Lutnick is a TRAITOR, he manipulated the system to benefit his company, at the expense of the National Security of the US, by investing in this Malaysian data center which in effect, allowed the Chinese military a source to run their code on Blackwells, and if he's not arrested for treason and a stop put to it, all the next generations of advanced Nvidia GPUs.
I am neither a US nor a Chinese citizen, so I have no stake in either side. But are you truly certain that blocking China’s access to the most advanced gpus is a sound long-term strategy? "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." (Puzo/Coppola)
> are you truly certain that blocking China’s access to the most advanced gpus is a sound long-term strategy?
There is a reasonable debate to be had around the level of limits. But I think it’s clear there need to be some. The idea that China won’t develop a local supplier if we sell to them is a ship that sailed a decade ago. And we’re still unclear on the AI’s future development curve—if it looks like what some proponents believe, it would make sense to preserve every advantage we have.
I think that in this case it's about the "rules for thee, but not for me" aspect. If the average U.S. citizen attempted to do what Lutnick allegedly did, the consequences would likely be unpleasant, at best.
And the average US citizen re-elected the poster child president for "rules for thee, but not for me." And IMO if he hadn't started the Iran War, imposed tariffs, and driven inflation through the roof, his approval rating would still be 47%+ like at the beginning of his second term.
Cantor & Fitzgerald is deep state associated and handles Tether's collateral after taking over from the CIA Deltec bank.
This could be approved operations to get Chinese companies to run their models in controlled data centers. The only hole in this theory is that the NYT would not print this if it were the case.
The disgust for the personality in other comments here is justified. But the broader picture is that Wexner, Lutnick and Epstein have always been deep state adjacent. In the early days Bears Stearns handle slush funds and laundering, then Cantor & Fitzgerald, now Bitcoing/Tether.
If you just focus on the personality there'll be another Lutnick soon.
Lutnick most certainly wasn't acting alone. The truth of the matter is that The neo-liberal project that hollowed out American business/manufacturing, the supported ruinous offshoring is composed of traitors to the American people on both sides of the aisle. They should all be prosecuted as such.
> The neo-liberal project that hollowed out American business/manufacturing, the supported ruinous offshoring is composed of traitors to the American people on both sides of the aisle. They should all be prosecuted as such.
Remember it was the American people that have been choosing the (cheaper) offshore manufactured products over the American made ones for decades. There are many products still made in America but in general people buy the cheaper ones made from abroad. And they buy more products - TVs, clothes, Barbie dolls because of it.
The US didn’t need to support China joining the WTO and when it became clear that they were not being a good partner (keeping their domestic markets locked to outsiders, requiring tech and IP transfer, requiring domestic partners over 50%, violating international labor and environmental standards etc) they should have been expelled and their goods blocked from all markets that we could get to align.
That would have cut off a source of cheap production.
The lack of enforcement of the WTO agreement befuddles me. The result has been the polar opposite of these statements from President Clinton:
"Economically, this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street. It requires China to open its markets—with a fifth of the world’s population, potentially the biggest markets in the world—to both our products and services in unprecedented new ways," said Clinton. In a speech in 2000, Clinton reiterated his hopes:
For the first time, our companies will be able to sell and distribute products in China made by workers here in America without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China, sell through the Chinese government, or transfer valuable technology—for the first time. We’ll be able to export products without exporting jobs."
The American people purchase goods within the trade regime, they don't set the trade regime. The oligarchs and political "elite" set the trade regime for personal and politic benefit.
Clinton March 8th, 2000, Johns Hopkins SAIS
On manufacturing, after saying American companies would for the first time sell and distribute American-made products inside China, he adds that they could do it “without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China.”
On democracy, after noting that China is agreeing to more than buying American goods, he says “it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom.”
With the Trump regime there's been a rather explicit transition from a system of neo-liberal exploitation-with-rules to an out and out oligarchical / corrupt system more analogous to Putin's Russia than Clinton or Obama era US globalized capitalism.
It's .. yes ... worse. Before what you had was an unjust, exploitative, but relatively stable system of rules by which international capitalism operated and in which specific individuals were not allowed to dominate because there was a balancing act of corporate interests, sector by sector, corporation by corporation. If you (not you or I, but corporate entities etc) played by the rules, you might get a chance at the bat.
What's replaced it is outright graft. "Success" is determined by proximity to specific individuals. Success and growth of the overall system is no longer a goal. It's outright "might makes right" politics and what makes it far worse than what came before is not only is it unjust (just like before) for the little guys like you and me.. it is now inherently unstable and prone to collapse.
It's absolutely short termist and interested only in certain families and individuals and maybe sectors.
The people that should be prosecuted are the actual individuals involved.
Also, as a Canadian I'll just say... FUCK Lutnick in particular. Him and Bessent and the whole cabal have made explicit economic war against former "allies" in the name of their own enrichment. It is glorious that they have now have knives out for each other.
Remember it was the American people who have been choosing to consume the (cheaper) food bathed in pesticides over the organic foods....
Remember it was the American people who have been choosing to use the (cheaper) gas with lead over the gas with out lead....
This take smacks of the 'learn to code' vibes that journalists were throwing around at blue collar workers only to cry about it being harassment when it was thrown at them.
Remember, the people who started buying cheap items from China were the same people who's jobs were being shipped to China. Kind of hard for you to afford the more expensive items when you don't have a job or you have switched from a good paying job to a low wage one.
not saying it’s necessarily a good thing but offshoring and financialization enabled American companies like Apple to retain a much larger chunk of profits and return more wealth to shareholders, who in turn recycled that money back into American assets, lowered cost of capital, raised valuations, funded startups that raised tech salaries and pulled global talent at the expense of other countries
In an alternate universe, keeping manufacturing industries and jobs onshore would likely have come at the expense of American dominance and high salaries in tech, and higher cost consumer goods - probably not a huge deal to most people
> but offshoring and financialization enabled American companies like Apple to retain a much larger chunk of profits and return more wealth to shareholders, who in turn recycled that money back into American assets, lowered cost of capital, raised valuations, funded startups that raised tech salaries and pulled global talent at the expense of other countries
So trickle down, but it only helps a small number of people in a handful of coastal cities? And imports people into the US to then take work from citizens?
And even that is no longer really happening (except for the importing people to take work from citizens), and hasn't for a few years now (not sure if you've seen the tech job market at the moment). Yes, there was a brief period of time that a few technologists were making 6 figures starting..
The American people voted for a clown and got the circus.
Unwinding it all takes. at best, another 2 years.
I get it, these people are pretty terrible, but some reflection and soul-searching is needed. Why is such a large group so gullible/dumb/desperate and how has society/traditional republicans/democrats failed them? How did it come to this?
Barely know in this case is merely an advantage. One act of treason on a single day in a few seconds can do alot of damage. What is unknown and likely redacted still haunts our nation. If anything, all the current presidents pardons should be nullified.
Lutnick has already been caught lying about the extent to which he is interacted with Epstein, when, and whether he ever stopped interacting with him. "Coincidentally neighbors" doesn't wash.
Both his and the larger adjacent Epstein house first belonged to Les Wexner. The smaller one was laundered through some Bronfman family trust and sold to Lutnick.
I highly doubt it was even advertised on the free market.
Vast majority dont care about right and wrong. They care about what benefits them in the short term. They are called Opportunists. Shaming and guilt tripping barely works because the benefits havent becomes costs for them. Costs have to drastically increase. Then will dump Trump and crew overnight.
His loyalties are to the same thing all oligarchs are. Personal enrichment and wealth. I wouldn't be surprised if the news cycle spins this as a positive thing.
A large portion of the world is resigned to enslavement (through economic and violent coercion and through PR) by megalomaniacs who see the world from a nation-state perspective and who are personally hyper-competitive.
They only want you to see the world from a nation-state perspective.
Meanwhile they're making business and political moves trans-nationally behind the scenes to support their own wealth and power.
Notably those linkages they're making have nothing to do with the "classic" G7 neo-liberal trading alliances and consensus and everything to do mostly with petroleum extraction and real estate, and the entities they control.
Hardly a surprise - the trump administration corruption is well documented. This period is a black eye on every American, and is the opposite of laissez-faire capitalism. Instead of the best succeeding, those who can pander and make connections win (or in this case, be literally family members with a powerful person).
I hope we can move past this with the next admin, and continue to give the upper hand to businesses that want to succeed fairly in the USA.
Corruption is legal in the US - at least relative to other democracies. It takes a lot for anyone to be attacked by the justice system, let alone criticized by newspapers, for giving money to a politician. Look at how Guilfoyle isn't in jail yet (in fact she's out of the press now) despite literally requesting a bribe for 100k.
"Ethics violations" is as far as it goes. We would need a radical overhaul of the legal system, but how can you do that when the patients run the asylum?
That's laissez-faire capitalism. It always devolves into an oligarchy, as it's the only logical endpoint of runaway capital. Free markets create the material conditions that lead to them becoming captured and unfree.
This is exactly the answer, and it's why so-called "libertarianism" is not just naive but destructive (and end-result authoritarian) as an ideology: it has a fundamental misunderstanding of what the "free market" actually is behind the scenes, imagining it as some sort of neutral/neutralizing / democratic mysterious force that prevents accumulation of power and being in opposition to "the State" when it is the opposite. "Free market" systems create the State and then dominate it and the interests involved create power systems for their own accumulation of dominance. And the end result is oligarchy.
The counterveiling force has to be an organized working class that uses unions, political parties, and democratic force to take back at least some control of the state and market and force its use for social means. And this is a constant battle. If we start to lose, which has happened progressively since the 70s, Trumpist oligarchy is the result. Or worse.
To answer the question, no. I don't think the establishment democrats should be running the country either. They're just the MUCH better of two evils though. I'd prefer new age politicians to be the leaders.
But, do you honestly think Trumps administration didn't materially contribute to making those conditions worse themselves? They basically made the hole so deep it will make it difficult to crawl out of in the first place.
> But, do you honestly think Trumps administration didn't materially contribute to making those conditions worse themselves? They basically made the hole so deep it will make it difficult to crawl out of in the first place.
I agree it made conditions worse. I never denied that.
But I'm also looking at the entire chain of events which led to it. "Lesser of two evils" "voting" literally got us to this point. How could it possibly get us out of it?
"Voting" in scare quotes because as the uniparty link explains, in addition to Dems proving they can't run fair primaries etc, democracy is illusory when corrupted by capital interests.
Ignoring the violent revolution option for obvious reasons, the logical thing to do would be to carefully design and build a new party from the ground up so that it can't succumb to the same levels of corruption that Dems and Repubs have, to disrupt the good cop / bad cop hypnosis that everyone is trapped in.
> "Voting" in scare quotes because as the uniparty link explains, in addition to Dems proving they can't run fair primaries etc, democracy is illusory when corrupted by capital interests.
Good grief, how are Bernie bros still grinding this axe ten years on
He also replaced Cantor & Fitzgerald human bond trading with his electronic trading company company eSpeed. Cantor & Fitzgerald was wiped out on 9/11 while he was fortunate enough to "bring his son to the daycare after an argument with his wife":
His treatment of the spouses and families of Cantor Fitzgerald employees who perished in the attack was just about what you'd expect from such a self-serving individual. Truly loathsome.
My take is that Trump (in the second term) appointed people he thought had expertise to the relevant departments but not to regulating them. He wanted the Secretaries to juice the economy from the Secretary position.
That doesn't, in itself, require corruption. But Trump clearly signaled that corruption would be overlooked so long as it was convenient for his admin (very similar to the Putin-oligarch model).
I feel like the entire current administration are the last bagholders in the musical chairs that were connected to exploits (CIA, etc) to arms traders and other nefarious dealers over the past 70 years involving necessary but nasty US activities that protected Americans. They are acting to protect even bigger unseen fish as well...who know who they are - likely some members of the opposing party as well. They were caught dead-to-rights as small time actors in the schemes and were offered a join-or-die proposition. On the way out: guaranteed pardons.
It's pretty clear they're mostly acting in the interests of the oil & gas sector. Which is broadly international and not just American, and also heavily tied into Russia.
So, given climate change: absolutely antithetical to the broader interests of the population and explicitly short-termist.
All countries can be corrupt. What a lot of African countries unfortunately lack is the strong institutions that make establishing corruption regimes more difficult. There are plenty of examples of corruption in about any country you’d care to study; no people is better than the others.
> Lutnick Pushed to Weaken Chip Rules That Overlap With His Family Business
Buried well below the fold and below two ads, 20pt, 400 weight:
> These dealings are just a tiny portion of Cantor’s business, which stretches from investment banking and trading to real estate. Other investment banks have similar partnerships, and there is no evidence that Cantor’s investments influenced Mr. Lutnick’s deliberations.
Overlap? These interests are barely even tangent. The Commerce Secretary has a background and experience in financial services; that sounds like a good thing compared to some of the other current adminstration qualifications.
I'm sure if you dig just a little, you'll find he's taken positions that benefit the clients of Piper Sandler, Stifel, and Jefferies as well. Because, despite those firms being competitors of Cantor, the Commerce Secretary will often take positions that benefit US commerce. And all of those firms who benefit and a larger than a lemonade stand will be clients of some financial services company/ies.
I feel like NYT's standards used to be higher than that...
> These dealings are just a tiny portion of Cantor’s business, which stretches from investment banking and trading to real estate
So an even larger attack surface for corruption in Mr. Lutnick's Cabinet role.
> The Commerce Secretary has a background and experience in financial services; that sounds like a good thing compared to some of the other current adminstration qualifications.
"Financial services" and commerce, writ large, are not the same thing.
The NYT may well be chasing clicks through its creative use of typography. But the defense of a genuinely offensive and quite possibly corrupt individual like Howard Lutnick isn't a hill I'd prefer to die on.
Corruption is corruption. The fact that he was “only” setting policy to benefit a small portion of his portfolio is not a mitigating factor.
Remember when politicians used to put assets in blind trusts and divest investments that could create even the perception of conflicts of interest?
It’s not the NYT’s standards that have fallen, it’s the American populace’s. “The oligarch billionaire probably only benefitted to the tune of tens of millions” is damning.
I think the argument would be that you don't "wait around" so long to get to the point. Oftentimes a news story can be written with the main point in the headline, summarized in the first paragraph and then really explained using the rest of the article.
It's fair in my mind to complain that you have to read a bunch of fluff (arguably to drive ad impressions) to find the actual news part. I expect that from HuffPo for sure, less so from NYT.
The inverted pyramid is a well documented technique for getting to the point quickly, and if you search it you'll find tons of articles by big name schools and institutions explaining it. Here's one.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journali...
Which would be a reasonable argument but it's not the one that sokoloff made. They clearly have issues with the accusation that Lutnick is corrupt.
> Overlap? These interests are barely even tangent.
> I feel like NYT's standards used to be higher than that...
You can see there's nothing in their comment that highlights frustration with an ability (or lack of) to find the information they clicked to read about.
Did we read the same first half of the comment? It describes font size and weight of the headline and the font size and weight and how far down the first supporting fact is.
There is then further commentary on how relevant or not relevant the fact is. But the first half of the complaint is literally about the organization and formatting.
Do you understand how English works? The part I quoted is the thesis, the first half is the evidence provided for that. It’s not “further commentary,” it’s the entire thrust of the comment. I genuinely don’t see how you can think the two halves are unrelated.
Exactly. They will do this over and over again like it's their job and it adds up. Nevermind the fact that this small "tens of millions" deal is more than the vast majority will earn in a lifetime. Who in their right mind is dismissing this as something small and meaningless? This guy is screwing everyone over to enrich himself. We need to raise our standards.
Now we have a President making billions while in office and others in his administration like Lutnick here making bank too.
I wonder how long until this post gets flagged off of HN since the usual lackeys will rage flag this and we have no way to vouch for it back like we do with comments
I’m not sure why you felt it was germane to highlight the font size difference between the headline and body of the article. It is following their usual formatting style. You also chose to cherry-pick a tiny section. Here’s the next paragraph:
> But the overlapping relationships are the latest indication of the potential conflicts that exist given Mr. Lutnick’s role in shaping rules around U.S. technology exports. And they demonstrate how the U.S. ban on selling chips directly to China has led to an explosion of data centers in Southeast Asia aimed at Chinese customers. It is now up to Mr. Lutnick to decide whether to tighten the rules in ways that would cut off this avenue.
The article concludes with:
> Still, Cantor Fitzgerald continued to help arrange billions of dollars of financing for industries ranging from data centers to cryptocurrency that depend on a steady supply of computing from Nvidia.
> That includes Bitdeer, which is building out the Malaysian data center it expects to generate $1.7 billion in revenue over five years, according to a company statement.
> That data center will likely serve Tencent, a Chinese internet giant that would be able to gain access to Nvidia’s most advanced A.I. servers, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement. Bitdeer is part of Nvidia’s partner network, a program for companies that work closely with the chipmaker.
> Bitdeer hosts a Chinese language website that lets customers rent A.I. chips and gain access to Chinese open source A.I. models through data centers in Malaysia, Canada and elsewhere. The Johor facility is one of five data centers the company plans to open in Malaysia in the coming years, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
> Cantor holds a stake in Bitdeer through its investment in Tether, the crypto company. It is far from the only American financial heavyweight investing in overseas data centers. Bain Capital, Citadel and Blackstone have all poured money into A.I. computing clusters across the region.
> Cantor also previously provided financial services to Gorilla Technology, which is building data centers in Thailand and Indonesia, and has a contract to provide A.I. computing to Freyr AI, a Singaporean data center firm that corporate filings and job ads indicate has ties to China.
> Cantor has worked with other Nvidia partners globally, including IREN, an Australian cloud computing company, and Lancium, a Texas data center developer.
> A Commerce Department spokeswoman said that Mr. Lutnick makes policy decisions based on the best interests of the United States. He does not discuss department matters with his sons, nor do they discuss Cantor Fitzgerald business with him, she added.
> Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment. Bitdeer did not reply to a request for comment.
> Mr. Lutnick, as of October 2025, transferred his remaining ownership stake in Cantor to his family. Before that, he had been given what the White House had called a “limited waiver” that allowed him to participate in certain decisions that could have “a direct and predictable effect on Cantor Fitzgerald,” exempting him from a federal criminal law that would otherwise have required him to entirely recuse himself from these discussions.
> Even after Mr. Lutnick finished transferring his ownership stake to his sons late last year, he still had to abide by an ethics rule prohibiting federal employees from using their public office for their private gain or the gain of friends and relatives.
> The Times reported last year that Mr. Lutnick was promoting data center projects that worked with his family firms. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and two dozen other Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation.
It is apparent there is a conflict of interest but the NYT was unable to find an explicit causal connection. The headline is objectively correct and in most administrations of the past, overlapping interests like this would constitute a scandal and would call for further investigation.
Is it corruption when a Commerce recommendation benefits a Cantor client and, I guess, incompetent corruption when it benefits clients of Piper Sandler, Stifel, and Jefferies?
Lutnick is a TRAITOR, he manipulated the system to benefit his company, at the expense of the National Security of the US, by investing in this Malaysian data center which in effect, allowed the Chinese military a source to run their code on Blackwells, and if he's not arrested for treason and a stop put to it, all the next generations of advanced Nvidia GPUs.
There is a reasonable debate to be had around the level of limits. But I think it’s clear there need to be some. The idea that China won’t develop a local supplier if we sell to them is a ship that sailed a decade ago. And we’re still unclear on the AI’s future development curve—if it looks like what some proponents believe, it would make sense to preserve every advantage we have.
He betrayed his coalition. Never do that.
This could be approved operations to get Chinese companies to run their models in controlled data centers. The only hole in this theory is that the NYT would not print this if it were the case.
The disgust for the personality in other comments here is justified. But the broader picture is that Wexner, Lutnick and Epstein have always been deep state adjacent. In the early days Bears Stearns handle slush funds and laundering, then Cantor & Fitzgerald, now Bitcoing/Tether.
If you just focus on the personality there'll be another Lutnick soon.
Remember it was the American people that have been choosing the (cheaper) offshore manufactured products over the American made ones for decades. There are many products still made in America but in general people buy the cheaper ones made from abroad. And they buy more products - TVs, clothes, Barbie dolls because of it.
Who exactly should be prosecuted?
That would have cut off a source of cheap production.
"Economically, this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street. It requires China to open its markets—with a fifth of the world’s population, potentially the biggest markets in the world—to both our products and services in unprecedented new ways," said Clinton. In a speech in 2000, Clinton reiterated his hopes:
For the first time, our companies will be able to sell and distribute products in China made by workers here in America without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China, sell through the Chinese government, or transfer valuable technology—for the first time. We’ll be able to export products without exporting jobs."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Re...
Clinton March 8th, 2000, Johns Hopkins SAIS
On manufacturing, after saying American companies would for the first time sell and distribute American-made products inside China, he adds that they could do it “without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China.”
On democracy, after noting that China is agreeing to more than buying American goods, he says “it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom.”
It's .. yes ... worse. Before what you had was an unjust, exploitative, but relatively stable system of rules by which international capitalism operated and in which specific individuals were not allowed to dominate because there was a balancing act of corporate interests, sector by sector, corporation by corporation. If you (not you or I, but corporate entities etc) played by the rules, you might get a chance at the bat.
What's replaced it is outright graft. "Success" is determined by proximity to specific individuals. Success and growth of the overall system is no longer a goal. It's outright "might makes right" politics and what makes it far worse than what came before is not only is it unjust (just like before) for the little guys like you and me.. it is now inherently unstable and prone to collapse.
It's absolutely short termist and interested only in certain families and individuals and maybe sectors.
The people that should be prosecuted are the actual individuals involved.
Also, as a Canadian I'll just say... FUCK Lutnick in particular. Him and Bessent and the whole cabal have made explicit economic war against former "allies" in the name of their own enrichment. It is glorious that they have now have knives out for each other.
Remember it was the American people who have been choosing to use the (cheaper) gas with lead over the gas with out lead....
This take smacks of the 'learn to code' vibes that journalists were throwing around at blue collar workers only to cry about it being harassment when it was thrown at them.
Remember, the people who started buying cheap items from China were the same people who's jobs were being shipped to China. Kind of hard for you to afford the more expensive items when you don't have a job or you have switched from a good paying job to a low wage one.
In an alternate universe, keeping manufacturing industries and jobs onshore would likely have come at the expense of American dominance and high salaries in tech, and higher cost consumer goods - probably not a huge deal to most people
So trickle down, but it only helps a small number of people in a handful of coastal cities? And imports people into the US to then take work from citizens?
And even that is no longer really happening (except for the importing people to take work from citizens), and hasn't for a few years now (not sure if you've seen the tech job market at the moment). Yes, there was a brief period of time that a few technologists were making 6 figures starting..
Ban iPhone imports for 6 months and see if it only helps a "small number of people in a handful of coastal cities"
Unwinding it all takes. at best, another 2 years.
I get it, these people are pretty terrible, but some reflection and soul-searching is needed. Why is such a large group so gullible/dumb/desperate and how has society/traditional republicans/democrats failed them? How did it come to this?
I highly doubt it was even advertised on the free market.
You don't support rapists and pedophiles, and somehow wash your hands of involvement.
Oh, I didn't personally rape a child, is no excuse for supporting someone who does.
edit: Struck a nerve with HN mods did I, wipe the orange off your lips
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/10/lutnick-epstein-island-vacat...
Meanwhile they're making business and political moves trans-nationally behind the scenes to support their own wealth and power.
Notably those linkages they're making have nothing to do with the "classic" G7 neo-liberal trading alliances and consensus and everything to do mostly with petroleum extraction and real estate, and the entities they control.
I hope we can move past this with the next admin, and continue to give the upper hand to businesses that want to succeed fairly in the USA.
"Ethics violations" is as far as it goes. We would need a radical overhaul of the legal system, but how can you do that when the patients run the asylum?
The statute of limitations gives the next administration a year to indict her.
The counterveiling force has to be an organized working class that uses unions, political parties, and democratic force to take back at least some control of the state and market and force its use for social means. And this is a constant battle. If we start to lose, which has happened progressively since the 70s, Trumpist oligarchy is the result. Or worse.
https://archive.is/wSmtd
That make you happy?
That's precisely what a party of controlled opposition would do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniparty
But, do you honestly think Trumps administration didn't materially contribute to making those conditions worse themselves? They basically made the hole so deep it will make it difficult to crawl out of in the first place.
I agree it made conditions worse. I never denied that.
But I'm also looking at the entire chain of events which led to it. "Lesser of two evils" "voting" literally got us to this point. How could it possibly get us out of it?
"Voting" in scare quotes because as the uniparty link explains, in addition to Dems proving they can't run fair primaries etc, democracy is illusory when corrupted by capital interests.
Ignoring the violent revolution option for obvious reasons, the logical thing to do would be to carefully design and build a new party from the ground up so that it can't succumb to the same levels of corruption that Dems and Repubs have, to disrupt the good cop / bad cop hypnosis that everyone is trapped in.
Good grief, how are Bernie bros still grinding this axe ten years on
Good grief, how corrupt/delusional enablers are still denying facts ten years on.
Also, even post-Bernie, why do you think voters were entirely denied a primary the most recent time around?
The best Dems could do was install a proven unpopular pick and act surprised when she lost.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/creative-destruction-9-11-enron...
(Use an LLM to extract and fact check the text that contains too many details.)
That doesn't, in itself, require corruption. But Trump clearly signaled that corruption would be overlooked so long as it was convenient for his admin (very similar to the Putin-oligarch model).
So, given climate change: absolutely antithetical to the broader interests of the population and explicitly short-termist.
every appointment is doing some sort of grift
All countries can be corrupt. What a lot of African countries unfortunately lack is the strong institutions that make establishing corruption regimes more difficult. There are plenty of examples of corruption in about any country you’d care to study; no people is better than the others.
How much market manipulation in every tweet threatening to double or delay tarrifs, launch or delay attacks on Iran?
Does MAGA want to somehow forget this term started with a multibillion dollar Trump shitcoin rugpull?
It's fucking disgusting how naked the corruption has been from the criminal Trump family and admin.
> Lutnick Pushed to Weaken Chip Rules That Overlap With His Family Business
Buried well below the fold and below two ads, 20pt, 400 weight:
> These dealings are just a tiny portion of Cantor’s business, which stretches from investment banking and trading to real estate. Other investment banks have similar partnerships, and there is no evidence that Cantor’s investments influenced Mr. Lutnick’s deliberations.
Overlap? These interests are barely even tangent. The Commerce Secretary has a background and experience in financial services; that sounds like a good thing compared to some of the other current adminstration qualifications.
I'm sure if you dig just a little, you'll find he's taken positions that benefit the clients of Piper Sandler, Stifel, and Jefferies as well. Because, despite those firms being competitors of Cantor, the Commerce Secretary will often take positions that benefit US commerce. And all of those firms who benefit and a larger than a lemonade stand will be clients of some financial services company/ies.
I feel like NYT's standards used to be higher than that...
So an even larger attack surface for corruption in Mr. Lutnick's Cabinet role.
> The Commerce Secretary has a background and experience in financial services; that sounds like a good thing compared to some of the other current adminstration qualifications.
"Financial services" and commerce, writ large, are not the same thing.
The NYT may well be chasing clicks through its creative use of typography. But the defense of a genuinely offensive and quite possibly corrupt individual like Howard Lutnick isn't a hill I'd prefer to die on.
Remember when politicians used to put assets in blind trusts and divest investments that could create even the perception of conflicts of interest?
It’s not the NYT’s standards that have fallen, it’s the American populace’s. “The oligarch billionaire probably only benefitted to the tune of tens of millions” is damning.
That is literally from Cantor’s website.
It's fair in my mind to complain that you have to read a bunch of fluff (arguably to drive ad impressions) to find the actual news part. I expect that from HuffPo for sure, less so from NYT.
The inverted pyramid is a well documented technique for getting to the point quickly, and if you search it you'll find tons of articles by big name schools and institutions explaining it. Here's one. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journali...
> Overlap? These interests are barely even tangent.
> I feel like NYT's standards used to be higher than that...
You can see there's nothing in their comment that highlights frustration with an ability (or lack of) to find the information they clicked to read about.
There is then further commentary on how relevant or not relevant the fact is. But the first half of the complaint is literally about the organization and formatting.
Now we have a President making billions while in office and others in his administration like Lutnick here making bank too.
I wonder how long until this post gets flagged off of HN since the usual lackeys will rage flag this and we have no way to vouch for it back like we do with comments
> But the overlapping relationships are the latest indication of the potential conflicts that exist given Mr. Lutnick’s role in shaping rules around U.S. technology exports. And they demonstrate how the U.S. ban on selling chips directly to China has led to an explosion of data centers in Southeast Asia aimed at Chinese customers. It is now up to Mr. Lutnick to decide whether to tighten the rules in ways that would cut off this avenue.
The article concludes with:
> Still, Cantor Fitzgerald continued to help arrange billions of dollars of financing for industries ranging from data centers to cryptocurrency that depend on a steady supply of computing from Nvidia.
> That includes Bitdeer, which is building out the Malaysian data center it expects to generate $1.7 billion in revenue over five years, according to a company statement.
> That data center will likely serve Tencent, a Chinese internet giant that would be able to gain access to Nvidia’s most advanced A.I. servers, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement. Bitdeer is part of Nvidia’s partner network, a program for companies that work closely with the chipmaker.
> Bitdeer hosts a Chinese language website that lets customers rent A.I. chips and gain access to Chinese open source A.I. models through data centers in Malaysia, Canada and elsewhere. The Johor facility is one of five data centers the company plans to open in Malaysia in the coming years, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
> Cantor holds a stake in Bitdeer through its investment in Tether, the crypto company. It is far from the only American financial heavyweight investing in overseas data centers. Bain Capital, Citadel and Blackstone have all poured money into A.I. computing clusters across the region.
> Cantor also previously provided financial services to Gorilla Technology, which is building data centers in Thailand and Indonesia, and has a contract to provide A.I. computing to Freyr AI, a Singaporean data center firm that corporate filings and job ads indicate has ties to China.
> Cantor has worked with other Nvidia partners globally, including IREN, an Australian cloud computing company, and Lancium, a Texas data center developer.
> A Commerce Department spokeswoman said that Mr. Lutnick makes policy decisions based on the best interests of the United States. He does not discuss department matters with his sons, nor do they discuss Cantor Fitzgerald business with him, she added.
> Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment. Bitdeer did not reply to a request for comment.
> Mr. Lutnick, as of October 2025, transferred his remaining ownership stake in Cantor to his family. Before that, he had been given what the White House had called a “limited waiver” that allowed him to participate in certain decisions that could have “a direct and predictable effect on Cantor Fitzgerald,” exempting him from a federal criminal law that would otherwise have required him to entirely recuse himself from these discussions.
> Even after Mr. Lutnick finished transferring his ownership stake to his sons late last year, he still had to abide by an ethics rule prohibiting federal employees from using their public office for their private gain or the gain of friends and relatives.
> The Times reported last year that Mr. Lutnick was promoting data center projects that worked with his family firms. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and two dozen other Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation.
It is apparent there is a conflict of interest but the NYT was unable to find an explicit causal connection. The headline is objectively correct and in most administrations of the past, overlapping interests like this would constitute a scandal and would call for further investigation.
But you know, cherry pick what you dont want to hear.
Is it corruption when a Commerce recommendation benefits a Cantor client and, I guess, incompetent corruption when it benefits clients of Piper Sandler, Stifel, and Jefferies?