Posted on 01/31/2013 9:35:54 AM PST by B4Ranch
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-fuedalist 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 ne0-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...
An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
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.
Leadership of the media are business men, involved in an international business.
Now you get into that goofy territory of the conspiracy doofus. Yes it is possible to achieve political success without the approval of the CFR.
It’s not gathering information for rich people, it’s gathering information for THEMSELVES from among their own kind, which includes rich people. Most of the movers and shakers in the world are in the upper class, if they weren’t born there they get there, it’s part of being driven.
A business man can never have too many business connections. Business connections are all opportunities, some of the biggest business breakthroughs in history happened when companies that didn’t think they had common ground found out they did. Look up what happened when IBM and American Airlines met, it changed the world all because the right 2 business men met. Good businessmen always want more connections further afield, that’s where innovation (and the massive profit that comes with it) comes from.
Bottom line, that’s stupid conspiracy buff paranoid bullshit. If it was really that super secret and super powerful you wouldn’t even know about it. Meanwhile out here in non-paranoid reality you can go to their website: http://www.cfr.org/ . The really aren’t that secretive, they publish a magazine.
You’re thinking things the wrong way around. Think of things the way it really happens, you just got elected president, you’ve come up through the American political system, but the American political system is about domestic policy, as Nixon pointed out 50 years ago the presidency is about FOREIGN policy, which is a very complicated situation that you probably don’t know much about. But you’re smart, you know you don’t know enough about foreign policy, and you know that’s why presidents have cabinets and advisors, so who you gonna hire? How about somebody from a long standing highly regarded think tank?
That’s the simpler solution anyway, and I shave with Occam’s Razor. Which is why I don’t believe in conspiracy crap, it’s very very complicated, way more complicated than people as power as the “secret master” are supposed to be would allow.
"Solid proof" apparently doesn't mean what it used to mean.
So true. This debate would have been much easier had the title been
“Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That Wealthy Elitists Are Pulling The Strings”
I find it difficult to believe that anyone other than the financiers, the world’s international bankers, actually work with nothing but greed and control on their mind.
There’s a few industries that I believe continually work in collusion with government officials such as the pharmacy industry lobbyists.
Overall, the senior execs that I know seem to be concerned with the increasing demand from government agencies with socialist leanings because bad press can cripple a company faster than anything.
So true. This debate would have been much easier had the title been “Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That Wealthy Elitists Are Pulling The Strings”
I find it difficult to believe that anyone other than the financiers, the world’s international bankers, actually work with nothing but greed and control on their mind.
There’s a few industries that I believe continually work in collusion with government officials such as the pharmacy industry lobbyists.
Overall, the senior execs that I know seem to be concerned with the increasing demand from government agencies with socialist leanings because bad press can cripple a company faster than anything.
That's what I thought. Gonna have to pass on that one. Little too delusional for my tastes.
interesting given the increase in surveillance of citizens- drones, email reading, smart phone data, automobile black boxes Obamacare medical records, smart meters...
Interestingly enough Zbigniew Brzezinski is among the elites at the international crisis group where he is a senior advisor.
Advisors
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/about/~/link.aspx?_id=AFAAD992BC154C93B71B1E76D6151F3F&_z=z
Board members
http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/about/board.aspx
Only a fool would believe there is such thing as national secrets among these idiots.
Sandy Berger is one of them-— (on the board)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/01/sandy_berger_what_did_he_take.html
I wish more people would pay attention to the international crisis group and the influence they have over America. They are the primary force behind involving us all over Africa and it looks like they’re getting their way. They were also the force trying to install Mohamed ElBaradei as the president of Egypt. ElBaradei was one of the ICG board members at the start of the arab spring.
We don’t need some shadowy group to build a conspiracy around, these clowns are hiding in plain sight.
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