Following The Money

I've begun to see some productive insights into the election results, and I'll probably be bringing more of these up in coming days. But I continue to be influenced by Ferdinand Lundberg (1902-1995), best known for his 1969 book, The Rich and the Super-Rich. I think he was a proto-Trumpian populist whose view was that American politics, media, and popular culture, at least in the 20th century, were dominated by the behind-the-scenes interlocking interests of the post-Civil War industrial fortunes.

So let's look at the election through a Lundbergian lens. The first thing to note is that the billionaires didn't operate behind the scenes in this election. Trump himself is one of them, after all. George Soros had Tim Walz to dinner at his condo; Mark Cuban was a Harris surrogate. Bobby Kennedy Jr joined the Trump campaign. Most notably, Elon Musk donated heavily to the Trump campaign and became a highly visible surrogate. Other, lower-profile Silicon Valley types were heavy donors to both campaigns.

The best insights so far into how the money moved, and why, over the campaign is at Conservative Treehouse.

You will remember last year when I dug deep into the financial system around Twitter, Elon Musk’s purchase, and the viability of the business model. In short, by the time he reached October/November ’23 there was going to be no way for Musk to continue operating Twitter without some serious change in financial construct.

So, what happened?

Larry Ellison happened.

In a little-known background conversation that President Trump is well aware of, Oracle founder Larry Ellison said, “I will not allow Musk to fall.” Thus, an immediate and opportune alignment began that shows the strategic thinking of billionaire Larry Ellison.

Ellison gains around $50 billion per year from his operations. Oracle is huge. The X-platform subsequently began big contracts with Oracle. Twitter’s fate is now intrinsically linked to Ellison. Nuf said.

. . . As a direct consequence of Musk’s position, Larry Ellison -by extension Oracle- is now easily positioned to be the biggest beneficiary of a Trump win. Ellison is the biggest influence operation; but as all influence and leverage operations go, he’s also the quietest influence.

Larry Ellison (Oracle) is the hand on the Elon Musk Marionette. All Musk moves are with this background alignment as the underpinning.

But another insight here is into Jeff Bezos's intervention with the Washington Post's editorial policy, reversing its tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, which amounted to a tacit endorsement of Trump in 2024. Why did Bezos do this? Well, if Larry Ellison is the puppet master pulling Elon Musk's strings, which in effect then control Trump, then

the biggest loser was set to be Larry Ellison’s billionaire competitor, Jeff Bezos (Amazon).

Jeff Bezos needs to position himself to avoid being totally shut out from White House influence ability. The non-endorsement was the first move. The shift in ideological alignment within the Washington Post . . . is the second move. Bezos is mitigating and strategizing risk. That’s what is going on.

These are not media outlets in your traditional frame of reference. These are influence operations aligned with the interests of the billionaires behind them. It’s a game of thrones thing. Each interest has their own advocacy group. That’s what you would call “modern media”. Bezos has the Washington Post, Ellison positioned himself with Twitter; the intent is the same.

The biggest winners from the Trump victory will be Larry Ellison (Oracle), his super influence operator Elon Musk, and their smaller -albeit ideologically similar- friend, Peter Thiel (Palantir).

This is the inside baseball stuff that circles the President Trump campaign orbit in very close proximity. This is the command-and-control influence operation that determines outcomes. When Trump wins, these interests are positioned for strongest influence.

If you want to really understand what is happening, follow this background context as the intellectual filter and you will be watching President Trump Term-2 politics with clear eyes. However, always remember, these are their personal interests. As long as they align with MAGA, all is cool. If their personal interests diverge from MAGA, we will have a problem.

This is very much in the spirit of Ferdinand Lundberg, except that Lundberg saw the super-rich as a group of about 60 families whose fortunes were inherited from the post-Civil War robber barons and whose interests were interlocked. It didn't much matter if the Hearsts or the Ochs-Sulzbergers controlled media; they were effectively the same interests.

Notice the fortunes behind Trump and Harris now -- much of the money is from Silicon Valley, a whole new industry, or set of industries, based on computers and the internet. The 19th-century fortunes are fading into the background. The oldest money directly involved in the 2024 campaign is from the Kennedys, but the founder of the fortune, Joseph Kennedy Sr, (1888-1969) was from a different generation than J P Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller, or Henry Ford, and his fortune didn't come from basic industries like steel, railroads, oil, or automobiles; he was into real estate, liquor distribution, and Hollywood.

I think the older money came from a tradition whose greatest fear was a world proletarian revolution on the paradigm of the Soviet Union, which that level of wealth had begun to fear well before 1917. Their political strategy was aimed at averting this revolution, and on one hand, they created a multigenerational intelligence-driven deep state designed to subvert that effort. On the other, they supported a Fabian socialist political strategy aimed at symbolic appeasement of working-class demands without actually improving working-class conditions.

Lundberg understood that this consensus strategy created the New Deal on one hand and the FBI-CIA on the other, and it was partially successful at least insofar as it averted Marxist-Leninist revolution without threatening the interests of the super-rich until the failure of the Marxist-Leninist model late in the 20th century. The problem is that the Fabian socialist program and the intelligence-driven state have outlived their usefulness while continuing to demand unsustainable expense.

Thus what I think we're seeing is a new generation of influential wealth looking for a new strategy, since the old one has outlived its usefulness and is unaffordable -- the level of debt has surpassed the ability simply to pass the expense on to the working and middle classes. But neither Musk nor Trump is driving the innovation, it's people like Ellison, with Bezos now looking for a piece of the action; Warren Buffett is also tentatively and quietly joining that side, though only as long as it suits his purpose. Gates, Soros, and a lot of the older money are still on the side of the old cold war and quasi-appeasement strategy, with the middle and working classes bearing the cost.