David Paul Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler. The pseudonym is an allusion to German historian Oswald Spengler, whose most famous work, Decline of the West, asserted that Western civilization was already dying. Goldman says that he writes from a Judeo-Christian perspective and often focuses on demographic and economic factors in his analyses; he says his subject matter proceeds "from the theme formulated by Franz Rosenzweig| Rosenzweig: the mortality of nations and its causes, Western secularism, Asian anomie, and unadaptable Islam." On March 14, 2015, Goldman and longtime Asia Times associate Uwe Von Parpart took control of Asia Times HK Ltd.
From 1976 to 1982, Goldman was responsible for economic publications in the Lyndon LaRouche movement. Goldman has described himself during that period as a radical and an atheist. After leaving the LaRouche movement, he became a conservative, and worked for the Reagan administration and later on Wall Street. Since 1984, Goldman has been employed as an economist and CEO of investment funds and investment policies in senior positions in bodies such as Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Cantor Fitzgerald, Asteri Capital, and SG Capital. After leaving Wall Street, he became an editor for First Things magazine. In September 2013, Goldman became a Managing Director and head of the Americas division of the Reorient Group investment bank based in Hong Kong. As an economist, Goldman published hundreds of articles and studies on various economic subjects, in professional journals as well as journals and dailies such as The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He was a columnist for Forbes from 1994 to 2001. Alongside his work as an economist and analyst, he has published articles in musicology journals and other publications and written several books. Between 2002 and 2011, Goldman served as a member of the board of directors of Mannes School of Music, where he was formerly a teacher. He is the Wax Family Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Sino-Israel Government Network and Academic Leadership.
Media
According to the Claremont Review of Books, in the Asia Times have attracted readership in the millions. Goldman concealed his identity under the "Spengler" pseudonym until 2009, when he revealed his identity in the Asia Times article, and the First Things article . Goldman regularly appears as a guest on CNBC's Larry Kudlow Program, where he has been an outspoken critic of Federal Reserve efforts to resuscitate the American economy. In "Dumb and Dumber", a widely commented upon piece for Tablet magazine in May 2013, Goldman argued how both Republican and Democratic foreign policy elite in the United States have wrongly put their faith in the so-called Arab Spring. In Goldman's view, economic and demographic realities could condemn many Arab states to state failure. In "Deplorably, Trump is going to win", published in Asia Times about two months before the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Goldman correctly predicted Donald Trump would win the presidency.
