America Was Always a Business (With a Democratic Appendix)
Let’s dismantle the myth of the "selfless public servant." From the tobacco fields of Virginia to the algorithmic volatility of modern crypto markets, the U.S. presidency has always functioned as the ultimate vehicle for capital accumulation, family enrichment, and influence peddling.
Modern politicians didn't invent corruption; they just traded slave labor and railroad monopolies for corporate speaking fees, Netflix deals, and offshore trusts.
🪵 The Agrar-Oligarchy (1789–1861)
The Business Model: Unpaid slave labor, aggressive land speculation, and direct state-funded wealth.
🏛️ George Washington (1st): Entered office with a modern-equivalent net worth of $580+ Million. His salary alone consumed nearly 2% of the entire U.S. federal budget.
🧑🤝🧑 The Family Network: His wife, Martha Custis, brought massive wealth into the marriage, which was later used by his step-grandchildren and nephews to build regional agricultural monopolies.
The Business Model: Unpaid slave labor, macro-tariff manipulation, and balancing massive debts to British merchants via human collateral.
🩸 Thomas Jefferson (3rd) – The British Debt & Slave Machine: Jefferson owned over 600 enslaved people during his lifetime—the most of any U.S. president. His entire lifestyle was funded by a massive contradiction. In 1773, through his wife Martha, he inherited 11,000 acres of land, 135 slaves, and a staggering debt of £4,000 to British merchants.
⛓️ Human Collateral: Jefferson was caught in a lifelong financial trap. He could not free his slaves because they, along with his land, served as direct financial collateral for his skyrocketing debts to British creditors. Between 1785 and 1795 alone, he sold 70 enslaved human beings just to pay off the accumulated interest to the British. When he died in 1826, he left a debt of $107,000 (millions today). To settle his debts with creditors, his family held a brutal estate auction at Monticello, selling 130 valuable slaves on the auction block, tearing families apart forever.
🚢 The Revenue: James Madison (4th) and James Monroe (5th) heavily influenced agricultural export tariffs directly benefiting their own Southern plantations.
🏫 John Tyler (10th): His 15 children utilized his political weight to establish deep-seated regional power; his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler used the name to finance and run local educational institutions.
🚂 The Industrial & Railroad Lobby (1861–1933)
The Business Model: Trading gold mining licenses, rail subsidies, and weaponized family law firms.
🏛️Abraham Lincoln (16st) The corporate lawyer: Lobbying at the source Before he moved into the White House, Lincoln was by no means just a simple country lawyer, but one of the most prominent and highest-paid corporate lawyers in the country
The clients: Lincoln was the chief legal adviser and lobbyist for the Illinois Central Railroad, at that time the largest railway company in the world. He successfully defended the company against state tax claims.
The record fee: In 1857, for a single successful lawsuit against the taxation of the railway, he billed the Illinois Central $5,000 (which was several times the annual salary of a governor at the time). When the company refused to pay, Lincoln simply sued his own client – and won.
The bridge precedent: In the case of Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Co. (1857), he defended the railway lobby against the powerful shipping industry. Lincoln won the right to span rivers with railway bridges – the legal death knell for the South’s old agrarian transport system and the starting signal for the rail barons’ monopoly.
🚂 The President: Sponsoring the oligarchy through legislationIn the midst of the bloody Civil War (1861–1865), whilst the nation was distracted, Lincoln, together with the Republican Congress, pushed through groundbreaking legislation that transformed the state into a self-service shop for large corporations:The Pacific Railway Acts (1862/1864):
With the stroke of a pen, Lincoln founded the Union Pacific and gave away the aforementioned 180 million acres of free federal land to private railway companies. It was the largest transfer of state assets to private corporations in human history.
The ‘Bonds of Steel’ principle: Europe offered its corporations nothing comparable. Lincoln provided the railway oligarchs with government-guaranteed loans and granted them almost complete immunity from state regulation. He literally bound the country together with ‘belts of steel’, financed by the taxpayer, but benefiting private tycoons.
💸 Ulysses S. Grant (18th): His sons, Buck and Ulysses Jr., co-founded the investment firm Grant & Ward with Wall Street fraudsters. They leveraged the President's name to defraud investors out of a staggering $16 Million (in historical value), resulting in a national bank failure.
👔 Grover Cleveland (22nd & 24th): Used the unique trick of a split term. In the years between his presidencies, he acted as an aggressively compensated corporate lawyer for monopolies reliant on federal contracts.
⛏️ Herbert Hoover (31st): Accumulated a massive global mining fortune abroad (China/Australia) and quietly maintained these tightly knit private assets through shell companies while in office.
📺 The Media & Cold War Monopolies (1933–1989)
The Business Model: Hand-picking TV/Radio broadcasting licenses and state-funded private property upgrades.
📻 Lyndon B. Johnson (36th): Mastered domestic influence. Officially, his wife Lady Bird Johnson bought the KTBC radio station. Unofficially, LBJ used his senatorial and presidential weight to press the FCC into giving their station a decades-long television monopoly in Austin, Texas. Value at death: $20+ Million.
🏡 Richard Nixon (37th): Used $5.9 Million of taxpayer military funds under the guise of "national security upgrades" to drastically renovate his private luxury estates in Key Biscayne (FL) and San Clemente (CA).
📝 Ronald Reagan (40th): His children, Patti Davis and Ron Reagan Jr., immediately monetized their father’s tenure via multi-million dollar book deals and network TV hosting contracts.
📈 The Billion-Dollar Trust Insulation: The Kennedys
The Business Model: Pre-regulatory market manipulation, front-running Prohibition, and PR-shielded wealth.
🥃 Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. (The Patriarch): Made a massive fortune in the 1920s via insider trading and Stock Pools (tactics he ironically banned later when FDR made him the first SEC Chairman). He secured the exclusive U.S. import rights for high-end Scottish whisky (Dewar's) right before Prohibition ended.
🗳️ John F. Kennedy (35th): Managed a family trust network worth over $1 Billion. JFK famously "donated" his entire presidential salary ($100k/year) to charity for brilliant public relations, while quietly pocketing $500,000 annually in tax-free distributions from his father's trusts.
💍 The Extended Clan: After JFK’s assassination, his widow Jackie Kennedy extracted a $26 Million settlement from the Onassis shipping empire. Daughter Caroline Kennedy currently holds up to $250 Million in family trusts, while nephew RFK Jr. draws a quarter of his $15 Million net worth directly from trusts established in 1926.
🛢️ The Bush Dynasty & The Carlyle Connection
The Business Model: Offshore energy cartels, private equity war profiteering, and global defense circles.
🛢️ The Energy Roots: Long before entering public office, George H.W. Bush (41st) co-founded Zapata Petroleum Corporation in 1953, pivoting into lucrative offshore drilling. His son George W. Bush (43rd) launched Arbusto Energy in 1977, heavily subsidized by family connections and international financiers (including early investments linked to the bin Laden family estate via investor Salem bin Laden).
💼 The Carlyle Group: Following their terms in public service, members of the Bush clan—most notably George H.W. Bush—served as highly paid advisors to The Carlyle Group, a powerful private equity firm. This positioning allowed the family to draw immense profits from the surge in defense spending during the war on terror, capitalizing on the exact geopolitical frameworks they helped establish.
🌐 The Modern Era: Global Monetization & Media Deals (1989–Present)
The Business Model: Foreign board seats, Wall Street speeches, streaming contracts, and crypto tokenization.
🏢 The Boeing "Revolving Door" Principle
To avoid direct bribery indictments, no president or direct child sits openly on Boeing's board. Instead, the extended political apparatus is enriched:
The Switch: Top officials who hand multi-billion dollar defense contracts to Boeing switch seamlessly to the corporation later. Nikki Haley (Trump’s UN Ambassador) joined Boeing's board right after resigning, pulling over $300,000 in cash and stock options.
The Generals: Retired top-tier military personnel answerable directly to the President (like Admiral John Richardson) routinely trade their uniforms for Boeing board seats to siphon the Pentagon budget.
👥 The Modern Dynastic Money Trails
🦅 The Clintons: Built a $120+ Million empire entirely after 2001. Bill Clinton commanded up to $750,000 per speech (over $100M total). Daughter Chelsea Clinton was handed over $9 Million in stock and cash via board seats at IAC and Expedia.
🎙️ The Obamas – The Pure Post-Office Monopoly: Entering office in 2009 with roughly $1.3 Million, Barack and Michelle Obama leveraged their status into a post-office financial empire valued at $70 to $135 Million. In 2017, they secured a historic $65 Million joint book advance from Penguin Random House. They founded Higher Ground Productions, locking in a $50 Million Netflix deal alongside multi-million dollar Spotify/Audible contracts.
Months after leaving office, Obama pocketed $400,000 for a single Wall Street speech to Cantor Fitzgerald, clearing $1.2 Million for just three corporate appearances. Daughters Malia and Sasha stayed out of the financial shell network, though Malia uses the alias Malia Ann for her Hollywood screenwriting contracts to mask the dynastic brand.
🇺🇦 The Bidens: Son Hunter Biden pulled $50,000/month from Ukrainian gas giant Burisma and routed $1.06 Million from Chinese energy firm CEFC through complex corporate shells like Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC, Hudson West III LLC, and Owasco PC. These funds were distributed to the extended family (including Joe’s brother, James Biden). Post-vice presidency, Joe and Jill Biden rapidly cleared $15 Million via "VIP book tours" charging up to $235,000 per appearance.
🪙 The Trumps: Donald Trump engineered a ... $6.5 Billion peak net worth by launching family crypto tokens (World Liberty Financial generating $2.1 Billion in liquid/crypto assets) and volatile Truth Social stock. During his first term, daughter Ivanka and Jared Kushner logged up to $640 Million in external revenue. Post-term, Saudi Arabia’s state fund invested $2 Billion directly into Kushner's private equity vehicle, Affinity Partners.
🎬 The First Lady Feature: In January 2026, Amazon MGM Studios paid a $40 Million license fee for the documentary „Melania: 20 Days to History“, funneling an estimated $28 Million directly to Melania Trump, leading to intense congressional scrutiny over corporate "pay-to-play" lobbying.
🧢 The Presidential QVC Model: The Merchandising Matrix
The Business Model: Monetizing populist devotion through premium-priced, low-cost manufactured goods, sneakers, and localized tech gear.
🪙 The Ultimate Grift-to-Asset Pipeline: No structural critique of the Trump presidency is complete without acknowledging the absolute distortion of traditional campaign finance through private, direct-to-consumer sales. Trump transformed the dignity of the highest office into an active, high-volume home shopping network.
👟 The Inventory: Under the protection of his political movement, the Trump clan successfully licensed and distributed $399 "Never Surrender" High-Top Gold Sneakers, specialized $100 "Trump Crypotcoins", branded "God Bless the USA" Bibles for $60 (printed and imported cheaply from China for roughly $3 a piece), and an entire ecosystem of MAGA-caps, digital NFT-trading cards, and secure "Freedom Phones."
💸 The Loophole: While standard political campaigns must route product sales directly into strictly audited, non-withdrawable campaign accounts, the Trump network systematically utilized private licensing LLCs (CIC Ventures LLC and 45 Office LLC). This setup ensures that when a supporter purchases a gold sneaker or a commemorative coin, the money does not go to a political campaign—it bypasses federal oversight and flows directly into Trump’s private personal bank accounts as tax-optimized royalty income, providing a beautiful masterclass in how to extract liquid multi-million-dollar dividends from raw political loyalty.
📊 Theoretical Presidential Corruption Ranking (International Compliance Standards)
Because anti-corruption concepts like "institutional capture" and "nepotism risk" vary over time, a theoretical compliance model is required to rank them. This list applies modern international anti-money laundering (AML) and corruption standards retroactively to track unprecedented accumulation of advantage, systematic conflicts of interest, and dynastic asset-shielding:
🥇 The Modern Corporate-Sovereign Layering Tier (Donald Trump)Risk Profile: Extreme. Blurring statecraft with dynamic billion-dollar financial assets (crypto ecosystems, volatile SPAC stocks, real estate branding with foreign state funds). Unparalleled complex corporate PEP-entanglement.🥈 The Multi-Generational Trust Insulation Tier (The Kennedys)Risk Profile: High. Mastery of systemic shielding via early trusts. Pre-regulatory insider trading wealth transferred cleanly into permanent political leverage under a philanthropic public relations mask.
🥉 The Institutional War-Profiteering & Revolving Door Tier (The Bushes)Risk Profile: High. Seamless fusion of corporate energy interests, foreign sovereign connections, and massive post-office private equity consulting tied to state military contracts.
🏅 The Direct Policy-Monetization Machine Tier (The Clintons / The Bidens)Risk Profile: Medium-High. Immediate, hyper-aggressive exploitation of status through multi-million dollar corporate lecture circuits, structured shell companies (LLCs) distributing foreign corporate capital to relatives, and global foundational influence networks.
🏅 The Transatlantic Creditor & Asset-Exploitation Tier (Thomas Jefferson)Risk Profile: Medium-High. Utilizing massive human slavery populations as literal economic currency and credit-collateral while liquidating human lives (selling dozens of slaves) to satisfy foreign debts to British merchant houses.
🏅 The Legalized Institutional Capture Tier (Barack Obama)Risk Profile: Medium. Textbook "Delayed Compensation" model. Zero shell-company money laundering, but rapid monetization via massive corporate multimedia networks (Netflix/Amazon) and high-paying Wall Street entities immediately following public service.
🏅 The Targeted Domestic Asset Capture Tier (Lyndon B. Johnson / Richard Nixon)Risk Profile: Medium. Direct manipulation of national regulatory bodies (FCC) to grant explicit market monopolies to spouses or routing direct state defense funding to expand private family properties.
🏅 The Unregulated Era Nepotism Tier (Early Republic to Industrial Era)Risk Profile: Low-Medium (by modern technical terms, though morally absolute). Direct diversion of up to 2% of federal budgets into personal salaries, leveraging unpaid human slavery to control agricultural macro-tariffs, and family-driven stock pooling.
In the international compliance matrix, Jimmy Carter occupies the historic place of honour at the bottom of the table:
Category: Active System Resistance / Controlled Integrity Risk.
The theoretical profile: Carter demonstrated that the US presidential model works against the incumbent if the latter refuses to treat it as a business. After leaving office, Carter sharply criticised the US electoral system until his death and openly described the US as an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” due to the unlimited campaign donations from billionaires.
⚖️ International Standard Corruption Assessment
Applying the frameworks of organizations like Transparency International and the FATF (Financial Action Task Force), the financial networks of U.S. presidential clans are categorized through specific risk vectors:
The PEP Classification (Politically Exposed Persons): Under global compliance rules, family members (Hunter Biden, Jared Kushner, Chelsea Clinton) represent extreme risk indicators. The systematic routing of foreign corporate capital to these individuals mimics textbook Indirect Enrichment Paths, designed to bypass domestic financial disclosures.
Legalized vs. Institutional Corruption: The data demonstrates that while explicit "quid pro quo" bribery is rarely proven, the U.S. framework suffers from Systemic Capture.
The "Revolving Door" (exemplified by Boeing and The Carlyle Group) and post-presidential mega-advances function as delayed compensation mechanisms that are completely legal within domestic frameworks, but violate international transparency best practices.
The Shell Company Vulnerability: The documented utilization of multi-layered domestic entities (e.g., Delaware LLCs) to process foreign transfers fulfills international criteria for Tranche-Splitting and Layering, often used to obfuscate the ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) behind political access
🏛️ The Oligarch Incubator: How Ultra-Rich Tycoons Mastered the System
The Business Model: Privatizing state-funded resources, defensive tariff lobbying, tax-shelter manufacturing, and the colonial weaponization of public land.
The presidential enrichment matrix never operated in a vacuum. It functioned as a symbiotic feedback loop with America’s top-tier billionaire class. For over two centuries, the state provided the scaffolding—protective laws, military clearing of land, and systemic tax cuts—while the oligarchy pocketed the multi-billion-dollar yields.
🚂 The Industrial & Railroad Barons (The 19th Century Land Grab)
Leland Stanford & "The Big Four" (Central Pacific): Leveraged the Pacific Railroad Acts to pull off the largest land theft in human history, absorbing 180 million acres of free federal land (larger than Germany and the UK combined).
While serving as Governor of California, Stanford signed state bills funding his own rail networks, building a $210 Billion (adjusted) empire.
Andrew Carnegie & John D. Rockefeller: Carnegie systematically bribed Congress to pass the McKinley Tariff of 1890, legally blocking European steel from entering the US and securing a state-guaranteed domestic monopoly.
Rockefeller amassed $400 Billion by exploiting a pre-1913 tax code that lacked a federal income tax.
🤠 The Cattle Barons (The Frontier Extraction Machine)
The Texas Meat Cartels (Charles Goodnight & Daniel Waggoner): Built Multi-Million-Dollar dynasties by exploiting the „Free Grass“ model on federal territory. The expansion of their ranches was directly subvented by the US Cavalry, which systematically wiped out indigenous populations and bison herds to clear shipping paths. The Waggoner Ranch grew to over 500,000 acres under a single fence; its historic footprint was sold in 2016 for $725 Million to modern sports billionaire Stan Kroenke (married into the Walmart fortune), closing the loop of dynastic resource hoarding.
💻 The Modern High-Tech Giants (The Code & Offshore Oligarchy)
Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX): The absolute peak of modern state-subsidized oligarchy ($300 Billion). Tesla’s early survival was engineered via state-mandated Regulatory Credits, and SpaceX holds a state-backed monopoly on NASA/Pentagon rocket launches. His wealth exploded exponentially via the corporate rate slashes of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
Jeff Bezos (Amazon): Utilized aggressive federal R&D tax credits and carryforward loopholes to log $0 in federal income tax liability across multiple multi-billion-dollar revenue years, while simultaneously securing exclusive cloud contracts (AWS) for the CIA and the Pentagon.
Mark Zuckerberg (Meta): Avoided systemic antitrust dissolution through dense lobbying pacification in Washington, while routing global intellectual property assets through the „Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich“ framework to completely eliminate domestic tax exposure.
👁️ The Intelligence AI Monopoly (Peter Thiel):
Built Palantir Technologies directly on the back of the deep state via initial funding from In-Q-Tel (the CIA's venture arm) Palantir holds multi-million-dollar software monopolies across the NSA, CIA, and Pentagon. Furthermore, Thiel executed the ultimate middle-class loop evasion: utilizing a Roth IRA pension shelter by putting in just $1,667 in early PayPal stock, growing it into a massive $5 Billion piggy bank that is 100% tax-free forever.
📊 The Billionaire & Tech-Giant Exploitation Ranking (International Compliance Standards)
Applying modern forensic audit standards to the private sector, this list ranks the all-time corporate and tech profiteers based on their capacity to capture the state, manipulate tax frameworks, and extract multi-billion-dollar returns from public infrastructure:
🥇 The Sovereign Subvention & Regulatory Monopoly Tier (Elon Musk)State Leverage Risk: Extreme. Complete capture of critical aerospace and defense pathways (SpaceX/Pentagon/NASA monopolies) paired with state-enforced revenue streams (Regulatory Credit trading) and massive asset expansion via the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)
🥈 The Sovereign Intelligence Capture & Pension-Shelter Tier (Peter Thiel)State Leverage Risk: Extreme. Full financial symbiosis with the surveillance apparatus (CIA funding for Palantir) paired with the hostile hijacking of zivil retirement infrastructure (Roth IRA Loophole) to legally isolate $5 Billion from federal taxes.
🥉 The Federal Land Theft & Sovereign Bond Tier (Leland Stanford & The Railroad Barons)State Leverage Risk: Extreme. Direct legislative self-enrichment by exploiting the Pacific Railroad Acts to absorb 180 million acres of free public land. Artificially inflating corporate values via shell networks (Credit Mobilier) to defraud public treasuries.
🏅 The Global Offshore Layering & Antitrust Shield Tier (Mark Zuckerberg / Jeff Bezos)State Leverage Risk: High. Using deep Washington lobbying structures to freeze antitrust enforcement, while deploying complex „Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich“ structures and municipal tax holidays to run multi-billion-dollar empires with zero local tax liability.
🏅 The Defensive Tariff Wall Tier (Andrew Carnegie)State Leverage Risk: High. Weaponizing political donations to pass the McKinley Tariff of 1890, effectively using federal custom laws to eliminate foreign competition and legally enforce a private domestic steel monopoly.
🏅 The Pre-Regulatory Zero-Tax Extraction Tier (John D. Rockefeller)State Leverage Risk: Medium-High. Accumulating the largest private fortune in modern history by operating in the pre-1913 era—completely free of federal income taxes—while utilizing state protection against early labor movements.
🏅 The Frontier Erasure & Open-Range Extraction Tier (The Cattle Barons / Waggoner Clan)State Leverage Risk: Medium. Siphoning massive wealth from the „Free Grass“ model on public land, directly subvented by the US Cavalry clearing human and environmental barriers, locking down dynastic ranches that sell for hundreds of millions today.
While the so-called pillars of society fall prey to the false perception that their immense wealth—generated through state-enforced protective barriers, exclusive intelligence monopolies, and tax-free retirement loopholes—is the pure product of an allegedly free market, this narrative cleverly masks the fact that the entire model relies on privatizing profits while systematically socializing losses onto the general public, all sustained by a societal tax architecture where the worker and the middle class dutifully pay the taxes, while celebrities pay advisors and lawyers to find the loopholes, and the ultra-rich simply pay the politicians to custom-tailor the laws. 🏛️💸⚖️
Blimey, America is the biggest self-service shop for the rich
Now, just between us, why does America think it’s America? It’s just the United States of America; the rest put together is America – it’s just national arrogance.
