Yesterday’s newsletter mentioned the play The Lehman Trilogy, based on the story of the founders of the Lehman Brothers banking firm, and cited a review calling attention to its thinly veiled anti-Semitism and serious departures from the truth. For the actual story of some of America’s great Jewish financiers and the roles they played as leaders of U.S. Jewry, one might turn to The Money Kings, by Daniel Schulman. In his review, Allan Arkush focuses on one in particular: Jacob Schiff, who in his day was one of the foremost Jewish philanthropists:

In tandem with his efforts to help migrants, Schiff sought to alleviate the conditions that motivated them to leave the tsarist Empire for the United States in the first place. Already in 1891, he was meeting with President Benjamin Harrison (together with Oscar Straus and Joseph Seligman’s brother Jesse) to seek his administration’s support for Russian Jewry. Twelve years later, in the aftermath of the Kishinev pogrom, he unsuccessfully badgered Theodore Roosevelt to take punitive commercial action against Russia if it didn’t cease to discriminate against American Jews traveling in its territory.

Soon thereafter, during the Russo-Japanese War, Schiff played “a decisive financial role” by taking up half of a Japanese bond issue at a time when other financiers were unwilling to do so. He spent $25 million (the equivalent of almost a billion dollars today). Schiff took this action at least in part to punish Russia for its treatment of its Jews and received from the Japanese emperor the “Second Order of the Sacred Treasure” for his investment.

Schiff continued to hammer away at the regime he loathed and eventually enjoyed a limited measure of success. In 1911, after failing to convince President William Howard Taft to break the U.S. commercial treaty with Russia, he launched a public campaign through the American Jewish Committee “to mobilize public opinion behind a legislative effort to invalidate the treaty.” It worked. Congress voted overwhelmingly to do so, and the president’s hand was forced. On January 1, 1912, he pulled the U.S. out of the treaty.

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.