Boomers are planning their succession. Here's the hardest question they face, according to a veteran generational wealth expert | Martin Scorsese on Making "Killers of the Flower Moon" | CIA plots, coups and a gold-capped molar in Congo | We've Never Seen Anything Like the Menendez Indictment

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� � � � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � Boomers are planning their succession. Here's the hardest question they face, according to a veteran generational wealth expert - Fortune    As my generation of baby boomers faces the inevitable, the vast majority of estate plans involve a fundamental question: Should each of the kids be treated equally–or should more assets be directed to those with less financial security? We sit with folks, often in their late sixties, who tell us that their kids are all on track, with no special medical needs. The adult children have chosen diverse career paths and enjoy disparate levels of financial success. Of course, there is no right answer. The nuances are important. But after decades of considering the issue, my default position is to treat all children equally. Continued here Martin Scorsese on Making "Killers of the Flower Moon" - The New Yorker    Martin Scorsese has the best curveball in the business. His 2013 film, "The Wolf of Wall Street," based on the true story of a large-scale financial fraudster, is also his wildest and wackiest comedy, closer in inspiration to Jerry Lewis than to Oliver Stone. His modern-gothic horror-thriller "Shutter Island," from 2010, is primarily a refracted personal essay about his childhood spent watching paranoid film-noir classics in the shadow of nuclear war. And now his forthcoming film, "Killers of the Flower Moon," his first attempt—as an octogenarian—at a Western, is essentially a marital drama akin to Stanley Kubrick's final film, "Eyes Wide Shut." It borrows more from such intimate psychological dramas as "Phantom Thread," "Suspicion," and, yes, "Gaslight" than from any of the Western classics of John Ford. In other words, the first of the mysteries that Scorsese's new film poses isn't in the plot—it's the mystery of its own genesis. When I met Scorsese several weeks ago, I told him, before we got started, that I do very few interviews, because, well, I have a director's films, and, if watching them doesn't give me enough to think about and to write about, then I'm in the wrong profession. That said, there was much that I wanted to know about Scorsese, not least because of the paradox of his artistic position: he directs extraordinary movies on hundred-million-dollar budgets yet makes them deeply personal and packs them with artistic flourishes—spectacular camera moves, intimate observations, dramatic shocks, and moments of performance—that are as daring as they are distinctive. I wanted to ask about his methods because I've long felt that a huge part of the art of directing is producing—that the originality of a finished film usually has its roots in the distinctiveness of its director's approach to the systems and methods that get it made. I'd seen something of Scorsese's behind-the-scenes originality in Jonas Mekas's documentary about the making of Scorsese's 2006 gangland drama, "The Departed"—the movie for which Scorsese finally won the Oscar for Best Director, after five previous nominations ended in disappointment, and which heralded his great outburst of work in the past decade and a half. I'd also seen it in "The Wolf of Wall Street," in the way that Scorsese took the increasingly commonplace technology of C.G.I. and proceeded to use it like a painter. But the part of his process on "Killers of the Flower Moon" that I was most curious about involved the subject matter. Set in Oklahoma in the nineteen-twenties, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is based on the nonfiction book of the same name by David Grann, a colleague of mine at The New Yorker. In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a white man who marries an Osage woman named Mollie (Lily Gladstone), under the direction of his gangster-like uncle (Robert De Niro), as part of a wide-ranging and murderous scheme to pry away the wealth of the Osage Nation, on whose territory oil has been discovered. Continued here Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium CIA plots, coups and a gold-capped molar in Congo - The Economist    Patrice Lumumba was prime minister of newly independent Congo for less than three months in 1960, before he was murdered at the age of 35. Yet his tumultuous life—and gruesome death—set a pattern for coups and post-colonial interference that shaped Congo’s torrid path, as well as the gameplan for CIA interventions and assassinations worldwide. Heroes are in short supply. The charismatic Lumumba repeatedly auditions for the role with stirring calls for Congolese independence and unity, but he is too egotistic and impulsive. As a young postal clerk he embezzled two years’ worth of salary from his job. As prime minister, he agreed to a 50-year, $2bn contract for the country’s mineral and hydroelectric resources with a dodgy financier in Delaware—without consulting his economy minister. (He managed to wriggle out of it.) The overwhelming tension in post-independence Congo, a country four times the size of France, was between the former coloniser, Belgium, and the elected prime minister, Lumumba. Frequently racist Belgian officials were angered by Lumumba’s anti-colonial rhetoric, including an unscheduled speech at the independence ceremony. “We have suffered contempt, insults and blows morning, noon and evening, because we were Negroes,” he declared in front of the fuming Belgian king. Lumumba, having won independence on paper, wanted it in practice. Continued here We've Never Seen Anything Like the Menendez Indictment - The Atlantic    The case against the New Jersey senator has the potential to reshape how America deals with foreign agents. Even before Bob Menendez was charged earlier this month with conspiring to act as a foreign agent, dozens of his fellow Democrats were calling on him to resign. Prosecutors say Menendez used his political office to influence American policy at the behest of the Egyptian government. He remains a senator—for now—but the latest indictment, coming after corruption charges last month, further complicates his fate. Last week, Menendez, who has pleaded not guilty to all counts, missed an all-senators classified hearing on Israel—no small indignity for a former chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. According to the indictment, the senator from New Jersey passed along sensitive information to Egypt, acted as a ghostwriter for its officials, and accepted “hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes.” While researching my next book, a history of the foreign-lobbying industry in the United States, I didn’t come across anything quite like these allegations. They appear to be the first time that an elected federal official has been formally accused of acting as an agent of a foreign government. Continued here

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