#USpolitics #SuperYachts
"How Superyachts Explain the World" [ ± 1min]
by MotherJones
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w3-6hn7EP5M
Quote by MJ:
"Jan 3, 2024
This is how superyachts explain the world. For the last 18 months, one of the most opulent and unnecessary vessels ever constructed has been floating in a narrow channel next to a jungle gym and a fleet of industrial cranes at the Port of San Diego. Built in Germany, the superyacht Amadea is 348 feet long, with a helipad, a swimming pool, two baby grand pianos, and a 5-ton stainless steel art-deco albatross. And costs $1 million a month to maintain. Who has been picking up that tab in the past is a matter of some dispute, tangled up in a web of trusts and LLCs, code names and NDAs, and legal proceedings in two countries.
But the ship’s current owner is a bit less ambiguous: Congratulations—it’s you. The capture of the Amadea was perhaps the most spectacular piece of a larger international reckoning. In the nearly two years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies have blocked, seized, or frozen more than $280 billion in assets from hundreds of sanctioned Russian businessmen, politicians, family members, and fixers. By putting the squeeze on what the Treasury Department called Putin’s “enablers,” the thinking goes, these governments can hit him where it hurts, isolate his regime, and pressure Russia to wind down the war.
But pay enough attention to our American infrastructure of wealth, secrecy, and tax avoidance, and you might find yourself asking an uncomfortable question: If the Amadea is a symbol of a failed political and economic system, what exactly does that make all of our superyachts? As investigators pored over bank statements and real estate records, they added new layers to a map journalists and watchdogs have been piecing together for years. Through a labyrinth of corporations, trusts, and false fronts, oligarch money made its way into the hands of nannies in California, fracking firms in Texas, wealth managers in New York, and startups in Silicon Valley.
Tim Murphy's essay on superyachts opens up our American Oligarchy series, shedding insight into how the world's most useless and opulent people are hiding out on useless and opulent vehicles, watching a planet they stripped for parts.
#USbeware
#CapitalismIsFailingYou
#WorkersUnite #UnionStrong
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