GekeVenn: BLACKSTONE

Note: Wayne Berman was on a list of Trump's possible candidates for US Trade Representative, but he instead nominated Robert Lighthizer.

In light of several mentions of Blackstone in the recent Wikileaks documents release, including this one from @fortified, I thought I'd put together a venn highlighting the company's Washington connections.

Blackstone is an investment firm best known for its ties to Hillary Clinton. It's also the largest owner of real estate in the world. After the housing collapse in 2008, Blackstone bought up a swath of vacant, foreclosed single-family rental properties to add to its holdings.

The firm is also described as a “shadow bank” – a non-bank that lends money. According to Goldman Sachs, shadow banks participate in about 41 percent of all lending, but avoid banking regulatory oversight. Of course, this type of complaint is ironic coming from Goldman Sachs, as their own venn shows how pointless banking “oversight” is, when done by the federal government.

Also, please note that I've also changed the watermark on all GekeVenns going forward to reflect my Steemit handle only. I recently started adding my Steemit blog link to the venns, and this change reflects a completed transition to promoting Steemit rather than my website! These venns are often picked up in other blogs, and even on some well-known media websites, so as they're picked up in the future, they'll be taking the Steemit name along with them!