FROM THE EDITOR: Dear reader: this is the fourth of the fourth part of this series, The Federal Reserve Cartel, which chronically explains the history of the Fed and the false perception that resulted in Americans believing it’s part of the U.S. Government when – The Fed Reserve is a private for-profit bank that ought be abolished.

This is an excerpt from a book
by Dean Henderson

To this end: a recent president of the World Bank was James Wolfensohn of Salomon Smith Barney. Merrill Lynch had $435 billion in assets in 1994, before the merger frenzy had really even gotten under way. The biggest commercial bank at the time, Citibank, could claim only $249 billion in assets.

In 1991 Merrill Lynch handled 26.8 percent of all global bank mergers. Morgan Stanley did 16.8 percent, Goldman Sachs 16.3 percent, Lehman Brothers 16.1 percent and Credit Suisse First Boston 14.5 percent. Morgan Stanley did $60 billion in corporate mergers in 1989. By 2007, reflecting the repeal of Glass-Steagel, the top ten NMA advisers in order were: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Lazard. In the IPO stock nderwriting field for 1991 the top four were Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and CS First Boston. In the arena of global privatization for years 1985-1995, Goldman Sachs led the way doing $13.3 billion worth of deals. UBS Warburg did $8.2 billion, BNP Paribas $6.8 billion, CS First Boston $4.9 billion and Paribas-owner Merrill Lynch $4.4 billion.

In 2006 BNP Paribas bought the notorious Banca Nacionale de Lavoro (BNL), which led the charge in arming Saddam Hussein. According to Global Finance, it is now the world’s largest bank with nearly $3 trillion in assets.

The leading US debt underwriters for the first nine months of 1995 bore the same familiar names. Merrill Lynch underwrote $74.2 billion in the US Desdebt markets, or 15.3 percent of the total. Lehman Brothers handled $52.5 billion, Morgan Stanley $47.4 billion, Salomon Smith Barney $45.6 billion. CS First Boston, Chase Manhattan and Goldman Sachs rounded out the top seven.

The top three municipal debt underwriters that year were Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and UBS Paine Webber. In the euro-market the top four underwriters in 1995 were UBS Warburg, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

[18] Deutsche Bank’s Morgan Grenfell branch engineered the corporate takeover binge in Europe. The dominant players in the oil futures markets at both the New York Mercantile Exchange and the London Petroleum Exchange are Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Goldman Sachs (through its J. Aron & Company subsidiary), Citigroup (through its Philbro unit) and Deutsche Bank (through its Banker’s Trust acquisition). In 2002 Enron Online was auctioned off by a bankruptcy court to UBS Warburg for $0. UBS was to share monopoly Enron Online profits with Lehman Brothers after the first two years of the deal. With Lehman’s 2008 demise, its new owner Barclays will get their cut.

Following the Lehman Brothers fiasco and the ensuing financial meltdown of 2008, the “Four Horsemen of Banking” got even bigger. For pennies on the dollar, JP Morgan Chase was handed Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.

Bank of America commandeered Merrill Lynch and Countrywide. And Wells Fargo seized control over the reeling #5 US bank Wachovia. Barclays got a sweetheart deal for the remains of Lehman Brothers. Former House Banking Committee Chairman Wright Patman (D-TX), declared of Federal Reserve Eight Families owners, “The United States today has in effect two governments. We are the duly constituted government. Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve ­System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution.”

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, US debt (mostly owed to the Eight Families) has skyrocketed from $1 billion to nearly $14 trillion today. This far surpasses the total of all Third World country debt combined, which is mostly owed to these same Eight Families, who own most all the world’s central banks.

As Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) pointed out, “International bankers make money by extending credit to governments. The greater the debt of the political state, the larger the interest returned to lenders. The national banks of Europe are (also) owned and controlled by private interests. We recognize in a hazy sort of way that the Rothschilds and the Warburgs of Europe and the houses of JP Morgan, Kuhn Loeb & Co., Schiff, Lehman and Rockefeller possess and  control vast wealth. How they acquire this vast financial power and employ it is a mystery to most of us.”

FROM THE EDITOR: Dear reader: this is the third of the fourth part of this series, The Federal Reserve Cartel, which chronically explains the history of the Fed and the false perception that resulted in Americans believing it’s part of the U.S. Government when in fact, not only the Fed Reserve is a private for-profit bank consorsium that ought to be abolished, and which is unconstitutional.

This is an excerpt from a book by Dean Henderson

To this end: almost all banks in the U.S. are members of The Fed, and by virtue of its enormous capital resources the New York Federal Reserve rules the Fed. The true center of power though is the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which only a NY Fed President has a permanent voting seat.

The FOMC issues directives on monetary policy that are executed from the 8th floor of the NY Fed, a fortress modeled after the Bank of England. In the fifth sub-basement of this 14-story stone hulk lays 10,300 tons of mostly non-US gold, one-third of the world’s gold reserves and the largest gold stockpile in the world.

The world of money is increasingly computerized. With the introduction by the Eight Families of complicated financial instruments like derivatives, options, puts and futures; the volume of inter-bank transactions took a quantum leap.

To handle this the Fed built a superhighway eerily known as CHIPS (Clearing Interbank Payment System), which is based in New York and modeled after Morgan’s Belgium-based Euro-Clear – also known as “The Beast.”

When the Fed was created, five NY banks- Citibank, Chase, Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover and Bankers Trust- held a 43 percent stake in the New York Fed. By 1983 these same five banks owned 53 percent of the NY Fed. By year 2000, the newly merged Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank combines owned even bigger chunks, as did the European faction of the Eight Families. Collectively they own majority stock in every Fortune 500 corporations and do the bulk of stock and bond trading. In 1955 the above five banks accounted for 15 percent of all stock trades. By 1985 they were involved in 85 percent of all stock transactions.

Still more powerful are the investment banks that bear the names of many of the Eight Families. In 1982, while Morgan bankers presided over negotiations between Britain and Argentina after the Falklands War, President Reagan pushed through SEC Rule 415, which helped consolidate securities underwriting in the six large investment houses owned by the Eight Families: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Brothers, First Boston and Lehman Brothers. These banks further consolidated their power via the merger mania of 1980s and 1990s.

American Express swallowed up both Lehm2an Brothers-Kuhn Loeb – which had merged in 1977 – and Shearson Lehman-Rhoades. The Israel Moses Seif’s Banca de la Svizzera Italiana bought a 7 percent stake in Lehman Brothers.

Salomon Brothers nabbed Philbro from the South African Oppenheimer family, then bought Smith Barney. All three then became part of Traveler’s Group, headed by Sandy Weill of the David-Weill family, which controls Lazard Freres, through senior partner Michel David-Weill. Citibank then bought Travelers to form Citigroup. S.G. Warburg, of which Oppenheimer’s Chartered Consolidated owns a 9 percent stake, joined the old money Banque Paribas- which merged ­into Merrill Lynch in 1984. Union Bank of Switzerland acquired Paine Webber, while Morgan Stanley ate up Dean Witter and purchased Discover credit card operations from Sears.

Kuhn Loeb-controlled First Boston merged with Credit Suisse, which had already absorbed White-Weld, to become CS First Boston- the major player in the dirty London Eurobond market. Merrill Lynch – merged into Bank of America in 2008 – is the major player on the US side of this trade tracks. Swiss Banking Corporation merged with London’s biggest investment house S.G. Warburg to create SBC Warburg, while Warburg became more intertwined with Merrill Lynch through their 1998 Mercury Assets tie up. The Warburg’s formed another venture with Union Bank of Switzerland, creating powerhouse UBS Warburg. Deutsche Bank bought Banker’s Trust and Alex Brown to briefly become the world’s largest bank with $882 billion in assets. With repeal of Glass-Steagal, the line between investment, commercial and private, banking disappeared.

This handful of investment banks exerts an enormous amount of control over the global economy. Their activities include: advising Third World debt negotiations, handling mergers and breakups, creating companies to fill a perceived economic void through the launching of initial public stock offerings (IPOs), underwriting all stocks, underwriting all corporate and government bond issuance, and pulling the bandwagon down the road of privatization and globalization of the world economy.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: MORE TO COME NEXT WEEK