A Fluoride-Free Pineal Gland is More Important than Ever
There has been some controversy over the activity of adding synthetic fluoride to municipal water supplies and elsewhere, but not enough. The seriousness of this issue is more than what most realize. Fluoridation ranks with GMO‘s and tainted, forced vaccinations among the great crimes against humanity.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Fluoride
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
definition of racism - wikipedia
link
Racism is generally defined as actions, practices, attitudes, or beliefs that reflect or support the racial worldview: the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called "races".
Some definitions of racism also include discriminatory behaviors and beliefs based on cultural, national, ethnic, caste, or religious stereotypes.
Racism and racial discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According to the United Nations convention, there is no distinction between the terms racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination, and superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous, and that there is no justification for racial discrimination, in theory or in practice, anywhere.
Michael Manns Hockey stick Graph
It’s a sordid tale of a graph that overthrew decades of work, conveniently fitted the climate models, and was lauded triumphantly in glossy publication after publication. But then it was crushed when an unpaid analyst stripped it bare. It had been published in the highest most prestigious journal, Nature, but no one had checked it before or after it was spread far and wide. Not Nature, not the IPCC, not any other climate researcher.
In 1995 everyone agreed the world was warmer in medieval times, but CO2 was low then and that didn’t fit with climate models. In 1998, suddenly Michael Mann ignored the other studies and produced a graph that scared the world — tree rings show the “1990’s was the hottest decade for a thousand years”. Now temperatures exactly “fit” the rise in carbon!
The IPCC used the graph all over their 2001 report. Government departments copied it. The media told everyone.
But Steven McIntyre was suspicious.
He wanted to verify it, yet Mann repeatedly refused to provide his data or methods — normally a basic requirement of any scientific paper. It took legal action to get the information that should have been freely available. Within days McIntyre showed that the statistics were so flawed that you could feed in random data, and still make the same hockey stick shape nine times out of ten. Mann had left out some tree rings he said he’d included.
If someone did a graph like this in a stock prospectus, they would be jailed. Astonishingly, Nature refused to publish the correction. It was published elsewhere, and backed up by the Wegman Report, an independent committee of statistical experts. In 2009 McIntyre did it again with Briffa’s Hockey Stick. After asking and waiting three years for the data, it took just three days to expose it too as baseless. For nine years Briffa had concealed that he only had 12 trees in the sample from 1990 onwards, and that one freakish tree virtually transformed the graph. When McIntyre graphed another 34 trees from the same region of Russia, there was no Hockey Stick.
Science was ripe to be exploited. Our laws protect investors from being cheated by the corporate world, but there are no police for the laws of science. No one in business would get away with these claims, but in the world of politics, we’ll transform entire national economies based on science that uses data no one can verify or audit.
Data for scientists is like receipts for company accountants. It’s a record of what happened. Yet many climate researchers hide their data, refusing repeated requests to provide it. Phil Jones from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit has refused to give out data despite many requests. In one such refusal, I’ve replaced the word “data” with “receipt”, otherwise this is a direct quote. Imagine he’s talking to the tax office. “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the [receipts] available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.” If the accountants for Enron said this, they would be jailed.
It’s a central tenet of science that once a paper is published the raw data, methods and all related information is made public, so anyone who wants to repeat the work and validate the methods can check it. All reputable science journals have this written into their charters, but strangely many are not enforcing it when it comes to climate research.
Even more oddly, the IPCC doesn’t seem to mind that no one can check results either. Nor does Al Gore complain.
Steve McIntyre has been asking for the global data from the East Anglia CRU since 2002. They have provided it to other researchers, but refused McIntyre saying he’s “not an academic”. So Steve got an academic colleague to ask, but again they were refused, this time because it was “commercial in confidence” and would break agreements. Next they launched legal action to see the agreements, but apart from a few of those, they’re all gone too. There are only so many excuses you can make. Could it get worse? It could, and it did. Apparently the entire original global records of climate data are now ... gone, “lost”. All that the East Anglia CRU can provide is the “adjusted” data. Global temperature records are missing Science has been corrupted. This is public data. They are public servants. We are the public. It’s a scandal.
ClimateGATE:
In Nov 23 2009: Fraud, collusion, corruption documented. Emails leaked or hacked out of the East Anglia CRU show that some scientists have deleted data rather than provided it to meet legal disclosure requests.They adjusted results in order to hide “the decline” in temperatures. They blackban and boycott science journals that publish skeptical material, and they collude to evict skeptical scientists from professional organisations
3 Inquiries found East Anglia U innocent of any wrong-doing
flashback: South African attempted coup in the Seychelles (1981)
link
The raid was led by Colonel Thomas Michael ("Mad Mike") Hoare, who gained notoriety as a mercenary in the Congo during the 1960s. The 1978 film, "Wild Geese" is loosely inspired by Hoare's adventures, and he is the author of several books that recount his swashbuckling exploits.
The raid was led by Colonel Thomas Michael ("Mad Mike") Hoare, who gained notoriety as a mercenary in the Congo during the 1960s. The 1978 film, "Wild Geese" is loosely inspired by Hoare's adventures, and he is the author of several books that recount his swashbuckling exploits.
30 Years Of U.S. UN Vetoes.
30 Years Of U.S. UN Vetoes.
How the U.S. has Voted // Vetoed
by rp 3:38pm Sat Mar 8 '03
1972-2002 Vetoes from the USA
---
Year -----Resolution Vetoed by the USA
1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids.
1973 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians.
1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories.
1976 Calls for self determination for the Palestinians.
1976 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians.
1978 Urges the permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France, China) to insure United Nations decisions on the maintenance of international peace and security.
1978 Criticises the living conditions of the Palestinians.
1978 Condemns the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories.
1978 Calls for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries.
1979 Calls for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with the apartheid South Africa.
1979 Strengthens the arms embargo against South Africa.
1979 Offers assistance to all the oppressed people of South Africa and their liberation movement.
1979 Concerns negotiations on disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race.
1979 Calls for the return of all inhabitants expelled by Israel.
1979 Demands that Israel desist from human rights violations.
1979 Requests a report on the living conditions of Palestinians in occupied Arab countries.
1979 Offers assistance to the Palestinian people.
1979 Discusses sovereignty over national resources in occupied Arab territories.
1979 Calls for protection of developing counties' exports.
1979 Calls for alternative approaches within the United Nations system for improving the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
1979 Opposes support for intervention in the internal or external affairs of states.
1979 For a United Nations Conference on Women.
1979 To include Palestinian women in the United Nations Conference on Women.
1979 Safeguards rights of developing countries in multinational trade negotiations.
1980 Requests Israel to return displaced persons.
1980 Condemns Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian people.
1980 Condemns Israeli human rights practices in occupied territories. 3 resolutions.
1980 Afirms the right of self determination for the Palestinians.
1980 Offers assistance to the oppressed people of South Africa and their national liberation movement.
1980 Attempts to establish a New International Economic Order to promote the growth of underdeveloped countries and international economic co-operation.
1980 Endorses the Program of Action for Second Half of United Nations Decade for Women.
1980 Declaration of non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
1980 Emphasises that the development of nations and individuals is a human right.
1980 Calls for the cessation of all nuclear test explosions.
1980 Calls for the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
1981 Promotes co-operative movements in developing countries.
1981 Affirms the right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes.
1981 Condemns activities of foreign economic interests in colonial territories.
1981 Calls for the cessation of all test explosions of nuclear weapons.
1981 Calls for action in support of measures to prevent nuclear war, curb the arms race and promote disarmament.
1981 Urges negotiations on prohibition of chemical and biological weapons.
1981 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development, etc are human rights.
1981 Condemns South Africa for attacks on neighbouring states, condemns apartheid and attempts to strengthen sanctions. 7 resolutions.
1981 Condemns an attempted coup by South Africa on the Seychelles.
1981 Condemns Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, human rights policies, and the bombing of Iraq. 18 resolutions.
1982 Condemns the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. 6 resolutions (1982 to 1983).
1982 Condemns the shooting of 11 Muslims at a shrine in Jerusalem by an Israeli soldier.
1982 Calls on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights occupied in 1967.
1982 Condemns apartheid and calls for the cessation of economic aid to South Africa. 4 resolutions.
1982 Calls for the setting up of a World Charter for the protection of the ecology.
1982 Sets up a United Nations conference on succession of states in respect to state property, archives and debts.
1982 Nuclear test bans and negotiations and nuclear free outer space. 3 resolutions.
1982 Supports a new world information and communications order.
1982 Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons.
1982 Development of international law.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment .
1982 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development are human rights.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment.
1982 Development of the energy resources of developing countries.
1983 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 15 resolutions.
1984 Condemns support of South Africa in its Namibian and other policies.
1984 International action to eliminate apartheid.
1984 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1984 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 18 resolutions.
1985 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1985 Condemns Israel for using excessive force in the occupied territories.
1985 Resolutions about cooperation, human rights, trade and development. 3 resolutions.
1985 Measures to be taken against Nazi, Fascist and neo-Fascist activities .
1986 Calls on all governments (including the USA) to observe international law.
1986 Imposes economic and military sanctions against South Africa.
1986 Condemns Israel for its actions against Lebanese civilians.
1986 Calls on Israel to respect Muslim holy places.
1986 Condemns Israel for sky-jacking a Libyan airliner.
1986 Resolutions about cooperation, security, human rights, trade, media bias, the environment and development.
8 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians.
1987 Calls on Israel to stop deporting Palestinians.
1987 Condemns Israel for its actions in Lebanon. 2 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
1987 Cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States.
1987 Calls for compliance in the International Court of Justice concerning military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua and a call to end the trade embargo against Nicaragua. 2 resolutions.
1987 Measures to prevent international terrorism, study the underlying political and economic causes of terrorism, convene a conference to define terrorism and to differentiate it from the struggle of people from national liberation.
1987 Resolutions concerning journalism, international debt and trade. 3 resolutions.
1987 Opposition to the build up of weapons in space.
1987 Opposition to the development of new weapons of mass destruction.
1987 Opposition to nuclear testing. 2 resolutions.
1987 Proposal to set up South Atlantic "Zone of Peace".
1988 Condemns Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories. 5 resolutions (1988 and 1989).
1989 Condemns USA invasion of Panama.
1989 Condemns USA troops for ransacking the residence of the Nicaraguan ambassador in Panama.
1989 Condemns USA support for the Contra army in Nicaragua.
1989 Condemns illegal USA embargo of Nicaragua.
1989 Opposing the acquisition of territory by force.
1989 Calling for a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on earlier UN resoltions.
1990 To send three UN Security Council observers to the occupied territories.
1995 Afirms that land in East Jerusalem annexed by Israel is occupied territory.
1997 Calls on Israel to cease building settlements in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories. 2 resolutions.
1999 Calls on the USA to end its trade embargo on Cuba. 8 resolutions (1992 to 1999).
2001 To send unarmed monitors to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
2001 To set up the International Criminal Court.
2002 To renew the peace keeping mission in Bosnia.
How the U.S. has Voted // Vetoed
by rp 3:38pm Sat Mar 8 '03
1972-2002 Vetoes from the USA
---
Year -----Resolution Vetoed by the USA
1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids.
1973 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians.
1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories.
1976 Calls for self determination for the Palestinians.
1976 Afirms the rights of the Palestinians.
1978 Urges the permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France, China) to insure United Nations decisions on the maintenance of international peace and security.
1978 Criticises the living conditions of the Palestinians.
1978 Condemns the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories.
1978 Calls for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries.
1979 Calls for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with the apartheid South Africa.
1979 Strengthens the arms embargo against South Africa.
1979 Offers assistance to all the oppressed people of South Africa and their liberation movement.
1979 Concerns negotiations on disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race.
1979 Calls for the return of all inhabitants expelled by Israel.
1979 Demands that Israel desist from human rights violations.
1979 Requests a report on the living conditions of Palestinians in occupied Arab countries.
1979 Offers assistance to the Palestinian people.
1979 Discusses sovereignty over national resources in occupied Arab territories.
1979 Calls for protection of developing counties' exports.
1979 Calls for alternative approaches within the United Nations system for improving the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
1979 Opposes support for intervention in the internal or external affairs of states.
1979 For a United Nations Conference on Women.
1979 To include Palestinian women in the United Nations Conference on Women.
1979 Safeguards rights of developing countries in multinational trade negotiations.
1980 Requests Israel to return displaced persons.
1980 Condemns Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian people.
1980 Condemns Israeli human rights practices in occupied territories. 3 resolutions.
1980 Afirms the right of self determination for the Palestinians.
1980 Offers assistance to the oppressed people of South Africa and their national liberation movement.
1980 Attempts to establish a New International Economic Order to promote the growth of underdeveloped countries and international economic co-operation.
1980 Endorses the Program of Action for Second Half of United Nations Decade for Women.
1980 Declaration of non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
1980 Emphasises that the development of nations and individuals is a human right.
1980 Calls for the cessation of all nuclear test explosions.
1980 Calls for the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
1981 Promotes co-operative movements in developing countries.
1981 Affirms the right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes.
1981 Condemns activities of foreign economic interests in colonial territories.
1981 Calls for the cessation of all test explosions of nuclear weapons.
1981 Calls for action in support of measures to prevent nuclear war, curb the arms race and promote disarmament.
1981 Urges negotiations on prohibition of chemical and biological weapons.
1981 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development, etc are human rights.
1981 Condemns South Africa for attacks on neighbouring states, condemns apartheid and attempts to strengthen sanctions. 7 resolutions.
1981 Condemns an attempted coup by South Africa on the Seychelles.
1981 Condemns Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, human rights policies, and the bombing of Iraq. 18 resolutions.
1982 Condemns the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. 6 resolutions (1982 to 1983).
1982 Condemns the shooting of 11 Muslims at a shrine in Jerusalem by an Israeli soldier.
1982 Calls on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights occupied in 1967.
1982 Condemns apartheid and calls for the cessation of economic aid to South Africa. 4 resolutions.
1982 Calls for the setting up of a World Charter for the protection of the ecology.
1982 Sets up a United Nations conference on succession of states in respect to state property, archives and debts.
1982 Nuclear test bans and negotiations and nuclear free outer space. 3 resolutions.
1982 Supports a new world information and communications order.
1982 Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons.
1982 Development of international law.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment .
1982 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development are human rights.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment.
1982 Development of the energy resources of developing countries.
1983 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 15 resolutions.
1984 Condemns support of South Africa in its Namibian and other policies.
1984 International action to eliminate apartheid.
1984 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1984 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 18 resolutions.
1985 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1985 Condemns Israel for using excessive force in the occupied territories.
1985 Resolutions about cooperation, human rights, trade and development. 3 resolutions.
1985 Measures to be taken against Nazi, Fascist and neo-Fascist activities .
1986 Calls on all governments (including the USA) to observe international law.
1986 Imposes economic and military sanctions against South Africa.
1986 Condemns Israel for its actions against Lebanese civilians.
1986 Calls on Israel to respect Muslim holy places.
1986 Condemns Israel for sky-jacking a Libyan airliner.
1986 Resolutions about cooperation, security, human rights, trade, media bias, the environment and development.
8 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians.
1987 Calls on Israel to stop deporting Palestinians.
1987 Condemns Israel for its actions in Lebanon. 2 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
1987 Cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States.
1987 Calls for compliance in the International Court of Justice concerning military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua and a call to end the trade embargo against Nicaragua. 2 resolutions.
1987 Measures to prevent international terrorism, study the underlying political and economic causes of terrorism, convene a conference to define terrorism and to differentiate it from the struggle of people from national liberation.
1987 Resolutions concerning journalism, international debt and trade. 3 resolutions.
1987 Opposition to the build up of weapons in space.
1987 Opposition to the development of new weapons of mass destruction.
1987 Opposition to nuclear testing. 2 resolutions.
1987 Proposal to set up South Atlantic "Zone of Peace".
1988 Condemns Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories. 5 resolutions (1988 and 1989).
1989 Condemns USA invasion of Panama.
1989 Condemns USA troops for ransacking the residence of the Nicaraguan ambassador in Panama.
1989 Condemns USA support for the Contra army in Nicaragua.
1989 Condemns illegal USA embargo of Nicaragua.
1989 Opposing the acquisition of territory by force.
1989 Calling for a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on earlier UN resoltions.
1990 To send three UN Security Council observers to the occupied territories.
1995 Afirms that land in East Jerusalem annexed by Israel is occupied territory.
1997 Calls on Israel to cease building settlements in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories. 2 resolutions.
1999 Calls on the USA to end its trade embargo on Cuba. 8 resolutions (1992 to 1999).
2001 To send unarmed monitors to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
2001 To set up the International Criminal Court.
2002 To renew the peace keeping mission in Bosnia.
the Arctic see-saw
1. "Phew" not recorded in mainstream press....return to normal during the Winter
2. "Eeek!" blown up as "proof" of climate change in press today
3. But its true, "Eeek" is a bit concerning, however still circumstantial proof. What if its caused by somethin else (causality issues have hamstrung science for centuries)
Track the Arctic ice yourself at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Daily images uploaded.
Just rememer: the true proof of climate change should start with recording temperature in the sky (~10 kilometers up) - the "heating hotspot" predicted by climate models, and easily measured by weather balloons - but to date, never found
And lastly, lastly....If 6 months ago, climate change was causing cooling, now its causing melting, how will we know when climate change has been defeated??
Sunday, August 26, 2012
British bank HSBC in money laundering probe
Link
Origins of HSBC: After the British established Hong Kong as a colony in the aftermath of the First Opium War, local merchants felt the need for a bank to finance the growing trade between China and Europe (with traded products including opium).[2][3] They established the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company Limited in Hong Kong (March 1865) and Shanghai (one month later).
![What Industries Contributed to Google's Billion in Revenues? [INFOGRAPHIC]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_strquwfsGQkb0434y3JgwbruISfzrS1Vxij91weX3Cu1hnPYEcoI0tgVa1-qSvS0eFDK3LG70bF267McLxcofBG8Yh6XDv-IVCFsvA57L2QK3afuiQXwQ=s0-d)
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Vital read: The Big Banking Crisis explained
August 20, 2012 |
Time is running out for prosecutors to file cases against big banks for activities that triggered the 2007-2009 financial crisis, since statutes of limitations set deadlines for launching prosecutions for fraud and other financial crimes. If prosecutors don’t start lawsuits before these deadlines expire, the big banks will, once again, have got off scot-free.
Failure to pursue banks, culpable management and employees for their complicity in causing the financial crisis is one of six bad policies that ensure we’re likely to see another bust-up of a big U.S. bank -- sooner rather than later.
Who’s going to pay the price for such a failure? We will, of course. Uncle Sam’s policy of allowing banks to get too big to fail means we’ll all be left holding the bag when that collapse occurs — and another banking bailout is necessary.
1. Too big to fail
Thirty years of financial deregulation have seen unprecedented concentration of the financial sector. Before, financial firms were limited both in where they could do business and the types of business they could do. This prevented a big banking blowup in the U.S. for more than 50 years.
Banks used to be limited to owning branches within individual states. When a bank got into trouble—and some did -- losses stayed confined. Regulators such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) could clean up the mess and preserve depositors’ assets, without unduly burdening taxpayers. But after changes culminating in the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act in 1994, those restrictions vanished.
So some banks got steadily bigger, while the overall number shrank. From 1990 to 2011, the number of commercial banks halved, from about 12,000 to 6,000, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.
Once upon a time, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act limited banks to either commercial or investment banking functions. Brokerage activities were restricted, and the operations of insurance firms constrained. Problems in one area of financial activity didn’t spread to another. Bankers could not speculate with small depositors’ money. Banks competed with each other, which led to better lending terms. And they didn’t get too big, so when they screwed up, they paid the price. They failed.
In the 1980s, financial institutions claimed that Glass-Steagall and other restrictions prevented U.S. banks from competing head-to-head with foreign banks. They lobbied hard and regulators began to allow the restrictions slowly to erode.
Financiers like Sanford Weill, the head of the Traveler’s Group, couldn’t wait for U.S. laws to change. In 1998, he masterminded the takeover of Citicorp, a merger which combined commercial banking, investment banking, and insurance functions in one firm in a way that was technically illegal. But the merged company got a grace period—during which Weill deployed formidable lobbying muscle to dismantle Glass-Steagall. It worked. In 1999, Congress passed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and finally buried Glass-Steagall.
Last month, Weill gave an astounding interview to CNBC in which he admitted that “What we should probably do, is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not gonna risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not gonna be too big to fail.”
That’s a bit like Jesus Christ returning to announce that introducing Christianity was all a big mistake. The reaction from the financial mafia has been appropriately apoplectic.
The net effect of all these rule changes – like the one that enriched Sandy Weill – was that banks became too big to fail. Fear that their failure has led regulators to go soft on the big banks, and to do anything to keep them alive.
2. See no evil, hear no evil
While the financial system was consolidating, another threat was looming: the “shadow banking system“ was being created. Another New Deal reform, the Investment Company Act of 1940, imposed heavy restrictions on investment companies, which were intended to protect investors from excessive risks, fraud and scams.
But regulators decided that sophisticated investors, including the wealthy, pension funds and charities, had enough financial savvy to be allowed to invest in shadow banks that were either lightly regulated, or not at all. Such alternative investment vehicles, including hedge funds and private equity funds, were exempt from investment restrictions.
In the last two decades, there’s been an explosive growth in shadow banks. The size of this unregulated system has increased fivefold and today is larger than the regulated financial system.
The rationale? Sophisticated investors, it’s claimed, can look after themselves, and therefore the largely unregulated funds that cater to them don’t pose any risks to the rest of us. But that’s not proven to be the case. And, surprise, surprise, when such firms fail, guess who pays the price? We do.
3. Calling in the cavalry, but giving them the wrong directions
Once the U.S. decided to deregulate the financial sector, and banks got bigger, it was inevitable that the government would be called in for a rescue. Most of us were aware that in 2008, the government stepped in to bail out big banks that were destabilized by Lehman Brothers’ collapse and by the bad derivatives bets entered into by AIG Financial Products. The world financial system was at the brink, we were told, and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was necessary to save the system.
But a decade before this bailout, U.S. financial regulators were involved in a rescue of a shadow bank, which helped set the stage for TARP. In 1998, the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund got into trouble by placing heavily-leveraged derivatives bets during the Asian financial crisis. Hedge funds are allowed to operate with scant regulatory supervision on the rationale that they cater only to sophisticated investors who could bear the risk.
The Federal Reserve changed its mind when it realized that LTCM’s failure was a threat to the global economy. So the Fed corralled major banks in a room, and told them to fix the problem. They dismembered LTCM and took its underperforming assets onto their books.
The Fed’s role in this rescue sent the wrong message: that the government would be there to fix problems, and that banks and shadow banks alike didn’t have to work too hard to manage risk and to protect themselves from contagion.
Sometimes you want government intervention to quell a banking panic, and to shore up or reboot a failed banking system. Banks need to be seized, or at minimum assessed by a neutral observer, and their balance sheets cleaned up. Investors, too, must pay a price for making foolish investment choices. Typically, existing shareholders are wiped out, while bondholders see their promises of guaranteed debt payments converted to more speculative shares of stock.
We used to know how to do this. The Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation seized failing banks, cleaned up their balance sheets, and later transferred these institutions back to private ownership. The Resolution Trust Corporation followed similar policies in cleaning up the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. More recently, the Swedish government nationalized failing banks in the 1990s. Managers were penalized, and shareholders and sometimes bondholders took losses.
But the U.S. forgot all these sound policies in the 2008 TARP. The government provided cash to stabilize shaky financial institutions, guarantees to bondholders, and tax breaks. It also purchased some risky assets. But it didn’t get much in exchange. Regulators didn’t demand that banks open their books and clean up their balance sheets. The big banks continued as going concerns.
Bank managers paid no price and mostly kept their jobs. They paid themselves bonuses rather than using capital to shore up their banks. Bottom line: Managers, shareholders, and bondholders didn’t fully pay for their folly.
The government further erred by nudging sound banks to take over failing ones. This policy led to further consolidation of the banking system, making surviving banks even bigger! Finally, the government failed to take action to address the problems that let big financial institutions get into trouble in the first place.
4. Creating financial weapons of mass destruction
The need to bail out AIG Financial Products in 2008 arose from huge losses in unregulated derivatives trading. We should have seen that coming, because derivatives had caused LTCM to fail back in 1998. In fact, plenty of people saw that derivatives were problematic. Warren Buffett called them “financial weapons of destruction” back in 2003.
So, why wasn’t anything done to defuse these weapons?
Well, in 1998, one very prescient regulator, Brooksley Born, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tried, and failed, to initiate a unilateral disarmament policy.
Derivatives aren’t necessarily dangerous. Farmers have long used futures contracts to hedge—or lock in—prices for their crops. As long as they’re traded fairly on open exchanges, they’re a valuable tool for minimizing risk. Congress recognized this when in 1974 it created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to regulate futures and options markets, which at that time, largely concerned agricultural commodities.
As derivatives became more popular, transactions were restricted to two parties, trading only with each other. These over-the-counter derivatives (OTC) transactions, weren’t regulated. Born had spotted this weakness in the regulatory framework before the 1998 LTCM collapse and had accordingly attempted to write rules to plug this regulatory gap.
But folks like Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and his successor, Lawrence Summers, and SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, ganged up on Born to preserve the status quo. They saw derivatives users as sophisticated financial players who should not be regulated.
Congress first passed a temporary provision forbidding any change in regulating derivatives. Born resigned in 1999. Congress then passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which specifically excluded OTC derivatives from regulation. This same state of play remained in 2008 when these weapons of mass destruction nearly destroyed the world financial system.
In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, Congress has taken some steps to increase regulation of OTC derivatives, and to push for more trading on organized exchanges. But these provisions have been riddled with exceptions, and delayed in their implementation.
So these weapons remain armed—and dangerous.
5. Companies consolidate, while regulation remains fragmented
Which brings us to another key question: What’s happened to the regulators while financial companies continue to get bigger and bigger? Answer, not enough.
Regulation continues to be very fragmented, with many different agencies responsible for bits and pieces of banking regulation. The Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, the National Credit Union Association, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Treasury Department-- each regulates some significant aspect of bank activities.
There’s no one single, buck-stops-here banking regulator. Instead, the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council, comprised of representatives drawn from each agency named above, is supposed to coordinate and oversee all policies.
Believe it or not, each state is also part of the regulatory mix. Insurance regulation remains primarily a state affair, and states are also heavily involved in banking regulation.
Does this seem sensible? Just as a teenager may play one parent off of another until one of them says “All right! You can go to the prom,” the lack of a streamlined regulatory system means banks play regulatory arbitrage. Recently we saw this dynamic unfold—unsuccessfully in this case— as Standard Chartered Bank used its press cronies to pressure Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s Superintendent of Financial Services, to go easy on the bank for laundering money for Iranian clients and cooperate with other regulators — the Fed, Justice and Treasury— that favored a softer stance. Lawsky threatened to cancel the bank’s license to operate in New York—a death sentence for any international bank. When he didn’t back down, the bank agreed to a $340 million settlement. Lawsky’s firm stance improves the prospects for the pending federal probes.
There’s another major problem with our current regulation. Agency missions often confuse priorities. Some agencies are supposed to worry about a bank’s survival at the expense of other concerns, such as looking out for the bank’s customers or worrying about broader public goals such as stopping money laundering.
The consequence? The regulator often sides with the bank and colludes in concealing facts and circumstances that should be more widely known.
The latest financial crisis should have been a giant wakeup call. The Obama administration had the chance to reform bank regulation to confront 21st-century challenges. Instead, it caved to bank lobbying, and in Dodd-Frank cemented a confused mix of regulatory imperatives. Even the meager promises are not kept, since further rule-making procedures must occur before key provisions can be implemented. Many of these have slipped their deadlines, and as a result of continued bank pressure, reforms remain pending or have been watered-down.
6. Perps get off scot-free
And so we come back to where we started—the decision not to go after Goldman Sachs. Normally, the Justice Department doesn’t comment on its pending investigations. But for Goldman, the rules are different. Justice issued an unusual statement saying the firm wouldn’t be criminally charged, as prosecutors didn’t believe they could meet the burden of proof necessary to win a trial. Earlier last week, Goldman disclosed that the SEC wouldn’t be pursuing criminal charges against the firm, despite having issued Goldman a “Wells notice” of its investigation. Dropping an investigation after issuing such a notice is not altogether unprecedented-- but is also rare.
Things weren’t always this way. During the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, banks were allowed to fail, prosecutions were undertaken, and executives and employees were jailed. Even after the popping of the dot-com stock bubble in 2000, prosecutors chased after cheating companies and their executives. Officers of Adelphia, Enron, WorldCom, to name a few, ended up doing significant jail time.
The current failure to prosecute means that banks will continue to pursue risky policies. Bankers continue to get paid based on results, and there’s so much to gain from a successful risky bet, and so little to lose from a bet gone bad, particularly if the taxpayer is there to pick up the tab.
In America, if you misuse food stamps, and you get caught, there’s a good chance you’ll lose your benefits, and you might even go to jail. If you rip off the Medicare system, commit tax fraud or perpetrate identity theft, federal prosecutors will throw the book at you. But if you’re part of a multi-billion dollar enterprise that misleads investors and lies to Congress, you’re like the trophy fish that’s caught and released. You’re off the hook.
Failure to pursue banks, culpable management and employees for their complicity in causing the financial crisis is one of six bad policies that ensure we’re likely to see another bust-up of a big U.S. bank -- sooner rather than later.
Who’s going to pay the price for such a failure? We will, of course. Uncle Sam’s policy of allowing banks to get too big to fail means we’ll all be left holding the bag when that collapse occurs — and another banking bailout is necessary.
1. Too big to fail
Thirty years of financial deregulation have seen unprecedented concentration of the financial sector. Before, financial firms were limited both in where they could do business and the types of business they could do. This prevented a big banking blowup in the U.S. for more than 50 years.
Banks used to be limited to owning branches within individual states. When a bank got into trouble—and some did -- losses stayed confined. Regulators such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) could clean up the mess and preserve depositors’ assets, without unduly burdening taxpayers. But after changes culminating in the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act in 1994, those restrictions vanished.
So some banks got steadily bigger, while the overall number shrank. From 1990 to 2011, the number of commercial banks halved, from about 12,000 to 6,000, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.
Once upon a time, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act limited banks to either commercial or investment banking functions. Brokerage activities were restricted, and the operations of insurance firms constrained. Problems in one area of financial activity didn’t spread to another. Bankers could not speculate with small depositors’ money. Banks competed with each other, which led to better lending terms. And they didn’t get too big, so when they screwed up, they paid the price. They failed.
In the 1980s, financial institutions claimed that Glass-Steagall and other restrictions prevented U.S. banks from competing head-to-head with foreign banks. They lobbied hard and regulators began to allow the restrictions slowly to erode.
Financiers like Sanford Weill, the head of the Traveler’s Group, couldn’t wait for U.S. laws to change. In 1998, he masterminded the takeover of Citicorp, a merger which combined commercial banking, investment banking, and insurance functions in one firm in a way that was technically illegal. But the merged company got a grace period—during which Weill deployed formidable lobbying muscle to dismantle Glass-Steagall. It worked. In 1999, Congress passed the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and finally buried Glass-Steagall.
Last month, Weill gave an astounding interview to CNBC in which he admitted that “What we should probably do, is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not gonna risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not gonna be too big to fail.”
That’s a bit like Jesus Christ returning to announce that introducing Christianity was all a big mistake. The reaction from the financial mafia has been appropriately apoplectic.
The net effect of all these rule changes – like the one that enriched Sandy Weill – was that banks became too big to fail. Fear that their failure has led regulators to go soft on the big banks, and to do anything to keep them alive.
2. See no evil, hear no evil
While the financial system was consolidating, another threat was looming: the “shadow banking system“ was being created. Another New Deal reform, the Investment Company Act of 1940, imposed heavy restrictions on investment companies, which were intended to protect investors from excessive risks, fraud and scams.
But regulators decided that sophisticated investors, including the wealthy, pension funds and charities, had enough financial savvy to be allowed to invest in shadow banks that were either lightly regulated, or not at all. Such alternative investment vehicles, including hedge funds and private equity funds, were exempt from investment restrictions.
In the last two decades, there’s been an explosive growth in shadow banks. The size of this unregulated system has increased fivefold and today is larger than the regulated financial system.
The rationale? Sophisticated investors, it’s claimed, can look after themselves, and therefore the largely unregulated funds that cater to them don’t pose any risks to the rest of us. But that’s not proven to be the case. And, surprise, surprise, when such firms fail, guess who pays the price? We do.
3. Calling in the cavalry, but giving them the wrong directions
Once the U.S. decided to deregulate the financial sector, and banks got bigger, it was inevitable that the government would be called in for a rescue. Most of us were aware that in 2008, the government stepped in to bail out big banks that were destabilized by Lehman Brothers’ collapse and by the bad derivatives bets entered into by AIG Financial Products. The world financial system was at the brink, we were told, and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was necessary to save the system.
But a decade before this bailout, U.S. financial regulators were involved in a rescue of a shadow bank, which helped set the stage for TARP. In 1998, the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund got into trouble by placing heavily-leveraged derivatives bets during the Asian financial crisis. Hedge funds are allowed to operate with scant regulatory supervision on the rationale that they cater only to sophisticated investors who could bear the risk.
The Federal Reserve changed its mind when it realized that LTCM’s failure was a threat to the global economy. So the Fed corralled major banks in a room, and told them to fix the problem. They dismembered LTCM and took its underperforming assets onto their books.
The Fed’s role in this rescue sent the wrong message: that the government would be there to fix problems, and that banks and shadow banks alike didn’t have to work too hard to manage risk and to protect themselves from contagion.
Sometimes you want government intervention to quell a banking panic, and to shore up or reboot a failed banking system. Banks need to be seized, or at minimum assessed by a neutral observer, and their balance sheets cleaned up. Investors, too, must pay a price for making foolish investment choices. Typically, existing shareholders are wiped out, while bondholders see their promises of guaranteed debt payments converted to more speculative shares of stock.
We used to know how to do this. The Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation seized failing banks, cleaned up their balance sheets, and later transferred these institutions back to private ownership. The Resolution Trust Corporation followed similar policies in cleaning up the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. More recently, the Swedish government nationalized failing banks in the 1990s. Managers were penalized, and shareholders and sometimes bondholders took losses.
But the U.S. forgot all these sound policies in the 2008 TARP. The government provided cash to stabilize shaky financial institutions, guarantees to bondholders, and tax breaks. It also purchased some risky assets. But it didn’t get much in exchange. Regulators didn’t demand that banks open their books and clean up their balance sheets. The big banks continued as going concerns.
Bank managers paid no price and mostly kept their jobs. They paid themselves bonuses rather than using capital to shore up their banks. Bottom line: Managers, shareholders, and bondholders didn’t fully pay for their folly.
The government further erred by nudging sound banks to take over failing ones. This policy led to further consolidation of the banking system, making surviving banks even bigger! Finally, the government failed to take action to address the problems that let big financial institutions get into trouble in the first place.
4. Creating financial weapons of mass destruction
The need to bail out AIG Financial Products in 2008 arose from huge losses in unregulated derivatives trading. We should have seen that coming, because derivatives had caused LTCM to fail back in 1998. In fact, plenty of people saw that derivatives were problematic. Warren Buffett called them “financial weapons of destruction” back in 2003.
So, why wasn’t anything done to defuse these weapons?
Well, in 1998, one very prescient regulator, Brooksley Born, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tried, and failed, to initiate a unilateral disarmament policy.
Derivatives aren’t necessarily dangerous. Farmers have long used futures contracts to hedge—or lock in—prices for their crops. As long as they’re traded fairly on open exchanges, they’re a valuable tool for minimizing risk. Congress recognized this when in 1974 it created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to regulate futures and options markets, which at that time, largely concerned agricultural commodities.
As derivatives became more popular, transactions were restricted to two parties, trading only with each other. These over-the-counter derivatives (OTC) transactions, weren’t regulated. Born had spotted this weakness in the regulatory framework before the 1998 LTCM collapse and had accordingly attempted to write rules to plug this regulatory gap.
But folks like Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and his successor, Lawrence Summers, and SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, ganged up on Born to preserve the status quo. They saw derivatives users as sophisticated financial players who should not be regulated.
Congress first passed a temporary provision forbidding any change in regulating derivatives. Born resigned in 1999. Congress then passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which specifically excluded OTC derivatives from regulation. This same state of play remained in 2008 when these weapons of mass destruction nearly destroyed the world financial system.
In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, Congress has taken some steps to increase regulation of OTC derivatives, and to push for more trading on organized exchanges. But these provisions have been riddled with exceptions, and delayed in their implementation.
So these weapons remain armed—and dangerous.
5. Companies consolidate, while regulation remains fragmented
Which brings us to another key question: What’s happened to the regulators while financial companies continue to get bigger and bigger? Answer, not enough.
Regulation continues to be very fragmented, with many different agencies responsible for bits and pieces of banking regulation. The Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, the National Credit Union Association, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Treasury Department-- each regulates some significant aspect of bank activities.
There’s no one single, buck-stops-here banking regulator. Instead, the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council, comprised of representatives drawn from each agency named above, is supposed to coordinate and oversee all policies.
Believe it or not, each state is also part of the regulatory mix. Insurance regulation remains primarily a state affair, and states are also heavily involved in banking regulation.
Does this seem sensible? Just as a teenager may play one parent off of another until one of them says “All right! You can go to the prom,” the lack of a streamlined regulatory system means banks play regulatory arbitrage. Recently we saw this dynamic unfold—unsuccessfully in this case— as Standard Chartered Bank used its press cronies to pressure Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s Superintendent of Financial Services, to go easy on the bank for laundering money for Iranian clients and cooperate with other regulators — the Fed, Justice and Treasury— that favored a softer stance. Lawsky threatened to cancel the bank’s license to operate in New York—a death sentence for any international bank. When he didn’t back down, the bank agreed to a $340 million settlement. Lawsky’s firm stance improves the prospects for the pending federal probes.
There’s another major problem with our current regulation. Agency missions often confuse priorities. Some agencies are supposed to worry about a bank’s survival at the expense of other concerns, such as looking out for the bank’s customers or worrying about broader public goals such as stopping money laundering.
The consequence? The regulator often sides with the bank and colludes in concealing facts and circumstances that should be more widely known.
The latest financial crisis should have been a giant wakeup call. The Obama administration had the chance to reform bank regulation to confront 21st-century challenges. Instead, it caved to bank lobbying, and in Dodd-Frank cemented a confused mix of regulatory imperatives. Even the meager promises are not kept, since further rule-making procedures must occur before key provisions can be implemented. Many of these have slipped their deadlines, and as a result of continued bank pressure, reforms remain pending or have been watered-down.
6. Perps get off scot-free
And so we come back to where we started—the decision not to go after Goldman Sachs. Normally, the Justice Department doesn’t comment on its pending investigations. But for Goldman, the rules are different. Justice issued an unusual statement saying the firm wouldn’t be criminally charged, as prosecutors didn’t believe they could meet the burden of proof necessary to win a trial. Earlier last week, Goldman disclosed that the SEC wouldn’t be pursuing criminal charges against the firm, despite having issued Goldman a “Wells notice” of its investigation. Dropping an investigation after issuing such a notice is not altogether unprecedented-- but is also rare.
Things weren’t always this way. During the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, banks were allowed to fail, prosecutions were undertaken, and executives and employees were jailed. Even after the popping of the dot-com stock bubble in 2000, prosecutors chased after cheating companies and their executives. Officers of Adelphia, Enron, WorldCom, to name a few, ended up doing significant jail time.
The current failure to prosecute means that banks will continue to pursue risky policies. Bankers continue to get paid based on results, and there’s so much to gain from a successful risky bet, and so little to lose from a bet gone bad, particularly if the taxpayer is there to pick up the tab.
In America, if you misuse food stamps, and you get caught, there’s a good chance you’ll lose your benefits, and you might even go to jail. If you rip off the Medicare system, commit tax fraud or perpetrate identity theft, federal prosecutors will throw the book at you. But if you’re part of a multi-billion dollar enterprise that misleads investors and lies to Congress, you’re like the trophy fish that’s caught and released. You’re off the hook.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Vital reading: the council on foreign affairs (CFR) (Gary Allen circa 1976)
The CFR, headed by David Rockefeller and
under the control of his lieutenants, is
America's "Shadow Government"
or "Invisible Government". Administrations, both
Democrat and Republican, come and go,
but as we shall see, the key appointments in
both always go to members of the
mysterious Council on Foreign Relations.
This organization, headquartered in New
York City, is composed of an elite of
approximately 1,600 of the nation's
Establishment Insiders in the fields of hight
finance, academics, politics, commerce,
the foundations, and the communications
media. The names of most of its members
are household words, but few ordinary
Americans have ever heard of this
organization. Even fewer are aware of its goals.
Despite the fact that the key moguls of
the mass media are members of the CFR,
its first fifty years of existence went
uncommented except for a single article in
Harper's, a feature in the Christian Science Monitor, and an
occasional perfunctory
announcement in the New York Times.
Such anonymity can hardly be accidental
-- especially when you realize that the
membership of the Council on Foreign
Relations includes top executives from the
New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Knight
newspaper
chain, NBC, CBS, Time, Life, Fortune,
Business Week, U.S. News & World Report,
and many others.
For several years now a handful of
conservative authors has been laboring to
expose the activities of the CFR. Until
recently these efforts, though cumulative,
could be ignored. Four years ago,
however, it began to be apparent that George
Wallace was planning to seize upon the
Council as an electoral issue.
Obviously anticipating this, two very
similar articles on the CFR appeared in the
New York Times and New York magazine. The strategy was to admit that the
Council
on Foreign Relations has long acted as
an unelected secret government of the United
States, but to maintain that it has
voluntarily withdrawn to the sidelines for reasons of
altruism.
Contrary to what the Times wanted
its readers to believe, the CFR (with Kissinger
in charge of American foreign policy)
was just reaching its zenith of power. Still, as
John Franklin Campbell put it in New
York for September 20, 1971:
Practically every lawyer, banker,
professor, general, journalist and bureaucrat who
has had any influence on the foreign
policy of the last six Presidents -- From Franklin
Roosevelt to Richard Nixon -- has spent
some time in the Harold Pratt House, a fourstory
mansion on the corner of Park Avenue and
68th Street, donated 26 years ago by
Mr. Pratt's widow (an heir to the
Standard Oil fortune) to the Council on Foreign
Relations, Inc. . .
If you can walk -- or be carried -- into
the Pratt House, it usually means that you
are a partner in an investment bank or
law firm -- with occasional "trouble-shooting"
assignments in government. You believe
in foreign aid, NATO, and a bipartisan
foreign policy. You've been pretty much
running things in this country for the last 25
years, and you know it.
Anthony Lukas, writing in the New York
Times magazine of November 21, 1971,
also admitted that the Insiders of the
Council have been responsible for our disastrous
foreign policy over the past twenty-five
years. Mr. Lukas observed:
From 1945 well into the sixties, Council
members were in the forefront of
America's globalist activism: the United
Nations organizational meeting in San
Francisco (John McCloy, Hamilton Fish
Armstrong, Joseph Johnson, Thomas
Finletter and many others); as
ambassadors to the world body (Edward Stettinius,
Henry Cabot Lodge, James Wadsworth and
all but three others); the U.S. occupation
in Germany (Lucius Clay as military
governor, McCloy again and James Conant as
High Commissioners); NATO (Finletter
again, Harland Cleveland, Charles Spofford
as U.S. delegates).
For the last three decades, American
foreign policy has remained largely in the
hands of men -- the overwhelming
majority of them Council members -- whose world
perspective was formed in World War II
and in the economic reconstructions and
military security programs that
followed. . .
The Council was their way of staying in
touch with the levels of power. . .
Liberal columnist Joseph Kraft, himself
a member of the CFR, noted in Harper's
for July of 1958 that the Council
"has been the seat of. . . basic government decisions,
has set the context for many more, and
has repeatedly served as a recruiting ground
for ranking officials." Kraft,
incidentally, called his article "School For Statesmen" --
an admission that the members of the
Council are drilled with a "Line" of strategy to
be carried out in Washington.
In New York magazine, Campbell
tells of CFR influence in World War II and in
post-war planning:
In 1939, with Rockefeller money and the
blessings of Secretary of State Cordell
Hull, the Council established planning
groups on political, economic and strategic
problems of the war, which, in 1942,
were transferred along with most of their
personnel directly into the State
Department.
Many of their studies which culminated
in the new international institutions of
1945 -- the United Nations, the World
Bank, and the International Monetary Fund --
began as research efforts at the
Council.
When he was chairman of the board of the
Council, John J. McCloy wrote a
private letter to its members in which
he euphemized that
"The Council -- more than any other
organization in the foreign field -- has helped
leading private citizens to gain an
understanding of international problems, and many
of them have subsequently used this
knowledge as government officials responsible
for carrying out United States foreign
policy".
Indeed, the CFR has served as a virtual
employment agency for the federal
government under both Democrats and
Republicans. The Christian Science Monitor
report back in September 1961 confirmed
this conclusion:
Because of the Council's single-minded
dedication to studying and deliberating
American foreign policy, there is a
constant flow of its members from private to
public service. Almost half of the
Council members have been invited to assume
official government positions or to act
as consultants at one time or another.
Anthony Lukas comments in the New
York Times magazine:
. . . Everyone knows how fraternity
brothers can help other brothers climb the
ladder of life. If you want to make
foreign policy, there's no better fraternity to
belong to than the Council . . .
When Henry Stimson -- the group's
quintessential member -- went to Washington
in 1940 as Secretary of War, he took
with him John McCloy, who was to become
Assistant Secretary in charge of personnel.
McCloy has recalled "Whenever we
needed a man we thumbed through the roll
of the Council members and put through a
call to New York".
And over the years, the men McCloy
called in turn called other Council members. .
. Of the first 82 names on a list
prepared to help President Kennedy staff his State
Department, 63 were Council members. . .
Indeed, the CFR provided the key men,
particularly in the field of foreign policy,
for the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower,
Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and now Ford
Administrations. As Joseph Kraft phrased
it:
"the Council plays a special part
in helping to bridge the gap between the two parties,
affording unofficially a measure of
continuity when the guard changes in
Washington."
The following prominent Democrats have been,
or now are, agents of the Council
on Foreign Relations: Dean Acheson,
Alger Hiss, Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy,
Robert Kennedy, Edward Kennedy (Boston
Committee), Averell Harriman, George
Ball, Henry Fowler, Dean Rusk, Adam
Yarmolinsky, Hubert Humphrey, Frank
Church, George McGovern and John
Lindsay.
Holding the fort for the CFR in the
Republican Party have been Dwight
Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, Thomas
E. Dewey, Jacob Javits, Robert McNamara,
Henry Cabot Lodge, Paul Hoffman, John
Gardner, the Rockefellers, Elliot
Richardson, Arthur Burns and Richard
Nixon.
The policy-making power of the
CFR is absolutely awesome and yet remains,
strangely, virtually unknown to the
American public.
Every Secretary of State
from 1934 to 1976 [in an unbroken line to the present -
2002] (except James Byrnes) has been a
member of the Council, as has every
Secretary of Defense and every Deputy
Secretary of Defense.
In the 44 years from 1928 to 1972, nine
out of ten Republican presidential
nominees were CFR members, and from 1952
to 1972 a CFR member won every
presidential election (except Lyndon
Johnson, whose White House staff was
nonetheless CFR-dominated).
In half of the presidential campaigns
during those same two decades, both
candidates had been or were CFR members.
More than 40 CFR members were
among the U.S. delegation to the first
United Nations conference in San Francisco,
including Soviet agent Alger Hiss.
In the Kennedy-Johnson Administrations,
more than 60 CFR members held major
policy-making decisions. President Nixon
appointed at least 115 members of the
Council on Foreign Relations to key
posts in his Administration, an all-time high for
any President. These included such
established Leftists as Charles Yost, Stanley R.
Resor, Arthur Burns, Harold Brown, Maxwell
Taylor, Lincoln Bloomfield, George A.
Lincoln, Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert
Murphy, Dr. Frank Stanton, Richard F.
Pederson, Alan Pifer, Dr. Paul
McCracken, Ellsworth Bunker, Dr. Glenn Seaborg,
Joseph Sisco, Jacob Beam, Gerard Smith,
and John McCloy.
George Wallace made famous the slogan
that at the Presidential level there is not a
dime's worth of difference between the
Democrat and Republican parties. Many
observers have noted that while the two
parties use different rhetoric and aim their
spiels at differing segments of the
population, it seems to make little difference who
wins the election.
The reason for this is that while grass
roots Democrats and Republicans generally
have greatly differing views on the
economy, political policies, and federal activities,
as you climb the sides of the political
pyramid the two parties become more and more
alike. The reason there isn't a dime's
worth of difference is that instead of having two
distinctly different groups called
Democrats and Republicans, we actually have
Rockedems and Rockepubs.
Of some 1,600 CFR members, 120 either
own or control the nation's major
newspapers, magazines, radio and
television networks, as well as the most powerful
book-publishing companies. The interlock
with academia is immense.
As the Schlafly-Ward writing team has
noted:
"The Rockefeller clique includes
the most influential of the 82 CFR foundationadministration
types who have disproportionate
influence on what is taught in our
universities and over professorial and
department appointments."
Plus, CFR members virtually control the
major foundations, whose grants quite
often are bestowed on persons or groups
tied to the CFR. With this group, the
"coincidences" are simply
astounding.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
has been under virtual CFR control since
its creation. Even though James R.
Schlesinger, who briefly headed it in 1973, was
not a CFR member, he was a protege of
CFR man Daniel Ellsberg of "Pentagon
Papers" fame, and his appointment
was manipulated by the key CFR operative, Henry
Kissinger.
Secretaries of State Dean Acheson, John
Foster Dulles, Dean Rusk, and Henry
Kissinger all were CFR members --
all, in fact, worked directly for the House of
Rockefeller -- before their appointments
to major federal posts.
The balance of the CFR elitist clique is
predominantly the big money boys. Of the
CFR's 1974 membership, about 90
represented the major Wall Street international
banking organizations. In addition,
presidents, vice-presidents and chairmen of the
boards of most of the giant corporations
are members of the CFR.
The Council on Foreign Relations gets
little publicity and is virtually unknown to
the general public. But it represents
Big Government, Big Business, Big Banking,
and the Big Media. At the apex of this
power elite sits none other than David
Rockefeller. And remember, this is the
organization which Henry Kissinger says
"invented"
him.
Nobody can rationally deny that
"our" government has been run by CFR members
for many years. They indeed form a
shadow government. The question is: Do these
CFR members generally share common
beliefs and goals?
For the first time we now have an actual
member of the CFR who is willing to
testify against the organization. He is
Admiral Chester Ward, U.S. Navy (Ret.), who
as a hot-shot youngish Admiral had
become Judge Advocate General of the Navy. As
a "man on the rise" he was
invited to become a member of the prestigious CFR. The
Establishment obviously assumed that
Admiral Ward, like so many hundreds before
him, would succumb to the flattery of
being invited into the inner sanctum and that
through subtle appeals to personal
ambition he would quickly fall in line.
The Insiders badly underestimated the
toughness and stern character of Admiral
Ward. He soon became a vocal opponent of
the organization. And while the
Rockefellers were not so gauche as to
remove him from the rolls of the organization,
he is no longer invited to attend the
private luncheons and briefing sessions. The
Admiral states:
The objective of the influential
majority of members of CFR has not changed since
its founding in 1922, more than 50 years
ago. In the 50th anniversary issue of
Foreign Affairs (the official quarterly publication of the CFR), the first and
leading
article was written by CFR member
Kingman Brewster, Jr., entitled "Reflections on
Our National Purpose".
He did not back away from defining it:
our national purpose should be to abolish
our nationality. Indeed, he pulled out
all the emotional stops in a hardsell for global
government. He described our
"Vietnam-seared generation" as being "far from
America Firsters" -- an expression
meant as a patronizing sop to our young people. In
the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term
of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as
"America First".
While CFR members are not robots and may
disagree on many minor matters,
according to the Admiral, this lust
to surrender our independence is common to most
of them:
"Although, from the inside, CFR is
certainly not the monolith that some members and
most nonmembers consider it, this lust
to surrender the sovereignty and independence
of the United States is pervasive
throughout most of the membership, and particularly
in the leadership of the several
divergent cliques. . . "
If the Rockefeller family's CFR has a
"lust to surrender the sovereignty and
independence of the United States",
to whom are we supposed to surrender?
Admiral Ward answers that the goal is
the "submergence of U.S. sovereignty and
national independence into an
all-powerful one-world government". And, according
to the Admiral, about 95 percent of the
1,600 members of the CFR are aware that this
is the real purpose of the Council --
and support that goal!
The Council on Foreign Relations is the
chief tool of the Money Trust in
promoting World Government. The late
James Warburg (CFR), scion of the
international banking family which was
principally responsible for the creation of the
Federal Reserve System that controls our
money, told a Senate Committee on
February 17, 1950:
"We shall have world government
whether or not you like it -- by conquest or
consent."
Most Insiders, however, avoid using the
term World Government because it
frightens the geese; instead they use
code phrases like "new international order" or
"new world order". But Nelson
Rockefeller spelled out quite clearly what the Insiders
mean by "new world order" in
this Associated Press report dated July 26, 1968:
"New York Governor Nelson A.
Rockefeller says as president he would work toward
international creation of a 'new world
order' based on East-West cooperation instead
of conflict. The republican presidential
contender said he would begin a dialogue
with Red China, if elected, to 'improve
the possibilities of accommodations' with that
country 'as well as the Soviet
Union'."
It can hardly be surprising that Rockefeller's
chief foreign policy adviser at the
time, one Henry A. Kissinger, later
arranged to move President Nixon toward just
such accommodation and amalgamation with
the Communist world.
During his trips to both Red China and
U.S.S.R., again and again Mr. Nixon called
upon the Communists to join him in a
"New World Order". The constant repetition of
that phrase by members of the CFR
strains the possibility of coincidence.
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