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.”
