The American Bankocracy

"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power– political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical. What the Trilateral Commission intends is to create a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. As managers and creators of the system, they will rule the future."

Senator Barry Goldwater, 1979

Obama is considered by many to be the Wall Street President, almost as if it's a first in U.S. politics, but nothing could be further from the truth. With the advent of the Global Financial Crisis (or GFC - might as well give it its own acronym since we'll be hearing about it ad nauseam for a long time yet), now is a good time to review the history of the Wall Street Establishment's incestuous relationship with the U.S. government and the extent to which America is ruled not so much by its politicians, but by the banking interests that fund, select and control them.

Murray N. Rothbard's article Wall Street, Banks and American Foreign Policy, written in 1984 and first published by a small financial journal called the World Market Perspective, is an epic historical account of the control and manipulation of the U.S. government by the big banks and their agents, from the Lincoln era all the way up to the end of the Reagan Administration. His article details the massive influence of Morgan and Rockefeller banking interests on the U.S. government and its foreign affairs throughout the 20th century - from within and without - which by 1973 had come together in the form of the Trilateral Commission. This shady organisation has hand-picked, vetted and groomed for office every presidential candidate since Nixon, including Obama.

Rothbard, until his death in 1995, was a Jewish-American economist, author and intellectual, and a fierce opponent of fractional reserve banking and the Federal Reserve [.pdf] (also see Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking [.pdf]). He was also a staunch anti-Zionist [.pdf] who wrote about the hypocrisy of the ADL and the "menace" of what he called "Organised Anti-Anti-Semitism".

The major fount of OAAS [Organised Anti-Anti-Semitism] is the venerable Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL), the head of what the grand Old Rightist John T. Flynn referred to during World War II as the "Smear Bund." (Flynn was forced to publish himself his expose of the orchestrated smear of isolationists in his pamphlet, The Smear Terror.) Since the end of World War II, the key strategy of the ADL has been to broaden its definition of anti-Semitism to include any robust criticisms of the State of Israel. Indeed, the ADL and the rest of the OAAS has formed itself into a mighty praetorian guard focusing on Israeli interests and Israeli security.

Rothbard's article Wall Street, Banks and American Foreign Policy is not what I would call entertainment - it's rich in detail and scrutinises the minutiae of each politician's banking and/or commercial connections - but it's a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the financial elite's stranglehold on the government of the United States. And it's probably more important and salient now than it was when it was written in '84.

Wall Street, Banks and American Foreign Policy