FTX chief "played DC like a fiddle"

If you’re reading this, you likely long ago gave up the sense that political ideology is a useful tool for sorting out the world’s good human beings from the bad ones. We may be much more likely to see the world from the political right, but we’ve likely all run into our own share of Republican jerks, insufferably self-righteous or preachy conservatives, libertarians who are unexpectedly pushy in their personal lives, likeable or even lovable Democrats, and well-meaning, big-hearted liberals who . . . just don’t like thinking about how their ideas don’t work out the way they hoped. And of course, we’ve run into lovable conservatives, as well as some liberals whom we would love to put on a rocket ship and blast into the sun. That’s just the way life is; people will surprise you, in good ways and bad.

Alas, a lot of people in this world do use politics as a shorthand for working out who’s good and who’s worth trusting. A few days ago, this newsletter looked at the epic downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried and his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. As with Bernie Madoff, Enron, and Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, people are asking, “How could so many people be fooled?” In retrospect, the fraud and the con look so obvious, so how did otherwise smart people think it was a good idea to trust Sam Bankman-Fried with so much of their hard-earned money?

This morning, two publications offer a more in-depth look at how Bankman-Fried won friends and influenced people, although maybe it’s more accurate to say he bought friends and influenced people. Vice writes that Bankman-Fried “created the new playbook for manipulating Washington, D.C.”