interview pitched a series of softball questions with the mask of a tough interrogation. Bankman-Fried replied with a bunch of financial-sounding mumbo jumbo that the interviewer could not really follow, so of course he gave him a pass. In the end, the interviewer and the audience gave the thief a round of applause for his frank answers and accessibility. Sam claimed that his lawyers advised against this particular appearance. I don’t believe it. I suspect that his lawyers understand something very dark about our times. If you can bamboozle an audience at The New York Times, you stand a better chance of favorable treatment in a court of law. That’s why he was continuing his media rounds (at least before his arrest on Monday). Hey, why not a speaking tour to boot? How did Bankman-Fried justify himself? Essentially he said that he had downplayed the downside risks in a possible bear market in which his tokens suddenly lost 90% of their value. He had not anticipated this. And, he seemed to imply, had the markets not changed directions, his company would be solvent. Hence, none of this is really his. By comparison, Bernie Madoff’s scam was rather simple. He used the money of new investors to pay a return to old investors. He gradually came to realize that he had better success in business by doing this than relying on market forces themselves. By offering a predictable 9% return, he could always attract new money in up markets or down markets. In a sense he was right: His Ponzi scheme lasted 20 years! When the housing market crashed and the money dried up, and he could no longer find new chumps to pay the old chumps, he admitted it. He said he lied and that he was running a scam. He pled guilty, went to jail and died. One son killed himself and the other died. His widow today lives a modest life, still reeling from the horribleness of it all. Sam’s scheme was far more complicated. It involved mixing funds over a huge range of companies that he owned, so his own exchange had an open spigot of customer funds going to his own Alameda Research, which would use those funds to buy the token FTT in which customer funds were held. [Over 62 And Collect Social Security? Take Action Immediately!]( [Click here for more...]( If you’re over the age of 62 and currently collect Social Security, you need to prepare now. Because Biden has given our country the worst inflation in decades – and many warn things will only get worse from here. Worse yet, the Social Security check you receive now may not keep pace with inflation… Which is why, if you don’t act now, you could fall behind in the months ahead. Is your retirement at immediate risk? [Click Here To Learn More]( It was the same scam as Madoff’s but tokenized in a world that has stupidly come to believe that anyone can create a thing of value with a few mouse clicks and some incantations of the world blockchain. Crucially, Bankman-Fried paid off all the right people along the way. He paid nonprofits, media companies and politicians and made all the right noises about the need to regulate the industry more than is currently the case. As a result, his media darling status persists even now, as The New York Times and MSNBC worked hard daily to rehabilitate him, despite his not being able to account for some $20 billion in missing funds. In the dystopian film and novel The Hunger Games, the elites have divided society into many districts depending on their function and economic status. Only District 1 truly lives well, and here you find the greatest champions of the system, which is kept alive through top-down tyranny. The games themselves are designed to shore up regime stability by necessitating random sacrifices of the lives of kids forced into a zero-sum game of murder. The whole thing looks implausible on first viewing. How could the richest of the rich sit by and watch cheering on this bloodthirsty tragedy? On second thought, the whole thing is wholly believable. Elites socialize themselves to believe whatever it is that protects their wealth and status. That’s exactly why such a large crowd of people gathered at The New York Times to watch the validation and vindication of Sam, and they happily cheered his fake honesty and transparency at the end. The display was disgusting but entirely predictable if you understand something about how our own hunger games are played. In this decade and a half of easy money, a whole class of people has risen to the top of the cultural echelon not by productive labor but by educational credentials and being part of the corporate float. They have come to believe that the system makes sense simply because it has benefited them. This is why they so gladly took to pandemic controls when they were at their height. They would “stay home and stay safe” while the proletariat slogged through the streets carrying dinners in bags to drop off at doorsteps. In some extremely strange way, this felt like a utopia for the upper classes. This is always why the lockdowns lasted so long. We are nowhere close to getting to the bottom of the whole scam. SBF gave millions away to all sorts of institutions while marketing his grift as altruism. He later admitted that his fake-woke philosophizing was nothing but a cover, as it is for all these people, which is why his admission didn’t really disqualify him from continued membership in the class of media and business elites. Nothing exposes the economic and financial hypocrisies of our time as much as this FTX caper. We can report some good news, however: It is not long for the world. Elon Musk is demonstrating how a competent leader can take over a single company, fire 75% of employees, make the platform work better than ever and still make a profit. For the sake of civilization, let us hope that the Musk model will inspire many coming corporate upheavals. District 1 needs to be thoroughly cleansed and the sooner the better. The cleansing fire in our times takes the most implausible form one can imagine: positive real interest rates. If the Fed sticks to its agenda — and it likely will — we will see every manner of upheaval coming in the next six months. In the meantime, have fun in jail, SBF! Regards, Jeffrey Tucker for The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Ed. note: Jim Rickards said in his book Aftermath that… The next financial crisis would be caused by something on the scale of a global pandemic, and that it would happen with “100% certainty” within the next few years… He said in his book The New Great Depression that… The lockdowns won’t work and they go down as one of the biggest policy blunders in the history of the world… He said late last year that… Russia invading Ukraine would happen with 90% certainty, long before that prospect was on anybody’s radar… And now Jim’s saying, because of what happened at 2pm today… What comes next for America may be [the greatest economic calamity of our lifetime.]( He’s even putting his own money in [this trade]( to prepare. Would you like to join him? If you are ready and eager to see what you need to do to protect and even grow your wealth in this coming crisis… Then simply [click here now.]( Jim will show you everything he recommends you do. You don’t have long though… because at midnight, we are taking this warning down. [Go here now]( before the clock strikes midnight — literally and maybe metaphorically. Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [Jeffrey Tucker] [Jeffrey Tucker]( is an independent editorial consultant who served as Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2022 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your The Daily Reckoning e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from The Daily Reckoning, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@dailyreckoning.com. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. We allow the editors of our publications to recommend securities that they own themselves. However, our policy prohibits editors from exiting a personal trade while the recommendation to subscribers is open. In no circumstance may an editor sell a security before subscribers have a fair opportunity to exit. The length of time an editor must wait after subscribers have been advised to exit a play depends on the type of publication. All other employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of a printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. The Daily Reckoning is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. Please read our [Privacy Statement.]( If you are having trouble receiving your The Daily Reckoning subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting The Daily Reckoning.](