As Lee Fang writes: The
possibility of an Iran nuclear deal depressing weapons sales was raised
by Myles Walton, an analyst from Germany’s Deutsche Bank, during a
Lockheed earnings call this past January 27. Walton asked Marillyn
Hewson, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, if an Iran
agreement could “impede what you see as progress in foreign military
sales.” Financial industry analysts such as Walton use earnings calls as
an opportunity to ask publicly-traded corporations like Lockheed about
issues that might harm profitability.
Hewson replied that “that really isn’t coming up,” but stressed
that “volatility all around the region” should continue to bring in new
business. According to Hewson, “A lot of volatility, a lot of
instability, a lot of things that are happening” in both the Middle East
and the Asia-Pacific region means both are “growth areas” for Lockheed
Martin.
The Deutsche Bank-Lockheed exchange “underscores a longstanding
truism of the weapons trade: war — or the threat of war — is good for
the arms business,” says William Hartung, director of the Arms &
Security Project at the Center for International Policy. Hartung
observed that Hewson described the normalization of relations with Iran
not as a positive development for the future, but as an “impediment.”
“And Hewson’s response,” Hartung adds, “which in essence is ‘don’t
worry, there’s plenty of instability to go around,’ shows the perverse
incentive structure that is at the heart of the international arms
market.”
Former managing director of Goldman Sachs – and head of the
international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London (Nomi Prins) –
notes:
Throughout the century that I examined, which began with
the Panic of 1907 … what I found by accessing the archives of each
president is that through many events and periods, particular bankers were in constant communication [with the White House] — not just about financial and economic policy, and by extension trade policy, but also about aspects of World War I, or World War II, or the Cold War,
in terms of the expansion that America was undergoing as a superpower
in the world, politically, buoyed by the financial expansion of the
banking community.
***
In the beginning of World War I, Woodrow Wilson had adopted initially a policy of neutrality. But the Morgan Bank, which was the most powerful bank at the time, and which
wound up funding over 75 percent of the financing for the allied forces
during World War I … pushed Wilson out of neutrality sooner than he might have done, because of their desire to be involved on one side of the war.
Now, on the other side of that war, for example, was the National
City Bank, which, though they worked with Morgan in financing the
French and the British, they also didn’t have a problem working with
financing some things on the German side, as did Chase …
When Eisenhower became president … the U.S. was undergoing this
expansion by providing, under his doctrine, military aid and support to
countries [under] the so-called threat of being taken over by communism
… What bankers did was they opened up hubs, in areas such as
Cuba, in areas such as Beirut and Lebanon, where the U.S. also wanted to
gain a stronghold in their Cold War fight against the Soviet Union. And
so the juxtaposition of finance and foreign policy were very much
aligned.
So in the ‘70s, it became less aligned, because though America was pursuing foreign policy initiatives in terms of expansion, the
bankers found oil, and they made an extreme effort to activate
relationships in the Middle East, that then the U.S.
government followed. For example, in Saudi Arabia and so forth,
they get access to oil money, and then recycle it into Latin American
debt and other forms of lending throughout the globe. So that situation led the U.S. government.
Indeed, JP Morgan also
purchased control over America’s leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in favor of US entry into World War 1.
And many big banks, in fact,
funded the Nazis.
BBC
reported in 1998:
Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $3.6m to
Jews whose assets were seized from French branches of the British-based
bank during World War II.
***
Chase Manhattan Bank, which has acknowledged seizing
about 100 accounts held by Jews in its Paris branch during World War II
….”Recently unclassified reports from the US Treasury about the
activities of Chase in Paris in the 1940s indicate that the local branch
worked “in close collaboration with the German authorities” in freezing
Jewish assets.
The New York Daily News
noted the same year:
The relationship between Chase and the Nazis apparently
was so cozy that Carlos Niedermann, the Chase branch chief in Paris,
wrote his supervisor in Manhattan that the bank enjoyed “very special esteem” with top German officials and “a rapid expansion of deposits,” according to Newsweek.
Niedermann’s letter was written in May 1942 five months after the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. also went to war with Germany.
The BBC
reported in 1999:
A French government commission, investigating the seizure
of Jewish bank accounts during the Second World War, says five American
banks Chase Manhattan, J.P Morgan, Guaranty Trust Co. of New York, Bank of the City of New York and American Express had taken part.
It says their Paris branches handed over to the Nazi occupiers about one-hundred such accounts.
One of Britain’s main newspapers – the Guardian –
reported in 2004:
George Bush’s grandfather [and George H.W. Bush’s
father], the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and
shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the
financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings … continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act
***
The documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH),
acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who
helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the
end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was
the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen’s US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
***
Bush was a founding member of the bank [UBC] … The bank was set up by
Harriman and Bush’s father-in-law to provide a US bank for the
Thyssens, Germany’s most powerful industrial family.
***
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the
world’s largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped
millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to
Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler’s build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of
which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the
Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and
between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to
$1m only on a few occasions.
***
UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the
Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that
this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler’s rise to power.
Indeed, banks often finance
both sides of wars:
And they are one of the main sources of financing
for nuclear weapons.
(The San Francisco Chronicle also documents that leading financiers
Rockefeller, Carnegie and Harriman also funded Nazi eugenics programs … but that’s a story for another day.)
The Federal Reserve and other central banks also
help to start wars by financing them. Thomas Jefferson and the father of free market capitalism, Adam Smith, both noted that the financing wars by banks led to
more – and longer – wars.
And America apparently considers
economic rivalry to be a basis for war, and is
using the military to contain China’s growing economic influence.
Multi-billionaire investor Hugo Salinas Price
says:
What happened to [Libya’s] Mr. Gaddafi, many speculate the real reason he was ousted was that he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The
same thing happened to him that happened to Saddam because the US
doesn’t want any solid competing currency out there vs the dollar. You know Gaddafi was talking about a gold dinar.
Senior CNBC editor John Carney
noted:
Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a
central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched
political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily
powerful central bankers have become in our era.
Robert Wenzel of Economic Policy Journal thinks the central banking initiative reveals that foreign powers may have a strong influence over the rebels.
This suggests we have a bit more than a ragtag bunch of rebels
running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.
“I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a
matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” Wenzel writes.
Indeed,
many claim that recent wars have really been about bringing all countries
into the fold of Western central banking, and that the wars against Middle Eastern countries are really about
forcing them into the dollar and private central banking.
The most decorated American military man in history said that
war is a racket, and
noted:
Let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers.
The big banks have also been
laundering money for terrorists. The big bank employee
who blew the whistle on the banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says that the giant bank is still aiding terrorists,
saying:
The public needs to know that money is still being
funneled through HSBC to directly buy guns and bullets to kill our
soldiers …. Banks financing … terrorists affects every single American.
He also
said:
It is disgusting that our banks are STILL financing terror on 9/11 2013.
And
see this.
According to the BBC and other sources, Prescott Bush, JP Morgan and
other leading financiers also funded a coup against President Franklin
Roosevelt in an attempt – basically – to implement fascism in the U.S.
See
this,
this,
this and
this.
Kevin Zeese
writes:
Americans are recognizing the link between the
military-industrial complex and the Wall Street oligarchs—a connection
that goes back to the beginning of the modern U.S. empire. Banks have always profited from war because
the debt created by banks results in ongoing war profit for big
finance; and because wars have been used to open countries to U.S.
corporate and banking interests. Secretary of State, William Jennings
Bryan wrote: “the large banking interests were deeply interested in the
world war because of the wide opportunities for large profits.”
Many historians now recognize that a hidden history for U.S. entry into World War I was to protect U.S. investors. U.S. commercial interests had invested heavily in European allies before
the war: “By 1915, American neutrality was being criticized as bankers
and merchants began to loan money and offer credits to the warring
parties, although the Central Powers received far less. Between 1915 and
April 1917, the Allies received 85 times the amount loaned to Germany.”
The total dollars loaned to all Allied borrowers during this period was
$2,581,300,000. The bankers saw that if Germany won, their loans to
European allies would not be repaid. The leading U.S. banker of the
era, J.P. Morgan and his associates did everything they could to push the United States into the war on
the side of England and France. Morgan said: “We agreed that we should
do all that was lawfully in our power to help the Allies win the war as
soon as possible.” President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned saying he
would keep the United States out of war, seems to have entered the war
to protect U.S. banks’ investments in Europe.
The most decorated Marine in history, Smedley Butler,
described fighting for U.S. banks in many of the wars he fought in. He
said: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and
during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man
for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and
especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped
make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to
collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central
American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in
1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American
sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American
fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that
Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might
have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate
his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes how
World Bank and IMF loans are used to generate profits for U.S. business
and saddle countries with huge debts that allow the United States to
control them. It is not surprising that former civilian military leaders
like Robert McNamara and Paul Wolfowitz went on to head the World Bank.
These nations’ debt to international banks ensures they are controlled
by the United States, which pressures them into joining the “coalition
of the willing” that helped invade Iraq or allowing U.S. military bases
on their land. If countries refuse to “honor” their debts, the CIA or
Department of Defense enforces U.S. political will through coups or
military action.
***
More and more people are indeed seeing the connection between corporate banksterism and militarism ….
Indeed,
all wars are bankers’ wars.
War Makes Banks Rich
Wars are the
fastest way for banks to create more debt … and therefore to make more profit. No wonder they love war.
After all, the banking system is founded upon the counter-intuitive but indisputable fact that
banks create loans first, and then create deposits later.
In other words, virtually all money is actually created as debt. For
example, in a hearing held on September 30, 1941 in the House Committee
on Banking and Currency, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Mariner S.
Eccles) said:
That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.
And Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said:
If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank
deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in
circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent
on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in
circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money
we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a
permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture,
the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but
there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can
investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present
civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the
defects remedied very soon.
Debt (from the borrower’s perspective) owed to banks is
profit and
income from
the bank’s perspective. In other words, banks are in the business of
creating more debt … i.e. finding more people who want to borrow larger
sums.
Debt is
central to our banking system. Indeed, Federal Reserve chairman Greenspan was so
worried that the U.S. would
pay off it’s debt, that he
suggested tax cuts for the wealthy to
increase the debt.
What does this have to do with war?
War is
the most efficient debt-creation machine. For starters, wars are
very expensive.
For example, Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated in 2008 that the Iraq war could cost America up to
$5 trillion dollars. A study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies says the Iraq war costs could exceed
$6 trillion, when
interest payments to the banks are taken into account.
This is nothing new … but has been going on for thousands of years. As a Cambridge University Press treatise on ancient Athens
notes:
Financing wars is expensive business, and the scope for initiative was regularly extended by borrowing.
So wars have been a huge – and regular – way for banks to create debt
for kings and presidents who want to try to expand their empires.
Major General Smedley Butler – the most decorated Marine in American history – was right when he
said:
Let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers.
War is also good for banks because a
lot of material,
equipment, buildings and infrastructure get destroyed in war. So
countries go into massive debt to finance war, and then borrow a ton
more to rebuild.
The advent of central banks hasn’t changed this formula.
Specifically, the big banks (“primary dealers”) loan money to the Fed,
and
charge interest for the loan.
So when a nation like the U.S. gets into a war, the Fed pumps out
money for the war effort based upon loans from the primary dealers, who
make a killing in interest payments from the Fed.
War Is Horrible for the American People
Top economists say that war is
destroying our economy. But war is
great for the
super-elites … so they want to keep it going.
And America’s never-ending wars are
hurting our national security.
Never-ending wars are also
destroying our freedom. The Founding Fathers
warned against standing armies, saying that they destroy freedom. (
update).
Perversely, our government – which is a
wholly-owned subsidiary of the big banks – treats
anti-war sentiment – or
protest of big banks (
and here) – as terrorism.
These are the annual phantom jobs added to the BLS calculations since 2008:
A bag cost $6.98. It had been this price for as long as I can
remember. This week I saw the price was $6.58 and thought to myself,
Wal-Mart really does lower prices. Then I picked up the bag. It was
different. It seemed smaller, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I brought
the new bag to work this morning and compared it to the old bag. The new
bag was only 12 ounces, while the old bag was 16 ounces.
Casualties were more pronounced in European and Asian markets.