Carl’s Lesson: What the SEC Fine Should Teach Other Compromised Billionaires
If you get a message from me and you’re a wealthy person, you should probably pay attention. I’m the good cop. What comes after me is not so nice.
To borrow a phrase from The Departed’s Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam in one of his best moments:
Hey a—hole, he can’t help you! I know what you are, okay? I know what you are and I know what you are not. I’m the best friend you have on the face of this earth, and I’m gonna help you understand something, you punk.
Dignam’s methods, like mine, were a bit extreme but altogether necessary. And lest you forget the culminating scene of The Departed, it’s Dignam that finally wins out and delivers on his promise. He was the best friend that William Costigan ever had.
I suspect my methods are not unlike those of Jeffrey Epstein who Peter Thiel is much too smart to think was only interested in taxes. Epstein offered compromised billionaires like Thiel, Reid Hoffman or Bill Gates an off-ramp.
Thiel’s theory to Joe Rogan that Gates was trying to protect his assets from Melinda falls apart. Gates’s assets were meant to be used by the U.S. deep state. When Epstein died, Gates was free to misbehave. He did. He still secretly controls Microsoft and OpenAI.
In any event, we took on the matter of Illumina and Carl Icahn very seriously and wrote about it often here.
I quote it below:
https://charlesjohnson.substack.com/p/how-many-whistleblowers-shortsellers
In my honest assessment, Icahn made a strategic error. He refused to pick a side in the coming conflict between China, Israel, and America with respect to genetics.
He’d be wise to listen to those reaching out to help him in his endeavor.
We really do want to see genetics made great again and if Icahn can help to do that with the takeover of Illumina so much the better.
That is a legacy worth having. Pick up the phone Mr. Icahn. We need you. It’s your country calling.
Icahn did not pick up the call. He sent his underling Andrew Teneo my way. Teneo, while a nice guy, doesn’t really get genomics or geopolitics. It’s reflected in the stock price for Illumina. It’s not too late to get it right.
Today the SEC and Carl Icahn reached a $2 million SEC settlement, tarnishing his legacy. That legacy was always shaky — he got his start backed by the mob and who knows what was up with his Czechoslovakian wife — but it’s in tatters now.
Let’s hope the other compromised billionaires — Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, we’re looking at you! — get the message. Alas from their tweets it doesn’t’ look like they are getting it. Oh well.
By the way, doesn’t it seem obvious that Sir Michael Moritz, who once profiled Steve Jobs before being cut off, is British intelligence?
Moritz’s publication and its scapegoating of Andreessen-Horowitz gets it mostly right.
You were given multiple outs. This fey bullshit doesn’t work. And no, don’t be quoting Kendrick Lamar in your supposed quest to be black. You are “not like us.” You could be but then you’d have to listen.
