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‘Keynes found the emergent form of what he called “the money motive” repulsive, and hoped for an end to “many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues…. [T]he love of money as a possession [has become the goal] — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life. [This behavior] will [someday] be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”’

Yeshiva University’s most honored benefactor (now that Bernard Madoff is no more) doesn’t just loot his polluting businesses to build the largest private home in America for himself; he also funds Israeli settlers. It has been a privilege, over many years, to follow the morbid disgusting ways of one of America’s great money obsessives, and to note the proud smiling faces of the many academics here and abroad who carry the Ira Rennert name throughout their careers. Nothing he does – tax fraud, stealing pensions, destroying his neighbors’ lives this way and that – seems to shame any of them.

UD has been sitting tight, awaiting the latest Rennert … distastefulness … but it looks as though one of her favorite pursuits may be over. The dude’s been out of the news for awhile, and has recently turned 89, and his current thoughts must certainly revolve around how to fuck the world over postmortem. Maledizione!!

Ira Rennert has aired his world-hatred with a scope and depth available only to the screechingly rich; how to keep screeching that hatred from the quiet of the tomb?

The directives in his will are clear to anyone who, like UD, has made a fetish of the man: Above his vast sepulchre on the grounds of his house, his Sikorsky helicopter must circle eternally in a memorial riot of noise that will deafen and defeat all of the Sagaponack neighbors who have been praying for his death. When the Sikorsky runs out of gas, his other copter will replace it until its fuel tank refills.

Margaret Soltan, April 18, 2024 11:19AM
Posted in: forms of religious experience

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4 Responses to “‘Keynes found the emergent form of what he called “the money motive” repulsive, and hoped for an end to “many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues…. [T]he love of money as a possession [has become the goal] — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life. [This behavior] will [someday] be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”’”

  1. Rita Says:
    April 18th, 2024 at 9:41PM

    From same Keynes essay: “Perhaps it is not an accident that the race which did most to bring the promise of immortality into the heart and essence of our religions has also done most for the principle of compound interest and particularly loves this most purposive of human institutions.”
    Hm, wonder which race Keynes is referring to here…

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:
    April 18th, 2024 at 10:35PM

    Rita: Didn’t think you were into cancel culture. Because Keynes said unpleasant things about Jews (though what the Jews have to do with immortality isn’t clear; that’s a Christian thing) we’re not allowed to bring his attack on money-pathology into discussions of people like Ira Rennert?

    Now, I am not sure all of this is an argument against his ideas. (There are good arguments against his ideas, but ad hominems are always weak tea, as I imagine Keynes saying).

  3. Rita Says:
    April 18th, 2024 at 11:00PM

    I like this essay and teach it frequently; I’m not about to cancel Keynes. I just thought it was ironic that the guy you’re going after is who, in a moment of quite overt anti-Semitism, Keynes blames for making otherwise virtuous Gentiles into base, “purposive” money-mongers. (I think the ascription of immortality just arises from the Jewish view of the soul, which Christianity does elaborate in much greater detail but could still plausibly be said to originate in Judaism.) It’s also a bonkers claim in itself – “purposiveness” is not amenable to being overcome bc its source is not resource scarcity (to be rectified by 2030, Keynes blithely predicts), but human mortality, which is neither caused by the Jews nor rectifiable by any date.

  4. Margaret Soltan Says:
    April 18th, 2024 at 11:23PM

    That a nut like Rennert – or his Christian equivalent, Donald Trump – could somehow inspire ordinarily pretty ethical people of whatever religious background to make him a role model, is always a danger. At its very worst American capitalism produces monsters like these, and Keynes was an important voice in warning us about them. Many, many social commentators have come along since to issue a similar warning, but few have Keynes’s fire.

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