"Doing Good" In California After Helping To Blow Up The World Economy?
"Power Couple" Beller and Moses Who Helped Bust The World Economy In 2008 Are Out To Make A Killing On Charters & Privatization of California Education. Their Caliber Charter Chain wants land in Richmond to build a non-union school and stick the taxpayers with the costs of privatization
"Doing Good" In California After Helping To Blow Up The World Economy?
"Power Couple" Beller and Moses Who Helped Bust The World Economy In 2008 Are Out To Make A Killing On Charters & Privatization of California Education
by Steve Zeltzer
KPFA WorkWeek Radio
5/31/16
Some of the same people who helped wreck the world economy in 2008 are now in California using the deregulation of education, charters and testing scams to make a killing in California public education.
They are also running up against angry parents, teachers and advocates of public education in Richmond, California
Ron E Beller, his wife Jennifer Moses and Scott Mead were leading stars as speculative traders at Goldman Sachs in London in the 1980's before the collapse. They left Goldman Sachs in 2001 to set up their own hedge fund which was called Peloton and a it was run by Beller , Moses and Scott Mead
Peloton initially made huge profits from the subprime mortgage debacle in the US. Peloton's top manager described proudly how it had gambled on a "'world coming to an end' trade that debt linked to subprime loans would tumble and higher quality securities would rise".
As a result the firm's ABS investment fund rose 87 percent in 2007. EuroHedge magazine awarded the fund best new fixed-income fund. Now, despite investing in high quality mortgages, it's worthless.
Beller and Moses early claim to notoriety in the UK was a secretary at Peloton who stole millions of dollars that he and his wife did not know was missing. "Not all Goldmanites avoid the headlines. An abiding tale of the boom years is how three London executives, Jennifer Moses and her husband, Ron Beller, and Scott Mead, had so much cash they did not notice when an assistant, Joyti De-Laurey, stole more than £4m from their accounts."
In the case it also came out that Ron and Jennifer had spent £500,000 on her 40th birthday weekend in Italy. According to trial records, Mrs. Moses took trips with personal shoppers around Bergdorf Goodman, a high end exclusive department store in New York. Two house keepers and a firm of landscape gardeners looked after their home outside New York as they spent most of their time in London.
Political Aspirations
Jennifer Moses also had big political aspirations. She had become an education advisor to UK Labor Party Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Her job was to “fix” the crisis in the British school system with US capitalist enterprise schemes and enterprise social policies. She was one of the US Clintonite neo-liberals who wanted to give “tough love” to the poor and children. According to reports she was even so hardliner in cutting benefits that even labor party leader Tony Blair was put off according to reports. According to one of her supporters, Moses took a “strictly pragmatic view of education supporting city academies and private money in the state education” which was opposed by many Labour MPs. "Her view is very American," says one leading Lib-Dem who knows her. "It is that if you can solve a problem with private money, just get on with it. It would have shaken up the brethren around Gordonif she had joined the team." As an American with, according to colleagues, a "formidable intellect", it is understood the Prime Minister was convinced Moses, a libertarian with a social conscience, was the woman to help "get things done" and show that he was not relying on a what new rightwing Labour party officials called “old” labour.
She and her husband were also supporters of the private charter school in the UK called the ARK schools. ARK advertises itself as an American and British educational charity sponsored and run by a group of millionaire merchant bankers and currency speculators. According to the UK National Teachers of Union NUT although it adverstises itself as an operator of ‘non-selective inner city schools.' it is not.
“ARK,advertises itss a specialism in maths. It has been revealed that one proposal considered by ARK is to develop a maths curriculum and sell it "Doing Good" In California After Helping To Blow Up The World Economy? Beller & Moses : Indybay: