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?”

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