From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: Bo Gritz/Federal Reserve
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 11:31:55 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <1993Jan25.083137.28783@StarConn.com> rburns@StarConn.com (Randall J. Burns) writes:

>1) Do you feel it is sheer and utter coincidence that several of the
>   most prominent financial criminals in recent decades have been Jewish
>   (i.e. Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Meyer Lansky)? Would it be fair 
>   to say that just as Jews have produced a disproportionate number of
>   doctors, lawyers and Nobel prize winners, they produced a
>   disproportionate number of certain types of criminals.
>
>2) Do you think it would be fair to say that the cohesiveness and
>   and educational strengths of the Jewish community have contributed to
>   the production of this particular breed of criminals?

   For various historical reasons different ethnic groups have
   tended to concentrate in specific career or occupational 
   fields.   One of the fields that Jews may have tended to
   enter in the west is banking and finance.  If so, it would
   not be surprising if we found that a larger percentage of
   illegal acts in banking and finance were conducted by Jews
   than their percentage of the general population.   But so what:
   Italians (at least in this part of the country) have often
   gone into construction.  So it might not be surprising
   if illegal acts associated with the construction industry 
   were over-represented by Italians.  In neither case would
   such findings cast any aspersions on the ethnic group in 
   question; it merely represents the probabilistic outcome
   of the numbers based on whatever historical forces engendered
   certain career choices.

   BTW, I should also point out that so far nobody on the net
   has produced any hard numbers pertaining either to Jews'
   participation in banking, nor to their propensity to 
   produce banking criminals.  In this part of the country
   (Boston area) my casual observations tend to suggest
   that both the bankers, and the banking criminals are 
   WASPy (like me), not surprising when one considers that
   historically in Boston WASPs have dominated the upper
   crust.

   
>3) Do you think it fair to say that the production of this particular
>   type of criminal is utterly incomprehensible to people who haven't
>   had much direct exposure to cosmopolitan cultures?

   I don't understand this question.



>Personally, I see Gritz's speculation in the same vein as the attempts
>of ignorant people to attempt to undertand the dynamics of organized
>crime

   Gritz hardly seems to be "speculating".  If one refers to a 
   "Zionist" conspiracy one seems to have one's theory already
   worked out.

> -and Mr. Frank's comments in the vein of comments that attempted
> to deny the existance of the Mafia.

   The Mafia is called "organized crime", instead of merely "crime",
   because it is conspiratorial in nature.   No one denies that 
   the organized crime originally in the form of Sicilian and southern 
   Italian syndicates exist.  Mr. Frank's comments, as far as I
   can see, are in the vein of demanding evidence that there 
   is some equivalent to this among Jews, i.e., a conspiracy
   largely among a group of Jews to run a syndicate of financial
   or banking crime.

   I would add to this the caveat that around here there was,
   when I was growing up, the reprehensible and racist assumption
   that anyone with an Italian last name had connections with 
   organized crime.  I grew up in an Italian neighborhood (we
   bought our house from the Gallerani's, on one side were
   the Balboni's, on the other the Tangerini's, etc, etc) so
   I was very sensitive to this when I was a kid.  But
   likewise there is the racist assumption that Jews have
   connections with "money" or some unique relationship 
   with it.  No one can imagine poor or working class Jews.
   

---peter