“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” Malcolm S Forbes
Did you know that Wall Street financed the Nazis, along with the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England? Or that this was hardly the first instance of overseas meddling? They'd done the same in Russia post 1914, first with the Tsar and then with the Bolsheviks and also with the Kaiser and the Allies (or the Entente, as the alliance was also known) in the Great War; the principle being that it's always favorite to back both runners in a two horse race, even if one of them is yours and the other belongs to your greatest enemy. It's not personal, it's strictly business and business is far more profitable if there is high demand sustained over a long time period. Plus, there's always the likelihood that, when the shooting stops, they'll both need further financial assistance in reconstructing what the banks have helped them destroy.
These bankers were what might have been called globalists, had the term been coined at the time. You remember them from my last offering, don't you? The Cambridge dictionary's version is this;
“...someone who believes that economic and foreign policy should be planned in an international way, rather than according to what is best for one particular country.”(1) (emphasis added)
Merriam Webster and Collins expand on the political ramifications - “a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence”(2) for the former and “a policy, outlook etc. that is worldwide in scope”(3) for the latter. I believe funding your likely future enemies may well qualify as undertaking activities that aren't best for one particular country, otherwise known as your own nation. One might also come to the conclusion that, were this succor to continue once a possible enemy became an official one, such actions would constitute treason as defined;
“The betrayal of allegiance toward one's own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.”(4) (emphasis added again)
More on that a little later. For now, it's enough to know that the Rothschilds' agents in the United States, the Warburg banking house, was financing the Kaiser. By March 1915, a mere nine months into the conflict (and before the carnage of the Second Battle of Ypres and the battles of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele), Germany was on the point of surrender. The British naval blockade was so effective – if that's the correct word – and the Germans were in such desperate need of currency, energy and food that they were prepared to sue for peace. The main factor allowing them to fight on was the credit supplied to them by the Warburg and Schroder banking families, who even opened banking institutions in Hamburg, after being approved by the Accepting Houses Committee in London.(5) Banks quartered in allied countries were, therefore, providing assistance to the enemy.
Revelations of this nature are not welcome a century or more later. What is instead emphasised is the financial backing that was supplied to the Allies. Before a year of conflict had passed, American bankers had loaned France and Great Britain tens of millions of dollars. By the spring of 1917, at around the time President Wilson declared war on Germany, the Allies were in hock to the tune of $3 billion in hard cash and $6 billion in American exports.(6) It's difficult to overstate the keenness with which the Wall Street banks lobbied for US entry into the conflict – a defeat for the Allies would inevitably result in defaults or, worse, non payment of interest on the capital.
This possible scenario was to be avoided at all costs and the bankers were largely successful in that endeavor; the Rockefellers alone made in excess of $200 million during the Great War and approximately 21,000 US investors joined the ranks of the millionaires and the billionaires.(7) J P Morgan was also in the thick of it, making the first loan to Russia in 1914 ($12 million) and then, a year later, another of $50 million to the French.(8) Lenin's return to Russia, passing through the German lines in order to do so, on the occasion of the Tsar's abdication, was secretly financed by the Guaranty Trust Company (another J P Morgan controlled entity) via a cut-out bank in Stockholm.
America and her proxies were deeply enmeshed in Russian affairs. A gentleman named Olof Aschberg was the principal intermediary, a role he had previously performed for tsarist Russia. Aschberg became the head of Ruskombank, the first Soviet international bank and a director of Guaranty Trust (an American) became chief of Ruskom's foreign department.(9) However, Morgan wasn't the only philanthropist dedicated to globalist machinations. Another director of Guaranty Trust and one from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York also funded revolutionary activity in Russia in 1917.(10) This intrigue took place after the American's declared war on the Central Powers, with the expressed intention of playing a leading role in shaping the peace to best advantage.
Lenin wasn't the only revolutionary to receive preferential treatment from unlikely sources. The other main architect of the Bolshevik Revolution (or the re-revolution, as it was also known), Leon Trotsky, arrived in Petrograd fresh from a stay in New York and in possession of $10,000 (likely donated by the Germans) and an American passport, courtesy of the American president himself.(11) So, to be clear, we have Lenin and Trotsky being assisted in their return to Russia – now an American ally – by Wall Street bankers, the Germans (in the case of Lenin) and the US president (in the case of Trotsky). Both Russians were known to be rabidly anti-war revolutionaries, committed to the establishment of a Marxist state.
But the successor government in Russia was not Lenin and co but the Russian Provisional Government, so American bankers were profiting from the act of undermining an ally. In this, they were actively colluding with their enemies, who were the authors of the original plan to use exiled revolutionaries to undermine the Russian state. It's worth noting that this wasn't Wall Street's first rodeo; there is copious documentary evidence of support for the Chinese Revolution of 1912 and of their funding of Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution, the latter being clandestinely supplied with weapons at the same time as the US state was officially supportive of his opponent. He then used those weapons in raids against American civilians, killing thirty five, seemingly with the banks' collusion.(12)
Come the Revolution of November 1917 (perhaps one of the first (but very far from the last) US-financed color revolution) and the subsequent capitulation by the new Bolshevik government, the Russian state was effectively dismembered, losing Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Poland and Ukraine to Germany and her allies.(13) Quite how it was in the Entente's best interests to see an ally defeated and the eastern front dissolved is beyond my ken, but I can certainly see how it would be in the best interests of the American business class. Stability aids profits, as does having the ear of the guys in charge.
The hard of thinking have, over the years, doubted the veracity of the evidence showing that Wall Street had invested heavily in Russia - a coalition between what could nominally be described as capitalists and Far Left Marxists. Nonetheless, that is what the evidence shows and it's not difficult to see why they would have done so. Russia was the largest untapped market in the world and the greatest potential threat to America's burgeoning industrial and financial supremacy. The likes of Morgan, Rockefeller and Guggenheim – all Wall Street behemoths – were already well known for their monopolistic tendencies, particularly with regard to the US railroad system. Now, they were looking to impose that template on the global stage:
“The gigantic Russian market was to be converted into a captive market and a technical colony to be exploited by a few high-powered American financiers and the corporations under their control.”(14)
All of this collusion was occurring behind the scenes; it was known to the government, but it was not to be revealed to the public for fifty years. After the Great War, New York bankers (and lawyers) did a lot of the heavy lifting required to rehabilitate the revolutionary Soviet regime in the eyes of the West, as well as providing more practical assistance in terms of financial support and trading opportunities. They were also most keen to recover costs, not unnaturally.
This manifested itself in disparate ways. The US insisted on both repayment of the final principal of $11.5 billion from the Allies and reparations of three times that amount (spread between the Allied nations) from the Germans. This was problematic from the get go, on at least two fronts. Firstly, payment in gold (which was what the United States wanted) was a recipe for disaster as the European nations needed their reserves as a backing for their faltering currencies – a century ago, gold backing for paper money was still considered necessary if a sound monetary system was to be sustained.
And, secondly, the Germans (and the European Allies) were obliged to export raw materials in lieu of payment which ensured that their own factories were unable to function, thus further damaging recovering economies and, inevitably, resulted in defaults on repayments. Eventually, the Allied debt was restructured at 2% interest over 62 years, yet still there were defaults on payments to France and Britain, as well as to America, which further inhibited the formers' own repayments.(15) It was a closed loop of chaos, which was only ameliorated by the implementation of the Dawes Plan, yet another initiative that proved beneficial to Wall Street and, more specifically, that man J P Morgan again. This time, the Germans were to be loaned $200 million, which was
“...a large capital influx to German industry, which continued to rebuild and expand. The capital now available to German industry functionally transferred the burdens of Germany's war reparations from German government and industry to American bond investors. The Dawes Plan was also the beginning of the ties between German industry and American investment banks....”(16)
The bankers didn't care who paid the principal, as long as someone paid the loan interest, as punitive reparations were not designed to fill their coffers, but those of Allied governments instead. Presumably, Wall Street might actually prefer the Germans not to pay, as that would likely result in the bankers providing yet more loans. And now they had their hooks into both the Russians and the Germans. For the Germans themselves, there was the added bonus of being able to turn the tables on France and reduce the supply of coal, thereby nobbling the French steel industry while rebuilding their own, enabled by the Americans; not really the way to treat a former (and future) ally but, as we've already seen, loyalty is not a quality in great abundance when Wall Street pursues its agenda.
And what of the America's domestic economy? Business boomed, even during the period of alleged neutrality between 1914 to 1917. US GDP was up 20% and manufacturing alone showed a 40% increase. The Entente, as well as borrowing funds, was then using them to pay American businesses to provide the war materiel they required.(17) Consequently, gold began to flow into US banks, thus increasing the ability of the newly incorporated Federal Reserve to create money out of nothing and lend it to the nations of the world. They didn't increase the money supply by a little; they doubled it when in the shadow of a recession.
This had the somewhat predictable result of more than doubling prices between 1913 and 1920 and also devastating the growth rate of the economy which, despite the huge demand for American industry, averaged only 1.4% a year over the period 1913-21. That sorry outcome was the result of the classic boom and bust cycle that the Fed was supposed to banish; two long recessions from 1913-15 and 1919-21, the introduction of the word 'unemployment' into the lexicon, wage regression and a newly introduced income tax system that fleeced the ordinary American and funded the payment of the national debt to the Federal Reserve.(18)
The Sixteenth Amendment (1913) had set the top rate at 7%, but within four years that rate had increased elevenfold. The tax brackets, however, remained the same, meaning that anyone fortunate enough to achieve wage parity with the inflation rate found themselves paying the top rate. This was in marked contrast to the pre-1913 era, when federal fiscal policy was light touch and the US had managed to sustain 5% annual growth and negligible price inflation. And the only group insulated from the carnage? You guessed it – the bankers who were in receipt of all those tax dollars.(19) For them, it was a bonanza, one that they had been pursuing for well over a century.
“No one disputes that America’s banking system prior to the Federal Reserve’s (the Fed’s) creation in 1914 was unstable, prone to money shortages and recurrent panics. But what was the cause of that instability?”(20)
The bankers maintained that what America needed was a central bank, because instability is the inherent weakness of a 'free' banking system, which doesn't have access to a 'lender of last resort' who can supply much needed cash in times of difficulty. This was, according to Wall Street, the only solution. It wasn't; but it was the only system that would bake in their hegemony.
The problem with the banking system wasn't that it was 'free', but rather the opposite. There were two crucial restrictions that were the catalyst for all the regular crises that afflicted monetary system – one was a relic of the Civil War, whereby the government, desperate for funds to support the war effort, forced the banks to buy government issued bonds. This meant that banks were left holding bonds, rather than cash. When a customer wished to withdraw cash, the bank had to find a seller for a bond, which took time and money.
“But those problems were exacerbated because the U.S. government began retiring its debt in the 1880s, making its remaining bonds harder and more expensive to buy. The result was that, at a time when the economy was growing quickly, the available supply of paper money was shrinking.”(21)
The easier solution, in order that they might honor withdrawals, was for banks to draw down their gold reserves instead. Clearly, this was not a sustainable solution (they'd run out of gold eventually) and it was one that was made worse by the fact that banks were legally prevented from branching out into multiple locations around the country. This meant that they had no sister outlets able to assist if they ran short of actual cash. Banks tried to circumvent this problem by leaning on 'correspondent' banks, but the cyclical nature of demand for cash (due to factors such the need to pay seasonal workers at harvest time) plus yet more regulatory chicanery in the National Bank Act of 1887 - which allowed banks to designate cash that they weren't even holding as bank reserves – resulted in regular scrambles for cash that existed only on a balance sheet.(22)
There was another way of doing things and that way worked. We know this because Canada had chosen the alternative path and was experiencing none of the difficulties that afflicted the American banking system.
“It sounds complex, but in the final analysis it’s all pretty straightforward. Bankers were not free to run their businesses in a way that would maximize their profits and minimize their risks. The government forced them to adopt an undiversified, inflexible business model they would have never chosen on their own. America’s banking system was unstable because government regulations made it unstable, and the solution would have been to liberate the system from government control.”(23)
None of this was a mystery at the time, either. But a de-centralised banking system, à la Canada, would inevitably reduce the opportunity for influence, power and profit on Wall Street and the bankers, and their deliberate obtuseness, carried the day. The Federal Reserve, which is neither federal nor a reserve but privately owned and the sole creator of currency out of thin air, was established. And, even in the Roaring Twenties, the counterpoint to the misery of the previous decade when growth returned (4.7% a year), unemployment was vanquished and inflation hovered around zero, they couldn't achieve stability. It seems to have been either/or; either continue putting a heavy thumb on the scale with all the risk to the ordinary American that had so far been occasioned, or adopt a hands off approach to monetary policy and cause yet more turmoil in the banking world:
“Bank failures reached record proportions even before the Great Depression of 1929-1933 and the collapse of the banking system in 1930. From 1913-1922, bank failures averaged 166 per year and the failure rate increased to 692 per year from 1923-1929 despite that period’s economic boom.”(24)
There is far more to the story of the Federal Reserve than I have summarised here, but it is the most impactful example of the Wall Street globalists' complete disregard for those they nominally serve – the American people, not the shareholders. Without the sole rights to print money and, in so doing permit government to keep us perpetually indebted, they would not be guaranteed permanent elite status. And, boy, have they printed money; on July 1st 1914, just prior to the Fed's first day in the saddle, US national debt was $2.9 billion; it is now over 11,000 times larger.(25) The dollar has lost 86% of its value of the past fifty years alone.(26) That's what you call a stratospheric tax rate, albeit one that is habitually overlooked.
While I speak of Wall Street globalists, I don't exclude the role of government. Much of the inflation of the money supply has been done at the behest – or in conjunction with – the federal government, which has treated the US dollar with no more regard than it would Monopoly money and, of course, the same elite individuals have been Wall Street aficionados and administration apparatchiks in turn, passing through the Deep State revolving doors at will. One of the most influential of all was a man called John J McCloy. That's him, second from the right in the following picture. He is a Zelig like figure, turning up at the scene of numerous important scenes over decades.
Figure 1
On this occasion, he accompanied the Führer to the Berlin Olympics in 1936. His role, at the time, was as a lawyer representing corporations in Nazi Germany and as an advisor for I.G. Farben, later the manufacturers of Zyklon B, the gas used at the death camps. Prior to this, he had worked for a pair of Wall Street law firms and, in 1940, he made his first foray into government service, working as a consultant to the Secretary of State. He parlayed that position into an influential role in setting US military priorities, as well as being on the task force that built the Pentagon, created the forerunner of the CIA and proposed the formation of the United Nations.
He was instrumental in the industrial reconstruction of Germany, was president of the World Bank, UN High Commissioner for Germany and then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. Additionally, he was a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Warren Committee 'investigating' the death of JFK and an advisor to five more presidents. This man was as connected as you get and wholly emblematic of the global elites. However, it's his pre-war work in Germany that is of primary interest here, as it sheds light on what he and his ilk were up to in the nineteen thirties.
I've already set out how American money restarted the German economy after the First World War, but this was hardly the altruistic endeavor that was feted publicly. Rather, it was a financial sleight of hand that became known as the Weimar circle;
“The gold that Germany paid in the form of war reparations, was sold, pawned, and disappeared in the US, where it was returned to Germany in the form of an “aid” plan, who gave it to England and France, and they in turn were to pay the war debt of the United States. It was then overlayed with interest, and again sent to Germany. In the end, all in Germany lived in debt [were indebted], and it was clear that should Wall Street withdraw their loans, the country would suffer complete bankruptcy.”(27)
The French, as we've seen, were a problem for the British and American financiers. France, the nation state, was far more wary of a strong Germany than were the bankers, who were clearly more interested in the pursuit of Mammon than in the fate of nations. Despite the restructuring of reparation payments under the Dawes Plan (which were further watered down under the subsequent Young Plan of 1929), the French were obdurate, insisting that their share was paid in full. They meant to keep Germany weak by economic means.
“We must remember: France does not want a prosperous Germany out of concern for her own security; America and England, however, need a healthy Germany, otherwise both can't be prosperous. All German governments stood between the frying pan and the fire: demands from foreign countries (mainly France) on one side, and anger from within on the other. If they fulfilled the foreign demands, then the German people cried treason -- reproaches and accusations from the people can ring very loudly -- if they resisted, then a French military occupation threatened.”(28)
This impasse was unacceptable to the bankers, especially the Morgans, Warburgs and the Rockefellers. By 1929, German industry was on the rise, although ownership of it was largely in the hands of American financial-industrial groups. IG Farben, which went on to finance 45% of Hitler's election campaign of 1930, was under the control of Rockefeller's Standard Oil. J P Morgan's General Electric owned a 30% stake in Focke-Wulf. By 1933;
“...the key sectors of German industry and large banks such as Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Danat-Bank (Darmstädter und Nationalbank), etc. were under the control of American financial capital...”(29)
Up to this point, one might semi-legitimately observe that the entanglement of German and American finance and industry was largely just an example of a melding of venture capitalism and entrepreneurship. Hitler wasn't yet in power, so no harm, no foul. One problem with this assessment is that such a concentration of Wall Street interests in a foreign land, especially one that had recently been an enemy combatant in a World War, might very well lead to a conflict of interest; which is exactly how it played out. A second problem, which ought to have initiated a pause for thought, was Hitler's very public condemnation of the punitive measures inflicted on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, along with his anger at Germany's defeat in the Great War. What might such a man do should he achieve power?
Wall Street decided to find out. Deeming the French to be intransigent (and the Weimar Republic to be insufficiently hostile to the payment of reparations), they favored regime change in Berlin. To this end, they sent an emissary to the German capital in 1929 (a Warburg, no less) and offered to fund the Nazi Party, provided it intended to overthrow the German state. Hitler was short of funds and amenable; he wanted to arm and equip his party's shock troops. The initial sum was around $10 million (the equivalent of over $170 million today). Two further tranches totaling another $22 million ($365 million) were remitted in 1931 and 1933, the latter arranged the day after the Reichstag fire.(30) There is no evidence to suggest that anybody in government was influential in any of this wheeler-dealing but, given the undeniable existence of the revolving door, it would be surprising if there wasn't knowledge after the fact, at the least.
It is entirely possible that American support for Hitler did, in fact, begun as early as 1922/23 (or possibly even prior to that, in the form of Henry Ford) when he met with the US military attaché in Munich and, subsequently, started receiving large sums of money from abroad.(31) This timeline may seem implausible, but isn't. Although largely airbrushed from history, the British and American elites were enamored of Hitler. There were hundreds of aristocratic supporters in Britain and large numbers of the industrial/banking elites in the US, including Prescott Bush (father and grandfather to the two Bush presidents), Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK and RFK) and Henry Ford.(32) It would hardly be surprising if we were to find that this support comprised of something more substantial than mere words.
The Brits also did their bit. On January 4th 1932
“...a meeting was held between British financier Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, Adolf Hitler and Franz Von Papen, who became Chancellor a few months later in May 1932. At this meeting, an agreement on the financing of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP or Nazi Party) was reached.”(33)
And, upon Hitler's accession to the Chancellorship of Germany a year later, one of his first acts was a refusal to pay further reparations. One might have thought that this would have provoked a storm of protest; not a bit of it. Wall Street and the Bank of England dipped into their pockets and loaned Hitler yet more funds and, in the summer of 1934, Britain signed the Anglo-German transfer agreement, legitimizing Hitler's breach of Versailles – by the end of the 1930s, Germany became the UK's biggest trading partners.(34)
American big business was also busy; in 1934, Rockefeller's Standard Oil built several large refineries in Germany, which supplied the (by then) openly fascist Nazi Germany with oil. Henry Ford, with huge German factories and in control of 100% of Volkswagen shares, supplied the German people with vehicles. In fact,
"...documents discovered in Germany, as well as thorough investigation have proven that the American Ford Co. produced war materials for the Nazis and assisted German armaments before and during the war up to 1944.”(35)
American companies also supplied modern equipment for the manufacture of aircraft, along with a large number of military patents, so that Hitler might continue to thumb his nose at treaty violations and rearm Germany.(36) There was one other major way of funneling money to the Nazis. Led, once again, by J P Morgan and ably assisted by Chase Manhattan, the Wall Street bankers established the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland in 1930. This obscure central bankers' central bank is still hugely important in global finance, but in the thirties and early forties it served as Hitler's private wealth managed and money launderer.
“The BIS would shelter hundreds of millions of dollars in Nazi gold, stolen from conquered nations and from slaughtered Jews (including dental fillings, jewelry, and such)...When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the nation’s gold reserves were looted and shipped via the BIS to the Reichsbank. When Germany absorbed Czechoslovakia, the SS actually held the directors of the Czech National Bank at gunpoint and demanded all their gold as well. The Czech bankers had just shifted millions to the BIS, thinking it was safe there; the BIS sent it along to Berlin.”(37)
It also functioned as a back channel between British and American bankers and their German and Japanese counterparts throughout World War II. And
So, to recap. We have British and American financiers loaning money to the Nazis, so that they might force their way into power in Germany, at which point Hitler was to abrogate the Treaty of Versailles which would, in the process, materially harm an Entente ally (France), because the bankers wanted to maximize their German profits and that could only be done if Germany was unencumbered by war debt. Not only that, but because those same bankers were heavily invested in German industry and finance, they contributed mightily to the militarization of Germany. In fact, without their assistance, Germany's subsequent belligerence would not have been possible. The translator of the document wherein the Warburg emissary details his role connects the dots;
“...it is a shattering document, because it is made abundantly clear that the unbelievable suffering and sacrifice of humanity in the last fifteen years were brought about and suffered in the interests of international and especially American high finance.”(38)
Once again, the amorality of the banking and big business fraternities is laid bare. British and American bankers and industrialists clearly couldn't give a fig about national interest. They'd been involved in financing the Kaiser and the Bolsheviks during the First World War and the Nazis prior to (and during, via the BIS) World War II. Germany could not have gone to war without the loans provided by the bankers; they are complicit in the subsequent deaths of tens of millions of people.
They are also responsible for the misery inflicted upon hundreds of millions of Europeans for over four decades at the hands of the Soviets, for without Wall Street, the Soviet Union would have been stillborn. But no American stood trial at Nuremberg and many senior Nazis and industrialists also evaded prosecution. Victor's justice did not involve drawing attention to US involvement in Hitler's rise to power.(39)
None of the above is to be taken to mean that financial nationalism should be the only way forward; that financiers and industrialists should confine their activities to concerns that exist only within their own borders. However, that's not to say that Wall Street or the Bank of England should be enthusiastically and recklessly funding activities that are clearly against the national interest. There is a moral dimension to these matters, whether they wish to acknowledge it or not and breathing life into two of the worst totalitarian regimes in modern history, simply for personal gain, is conduct that is clearly to be recorded on the debit side of the ledger.
Enabling (and prolonging) two World Wars, with all the collateral damage to people and societies, is one thing. It's certifiably macro. But that doesn't mean that the globalist elites can only paint on a large canvas. Post war, and secure in the knowledge that they hadn't been rumbled, they set about screwing their countrymen in other ways. The effect of these activities wasn't immediately obvious, but has become glaringly so as the decades have rolled by.
In simple terms, there are three huge drivers in the gradual impoverishment of much of the West; hubris, both at home and abroad, and rapacity. Otherwise known, on the domestic front, as the expansion of government and the consequent financial ill-discipline that has destroyed the real value of national currencies, plus the globalist exploitation of overseas labor to the detriment of their own countrymen's standard of living. In the global context, American arrogance and greed is similarly endemic, but has usually been masked by the fiction that the United States is the world's policeman, self-tasked with upholding some sort of international rule based order.
Those familiar with the game of cricket may find an echo of the Australians' infamous 'line' that must not be crossed, the corollary being that only the Australians knew exactly where that line was on any given day. America has displayed a similar disregard for anything that might be construed as international law. To some extent, that is almost to be expected; bullying isn't exactly rare. But the sanctimony that has often accompanied it, of the most transparent variety, has resulted in a large reservoir of ill will towards the US, from both 'friend' and foe. First, though, the hubris.
The financial incompetence and willful sabotage of Western economies by our political class (which is nearly complete) is the subject of a separate upcoming article. Here, I will limit myself to observations pertinent to one of the strains of economic vandalism that has done the most damage and to detail how successive regimes have taken the view that all the world's a stage, so “a national policy of treating the whole world as a proper sphere for political influence”makes complete sense.
Commentators generally trace America's coming of age as a global superpower to the early 1940s, when her ability to churn out war materiel became unsurpassed. In truth, a case can be made for much earlier, if one is perverse; the global recession, triggered by Wall Street, was evidence of the outsize influence that America already had on the world at large, albeit in a negative sense. Had it not been for a combination of the Federal Reserve's disastrous stewardship of the economy and FDR's New Deal – which turned a manageable recession into an unmanageable Great Depression that only truly ended upon US entry into the global war at the end of 1941 – America would have been a powerhouse by the mid-twenties.
As it was, the globalist, supranational framework was assembled before the war was even over. The United Nations was founded in 1942 and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were incorporated in 1944, all of which provide the US with a veneer of plausible deniability, even though it dominates each of these institutions. Additionally, post-war US pre-eminence was impossible to deny but, from the very outset, the extraordinary power and influence that it possessed did not foster any impulse to utilize that power responsibly. The Rand Corporation, an establishment mouthpiece, is unironically explicit in its description of how America has conducted its foreign policy for decades:
“Since 1945, the United States has pursued its global interests by building and maintaining various alliances, economic institutions, security organizations, political and liberal norms, and other tools — often collectively referred to as the international order. . . .Building an international order has been a formal program of U.S. foreign policy since at least the 1940s and an aspirational goal since the nation’s founding. According to its post–World War II architects, the international order protects U.S. values by maintaining an environment in which the ideals of a free and democratic society — like that of the United States — can flourish. The United States has used both power and idealistic notions of shared interests to underwrite the rules-based order. In this sense, it employed both hard and soft power to construct the order.”(40)
It sounds good, but the implications are clear. The US, however it wants to dress it up, has pursued policies that promote its own interests at the expense of others, all across the globe. Not only that, but it's prepared to do so via the exercise of 'hard' power if 'soft' power doesn't get the job done and punish 'rule-breakers'. This policy is known as full spectrum dominance, officially recognized in 1997 but, in reality, an acknowledgement of the past forty years' conduct as well. Hypothetically, of course, rules are supposed to apply to everyone, but the US has positioned itself as the de facto international referee and blatantly applied the 'rules' with partiality.
Recent examples serve to illustrate the point. If protesters take to the streets in an attempt to overthrow a government and that government is disfavoured, the Americans will egg them on and often materially assist them – see Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia and Iran in the very recent past.(41)(42)(43) When the Georgian legislature tried to pass a law intended to limit foreign interference in their elections, there were riots in Tbilisi and the police were obliged to deploy tear gas and water cannons to prevent the protesters storming the parliament building. The US response? The State Department stated:
“We urge the government of Georgia to respect the freedom of peaceful assembly and peaceful protests. We are standing with the people of Georgia and the aspirations that they have.”(44)
The Iranian protests against the government? More of the same:
“The United States is committed to supporting the Iranian people and ensuring that those responsible for the brutal crackdown on the ongoing nationwide protests in Iran are held accountable.”(45)
Similarly, if an ally decides to attack a neighboring nation because it believes that pre-emptive action is necessary for its defense, then America will either look the other way or actively assist – see the Saudi assault on Yemen, which has been ongoing since 2015, not that you'd know it if your sole source of information was the mainstream press.(46) However, if the American people wish to protest a stolen election and a soft coup d'état, that is entirely unacceptable. Likewise, if Russia pre-empts a Ukrainian attack, launched by a military that is shelling the front line and massing troops at the border, that is a breach of the international order. This from a nation that has launched military campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Panama, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Afghanistan – that list is not exhaustive, either.
This self regarding American exceptionalism - and glaring hypocrisy – was in evidence in the immediate post war period. Any lingering isolationism dared not speak its name and, as time passed, the relationship between Big Business and the state became increasingly symbiotic. Whereas the financing of inter-war Germany may have been a predominantly private affair (or instigated by private business, at any rate), post World War II the state and its organs came to be the kinetic arm of what is now the globalist Deep State. One of these entities became what is effectively a private army, masquerading as a state entity; the Central Intelligence Agency.
As I have noted elsewhere (see Who Are They?), the CIA has always been the peace-time tip of the globalist spear. Initially, the agency's adventurism in Latin America and the Middle East was linked solely to the preservation of the existing business interests of American elites and their partners. Their first notable achievement was regime change in Iran where, in 1953, the president declared that the Iranian people should be benefiting more from the sale of the country's oil. He even had the temerity to start seizing oil company assets. This would not do, so a CIA officer was inserted (Kermit Roosevelt) and he managed to single-handedly invent what became known as a color revolution, which was executed with surprising ease; it subsequently became the template of future operations, with the odd tweak. Roosevelt fomented civil unrest with the use of locals who were prepared to riot provided they were being paid to do so.
The international press exaggerated the protests, terming them a 'revolution', pictures of the deposed Shah started appearing on the streets and the president was deposed. The Shah then returned and reversed the oil company seizures, thus restoring the status quo.(47) Note that the US government is absent from this operation. There was no national interest threatened; it was oil companies that would lose out, not the state. Instead, this was a strictly private affair; literally, taking care of business.
The success of this operation and, specifically, its value for money was a lightbulb moment. The next year, it was Guatemala's turn. President Arbenz had been elected on a manifesto that sought to return land rights back to the people. The company that had control of the land, United Fruits Company (a Rockefeller asset), was not enamored at the prospect. A media blitz which inferred that the president was a Soviet puppet provided a pretext for the CIA who sponsored a mercenary attack involving ground troops, planes and a propagandist radio station; it worked. Arbenz resigned and went into exile. The next man up was much more pliant and United Fruit could rest easy.(48)
A familiar pattern now started to emerge, firstly in South America and then in the Middle East. In 1981, the newly elected President of Ecuador declared that the profits from its oil sales should go to the people, not to the oil companies. The agency had heard this song before and they had the capability to ensure it ended the way they wanted. So, the president died in a plane crash shortly thereafter.(49) A month later, the Panamanian president also died in a plane crash; he had made the mistake of being vocal in demanding the repayment of debt by the US and the restoration of the ownership of the Panama Canal.(50) In 2002, in Venezuela, there was another attempt at a color revolution, this time unsuccessful. That president, Chavez, had also been demanding that the sale of oil be used to help the people.(51)
If their involvement in a coup attempt becomes semi-public knowledge, the narrative has always been that they are fighting communism or, latterly, jihadis. However, many of the 80 attempted coups the CIA has had a hand in have been against democracies; just not democracies that the US is terribly keen on, because American national interest is being impeded in some way (see Ukraine).(52) An extra scam has also been developed, one which entails collusion with institutions under the control of the UN (but financed, largely, by US tax-payers) or with Congress, which can be relied upon to approve vast financial reconstruction packages and sometimes involves much more direct action.
The method is as follows. First, send in an 'economic hit man', tasked with pressuring the president of a target country into accepting a vast loan from the World Bank or the IMF – both UN entities. The loan is to be spent on infrastructure projects that will be assigned to American firms. As such, the money never actually makes it as far as the country itself, although some of it will find its way into the offshore account of the president. Then the loan will prove impossible to service. This is because the economic hit man has written reports that deliberately overstate the future GDP of the country in question. Thus, come the time, there are insufficient funds to repay the interest.
The loan is reconfigured, with the result that more interest will eventually become due. In order to get out from under, the country is often forced to devalue its currency and then sell its valuable infrastructure, utility companies, healthcare system, education systems, sometimes even prisons to the companies who performed the original work. At least, that's what happens if the president can read the runes correctly.
If he doesn't, there is also a second option and that is to take him out, either via a fomented revolution or assassination, usually by 'jackals' rather than by CIA perpetrators, because that preserves plausible deniability. If that doesn't work, then the military gets involved, which is how the Second Gulf War in 2003 came to pass. Saddam wasn't interested in a loan and his security was too good. And so, we were fed a new narrative. This time Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) tucked away in the desert somewhere which needed to be found and destroyed.
Except he hadn't; at least, not any more. Those weapons had been destroyed in collaboration with the UN after the first war and weapons inspectors had discovered no trace of them since.(53) This didn't dissuade the Americans who, along the British, insisted that Saddam was lying and invaded once again. The operational name, 'Enduring Freedom', left nobody in any doubt that the US led coalition occupied the moral high ground.
This time, they found Saddam and hanged him. They still didn't find any WMDs though. No matter. The new government was much more receptive to US blandishments and numerous World Bank loans have followed. In addition, the US has also contributed to the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure, by which I mean that multi-billions of dollars have been spent on contracts with US companies, all of which has been provided by the US tax-payer and most of which has been wasted.(54) But the welfare of the Iraqi people is of no consequence; they are merely collateral damage. The only motivation here is profit.
What about the war in Afghanistan? Ostensibly, the US invaded because the Taliban refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden. This made them a state sponsor of terror in the eyes of the US government and that was good enough to justify an invasion. While the American military eventually retreated in disarray, American business did just fine. The World Bank loaned Afghanistan tens of billions for reconstruction (and we know how that works, now) and the 'international community', for which read the US tax-payer, stumped up billions more.(55) Not to mention perhaps $83 billion of military material which went to Afghanistan and never came away again, but which must still be replaced.(56)
Whether the justifications for direct military action hold up to scrutiny in the aftermath is of no real consequence, as we've seen. There were no WMDs in Iraq and, not only was bin Laden never an official suspect in the 9/11 attack and was therefore ineligible for extradition, none of the alleged hijackers were even Afghans – fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, two were from the UAE and there was one each from Egypt and Lebanon.(57)
This dynamic results in an especially sweet deal and a simple wealth transfer from the ordinary tax-paying citizen to US businesses and Wall Street banks. American soldiers die and American citizens pay for it to happen. All wars costs billions – billions which the privately owned Federal Reserve creates, thus adding to the federal deficit. The armaments and other materiel expended in these wars clearly have to be replaced. Often, the infrastructure of the devastated enemy (think Iraq and Afghanistan) must be repaired with American dollars, either directly of indirectly. This money also goes to American corporations.
It is utterly brazen; make up an excuse to go to war (again, think Iraq and Afghanistan), break stuff in epic quantities and then pay yourself to repair it while the enemy (or the dullards in your voting public) foot the bill. It's a scam of vast proportions and at no point do the American people have an opportunity to express their opinion of it, as the neocon hawks are a feature of both parties. It is evident that private enterprise, elements of the state and the United Nations are all working together; but crucially, in the service of the private entity, rather than the common people.(58)
I appreciate that this review of American globalism may seem overly negative in tone. Surely, one might think, there must have been occasions when a measure of altruism informed their overseas escapades? When there was actually a moral dimension to the globalists' actions, which were devoid of any self interest? Or, at minimum, an occasion when serving their own interests also happened to be in synch with the international rules-based order that they are so keen on?
I'm struggling to think of one. If we rule out the most frequent apologia, the imposition of Western-style democracy at the point of a gun, then it's pretty difficult to make a case for any known interventions. The 'line' has meandered back and forth, its position dependent on whatever imperative is uppermost in the globalist mind at any given time. Indeed, in the thirty years since the fall of the Wall, they've pretty much had a free hand and, in typical fashion, they have merely sought to maximize their advantage. They've been explicit about their self regard:
“… if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see here the danger to all of us. I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life.”(59)
That's the US Secretary of State in 1998, giving the rhetorical finger to every other nation, in addition to assuming that Americans should be prepared to die to ensure that the elites' self appointed role of global policeman is fulfilled.
Ironically, by continually weighing in on one side of a dispute, the US destroys it's own ability to mediate outcomes, as it can no longer present itself as an impartial interlocutor. But neutrality is anathema to US policymakers; Bush the Younger's threat - “you're either with us or against us” - is now part of the political bedrock.(60)
None of this serves the core interests of the people themselves. Coups in faraway countries, wars in equally far away countries, the belief in American exceptionalism weaponized and expressed in oppressive 'diplomacy'; all of this activity has been undertaken by a public/private elite which is hermetically sealed and largely uninfluenceable by anyone outside the bubble. The last time American voters compelled a policy shift in the field of foreign affairs was 1968, when Nixon won election on the back of a promise to exit the Vietnam War, stage left.(61) Otherwise, the middle class and the working class are simply there to provide a tax base, work in the industries that the elites deem to be important and offer themselves up as cannon fodder when required.
But they are not there to have a proper say in matters. The CIA does its thing, regardless of who's in charge. Hostile acts are initiated by Democrat and Republican alike; LBJ in Vietnam, the Bushs all over the Middle East, for example. Domestically, also, the voting public have been taken for a long ride to nowhere good. This should not be a revelation; it would be more surprising if the elites' bullish lack of restraint and collective narcissism hadn't been replicated at home.
Between 1945 and 1974, real incomes in the US rose in line with the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the light of what was to come, that was a commendable outcome, notwithstanding the fact that inequality undoubtedly colored some sectors of society. Indeed, even as late as 1985, the average American was better off than today by several orders of magnitude. The Cost of Thriving Index, the amount of money needed to pay for the basic costs of housing, healthcare, transportation and education for a family took thirty weeks to earn. By 2018, it was 53 weeks.
“But the counterfactual reveals an even starker picture: In 2018, the combined income of married households with two full-time workers was barely more than what the income of a single-earner household would have earned had inequality held constant. Two-income families are now working twice the hours to maintain a shrinking share of the pie, while struggling to pay housing, healthcare, education, childcare, and transportations costs that have grown at two to three times the rate of inflation.”(62)
In 1975, a standard nuclear family of parents and 2.2 kids could comfortably exist on the wage of one middle class adult. If there ever was an American Dream, it was most likely to be attained in this post war period. There are many other examples with which to illustrate the stark division between what was and what is. For instance, GDP has risen 118% since 1975 and yet the median real income for a college educated worker has only increased to $72,000 (from $55,000), rather than to $120,000. And, of course, while wage inflation has foundered, other inflation hasn't and has additionally decimated the purchasing power of even that underwhelming wage.
So what happened? How is it that, during a period of huge productivity, the standard of living for average American has plummeted? The following quote hints at the beginnings of an answer:
“In 1960, about one in four American workers had a job in manufacturing. Today fewer than one in 10 are employed in the sector, according to government data.”(63)
Figure 2
The decline started even prior to that and the numbers are huge:
“Between 1950 and 2000, the U.S. lost more than 491,000 jobs from the primary metals industry alone—most of those after 1980; from 2000 to 2003, an additional 149,000 of these jobs vaporized...”(64)
Another representation shows the gathering pace of the storm that has engulfed the US economy.
Figure 3
If you've been paying attention, you'll know why this has happened, not just in the US, but across numerous Western nations – globalization, again. The effectively indivisible political/business class profess fealty to the concept of democracy and the American way and excuse their exceptionalist foreign policy by claiming that it is their mission to spread the gospel as widely as possible. This hasn't stopped them exploiting nations of every political hue if it translates into bigger profits by offshoring their factories and cutting costs by paying the local population peanuts in comparison to the wages they would have had to pay Americans. There are other downsides, despite corporate enthusiasm:
“Admirers of globalization contend that freer access to foreign markets and cheap labor increase corporate profits and thereby benefit the U.S. economy. While this argument may superficially sound compelling, it ignores the dangerous long-term effects of manufacturing losses...by building factories overseas, manufacturers are sowing the seeds of their own long-term destruction by slowly reducing the wealth of Americans—their primary customers... in reality, outsourcing makes Americans poorer over time, because America’s wealth and technology slowly migrate to other nations....America’s wealth grew when profits from domestic manufacturing were reinvested into buildings, machinery and technological change. But now outsourcing is diverting that income to foreigners.”(65)
The trend was started in the late 70's by the much respected CEO of General Electric, who argued that the primary obligation of publicly quoted corporations was to their shareholders, not their employees and they should, therefore, seek to lower costs and maximize profits by shifting production to whichever country offered the best deal. Tellingly, there were (and are) very few legislative impediments to doing just that and, commensurately, almost no protection for the American worker.
Figure 4
So, American manufacturing industry has been decimated and a typical worker's wage has hugely regressed; if there are losers, there must also be winners and there is a clue as to their identity in the much abused example of rich tax payers, the statistic that conservatives love to trot out when they want to make socialists look particularly stupid. The bald facts are that the top 1% tax payers pay 22% of income tax. The less acknowledged statistic is the one which shows that, in 1975, the top 1% paid 9% of total income tax. Over the same period, the bottom 90% of tax payers have seen their share of tax paid fall to 50%, from 67%; from which we may further deduce that the top 10% of earners currently pay 50% of income tax. In layman's terms, the estimate is that $50 trillion has made its way from the 90% to the less than 10%.(66)
Oddly enough, it is Marx whose critique of capitalism (the economic arm of the globalist religion) is strikingly prescient:
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeosie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”(67)
His contention is that the biggest conglomerates will find themselves able to “seduce, bribe and bully” the state into doing their bidding and, rather in the manner of the General Electric CEO, the citizens whose interests are then compromised can take a long walk off a short plank. Eventually, he believed, the power of capitalist firms would rival and then exceed the power of the nation state. That's where we are today and it's where we've been for some considerable time. In addition to a hollowing out of the working/middle class, there's the small matter of the undermining of the the security of the nation.
Globalists cannot serve two masters; the headlong pursuit of maximal profit will inevitably lead to aberrations unless there is at least some degree of regulatory oversight. While the US isn't short of a pervasive and invasive regulatory regime in some areas (think trans rights, guns and climate change), it has shown no interest in preserving the national interest in areas that actually matter. Seemingly, not only is it open season on outsourcing; entire industries have haphazardly bitten the dust, leaving America hugely vulnerable;
“...more and more American manufacturers setting up (sic) plants in China, our domestic supply chain was weakened...the U. S. textile industry lost 63% of jobs since 2001. Communication equipment industry lost 47% of its jobs. Motor vehicles and parts industry lost 43% of its jobs. U. S. machine tool industry consumption fell 78% in 2008 and another 60% in 2009. U. S. printed circuit board industry has shrunk by 74% since 2000. We even lost whole industries, such as: fabless chips, compact fluorescent lighting, LCDs for monitors, TVs and handheld devices like mobile phones displays, lithium ion, lithium polymer and NiMH batteries, low-end servers, hard-disk drives, and many others.”(68)
China also has control of the American pharmaceutical market – up to 97% of US antibiotics are made there. The same goes for cancer drugs and other meds. There are current shortages of amoxicillin and Ritalin but, while the political class is devoting itself to talking up the threat of China, it is doing nothing to insure itself against what would be an obvious tactic – cutting off shipments – in the event of war or the imposition of sanctions.(69)
It's hardly the only blind spot. In 1954, there were only eight minerals for which the US was wholly reliant on foreign sources; by 2016, there were 20.
Figure 5
Is there another vital sector that is similarly compromised? Yes, there is. America has no domestic suppliers of antimony or lead styphnate – the former a material used to harden lead alloys on bullets, the latter a bullet primer. The US Army uses one major small arms ammunition producer, capable of annually producing less than 5% of the rounds used by the army in World War II.(70) It gets worse – a lot worse:
“In the first eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukrainian forces burned through 13 years worth of Stinger antiaircraft missiles and five years of Javelin missiles, according to Raytheon, which produces both weapons.”(71)
The Ukrainians are also getting through 7,700 155mm artillery rounds a day; the only US plant produces 14,000 a month. The howitzer that fires it is built in England and made of titanium. Not only will it take three years to replenish the guns – the largest single global supplier of titanium is located in Russia. Additionally, the gallium arsenide used in the Hellfire missile system must be sourced from abroad, as there are no gallium mines currently operational in the US. And that little litany of disaster is only a sample; there's plenty more besides.(72)
And it's all been by choice. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter that the stock-market had been going gangbusters for nearly 40 years, if the growth isn't in real production.
“America’s proportional ability to make critical infrastructure, as I’ve shown, has precipitously declined. Instead, these numbers testify, in large part, to Wall Street’s gutting of the American economy. Parasites in America’s blue states sucked dry the conservative heartland. Rural manufacturing communities...are today in all-out decline.”(73)
All of the above prompts a number of observations. For instance, when one speaks of the United States, what does one really mean? The government itself and its institutions? That would be the traditional approach, I suspect, but it must necessarily be misleading. State institutions have routinely acted in support of private entities; so much so that it's not clear where the state ends and Big Business begins. It's almost certainly more helpful to view America as the world's foremost corporatist outpost.
“Corporatism: Political / Economic system in which power is exercised through large organizations (businesses, trade unions their associated lobbying efforts, etc.) working in concert or conflict with each other; usually with the goal of influencing or subsuming the direction of the state and generally only to benefit their own socioeconomic agendas at the expense of the will of the people, and to the detriment of the common good...control of a state or organization by large interest groups.”(74)
And this corporatism is global in nature and distinct from what might usually be considered to be in the interests of 'the people'. The latter are the one group that has been progressively marginalized – even the vote simply results in the selection of slightly different versions of the same animal. They are there to be used and abused in further entrenching the globalist elites' status.
Furthermore, globalists believe that they owe no allegiance to their own country, nor to their fellow citizens. The American version has used the resources of a world superpower to further their own ambitions, even if it appears as though it is the “United States” itself that has been the instigator of whatever actions it has undertaken on the global stage. The power and influence that, in other hands, might have been a force for good, has instead been used arbitrarily, without regard for any of the rules that they claim to be upholding. But all good things come to an end and US global dominance will be no different. They haven't quite realized it yet, but their Unipolar world is rapidly dissolving. That's the topic of the next missive.
Citations
(1) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/globalist
(2) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/globalism
(3) https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/globalism
(4) https://www.wordnik.com/words/treason
(5) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/lusitania.html
(6) http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/bankers.html
(7) Ditto
(8) https://archive.org/details/WallStreetTheBolshevikRevolution/page/n63/mode/2up?view=theater
(9) Ditto
(10) Ditto
(11) Ditto
(12) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I#March_to_November_1917;_Russian_Revolution
(13) https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1359.html
(14) https://archive.org/details/WallStreetTheBolshevikRevolution/page/n65/mode/2up?view=theater
(15)http://www.revisionist.net/hysteria/bankers.html
(16) Ditto
(17) https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/1913-worst-year-ever/
(18) Ditto
(19) Ditto
(20) https://ari.aynrand.org/banking-panics-and-the-creation-of-the-federal-reserve/
(21)Ditto
(22) Ditto
(23) Ditto
(24) Ditto
(27) https://finbold.com/real-value-of-one-u-s-dollar-decreases-by-86-in-the-last-50-years/
(29) https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/history/nazi/Hitlers%20Secret%20Backers%20Warburg.pdf
(30) Ditto
(32) Ditto
(34) https://expose-news.com/2023/02/11/bank-of-england-and-federal-reserve-financed-hitler/
(36) https://expose-news.com/2023/02/11/bank-of-england-and-federal-reserve-financed-hitler/
(37) https://tonyisola.com/2019/02/hitlers-bankers/
(38) https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/history/nazi/Hitlers%20Secret%20Backers%20Warburg.pdf
(39) https://propagandainfocus.com/wall-street-the-nazis-and-the-crimes-of-the-deep-state/
(40) https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1598.html
(42) https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics/us-iran-sanctions/index.html
(43) https://www.mintpressnews.com/coup-cia-foreign-agent-law-color-revolution-georgia/283992/
(44) https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/03/understanding-the-international-rules-based-disorder/
(45) https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics/us-iran-sanctions/index.html
(46) https://consortiumnews.com/2021/01/13/sacrificing-yemen-to-appease-saudis/
(47)https://expose-news.com/2022/11/28/economic-hit-men-are-the-first-line-of-defence/
(48) Ditto
(49) Ditto
(50) Ditto
(51)
(52) https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2014/4/15/1292378/-US-has-Attempted-80-Coups-since-1953
(55) https://thenewamerican.com/afghanistan-reconstruction-a-145-billion-failure-says-inspector-general/
(57) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks
(58) John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
(59) https://1997-2001.state.gov/statements/1998/980219a.html
(60) https://consortiumnews.com/2023/04/04/us-diplomacy-war-never-peace/
(61) https://www.theamericanconservative.com/americans-must-choose/
(62) https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
(63) https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/29/news/economy/us-manufacturing-jobs/index.html
(64) https://www.thetrumpet.com/2061-the-death-of-american-manufacturing
(65) https://www.thetrumpet.com/2061-the-death-of-american-manufacturing
(66) https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
(67) https://compactmag.com/article/why-the-great-reset-is-not-socialism
(70) https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/12/arsenal-of-dumb-ocracy/
(71) https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/08/us-weapons-manufacturing-ukraine/
(72) https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/12/arsenal-of-dumb-ocracy/
(73) Ditto
(74) https://www.wordnik.com/words/corporatism
Figure 1 http://www.lachschon.de/forum/thread/show/52673/
Figure 2 https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/29/news/economy/us-manufacturing-jobs/index.html
Figure 3 Ditto
Figure 5 https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/2016-us-net-import-reliance