Saturday Miscellany

First, what the fuck, Zuck? 

You may have heard that Meta, aka Facebook, has an Oversight Board. And you might also have heard that said Oversight Board has proclaimed that the phrase, “From the river to the sea” is not hate speech.

Since the phrase says that the Palestinian cause wants to rid Israel of Jews, it is not a stretch to call it hate speech.

Senator John Fetterman denounced the notion immediately. To his credit.

Now, for those who find this mysterious, the New York Post tells us who sits on said Oversight Board. You will not be surprised to hear that the Board is packed with anti-Semites.

One of the most vocal has been Tawakkol Karman, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who has referred to the deaths of civilians in Gaza as an “ethnic cleansing” and a “war of extermination.”

In a June 7 post on X, Karman celebrated the United Nations’ move to place Israel’s military on a global list of entities that have committed harm against children – known as its “list of shame.” Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were also added.

“The United Nations puts Israel, its terrorist government, and its most criminal army in history on the list of shame. I applaud this decision, which was long overdue,” Karman wrote, according to a Google translation.

Nighat Dad, an Oversight Board member and the director of the Pakistan-based Digital Rights Foundation, also has been publicly critical of Israel since Hamas’ surprise cross-border raid killed 1,200 in Israel.

And also,

Oversight Board member Alan Rusbridger, the former editor-in-chief of left-leaning UK news outlet The Guardian, penned a column earlier this year arguing that, while “real and vile antisemitism” does exist, the “horrors of 7 October most certainly did not happen in a vacuum.”

Endy Bayuni, an Oversight Board member and senior editor at the Jakarta Post, published a column last April that argued Indonesia “should be seen championing an independent Palestinian state and full membership of the United Nations.”

How does it happen that Meta chooses radical leftists to perform censorship and oversight? Is it any consolation that they are diverse.

Second, meanwhile in the conservative podcasting sphere, one Tucker Carlson has lost his mind. Or, lost what was left of his mind. Worse yet, he damaged his reputation, which is now swirling down the drain.  

Apparently, Carlson was jealous of all the attention that leftist anti-Israeli activists were gleaning, so he decided to one-up them, by having a conversation with a genuine, bona fide Nazi. The man’s name is Darryl Cooper.

Carlson proclaimed him a great historian, even though Cooper has not written any history. Worse yet, Carlson decided to promote Cooper’s crackpot ideas-- that the great villain of World War II was Winston Churchill, while the great hero was Adolph Hitler.

Niall Ferguson and Victor Davis Hanson, two important historians of the period, responded to Cooper in The Free Press.

Ferguson summarizes his analysis thusly:

Darryl Cooper offers a series of wild assertions that are almost entirely divorced from historical evidence and can be of interest only to those so ignorant of the past that they mistake them for daring revisionism, as opposed to base neo-Nazism.

Third, the latest from once-Great Britain shows that the war against free expression is moving ahead.

Peter Sweden offers this on Twitter:

BREAKING: Britain will begin to release s*x offenders early to make more prison cells available. Meanwhile they are sending people who post offensive words online to long prison sentences. Soviet Britain.

Fourth, Aayan Hirsi Ali writes in The Spectator that free speech is dying in Great Britain. She explains:

Julie Sweeney, fifty-three, got a fifteen-month sentence for a Facebook comment: “Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.” Lee Dunn, fifty-one, on the other hand, got eight weeks for sharing three images of Asian-looking men with captions such as “Coming to a town near you.”

Fifth, on the learning loss front, Harvard has discovered that first year students do not know algebra. They blame it on the Covid lockdowns.

Thus, it is introducing courses in remedial algebra, lest too many students fail to advance in their STEM studies.

The Harvard Crimson reports:

The Harvard Math Department will pilot a new introductory course aimed at rectifying a lack of foundational algebra skills among students, according to Harvard’s Director of Introductory Math Brendan A. Kelly.

He said the Covid-19 pandemic led to gaps in students’ math skills and learning abilities, prompting the need for a new introductory course.

“The last two years, we saw students who were in Math MA and faced a challenge that was unreasonable given the supports we had in the course. So we wanted to think about, ‘How can we create a course that really helps students step up to their aspirations?’” he said.

“Students don’t have the skills that we had intended downstream in the curriculum, and so it creates different trajectories in students’ math abilities,” Kelly added.

Now, to put it all in context, MIT had the same problem a year or so ago. It concluded that the students who were flunking Freshman math were diversity candidates. So the institute changed its admissions policies.

Could Harvard be suffering from DEI admissions policies? We do not know.

Sixth, when it comes to competing with other nations at building ships, we have fallen seriously behind. Brian Potter at Noahpinion has the story.

It is going to take more than tariffs and new legislation to revive the American shipbuilding industry.

Consider this, from Potter:

Commercial shipbuilding in the U.S. is virtually nonexistent: in 2022, the U.S. had just five large oceangoing commercial ships on order, compared to China’s 1,794 and South Korea’s 734. The U.S. Navy estimates that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own. It costs twice as much to four times as much to build a ship in the U.S. as it does elsewhere. The commercial shipbuilders that do exist only survive thanks to protectionist laws like the Jones Act, which serve to prop up an industry which is uncompetitive internationally. As a result, the U.S. annually imports over 4 trillion dollars worth of goods, 40% of which are delivered by ship (more than by any other mode of transportation), but those ships are overwhelmingly built elsewhere.

And also,

The situation we face today, with U.S. ships costing at least twice as much to build as ships built elsewhere, is not a recent development; it’s been the norm for at least the past 100 years.

Does this apply to other industries? It is worth asking the question. 

Sixth, if you are in despair at Trump’s losing Liz Cheney’s vote, balance it against the fact that Alan Dershowits has quit the Democratic Party. He sees that it has become infested with anti-Semitism.

The New York Post reports:

Renowned legal scholar Alan Dershowitz recently announced that he is leaving the Democratic Party, after being “disgusted” by what he witnessed at last month’s Democratic National Convention. 

The retired Harvard Law School professor, who is a longtime self-described liberal Democrat, told radio host Zev Brenner on Aug. 23 that he felt the Chicago gathering was “the worst convention in American history” because of the number of speakers who have publicly expressed opposition to Israel. 

“They had more anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist people who were speaking, starting with [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] – a miserable, anti-Zionist bigot,” Dershowitz said during an appearance on “Talkline with Zev Brenner.” “Then of course they had [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren, who is one of the most anti-Jewish people in the Senate. Then they had Bernie Sanders, one of the most anti-Jewish people in the Senate.”

Dershowitz argued the Democratic Party gave anti-Israel arguments “legitimacy” by allowing those that espouse them to speak at the convention.

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Odelia's Case Fiction: Part II

Herewith the continuation of Odelia’s case fiction. I posted the first part last Friday.

Odelia saw herself as accursed. She hated her job. She hated working for her father. And yet, she did not feel that she could just pick up and leave. 

Overtaken by feelings of impotence, Odelia saw herself as accursed. Percival saw that if the problem had an easy solution, she would have found it herself.

So he began broaching Odelia’s dilemma by asking her what options she had considered. He added that she must have discussed the problem with friends, perhaps even with one or another of the therapists she had consulted. Had any of her friends from LA, even her sponsor, offered a clarifying insight. 

Odelia took care to answer clearly, though what she said was largely predictable. Some of her friends and erstwhile therapists had recommended that she fight the good fight for women’s liberation. Her friend Morgana-- a tireless crusader for women’s rights-- suggested that Odelia punish any man who did not respect her. 

Odelia had chosen not to follow this advice. She felt that confrontation would produce dissension in the ranks and make the business more difficult to run. Moreover, she needed her contractors more than they needed her.

Two other friends, Roderick and Corinne,  had taken the opposite position. They were concerned that the abuse was numbing her sensibility and provoking a general distaste for male companionship. So they thought that she should simply walk away from it all. Unfortunately, that solution would betray her father’s trust. It would feel like a defeat. 

Percival shifted the focus to the person whose will was at issue-- Odelia’s father. While he understood Odelia’s pride in being her father’s favorite, he also knew that she could not simply accept his dictate without a discussion. The man was clearly a bully, a petty tyrant. So Percival asked whether she had discussed what was happening with him.

Odelia offered a ready-made answer: “No one sits down and has a chat with my father. I do not think that I ever had a real conversation with him. He makes pronouncements and gives orders. My brothers rebelled, but I did not. Perhaps because I was the girl and the favorite, I did not challenge him. My brothers did and were punished for talking back.”

Percival replied that somehow or other someone needed to improve the father/daughter relationship. Yet, the man had wrapped his tyranny in the mantle of cultural revolution. He certainly did not want to hear that he had hurt the one person he loves the most in this world. He had chosen Odelia because she would never threaten his position.

She continued: “You know, any time I talk to my father he thinks I’m talking back to him. It has to be ‘Yes, Daddy,’ ‘Of course, Daddy.’"

Evidently, Odelia was terrified of her father. And yet, the only way to deal with fear, as we all know, is to face it. And yet, Odelia’s conversational repertoire seemed to comprise two extremes: obscenities for her brothers, sheepish deference for her father. She was sorely in need of other ways of negotiating with men.

Perhaps if her father recognized that his way of treating did not enhance her ability to assume a managerial or leadership role, he would lighten up on the abuse.

Odelia was not impressed by his analysis. Yet, when she came to her next session she announced that she had made an appointment to have lunch with her father. Frankly, she did not expect very much and Percival agreed that she should tone down her expectations. 

Percival thought it might be a good idea to rehearse the lunch meeting. Odelia did not think so. Thus, he dropped the issue.

So, Percival began to query Odelia about her mother. In many ways this woman was a cipher in Odelia’s family. She seemed to be almost a non-player in the drama. 

The young woman quietly explained that her mother had made a career of being a homemaker and bringing up her children. She did some occasional charity work, but kept a safe distance from her husband’s business. She had never been very close to her daughter, but devoted herself to protecting her sons from their bully of a father. The more she showered them with tenderness and compassion, the more her husband thought that they were weak and ineffectual.

Odelia’s mother would have preferred that her sons not join her husband’s business. Unfortunately, their spotty academic records and generally bad character offered little hope for career success elsewhere. Seeing her youngest son go out on his own had been one of the abiding successes in her life. 

Percival started encouraging Odelia to try to get closer to her mother. He wanted her to open a line of communication with this woman. He did not want to examine childhood traumas or even childhood neglect. Given the young woman’s urgent need for a family ally, dredging up instances of inadequate mothering would have been counterproductive.

Was it still possible to reconcile mother and daughter? Percival did not know. Would Odelia discover that she had suffered from her mother’s neglect? Percival feared that she would. Yet, he had few alternatives to modify the family dynamic. 

Percival suggested that this woman had also been oppressed by her husband. She had not abandoned her child, but had had her daughter taken from her.

As for the upcoming lunch with her father, Percival recommended that Odelia take the path of least resistance. She should not confront her father or suggest that he had done anything wrong. If there were problems she ought to blame herself. She had been stressed and perhaps was working too hard.

And Odelia could hint that overwork was making it impossible for her to develop a life outside of the office. Her father might understand the point, but he might also prefer that she not fall into another love addiction. 

Percival articulated his idea thusly: “Think of it as an opening offer in a long and protracted negotiation. Clearly, your father is not going to change because you feel fatigued. He will need to believe that he has changed his own mind. You need to state your dissatisfaction and then act accordingly. You will slow down your own activities. And you might consider giving your brothers more responsibility. In other circumstances you might have a claim of sexual harassment, but such an accusation would surely destroy your family. And this is not a solution.”

Finally, Odelia had her lunch. It did not go well. Her father was unable to hear his daughter’s distress. Or else, if he did hear it, he did not take it seriously. It smacked of weakness, a quality he despised in his sons and that he had thought his daughter had overcome. 

Besides, she had a plethora of outside activities, from exercise classes to concerts and LA meetings. It was no wonder that she was tired. Her father believed that she was overextended. He had no interest in relieving her of the burdens that went along with her job. 

Odelia was discouraged. Percival was not. The issues had been put on the table. It was an opening gambit, but surely not the final move in the game. 

So, Percival changed the subject. He asked her whether she had had any time to spend with her mother. On that score things had gone better.

Odelia had offered to help her mother prepare Thanksgiving dinner. And while the men were watching the football game, she had taken the opportunity to have a pleasant conversation.

Finally, Odelia averred that she was pleased with Percival. He was not nearly as horrid as she had heard. He seems to have given her more of a sense of being in the game, of making her own moves, of taking initiatives. 

And then she put the rest of their plan into action. During the next few weeks she left work early several times, complaining that she was not feeling well. She asked her brother Anderson to become more active in managing two buildings the company had just started leasing.

Naturally, her father noticed. His warm encouragement had yielded to a surly indifference. In time he began to distance himself from the person he loved most in the world, and who was fast becoming a disappointment. 

Doubtless he imagined that withdrawing would cause her to come to her senses. In fact, he was punishing her disobedience. Even though her brothers had started acting better toward her, the most striking change was her relationships with her mother.

The two women seem to have found a new camaraderie. They shared intimacies and confided in each other. In some ways the connection was superficial, but it was more real than what had been.

Obviously, Odelia was suffering from her father’s indifference. So she needed and received Percival’s support. She began to feel increasingly vulnerable to male attention. She began imagining that some man would come along and sweep her off her feet and take her to Bali. 

Her libidinal energies seemed to be coming back. But, she was afraid that she would fall off the wagon and fall for Mr. Wrong.

Her father had sucked the marrow from her soul for so long that she wanted desperately to escape his influence. And yet, his influence had kept her from unfortunate love affairs. 

To Percival the problem was her transition. Would he have enough time to build up Odelia’s self-confidence before some man swept her into an ill-advised love affair? After all, she could not rely on her judgment or her instincts, and that meant, she was courting, not just a man, but danger.

He was soon to have his answer.

To be continued.

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The War against Netanyahu

If your name is Tommy Friedman the recent murder of six hostages by Hamas poses a serious intellectual challenge. Hamas terrorists executed six hostages in cold blood and you need to find a way to affix the blame on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

Of course, the Biden administration had already laid the groundwork, blaming Netanyahu for the actions of Hamas. Since Tommy is like a ventriloquist dummy for the administration, we expect that he would offer something resembling a cogent argument for why the fault lies with the Israeli prime minister. 

Sad to say, his reasoning does not quite pass the test. For example, he continues to beat on the drum called the two-state solution, showing us that he has detached from reality.

Apparently, he does not read the Wall Street Journal. If he had, he would have learned on August 18 that the great hope of the two state solution is effectively dead.

I reported on the Journal story previously. If you missed it, here is the opening:

Most of the world has long agreed on what it will take to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has now brought the Middle East to the brink of a regional war that would almost certainly draw in the U.S. 

The U.S., Europe and many Arab governments insist the overdue answer is the two-state solution, under which Israel and a Palestinian state would exist side-by-side.

The snag is that Israelis and Palestinians no longer believe in it. 

The past 10 months have dealt the biggest setback in decades to the chances of a negotiated peace. The Hamas-led Oct. 7 killing of nearly 1,200 people in southern Israel and Israel’s devastating response, which Palestinian authorities say has left more than 40,000 dead in Gaza, have confirmed for both sides that their unwanted neighbor has no regard for their lives.

One ought to question generalizations about what most of the world believes. It might be the case that most of the world is willing to pay lip service to a plan that the Biden administration can use to beat up Israel. Or better, to continue the war against Bibi Netanyahu. 

Evidently, Tommy is all-in with the Biden-Harris administration, so his ulterior motive is to undermine the Trump presidential candidacy. It does not matter whether or not the facts fulfill his beliefs.

Note his opening:

If President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris needed any reminder that Benjamin Netanyahu is not their friend, not America’s friend and, most shamefully, not the friend of the Israeli hostages in Gaza, the murder by Hamas of six Israeli souls while Netanyahu dragged out negotiations should make that clear. Netanyahu has one interest: his own immediate political survival, even if it undermines Israel’s long-term survival.

So, Netanyahu does not really care about Israel but Biden and Harris do. How stupid do you have to be to believe that?

Tommy tells Kamala that she has being played by Netanyahu, whose true goal is to elect Donald Trump. It takes a considerable amount of imagination to invent such nonsense, but Tommy is clearly up to that job.

Strangely, he assumes that Hamas is a willing and trustworthy negotiating partner. Andhe imagines that Biden has put together an impressive coalition of countries to fight who knows what? Keep in mind, Biden has failed miserably to take the fight to Iran. In truth, he ignored sanctions on Iranian petroleum exports and allowed them to accumulate nearly a hundred billion dollars, with which to promote terrorism.

Amazingly, Tommy ignores the impressive coalition called the Abraham Accords. If he does not understand that Gulf Arab states would not have signed on to it without the tacit approval of Saudi Arabia, he ought to find another line of work. 

Keep in mind, as we have noted, and as Tommy has ignored, that the Saudi back channel advice to Israel after October 7 was to waste Hamas. And keep in mind that Saudi Arabia forbade all subjects to mourn the death of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas chieftain. 

And recall, as I reported, that Saudi Arabia send a delegation to Auschwitz to pray for the victims of that genocide, implying that they understood what Tommy failed to understand, namely that Israel was not committing genocide in Gaza.

So, Tommy suggests that the Palestinian Authority is in bed with Hamas. To call the government of notable anti-Semite Mahmoud Abbas, moderate is simply to compound one’s errors.

The more you think about it, the more Tommy sounds like a flak.

As for the notion that the Israeli people are rising up in anger against their government, filling the streets of Tel Aviv with protests against the prime minister, the truth lies elsewhere.

The Jewish News Syndicate has reported on a new poll:

According to a new, in-depth JNS poll of Israeli public opinion suggests an overwhelming majority of Israelis oppose the current protests in Israel and supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s negotiating positions.

As for the most important point. Tommy’s screed has a clear and defined purpose. To shift blame from the incompetent Biden foreign policy team to the Israeli prime minister.

Clearly, this is making negotiation more difficult and is inviting Hamas to resist. If murdering hostages brings forth a demand that Israel make more concessions, why would Hamas not murder more hostages.

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Wednesday Potpourri

First, Columbia University set up a task force to study the incidence of anti-Semitism on campus. The interim president read the report and decided to do nothing.

The New York Post reports:

Jewish students at Columbia University were chased out of their dorms, received death threats, spat upon, stalked and pinned against walls, as the Ivy League school devolved into a cesspool of antisemitic hate in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 murderous raid on Israel.

The new and disturbing details emerged from the lengthy, 91-page document released Friday by the school’s faculty-led antisemitism task force, which revealed the extent to which the hate permeated the institution.

“Students described being shoved, pushed to the ground, berated for showing support for Zionist causes, and watching Israeli flags burned,” the task force’s authors wrote.

“They recounted seeing drawings of swastikas in their dorms, students yelling pro-Hamas chants, and being denied access to public spaces and opportunities simply because they were Jewish or Israeli.”

Faculty members went along for the ride:

One faculty member leading a class that delved into the Israel-Hamas conflict called a student who previously served in the IDF a murderer. Another professor extensively said a pair of Jewish donors to the university had “laundered” “dirty money” and “blood money.” 

During the spring, as protests and encampments roiled the school’s Morningside Heights campus, protesters, including outsiders and members of the university community, bellowed death threats at Jewish students. Demonstrators who held Israeli flags, meanwhile, recalled being assaulted. 

“There is a sense of personal threat, and we keep looking over our shoulders,” master’s student Omer Lubaton Granot, an Israeli veteran and father of a toddler, told an Israeli radio station in the wake of protesters seizing the academic building Hamilton Hall in April.

The report recommended anti-bias training and a new system for reporting complaints.

The truth is, as long as the perpetrators of this hate continue to be allowed to enroll in the university or even to stay in the country, nothing will change.

Keep in mind, not a word from the Biden Justice Department. No action from the administration. The only political leaders who went to Morningside Heights to meet with Jewish students and to express their support were Congressional Republicans, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Second, in the meantime Great Britain is still undergoing labour pains. This time, the culprit is the new tax proposal offered up by Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves. It will sound familiar to Americans. She wants to raise taxes, especially on capital gains. 

The result, wealthy people are moving their money out of the country. This is from the London Telegraph:

Wealthy individuals and entrepreneurs are already fleeing Britain as fears grow over a raft of tax rises in Rachel Reeves’s first Budget.

An exodus is being reported by bankers, financial advisers and business chiefs with experts warning that the Chancellor risks ruining hopes of faster economic growth with a widely expected increase in capital gains tax (CGT).

It comes after Sir Keir Starmer warned last week that those with the “broadest shoulders” would carry the burden of fixing Britain’s ailing public finances.

Ceri Vokes, a partner at law firm Withers Worldwide, who works with entrepreneurs and private equity executives, said a number of her wealthy clients had already moved overseas this year, with the election “the main driver”.

She added: “People with hundreds of millions of pounds [are leaving] because changes can be more impactful for them.”

Those packing their bags and moving overseas are typically entrepreneurs and private equity executives in the top income bracket, she said. Italy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Switzerland are among the most popular destinations.

Third, I assume that this is not news, but we have experts on reading body language. What would we do without them? Among them, one Susan Constantine, analyzed Kamala Harris’s body language during her CNN interview. 

The conclusion, not very encouraging to the Kamala team. From Matt Margolis on PJ Media:

But it should come as no surprise that a body language expert who analyzed Kamala's performance during the interview told Fox News Digital that Harris lacked both confidence and a presidential demeanor. 

According to Susan Constantine, Harris frequently looked down during the CNN interview, which suggested that she was “not confident in what she’s saying.” Constantine explained that Harris did not project the “presidential appearance” required to command her position, adding, “She definitely needs to make some tweaks into her body language to appear more confident.”

"The fact that she's looking down a lot removes a lot of the fluidity and the authenticity," she added. 

Throughout the interview, Constantine noticed that Harris struggled to deliver clear answers, particularly when asked about her “day one” agenda. This led to what Constantine described as “head bobbling,” a sign that Harris was searching for the right answers but couldn’t confidently deliver them.

“When you bobble and waffle like that, that’s another signal that she’s not really… prepared.” Constantine also highlighted Harris’s tendency to break eye contact, which she described as “a form of deflection,” further indicating a lack of confidence. 

 

Overall, you know, as one woman to another, I would say if you're going to be a woman in power, you have to look like a woman in power," Constantine concluded. "And she doesn't at this time." 

Dare I say that Constantine was not the only one who noticed that the Harris posture does not command respect. It is more posturing than posture.

Fourth, if you believe that sentiment indicators are a good contrary indication of the stock market’s future, you probably noticed this story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Americans have rarely been this giddy about the stock market.

They are piling into stocks as major indexes reach new highs and placing bets that the rally that has driven the S&P 500 up 18% this year has more room to run. 

According to contrary opinion, this signals that we are approaching a market top. Beware.

Footnote-- apparently, I was not the only one who read the signal.

Fifth, and then there is Kevin O’Leary, serial entrepreneur, star of a television show called Shark Tank. Apparently, O’Leary has ceased investing in blue states. The tax situation and the regulatory environment makes them uninvestible.

Who knew?

Matt Margolis has the story on PJ Media:

According to O'Leary, states like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California have become increasingly hostile to businesses, driving investment and jobs to more business-friendly locations, which, not coincidentally, happen to be red states.

“I don’t put companies here in New York anymore or in Massachusetts or in New Jersey or in California,” O'Leary stated. “Those states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane. 

The taxes are too high.” He highlighted Fargo, N.D., as a prime example of where his businesses are now relocating, noting that 40% of the workforce there operates remotely, including employees in Boston.

"New Jersey, what a mess. New York, uninvestable," he said.

The panel then asked O'Leary why New York was "uninvestable" and if it was just because of high taxes. The hosts were clearly not happy with O'Leary's characterization. 

“The regulatory environment is punitive,” he explained, explaining how a global data center project near Niagara Falls eventually moved to Norway due to the state's oppressive policies. “Thousands of jobs coming out of that... that’s New York. Uninvestable.”

It brings to mind the fact that more and more of the banking business has been moving from Wall Street to Dallas.

Sixth, the Wall Street Journal reported last month on the banks that are moving to Dallas.

Ross Perot Jr. gestured out the window as his helicopter circled a 4.5-acre pit alongside the skyline of downtown Dallas. Texas and U.S. flags hung from a crane within it.

The site is where Perot’s real-estate investment company, Hillwood, is partnering to build a $500 million  tower for more than 5,000 bankers and investors. That will make it the financial firm’s second-largest office, behind New York. As the helicopter swung northwest, windows glinted from two unfinished Wells Fargo office towers, scheduled to open next year. A bit farther away: a fourth office building under construction for Charles Schwab, which moved its headquarters from California to the Dallas area five years ago, and the footprint of a Deloitte campus doubling in size.

The sprawling landscape illustrates an expansion that has brought to North Texas a presence in financial services that now sits second only to New York City in the U.S. And growth of so-called Y’all Street is accelerating.

Or else, by the numbers:

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Texas investment-banking and securities employment has increased 111% over the past 20 years and 27% since the pandemic, compared with 16% and 5%, respectively, in New York. The number of people employed in finance overall has risen 13% in Texas since 2019, compared with 2% in New York and 3% nationally.

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