Business Shenanigans: The Actions of Thomas Durant, Richard Whitney, Bernard Madoff, and Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried

The history of business is largely one of commerce with corruption sometimes intertwined.  Big business rose after the end of the Civil War in 1865.  In the connecting of the east west halves of the country through a transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific was saddled with a particularly nefarious scheme, the Credit Mobilier.

Thomas Durant (February 6, 1820-1885) created the fiction for investors that the Credit Mobilier was linked to a French bank.  He used it to pad Union Pacific’s construction costs. The cost of the railroad never exceeded $50 million, yet the Credit Mobilier billed the federal government $94 million.  Durant paid a friend to make a bid. After awarding him the construction contract, it was turned back over to Durant.  (Wikipedia, article about Durant)

Thomas Durant was an Aquarius with the Moon in Scorpio.  Mercury was square the Moon.  With this aspect, “cunning and an astute intellect can tend to underhandedness…”  (Parker, The Compleat Astrologer, p. 137)  His interest in acquiring money is shown by Mars in Cancer together with Jupiter in Capricorn.

In the 1930s Richard Whitney was a well-known stockbroker, head of the brokerage firm Richard Whitney & Company, and president of the New York Stock Exchange.  His tastes were extravagant.  Whitney spent $5,000 a month.  $2,500 a year was a middle class income.   His firm only had a net worth of $40,000.  He kept afloat by borrowing from friends and his brother, a Morgan partner, and paying them back.  Whitney was not good at investing.  Realizing prohibition was going to be repealed, he established a company to distribute Jersey Lightning, a type of applejack.  The stock plummeted from $45 a share to $3.50 in 1937.  He had borrowed on the stock.  When the price went down, he had to cover his loses and stole from others to do so.  Whitney told his brother his misdeeds. He was urged to sell his stock, business, and retire.  Whitney was arrested, pled guilty, and spent three and a half years in Sing-Sing.  (American Heritage, Article “Wall Street’s 10 Most Notorious Stock Traders,” Volume 59, Issue1, John Steele Gordon, Spring 2009)

Richard Whitney was born on August 1, 1888 in Boston.  He was a model prisoner and later managed a dairy farm and became president of a textile firm.  Whitney died in 1974.  (Wikipedia article about Whitney)

Whitney was a Leo with his Moon either at the end of Taurus or beginning of Gemini.  His Sun, Venus, and Saturn were less than six degrees apart.  The Moon is probably in opposition to Jupiter and in conjunction with Neptune.  With that opposition, “financial and general judgment may be weak.” (138)     The Moon/Neptune conjunction would have made him kind and warmhearted.

Bernard Madoff (April 29, 1938-2021) at one point had been chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange.  His firm had two parts, a brokerage firm and an asset management business.  The latter was in reality a gigantic Ponzi scheme.  In such a scheme, investors are lured in and money from later ones is paid to early entrants.  The Securities Investor Protection Corporation concluded investors lost about $18 billion.  $14.4 billion was recovered.  Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009.  (Wikipedia, article about Madoff)

Madoff was a Taurus with the Moon in either Aries or Taurus.  His Mercury and Saturn are also in Aries.  The Sun was conjoined with Uranus.  The aspect of Venus square Jupiter may have encouraged him to take the easy way out in “creating” wealth for investors.

Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried (March 6, 1992) was the CEO and founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.  This business permits people to trade cryptocurrencies* or digital ones for other assets such as conventional money or other digital currencies.  The exchange also accepted credit card payments and wire transfers.  FTX was founded in 2019.  Bankman-Fried also created the firm Alameda Research.  This entity traded cryptocurrencies.

SBF’s wealth peaked at $26 billion which made him the world’s sixtieth wealthiest person.   By November 2022 he was largely penniless.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, stated he intended to sell FTX’s token called FTT** in November 2022.  He had received $529 million worth of FTT as part of the sale of its equity in FTX in 2021.
Zhao made this decision after learning that the majority of holdings in Alameda Research were in FTT.

The token FTT had a low trading volume hence any sale by Binance would have a large impact on price.  Changpeng at first stated he would purchase FTX after due diligence.  However, after he made the announcement FTT lost eighty percent of its value.  Zhao stated he no longer was interested in acquiring the firm after reports of mishandling customers’ funds and attendant investigations surfaced.

Sam was arrested in the Bahamas in December 2022, extradited to the U.S., and charged with wire and securities fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.  (Wikipedia, article about Bankman-Fried)

Samuel Bankman-Fried is a Pisces with the Moon and Mercury in Aries.  The Sun is in opposition to Jupiter.  Blind optimism and get-rich-quick schemes may attract.   (Parker, p. 136)  His Uranus/Neptune conjunction adds self-will and originality.  (147)  SBF has a stellium in Aquarius.  Venus, Mars, and Saturn are all together.  The Mars/Saturn conjunction can indicate suffering.  (143)  Poor judgment may have led him to run afoul of the law.

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*”Cryptocurrency is a digital, encrypted, and decentralized medium of exchange.  There is no authority that manages and maintains its value.  That is done by its users on the internet.  It can be used to buy goods or services or as an investment like stocks.  (Forbes Adviser Article “What is Cryptocurrency?” by Kate Ashford, 2022)

**Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, and it was first outlined in theory in 2008. It required cryptographic proof instead of trust.  The proof came in the form of transactions that were verified and recorded on a block chain.  (Ashford)

A blockchain is a digital ledger that stores data.  It is not maintained in one location.  Identical copies are on many computers called nodes across a wide network. The ledger is the chain which is made up of individual blocks of data.  When new data is added, a new block is created and added to the chain.  A majority of nodes must confirm the veracity of the new data.  For a cryptocurrency this means ensuring that the transactions are not fraudulent or that the coins had not been spent more than once.  (Forbes Advisor Article “What is Blockchain?”  by David Roderick and Benjamin Curry, 2022)

 

Brian Hill, blog writer