By Michael Snyder
Activist Post
Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the
world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the
world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you. Most of
us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions,
but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today
we live in a
neo-feudalist system
in which the super-rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about
the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few
million dollars.
As you will see later in this article, the ultra-wealthy have enough
money sitting in offshore banks to buy all of the goods and services
produced in the United States during the course of an entire year
and
still be able to pay off the entire U.S. national debt. That is an
amount of money so large that it is almost incomprehensible.
Under this neo-feudalist system, all the rest of us are debt slaves,
including our own governments. Just look around – everyone is drowning
in debt, and all of that debt is making the ultra-wealthy even
wealthier. But the ultra-wealthy don’t just sit on all of that wealth.
They use some of it to dominate the affairs of the nations. The
ultra-wealthy own virtually every major bank and every major corporation
on the planet. They use a vast network of secret societies, think
tanks and charitable organizations to advance their agendas and to keep
their members in line. They control how we view the world through their
ownership of the media and their dominance over our education system.
They fund the campaigns of most of our politicians and they exert a
tremendous amount of influence over international organizations such as
the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. When you step
back and take a look at the big picture, there is little doubt about who
runs the world. It is just that most people don’t want to admit the
truth.
The ultra-wealthy don’t run down and put their money in the local
bank like you and I do. Instead, they tend to stash their assets in
places where they won’t be taxed such as the Cayman Islands.
According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to
32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the globe.
U.S. GDP for 2011 was about 15 trillion dollars, and the U.S.
national debt is sitting at about 16 trillion dollars, so you could add
them both together and you still wouldn’t hit 32 trillion dollars.
And of course that does not even count the money that is stashed in
other locations that the study did not account for, and it does not
count all of the wealth that the global elite have in hard assets such
as real estate, precious metals, art, yachts, etc.
The global elite have really hoarded an incredible amount of wealth in these troubled times. The following is from an article
on the Huffington Post website…
Rich individuals and their families have
as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax
havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues,
according to research published on Sunday.
The study estimating the extent of global
private financial wealth held in offshore accounts – excluding
non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses –
puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.
The research was carried out for pressure
group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James
Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.
He used data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and central banks.
But as I mentioned previously, the global elite just don’t have a lot
of money. They also basically own just about every major bank and
every major corporation on the entire planet.
According to an outstanding
NewScientist article,
a study of more than 40,000 transnational corporations conducted by the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich discovered that a very
small core group of huge banks and giant predator corporations dominate
the entire global economic system…
The researchers found that this core group consists of just 147 very tightly knit companies…
When the team further untangled the web
of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of
147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held
by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of
the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the
companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says
Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included
Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
The following are the
top 25 banks and corporations at the heart of this “super-entity”. You will recognize many of the names on the list…
1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
The ultra-wealthy elite often hide behind layers and layers of
ownership, but the truth is that thanks to interlocking corporate
relationships, the elite basically control almost every Fortune 500
corporation.
The amount of power and control that this gives them is hard to describe.
Unfortunately, this same group of people have been running things for
a very long time. For example, New York City Mayor John F. Hylan said
the following during a speech all the way
back in 1922…
The real menace of our Republic is the
invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs
over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations,
let me say that at the head of this octopus are the
Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking
houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little
coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United
States government for their own selfish purposes.
They practically control both parties,
write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the
leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to
place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will
be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business.
These international bankers and
Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the
newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these
papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials
who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which
compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a
self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative
bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the
public protection.
These international bankers created the central banks of the world (including
the Federal Reserve), and they use those central banks to get the governments of the world ensnared in
endless cycles of debt from which there is no escape.
Government debt
is a way to “legitimately” take money from all of us, transfer it to
the government, and then transfer it into the pockets of the
ultra-wealthy.
Today,
Barack Obama
and almost all members of Congress absolutely refuse to criticize the
Fed, but in the past there have been some brave members of Congress that
have been willing to take a stand. For example, the following quote is
from a speech that Congressman Louis T. McFadden delivered to the U.S.
House of Representatives
on June 10, 1932…
Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one
of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to
the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal
Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government of the
United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to
pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Federal
Reserve Board has cost this country enough money to pay the national
debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and
ruined the people of the United States, has bankrupted itself, and has
practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the
defects of the law under which it operates, through the
maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through
the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.
Sadly, most Americans still believe that the Federal Reserve is a
“federal agency”, but that is simply not correct. The following comes
from factcheck.org…
The stockholders in the 12 regional
Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the
Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by
the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to
join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation’s
more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed
banks.
According to researchers that have looked into the ownership of the
big Wall Street banks that dominate the Fed, the same names keep coming
up over and over: the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the
Lazards, the Schiffs and the royal families of Europe.
But ultra-wealthy international bankers have not just done this kind
of thing in the United States. Their goal was to create a global
financial system that they would dominate and control. Just check out
what Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley
once wrote…
[T]he powers of financial capitalism had
another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of
financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system
of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system
was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the
world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent
private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the
Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank
owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves
private corporations.
Sadly, most Americans have never even heard of the Bank for
International Settlements, but it is at the very heart of the global
financial system. The following is
from Wikipedia…
As an organization of central banks, the
BIS seeks to make monetary policy more predictable and transparent among
its 58 member central banks. While monetary policy is determined by
each sovereign nation, it is subject to central and private banking
scrutiny and potentially to speculation that affects foreign exchange
rates and especially the fate of export economies. Failures to keep
monetary policy in line with reality and make monetary reforms in time,
preferably as a simultaneous policy among all 58 member banks and also
involving the International Monetary Fund, have historically led to
losses in the billions as banks try to maintain a policy using open
market methods that have proven to be based on unrealistic assumptions.
The ultra-wealthy have also played a major role in establishing other
important international institutions such as the United Nations, the
IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. In fact, the land for the United
Nations headquarters in New York City was purchased and donated by John
D. Rockefeller.
The international bankers are “internationalists” and they are very proud of that fact.
The elite also dominate the education system in the United States.
Over the years, the Rockefeller Foundation and other elitist
organizations have poured massive amounts of money
into Ivy League schools.
Today, Ivy League schools are considered to be the standard against
which all other colleges and universities in America are measured, and
the last four U.S. presidents were educated at Ivy League schools.
The elite also exert a tremendous amount of influence through various
secret societies (Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, etc.), through some
very powerful think tanks and social clubs (the Council on Foreign
Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Bohemian
Grove, Chatham House, etc.), and through a vast network of charities
and non-governmental organizations (the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford
Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, etc.).
But for a moment, I want to focus on the power the elite have over the media. In a
previous article,
I detailed how just six monolithic corporate giants control most of
what we watch, hear and read every single day. These giant corporations
own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers,
magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite
websites.
Considering the fact that the average American watches
153 hours
of television a month, the influence of these six giant corporations
should not be underestimated. The following are just some of the media
companies that these corporate giants own…
Time Warner
Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine
Walt Disney
ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books
Viacom
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1
News Corporation
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
DIRECTV
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan
CBS Corporation
CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network
NBC Universal
Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Trio
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video
And of course the elite own most of our politicians as well. The following is a quote from
journalist Lewis Lapham…
“The shaping of the will of Congress and
the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved
to the country’s equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population
that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and
the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose
the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic
foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas.”
Have you ever wondered why things never seem to change in Washington D.C. no matter who we vote for?
Well, it is because both parties are owned by the establishment.
It would be nice to think that the American people are in control of
who runs things in the U.S., but that is not how it works in the real
world.
In the real world, the politician that raises more money wins
more than 80 percent of the time in national races.
Our politicians are not stupid – they are going to be very good to
the people that can give them the giant piles of money that they need
for their campaigns. And the people that can do that are the
ultra-wealthy and the giant corporations that the ultra-wealthy control.
Are you starting to get the picture?
There is a reason why the ultra-wealthy are referred to as “the
establishment”. They have set up a system that greatly benefits them
and that allows them to pull the strings.
So who runs the world?
They do. In fact, they even admit as much.
David Rockefeller wrote the following
in his 2003 book entitled “Memoirs”…
“For more than a century, ideological
extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon
well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the
Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield
over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we
are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the
United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’
and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more
integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you
will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
There is so much more that could be said about all of this. In fact,
an entire library of books could be written about the power and the
influence of the ultra-wealthy international bankers that run the world.
But hopefully this is enough to at least get some conversations started.
So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.
Huffington Post – by Zoe Mintz
