Blank, who allegedly alternated mainstream politics with support for the far-left, found himself pitted against the antisemitic far-right, being brutalized by the National Christian Defense League and marked for retribution by the Iron Guard.

[10] Blank's political friend and enemy, Constantin Argetoianu, claims that Mauriciu had a marriage of convenience to Aristide's mother Betina Goldenberg, who was "ugly as well as vulgar, avaricious as well as venomous".

"[15] Aristide received an elite education, and was possessed of an artistic sensibility;[16] however, Argetoianu portrays him as "highly intelligent [but] lacking a serious culture", his main attributes being ambition, jealousy, and eventually paranoia.

[37] In the winter of 1914–1915, he was sent to the United Kingdom by Ion I. C. Brătianu's PNL government, in order to secure a loan for the state, establishing neutral Romania's closer ties to the Triple Entente.

[38] Upon his return, Blank debuted in economic theory with a tract on pricing policies, Scumpirea și ieftinirea traiului ("Increases and Decreases in the Cost of Living", Bucharest, 1915–1916);[16] his ideas on this topic inspired banking clerks to set up a consumers' co-operative.

[45] During the exodus of 1917, Blank arrived on a special mission to Vladivostok; from this outpost, he sponsored Ioan Timuș's extended trip to Japan,[46] asking him to act as an informant on Japanese cultural norms, and "therefore of use to our country".

In October 1918, he sailed across the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and into Europe, ultimately reaching France; he had intended to join the French Army, but his services were no longer required after the Armistice of November.

[81] When Averescu returned as Prime Minister of a People's Party cabinet in 1920, Blank helped it negotiate a four-year loan of 15 million French francs with Belgian bankers such as Lucien Kaisin.

[85] The PNL's central organ, Viitorul, reported that, as the Conservative-Democratic Minister of Agriculture, Constantin Garoflid had leased 100,000 hectares of Romanian arable land to an investment firm, Progresul Agricol.

[79] Nicolae Carandino, at the time a young journalist, recalls that Blank, "having no administrative appointment and no title to his name", was unofficially recognized in government circles as the organizer of receptions for "any of the important foreignes who were visiting our country.

[121] Blank's involvement with youth and left-wing causes during the process of Jewish emancipation saw him engaged in a prolonged conflict with the antisemitic far-right, and in particular with Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, who would emerge as a regional leader of the National Christian Defense League (LANC).

[123] In late 1923, police agents captured Codreanu, Ion Moța, and other LANC activists, accusing them of plotting to assassinate members of the Romanian political and financial elite, including the Blanks.

[128] As part of their conflict with Iorga, Lăncieri youths openly confronted him, asking him why had "sold himself to banker Blank"; details about such contacts were popularized by LANC leader A. C. Cuza and by Madgearu, who had since joined the PNȚ.

[129] The Iron Guard, founded by Codreanu after his split with the LANC, put up Blank and Constantinescu's names on an enemies' list which also included Constantin Banu, Wilhelm Filderman, and Gheorghe Gh.

Their Paris wedding was attended by numerous figures in politics and social life, including the then-Yugoslav Premier Nikola Pašić, Maharajah Jagatjit Singh, diplomat Nicolae Titulescu, banker Robert de Rothschild, and writers such as Marcel Prévost and Elena Văcărescu.

A LANC newspaper covered the event, noting: "Blank must be reminded that this international and Jewified society does not impose itself on the Romanian public, who still feels the same way about him as those students who pummeled him out [...] in late March 1924.

A Council of Regents oversaw matters relating to the court; one of its members was Gheorghe Buzdugan, who, in 1929, declared having "particular high esteem for Aristide Blank, the banker who is a remarkable personality, a man with a big heart and a philanthropist.

[149] Also frequenting this circle, Argetoianu noted that Blank was a second-wave inductee into the camarilla, arriving in at the same time as Tabacovici and "the pimp" Alexandru Mavrodi; but also that, during the first year of Carol's reign, he became his most influential adviser, to the point of "ruling over Romania".

[16] This induction into a military fraternity, on par with that of professionals such as Vasile Rudeanu, was described as especially insulting by his old enemy Moța, who noted that the "Jewish populace is now nested within our army like a moth inside a piece of cloth".

[172] Carol intervened to get Discom a share from the Alcohol Monopoly, as well as control over Loteria de Stat; through the king's pressures, the General Council of Bucharest also spent 500 million lei on acquiring Blank's allotment in Otopeni.

[146] From early 1931, Blank allowed his "fantastically decorated palace" on Dionisie Street, Bucharest, to be used by the Romanian state for housing its more pretentious foreign guests—immediately after, it was a temporary home to Henri Deterding of the Royal Dutch/Shell, who was prospecting the local petroleum industry.

If Mr Aristid Blank had not so carefully demarcated his huge private wealth from his bank house, which is also his property but operates on a separate joint stock company basis, and had not also been living with the splendor of an Oriental maharaja, he would have paid back those millions".

"[210] Argetoianu looked back on 1935 as the worst year in Romanian history, only similar to the period of Ottoman dominion over the Danubian Principalities: "It would still appear as the better alternative to be trampled on by the Padishah than by that Yid Aristid Blank or the alms-giver Malaxa.

[225] He reports meeting the "all-too-serene" Blank visiting the Wallace Collection alongside diplomat Dimitrie N. Ciotori: "I never asked him why he was in London: I don't doubt for a moment that he's here to pick up scraps from the table that's being set for King Carol".

Official reports presented Discom as "a business venture of the Jew Aristide Blanc and of some politicians, most notably Const[antin] Argetoianu", also recounting that it had defrauded the state to the tune of "many a million.

The group, which also included Auschnitt, Malaxa, Nicolae Ciupercă, Emil Ghilezan [ro] and Mihail Ghelmegeanu, was highly selective, to the point where its activities were kept secret from other Romanian Lodges.

In reviewing this decision, the left-wing paper Viața Sindicală noted that all those serving on the body were "guarantees that the issue of publishing houses and the healthy purpose of books will be steered along the justest path".

[137] That year, the BMB was nationalized (though it continued to exist as a separate entity, under state management, to 1951); the company's former offices, a granite building on Doamnei Street, were taken by Romania's new secret police, the Securitate.

[137] In April 1955, his conviction for treason was overturned, and commuted into a three-year sentence for mishandling national secrets; he had by then served the equivalent in Jilava and Pitești prisons, and was consequently set free.

Like his friend Bertrand de Jouvenel, he spoke out against the French economic mainstream, advocating right-libertarianism; this agenda was promoted by his own magazine, Liaisons Sociales, as well as by Commentaire journal and Saint-Simon Foundation, both of which he financed.