Excerpts from A Vile Act of Evil

... The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis attributed the Panic of 1907 to financial manipulation from the banking establishment: "If Knickerbocker Trust would falter, then Congress and the public would lose faith in all Trust companies and banks would stand to gain, the bankers reasoned." Major banks, including J.P. Morgan (owned by Rothschild) and Chase (owned by Rockefeller), launched an all-out attack on the Knickerbocker Trust. They sold off assets in their competitor and planted stories about bad loans in their newspapers (yes, theirnewspapers.) The run on Knickerbocker Trust turned into a panic and, just like today, the Federal Government came to the rescue of the privately owned "National Banks." During the depositors 'run' on the Knickerbocker Trust, J.P. Morgan and James Stillman of First National City Bank acted as a "central bank," providing liquidity to stop the bank run. President Theodore Roosevelt provided Morgan with $25 million in government funds to help control the panic. Morgan, acting as a one-man central bank, gathered together his own funds, along with money from other wealthy individuals, trusts, banks, and the U.S. Treasury. He decided which firms failed and which firms survived. His, of course, survived. To be fair, he put his own money at risk too, not knowing if the companies he supported would ultimately die.

Frank Allen, writing for Life Magazine April 25, 1949 stated, “Oakleigh Thorne, the president of that particular trust company (The Trust Company of America), testified later before a Congressional committee that his bank had been subjected to only moderate withdrawals … that he had not applied for help, and that it was the (Morgan's) ‘sore point’ statement alone that had caused the run on his bank. From this testimony, plus the disciplinary measures taken by the Clearing House against the Heinze, Morse and Thomas banks, plus other fragments of supposedly pertinent evidence, certain chroniclers have arrived at the ingenious conclusion that the Morgan interests took advantage of the unsettled conditions during the autumn of 1907 to precipitate the panic, guiding it shrewdly as it progressed so that it would kill off rival banks and consolidate the preeminence of the banks within the Morgan orbit.” Morgan’s “sore point” statement was his “private” comment to Secretary of the Treasury, George Corteyou at the beginning of panic that he saw one “sore point” and that was The Trust Company of America. “Ironically, next to the front page article describing the suspension of the Knickerbocker Trust in the Wednesday, October 23, edition of the New York Times was a headline describing Trust Company of America, the second largest trust company in New York City, as the current “sore point” in the panic.  By attracting attention to Trust Company, the newspaper article greatly exacerbated the serious run on it. Barney, who was president of Knickerbocker, was also a member of the board of directors of Trust Company of America... On Tuesday, October 22, withdrawls from Trust Company of America were approximately $1.5 million; on Wednesday, when the ill-timed article was published depositors claimed another $13 million of nearly $60 million in total deposits... During the span of the run, which lasted two weeks, Trust Company of America reportedly paid out $47.5 million in deposits.”– Ellis W. Tallman and Jon R. Moen, “Lessons from the Panic of 1907,” Economic Review, May/June 1990.

So, after creating the 1907 fiasco, J.P. Morgan got Teddy Roosevelt, to provide him with $25 million in U.S. government money to keep the nation’s banking system from collapsing. The funds were then deposited in the national banks in New York with the intent of adding funds to a system sorely in need of more liquidity. Exactly as with Bush’s 2008 bailout, the banks were to apply the funds as they saw fit and without any government oversight. Of course, it was incredible that the U.S. Treasury would hand out so much money to private bankers to use as they wanted - with no accountability and – just like today – that absurdity seems to have escaped the press. Perhaps because the big newspapers then, as now, are owned by the bankers. If you just multiply that $25 million by a factor of 80,000, you essentially have today’s two trillion dollar bank bailout plan. Our current, complicated bailout plan, like the 1907 plan, can be distilled into four – count ‘em, four - words: “Here, take this money.”  This is the best plan that Teddy Roosevelt and Bush II can come up with?   Absurd! The pumped-up public outrage over a few million dollars in executive bonuses is nothing – NOTHING in comparison to the two trillion dollars that was dispensed to the wealthy bankers and then disappeared without a trace and seemingly, without any effect. Where’s the outrage!? Misdirected, of course, to individuals well below the level of those who actually profit from this enormous taxpayer gift and control the media. I figure it’s just Bush, with one last chance to pay back his backers. His last, hurrah, before he fades off into his well-deserved oblivion. It reminds me of September 10th, 2001 – you know, the day before 9/11 - when Rumsfeld “discovered” that 2.3 trillion dollars was “missing” from the defense department, but that he would find it – and, gosh darn it, he meant it too. But, the very next day, instead of looking for it, he got sidetracked. Unfortunately, the Jumbo jet that hit the Pentagon, did an incredibly tight, 280 degree downward spiral, well beyond the limitations of the plane’s manual controls, avoiding Rumsfeld and the Chiefs of Staff, and hit on the opposite side where accountants were busy trying to find Rumsfeld’s missing money. Of course, now we will never know where that 2.3 trillion dollars went – or who it went with. I know that must have made Rumsfeld really, really mad, because he never mentioned that missing 2.3 trillion dollars ever again and he immediately asked Congress to increase the defense budget sky high so that he could send soldiers out to kill all those terrorists. But, I digress.

... The Rothschilds are quite content to let legend be their public relations. Though they control scores of industrial, commercial, mining and tourist corporations, not one bears the name Rothschild. Being private partnerships, the family houses never need to, and never do, publish a single public balance sheet, or any other report of their financial condition"– Fredrick Morton, The Rothschilds, Portrait of a Dynasty, 1998.

“There is a man-made god that controls the social and industrial system that governs us. We know him as the ‘Money Trust.’  He is offended if given or called by his true name, and being jealous of his power, he opposed an investigation of its sources. At the present time he has an almost illimitable influence upon our daily actions and is seeking to increase it by framing new currency and banking laws to suit his purposes.” –Charles Lindbergh, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, 1913.

After the Panic of 1907, there was a wide and well orchestrated public outcry that the nation’s monetary system needed to be stabilized. Public opinion was that the “Money Trust” had gotten too big for its britches and needed to be busted. To this end, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law a bill creating the National Monetary Commission (NMC) in 1908. One purpose of The National Monetary Commission was to propose legislation to break the grip of the “Money Trust” and, curiously, Senator Nelson Aldrich was chosen as chairman of that committee. I say curiously because Nelson Aldrich was a very close associate of J. P. Morgan, the father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., (and grandfather of former Vice President, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. – Which would be another great kicking-off point to discuss the rampant inbreeding of the rich.) Aldrich led the members of the Commission on a two-year tour of the central banks of Europe, spending some three hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer money. “Aldrich lost no time setting up the N.M.C., which was launched in June 1908. The official members were an equal number of senators and representatives, but these were mere window dressing. The real work would be done by the copious staff, appointed and directed by Aldrich, who told his counterpart in the House, Cleveland Republican Theodore Burton: ‘My idea is, of course, that everything shall be done in the most quiet manner possible, and without any public announcement.’ From the beginning, Aldrich determined that the N.M.C. would be run as an alliance of Rockefeller, Morgan, and Kuhn, Loeb people.” – Murray Rothbard, The History of Money and Banking in the United States, 2002. Money Trust people investigating the Money Trust. Kind of like the Bush team investigating 9/11. No, wait, that’s wrong... Exactly like the Bush people investigating 9/11.

The Abortion is Born

The Federal Reserve Act (Owen-Glass Act) had been shepherded through a Congressional Conference Committee meeting scheduled for between 1:30 - 4:30 AM(when most members of Congress were asleep) on December 22, 1913. The Act was then voted on the next day and passed although many members of the body had left for the Christmas holidays, reassured by Senate leadership that nothing would be done until after the New Year.  Most of the others who stayed behind hadn't had time to read the bill or understand its contents.  President Wilson, under pressure from Bernard Baruch, signed the bill into law at 6:30 P.M. that very same day.  At the end of his term, Wilson would write, “Our great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit.  Our system of credit is privately concentrated.  The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men... who necessarily, by reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.”  Wilson finally saw the light - a little too late. "I unwittingly ruined my country." – Woodrow Wilson.

“Paul M. Warburg is probably the mildest-mannered man that ever personally conducted a revolution.  It was a bloodless revolution: he did not attempt to rouse the populace to arms.  He stepped forth armed simply with an idea.  And he conquered.  That’s the amazing thing.  A shy, sensitive man, he imposed his idea on a nation of a hundred million.” – Harold Kellock, Warburg’s biographer.

It took almost a year before the Federal Reserve System came on line.  At a massive luncheon at the Astor Hotel in New York on November 24, 1914, New York Federal Reserve Bank Governor, Benjamin Strong offered these words to the 1,625 merchants and bankers gathered: “Permit me to ask the merchants of New York to make a careful study of the laws provisions and of the Board’s regulations.  Our system may, at first, appear to have been devised for the service and protection of the banks.  They own the stock.  The reserve deposits belong to them.”  His revealing remarks were followed by “Fed” Chairman, Pierre Jay and were reported, “Mr. Jay complimented the merchants on coming together in a better spirit of co-operation than formerly exhibited, it demonstrated, he said, what bankers did when they formed a syndicate to finance the city’s European obligations and what the Northern and Southern bankers did when they made it possible to market Southern cotton in the war zone.” – New York Times, November 25, 1914.  And did you know about the Northern and Southern bankers coming together in a spirit of cooperation to market Southern cotton during the Civil War?  I don’t recall that discussion in history class.  It’s good to know that bankers can operate above the fray of common men and make profits even when it involves trading with the enemy.  The celebratory luncheon at the Astor Hotel was a post-mortem slap in the face to John Jacob Astor, who fought against establishing the Federal Reserve System.  Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, and Isodor Strauss, were all extremely wealthy, all opposed to the creation of the “Fed,” and all died together in 1912, when the Titanic sank.  And so begins another conspiracy story.

“Who is the New York Fed?  Who exactly has been running the show? Yes, we all know that Tim Geithner was the president and CEO of the N.Y. Fed from 2003 until his ascension as treasury secretary.  But who chose him for that position, and to whom did he report? The N.Y. Fed president reports to, and is chosen by, the Fed board of directors.

So who selected Geithner back in 2003?  Well, the Fed board created a select committee to pick the CEO.  This committee included none other than Hank Greenberg, then the chairman of AIG; John Whitehead, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs; Walter Shipley, a former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, now J.P. Morgan Chase; and Pete Peterson, a former chairman of Lehman Bros.  It was not a group of typical depositors worried about the security of their savings accounts but rather one whose interest was in preserving a capital structure and way of doing business that cried out for-but did not receive-harsh examination from the N.Y. Fed.  The composition of the New York Fed’s board, which supervises the organization and current Chairman Friedman, is equally troubling.  The board consists of nine individuals, three chosen by the N.Y. Fed member banks as their own representatives, three chosen by the member banks to represent the public, and three chosen by the national Fed Board of Governors to represent the public.  In theory this sounds great: Six board members are "public" representatives. 

So whom have the banks chosen to be the public representatives on the board during the past decade, as the crisis developed and unfolded?  Dick Fuld, the former chairman of Lehman; Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE; Gene McGrath, the chairman of Con Edison; Ronay Menschel, the chairwoman of Phipps Houses and also, not insignificantly, the wife of Richard Menschel, a former senior partner at Goldman. 

Whom did the Board of Governors choose as its public representatives?  Steve Friedman, the former chairman of Goldman; Pete Peterson; Jerry Speyer, CEO of real estate giant Tishman Speyer; and Jerry Levin, the former chairman of Time Warner. These were the people who were supposedly representing our interests!” – Eliot Spitzer, May, 2009.

Tim Geithner was head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 2003 to 2009, with the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003, with the U.S. Treasury Department from 1988 to 1999, and before that, he worked for Kissinger Associates.  I would call that well-bred for the job.