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What's your take on Ken Langone?
He has the looks of a man I'd be into. Plus he's a billionaire. Now I'm not saying that's the reason I'd date/fuck him. It's just a benefit.
Also, he looks like a dominate, filthy in bed.
Now that's a reason I'd date/fuck him.
What Is Just
Ken Langone is an American capitalist, and now memoirist.
Ken Langone fancies himself a good guy. In fact, everyone fancies him a good guy, if his memoir, “I Love Capitalism! An American Story” is to be believed. Every interaction has the other person singing his praises, which must be an odd way to go through life, with every conversation consisting of compliments in one direction. From the college professor who saw through his horrible grasp of language into his prodigious understanding of capitalism, to Bernie Madoff attempting a grift, Langone is consistently praised by others. Perhaps this is why he thinks so highly of himself, but I’m sure a little of it is on his own ego.
My problem with Langone isn’t just that he comes off horribly in his own memoir, it’s that he claims Catholicism in his rise to the top of the richest people on earth.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to read this book. My grandmother got it for me for my birthday, and sent it to me in the mail with a note that said,
“When I saw this book advertised I thought of you - I think I got Capitalism and Socialism mixed up! However - it is always a good idea to know more. Let me know what you think of Langone. As a man - as a Catholic, I like what Cardinal Dolan has to say on the back cover. Maybe you could do a review…”
Grandma was definitely right - it is a good idea to know more, and I learned more than I ever thought I could from this guy.
And I learned that Cardinal Dolan should beg the publisher to remove his name from the book.
On full display here is the egotism that fuels the top “earners’” accumulation of wealth. But also on full display is the cognitive dissonance that any self-professed religious man has to have in order to live like Langone does.
It’s strange that Langone doesn’t try to mask his love of money. He admits that he just loves making it. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, he just loves the money. As a kid, “As long as I had that money in my pocket I was okay.” “I knew damn well I didn’t want to be poor, I wanted to be rich.” He doesn’t say things about liking the things money can buy him, or the security he felt with having a lot of it, just that he loves money, it was that simple.
To that end his first grift was selling wreaths door to door at a profit, while paying his employees (other 11 year olds) a tuppence. Then in college he sold neckties and stationary to freshman even knowing they would never use the paper. Then he became the campus rep for Winston cigarettes, which along with a monthly salary, came free cigarettes that he sold instead of giving away. He didn’t care about the ethics of his actions. He was taking advantage of these guys, and offers the meager statement, “I guess you might say I was being exploitative.” Note that this is not him admitting to exploitation, just getting ahead of the accusations by saying you might think that. He never would.
Langone consistently tries to shield himself from such accusations. Once he’s making huge deals on stock he says that he lets his clients choose his commission rate, so he doesn’t have to appear greedy by demanding a huge sum. But of course he gets huge sums, because he was dealing in a greedy, excessive industry; he tries to treat the money as incidental, just something that comes with the territory. This is at odds to his grandstanding about buying a jet, and moving to the nice neighborhood, and buying more houses, and traveling to Europe whenever he wants, and having a driver, and never worrying about how much he spends on everything. And he might not worry about how much he spends, but he sure remembers and mentions how much everything he bought cost. And he finds ways to shoehorn in just how much he’s donated to various causes. And while charity is great, let’s marvel at this quote: “It was then and there that I decided to give $100 million, anonymously, to NYU Medical Center.” He should try harder to be anonymous.
I don’t know where else to put this, and I know that Langone is from another era, but he feels the need to point out whenever someone in the book is black (and they are almost never black) or Jewish, and often makes crude racial statements, especially about Jews.
I’m also not going to touch his thoughts on socialism or economic progress because it is clear he doesn’t understand these topics well at all. He says that “I do know that nobody can live on $20,000 a year,” but then opposes a raise of the minimum wage, so there’s nothing really to be said here other than he doesn’t actually care about poor people. His whole schtick is that since capitalism worked for him it can work for anybody, even though all the things he says oppose this idea.
Let’s move to the Catholic bit.
Langone retells the parable of the workers in the vineyard, where the laborer hired in the morning, and the laborer hired in the afternoon receive the same wage. When the landowner explains himself (Langone calls him the “farmer”, a subconscious attempt to connect a landlord to the idyllic American ideal of a farmer? A common person?), Langone hears, “am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?” But fails to read the very next line: “Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Here is Langone’s analysis:
“The first guy bitches. The farmer says, “Hey I didn’t take anything away from you. It’s my money.” That’s the essence of capitalism. It’s investing, and people are always your best investment.”
This is such a self serving, selective reading, and it seems to be emblematic of his relationship with religion. What he looks for in religion is the same thing he looks for in other people: confirmation that he is doing the right thing. That him chasing money is a good and worthwhile thing to do. He even brings up the camel passing through the eye of the needle, but uses his charitable giving as a way to dodge the ramifications. Rather than follow the biblical gospel he chooses the gospel according to Warren Buffett, and mentions how he’s given away more than half of his net worth already, but, “as much as we give, it keeps coming back: we’ve made back all the money we’ve given away, and more.”
And yet, he claims that he has sacrificed to donate his money. “My firm belief about donating money is that if you’re not sacrificing something, you’re not being truly philanthropic. Add up everything I own - the plane, the houses, the cars - and even all the yearly maintenance, the sum comes to about one-third of the total amount of money that we’ve given away.” In Ken Langone’s mind, he is sacrificing by only having one jet instead of three, four houses instead of twelve. This is the logic of a lunatic. This is the logic of someone so perverted by money, so disconnected to the reality of 99% of the world, that he sees only having one personal jet as a sacrifice. All it took to corrupt him was the whole world.
Another passage:
“Should I follow the bible? I’ll be honest: I’m not giving everything away. Why? Because I love this life! I love having nice houses and good people to help me. I love getting on my airplane instead of having to take my shoes off and wait in line to take a commercial flight. You want to accuse me of living well? I plead guilty. I envy people who aren’t as motivated by material things as I am. … If that’s greed, let the chips fall where they may. As I said, I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better."
After reading this book it is obvious that Langone was never actually poor, and that he can only think he was poor because now he has $3.4 billion so his views are distorted. And passages like this show that he truly does not empathize with actual poor people, or maybe he would be willing to give up his luxuries. It’s clear that he knows he is greedy, but is proud of this greed, because in his mind anyone would choose his life, so he is justified in choosing it also.
In one passage meant to make him seem magnanimous, Langone recounts how he found out South American textile workers for one of his corporations were only making the equivalent of $4,000 per year, and on the spot he gave them all a raise to $5,200. This is the tragic comic of a man not only missing the forest for the trees, but only seeing the tree when he walked straight into it. This anecdote shows how Langone, by doing nothing of real substance other than taking a tiny, tiny part of his profit and returning it to the workers, feels like a world class guy. With one stroke of his pen he changed the lives of 180 people. Rather than seeing him as a benevolent boss, though, we should see him as a ruthless oppressor. Who gave these people such poor wages in the first place? Maybe not Langone, but someone just like him. And Langone has the power to make systemic changes, but does not, because that would eat too far into his profits. He’s okay with $8 million instead of 9, but he would not be happy with the workers getting their fair share, which is to say all of it.
My grandmother was right, I did learn a lot from reading this book. Perhaps the best part of me reading this book is that I get to recommend that no one else ever does. This is a vanity project. This is Langone navel gazing and loving what he sees. Unknowingly, this is him showing how the rich and powerful think, the inner workings of the psychotic mind that acts only for profit, without care to where it comes from.
You might think I’m being unfair, and that Langone deserves to enjoy himself, that he worked hard for his money. I just don’t think that’s the case. Langone made his money by aiding private companies with their IPOs. While doing this he consistently pushed the founders of companies out of their own businesses to put leadership in place that would serve the shareholders, leaders who would put stock price ahead of the businesses’ products and services. He even did this with the business he helped “co-found”, Home Depot. He forced the founding CEO out in favor of someone he liked better. He fostered a business community that was bad for consumers and workers. And he did it all so he and his friends could make money. Ken Langone is a disgusting portrait of the excesses of the American financial world.
Langone, not just as a rich and powerful man, but as a plain human, needs to be held to a higher standard, the same standard as the rest of us. All of the opportunities that Langone had to be a force for good that were lost because he only thought of himself should be his greatest regrets. But he appears to have none. This matters because the highest standard of all is waiting in the afterlife, and Langone seems to be heading toward utter failure for the first time.
This is a depressing review, because the subject truly is depressing.
Maybe to end this I should say something nice about him. To his credit, Langone does give a lot of money away. But after reading this book, perhaps he should take another shot at being an anonymous donor.
Home Depot co-founder to Robert Mueller: 'Come out and SAY what you've got'
Home Depot co-founder to Robert Mueller: ‘Come out and SAY what you’ve got’
(National Sentinel) Put up or shut up: The co-founder of the Home Depot retail franchise issued an open challenge to special counsel Robert Mueller in defense of POTUS Donald Trump on Wednesday: Show the country the proof that he ‘colluded’ with Russia or otherwise committed obstruction of justice in firing leaker James Comey.
In an interview with Fox Business‘ Neil Cavuto, Ken Langone said…
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Research for Episode 21 - Ken Langone
Soundcloud: Episode 21 - Ken Langone
Most research came from Ken’s new book “I Love Capitalism.” Please do not buy it as Ken Langone is worth $3.4 billion dollars.
Ken Langone has been a big fundraiser for Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and for Karl Rove’s Super PAC among others
He has praised New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, which isn’t shocking as no state gives more in subsidies to Home Depot than New York State.
Partial transcript of Home Depot’s anti-union propaganda video that was mandatory viewing for employees. The video itself has been pulled from most streaming sites but please reach out to our twitter inbox if you know where it can be found.
His role is the massive over-payment of Dick Grasso, then CEO of the then non-profit New York Stock Exchange.
Roger Stone has allegedly stated that Ken Langone hired him to dig up dirt on Eliot Spitzer due to the above lawsuit Spitzer brought against Langone.
Langone all but admitted to CNBC that he paid private detectives to follow Spitzer
One of several Splinter pieces on the grinding, miserable conditions low paid Home Depot employees are made to work under.
Capitalism has a moral imperative to bring more people to the party. ~ Ken Lagone
Remember when Home Depot CEO Ken Langone campaigned against the Affordable Care Act? It was because he doesn't care about people, let alone his own employees.
New video posted on: https://dailyvideovault.com/business-icon-ken-langone-on-new-memoir-i-love-capitalism-an-american-story/
Business icon Ken Langone on new memoir "I Love Capitalism! An American Story"
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner hobnob in Sun Valley with Apple's Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, and other tech and media elite
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner hobnob in Sun Valley with Apple’s Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, and other tech and media elite
“As turmoil brews back at the White House, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump jetted out of Washington Wednesday, escaping the heat — literally and figuratively — to attend the annual Sun Valley, Idaho, summit of media, tech and finance moguls, put on by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen,” Kate Bennett reports for CNN.
“The conference, an invite-only affair held for one week each summer…
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