NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Conclusion

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s WisdomTree Investments-SEC Connection

Although NYU Trustee Steinhardt finally retired as Chairman of the “Birthright Israel” Foundation in June 2014, the Wall Street speculator for whom NYU’s school of “Culture, Education and Human Development” is named has apparently still been making a lot of money on Wall Street since the post-2008 endless global “Great Recession” began. As Forbes magazine noted in its Feb. 10, 2014 issue:

“Steinhardt is chairman of the board and, with a 14.7% stake worth some $330 million, the largest single stakeholder in WisdomTree Investments…created by Jonathan `Jono’ Steinberg, son of the late corporate raider Saul Steinberg…In absolute, non-inflation-adjusted figures, Steinhardt has made more from his WisdomTree investment than he did in 28 years of running a…hedge fund. At last count there were 30 American hedgies on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires, but it’s only after WisdomTree’s recent performance-added to his hold Wall Street stash and extensive art collection—that Steinhardt has, for the first time qualified himself.”

The same magazine also observed that “Arthur Levitt, who had been chairman of the SEC from 1993 to 2001, was brought on” the “board” of Steinhardt’s WisdomTree firm “to help grease the skids with regulators;” and “Levitt had just taken command of the SEC when Steinhardt paid the $70 million fine that helped drive him from the hedge fund business” in the mid-1990s.

Perhaps NYU Trustee Steinhardt should, in the interest of full disclosure, allow the students and faculty of NYU to examine his post-2008 tax returns to determine whether or not his required federal income tax payments have been reduced as a result of any tax-exempt “philanthropic” money contributions he has made in recent years to the “non-profit” NYU Administration? Or perhaps the NYU Administration should rename its school of “Culture, Education and Human Development,” the “NYU Capitalist Pig School of Culture, Education and Human Development” or the “NYU Plutocrat School of Culture, Education and Human Development?”

(end of article)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 11

NYU’s Land Grabbing Project and Steinhardt’s Cuomo Campaign Contribution

Coincidentally, besides being funded by a Wall Street speculator who has collaborated with an Israeli power elite that continues to gobble up and exploit Palestinian land in the West Bank for new settlements and Syrian land in the occupied Golan Heights for Genie Energy to exploit, the NYU Administration, itself, plans to continue to gobble up and exploit neighborhood land in Downtown Manhattan in a big way in the 21^st-century. As the Village Voice noted in a Feb. 20, 2013 article: 

“Some neighbors are still bitter about NYU's previous fits of expansion in the 1960s and again in the '90s; in both periods, the university earned its reputation as an insatiable beast swallowing entire neighborhoods. But the current proposal goes much, much further…Dubbed `NYU 2031,’" the plan calls for…new construction…in the two blocks bound on the south and north by Houston and 3rd streets and on the east and west by Mercer Street and LaGuardia Place. The construction would…entail the demolition of the historically significant 1959 Washington Square Village Garden…It would also renege on promises it made 50 years ago, when it built the existing residential towers, to not further crowd the area…”

Yet the Democratic Administration of former Democratic New York Governor Mario Cuomo—Andrew Cuomo—has apparently not been that eager to pass state legislation which would prohibit or block tax-exempt and “non-profit” NYU from gobbling up more land in New York state for private, institutional expansion purposes. Nor was New York Governor Cuomo II apparently that eager to criticize the militaristic, right-wing Netanyahu regime in Israel/Palestine for ordering an Israeli military attack on people in Gaza between July 7 and Aug. 26, 2014 that killed 1,662 Palestinian civilians, including 519 Palestinian children and 297 Palestinian women, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

One reason might be because NYU Trustee and “Birthright Israel” founder Steinhardt apparently made a big campaign contribution to Andrew Cuomo’s re-election campaign fund in 2014. As the New York Times observed in its July 15, 2014 issue, “Mr. Cuomo…drew individual donations from a variety of real estate, financial and entertainment elites, including $40,000 from Michael Steinhardt, a hedge fund expert…”

(end of part 11)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 10

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s Murdoch-Genie Energy-IEI-Golan Heights Connection

In 2010, NYU Trustee Steinhardt also joined the billionaire Australian global media baron whose News Corp. media conglomerate owns the right-wing Fox News network, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal  and many other mass media properties—Rupert Murdoch—as an investor and chairman of Israeli Data Technologies [IDT]/Genie Energy’s Israel Energy Initiatives [IEI[: a U.S.-based oil corporation that’s been seeking in recent years to profit from drilling for oil in Israel/Palestine and the Golan Heights region of Syria, that the Israeli military still illegally occupies. As Sarah Pavlus noted in a May 11, 2011 post on her “Conflict of Interest” Media Matters blog:

“Fox Business Network repeatedly promoted a controversial oil shale venture in Israel without disclosing that Rupert Murdoch -- the head of Fox's parent company -- is one of the project's most prominent investors.

“Last year, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch joined the `Strategic Advisory Board’ of Genie Energy, and purchased an equity stake in Genie Oil and Gas, which consists of Genie Energy's interests in oil shale initiatives on federal land in Western Colorado and in Israel's Elah Valley. Genie Energy -- which is a division of IDT Corporation, a global telecommunications company -- has attracted several other high-profile advisers and investors, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Lord Jacob Rothschild, and Michael Steinhardt, a prominent hedge fund investor…On three consecutive days last month, Fox Business promoted Genie Energy's project in Israel -- known as Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) -- yet never disclosed Murdoch's financial stake in it….”

Not surprisingly, however, opposition to Steinhardt and Murdoch’s Genie Energy/IEI planned oil shale drilling project in the Elah Valley of Israel/Palestine by environmental groups soon developed; and the Israeli Union for Environmental Defense was successful in getting the Jerusalem Regional Planning and Building Committee to block the Elah Valley oil shale drilling project in a Sept. 2, 2014 legal ruling. But ten days later the Northern Regional Planning and Building Committee of Israeli/Palestine authorized Steinhardt and Murdoch’s Genie Energy/IEI/Afek Oil Gas division to start drilling for oil in the Golan Heights region of Syria. As an Oct. 22, 2014 article in The Times of Israel noted:

“…On September 11, the Northern Regional Planning and Building Committee approved a project for exploratory drilling in the Golan Heights. The area approved is 396 square kilometers [33% of the 1,200 sq. km that make up the Golan Heights], starting in Katzrin and extending southward…The exploration program allows Afek to drill 10 wells in order to search for oil, which its experts believe exists in a conventional liquid form…Genie [the parent company of Afek] is also the parent company of Israel Energy Initiatives [IEI]…Genie Energy…has some heavyweight investors. Former US vice president Dick Cheney, Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Rupert Murdoch are all reportedly connected to the company. It also has connections within the Israeli political establishment: The chairman of Genie Israel is Effie Eitam…who…served as the minister of national infrastructures in 2002-2003….”

Yet according to the same article, environmental activists in Israel/Palestine “contend that even a small amount of oil seeping into the underground water table” from Steinhardt and Murdoch’s Genie Energy/IEI/Afek Oil Gas division project in the illegally occupied Golan Heights region of Syria “could eventually reach the Sea of Galilee—actually a lake—and make” Israel/Palestine’s “largest freshwater reservoir undrinkable…”

(end of part 10)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 9

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s Historic Price-Fixing Case Connection

Coincidentally, in the year before Clinton defeated Republican President Bush I in the 1992 presidential election, the Republican Bush Administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] apparently began looking into allegations that Steinhardt’s investment firm and billionaire speculator-turned “philanthropist” George Soros’ investment firm were involved in the white-collar crime of price-fixing. As Steinhardt noted in his 2001 No Bull book:

“…In June 1991, the government began investigating price fixing or collusion at auctions. It was alleged that Salomon and three key clients—Tiger Management (run by Julian Robertson), Quantum Fund (run by George Soros) and the Steinhardt funds—had colluded to manipulate the market in two-year Treasury notes in the April and May auctions…In time, the SEC issued subpoenas to key people at…Steinhardt. Eventually a large group of small investors filed a number of class-action civil suits…against…Steinhardt. They alleged that…we had colluded…causing them to lose millions…We ended up paying the SEC and Justice Department civil fines. All in all, we at Steinhardt paid fines and fees totaling more than $70 million…I paid 75 percent of the fines…”

(end of part 9)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 8

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s Historic Bill Clinton-DLC Connection

Although Steinhardt supported right-wing Republican presidential candidates like Barry Goldwater during the 1960s, in the mid-1980s’ he “got seriously involved in the…Democratic Leadership Council” [DLC] that promoted former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, according to No Bull. As Wall Street speculator Steinhardt recalled in the same 2001 autobiography:

“…The phrase `moderate Democrat,’ `centrist Democrat,’ and `new Democrat’ all evolved from the DLC. I soon became, by far, the DLC’s largest financial contributor, donating a minimum of $250,000 per year for nearly 10 years. Early on, I became its legal chairman…I also became chairman of the DLC’s think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute…The Board of Trustees of the DLC held regular meetings in Washington, D.C. which I chaired…”

“I met Bill Clinton for the first time in my apartment…Not too long after that first meeting, Clinton began calling me from time to time, late in the evening…We would talk about contemporary issues impacting either the Democratic Party or the DLC…”

(end of part 8)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 7

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s Historic NYU-Larry Tisch Connection

In his 2001 No Bull book, Steinhardt also described the historical business connections that his Wall Street speculation hedge fund firms have historically had with tax-exempt and “non-profit” universities like NYU and with the now-deceased former NYU board of trustees chairman Larry Tisch:

“…Larry Tisch…had been one of the original investors in Steinhardt Partners…He agreed to commit some pension fund money from two companies that he controlled: Loew’s Corporation and Lorillard. In addition, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees at New York University, he agreed to invest some of the school’s endowment with us…In large part because of Larry’s support, we launched Institutional Partners, LP, with $12 million…In time, we attracted an elite group of blue-chip investors: the World Bank, Carnegie Corporation, Yale University, Duke University, University of Minnesota…Within 2 years, the fund was about $100 million. Eventually, it grew to over $1 billion…Allocating to hedge funds is a common practice for endowments and foundations…”

Coincidentally, as Christopher Winians noted in his book The King of Cash: The Inside Story of Laurence Tisch, the “investment formula” of the former NYU Board of Trustees chairman--who apparently used “tax-exempt” NYU’s endowment money to provide some Wall Street speculation money for Steinhardt’s for-profit hedge fund firm--was to “exploit hidden tax benefits;” and after former NYU Board of Trustees Chairman Tisch’s Loew’s Corporation purchased its Lorillard tobacco industry subsidiary in 1968, “Loew’s would come to depend heavily on the cigarette business for much of its earnings.”

(end of part 7)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 6

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s `Birthright Israel’ Connection

Steinhardt also revealed in his 2001 autobiography other ways in which he has apparently historically collaborated with the militaristic Israeli establishment that has historically violated Palestinian human rights:

“…I also set up the Steinhardt Family Foundation in Jerusalem…I have derived the most satisfaction from my most ambitious…project `Birthright Israel…’ In the spring of 1997…I ran into Charles Bronfman…whose family controlled The Seagram Company…We agreed to each put up $5 million to start developing an organization called `Birthright Israel.’,,,

“By the summer of 1998, we had developed a plan that would fund `Birthright Israel.’ In Jerusalem,…Benjamin Netanyahu announced he would commit $20 million a year to the project…In addition, Charles and I would raise another $20 million a year on our own…Starting Jan. 1, 2000, 15,000 college-aged Jews would be brought to Israel…In 1999, Charles and I each wrote a check for $9 million…The kids…met Israeli politicians…A number of them took Jeep trips…through the Golan Heights…After seeing the topography…they were absolutely opposed to giving up the Golan Heights in any peace negotiations…”

According to a July 4, 2011 article by Kiera Feldman (no relation to this writer)  in The Nation  magazine, between 1999 and 2011 Steinhardt’s “Birthright Israel…spent almost $600 million to send more than 260,000 young diaspora Jews on free vacations” to Israel. The same article also noted that by 2011, “far-right Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson” was “the largest individual donor, having given Birthright $100 million over the” previous “five years,” while “the Israeli government provided Birthright $100 million during the program’s first decade; and in 2011 Israeli “Prime Minister Netanyahu…announced another $100 million in” Israeli “government funding” for NYU Administration funder Steinhardt’s project.

One reason the militaristic Netanyahu government was so eager to spend $100 million more to fund Steinhardt’s Birthright Israel project in 2011 was perhaps because “after the 2006 Lebanon war, Brandeis researchers found that Birthright alumni were more likely than other young American Jews to view Israel’s military conduct as justified,” according to The Nation magazine article. The same article also described Birthright Israel’s 2000 to 2011 U.S.-based funders in the following way:

“…Most of them just happen to share hawkish Israel politics. In 1998, during his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu gave the initial guarantee of Israeli government funding. By 2000…at least eight funders were trustees of AIPAC’s think-tank spinoff, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy—including Steinhardt and Bronfman. Casino magnate Adelson…once…broke with AIPAC—for not being conservative enough. Other notables: oil billionaire Lynn Schusterman,…thirty-five-year AIPAC veteran and the purse for many `pro-Israel’ youth initiatives such as the Israel on Campus Coalition,…; diamond baron and settlement construction impresario Lev Leviev; Slim-Fast billionaire 
S. Daniel Abraham, a member of the AIPAC board; and neoconservative philanthropist Roger Hertog, emeritus chair of the Manhattan Institute. Then there’s [now-deceased] donor Marc Rich, a founding Birthright board member, the billionaire oil trader controversially pardoned by President Clinton; throughout his business dealings, Rich gathered intelligence for the Mossad.

“Several Birthright donors, including family foundations operated by the Gottesmans, Grinspoons, Steinhardts and Schustermans, have also financially supported illegal Jewish settlements…”

But in an Apr. 29, 2013 article that was posted on The Electronic Intifada website, three non-Israeli Jews who launched the website Renounce Birthright called for an end to Steinhardt’s Birthright Israel program, because it is “based on the belief that Jews have a right to settle in modern-day Israel, to the exclusion of the indigenous Palestinians” and “operates under the premise that all Jewish people have an exclusive `right’ to Palestinian land;” while “a Palestinian refugee population of nearly 7 million people is to this day excluded from returning to their lands by Israeli state discrimination.”

As a late September 2014 press release of the Loyola University Chicago Students for Justice in Palestine [SJP] chapter—that was issued after 15 Palestinian students lined up on Sept. 9, 2014 at a Birthright Israel table on Loyola University’s campus and asked if they, as Palestinians whose families were expelled from villages inside present-day Israel, could also register for a Birthright trip—also observed:

 “…Birthright Israel is an Israeli government-funded program that sponsors free trips to Israel exclusively for Jewish students…Any Jewish student worldwide can register for the program, while indigenous non-Jewish Palestinians are not only ineligible for the program, but often are denied the right to live in or even visit their homeland freely.”

(end of part 6)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 5

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s Israeli Investments

In 1979, Steinhardt apparently began to invest his money more heavily in an Israeli society whose military violated the human rights of Palestinians. As he recalled in No Bull:

“In 1979…I went into partnership with an Israeli businessman, Lehu Veisser. We constructed industrial parks in…towns, including Kiryaf Gat, Natirot, Schderet, and Ofakim, that had been built near the southern border of Israel primarily for strategic purposes…I met Shimon Topor, who eventually became a partner of mine. He became my guide to all subsequent investments made in Israel, some of which have been substantial…”

Before becoming a business partner of Steinhardt, Shimon Topor, was, coincidentally, the Israel Continental Bank’s Chairman and CEO and managed the international operations of Israel’s Bank Hapoalim.

Given NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s “substantial” investments in Israel’s corporate-oriented economy, in 1990, not surprisingly, Steinhardt also “held a meeting of leading Israeli economic figures at” his “home” that “included the senior members of the” Israeli “Ministry of Finance, including then Finance Minister Berga Shohat, as well as the” Israeli “Ambassador to the United States.., Lester Crown, CEO of General Dynamics; Leonard Garment, a former…adviser to President Nixon; and…Richard Ravitch, former head of the Metropolitan Transit Authority…to discuss the development of new infrastructure programs for Israel,” according to No Bull.

(end of part 5)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 4

NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s Vietnam War Era Hedge Fund Firm

NYU Trustee Steinhardt apparently made a lot of money during the Vietnam War Era after he, Howard Berkowitz and Jerold Fine established a Wall Street private investment/hedge fund firm they named Steinhardt, Fine and Berkowitz & Company in July 1967. In his 2001 book, No Bull, Steinhardt indicated how his partnership of Wall Street hedge fund speculators apparently made its profits during the Vietnam War Era:

“…Hedge funds generally charge a management fee of 1 percent to cover overhead and expenses, plus a percentage of the profits [of their clients’]—in our case and conventionally, 20 percent…By the end of fiscal 1969 [during the Vietnam War Era], Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Company, had almost $30 million in capital…In 2 short years, still in our late twenties, Jerry and I had become millionaires…Our biggest success came with King Resources, a company whose story was vast oil and gas discoveries…We made about 5 times our money in a few months…Because I was at the center of…trading information, I gained a competitive advantage…We were often accused of `running ahead’—trading on the knowledge of buyers and sellers that the block traders provided…In 1969, a trader needed to sell 700,000 shares of Penn Central, a large railroad…I bought 700,000 shares at 7…I turned around and sold the 700,000 shares at 7 ¾ to a buyer at another firm…I made more than a half million dollars on a trade that took all of 8 minutes…Marc Rich…became an investor and then a good friend of mine…”

Coincidentally, a Mar. 9, 2001 article by Josey Ballenger, titled “Marc Rich inquiry highlights strange bedfellows,” on the Center for Public Integrity’s website contains the following reference to NYU Trustee Steinhardt’s “good friend,” Marc Rich (who died in 2013):

“Buried in the furor over former President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich is the role the fugitive commodities trader played in supplying oil to South Africa's apartheid government, in violation of international sanctions against the racist regime…The billionaire Rich, who fled to Switzerland in 1983 to escape tax evasion and other U.S. criminal charges, was South Africa’s biggest supplier of oil (and traded other commodities with the pariah country), contravening U.S., European Community and OPEC embargoes and amassing millions of dollars… Rich headed the list of oil suppliers to South Africa, according to the Shipping Research Bureau, an Amsterdam-based watchdog that monitored sanctions-busting commodities trading from 1980 to 1993…An apartheid-era official from the Strategic Fuel Fund—South Africa’s oil procurement agency—confirmed in a recent interview that the former government traded directly with Rich, sometimes through front companies. The SFF considered Rich to be its most reliable supplier during the boycott, said the official, who asked not to be named.

“Rich was indicted in 1983 on more than 50 counts of tax evasion, fraud, racketeering and trading with the enemy. The Justice Department charged that he evaded more than $48 million in taxes (the largest tax fraud case in U.S. history)…Rich’s companies paid $200 million in criminal fines and penalties in 1984 in connection with the case, but he was not tried as an individual.”

(end of part 4)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 3

Sol Frank Steinhardt and Michael Steinhardt’s Historic Business Relationships

Much of the money that Steinhardt used when he first began his speculation activity on Wall Street during the early 1960s was money that his father, Sol Frank Steinhardt, apparently gave him. As Michael Steinhardt recalled in No Bull:

“…My father began loaning me money to start investing. Before long, I had a stock portfolio worth $200,000, a substantial sum of money for a 20-year-old in the early 1960s…He would give me, say, $10,000, all in $100 bills (in early 1960s-valued money)…I never asked where the money came from. I simply took the money…to begin investing for him. Occasionally, he would come up with more than $10,000. Once, he handed me a substantially larger amount, which I stuffed in my pockets….It heightened my consciousness to be carrying stacks and stacks of $100 bills through the streets and subways of the city…Investing my father’s money allowed me to invest in the stock market without feeling undue pressure…”

Coincidentally, only a few years before the father of NYU Trustee Steinhardt, Sol Frank Steinhardt, began handing his son a lot of cash in envelopes to “invest,” Sol Frank Steinhardt apparently was accused of enriching himself illegally by then-Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan’s office. As Michael Steinhardt noted in No Bull:

“…My father became a gambler of some repute as an adult. His friends and his business activities, along with his gambling, drew the attention of various state and federal authorities…He paid for everything with cash…He did not keep business records nor seriously prepare a tax return until the federal government finally discovered this oversight…He knew Meyer Lansky, the…mobster, and right up until the time of my father’s death, he remained close to Lansky’s partner, Jimmy Aiello--`Jimmy Blue Eyes,’ as his friends called him. I met Jimmy on several occasions; he and my father saw each other at least a couple of times a year…Plenty of rather shady characters were in my father’s circles. When Joey Anastasia, another acquaintance, was shot in the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel, the police picked up my father for questioning. The two of them had apparently been out gambling together the night before Anastasia was killed…

“My father’s gold-buying during the war [World War II] became the defining opportunity of his life and led him into the jewelry business. He became a fixture on Forty-Seventh Street, in the `Diamond District’ of Manhattan, where cash was often the primary medium of exchange…Everybody in the jewelry district knew him…I even heard him referred to as the `jeweler to the mob.’…During my time at Penn, my father was arrested…In 1958, Frank Hogan, the District Attorney of Manhattan, arrested my father and announced publicly that he had apprehended the biggest jewel fence in America, Sol Frank Steinhardt…My father was found guilty on two felony counts and sentenced to prison. For each count, he received 5 to 10 years, to be served consecutively, not concurrently…I hired a lawyer who taught at Brooklyn Law School. He won a second appeal for my father…The court agreed to release my father on the basis of time served (almost 2 years), if my father accepted the felony charge. He did.

“At the time, I believed, totally, in my father’s innocence…Over time, I have come to have a different opinion…He had certainly engaged in purchasing stolen jewelry at various times in his life…He did engage in illegal activities…”

(end of part 3)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 2

Most anti-war, anti-corporate and environmental activists and students on the Lower East Side and in other New York City neighborhoods don’t think that a New York City university school of “Culture, Education and Human Development” should be named in honor of a billionaire hedge fund operator—who apparently made his fortune by speculating in the institutionally racist, sexist and classist Wall Street business world of the late 20^th century.

Nor do most folks outside the United States think that a U.S. university school of “Culture, Education and Human Development” should be named in honor of a U.S. billionaire who has apparently collaborated since the 1990s with a militaristic Israeli power structure that denies Palestinians their human rights; and who, in recent years, has involved himself in an oil corporation that apparently has both threatened the ecology of Israel/Palestine and seeks to make big money from drilling for oil in the Golan Heights region of Syria, which the Israeli military continues to illegally occupy.

Yet since 2001 the name of New York University [NYU]’s school of education division has been linked to an NYU trustee named Michael Steinhardt in some way; and in 2014 this division—in which nearly 6,000 students are enrolled—still operates under the name of “NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.”

One reason might be because the administration of tax-exempt and “non-profit” NYU has apparently been receiving millions of tax-exempt dollars from Michael Steinhardt since 2001. As a Dec. 23, 2006 press release that’s posted on NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development’s website noted:

“New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education has received a $10 million gift from Wall Street financier Michael Steinhardt... and his wife, Judy, a Trustee of the NYU Institute of Fine Arts…The donation matches their $10 million gift in 2001, when the school was named in honor of the Steinhardts. The combined $20 million is the largest gift in the history of the school…In March 2007, the Steinhardt School of Education will be changing its name to the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development…”

And, coincidentally, another $5 million was received by the NYU Institute of Fine Arts—on whose board of trustees sits Judy Steinhardt—from the Steinhardts in 2013.

In his 2001 autobiography, No Bull: My Life In And Out of Markets, NYU Trustee Steinhardt indicated how he obtained his personal wealth from being a Wall Street speculator who apparently has profited from U.S. capitalist economic recessions historically:

“Much of my life’s focus has been on my performance as a hedge fund manager…Since the age of 13, stocks have held a magical fascination for me…I started buying bonds on the premise that the economy would weaken faster…In the early 1980s, I managed about $75 million in my two hedge funds—the flagship Steinhardt Partners, LP, and an off-shore fund, SP International…We invested $50 million of the funds’ cash and borrowed another $200 million to buy a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of intermediate 10-year Treasury bonds…Bond bulls—investors like myself—hoped that the money supply would stop growing. This would indicate that the economy was slowing down and possibly heading into recession, good news for bondholders…Our bond investment of $250 million, on $50 million of equity capital and the rest borrowed, made a profit of $40 million…”

(end of part 2)

NYU's Michael Steinhardt, Wall Street and Golan Heights Oil Connection: Part 1

“…Hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion in 2012. He is known to be the founder of the hedge fund company, Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz and Co. He acquired most of his net worth from his diverse business investments as well as from serving as the Chairman of IDT Corporation and Wisdom Tree…In 2010, he started working for Israel Energy Initiatives Ltd (IEI) as the Chairman of the Board….”

--from The Richest.com website

“Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) announced in March 2011 a project to transform shale into oil...If it proceeds, the shale oil extraction in Israel project could permanently alter the…atmospheric climate of the Middle East… Along for the ride on this venture are media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former US vice-president Dick Cheney, along with many other notables…IEI's planned operations in the Elah Valley include digging five kilometers of trenches through farms and vineyards to expose the shale rock, which would then be heated…If carried out as planned, IEI’s project would constitute one of the least energy efficient forms of oil production ever devised…Heating the shale…could release at least 15 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. No other extraction process…is…as carbon intensive. This carbon release takes place even before refining, let alone consumption…”

--Macdonald Stainsby in the Nov. 30, 2011 issue of The Dominion

“New York University will celebrate the naming of the School of Education in honor of Michael and Judy Steinhardt...The Steinhardts’ $10 million gift, the largest in the school’s history, will create an endowment…The school will be named The Steinhardt School of Education…[then-NYU President] Oliva said: `Our New York University community is enormously proud that our School of Education will bear the name of Michael and Judy Steinhardt…’…A former Wall Street financier, Mr. Steinhardt is a member of the NYU Board of Trustees, chairman of the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University…Mrs. Steinhardt is a Trustee of the NYU Institute of Fine Arts and co-chair of the American Friends of Israel Museum…”

--from a Mar. 26, 2001 press release of NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development

“In 1991 the SEC began investigating four hedge fund managers–Steinhardt, Soros, Robertson and Bruce Kovner–for colluding with Salomon Brothers to corner the market in two-year Treasury bills. Robertson and Soros were eventually dropped from the investigation, but in 1994 Steinhardt, Kovner and Salomon agreed to pay to settle the allegations. Salomon coughed up $290 million–then the second-largest fine in Wall Street history–while Steinhardt Partners paid $70 million, 75% of it coming out of Michael’s personal pockets…”

--from a Feb. 10, 2014 Forbes magazine article