American Oligarchy

Chelsea Clinton's big payday, Hunter Biden's laptop and other elite shenanigans

(Source: Getty Images)

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from San Martin, Argentina...

Oh Chelsea!

What a gal. If only we could be her. We’d have it all. Youth. Fame. Fortune. And, respectability.  

Whether she is sitting in her $10 million “luxury fortress” apartment in New York… which, we are assured, is ‘environmentally friendly’… Or out on the road hustling votes for her mom… She has all the correct thoughts… all the time.

Have you wondered, dear reader, how come almost all US administrations – Republican or Democrat – continue more or less the same policies?

And why do ‘western’ governments react to crises in almost exactly the same way?

When the US confected the “War on Terror” almost all ‘western’ nations joined in.  Remember when, in 2003, practically all the ‘west’ nodded its head as Colin Powell peddled the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ lie to the UN… and most signed up for an invasion of Iraq?

When the mortgage finance crisis sent shock waves through the financial markets, almost all the ‘alliance’ members met the challenge with nearly identical policies again – cutting rates and pumping in more credit.

Then, when the Covid struck… again, with few exceptions, the ‘western’ nations rolled out the same solutions. Within weeks of the first reports, it was obvious that only a few people were really threatened. No matter; they proclaimed lockdowns, mask mandates… and later, vaccines, for everyone.   

As for controlling the virus, we see now that even the most severe and crippling controls only delayed the inevitable. The ‘zero covid’ countries eventually had to open up. And then… the virus did what viruses do. New Zealand – one of the most successful at staving off the Covid 19 – is seeing a spectacular spike in cases, with a higher percentage of cases among the vaccinated than among the un-vaxxed.  

Honest mistakes? Maybe.

Elite Pedigree

But all of the “democratic alliance’ nations seem to be making the same ones… following the same playbook – in 2003, 2008, 2020…

And now, 2022, isn’t it possible that Putin is doing just what he has been warning about for the last 15 years, trying to secure his southwestern flank against further encroachment by the self-same “democratic alliance?” And yet, only one point of view is permitted, and that ain’t it. The “new world order” folks are all piling on Russia… and denouncing Putin as if he were Adolph Hitler reincarnated.

Are they right or wrong? We don’t know, but how come they all think the same things at the same time? 

Because they all go to the same schools?

Ms. Clinton attended – surprise, surprise – the elite universities… Stanford, Columbia, NYU and Oxford. Elite by birth. Elite by training. Elite by wealth. Elite by marriage (she hooked up with a man who is the son of TWO members of Congress). 

And most important, she is elite by gig. With degrees in international relations and history, Ms. Clinton must have been delighted when NBC hired her as a ‘special correspondent’ at $50,000 a month. That’s a lot of money for a rookie reporter with no training.

Does that amount sound familiar? It must be the equivalent of ‘union scale’ for scions of US presidents. It’s about the same amount as Hunter Biden earned as a board member of a Ukrainian gas company. What did Biden know about the gas business? At least as much as Ms. Clinton knew about journalism.

But that’s the nice thing about being one of the most elite of the elite. You don’t get gigs on the basis of what you know... you get them on the basis of who you are.

Fake Disinformation

Last week, the New York Times finally connected some dots. It confirmed that the salacious story of Hunter Biden’s laptop – which it sat on throughout the 2020 election – was true. That is, it was not the “Russian disinformation” that the elite press had claimed. Hunter really did leave the laptop in a repair shop. It really was retrieved by Rudolph Giuliani, who gave it to the New York Post. It really did show that Hunter was deep into hanky-panky in the Ukraine. And he really did say that the ‘big guy’ – his father – was getting money too.  

Had not the Times and the rest of the elite media suppressed the story – unlike the phony “Russian election tampering” of 2016 – Donald Trump might actually be serving his second term today. And the US government might be a lot less eager to get into a sanctions war to protect the Ukraine.

But while Mr. Biden, the younger, went from drugs to prostitutes – from weakness to weakness, in other words – Ms. Clinton, the younger, went from strength to strength. She later got an even better gig – again without knowing anything about the subject matter.

 The Hill reports:

Chelsea Clinton has reaped $9 million in compensation since 2011 for serving on the board of an internet investment company, according to Barron’s, the financial publication.

Barron’s reported Sunday that Clinton has profited handsomely as a board member for IAC/InterActiveCorp, a media and internet investment company that has an ownership stake in 150 well-known brands, such as Vimeo, Tinder, Angie’s List and Home Advisor.

Clinton, the only child of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has served on IAC’s board since 2011 and receives an annual $50,000 retainer and $250,000 worth of restricted IAC stock units, Barron’s reports.

She reported owning $8.95 million worth of IAC stock to the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of December.

Sex, Drugs and Global Governance

What a hoot it must be for the two of them. Attending board meetings of a company you know nothing about. Gas pipelines? Internet investments? Financial statements in Ukrainian, written backwards to fool the translators?  

What do you do? You ask about the ‘diversity’ program. You query the honchos about their carbon footprint… and whether they have special bathrooms for trans people. And then, if any serious business should make its way into the conversation, you nod off… wondering what ‘negative equity’ could mean.

But what do you do when all your lilies are gilded… and the world lies at your feet like a dead Ukrainian soldier? You try to improve it, of course. Mr. Biden tried to improve his world honestly – with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Ms. Clinton had more ambitious plans, which she outlined in her 2014 dissertation from NYU: “The Global Fund: An Experiment in Global Governance.” 

Uh. Oh.

Stay tuned, because we’ll soon discover where the experiment in global government actually leads.  

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Ed Note: have you noticed, dear reader, how paying higher prices at the store and the pump is now considered part of your patriotic duty?

Inflation that was “non-existent,” then “under control,” then “transitory,” is now considered the price we must pay in order to “do our part” in defeating Putin and his nasty Putin Price Hikes. (How DARE he!)

Don’t like $5.50 per gallon gas? Hey, maybe YOU’RE a Russian asset!

Of course, “inflation volatility” is nothing new to readers of these pages. In fact, Tom Dyson has been helping paid readers navigate these turbulent times with a combined strategy of “Maximum Safety” (gold, some silver, plenty of cash) and by investing in carefully selected, real world companies that offer attractive upside in precisely this environment.

Currently, Tom is tracking 5 stocks, all of which have handily outperformed the broader markets this year, exactly as they were selected to do. If you’d like to become a paid member of Bonner Private Research today, whereby you gain full access to all our paid research - including Tom’s best investment ideas, Dan Denning’s Friday updates and private Zoom calls with Bill Bonner and his personal network of analysts and investors - you can do so today for as little as $2/week. Join here…