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BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street -Ticket prices

Post by Firestarter »

I guess that most people don’t even realise how bad it is that a small number of investment funds completely dominate our economy. The last time the financial power was this concentrated was in the days of J.P. Morgan (1837-1913)...

Here are a couple of things “they” could do.

Inflate stock prices, currency and orchestrate crashes of the economy.
When you know in advance that a crash will come, it’s even easier to get huge profits (while eliminating the “competition” at the same time) than in a “normal” market.

When the media (controlled by the big investment funds) report that the “passive funds” of BlackRock and Vanguard outperform the competition, this doesn’t really mean that they perform “better”.
This is the logical result of dominating the financial markets.

Because the same funds own (thus control) all the major corporations, these corporations aren’t competing against each other, but are colluding against the customer.

It becomes even more interesting when you think about what they could do, as they completely dominating several (or all) sectors (diversified portfolios).

Let’s assume a situation where a small amount of tenants prevent the destruction of some houses to build a huge building that is expected to make profits of many million dollars.
They could for example use psychiatrists, on the take of big pharma, to have some of these tenants declared mentally ill to get rid of them...


I’ve found a story about the effects of concentration of ownership on the price of airline tickets. If one company has an effective monopoly, the price of tickets will be higher than with competition.
Three investment funds — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — collectively control about 15% of the shares of major US airlines.

José Azar discussed with his colleague Isabel Tecu on how corporate behaviour might change when large investors hold diversified portfolios. Tecu had worked with airline data, and they decided to test whether airfares had been influenced by the concentration of shareholders. They asked an old classmate, Martin Schmalz, to join them.

Azar found a 1984 paper by Julio Rotemberg, who posited that “firms, acting in the interest of their shareholders” might “tend to act collusively when their shareholders have diversified portfolios”.
Rotemberg figured that if investors own a stake in every firm, they will make more money if firms compete less and collude against their customers.
Customers have already found this out, and rightfully complain about their treatment by big firms.

Index funds have grown exponentially since John Bogle founded Vanguard in the mid-1970s. BlackRock and Vanguard each manage trillions of dollars, and together with State Street hold 15 to 20 % of the stock in (almost all) major US corporations.
One journalist argues that large index funds are violating antitrust law. Another recommends that index funds should be prohibited to own stock in more than one company in one sector of the economy.

In April 2015, Azar, Schmalz, and Tecu published a draft of their paper.
They claimed that: the high concentration of share ownership had caused that ticket prices were 12% higher than they would have been with less concentration of the shareholders.

BlackRock subsequently published a 24-page report, discrediting not only the claims but even the facts. Executives at Vanguard likewise expressed scepticism.
In defence, BlackRock claimed that it votes with activists more than it votes with managers. This is a blatant lie, but please don’t let the facts get in the way of the truth...

Azar, Schmalz, and Tecu subsequently published the paper with some less harsh conclusions: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... il/534183/
(http://archive.is/TfOVU)


I’ve also looked at the full paper.
It’s sort of boring because it spends so many pages on describing the model they used.

They use the December 2009 acquisition by BlackRock of Barclays Global Investors (BGI), to estimate the effects. After the acquisition the ownership became more concentrated.
Until the first quarter of 2011, ticket prices in the treatment and control markets co-moved very closely. Since 2011, ticket prices in the treatment market (with concentrated ownership) noticeably increased more than in the control market.
See Figure 5.
Image

Here’s the (draft) paper - Azar, Schmalz, Tecu – Anti-competitive Effects of Common Ownership (2015): https://web.archive.org/web/20200729160 ... 427345.pdf
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Vanguard, BlackRock – Supermarkets

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I’ve searched for the major shareholders of the biggest supermarket chains in the US. I was surprised that relatively a lot of these chains aren’t publicly traded because they are “privately owned”. Many of these corporations are reportedly owned by its employees.
In the last couple of years a relatively large amount of the biggest supermarket chains have been merged to form even bigger companies.

Not publicly traded are:
Albertsons Companies LLC - “privately” owned by investors (including Cerberus Capital Management).
Aldi – privately owned (founded by ALbrecht brothers, from Germany).
H.E. Butt Grocery Company - privately owned.
Giant Eagle, Inc - privately owned.
Wegmans Food Markets, Inc - privately owned.

Hy-Vee, Inc – employee owned.
WinCo Foods LLC – employee owned.
Publix Super Markets – employee owned: http://www.4-traders.com/PUBLIX-SUPER-M ... 2/company/

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) - ceased supermarket operations in November 2015, after 156 years in business.
Southeastern Grocers, LLC – In May 2018, its restructuring plan was confirmed by a U.S. Bankruptcy judge in Delaware.


Amazon acquired Whole Food Market, Inc in August 2017 (labelled as a merger): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-whol ... SKCN1B31W6


Major Shareholders in The Kroger Co. include – Vanguard Group (more than 12.9%); Blackrock; State Street; Capital; Fidelity (FMR): https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/KR/holders?ltr=1
(archived here: http://archive.is/qa9yP)


Major Shareholders in Walmart Inc. include – Vanguard Group; Blackrock; State Street; Fidelity (FMR): https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/wmt/holders?ltr=1
(archived here: http://archive.is/U1M1E)


Major Shareholders in SuperValu Inc. include – Vanguard Group (more than 19%!); Blackrock (12.7%); State Street; and iShares Core S&P Smallcap ETF; Dimensional Fund Advisors LP; Lsv Asset Management; Towle & Company: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SVU/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/Os5S8)


Major Shareholders in Ingles Markets, Incorporated include – Vanguard Group; Blackrock; State Street; and Gamco Investors Inc (more than 14%); Gabelli Funds, LLC (more than 11%); Janus Henderson Group PLC; Dimensional Fund Advisors LP; River Road Asset Management, LLC; Lsv Asset Management; iShares Russell 2000 ETF: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IMKTA/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/UI3Xi)
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ABCD traders and giant food corporations

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In reality it are not the supermarkets that decide what we eat, but the major corporations that supply the giant food companies like Unilever, Nestlé, Heinz, Mars, Kellogg’s and Tchibo.
These companies aren’t only the top suppliers of supermarket chains but also of the “smaller” shops. In Germany, 4 of these companies account for 85% of retail food sales.

There are a total of 4 corporations - the so-called ABCD traders - Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Dreyfus that completely dominate the wheat, maize and soybeans markets. The farmers, after they harvest their products, have no choice but to sell to the ABCD traders.
According to Corporate Atlas these 4 corporations have a share of 70 % of the world market.

Since 2015, 15 mega-mergers have occurred in the food and agriculture industry.
Today, 5 corporations are controlling the production of seeds and pesticides worldwide, but their number is likely to shrink to merely four by the end of 2017.

Germany’s Bayer has acquired Monsanto in the USA to become the world’s largest provider of agrochemicals.
The US-based corporations DuPont and Dow Chemical have merged into DowDuPont.
ChemChina has acquired the Swiss-based multinational Syngenta.
These 3 corporations (after being merged) control more than 60% of the seed and agrochemical markets: https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/small-n ... rket-shelf
(archived here: http://archive.is/oIqA1)


I survive in the Netherlands, but I had never even heard of the gigantic Louis Dreyfus Company with its head office in Rotterdam.
The company's parent, Louis Dreyfus Holding B.V., is headquartered at the World Trade Center in Amsterdam (my home town). Louis Dreyfus companies has 72 offices in more than 100 countries.
Louis Dreyfus controls more than 75% of the global grain trade.

Cargill, Incorporated is a privately owned corporation based in Minnetonka, Minnesota and incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware.
It is the largest privately held corporation in the US in terms of revenue.


Major Shareholders in Archer-Daniels-Midland Company include – Vanguard (more than 13.5%); BlackRock; State Street; and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance (more than 10%): https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ADM/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/5k4fP)


Major Shareholders in Bunge Limited include – Vanguard (more than 17%!); BlackRock; State Street; Fidelity (FMR); and Price (T.Rowe) Associates (more than 11.5%); Franklin Resources: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BG/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/M0mVk)


Even though Monsanto has already been acquired by Bayer, it’s still publicly traded…
Major Shareholders in Monsanto Company include – Vanguard (more than 14%); BlackRock; State Street; Fidelity (FMR); and Berkshire Hathaway; Primecap Management Company: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MON/hol ... ccounter=1
(archived here: http://archive.is/Ra0X6)


Major Shareholders in DowDuPont Inc. include – Vanguard (more than 12%); BlackRock; Fidelity (FMR); and Capital: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DWDP/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/uFFAP)


Following some information on the giant food corporations...


In 2012, Kraft Foods split into two separate companies, Kraft Foods Group and Mondelez International. Mondelez took the snacks and candies brands, including Cadbury, Nabisco, and Oreo.
Major Shareholders in Mondelez International, Inc. include – Vanguard; BlackRock; State Street; Fidelity (FMR); and Trian Fund Management; JP Morgan Chase: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MDLZ/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/l1EqV)


Major Shareholders in The Kraft Heinz Company include – Vanguard Group; BlackRock; State Street; and Berkshire Hathaway (more than 26.7%!); Capital: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/KHC/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/NKiRF)


Major Shareholders in Kellogg Company include – Vanguard; BlackRock; State Street; and Kellogg W K Foundation Trust (more than 19.5%); Keybank National Association; Capital: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/k/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/mJOUa)


Major Shareholders in General Mills, Inc. include – Vanguard; BlackRock; State Street; and Massachusetts Financial Services; Invesco: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GIS/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/fsXip)


Major Shareholders in The Coca-Cola Company include – Vanguard; BlackRock; State Street; Fidelity (FMR); and Berkshire Hathaway; Capital: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/KO/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/F8WIs)
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Major shareholders – Restaurant chains

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It’s strange that BlackRock is widely known as the biggest investment fund in the world, but for just about all the big corporations I checked Vanguard is the bigger shareholder.

When I looked for the major shareholders of PepsiCo on Finance.yahoo.com, for some reason it doesn’t present the detailed information I was looking for...
Major Shareholders in PepsiCo Inc. include – Vanguard (more than 15%); BlackRock; and SSgA Funds Management; Wellington Management: https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholder ... titutional
(archived here: http://archive.is/FBieb)


Subway is the largest single-brand restaurant chain in the world and is privately owned.

Chick-fil-A is privately owned. Reportedly its founder and long-time CEO set up a contract before he died in 2014 so that his children can never go public with the chain.


Major Shareholders in McDonald's Corporation include – Vanguard (more than 13%); BlackRock; State Street; Fidelity (FMR); and Capital: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/mcd/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/4VTzb)


Major Shareholders in Starbucks Corporation include – Vanguard (more than 12.5%); BlackRock; State Street; Fidelity (FMR); and Capital; Morgan Stanley; Magellan Asset Management; Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SBUX/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/yJR1j)


YUM! Brands is the parent company of amongst others Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC.
Major Shareholders in YUM! Brands, Inc. include – Vanguard; BlackRock; State Street; and Price (T.Rowe) Associates (more than 14.5%); Magellan Asset Management; Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/yum/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/p5QRp)


Restaurant Brands International is the (Canadian) parent company of amongst others Burger King.
Major Shareholders in Restaurant Brands International Inc. include – Fidelity (FMR); Vanguard; and Pershing Square Capital Management (10.9%); Price (T.Rowe) Associates; Royal Bank of Canada; Principal Financial Group; Berkshire Hathaway; Franklin Resources; Principal Mid Cap Fund; Bank of Montreal/Can/: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/QSR/hol ... ccounter=1
(archived here: http://archive.is/iuuIc)


Major Shareholders in The Wendy's Company include – Vanguard (more than 12%); BlackRock; State Street; and Trian Fund Management (16.3%!); Eminence Capital; Wells Fargo; Janus Henderson; Victory Capital: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WEN/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/ztNXE)


Only 3 companies own more than 52% of Dunkin' Brands – Vanguard; Price (T.Rowe); Janus Henderson.
Major Shareholders in Dunkin' Brands Group, Inc. include – Vanguard (more than 16.5%!); BlackRock; Fidelity (FMR); State Street; and Price (T.Rowe) Associates (more than 20%!); Janus Henderson (more than 15.5%!); Goldman Sachs: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/dnkn/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/DEr0q)


Major Shareholders in Domino's Pizza, Inc. include – Vanguard (more than 16%!); BlackRock (12.4%); State Street; and Renaissance Technologies; Tiger Global Management; Viking Global Investors; Capital; William Blair Investment Management; iShares; Smallcap World Fund: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DPZ/holders/
(archived here: http://archive.is/UDLfS)
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Hollywood slump

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In tickets bought per US adult 2016 was the worst year for movies since before the 1920s and 2016 also had the fewest total ticket sales in 2 decades.
Ten percent of monthly filmgoers buy half of all movie tickets. Most people that watch movies in the cinema are young people (between 18 and 39). The most important demographic group for Hollywood, 18-to-24-year-olds, is going less and less to the cinema. Image

In 1980, Hollywood spent less than 20 cents on advertising for every $1 it earned at the box office. Now it spends 60 cents to earn a buck. Movie makers are spending an enormous amount of advertising money to create “blockbusters”.
In 1996, none of the 10 biggest films were sequels or superhero movies. In 2016, out of the 371 movies released, 4 superhero films — Captain America: Civil War; Deadpool; Batman vs. Superman; X-Men: Apocalypse — accounted for 29% of the total box office.

Hollywood has been shoving sequels down our throats for more than a decade. In 2011, the 7 top films were all sequels, including Fast 5 and Harry Potter.
Both in 2015 and 2016, 6 of the top 10 and 11 of the top 20 films were sequels. In 2015, the 8 biggest opening weekends were all sequels, including Furious 7 and the latest Star Wars.
It appears that even in the 21th century, people can get enough of seeing the same story retold over and over again.

That Hollywood is less influential in brainwashing us, doesn’t mean that people are “waking up” though. arguably the “new” mind control techniques are even more successful than the movies…
Our attention is now pouring into mobile devices, using Netflix, premium cable apps, YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ar ... em/486209/
(archived here: http://archive.is/nof5W)


In 2017, theatrical revenues in the US dropped another 2%, ending the year a little over $11 billion, while attendance went down another 4% to 5%. By inflating prices, the worldwide box office will likely hit new heights and could come close to a record breaking $40 billion.

At the beginning of 2017, the results looked even more devastating.
Beginning in September, when “It” (another remake) made $327.5 million in the US, theatres began to draw more visitors.

Indie favourites like “Lady Bird” and “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” helped to bring people to the theatres, while “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and “Coco” became box office smashes.
Other sequels - “Transformers: The Last Knight” and “Alien: Covenant” - performed less than expected.

Could Hollywood be trying to attract more people by using “adverse publicity”?!?
Several big moguls and movie stars have been accused of sexual harassment generating a huge amount of “publicity”: https://variety.com/2017/film/news/holl ... 202647206/
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Henry C. Carey – The Slave Trade

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I’ve found an interesting book by Henry C. Carey (1793−1879), born in Philadelphia, on how so-called “free races” are enslaved. The strange thing is that it’s from 1853 (165 years old) and most of it is still actual. It really explains why the United Nations, World Bank and IMF were founded.
A lot of it is based on Adam Smith’s views. While Carey pinpoints a lot of strategies used against “us”, some of the solutions he presents miss the mark…


Under the Spanish system, labour is valuable so slaves continue to be imported. Under the English one, labour is valueless and men sell themselves for long years of slavery at the sugar culture in the Mauritius, Jamaica, and in Guiana.
England is engaged in a war against the labour of all other countries employed in other activity than raising raw produce to be sent to England, there to be manufactured into end products at the factories of her millionaires, who have accumulated their vast fortunes at the expense of Ireland, India, Portugal, Turkey, and other countries that have been ruined.
The nation that exports raw produce exhausts its land, and then it must export its men, leaving women and children to perish.

Cotton is produced in countries like India, Egypt, Brazil, the West Indies, and the Southern States of the US. It’s then made into cloth in England and becomes valuable. The trick is to keep the value of the raw material low and the end product high. In this way the rich of England become even richer, while the poor become poorer.
This also shows how deceptive calculations based upon statements on the value of exports and imports are; that always “prove” the growing prosperity of England.
If the people of Cuba, Brazil, India, and other countries produce cloth, iron, and other commodities for which they now depend on Europe, and thus diminish their need to export, it would increase the price of their products while making cloth and iron cheaper. This would make these “third world” countries more “free”.

Ever since India came under English rule, their condition has become hopelessly miserable. Cholera became very common.
The Hindu, like the black, is shut out from the workshop. If he attempts to make cloth, he’s heavily taxed, from which his wealthy English competitor is exempt. His iron ore and his coal must remain in the ground, and if he dares to collect the salt which crystallizes before his door, he is fined and imprisoned.
The sub-renter extorts whatever he thinks the unfortunate borrower could pay, for example 1% interest a week. In this way, no matter how large the crop, the poor borrower will never make a profit.

The very best parts of India were selected for the cultivation of the poppy. If the people refused, they were forced. The same company that forced them to grow opium, forced them to sell it back to them for the price they decided. It was exported to China.
In 1839, the emperor of China finally seized a huge amount of opium to be destroyed. Then Britain started the “opium wars”, to force the Chinese to repay them for the destroyed opium.

Britain calls her opponents “despots”, while the British elite are the real despots.
Portugal, India, Turkey and Ireland yield to the British system, become poorer and weaker every year, and their people more enslaved.
In 1801, the copyright and patent laws of England were extended to Ireland, and publishing books was stopped. As a result Ireland couldn’t compete anymore. Irish workers were forced to go to England looking for a job to pay the rent at home. It is common to blame the rapid growth of population for the poor state of Ireland, but in reality this wasn’t the cause.
The Irish went from being land owners, to tenants. The land passed from many into the hands of the few. In the days of Adam Smith there were 220,000 English land-owners, in 1853 only 80,000 were left, while all the land of Scotland is accumulated in the hands of only 6000 people.

In Britain children were sold. Girls brought the highest price; girls aged 12 to 18 cost $500-800.
The poor enter their children in so-called “burial clubs”. A small sum is paid every year by the parent, and this entitles him to receive a larger sum when the child dies. Many parents enter their children in several clubs. One man in Manchester had his child in 19 different clubs.
Parents are so miserable that they actually kill their helpless little offspring to receive the reward from the “burial clubs”.

In 1825, Germany exported almost 30 million pounds of raw wool to England, where it was subjected to a duty of 12 cents per pound for the privilege of being manufactured into cloth.
Germany, Russia, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and some other states, are trying to protect their farmers. The King of Prussia tries to strengthen his people by enabling them to find employment, manure for their farms, and strengthens Germany by the formation of a great Union, that gives 30 million people the freedom of internal trade.
In contrast, all the measures of England in India are to enslave a hundred million. Of course Russia and Germany haven’t bothered England anymore since the first and second World Wars…

According to Carey, the way to freedom is increasing the value of labour and land. He proposes to export machines to (for example) Africa to increase the labour “value” of Africans. I don’t agree with these ideas…
The additional profits from using machines go to the same elite that control the manufacture of machines. In the 21th century we have computer technology that has reduced the value of a human to an all-time low…
Increasing the value of land, makes the poor: slaves of (the interest rates of) the banks.


The Hindu sells his cotton for a penny a pound, and buys it back as cloth at 18-20 pence.
The Virginia slave sells tobacco for 6 shillings' worth of commodities, of which he and his owner obtain 3 pence.
The poor Irishman raises chickens which sell in London for shillings, of which he receives a pence.
A pound of sugar which had yielded the “free” black of Jamaica two pence, exchanges in Ireland for 2 chickens or 12 lobsters.
It would be much better if labour and capital would be locally applied, reducing exports. The home trade, instead of import-export would increase prosperity.

Henry C. Carey – The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: why it exists, and how it may be extinguished (1853): https://archive.org/stream/slavetradedo ... e_djvu.txt
(or try the PDF version (28 MB): https://ia800603.us.archive.org/6/items ... 01care.pdf)
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Dutch patent on Ethiopian grain thousands years old

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I’ve found an interesting example of “bio-piracy”: the misappropriation of traditional knowledge of indigenous communities for the purpose of seeking exclusive patent ownership over the knowledge.
According to history books, between 4,000 BC and 1,000 BC Ethiopia was the first country to produce teff grain.

In 2005, the Dutch company Health and Performance Food International (HPFI) of Jans Roosjen secured patent rights on teff grain in the Netherlands and later Italy, Britain, Germany, and Austria. These rights will expire in 2024.
In 2007, the company stopped communicating with Ethiopian authorities.

Since then, the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office (EIPO) has tried in vain to claim the patent right through negotiations, public campaign and “legal means”.
Ethiopia's government finally filed charges at the International Court of Arbitration to get (back?) its patent right for teff grain: https://www.newtimes.co.rw/africa/ethio ... eff-patent

Following is a longer story on this clear example of “bio-piracy”:
Teff is becoming quite the health rage, because it’s gluten-free, rich in phosphorous, copper, aluminium, thiamine, protein, amino acids and carbohydrates. Teff is also high in fibres, important in dealing with diabetes.
In Ethiopia, with nearly 90 million people, Teff accounts for about 15% of all calories consumed.

In 2005, Ethiopia agreed on a MOU that stated that this agreement will strengthen the position of Ethiopia as a leading Teff producer.
Requirements for a patent include novelty and an inventive step: http://www.academia.edu/31939275/The_Re ... tent_Right

My “logic” tells me that as this grain is thousands of years old, the Dutch patent should be rejected.
But I’m no crooked lawyer and have found out the hard way that in our Brave new world the courts protect the big criminals…
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Vanguard, BlackRock – Social media

Post by Firestarter »

Today I’ve searched for information on the major shareholders of the biggest social media networks.


Major Shareholders in Facebook, Inc. include – Vanguard (7.1%), Blackrock, Fidelity (FMR), State Street; and Price (T.Rowe) Associates, Capital: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/hold ... ccounter=1
(http://archive.is/YDC27)


There is something peculiar about the corporate structure of Facebook. The Class B shares have 10 times as much voting rights as the “normal” Class A shares.
By this construction Mark Zuckerberg (who owns 60% of the Class B shares) has most voting rights.

By similar protective structures:
News Corp is controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his family (with Class A shares without voting rights);
Google, where B shares have 60% of the total voting power, is controlled by insiders Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/shareho ... ement.html


Strangely of the “big four” investment funds only BlackRock is a major shareholder, but nowhere near the stake owned by Alibaba Group Holding and Harding Loevner…
Major Shareholders in Weibo Corporation include – Blackrock; and Alibaba Group Holding, Harding Loevner, Wellington, Wells Fargo: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WB/holders/
(http://archive.is/uwVwD)


Major Shareholders in Twitter, Inc. include – Vanguard (7.1%), Blackrock, State Street; and ClearBridge Investments, Morgan Stanley, Coatue Management: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TWTR/holders/
(http://archive.is/DUSCS)


American holding company IAC (InterActiveCorp) owns Ask.fm (since August 2014) that also owns Ask.com.
Barry Diller is chairman of IAC, with Edgar Bronfman Jr., Michael Eisner and Chelsea Clinton on the board of directors.

Major Shareholders in IAC/InterActiveCorp include – Vanguard (more than 8.3%), Blackrock; and Price (T.Rowe) Associates, Canada Pension plan, TIAA-CREF Investment Management, Boston Partners, Steadfast Capital Management, Goldman Sachs: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/iac/holders/
(http://archive.is/kxwhG)


Since 2012, the controlling shareholder in Reddit is Condé Nast's parent company, Advance Publications that is owned by the descendants of the Newhouse family.
Josh Kushner is named “angel investor” in Reddit: https://web.archive.org/web/20180425224 ... reddit-inc


To finish this post...
Youtube is owned by Google (Alphabet).

Instagram is owned by Facebook.

Tumblr and Flickr are part of Yahoo (owned by Verizon).

LinkedIn is part of Microsoft.
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Tatum O’Neal, Corey Feldman - sexual abuse

Post by Firestarter »

Actress Tatum O’Neal recently posted on Instagram about the repeated sexually abuse she suffered as a child star by older men.
O’Neal is the youngest person to win an Oscar aged 10 playing opposite her father Ryan O’Neal in 1973’s “Paper Moon”.

She said both her mother, the late actress Joanna Moore, and her father struggled with addiction: “When your parents are off getting drunk or high, they are not watching what happens to their children”.

In her 2004 autobiography “A Paper Life”, O’Neal wrote she was molested by a family acquaintance aged 6 and by her father’s drug dealer when she was 12.
She has added that she was once assaulted by a friend of her father’s and on another occasion her mother’s boyfriend tried to rape her: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -star.html


Here’s Tatum O’Neal’s Instagram post:
M O O D!! I am a woman and i have been sexually assaulted more than once !! It was not my fault when i was 5, 6 12 , 13 , 15. - All by older men who i thought were safe ! I rarely have known safety and was always blamed for for the assaults and,my loudness , and curiosity. It’s taken in me almost 55 years to know how to advocate for myself

But I learn fast and here I go!! To see the president of US.Mock a woman, let alone a sexual assault victim. We’ve sunk to a depth of depravity that I never thought the president of the United States could ever sink to you. With uproarious laughter for someone who was assaulted at 15 years old. Whether it was 35 years ago to a 75-year-old man at 15 I remember everything !!

(…)
But we , victims the victim of sexual Assault,or violence,must NOT put down our armor.It’s time to fight for one another and each other in this dark time ! America We can do better - we will be better!!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BogVvgWhHMR ... e=ig_embed


I’ve found some serious accusations against self-proclaimed whistleblower Corey Feldman by former Corey’s angels, including: mental, physical and sexual abuse.

Former Corey's angel Mara Moon tells that she had a strange contract where Corey provided food and living arrangements.
Moon complains that these were insufficient and even claims that she was starved by giving her too little food. She tells that they, Corey and wife, yelled at her.
Because of the constant assaults, her physical and mental health was in danger.

She also complains that they were using drugs, so it’s no surprise that the cops found drugs when they searched the car.
Moon tells that Corey had already told everyone on tour that he was going to start a campaign in order to generate some funds (before he launched his “truth campaign”), so it must be a complete fraud.

Mara Moon tells that she left the tour because she wasn’t comfortable with what she was asked to do by Corey Feldman (so NOT because her life was in danger): https://archive.is/fkH96

Another former Corey’s angel, Poeina Suddarth, told about the abuse she and other former “angels” faced.
She tells that she was sexually harassed by Corey’s manager Phil Shapiro, who confirmed to her that Shapiro also harassed other girls (even Corey’s wife), but he didn’t do anything about it.

Suddarth revealed that the women faced psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse while working for Corey Feldman.
Suddarth tells that Feldman worked her to the point that she ended up in the emergency room: http://affinitymagazine.us/2018/01/09/f ... -campaign/

The following 2 hour video features Mara Moon and Poeina Suddarth that tell all about their experience with Corey Feldman.
https://youtu.be/syNqs-xGBnM

Another former member of Corey’s Angels, Jackie von Rueden, made assault allegations against Feldman at sex orgy parties, where drugs was used and that she stated to the Los Angeles Police that Feldman raped a girl (I think NOT underage) while others were present. The LAPD refused to investigate further.
She tells that Corey repeatedly grabbed her ass.

Von Rueden and the other angels were forced to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements; so they aren’t allowed to speak out about their experiences and the abuse they witnessed: https://archive.is/hDmoL

Here’s a 1 hour video with Jackie von Rueden - EDIT video was deleted: youtu.be/XomehSbwCcA]
Last edited by Firestarter on Sat Feb 24, 2024 9:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
For some reason internet “search” engines block my posts: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread ... orld/page2

The Order of the Garter rules the world: viewtopic.php?p=5549#p5549
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William Engdahl - A Century of War

Post by Firestarter »

I’ve found a good book by William Engdahl that explains a lot of things that have happened from the end of the 19th century till the beginning of the 20th century…


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Iran oil, the Ottoman Empire – WW I
In the 1870s, the German Reich stopped playing according to the British model for economic destruction. This made Germany a threat. From 1850 to in 1913, German total domestic output increased fivefold and the per capita output increased by 250%. Between 1871 and 1913, the German population saw a steady increase in its living standard.
After the report by the Koch commission, the Reichstag in June/July 1896 approved legislation that restricted financial speculation.
For most of the 19th century England dominated the seas. The emergence of Germany as a preeminent modern shipping nation, was threatening the British domination of the seas.

In 1882, the black heavy sludge we today know as petroleum “rock oil” had little commercial interest other than as fuel to light the new mineral oil lamps.
Britain’s Admiral Lord Fisher was one of the first to conclude that Britain must convert its naval fleet to the new oil fuel. He argued that oil power would allow Britain to maintain decisive strategic advantage in future control of the seas.
By 1905, British intelligence and the British government had finally realised the strategic importance of oil but had no oil of its own. Fisher was ordered to establish a committee to “consider and make recommendations as to how the British navy shall secure its oil supplies.

In 1889, a group of German industrialists and bankers, led by Deutsche Bank, secured a concession from the Ottoman government to build a railway through Anatolia from the capitol, Constantinople. In 1899, the Ottoman government agreed that the German group could continue with the next stage of the Berlin–Baghdad railway project.
Germany was also becoming a close ally of France, but then the Dreyfus affair was staged to sabotage the relationship between Germany and France.

For information on the Dreyfus affair: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewto ... =31&t=1415

For Britain this was a huge threat to their world dominance. It would also cut Russia off from her western friends, Great Britain and France. It is not surprising to find enormous unrest and wars throughout the Balkans in the decade before 1914, including the Turkish War, the Bulgarian War and continuous unrest in the region.

For information on how the mass murdering “Young Turks” freemasons destroyed the Ottoman Empire: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewto ... f=7&t=1107

In 1901, the Shah of Persia (Iran) granted the Australian William Knox d’Arcy by royal decree a monopoly for 60 years, to probe, pierce and drill in the Persian soil for an amount equal to some $20,000 cash and the Shah received a 16% royalty from the sales of the petroleum.
In 1905, British “spy ace” Sidney Reilly persuaded d’Arcy to sign over his exclusive rights to Persian oil with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Scottish financier Lord Strathcona was used as a front man by the British government as the majority shareholder of Anglo-Persian, while the government’s stake was kept secret.

By 1902 it was known that the Mesopotamia region (today Iraq and Kuwait) of the Ottoman Empire contained resources of petroleum.
In 1899, the British government offered “protection” to the Sheikh Mubarak al-Sabah of Kuwait.
Image

By 1912, German industry and government had realised that oil was the fuel of the future. At that time, Standard Oil’s Deutsche Petroleums Verkaufgesellschaft (of Rockefeller) controlled 91% of all German oil sales.
In 1911, the young Winston Churchill succeeded Lord Fisher as First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill used Fisher’s arguments to campaign for an oil-fired navy.
In 1913, the British government secretly bought a majority stake in Anglo-Persian Oil (today British Petroleum).

On 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on France, and German troops entered Belgium en route to attack France; on August 4, Britain declared war against Germany.
When WW I erupted, Britain was effectively bankrupt, according to a letter from Sir George Paish to Lloyd George dated 1 August 1914:
The credit system upon which the business of this country is formed, has completely broken down, and it is of supreme importance that steps should be taken to repair the mischief without delay; otherwise, we cannot hope to finance a great war if, at its very commencement, our greatest houses are forced into bankruptcy.
Britain’s secret weapon was the special relationship with the Wall Street banking house of J.P. Morgan & Co.

By January 1915, 4 months into the Great War, the British government had named J.P. Morgan & Co. as its exclusive purchasing agent for all war supplies from the US. As purchasing agent alone, Morgan took a 2% commission on the net price of all goods shipped. By 1917, the British War Office had placed purchase orders totalling more than $20 billion through the house of Morgan.
It became a giant credit pyramid on top of which sat the house of Morgan. Firms such as DuPont Chemicals grew into multinational giants by their ties to Morgan. Remington and Winchester arms companies were also Morgan “friends”.’

Had President Woodrow Wilson not signed the Federal Reserve Act into law on 23 December 1913, it is questionable whether the US could have committed the resources it did to a war in Europe. In August 1914, the house of Morgan and the City of London shaped the US Federal Reserve System in the months just before outbreak of the Great War.
In August 1917, the Federal Reserve mobilised sales of Liberty Loans and bonds, to finance US government war costs. By 30 June 1919, these Liberty Loans and bonds totalled the breathtaking sum of $21.5 billion.
Morgan & Co. quietly shifted their private British government loans over to the general debt of the US Treasury when the US officially entered the war, making the British debts the burden of the American taxpayers after the war. But, in a great example of justice, Morgan had a major stake in the post-war Versailles reparations financing.

At the time of the Versailles peace conference in 1919, Britain owed the US $4.7 billion in war debts, while its own domestic economy was in a deep post-war depression, its industry in shambles, and domestic price inflation 300% higher after the 4 years of war.
The British national debt had increased more than nine fold, between 1913 and the end of the war in 1918, to the then-enormous sum of £7.4 billion.

During WW I, Sir Mark Sykes made a deal with French negotiator Georges Picot (the Sykes–Picot accord), under which Britain would get control over “Area B”, from what today is Jordan, east to most of Iraq and Kuwait, the ports of Haifa and Acre, and the rights to build a railway from Haifa through the French zone to Baghdad.
France got control over “Area A”: Greater Syria (Syria and Lebanon), including Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, the oil-rich Mosul to the northeast, including the oil concessions then held by Deutsche Bank in the Turkish Petroleum Gesellschaft.
After 1918, Britain maintained almost a million soldiers stationed in the Middle East. By 1919, the Persian Gulf had become a “British Lake”.

In 1920, Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont noted with satisfaction that, as a result of WW I, “the national debts of the world have increased by $210,000,000,000 or about 475 per cent in the last six years, and as a natural consequence, the variety of government bonds and the number of investors in them have been greatly multiplied”.

WW I was planned and succeeded in reallocating the raw materials and physical wealth of the entire world, especially the areas of the Ottoman Empire with significant petroleum reserves. In 1912, Britain commanded only 12% of world oil production through British companies. By 1925, she controlled the major part of the world’s future supplies of petroleum.
The newly carved Middle East boundaries were dominated by British government interests through Britain’s covert ownership of Royal Dutch Shell and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
Engdahl systematically claims that the Anglo-Dutch Shell is controlled by Britain. I have read that Queen Wilhelmina was “the richest woman in the world” at that time and the majority shareholder in Shell and Shell chairman Deterding was a Dutchman - I’m not convinced by Engdahl on this...


The Round Table, RIIA, CFR
The Round Table, founded in 1910, was anti-German and pro-Empire. Instead of the costly military occupation of the colonies of the British Empire, they argued for a repressive tolerance, calling for the creation of a British “Commonwealth of Nations”. Member nations were given the illusion of independence, enabling Britain to reduce the high costs of far-flung armies.
The Round Table included such notables as Foreign Secretary Albert Lord Grey, British secret agent Arnold Toynbee, and H.G. Wells.

The Round Table’s think tank, which was formed by Lionel Curtis in Versailles in May 1919, became the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House). The RIIA received an initial endowment of £2,000 from Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan.
The same circle at Versailles also decided to establish an American branch of the London Institute, to be named the New York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); initially composed almost entirely of Morgan men and financed by Morgan.


Treaty of Versailles – 1920s
Wall Street lawyer John Foster Dulles had authored the infamous German “war guilt” clause Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty.
John Foster Dulles calculated that Britain and the other Allied powers owed the US $12.5 billion at 5% interest. Britain, France, and the other Entente countries, in turn, were owed by Germany, according to the Versailles demands, the sum of $33 billion!
The figures were beyond the scale of imagination at that time. The sum, 132 billion gold marks, was finally decided in May 1921.

Since Versailles, the Reichsbank printed money to cover the state deficits, inflation was rising and Versailles had stripped Germany of her most vital economic resources. All her valuable colonies, her entire merchant fleet, a fifth of her river transport fleet, a quarter of her fishing fleet, 5,000 locomotives, 150,000 railroad cars and 5,000 motor trucks were taken by the Allied powers (most of it by Britain).

The French were given the 25% share of the Deutsche Bank in the old Turkish Petroleum Gesellschaft by Versailles.
The remaining 75% of the huge Mesopotamian oil concession was directly in the hands of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and Royal Dutch Shell.
Henri Deterding’s Royal Dutch Shell had an iron grip on the oil concessions of the Dutch East Indies, Persia, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and most of the Middle East.

The Sinclair Refining Company, with son of the former president Theodore Roosevelt Jr. on its board and his brother, Archibald Roosevelt, aas vice president of Sinclair Oil, secured the prised Baku oil concession (from under the nose of Royal Dutch Shell). William Boyce Thompson, director of Rockefeller’s Chase Bank in New York, was also on Sinclair’s board.
But then suddenly in April 1922, the Teapot Dome scandal erupted, implicating Sinclair, Fall, and even President Harding. Within a year Harding himself had died under strange circumstances. The Coolidge presidency dropped Sinclair and the Baku project, and plans to recognise the Soviet Union.

In 1922, Walther Rathenau was making a deal with the communist Soviet Union that in return for leniency on the war reparations claims on Germany, Germany would sell industrial technology to the Soviet Union.
Within 2 days of its formal announcement, on 18 April at Genoa, the German delegation was presented with an Allied note of protest that Germany had negotiated the Russian accord “behind the backs” of the Reparations Committee.
On 22 June 1922 (something numeric 6/22/’22?), Walther Rathenau was assassinated. Following the murder of Rathenau, the gold mark rate by July 1922 plunged to 493 Marks per US dollar, by December, the Mark had fallen to 7,592 to the dollar.

Then, in January 1923, the Reparations Committee voted 3 to 1 that Germany was in default of her reparations payments. On January 11, Poincaré ordered the military forces of France, with participation from Belgium and Italy, to occupy German industrial Ruhr by force. It took until the end of 1923 for French troops and engineers to bring production in the Ruhr to even a third of the former level of 1922.
In a smart move Britain had formally opposed France, Belgium and even the newly installed Mussolini government of Italy (!). Germany ceased all reparation payments to France, Belgium and Italy for the duration of the occupation, but maintained its payments and deliveries to Britain.
Directly after the Ruhr occupation, in January, the Mark dropped to 18,000 to the dollar; by July, the Mark had collapsed to 353,000 per dollar; in August, 1 Mark was worth $4.6 million; on 15 November 1922, the Mark was at 4.2 trillion per dollar. The savings of the entire population were destroyed.

In October 1923, US secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes, former chief counsel to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, recommended a new scheme to President Calvin Coolidge to continue the reparations pyramid of debt collection which had been shaken since the April 1922 Rapallo shock. On 1 September 1924, the Dawes reparations plan formally began.
Under the Dawes Plan, Germany paid reparations for 5 years, until 1929. At the end of 1929, she owed more than at the beginning.
With their risk thus all but nil, the London and New York banks began a vastly profitable lending to Germany, money which was recycled back to the banks of New York and London in the form of reparations with commission and interest. It was a vast international credit pyramid at the top of which sat New York and ultimately the City of London.


The seven sisters oil cartel
In 1927/1928, a peace agreement was signed between the major Anglo-American oil corporations at the Scottish castle of Shell’s Henri Deterding - the “As Is” or Achnacarry agreement. John Cadman for the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. and Walter Teagle president of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil were also present.
British and American oil majors agreed to accept the existing market divisions, end destructive competition, and to set a secret world cartel price.
By 1932, all 7 major Anglo-American companies “The Seven Sisters” had joined the Achnacarry cartel — Esso; Mobil; Gulf Oil; Texaco; Standard of California; Royal Dutch Shell; and Anglo-Persian Oil Co.


Wall Street crash, Montagu Norman, Creditanstalt – WW II
In 1929, governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman asked the governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, George Harrison, to raise U.S. interest rate levels. This later caused the Wall Street stock market crash in October 1929.

In 1931, France ordered its banks to cut short-term credit lines to Creditanstalt, following rumours of a run on the deposits of Creditanstalt (owned by the Rothschild family) broke in the Vienna press, in May 1931, this toppled the fragile Creditanstalt and a credit crisis shook all of Europe.
The man who controlled US monetary policy at the time, former Morgan banker Benjamin Strong, an intimate personal friend of Britain’s Montagu Norman, met with Volpi and the Bank of Italy governor, Bonaldo Stringher, to dictate the Italian “stabilisation” program. The ensuing banking crisis, economic depression and the tragic developments in Austria and Germany were dictated virtually to the letter by Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the governor of the New York Federal Reserve, George Harrison, and the house of Morgan and friends in Wall Street.

Capital began to flow out of Germany in ever greater amounts. On the demand of Montagu Norman and George Harrison, the new Reichsbank President Hans Luther imposed rigorous credit austerity and tightening in the German capital markets to let the collapse of the large German banks continue.
By July 1931, some 2 months after the collapse of the Vienna Creditanstalt, the Basle Nationalzeitung reported that the Danat-Bank was “in difficulties”, which caused a full panic run so it also collapsed.

After their first meeting in 1924 until Norman’s death in 1945, Hjalmar Schacht and governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman were close friends.
In 1931, the German Alfred Rosenberg travelled to Britain to meet the editor in chief of the influential London Times, Geoffrey Dawson, that gave Hitler invaluable positive publicity. More important were his meetings with Montagu Norman and Henri Deterding. The introduction to Norman came from Hjalmar Schacht.
The final London visit of Alfred Rosenberg was in May 1933, he went directly to the country home in Ascot of chairman of Shell “Sir” Henri Deterding, arguably the world’s most influential businessman. Royal Dutch Shell secretly had intimate contact with, and provided support to the German Nazis.
In early 1933, Montagu Norman quickly strengthened the Hitler government with vital Bank of England credit. Norman also visited to Berlin in May 1934 to arrange further secret financial stabilisation for the Nazi regime. Hitler made Norman’s friend Schacht both his minister of economics and president of the Reichsbank.

For more on who brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany: https://www.lawfulpath.com/forum/viewto ... f=7&t=1340


Iran 1941-1954 - Mossadegh and the Shah
Britain, through its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, retained a stranglehold on Iran throughout the first half of the 20th century.
During the Second World War, Stalin’s Soviet Union assisted Britain to invade Iran. A month after British and Russian forces occupied Iran in August 1941, the Shah abdicated in favour of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who was disposed to accommodate the Anglo-Russian occupation.
Tens of thousands of Iranians died of hunger while 100,000 Russian and 70,000 British and Indian troops were given priority in supplies.
General M. Norman Schwarzkopf (father of the commander of the US forces in the 1990–91 Desert Storm) trained Iranian national police force during a six-year period, until 1948.

Russia was granted an exclusive oil concession in the northern part of Iran bordering Azerbaijan, while Royal Dutch Shell got another concession. In the midst of selling Iran to the oil vultures, in December 1944 the Iranian leader, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, introduced a bill in the Iranian parliament which would prohibit oil negotiations with foreign countries.
The resolution passed, but it didn’t decide on the concession of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in southern Iran, from all the way back in 1901.

In 1947, the government of Iran suggested that the original concession must be changed according to the principles of justice and fairness, so that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. would increase the share paid to the government of Iran that was only 8%. Britain flatly refused to meet Iran even half way.
In April 1951, Mossadegh became prime minister and his nationalisation plan was finally approved by the Majlis on 28 April 1951. Britain promptly threatened retaliation and within days British naval forces arrived near Abadan. In September 1951, Britain declared full economic sanctions against Iran, including an embargo against Iranian oil shipments as well as a freeze of Iranian assets in British banks. The British embargo was joined by all the major Anglo-American oil companies. Prospective buyers of nationalised Iranian oil were warned that they would face legal action on the grounds that a compensation agreement had not yet been signed with Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
Iran oil revenues, plummeted from $400 million in 1950 to less than $2 million between July 1951 and the fall of Mossadegh in August 1953. Britain brought the case be brought before the World Court for arbitration, but Mossadegh, himself a lawyer, argued his case successfully, and on 22 July 1952 the Court denied Britain jurisdiction.

In May 1953, US President Dwight Eisenhower, turned down Mossadegh’s request for economic aid, on advice of his secretary of state John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles. On August 10, Allen Dulles met with the US ambassador to Tehran, Loy Henderson, and the Shah’s sister in Switzerland.
In 1953, after a five-year absence, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. arrived in Tehran to see “old friends”. He promised army generals he had earlier trained power after a successful coup against Mossadegh. Under code name Operation AJAX, the CIA with British SIS overthrew of Mohammed Mossadegh in August 1953.
The young Reza Shah Pahlevi returned to power, and economic sanctions were lifted.

In April 1954, the Anglo-American companies, joined by France’s state-owned CFP, started negotiations with the government of Iran to secure a 25-year agreement for exploitation of oil on 100,000 square miles of Iranian territory.
British Petroleum (previously named Anglo-Iranian Oil) was given 40% of the old d’Arcy concession; Royal Dutch Shell got 14%; the major US oil companies divided 40% of the oil between them; and France’s CFP got 6%.


Enrico Mattei - ENI
One European company expressed interest in purchasing oil from Mossadegh’s nationalized oil supply. It was Italy’s Ente Natzionale Idrocarburi (ENI) of Enrico Mattei that was founded in February 1953.

In 1955, Mattei successful negotiated a share of the oil of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with Egypt’s new leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, which by 1961 had grown into a considerable 2.5 million tons per year of crude oil.
In August 1957, Mattei made a deal with the Shah - he offered an unprecedented 75% of total profits to the National Iranian Oil Company, with ENI (only) 25%. The new joint venture Société Irano-Italienne des Pétroles (SIRIP), got the 25-year exclusive right to explore and develop some 8,800 square miles of promising petroleum prospects in non-allocated regions in Iran.

By 1958, total proceeds from ENI’s Italian natural gas sales alone topped $75 million per year. Instead of spending precious Italian dollar reserves on imported oil and coal.
Between 1959 and 1961, gasoline prices in Italy dropped 25%, which significantly aided Italy’s post-war economic revival.

On 27 October 1962, under suspicious circumstances a private airplane crashed after taking off from Sicily en route to Milan killing Enrico Mattei, who was on his way to make deals with Iran, Egypt and the Soviet Union for oil supply.
He had already signed agreements with Morocco, Sudan, Tanzania, Ghana, India and Argentina. At the time of his death, Mattei had been preparing a trip to meet with the president John F. Kennedy, who was then pressing the US oil companies to reach an agreement with Mattei.


From Bretton Woods to 1968 - Gold fixed dollar
The US came out as the “world leader” from WW II.
A little known fact of the 1944 Bretton Woods deal was the creation of a gold exchange system. Under this system, each member country’s national currency was connected to the US dollar. The dollar rate was permanently fixed at $35 per ounce of gold.

From 1947 on, the Marshall plan was used by Western Europe to buy oil, supplied primarily by US oil companies, more than 10% of all Marshall aid. Between 1945 and 1948, they more than doubled the price of oil from $1.05 per barrel to $2.22 per barrel.
There were huge differences in the prices, at the time Greece paid $8.30 per ton for fuel oil, Britain paid only $3.95 per ton.

In late 1957, the US underwent the first deep post-war economic recession, which lasted into the mid 1960s.
While Europe was forced to pay excessively high interest rates to attract US dollars, as the dollar price was fixed, the US lowered its interest rates. Investors grabbed up “cheap” industrial companies in Western Europe, South America or Asia for higher profits abroad, as dollars flowed out of the US.
From 1957 to 1965, US annual net capital export into Western Europe mushroomed from less than $25 billion to more than $47 billion. Between 1962 and 1965, US corporations earned 12 to 14% on their investments in Western Europe.

JFK proposed a new bill to impose a tax of up to 15% on American capital invested abroad. When it finally passed in September 1964, they had made a seemingly innocent amendment, which exempted one country — British colony Canada! Montreal and Toronto thereby became the centres for an enormous loophole which ensured that the US dollar outflow continued, through London-controlled financial institutions.
Bank loans made by foreign branches of US banks to foreign residents were also exempt from the new US tax. So US banks quickly established branches in London and other major cities across the globe.

The City of London attracted the world’s financial flows with highest interest rates of any major industrial nation throughout the mid 1960s.
In 1961, the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and Japan agreed to pool reserves in a special fund, the gold pool, to be administered in London by the Bank of England. The US Federal Reserve contributed only half the costs of continuing to maintain the world price of gold at the artificially low $35 per ounce price of 1934.
Financial speculators by the second half of 1967 were selling pounds and buying dollars to buy commercial gold in all possible markets from Frankfurt to Pretoria, sparking a steep rise in the market price of gold, in contrast to the $35 per ounce official US dollar price.
It appeared that even 80 tons of sold gold on the London market wasn’t enough to keep the fixed dollar price of Bretton Woods intact. On 18 November 1967, Britain announced a 14% devaluation of the pound from $2.80 to $2.40, the first devaluation since 1949. Once the pound had been devalued, speculative pressures immediately turned to the US dollar. International holders of dollars went to the gold discount window at the New York Federal Reserve and demanded their rightful gold in exchange.
The market price of gold rose even further. By the end 1967, Washington’s gold stock had declined another $1 billion to only $12 billion.

In January 1967, French president De Gaulle’s principal economic adviser, Jacques Rueff, came to London to propose raising the official price of gold. The US and Britain refused to hear such arguments, which would have meant a de facto devaluation of their currencies. The US and British press, led by the London Economist, attacked the French policy.
On 31 January 1967, a new law came into effect in France which allowed unlimited convertibility for the French franc.
Then France withdrew from the Group of Ten gold pool. France immediately became the target of riots, first by leftist students in Strasbourg, soon followed by students all over France. In coordination with the political unrest, US and British investment houses started a panic run on the French franc, cashing in francs for gold, draining the French gold reserves by almost 30% by the end of 1968.
Within a year, De Gaulle was out of office and France wasn’t a threat anymore.
In April 1968, a special meeting of the Group of Ten was convened in Stockholm where US officials unveiled the new “paper gold” substitute plan through the IMF, the so-called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).


The oil inflation of 1973 – creating the petrodollar
In 1969, the US economy was again in a recession. In 1970, US interest rates were sharply lowered. As a consequence, speculative “hot money” sought higher short-term profits in Europe and elsewhere. As interest rates continued to drop, these outflows reached huge dimensions, totalling $20 billion.
In May 1971, the US recorded its first monthly trade deficit, triggering a virtually international panic sell-off of the US dollar.

On 15 August 1971, President Nixon formally suspended dollar convertibility into gold, effectively putting the world fully onto a dollar standard with no backing. The US also formally devalued the dollar a mere 8% to $38 per fine ounce gold.
The real architects of the Nixon strategy were the influential City of London merchant banksters, including: Edmond de Rothschild, Sir Siegmund Warburg, and Jocelyn Hambro, who saw a “golden” opportunity in Nixon’s dissolution of the Bretton Woods gold standard.

In 1972, the massive capital outflows of dollars to Japan and Europe continued. In 12 February 1973, Nixon announced a second devaluation of the dollar, of another 10% to $42.22 per ounce (where it remains to this day).
Between February and March 1973, the value of the US dollar against the German Deutschmark dropped another 40%.

In May 1973, the Bilderberg Group met at Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, the secluded island resort of the Swedish Wallenberg banking family. At his meeting of 84 high ranking members of international crime, Walter Levy outlined a ‘scenario’ for a drastic increase in OPEC petroleum revenues. He projected an OPEC Middle East oil revenue rise.
See 2 excerpts from the confidential protocol of the 1973 meeting of the Bilderberg group in Sweden. There was discussion about the danger that “inadequate control of the financial resources of the oil producing countries could completely disorganize and undermine the world monetary system”.
The second excerpt speaks of “huge increases of imports from the Middle East. The cost of these imports would rise tremendously”.
Image

The purpose was not to prevent the oil price shock, but plan it in a process that US Secretary of State Kissinger later called “recycling the petrodollar flows”. Since 1945, world oil had been priced in dollars. A sudden sharp increase in the price of oil, therefore meant an equal increase in world demand for US dollars to pay for that necessary oil.

Bilderberg policy used a global oil embargo, to create a 400% increase in world oil prices. On 6 October 1973, Egypt and Syria invaded Israel, igniting the Yom Kippur War.
The events surrounding the outbreak of the October War were secretly orchestrated by Washington and London, using the powerful secret diplomatic channels developed by Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. US intelligence reports, including intercepted communications from Arab officials confirming the build-up for war, were suppressed by Kissinger.
Washington didn’t permit Germany to remain neutral in the Middle East conflict, but hypocritical Britain clearly stated its neutrality, so avoided the Arab oil embargo.

On October 16, the Arab OPEC declared an embargo on all oil sales to the US and the Netherlands for its support for Israel and raised the oil price from $3.01 to $5.11 per barrel (+70%). Following a meeting in Teheran on 1 January 1974, a second price increase of more than 100% brought OPEC benchmark oil prices to $11.65. Henry Kissinger secretly put up to the Shah of Iran to arrange this.
President Nixon was kept busy with the “Watergate affair”, leaving Henry Kissinger as de facto president. When in 1974 the Nixon White House sent a senior official to the US Treasury in order to devise a strategy to force OPEC into lowering the oil price, he was bluntly turned away.
In August 1971, Nixon had established a secret accord with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) that was finalised in February 1975. Under the terms of the agreement, a sizeable part of the huge rise in Saudi oil revenue would be invested in financing the US government deficits.
In 1974, 70% of the additional OPEC oil revenue, $57 billion, at least 60% went directly to financial institutions in the US and Britain.

The most severe impact of the oil crisis in the US was felt in New York City. New York was forced to slash spending for roadways, bridges, hospitals and schools in order to service their bank debt, and to lay off tens of thousands of city workers.
Bankruptcies and unemployment across Europe rose to alarming levels. As Germany’s imported oil costs increased by 17 billion Deutschmarks in 1974. By June 1974 the oil crisis had resulted in the collapse of Germany’s Herstatt-Bank and a crisis in the Deutschmark as a result. It resulted in a million unemployed Germans.
In May 1974, Willy Brandt offered his resignation to Federal President Heinemann, who then appointed Helmut Schmidt as chancellor.

In 1973, India had a positive balance of trade. But in 1974, India had total foreign exchange reserves of $629 million which couldn’t pay for the annual oil import bill of 1,241 million.
In 1974, Sudan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and most countries in Africa and Latin America faced gaping deficits in their balance of payments.
In 1974, developing countries had a total trade deficit of $35 billion, 4 times as large as in 1973 (precisely in proportion to the oil price increase). In the early 1970s, the account deficit of all developing countries was (only) some $6 billion per year.

The major New York and London banks, and the Seven Sisters oil multinationals benefitted. In 1974, Exxon overtook General Motors as the largest US corporation in gross revenues. Her “sisters”, including Mobil, Texaco, Chevron and Gulf, were not far behind.
Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover, Bank of America, Barclays, Lloyds, Midland Bank all enjoyed the windfall profits of the oil crisis.
In a strange twist, the American David Mulford became director and principal investment adviser of the SAMA, the largest OPEC oil producer.
Basically the post-war Bretton Woods gold exchange system was replaced by the highly unstable petroleum-based dollar exchange system, the “petrodollar standard”.

The year 1975 witnessed the first major decline in world trade since the end of the war in 1945, a drop of 6%.
While industrial countries had experienced a slow recovery from the initial oil shock, the developing economies deteriorated even further in 1975. In 1976, the account deficit of all developing countries rose to $42 billion. Private US and European banks were glad to lend to these countries.
Foreign debts of the developing countries expanded some five-fold, from $130 billion in 1973, before the first oil shock, to some $550 billion by 1981, and to over $612 billion by 1982, according to the IMF.

In August 1976, the 85 non-aligned “developing” states countries tried after the Colombo meeting to fight for “A fair and just economic development”. The UN was chosen as the arena where the “developing” countries explained their demands.
Share prices for US banks began to fall, especially those most involved in Eurodollar lending to the developing countries: Citicorp, Morgan Guaranty, Bankers Trust and Chase Manhattan. The Federal Reserve Bank was forced to intervene to support the falling dollar.
One by one, the advocates of Third World development were removed from the seats of domestic power. In February 1977, PM Indira Gandhi of India was forced into elections and was ousted by March. Sri Lanka paralyzed by a wave of strikes in early January 1977. By May 1977, Bandaranaike’s ruling Freedom Party was gone from power. In 1977, Bhutto was overthrown in a military coup led by General Zia ul-Haq. Before his death by hanging, Bhutto accused US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of being behind his overthrow. On 14 February 1978, in Guyana, Frederick Willswas forced to resign.


Ayatollah Khomeini – Thatcher economics, the IMF in the 1980s
In 1975, the CFR, under the direction of New York attorney Cyrus Vance, drafted a series of policy blueprints for the 1980s. The CFR called “A degree of “controlled disintegration” in the world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980’s”.

In 1978, the Shah’s government of Iran and British Petroleum were “negotiating” on the renewal of the 25-year oil extraction agreement. In October 1978, the talks had collapsed over the British “offer” that demanded exclusive rights to Iran’s future oil output.
In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group’s George Ball, a member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council’s Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead “case officers” in the new CIA-led coup against the Shah that they had placed into power in 1953. US security advisers to the Shah’s Savak secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, to maximize antipathy against the Shah. At the same time, the Carter administration began protesting abuses of “human rights” under the Shah.
The BBC’s Persian-language broadcasts, drummed up hysteria against the regime in exaggerated reporting of incidents of protest against the Shah and gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran.
The Shah fled in January 1979, and by February Khomeini had been flown into Tehran to proclaim the establishment of his theocratic state.

Iran’s oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3 million barrels per day. Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in January 1979 also cut some 2 million barrels per day.
Unusually low reserves of oil held by the “Seven Sisters” oil multinationals contributed to the oil price shock, with prices for crude oil soaring from a level of some $14 per barrel in 1978 towards $40 per barrel for some grades of crude on the spot market. The ensuing energy crisis in the US was a major factor in bringing about Carter’s defeat in the presidential election a year later.
Despite the fact that an oil price of $40 per barrel represented a dramatic increase in dollar terms, the media hysteria over the “incompetent” Carter administration, led to a further weakening of the dollar.
Since early 1978, the dollar had already dropped more than 15% against the German mark and other major currencies. In September 1978, the dollar fell in a near panic collapse when it was reported that Saudi’s central bank SAMA had begun liquidating billions of dollars of US treasury bonds.
The oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979, which had raised the price of the world’s basic energy by 1,300% in 6 years, had understandably caused inflation.

British PM Margaret Thatcher, insisted that the 18% inflation in Britain had been caused by government deficit spending, carefully ignoring the 140% increase in the price of oil since the fall of Iran’s Shah. In June 1979, a month Thatcher had become PM, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, began raising base rates for the banking system a staggering five percentage points, from 12% to 17%in only 12 weeks. The Bank of England simultaneously began to cut the money supply, to ensure that interest rates remained high.
Director of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker followed Britain’s example to “fix” this inflation by cutting credit to banks, consumers and the economy. US interest rates on the Eurodollar market soared from 10% to 16% and 20% in a matter of weeks. Government spending was savagely cut in order to reduce “monetary inflation”.
In March 1980, President Carter had signed into law the “Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act” that empowered Volcker’s Federal Reserve to impose reserve requirements on banks, ensuring that his credit choke succeeded.

Businesses went bankrupt, families were unable to buy new homes, long-term investment in power plants, subways, railroads and other infrastructure came to a grinding a halt. Unemployment in Britain doubled, from 1.5 million to 3 million in Thatcher’s first 18 months as Prime Minister.
Inflation was indeed being “squeezed” as the world economy was plunged into the deepest depression since the 1930s – this was labelled the “Thatcher revolution”. And the dollar began an extraordinary 5-year ascent.
The international financial interests of the City of London and the powerful oil companies, chiefly Shell and British Petroleum, were the intended beneficiaries. British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell exploited the astronomical price of $36 or more per barrel for their North Sea oil.
Also exchange controls on the big City banks were removed, so that instead of capital being invested in rebuilding Britain’s rotten industry base, funds flowed out to real estate in Hong Kong or lucrative loans to Latin America
The radical monetarism of Thatcher and Volcker spread like a cancer. With interest rates of 17-20% any “normal” investment was simply not profitable.

Six months after Thatcher took office, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the US, with Vice President George H.W. Bush in control.
Reagan had been tutored while governor of California by the guru of monetarism, Milton Friedman. Reagan kept Milton Friedman as an unofficial adviser on economic policy. His administration was filled with disciples of Friedman’s radical monetarism, following the same radical measures earlier imposed by Friedman to destroy the economy of Chile under Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

As the average cost of their petroleum imports, rose some 140% in US dollars, developing countries this time around were faced with the situation that the dollar itself was also rising rapidly, because of both the high US interest rates and the higher oil price.
All Eurodollar loans to these countries were fixed at a specified premium over and above the given London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). This LIBOR rate was a “floating” rate, which rose from an average of 7% in early 1978 to almost 20% in early 1980.
The creditor banks, following a closed-door meeting in England’s Ditchley Park that fall, created a creditors’ cartel of leading banks, headed by the New York and London banks, later called the Institute for International Finance or the Ditchley Group. The private banks “socialised” their lending risks to the taxpaying public, but kept the profits for themselves.
This was an almost exact copy of what the New York bankers did after 1919 against Germany and the rest of Europe under the Dawes Plan.

Out of $270 billion loaned by Latin America between 1976 and 1981, only 8.4% actually arrived in the countries. In 1979, a net sum of $40 billion flowed from the “rich” North to the “poor” South. In 1983, this flow had reversed with $6 billion from the “developing” countries to the industrialised countries, since then the amount has risen steadily, to approximately $30 billion a year.
In August 1982, large Third World debtor nations refused to pay, but the IMF simply pressured them to sign “debt work-outs” with the leading private banks, often led by Citicorp or Chase Manhattan of New York. The IMF “medicine” was invariably the same: the victim debtor country was told to slash domestic imports to the bone, cut the national budget, quit state subsidies for food and other necessities, and devalue the national currency in order to make its exports “attractive”.
Between 1980 and 1986, a group of 109 debtor countries, paid to creditors in interest on foreign debts alone $326 billion; repayment of principal on the same debts totalled another $332 billion. They were paying $658 billion on what originally had been a debt of $430 billion and on top of that these 109 countries still owed the creditors $882 billion in 1986!
Total foreign debt of the developing countries, rose from just over $839 billion in 1982 to almost $1,300 billion by 1987. Virtually all this increase was due to the added burden of “refinancing” the unpayable old debt.

During the 1980s, the “developing“ nations transferred a total of $400 billion into the US alone. Capital flight from Third World countries into the “safe haven” of the US and other industrialised countries amounted to at least another $123 billion in the decade up to 1985. Large banks, like Citicorp, Chase Manhattan, Morgan Guaranty and Bank of America, were bringing in flight capital assets of some $100–120 billion. The annual return for the New York and London banks on their Latin American flight capital business, was 70% on average. The very same “developing” countries were forced into brutal domestic austerity to “stabilise” the currency.
These profits allowed the Reagan administration to finance the largest “peacetime” deficits in world history, while falsely claiming “the world’s longest peacetime recovery”. As exports to Latin America came to a grinding halt, there was a devastating loss of US jobs and exports.

President Ronald Reagan in August 1981 signed the largest tax reduction bill in post-war history. In the summer 1982, Paul Volcker decreased interest rate levels. This was followed by a speculative bonanza in real estate, stocks, oil wells in Texas or Colorado. As the Federal Reserve’s interest rates went lower, the fever grew hotter. “Cheap” debt was the new fashion. Within 5 years, the US transformed from the world’s largest creditor to becoming a debtor nation, for the first time since 1914.
While this turned young stock brokers into multimillionaires, the real living standard for “normal” Americans steadily decreased, while that of a minority rose as never before. Families went into record levels of debt for buying houses, cars, video recorders. Government went into debt to finance the huge loss of tax revenue and the expanded Reagan defence build-up.
By 1983, annual government deficits began to climb to an unheard-of level of $200 billion. The national debt expanded, along with the deficits, and paying Wall Street bond dealers and their clients record sums in interest income. Interest payments on the total debt by the U.S. government almost tripled in 6 years, from $52 billion in 1980, to more than $142 billion by 1986 (equal to one-fifth of all government revenue).
Money kept flowing in from Germany, from Britain, from Holland, from Japan, to take advantage of the high dollar and the speculative gains in real estate and stocks on the US markets.

Billions of dollars flowed out of the London-based Eurodollar banks to the accounts of developing country borrowers without a “lender of last resort” but the banks didn’t take any risk as the IMF enforced payment of the usurious debts through the most draconian austerity in history. The IMF was firmly controlled by the Anglo-American voting power.

Nationally controlled oil resources could have been the means for modernising Mexico.
In February 1982, the IMF dictated a series of Mexican peso devaluations to “spur exports”. By the first 30% devaluation, the private Mexican industry, which had borrowed dollars to finance investment, led by the once-powerful Alfa Group of Monterrey, was made bankrupt overnight.
In early 1982, the peso stood at 12 pesos for a dollar. By 1986, 862 Mexican pesos were needed to buy 1 dollar, and by 1989 the sum had climbed to 2,300 pesos. But Mexico’s total foreign debt, grew from some $82 billion to just under $100 billion by the end of 1985.
British and US multinationals set up child-labour sweatshops along the Mexican border with the US. These “maquiladores” employed Mexican children aged 14 or 15 for wages of 50 cents an hour, to produce goods for General Motors or Ford Motor Company or various US electrical companies. Of course the IMF agreed with this child labour!

The same process was repeated in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, most of black Africa, including Zambia, Zaire and Egypt, and large parts of Asia.
Until the 1980s, black Africa remained 90% dependent on raw materials export for financing its development. In the early 1980s, the world dollar price of these raw materials came tumbling down. By 1987, raw materials prices had fallen to the lowest levels since the Second World War, about the level of 1932 (when there was also a deep world economic depression).
In 1982, these African countries owed creditor banks in the US, Europe and Japan some $73 billion. By the end of the 1980s, through debt “rescheduling” and various IMF interventions, this had more than doubled, to $160 billion. This was about the sum these countries would have earned at a stable export price level.

The incredible high inflation rates during the early part of the 1980s, typically 12–17%, dictated the conditions of investment returns. A fast and huge gain was needed.
In 1985, the US economic situation threatened the future presidential ambitions of Vice President George H.W. Bush. This was reason for a “rescue” mission.
This time Saudi Arabia was used to run a “reverse oil shock” and flood the world oil market with “cheap” oil. The price of OPEC oil dropped from an average of nearly $26 to below $10 per barrel in only a couple of months in the spring of 1986. Wall Street economists proclaimed the final “victory”, while George Bush Sr. made a quiet trip to Riyadh in March 1986 to tell King Fahd that the oil price had gone down enough. Saudi Oil Minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani was fired for a scapegoat and oil prices stabilized at the “low” level of around $14–16 per barrel.

Speculation in real estate in the US continued at a record pace, while the stock market began a renewed climb to record highs. This 1986 oil-price collapse unleashed what was comparable to the 1927–29 phase in the US speculative bubble. Interest rates dropped even more dramatically, as money flowed in to make a “killing” on the New York stock markets.
A new financial perversion became fashionable on Wall Street, the ”leveraged buyout”. Boone Pickens with borrowed money - “junk bonds” - bought controlling stock in companies, like Union Oil of California, or Gulf Oil, that were many times more worth than he had. If he succeeded in taking over a huge company with “borrowed money”, his debt could be repaid, while making a handsome profit. If the company became bankrupt, his bonds were just “junk” paper.
During the last half of the 1980s, such actions consumed Wall Street and pushed the Dow upwards, driving corporations into the highest levels of debt since the 1930s depression. But this debt was not undertaken to invest in modern technology or new plant and equipment.

After President Reagan signed the new Garn–St. Germain Act into law, he enthusiastically told an audience of invited S&L bankers, “I think we’ve hit the jackpot”. The new law opened the doors of the S&Ls to financial abuses and speculative risks as never before. It also made S&L banks an ideal vehicle for “organised crime” to launder billions of dollars from the booming narcotics business.
Few noticed that it was the former firm of Reagan’s Treasury secretary Donald Regan, Merrill Lynch, whose Lugano office was implicated in laundering billions of dollars of heroin profits in the so-called “pizza connection”.
Life insurance companies, began to speculate in real estate during the 1980s. By 1989, insurance companies were holding an estimated $260 billion of real estate on their books, in 1980 this had been $100 billion. Then in late 1980, real estate collapsed, forcing failures of insurance companies for the first time in post-war history.

On 19 October 1987, the bubble burst. On that day the Dow Jones Index collapsed more than in any single day in history, by 508 points. Nakasone pressed the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance to assist. Japanese interest rates fell lower, and lower, making US stocks, bonds and real estate appear “cheap” by comparison. Billions of dollars flowed out of Tokyo into the United States. During 1988, the dollar remained strong and Bush was able to secure his election as president. The plan of the new Bush administration was to direct pressures onto US allies for “burden sharing” of the huge US debt.
The Thornburgh Doctrine had stipulated that the FBI and Justice Department had authority to act on foreign territory. President Bush quickly showed himself to be a “tough guy”, by invading the tiny Panama, in his first year as President, December 1989.

From 1979, when Paul Volcker had begun his monetary shock, to 1988 the government recorded Americans below the poverty level went from 24 million to 32 million Americans (an increase of more than 30%). Costs of American health care, rose to the highest levels ever, and as a share of GNP, to double that of the UK.
In the 1980s, the vital public infrastructure of the US collapsed: highways cracked; bridges became structurally unsound and even collapsed; in areas like Pittsburgh, water systems became contaminated; hospitals in major cities fell into disrepair; housing stock for the less wealthy decayed dramatically.
Total private and public debt of the US in the 1980s went from $3,873 billion to $10 trillion by the end of the decade.
Thatcher’s eleven-year as PM of Britain was equally disastrous. Real estate speculation and the financial services of the City of London increased enormously, while Thatcher’s economic policy had severely restricted industrial investment, and modernisation of the nation’s deteriorating public infrastructure.


William Engdahl – A Century of War; Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (first published in 1992, but updated since): http://www.takeoverworld.info/pdf/Engda ... r_book.pdf
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Understandably there are important events missing from the book (with “only” 270 pages). I’ve also deleted lots of information, and even with these omissions this post is “too” long...

Following is a recent interview with William Engdahl (44:33): https://soundcloud.com/21wire/featured- ... al-warfare
For some reason internet “search” engines block my posts: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread ... orld/page2

The Order of the Garter rules the world: viewtopic.php?p=5549#p5549
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