J P Morgan: Emperor of Wall Street

J P Morgan: Emperor of Wall Street

A&E (2005)

Film Review

This insipidly uncritical biography of the 19th century bankster, J P Morgan, relies mainly on reminiscences of his family and business associates.

Born in Connecticut in 1837, Morgan moved to Britain at 18, where his father worked in the merchant banking firm Peabody, Morgan & Co. A year later he returned to New York to join the US branch of Peabody, Morgan & Co.

The film conveniently neglects to mention he made his fortune during the Civil War, purchasing 5,000 rifles from an army arsenal at $3.50 apiece and reselling them to a field general for $22 each. Morgan evaded the Civil War draft by paying a substitute $300 to take his place (also not mentioned in the film).

In addition to his banking interests, between 1869 and 1883, Morgan systematically gained control of one-third of all US railroads. After his father’s death in 1890, he used his father’s fortune to acquire more corporations.

Following the 1893 depression, the US experienced a massive drain on its gold reserves and Morgan used an old Civil War statute to allow his and the Rothschilds’ banks to sell gold to the US government (at a tidy profit).

In 1901, he purchased Carnegie Steel to form US Steel Corporation (the world’s first billion dollar corporation). Following the purchase, he controlled roughly 70% of the country’s steel production.

After notorious “trust-buster” Teddy Roosevelt assumed the presidency in the same year, his attorney general prosecuted Morgan’s Northern Security Corporation (which ran his railroads) for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Morgan appealed, but the Supreme Court upheld the government order to break up the company.

During the 1907 panic, many US banks were again on the verge of collapse, when Roosevelt appropriated $35 million from the US Treasury to invest in New York banks to keep them afloat.

It would be the last time the federal government allowed a single banker (the filmmakers refer to Morgan as a “one-man central bank”) to singlehandedly control the US monetary system. In 1913 banking and political leaders secretly conspired with President Woodrow Wilson to create the Federal Reserve.*

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*Contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve is not owned and controlled by the government but by a consortium of private banks.

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/j-pierpont-morgan-emperor-wall-street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/j-pierpont-morgan-emperor-wall-street

Monopoly – Follow the Money

Monopoly – Follow the Money

Directed by Tim Gielen (2021)

Translated by Vrouwen voor Vrijeid (Women for Freedom)

Film Review

This Dutch documentary attempts to pinpoint the main corporations and individuals responsible for the Covid plandemic.

It begins by examining the key institutional investors that own the vast majority of the global share market. Going company by company, filmmakers reveal that approximately 8-10 institutional investors own 80% of the stock of nearly all global corporations. Some of the smaller institutional investors include mutual and pension funds. However the top three of every corporation they examine include BlackRock* and the Vanguard Group.**

The film looks at the institutional shareholdings of company after company, including Google, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Phillips, Boeing, Airbus, Coca Cola, Pepsi, all the mining companies, all the oil companies, Cargill, ADM, Bayer (the largest seed producer in the world since their acquisition of Monsanto), all the textile and fashion brands, Amazon, Ebay, Master Card, Visa, Paypal, and all the banks, tobacco companies, defense contractors, insurance companies, processed food companies, cosmetic brands and publishers and media outlets.***

In every case, both Vanguard Group and BlackRock are both within the top three institutional investors.

They also own stock in each other’s companies. In fact, Vanguard is  the biggest shareholder in BlackRock, which Bloomberg refers to as the “fourth branch of government” because it both advises central banks and lends them money.

We don’t know exactly who owns shares in Vanguard as it’s not a publicly traded company. However we do know that it’s a safe place for many of the most powerful families in the world to hide their wealth (eg the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and British royal family).

The film also explores how wealthy families use nonprofit foundations to shape global politics in their own interest without attracting public attention. The big three featured in the film are George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, the Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

All these rich and powerful elites meet at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland every January and mingle with world leaders and significant non-profit groups, such as Greenpeace and UNESCO.

Chairman and founder of the WEF is Klaus Schwab, a Swiss professor and businessman. In his book, The Great Reset, he states that the coronavirus is a great “opportunity” to reset our societies. According, to Schwab, our old society must switch to a new one because the consumption society the elite has forced on us is no longer sustainable. Under the new society he proposes, people will own nothing and rely primarily on the state to get their needs met.

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*BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment management corporation based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with $8.67 trillion in assets under management as of January 2021.

**The Vanguard Group, Inc. is an American registered investment advisor based in Malvern, Pennsylvania with about $7 trillion in global assets under management, as of January 13, 2021. It is the largest provider of mutual funds and the second-largest provider of exchange-traded funds in the world after BlackRock’s iShares.

***What this means, In essence, is that a handful of individuals control all public information.

 

 

The Hidden History of Big Oil

How Big Oil Conquered the World

Corbett Report (2016)

Film Review

This is an extremely gripping documentary about the hidden history of John D Rockefeller and the global oil cartel. Much of this history, including Rockefeller’s early background, the role of the “oilagarchy” in instigating World War I, Prohibition and their total domination of education, medicine, agriculture and finance has been systematically erased from US history books.

I found the beginning of the film, in which James Corbett talks about JD’s father William Avery Rockefeller, most revealing. Rockefeller senior was a notorious snake oil salesman (and cunning sociopath) who changed his name to Dr Bill Livingston to escape the clutches of the law for fraud, bigamy, rape and various other crimes.

The film traces Rockefeller junior’s entry into the oil drilling business in the 1850s with the formation of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company. From the very beginning of his career, JD demonstrated the same knack for treachery, deceit and fraud as his father – in dealings with both business partners and competitors.*

The invention of the internal combustion engine in the 1870s put Rockefeller in direct competition with the electric vehicle industry. Even the first electric cars (built in 1884) had a number of advantages over gas-powered cars. In 1900, they made up 28% of the US market. Thanks to the discovery of plentiful oil in Texas, Rockefeller easily flooded the market with cheap gasoline and put electric car makers out of business.

After World War I, he faced similar competition from ethanol-fueled cars (Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on either gasoline or alcohol produced from agricultural waste). Here Rockefeller and his corporate allies demolished their competition by conspiring to instigate a national anti-alcohol movement. The latter resulted in the enactment of Prohibition in 1919 and a total ban on alcohol. In a similar vein, after World War II the “oilagarchy” conspired with General Motors to acquire and shut down electrified public transport systems in at least a dozen cities.

Rockefeller’s transformation of medicine (by funding and acquiring control of medical schools) into a field dominated by synthetic petroleum-based pharmaceuticals is fairly well known. There is less public awareness that he played a similar role in shaping public education (especially the teaching of history) and the replacement of organic-based farming with industrial agriculture reliant on petrochemicals. Rockefeller played a similar role in secret meetings that resulted in the creation of the Federal Reserve, as did Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank in the creation of the World Bank and IMF.

Corbett also traces the creation of parallel oil monopolies in Europe by the Rothchilds, the Nobel family and the British and Dutch royal families. Germany posed a major threat to this global oil cartel with a treaty they signed with the Ottoman Empire to acquire a controlling interest in Iraqi oil development. The threatened competition with established European oil interests set wheels in motion for a British-led war against Germany (ie World War I).

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* JD’s favorite motto: “Competition is a sin.”

 

The Real Vampires: An Insider’s View of Banks

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

Carroll Quigley* (1966 MacMillan)

Tragedy and Hope is a free download from http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119975.pdf

(This is a third of a series of posts about stripping private banks of their power to create and control our money supply.)

Book Review

Tragedy and Hope is an exacting account of how the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the European central banks, and the investment banks that dominate them (e.g. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan) came to control all western governments.

According to Quigley, banks have controlled western society – by manipulating the money supply – since the creation of the Bank of England and the fractional reserve lending system in 1694. Moreover, owing to the secrecy under which they operate, Quigley asserts that most elected officials are totally unaware of the immense control central and investment banks exert over the so-called democratic process.

He describes in exhaustive detail how all historical inflationary and deflationary crises, panics, wars, recessions and depressions were orchestrated behind the scenes by the banking establishment, for the purpose of increasing their private wealth. In his epic portrayal of three centuries of western civilization, he also describes how the banking aristocracy financed the rise of Communism in Russia, China and Eastern Europe, as well as bringing Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Roosevelt to power and guiding their governments from behind the scenes.

How Banks Create Money “Out of Nothing”

The single act, according to Quigley, that guaranteed Britain’s two century preeminence over the rest of the world was the development (in 1694), by British investment banks, of the fractional reserve lending system. This system allowed English investment banks to be the first in the world to lend money (to industry and the British government) that they created out of thin air. He goes on to list the banking dynasties that have held near absolute control of the global money supply since 1694, starting with banking cartel formed by Frankfurt banker Meyer Rothschild. At the time of his death, Rothschild’s five sons each controlled a major investment bank in Vienna, London, Naples, Paris and Frankfurt. Quigley lists the investment bank formed by the J.P. Morgan family as second to the Rothschild banks in power and influence, followed by the Baring Brothers, Morgan Grenfell, the Lazard Brothers, Erlanger, Warbur, Shroder, Seligman, the Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet and Fould.

The Council on Foreign Relations

Quigley also writes about the network of secret round tables of international corporate and banking elites started by Cecil Rhodes and expanded by his followers with his sizable estate. At their founding, they had the stated purpose of spreading British the virtues of “ruling class” tradition throughout the English speaking world and solidifying the political power and influence of the British Empire. The US Council on Foreign Relations, one of the secret round tables started by Rhodes’ followers, was started in 1919, with the explicit goal of influencing the foreign and domestic policies of a former colony over which Britain no longer had direct control.

How English Banks Controlled the US Government

According to Quigley, the US was consistently a debtor nation prior to World War I. Following the 1776 revolution, US government and businesses continued to borrow funding for industrial and colonial expansion from English and European investment banks. The American banker, JP Morgan, collaborated with European investment banks to dictate US foreign and domestic policy. They did so by threatening to destroy the US economy by 1) refusing to renew treasury bonds (i.e. money the government borrowed from banks to fund public spending 2) causing a panic by throwing large numbers of shares on the stock market or 3) destroying the value of railroads and other companies the banks owned by loading them up with worthless assets.

As Quigley relates, they engaged in all three tactics at various times throughout the 19^th century, resulting in a series of booms, panics, recessions and depressions that wreaked havoc on American economic development.

How Bankers Engineered, World War I, Bolshevism, Nazism and the Great Depression

The most disturbing section of Tragedy and Hope describes how international bankers engineered (he describes their secret meetings) World War I and what Quigley calls the Banker-Engendered Deflationary Crisis of 1927-40 (aka the Great Depression). Following the 1870 unification under Bismarck, Germany experienced a rapid burst of industrialization, generating sufficient profit that they ceased to rely on investment banks to finance either business or government. They also threatened global bankers by competing with England and other European countries for export markets.

While engineering the first world war to put Germany in her place, the world banking cabal simultaneously hatched a scheme to destabilize Russia (which was making claims on Balkan members of the former Ottoman Empire) by secretly funding the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries.

Financing Hitler and the Nazis

When the the first world war ended in 1918, public debt in Western Europe and the US had increased by 1000%. In 1929, the austerity measures global banks forced on the US, England, France and other European countries led to widespread bankruptcies and unemployment and the virtual collapse of foreign trade.

Except in Germany. The global banking elite used the wealth generated from debt repayment to finance rapid German re-industrialization and militarization and the Nazi movement started by Hitler. The main German corporations funding Hitler were IG Farben, Siemens, Bayer, Daimler Benz, Porsche/Volksvagen and Krupp. In addition to Henry Ford and William Randolph Hearst, the important US banks and corporations who financed Hitler’s rise to power included Kodak, Coca-Cola, DuPont, Standard Oil, IBM, Random House and Chase Bank.

* Late mentor to former president Bill Clinton, Princeton, Harvard and Georgetown professor Carroll Quigley also served as an adviser to the Pentagon and Foreign Service.

The Role of Foreign Banks in US History

Stuff They Forgot to Teach in High School

The Money Masters

Bill Still 1996

Film Review

Produced twelve years before the 2008 economic collapse, The Money Masters provides a comprehensive outline of the role of the international banking cartel in hijacking America’s so-called “democratic” government. Referring to them as “moneychangers” (a New Testament reference), Still explores the key role international banksters have played in deliberately creating depressions and panics, instigating US wars, and assassinating presidents who sought to curtail their power.

Understanding how money is created in the US and other capitalist countries is essential in grasping this historical perspective. Contrary to popular misconception, the federal government doesn’t create or control the money supply – private banks do. Moreover the Federal Reserve isn’t a government agency. It’s actually a private corporation owned by its member banks. What’s more, the fractional reserve banking system allows these banks to loan and charge interest on money they don’t possess – that they essentially create out of thin air.

Most of the film is devoted to the 130 year battle between the world banking cartel and the American presidents who stood up to them: Jefferson, Madison, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Warren Harding. Jefferson and Madison both warned that allowing private banks to seize control of money creation would be the end of democratic rule in the US.

During the 19^th century, the global banking cartel was dominated by key families, like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. However during the 20^th century, this power shifted to a corporate structure with control residing with CEOs and interlocking boards. Still stresses that global economic and political instability can no longer be blamed on specific families (i.e. the Rothschilds) – that the problem lies with the corporate banking system itself.

The solution he proposes is to end fractional reserve banking and the ability of private banks to create money – to follow Lincoln’s example by restoring the responsibility for money creation to federal and state governments.

As the 3 ½ hour film below covers nearly 1000 years of history, I have indexed the key historical events covered:

• 0-21 min – 1100 AD King Henry I creates the tally stick to counter the influence of private goldsmiths and moneychangers who are wreaking economic havoc by manipulating the supply of gold coins.
• 22-27 min – 17^th century Queen Elizabeth I counters the power of private moneychangers by issuing coins directly from the royal treasury. In 1642, international moneychangers finance Oliver Cromwell, who leads a Civil War to overthrow the monarchy. Later they finance an invasion by the Dutch William of Orange to invade England and overthrow the House of Stuart. In 1694 Bank of England (the world’s first central bank) is formed and granted power to create money out of thin air.
• 28-36 min 18^th century Amschel Moses Bower, Frankfurt moneychanger, changes his name to Rothschild and five of his sons assume control of the central banks of Germany, Austria, London, Italy and Paris. The Rothschild family plays major role in financing the Vanderbilt and Harrison railroad monopolies, Carnegie’s monopoly of the steel industry, and 80% of JP Morgan’s holdings. The Rothschild family proceeds to finance both sides of a continuous cycle of European wars. The British treasury incurs a 140 million pound debt to the Bank of England. George III is forced to raise revenue by taxing the American colonies.
• 37-38 min 1764 Under pressure from the Bank of England, George III passes currency act forbidding the use of colonial scrip (paper money) in the American colonies. Forced to use scarce gold and silver coins issued by the Bank of England, the colonies are plunged into deep depression with massive unemployment. Benjamin Franklin maintains this, not the tea tax, triggers the American Revolution.
• 39-44 min 1781 Over strong objections of Jefferson and Madison, charter is granted for the Bank of North America, a privately owned central bank which is allowed to create money out of thin air. Charter allowed to lapse in 1785, and power to issue money reverts to federal government.
• 45–51 min 1790 Alexander Hamilton pressures Congress to charter a second private bank, the Bank of the United States. The US Treasury, which provides all the funds, is a 20% shareholder. The Bank creates money out of thin air to loan funds to private shareholders to purchase the other 80%.
• 52-99 min 1811 Congress refuses to renew Bank of US charter, despite a threat by Nathan Mayer Rothschild that “ . . .the United Stateswill find itself involved in a most disastrous war (War of 1812) if the bank’s charter is not renewed.”
• 1:00-1:01hr 1816 Devastated by war and war debt, Congress grants new charter for the (private) Bank of the United States, again funded mainly by the federal government. The US Treasury winds up with 20% share, with the Bank creating additional money to loan private shareholders (mostly foreign) sufficient funds to buy the other 80%.
• 1:02-1:10hr 1828 Andrew Jackson elected president on platform to end massive corruption and fraud at the Bank of the United Statesby shutting it down. Nearly assassinated after “powerful Europeans” hire gunman to kill him. The USremains free of central bank control for 77 years, with state chartered banks assuming responsibility for money creation.
• 1:11-1:18hr Civil War European financial powers pressure Southern states to secede by boycotting their cotton. Ending slavery was not the original cause of US Civil War, as Lincolnoriginally had no intention of abolishing it.
• 1:19-1:27hr 1862 To finance the Civil War,  Lincoln issues $450 million in paper money (greenbacks) and is attacked by the London Times – which calls for the destruction of the US before it destroys the world’s monarchies. British troops mobilize in Canada and British navy mobilizes on Atlantic coast. The Rothschilds grant Napoleon III $3 million to seize Mexico. Russian czar stations battleships on West Coast and pledges to come to US defense if England and France enter Civil War (on behalf of the South). Lincoln agrees to allow national banks to temporarily issue currency through 1863 National Banking Act, though his government-issued greenbacks continue to circulate until 1994. German chancellor Otto von Bismarck predicts triumph for global banking cartel following Lincoln’s 1865 assassination. In 1934 Vancouver Mayor Gerry McGreer releases Secret Service records revealing John Wilkes Booth was hired by powerful banking interests.
• 1:28–1:30hr 1873 Banking interests pressure Congress to demonetize silver (which is far more plentiful than gold) and place all US money on gold standard. Deliberate contraction of the money supply leads to severe depression and unemployment (1/3 of US workforce unemployed in 1876). In 1877 riots calling for return of silver currency lead to 1878 Sherman Law, which allows limited number of silver coins to be minted.
• 1:37-1:38 hr 1881 President Garfield attacks the moneychangers and is assassinated.
• 1.38–1:47 hr 1891-1907 Determined to manipulate public opinion in favor of a new (private) central bank, the moneychangers deliberately shrink US money supply, causing 20 years of extreme economic instability. .
• 1:48-1:54 hr 1907 secret meeting of Rockefellers and other major banking families at Jekyll Island to draw up plans for new central bank called the Federal Reserve. President Taft (a Republican) refuses to support it, so moneychangers begin courting Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat)
• 1:54-1:57 hr 1913 Wilson defeats Taft with support from William Jennings Bryant and other currency reformers by promising he won’t support the new central bank. Wilson betrays his supporters and Federal Reserve Act passed during Christmas recess. The Act requires the federal government to borrow funding for operational expenses from the Federal Reserve. A federal income tax is adopted to ensure the government can make the interest payments.
• 2:13-2:17 hr 1905-1917 $20 million of Federal Reserve funds channeled to Bolsheviks via Chase Manhattan Bank (controlled by Rockefellers) after czar denies them access to Russian oil fields.
• 2:18- 2:29 hr 1929 Federal Reserve deliberately contracts money supply and crashes the stock market after all their members transfer their wealth from stocks to gold and cash. According to Milton Friedman, this contraction triggers Great Depression.
• 2:30-2:31hr 1931 Rep Louis McFadden warns that US banks are subsidizing the rise of Hitler, channeling over $30 billion in Federal Reserve funds via Chase Manhattan Bank.
• 2:32-2:44 hr 1933 Roosevelt prohibits US citizens from owning gold coins or bullion and forces them to turn all their gold to the federal government. All US Treasury gold becomes property of Federal Reserve and most of it is sold to European speculators.
• 2:45-2:50 hr 1945 a global central bank is formed through creation of IMF, World Bank, and International Bank of Settlements. All are run by private bankers, with intention of consolidating control of the global money supply.
• 2:51-2:58 hr 1989-1993 Economy of Japan and Mexico wiped out when Bank of International Settlements contracts the global money supply. Punitive IMF interest charges result in massive transfer of wealth from third world countries to World Bank. Continuing consolidation of central bank control with formation of NAFTA and WTO.

Still produced a sequel to the Money Masters in 2010 called The Secret of Oz in 2010. It focuses mainly on the rise of the Populist movement in the 1890s and the presidential campaigns of Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryant. Bryant ran on a platform of ending the power of private banks to issue money and returning to federally issued greenbacks and silver coinage. L Frank Baum, who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was a strong Bryant supporter. The book is loaded with symbols related to monetary reform (for example, the silver slippers, Emerald City, and the yellow brick road).

Enjoy.

photo credit: Cea. via photopin cc

Reposted from Veterans Today