Bilderberg, the World Economic Forum, Semafor and why the 2008 economic collapse will repeat itself
Semafor (a global digital news organization) is one of the least discussed media in the public eye. It is exceptionally well-suited to conveying the opinions of the “elite” or “C-suite” (executive staff) of corporations in the imperial power itself, the United States, to a wider audience. Semafor publishes both news and opinion pieces that may be of particular interest and benefit to these persons; however, this media outlet poses no threat – and it has competitors in this field: the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg, and so on. None of these, however, possesses the network of private elite conferences that Semafor operates.
On October 12, Semafor’s business editor Liz Hoffman ran the headline “Single Point of Failure,” reporting that the US government’s “Too Big To Fail” policy (which favours economic concentration) that led to and caused the 2008 financial crash has since been expanded to include more than just financial companies:
“‘You want ‘too big to fail’? Here you go!’ shouts the TV version of Hank Paulson in the 2011 HBO film, as he witnesses the collapse of AIG. The plane that had brought him to a crisis meeting in New York was leased from AIG. The construction projects he passed on his way to the New York Fed were financed by AIG. Eighty million in retirement plans, insured by AIG.
In 2008, the fact that a single company had become the sole weak point of the entire economy only became apparent when it was on the verge of collapse. At least this time, we can see it in plain sight: Nvidia is officially too big to fail.
More than $108 billion in data centre leases guaranteed by Nvidia. Eight cents of every dollar invested in the S&P 500 is invested in Nvidia. It owns $50 billion worth of stock in private companies, many of which are its customers, and another $63 billion in publicly traded companies. It’s a kind of AI acquisition machine, and over the weekend there were new reports that the company is in talks to acquire or invest in both a customer, Reflection AI, and a competitor, d-Matrix.
The balance sheet is strong enough for now – a message underscored by a share buyback gesture last month. But Nvidia has become the bank and safety net of AI, a central hub for financial and emotional security. Beyond the numbers, a company is too big to fail if the answer to the question ‘Would the government step in to save it?’ is ‘Yes.’
Major banks undergo annual tests to see how they would fare under various economic conditions – a rise in unemployment, a fall in real estate prices. What would a stress test reveal for Nvidia that takes into account an increase in the cost of AI-related debt, a decline in the valuations of venture-funded startups, and a slowdown in data centre construction?
There’s a reason why Paulson let Lehman Brothers fail but saved AIG.”
Of course, their argument for the need for the US government to end its “too big to fail” policy and replace it with comprehensive regulation to prevent a single company from becoming so powerful is sound. But in the more immediate context that matters to these executives, the message is this: the next economic crash will be the biggest ever, and Nvidia is today’s AIG, not some kind of Lehman Brothers. Nvidia is “too big to fail,” but the companies it insures (Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Equinix, QTS, etc.) are not; therefore, any one of them could be the next Lehman Brothers.
This is how the collapse of 2008 came about:
Financial derivatives were authorized by Bill Clinton at the end of his term and are designed and used to act as a substitute for an insurance policy, transferring financial risks to the public and the government – mutualizing the risks (the losses) while privatizing the profits (the gains) to the financial corporations. A credit default swap is a financial derivative that serves as a substitute for insurance against the default of a tranche (or group) of collateralized debt obligations.
On September 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve rescued AIG with an initial $85 billion loan secured by AIG’s assets, as well as warrants for an 80 percent federal stake in the company. AIG collapsed due to credit default swap (CDS) securities issued by its London branch that insured $441 billion in AAA-rated credit default swaps (CDOs) (mortgage-backed securities) of other companies, which had been overrated by Moody’s and S&P.
These securities had been overrated because the creditworthiness of the borrowers was not disclosed to the rating agencies. Anyone who trusted the rating agencies was essentially trusting lies. (The salespeople who sold mortgages to these homebuyers received their commissions based on their sales volume and therefore had every incentive to close every deal regardless of the borrower’s creditworthiness and not be deterred from closing a deal by such facts. These lies by the rating agencies benefited the financial companies that issued and marketed these mortgage-backed securities (MBS).)
Another reason why these CDOs, issued to investors, were overrated by the rating agencies is that the companies selling these CDOs acted as lenders for Moody’s and S&P in rating these securities and consequently controlled the CDO ratings. CDS (credit default swaps) were thus toxic investment derivatives that were essentially uncovered (or uncapitalized) bets that these CDOs would not default. However, the plummeting property values in the US (due to these loans actually classified as “subprime” mortgages) also caused other property values to fall, resulting in a contagion wave of CDO defaults in the US, even among normal mortgages.
A UN study from April 2023, Reducing The Cost Of Finance For Africa: The Role Of Sovereign Credit Ratings, reported (page 41) that the systematic underrating of African states’ creditworthiness by the American rating agencies S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch results in these states having to pay $74.5 billion annually in excessive borrowing costs due to the resulting unrealistically high interest rates. All of this is part of an imperialist system, the US empire, from which America’s billionaires profit enormously.
Furthermore, Bush’s US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (former head of Goldman Sachs) appointed Goldman Sachs to the committee he had established to advise on how to deal with AIG – and Goldman had enormous demands on AIG. That alone should have landed the former Paulson in jail. The AIG bailout ultimately cost US taxpayers far more than the entire bailout of the savings and loan associations in the 1980s.
On August 9, 2009, Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta Jr. ran the headline “Paulson’s Calls to Goldman Tested Ethics” in the New York Times, revealing that Paulson had realized his communications with Goldman in this AIG matter violated ethical rules and had therefore sought waivers to escape those rules. And: “On September 17, the day Mr. Paulson received his exemptions, he and Mr. Blankfein [Goldman’s CEO] spoke five times. Two of these calls took place before Mr. Paulson’s exemptions were granted.” Furthermore: “During the week of the AIG bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Blankfein spoke to each other two dozen times, ……. far more often than Mr. Paulson spoke to other Wall Street executives.” (After all, Paulson received his retirement benefits from Goldman, not any of those other firms.)
Furthermore: “In addition to receiving $13 billion in taxpayer money as part of the AIG bailout, Goldman also received permission at the height of the crisis to transform itself from an investment firm into a national bank, which gave the company easier access to federal financing. ….… Goldman also received government loan guarantees and $10 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The company benefited further when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suddenly changed its rules for stock trading, prohibiting investors from short selling Goldman Sachs shares.”
Times reporters requested an interview with Mr. Paulson, but he declined; instead, the reporters spoke with his aide, Michele Davis, who made several claims that the reporters considered false, such as that a Treasury Department exemption was not legally required and that Paulson had no influence over the decision to bail out AIG. Blankfein’s reputation plummeted in 2010 after it was revealed that Goldman Sachs had bundled and sold mortgage-backed securities apparently designed to fail and then shorted those securities, making a huge profit for the firm while its clients lost money. JPMorgan Chase acted similarly, but its CEO, Jamie Dimon, did not face the same level of criticism – perhaps because he was a close friend of President Obama.
I asked ChatGPT: “Paulson let Lehman collapse, but not AIG. If Nvidia is today’s AIG, what could be today’s Lehman?” It replied (and then explained why): “My favourite is CoreWeave. Oracle is second. However, if your analogy is about which company Washington might deliberately let fail while bailing out Nvidia, CoreWeave is the more revealing possibility. The difference is between a company that is financially vulnerable and one whose collapse could threaten the entire financial system.” In other words, Oracle is too powerful for the government not to bail it out if it were to collapse.
This is useful information for the super-rich, but not for private persons whose wealth consists primarily of their residential real estate. Semafor targets the former; therefore, informing this clientele about Nvidia’s risks could be helpful.
In September 2020, the RAND Corporation – that think tank which (as if hidden in the middle of a long report by another think tank ) received sixteen times as much funding from its biggest donor, the Pentagon (perhaps the federal agency that helps billionaires the most), during the period 2019–2023 as all nine of the ten think tanks that received the most Pentagon funding combined. Clearly the Pentagon’s think tank, it published a study, Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018, authored by Carter C. Price and Kathryn A. Edwards, which reported the following: “From 1975 to 2018, the difference between the total taxable income of those below the 90th percentile and the counterfactual value under just growth was $47 trillion,” meaning that in those 43 years, the wealthiest 10% received $47 trillion more than if the income distribution in America had remained as it was in 1975 (which was roughly the income distribution that had existed since 1947, the first year of data collection).
Furthermore, it showed that the top 10%’s share of taxable income increased from 33% in 1975 to 50% in 2018. Their “Figure 1” showed that income inequality in the US has increased dramatically since 1980 (the Reagan era). (See also their follow-up study: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RBA516-1.html)
To put the result into perspective for ordinary people, the report stated on page 10: “For example, the median income of all non-zero-income adults was $26,000 in 1975 [and] rose to $36,000 by 2018. Had this percentile’s income grown at the same rate as the economy [or had the original income distribution been maintained], it would have reached $57,000,” which would have been 58% more than in 1975. Thus, in 2018, the average American income earner received only $36,000/$57,000, or 63%, of the income they would have received if the income distribution of 1947-1975 had remained stable, instead of skyrocketing only for the wealthiest 10%.
Moreover, “the average income growth of the top one percent was significantly higher due to a substantial increase in income dispersion within the 99th percentile, exceeding 300 percent of the real per capita GDP rate.” The wealth growth of the richest 1 percent even dwarfed that of the remaining top 10 percent. So, was there a problem with the previous income distribution, or is there a problem with the current one?
Perhaps conferences held exclusively by invitation and reserved solely for billionaires and their representatives are part of this trend of ever-increasing wealth being transferred from everyone else to the super-rich. This is occurring not only through certain persons, but primarily through the system, the societal apparatus. And organizations like Bilderberg, the WEF, and Semafor are the ones who grease the wheels of this apparatus.
Author: Eric Zuesse
yogaesoteric
October 20, 2026