Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost is haunting the grand old men of capitalism

When he was alive, Jeffrey Epstein relentlessly abused young women. Nowadays his ghost haunts a different group: the grand old men of global capitalism. Even before America’s Justice Department released a vast trove of documents on January 30th, the Epstein affair had claimed enough high-profile careers to fill a private jet. Les Wexner, a retail magnate who employed Epstein as a financial adviser, was the first to go. He resigned from L Brands in 2020. The next year Jes Staley, boss of Barclays, a British bank, and Leon Black, founder of Apollo, an investment firm, were dethroned. Some of the biggest names in commerce, from Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, to Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, have been tarnished.

Their ranks will surely grow as lawyers, journalists and social-media addicts pore over Epstein’s emails. On February 4th the chair of Paul Weiss, a white-shoe law firm, joined those resigning from their posts over revelations of their ties to Epstein. What many of the defenestrated have in common, apart from various levels of bad judgment, is membership of an elite at its zenith between the 1980s, when Epstein left Wall Street to work as a fixer and tax adviser, and 2019, when he died in an apparent suicide. Epstein attracted powerful people because he knew so many of them. Yet this dynamic also created a single point of failure for a singular elite. Meritocracy made them powerful, global markets made them rich—and now Epstein is making them reviled.

This corps of global titans was already under threat. Trust in big business, and by implication those in charge of it, has collapsed. A record 43% of those surveyed by Gallup, a pollster, say they have “very little” faith in it. No great mystery why. The twin ideals of free markets and globalisation have received a bad rap since the financial crisis of 2007-09 (perhaps the only event to end more careers than Epstein). Efforts since by elites to appear more normal, such as their embrace of the ESG craze, have had the effect of making them seem even stranger.

The Epstein affair could not have been better designed to embarrass big-shot globalists. Some will be most alarmed by the group’s moral turpitude—or at least how comfortable they were around it. The boss of DP World appears to have made arrangements for a Russian masseuse employed by Epstein to visit a hotel in Turkey. The logistics firm’s website boasts that he was the Middle East’s first “HeForShe champion”, a gender-equality programme run by the United Nations. (DP World has not responded to a request for comment.) Others will be dismayed by compromised relations between businessmen and politicians. While a British government minister, and shortly before embarking on a lucrative consulting career, Peter Mandelson appears to have shared sensitive information with Epstein about the euro-zone crisis and advice on how JPMorgan Chase might lobby the British government. (The bank declined to comment.)

Public opinion is less tolerant of hypocrisy than of sex scandals or corruption, which is why anger over the Epstein affair will not be evenly distributed. Those atop corporations known for flaunting their social conscience, or who have proudly denied their connection to Epstein, are most squarely in the firing line. Figures like Donald Trump or Elon Musk, whose authority has never rested on piety, can continue to shrug off the association.

Even the publication of millions of pages of Epstein-related documents will not draw a line under the scandal. One reason is that, although the Justice Department says its latest release satisfies the “Epstein Files Transparency Act” passed by Congress, many more files are still hidden. Whatever the law’s demands, its political goals remain unfulfilled. “Not good enough,” was the reaction of Ro Khanna, the Democrat who wrote it.

Another reason is that elites will do what they often do when their position is threatened: quarrel. The most interesting remarks at Davos last month were not Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, ruminating on the “rupture” between America and the world, but Scott Bessent, America’s treasury secretary, illustrating the rupture within America’s elite. He lambasted Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, for having a “billionaire sugar daddy” in Alex Soros. Mr Soros is the son of George—an investor of great interest to conspiracy theorists and Mr Bessent’s former employer.

A weakened elite is also more vulnerable to populism. That is understood by Mr Trump, who in recent weeks released a barrage of company-bashing orders. In January alone he proposed a cap on credit-card rates, a ban on share buy-backs by defence contractors and changes to health-care funding that have spooked the big insurers. Each of these policies is more bark than bite, but Mr Trump’s willingness to attack even his supporters within the elite is an illustration of corporate America’s unpopularity.

What makes the Epstein affair so explosive is that so many who spun in his orbit are still in power. Epstein’s correspondence reads like a “Who’s Who” which has gathered only a thin layer of dust. But as those embroiled in the tawdry affair are scorned, ostracised or, in some cases, locked up, a new business elite is getting ready to take their place. It has vices of its own.

The worldviews of the upcoming stars of finance and technology are often inspired by the “effective altruism” movement, a sort of utilitarianism for millennials that is even more perplexing to ordinary people than the liberalism of the ancien régime. And the designs for society of Silicon Valley’s AI labs promise more radical changes than globalisation ever wrought. Meanwhile, plenty in the MAGA universe have relaxed attitudes to corruption. The most important lessons of the Epstein elite’s messy end are moral. But let it also serve as a warning to whoever replaces them. ■