ANT IPO

If Americans help this nation’s enemies build the capability to harm, or even kill, their countrymen and women, those enablers are considered to be traitors and are, under the law, supposed to be severely punished. 

The question occurs: How should we view U.S. financiers who enable the Chinese Communist Party to raise funds for a company that is working to do incalculable damage to our economy and people? 

For example, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are lead managers of Ant Technology Group’s impending Initial Public Offering expected to generate between $60-80 billion – and possibly even more.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is one of the most thoughtful of contemporary historians and most clear-eyed analysts of current events. He recently co-authored an important essay in Newsweek expressing serious concerns about what such Wall Street firms – they might properly be called “Beijing’s Bankers” – are doing as they seek to raise funds for Ant on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Exchanges sometime this month. 

For one thing, Mr. Gingrich warned that, coming as it does on the heels of the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown in the former British colony, “the Ant IPO listing essentially validates the eradication of freedoms in Hong Kong by allowing ‘business as usual’ to continue.” He notes that our Committee on the Present Danger: China has concluded that the success of the Ant IPO “would effectively demonstrate that the CCP is free to impose totalitarian measures on the people of Hong Kong with little, if any, financial or geopolitical consequences.”

Speaker Gingrich calls out another serious problem with the Ant IPO, saying “[It] presents noteworthy material risks for American retail investors.” That is a problem with Chinese companies actually listed on our exchanges, since – thanks to a 2013 Memorandum of Understanding with the PRC engineered by then-Vice President Joe Biden – they don’t have to conform to our laws and regulations designed to protect investors.  But, as Mr. Gingrich observes, “Since Ant Group is not being listed on a U.S. exchange, it will not have any oversight by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board….This means even less transparency concerning, and more exposure to, the material risks posed by the Ant Group to American investors.”

Among such risks are several identified in a recent analysis cited by Speaker Gingrich. It was conducted by an independent research firm, RWR Advisory Group, and found that Ant Group enables the Chinese Communist Party’s Orwellian surveillance state apparatus used to repress its own people. Among the most brutally afflicted are those of Captive Nations like the Muslim Uyghurs of East Turkistan, the Tibetans and Southern Mongolians. 

Ant Technology is also used to collect personal and business data in China and elsewhere that can compromise intellectual property and individuals. Blackmail and manipulation are predictable uses of such information in the hands of Chinese Communists.

In addition, Ant is part of the CCP’s “civil-military fusion” initiative which puts any and all relevant technology at the service of the Chinese military. That means it poses a potential threat to the national security of the United States and its allies.

Finally, Ant’s technology is at the core of the Chinese Communist Party’s effort to develop digital money that it intends to use to destroy the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Should that happen, the effect on America’s debt, economy and people would be far-reaching and devastating. Think the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe and you have a sense of what the CCP has in mind for us if they can crater the dollar. 

For such reasons, the Committee on Present Danger has recommended that Ant Group be added to the U.S Department of Commerce’s “Entity” list. It certainly should not be added to the portfolios of possibly tens of millions of American investors. 

And that can happen, as Speaker Gingrich argues, even if the IPO is issued offshore thanks to what he calls “the unguarded, undisciplined ‘backdoor’ of indexes and exchange-traded funds, exposing unwitting American investors to material risks that have not been adequately explained to them in plain English.” 

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio, told reporters last week that, “It’s outrageous that Wall Street is rewarding the Chinese Communist Party’s blatant crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedom and autonomy by orchestrating Ant Group’s IPO on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges.”

So, if we prosecute and punish those who betray our country in various other ways, how should we treat U.S. financiers who enable the Chinese Communist Party to raise funds for a company that is working not only to subvert U.S. government policy on Hong Kong, but to do potentially incalculable damage to our economy and people?

Clearly, the betrayal of our country through financial transactions – transactions  that, of course, immensely enrich the lead managers – should not be condoned or ignored, any more than other forms of treachery. Instead they should be actively opposed by the U.S. government, impeded through official interventions to protect investors and the national interest and appropriately sanctioned.  

Those are my thoughts, I’d welcome yours at SecuringAmerica.TV, where you can learn more about the work we do and how you can support it.

Next up, as revolutionary adherents to Karl Marx and his totalitarian, communist ideology are laying siege to American cities and running for high office, we’ll talk about a devastating portrayal of the man and his beliefs with comedian, actress and social commentator Rachel Keane, the Conservative Momma.