Economy
Bilderberg - Part 1
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Occupy.com http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_68864.shtml
Friday, Jan 2, 2015
Meet the Bilderberg Group – an annual gathering
of 130 of the Western world’s top financial,
corporate, political, academic, media, military
and policy elites, held every year since 1954.
They meet behind closed doors, at five-star
hotels, where participants are encouraged to
speak frankly – meaning "off the record" and away
from the prying eyes and piercing ears of the
public. Some journalists and media executives are
invited, but they don’t actually cover the
meetings: they simply attend them as guests.
The famous exclusivity and secrecy of the
Bilderberg Group, we are told, is designed to
encourage frank and open discussions among some
of the most influential people in North America
and Western Europe. But unlike its portrayal as a
place where powerful people simply "talk shop,"
critics for years have considered the meetings a
form of secret world government, and a shadowy cabal.
The truth, as it often is, rests somewhere between these extremes.
Bilderberg is a meeting of the movers and
shakers, the managers and policy-makers, the
plutocrats, technocrats, financiers and
imperialists of the North Atlantic powers. Its
original purpose was to provide a forum where
Western European elites could meet in private
with American officials to encourage the
strengthening of the "Atlantic Alliance." The
forum has provided the geopolitical and economic
framework for behind-the-scenes collaboration and
cooperation between the major NATO powers.
Founding members of the group in 1954 included
Joseph Retinger, Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands, and David Rockefeller of the United
States. Named after the Hotel de Bilderberg in
the Netherlands, where the first conference took
place, attendees decided to hold a conference
annually with locations rotating between Europe
and North America. In its early years, much of
the funding for the group came from the CIA and
American philanthropic foundations such as the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
These institutions, along with the CIA, other
major foundations and the Bilderberg conference
itself, were pivotal in the early process of
post-WWII European integration, laying the
groundwork for what decades later would become the European Union.
In the 1955 meeting of the Bilderberg Group,
the topic of “European Unity” was a major
discussion point, with attendees articulating the
need to eventually create a “common currency” and
“a central political authority” in Europe. One
American participant reportedly encouraged the
European attendees “to be practical and work
fast.” Within two years, the Treaty of Rome was
signed, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC).
A New York Times article from 1957 noted that
the first Bilderberg meeting to take place on
U.S. soil represented “an unpublicized backdoor
approach to better relations among nations” of
NATO, and noted that U.S. State Department
officials were “meeting in secret for three days
for an unofficial but frank exchange of views.”
Among the American participants were former
Ambassador to the Soviet Union (and architect of
America's "containment" policy) George F. Kennan;
World Bank President Eugene R. Black, and Gabriel
Hauge, an economic adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The issue of European integration remained
important to attendees at Bilderberg, as a
Reuters article noted in 1965, when a communiqué
was issued confirming that the meeting’s
participants “believed that only a united Europe
could join the United States in effective direction of the Atlantic alliance.”
How It Works and Who Is Involved
Bilderberg is run by its Steering Committee of
roughly 40 members whose responsibility is to
organize the annual meetings and invite guests
from their respective countries, bringing the
average yearly attendance to roughly 130 people.
Participants and Steering Committee members
come from the largest banks, corporations and
think tanks; they run media empires, military and
intelligence agencies. They include European
royalty and representatives from some of the
world’s most prominent financial and corporate
dynasties, including the Rockefellers of the
U.S., the Rothschilds of Europe, the Agnellis of
Italy, the Wallenbergs of Sweden, the Desmarais
of Canada, and the Koc family of Turkey, among others.
These elites meet together with top foreign and
economic policy makers from North American and
European nations, as well as up-and-coming
politicians being groomed for high office and the
heads of major international and regional
organizations including NATO, the European Union,
IMF, World Bank, WTO and some of the world’s most powerful central banks.
Still, its members and leadership contend that
there is nothing the public needs to worry about
when all these people get together in secret
meetings to discuss the major geopolitical and
economic issues of the day. Etienne Davignon, one
of the chief architects of European integration
in recent decades, has been a long-time
Bilderberg member and was, until recently, the
chairman of the steering committee. In 2005,
Davignon was quoted by the Financial Times saying
that the meeting is “not a capitalist plot to run
the world... If we really believed we were
running the world, we would immediately resign in
complete despair.” In 2009, Davignon
acknowledgedthat the formation of the euro was
debated and promoted in annual Bilderberg meetings.
A decade ago, The New York Times wrote that the
guest list of Bilderberg meetings “would more or
less overlap with the ‘Wanted’ posters of
anti-globalization protesters,” noting that a
former participant, Will Hutton, once referred to
the Bilderberg members and participants as the “high priests of globalization.”
More recently, a 2013 article from the Daily
Telegraph asserted that while many members
contend the group “is still merely a debating
society,” interviews with past guests and
steering committee members referred to the
conference as among “the most important events
they ever went to,” where “the discussions that
took place decisively shaped modern Europe.”
Referring to the group as “a club for life’s
winners,” the article noted that former steering
committee member Denis Healey said he debated the
Vietnam War with Henry Kissinger, and that the
group brought “the architects of the European
integration... together for open-ended
discussions with bankers and economists about how
the European monetary system might work.” Healey
was quoted saying: “The great advantage of the
Bilderberg thing was they did not have to reach
agreement. You had time to discuss things with
people who influence events who normally you
would not meet at all... People could talk very
freely, much more freely than they would at home.”
Other former participants noted that it was at
Bilderberg meetings where they first heard of the
intentions of the West Germans to unify Germany,
and where British policymakers convinced other
nations in attendance to apply sanctions on
Argentina during the Falklands War. As Denis
Healey explained: “I found it the most useful of
all the meetings I attended regularly. The
Bilderberg was the best because the level of the
people attending regularly was so much higher...
Bilderberg was the most useful of the lot.”
Indeed, in a June 1974 Argus-Press article, the
then-Chairman of Bilderberg, and one of its
founding members, Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands, explained that “the purpose of the
conference... is that eminent persons in every
field get the opportunity to speak freely without
being hindered by the knowledge that their words
and ideas will be analyzed, commented upon and
eventually criticized in the press.”
Gerald Ford, who attended two Bilderberg
meetings long before becoming vice president and
president of the United States, was quoted in
1965 saying: “You don’t really belong to the
organization: one gets an invitation from the prince,” referring to Bernhard.
It should be noted, however, that there was one
year in which the annual meeting was cancelled –
1976 – due to revelations of corruption involving
bribes between the Lockheed military contractor
and Prince Bernhard, leading to his resignation as chairman of the group.
In 2005, the BBC quoted then-chairman Etienne
Davignon as saying: “I don’t think (we are) a
global ruling class because I don’t think a
global ruling class exists. I simply think it’s
people who have influence interested to speak to
other people who have influence... Bilderberg
does not try to reach conclusions – it does not
try to say ‘what we should do’... Business
influences society and politics influence society
– that’s purely common sense. It’s not that
business contests the right of democratically-elected leaders to lead."
Will Hutton, who attended a 1997 meeting,
explained: “On every issue that might influence
your business you will hear first-hand the people
who are actually making those decisions and you
will play a part in helping them to make those
decisions and formulating the common sense.”
Former NATO Secretary-General and Bilderberg
participant, Willy Claes, said in a 2010
interview with a Belgian radio program, “Well
look, it’s not all that secret really. There is
an agenda for the day with the most pressing
problems the world is confronted with... that is
discussed... there is never a vote, no
resolutions are being put to paper.” However, he
added, “naturally... the rapporteur always tries
to draw up a synthesis, and everyone is assumed
to make use of these conclusions in the circles where he has influence.”
An anonymous former participant in Bilderberg
meetings was quoted by the Financial Times in
2013 saying: “The reason it’s perceived as
sinister is because it brings together big
international institutions – the IMF, the World
Bank and the European Union – with heads of
state, royalty and corporate leaders, and they
don’t produce a statement at the end of it.”
In 2001, founding member Denis Healey told the
Guardian in an interview, “We aren’t secret...
We’re private.” Speaking of the meeting’s critics
who contend that the member of the conference aim
to achieve a type of "global government," Healey
told journalist Jon Ronson: “To say we were
striving for a one-world government is
exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us
in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever
fighting one another for nothing and killing
people and rendering millions homeless. So we
felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”
The key issue, however, is that the world which
Bilderberg is helping to shape and support is one
in which financiers and industrialists are the
key beneficiaries – one in which
democratically-elected politicians engage with
their real constituents behind closed doors, in
“private” conversations that have profound and
real effects upon policy and thus upon entire
populations who are given no such access to public officials.
Elected leaders and policy-makers don't meet in
secret with the world’s major financiers and
industrialists so they can discuss the best ways
to serve the interests of the public, or
populations, of their respective nations. They
meet to serve their own collective and individual
interests. It is not a conspiracy: it is a forum
in which leaders from the upper echelons of
Western power structures aim to establish
consensus on priorities and policies for major political and economic issues.
Bilderberg contributes to directly undermining
democracy, while further institutionalizing
technocracy – the “rule by experts” – at the
national and international level. This series of
the Global Power Project aims to examine and
further bring to light the activities and
individuals behind the Bilderberg Group.
Bilderberg - Part 2
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Occupy.com
Monday, Jan 5, 2015
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_68863.shtml
When it comes to the secretive meetings of the
world’s financial, corporate, political and
technocratic elites at the annual Bilderberg
conferences, a common criticism from conspiracy
theorists and others is that the group
pre-selects major politicians – choosing
presidents and prime ministers in private before
populations have a chance to vote themselves.
Bilderberg participants contest this framing,
suggesting that Bilderberg participants simply
invite up-and-coming politicians who appear to
have a bright future ahead of them.
The truth is that it’s a bit of both.
Bilderberg invites politicians who appear to have
an influential future in their respective
nations, but their attendance at the meetings
(depending on their ability to impress Bilderberg
members and participants) can itself have a very
significant influence on their political futures.
This is because the industrialists, bankers and
media moguls in attendance hold significant
individual and collective power over the
political processes across much of the Western world.
The main ideologies that pervade the group are
an undeterred commitment to corporate and
financial globalization, support of a Western-led
world order, and the advancement and further
institutionalization of global governance.
Politicians who share similar views are more
likely to be invited. As former Bilderberg
chairman Etienne Davignon explained,
“automatically around the table [at meetings] you
have internationalists” who support European
integration, the WTO and trans-Atlantic cooperation.
The result: invited politicians who impress the
attended members and guests through speeches or
contributions to debates are likely to gain the
support of some of the world’s most powerful
individuals and institutions. This is no absolute
guarantee of political success for higher office,
but there are numerous examples of politicians
whose attendance may have provided supportive –
or even pivotal – influence in their reaching higher office.
As Bilderberg's former Steering Committee
member Denis Healey explained in an interview
with the Guardian, “Bilderberg is a way of
bringing together politicians, industrialists,
financiers and journalists. Politics should
involve people who aren’t politicians. We make a
point of getting along younger politicians who
are obviously rising, to bring them together with
financiers and industrialists who offer them wise
words. It increases the chance of having a sensible global policy.”
Of course, the notion of what is “sensible” is
clearly biased toward policies that benefit the
interests and objectives of financiers and industrialists.
The Thatcher and Clinton Factors
One good example of this is the rise of
Margaret Thatcher. In 1975, when Thatcher became
the leader of the opposition in British
Parliament, she was invited to that year’s
Bilderberg conference. A Financial Times article
that year by C. Gordon Tether noted that Thatcher
and other British participants “were engaging –
in company with a handful of British banking and
industrial chiefs – in ‘completely private talks
on world problems’ with the top-most brass of the
international business community – the super-capitalists.”
The article noted that “if Bilderberg is not a
conspiracy, it is conducted in such a way as to
give a remarkably good imitation of one.”
Jon Ronson interviewed the member of Bilderberg
(who remained anonymous) that had invited
Thatcher to the meeting. The former Bilderberg
member recalled that Thatcher had sat in silence
for the first two days of the meeting, leading to
some participants “grumbling” about this lady who
“hasn’t said a word.” So the Bilderberg member
spoke with Thatcher, and then, “the next day she
suddenly stood up and launched into a
three-minute Thatcher special... The room was
stunned. Here’s something for your conspiracy
theorists. As a result of that speech, David
Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger and the other
Americans fell in love with her. They brought her
over to America, took her around in limousines,
and introduced her to everyone.” Four years
later, Thatcher was Prime Minister, and her reign
left a legacy of privatizations, neoliberalism and profit for the powerful.
But Thatcher is not the only politician who
reached great heights after attending a
Bilderberg meeting. Bill Clinton was invited to a
1991 meeting in Germany when he was the Governor
of Arkansas. Two years later he would be the U.S.
president. Clinton was invited by his friend and
Bilderberg Steering Committee member Vernon E.
Jordan Jr., a major corporate figure in America
who later became known as President Clinton’s “closest confidant.”
As the Washington Post reported in 1998:
“Plenty of governors try to make that scene; only
Clinton got taken seriously at that meeting,
because Vernon Jordan said he was okay.”
Vernon Jordan later recalled that after Bill
Clinton won the presidential election and became
president, “the steering committee of Bilderberg
came to Washington in January, and I called the
president up and said ‘Mr. President, they’re
here’ – and he came to the Four Seasons hotel,
and the Europeans felt like they owned them
because they met him when he was totally unknown.”
Shaping Canada, America, the U.K. and beyond
Among the Canadian politicians who attended
Bilderberg meetings before they became prime
ministers were Pierre Trudeau, Paul Martin, Jean
Chrétien and Stephen Harper. Former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair had also attendedbefore
becoming prime minister of the UK. Virtually all
presidents of the European Commission attended
Bilderberg meetings before being appointed to office.
In 2004, as John Kerry was running for
president against George W. Bush, a potential
running mate, John Edwards, was invited to speak
at that year’s Bilderberg meeting. According to a
report in the New York Times, John Edwards “spoke
so well in a debate on American politics... that
participants broke Bilderberg rules to clap
before the end of the session.” A friend of John
Kerry’s who had attended that meeting recalled
that the speech by John Edwards “was important...
I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry
about how well he did.” Shortly after, Edwards
was selected as Kerry’s running mate (though they
clearly did not win the more important election that year).
Bilderberg's Influence on Obama
In fact, it was a Bilderberg member, James A.
Johnson, a prominent American corporate
executive, who John Kerry tapped for choosing a
running mate. And in 2008, that same Johnson “was
tasked with spearheading Barack Obama’s 2008
search for a running mate.” As the Financial
Times reported in May of 2008, James Johnson was
appointed “to head a secret committee to produce
a shortlist for [Obama’s] vice-presidential
running mate,” though the Obama campaign refused to comment “on this process.”
From June 5 to 8 of 2008, Bilderberg was
meeting in Chantilly, Virginia, just as the
campaign to win the presidential nomination was
heating up between Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton. As is typical during campaign season,
the candidates traveled with a regular entourage
of journalists. But on the night of June 5,
following a campaign rally in Bristow, Virginia,
Obama’s press entourage was “whisked away to
Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C., to
board a flight to Chicago,” as CBS reported.
The press waited on the plane for Obama, who
was said to be doing interviews with local
reporters. After an hour of waiting, the pilot
informed the press that the plane was about to
take off, without Obama on board, leading many
journalists to feel that they “had all been
duped.” Robert Gibbs, Obama’s communications
director (and later press secretary) informed the
reporters on the plane that Obama decided to stay
behind in Washington for “meetings,” though he
refused to say whom the meetings were with. Gibbs
explained: “It wasn’t an attempt to deceive in
any way, it’s just private meetings.” Shortly
after the plane landed in Chicago, Gibbs informed
the press that Obama had gone to meet with
Hillary Clinton, though provided no details of
the meeting or where it took place.
At the time, there was speculation that both
Obama and Clinton had gone to attend the
Bilderberg meeting taking place nearby. Though
never confirmed, the question remains, and two
days after the “private meetings,” Hillary
withdrew from the race and Obama became the
presidential nominee. Later, as president, Obama
gave Clinton the role of Secretary of State.
In the summer of 2012, John Kerry attended the
Bilderberg meeting, and he went on to replace
Hillary Clinton as Obama’s Secretary of State for
the second term. Forbes noted that Kerry’s
attendance at the Bilderberg meeting may have
helped his selection as secretary – also noting
that Canadian Mark Carney had attended his first
Bilderberg meeting in 2011 when he was Governor
of the Bank of Canada, and was invited back in
2012 when he attended alongside British
Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.
Within a couple months of the meeting, Osborne
announced Carney’s appointment as the Governor of
the Bank of England – the first time a
non-British citizen was appointed to head the institution.
Just prior to being appointed as President of
the European Council in 2009, Belgian politician
Herman Van Rompuy attended a “secret dinner” of
the Bilderberg group’s Steering Committee in
order “to promote his candidacy.” He was invited
by then-Bilderberg chairman Etienne Davignon, and
attending members included other leading
industrialists and financiers as well as
influential figures like Henry Kissinger. Van
Rompuy impressed the audience. He later served as
President of the European Council from 2009 to 2014.
Attending Bilderberg is not a guarantee of
higher office, but it can often support a rapid
rise to state power for politicians who impress
the members and guests at the annual meetings. As
Etienne Davignon explained, Bilderberg’s Steering
Committee “does its best assessment of who are
the bright new boys or girls in the beginning
phase of their career who would like to get known.”
Bilderberg - Part 3
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Occupy.com
Thursday, Jan 8, 2015
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_68862.shtml?
This article looks at the published lists of
participants attending recent Bilderberg
meetings, specifically ones that took place
between 2008 and 2014. From these lists, we're
better able to understand the relevance of
Bilderberg meetings to specific institutions,
ideologies and powerful sectors of society
connected with global economic governance. As
such, the following articles in this series
examine financial markets, banks, technocracy,
finance ministries, central banks, the IMF and the European Union.
When discussing the Bilderberg group, its
meetings and their impacts, there is one major
problem: the meetings are held in secret. When
130 of the world’s most influential individuals
and institutions get together behind closed doors
for a “private chat,” the public is left unaware
of what was said, debated, agreed or decided. The
official website for Bilderberg publishes recent
lists of attendees as well as a press release of
the "topics" due to be discussed.
With no details added, the list for the 2014
meeting’s topics included, “Is the economic
recovery sustainable?”, “What next for Europe?”,
“China’s political and economic outlook,” and
“Current Events.” This is essentially all we have
to go on in our efforts to discern what was
debated and discussed behind the scenes.
So, instead of engaging in speculation about
what was or was not discussed at Bilderberg
meetings, let's instead look at the individuals
and institutions that are frequently represented
there. What role do those groups play in society?
What is their history and evolution as
institutions and individuals? What ideologies do
they embrace and propagate? Seeking the answers
to these questions raises further inquiries: what
do these individuals, institutions and ideologies
tell us about our society? What do they tell us
about power and how it is organized, exercised and expanded?
Bilderberg and Financial Markets
Some people suggest we may judge others by the
company they keep. After all, who we choose as
friends says a great deal about ourselves.
Applying this logic to the Bilderberg Group, we
see a body whose activities and internal
discussions remain largely secret, which we can
get to know better by examining the membership and guests it invites.
Bilderberg’s official website provides a press
release for each meeting held between 2010 and
2014. In all of these meetings, issues such as
the financial crisis and regulation, the European
debt crisis, economic recovery and growth,
austerity and global economic governance are
relevant throughout. With membership drawn
primarily from North America and Western Europe,
the financial and economic turmoil of the past
several years has been a consistent topic of
discussion and concern for Bilderberg meetings.
Within all of these issues, “financial markets”
play an extremely important and influential role.
Given that Bilderberg represents the interests of
some of the largest and most powerful banks and
financial institutions in the world, the meeting
provides a forum where "financial markets" are duly given a powerful voice.
But before we address the relevance of these
financial market leaders, let's briefly define
what “financial markets” are. The Financial Times
Lexicon calls them a “generic term for an
exchange that facilitates the trading of
financial instruments, such as stocks, bonds,
foreign exchange, or commodities.” In other
words, “financial markets” create and collect
vast sums of money (or debt) and move it around
in order to collect more money and debt.
Financial markets manage the investment and exchange of money and debt.
Many major institutions and actors shape
financial markets. There are individual
financiers, such as billionaires George Soros and
Warren Buffett, who are able to move financial
markets with words and actions. There are also
major global banks (the “too big to fail”
financial institutions), insurance companies,
holding companies, asset management firms,
sovereign wealth funds, exchange traded funds,
wealth management firms, hedge funds, private
equity companies, credit ratings agencies,
consulting and accounting firms, and central banks, among others.
Despite – or because of – their many different
areas of operations and institutions within
financial markets, the power of these groups is
heavily concentrated, largely globalized and highly destructive.
Roger Altman
But don’t take my word for it. Instead, take
the word of a Bilderberg Steering Committee
member, Roger C. Altman, who has attended every
meeting since 2010. Altman is the chairman of
Evercore, which claims to be the “most active
independent investment bank” in the United
States. He was a former partner at Lehman
Brothers in the 1970s, became a fund-raiser for
then-Governor Jimmy Carter, and later served as
an Assistant Treasury Secretary in the Carter
administration from 1977 to 1981, during which
time he oversaw the $1.5 billion government bailout of Chrysler Corporation.
Altman returned to Wall Street in 1981, working
for Lehman Brothers. The New York Times noted
that apart from his stint in the Carter
administration, Altman “spent the 70s and 80s on
Wall Street, growing very wealthy.” He became
close with the chairman of Lehman Bros., Peter G.
Peterson, who founded the major investment firm
Blackstone in 1987, today one of the world’s
largest independent asset management firms
managing nearly $300 billion in assets.
Altman joined Blackstone at its founding as
Vice Chairman, staying until 1993 when he was
appointed as Bill Clinton’s Deputy Treasury
Secretary. One of Clinton’s closest economic
advisers at the time, Gene Sperling, commented
that Altman was “one of the six or seven people
who is always consulted on any significant economic position.”
Altman left the Clinton administration in 1995
and founded Evercore that same year, where he has
remained until the present. He is currently also
a director of Conservation International, a
member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the
Steering Committee of Bilderberg, and regularly
writes columns for the Wall Street Journal, New
York Times and Financial Times. In 2006, Altman
served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton for her
presidential campaign. Today, Evercore manages
over $14 billion in assets and has handled over
$1.4 trillion of transactions for major global
corporations, investment agencies and the super rich.
What does all this mean? It means when Roger
Altman writes articles that are widely
distributed and read by the key decision-makers
and those who shape the global financial markets,
he speaks not simply as an observer but as an
active participant and player. His words carry
weight – like in December of 2011, a month after
the democratically elected leaders of Greece and
Italy were removed from office. The EU elite
replaced those countries' leaders, who had
displeased the financial markets, with economic
technocrats and bankers who swiftly imposed
ruthless austerity measures that punished their
populations into poverty in order to pay the interest on debts to banks.
Altman wrote in the Financial Times that
financial markets were “acting like a global
supra-government” with the power to “oust
entrenched regimes where normal political
processes could not do so. They force austerity,
banking bail-outs and other major policy
changes,” and their influence “dwarfs” that of
major global institutions like the International
monetary Fund (IMF), he wrote. Indeed, the
markets “have become the most powerful force on
earth,” and when those markets flex their
muscles, “the immediate impact on society can be
painful” with high unemployment and collapsing governments.
But, he added, “the longer-term effects can be
often transformative and positive,” at least for
the interests of banks. Ultimately, Altman
concluded: “Whether this power is healthy or not
is beside the point. It is permanent... there is
no stopping the new policing role of the financial markets.”
Martin Wolf
Martin Wolf, another frequent Bilderberg
participant, is considered to be perhaps the most
influential financial journalist in the world,
being the chief economics commentator and
associate editor at the Financial Times. He is
consistently rated among the 100 most influential
"thinkers" in the world, with “a devoted
following among top economists, politicians, and
financiers." Wolf himself once explained: “I’m
writing for the people who are doing these
things, who are running these things.”
Lawrence Summers, another top economist, former
Treasury official and occasional Bilderberg
participant, has referred to Wolf as “the world’s
preeminent financial journalist,” and the
economist Kenneth Rogoff called him “the premier
financial and economics writer in the world.”
Mohamed El-Erian, former CEO of the world’s
largest bond trader, PIMCO, stated that Wolf was
“by far, the most influential economic columnist
out there,” and the current governor of the
central bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, commented:
“You cannot measure influence, but you can feel
influence... And I think [Wolf] has it.”
Wolf himself acknowledged, “I don’t know if
there’s any significant central banker I don’t
know.” As the New Republic explained in a
profile, Wolf’s audience and readership “are some
of the top earners, spenders, and decision-makers
in the world,” noting that he was “staggeringly
well-connected within the elite circles he is writing for.”
No doubt, Wolf’s consistent presence at
Bilderberg meetings, and at the World Economic
Forum, has helped to secure that access and
maintain those connections. Thus, when Wolf
writes about issues related to financial markets,
his commentary holds far more weight than when
outside or more critical voices speak up. This is
all the more notable when Wolf defines and
criticizes what he perceives as the primary
problems of financial markets, and the financial
system as a whole – which he did in 2011, writing
that “an out-of-control financial sector is
eating out the modern market economy from inside,
just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the
host in which it has been laid.” (Wincott Annual
memorial lecture, Oct. 24, 2011).
The Super-Entity
Combining the analyses of these two prominent
Bilderberg members who have strong connections to
leading global financiers and regulators, we can
thus understand financial markets as something of
a global parasite – one with unprecedented power
to determine the fate of nations and peoples
through investments and exchanges of money and
debt. Financial markets, in other words,
represent a global parasitic social structure in
which power is gained and exercised through the
manipulation of numbers on screens.
At the core of financial markets are what Swiss
scientists have called the “super-entity,”
composed of 147 of the world’s top transnational
corporations, primarily banks and insurance
companies concentrated in the United States,
Western Europe and Japan, which collectively own
each other through shareholdings.
As a group, these 147 corporations own roughly
40% of the entire network of the world’s top
43,000 transnational corporations. One of the
financial researchers commented, “In effect, less
than 1 per cent of the companies were able to
control 40 per cent of the entire network.”
Many of these institutions are frequently
represented in Bilderberg meetings, including
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche
Bank and AXA. Collectively, these are the leaders
in financial markets and the overlords of Roger
Altman's “global supra-government.” The leaders
and advisers to these banks who have been
represented at Bilderberg meetings, and the
influence and views they hold, will be the focus
of the next installment in this series.
Bilderberg - Part 4
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Occupy.com
Monday, Jan 12, 2015
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_68861.shtml?
In the previous Bilderberg article, I wrote
that financial markets were “a type of global
parasite with unprecedented power capable of
determining the fate of nations and peoples.” In
truth, the "super-entity" known as financial
market power functions like a cartel, or an
organized criminal network: a Mafia. This
installment examines some of the members of the
global financial mafia who are present at
Bilderberg meetings and thus are given
unparalleled access to political leaders behind closed doors.
At Bilderberg meetings, participants frequently
include leading officials and advisers to banks
like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Barclays,
Deutsche Bank, HSBC and AXA, among others. The
participation of leaders and advisers to these
and other large financial institutions provides
world leaders with direct, "private" access to
some of the leading voices at the core of global
financial markets. The interests and actions of
financial markets can thus be articulated to the
leaders of powerful political, media, military,
intelligence and technocratic institutions. The
“invisible hand” may voice where and when it might smack.
Through Bilderberg, leaders in financial
markets are given an inside look at, and access
to, those who shape and wield foreign and
economic policy in the world’s most powerful
nations. Their interests become a part of that
process, just as geopolitical interests are
integrated into the actions of financial markets.
While financial markets command no armies, they
determine the flow and functions of money upon
which all armies are dependent, and to which
nations are obedient. Bilderberg brings these
institutions and individuals together for an
off-the-record, private chat about global affairs and policy.
Martin Feldstein, who serves on the
International Council of JPMorgan Chase, attended
all but one Bilderberg meeting between 2010 and
2014. Feldstein is one of the most influential
American economists over the past several
decades, serving as a professor at Harvard, a
member of the Group of Thirty, the Trilateral
Commission, the International Advisory Board of
the National Bank of Kuwait, and the Council on
Foreign Relations. He advised President George W.
Bush as a member of the Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board between 2007 and 2009, a position
in which he was given access to top-secret
intelligence information. He had previously
served as one of Ronald Reagan’s chief economic
advisers, and President Obama appointed him in
2009 to serve on the Economic Recovery Advisory
Board, advising on how to manage the "recovery" following the financial crisis.
Feldstein’s views are well known. Relating to
Europe’s debt crisis, for which Bilderberg
meetings hold a great deal of significance,
Feldstein wrote in the Financial Times in July of
2013 that governments that bowed to “popular
political pressure” to lessen the brutal
austerity measures widely seen as the cause of
mass unemployment, poverty and social unrest,
were at risk of facing rising interest rates and “a new fiscal crisis.”
In other words, if governments bend to the will
of the people, financial markets will seek to
bend them back. A "fiscal crisis" only takes
place when creditors (financial markets) decide
to stop funding the government. In Europe,
nations are largely dependent upon banks to
provide them with credit to function. Thus, if
the heads of financial markets don't like the
policies of nations, they can cut off their
funding, creating a major crisis and even
collapsing the government. This leverage forces
nations to follow policies favored by financial
markets, such as austerity and various other
"structural reforms." Meanwhile, the policies
combine to impoverish the population, enrich the
elite, allow for mass exploitation of resources
and labor, and consolidate control of the economy
into the hands of relatively few, large global banks and corporations.
Another key Bilderberg member and leading
figure in financial markets is Josef Ackermann,
whom I have written about previously. Ackermann
has been one of Europe’s most powerful bankers
over the past decade, as the CEO of Deutsche Bank
and a major power player throughout the debt
crisis holding key leadership positions in large
industry associations such as the Institute for International Finance (IIF).
The current chairman of the Bilderberg Group,
Henri de Castries, is chairman and CEO of the
French insurance giant, AXA, one of the top
companies on the Swiss study’s list of the
"super-entity" of banks and insurance giants. De
Castries is also a member of the European
Financial Services Round Table (EFR), a lobby
group made up of the chairmen and CEOs of
Europe’s largest financial institutions.
In 2012, the Financial Times referred to Henri
de Castries as one of France’s “best known
captains of industry,” having served as an
unofficial adviser to former French President
Nicolas Sarkozy, and been school classmates with
the current President Francois Hollande. De
Castries is considered “as establishment as you can get in France.”
In the wake of the European debt crisis, Henri
de Castries supported the policies of austerity
and structural reform, warning in 2012 that the
crisis would continue for some time. He suggested
that governments needed to learn how to “spend
less” and the only way to “win back our
competitiveness” was “through business investment
and not by public spending,” adding: “What we
need is a profound cultural change.”
Marcus Agius, a member of Bilderberg’s steering
committee, is the chairman of PA Consulting,
having previously served as the chairman of
Barclays, the bank listed in the number one spot
on the list compiled by the Swiss study. As chair
of Barclays between 2007 and 2012, Agius also
served as chairman of the British Bankers
Association, was a director of the BBC from 2006
to 2013, and served as a Business Ambassador of
the Trade and Investment Ministry of the British
government. Agius also married the daughter of
Edmund de Rothschild, bringing him into the
family of one of the most prestigious and
influential financial dynasties in the world.
Agius resigned from Barclays in 2012 as a
result of the massive global financial fraud
revealed by the Libor rate scandal, whereby some
of the world’s largest banks – including Barclays
– formed a cartel at the British Bankers
Association to manipulate the interest rate at
which banks lend to each other, influencing
prices throughout the global economy. Despite the
resulting scandal for Agius and others, which
forced resignations in 2012, he stayed on the
bank’s payroll as an adviser until March of 2014,
a full 20 months following his official resignation.
Douglas J. Flint, who is chairman of HSBC, has
attended every Bilderberg meeting since 2011. He
is also chairman of the Institute of
International Finance (IIF), and is a member of
the European Financial Services Round Table
(EFR), the Financial Services Forum, the
International Monetary Conference (IMC), and
serves on advisory boards to the Mayors of Shanghai and Beijing.
W. Edmund Clark, the chair of one of Canada’s
largest banks, TD Bank, has attended every Bilderberg meeting since 2010.
Peter Sutherland has been a long-time
Bilderberg participant, and serves as the
chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
Robert Zoellick, former World Bank president
and Bilderberg participant at every meeting
between 2010 and 2014, now serves as the chairman
of the Board of International Advisers of Goldman Sachs.
Peter R. Orszag, a Vice Chairman at Citigroup,
attended Bilderberg meetings between 2010 and 2012.
The Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, J. Michael
Evans, attended Bilderberg meetings in 2012 and 2013.
This is but a small sampling of some of the
names of the leaders of financial institutions
represented at Bilderberg meetings over the past
few years. Apart from leading individual banks
and financial institutions, many of the
financiers who attend Bilderberg meetings
simultaneously hold leadership positions within
other large banking lobby groups, industry
associations, and major international conferences.
For example, Bilderberg members and
participants frequently hold simultaneous
leadership positions at the Institute of
International Finance (IIF), the International
Monetary Conference (IMC), and the Group of
Thirty (G30), all of which have been the focus of
previous installments of the Global Power
Project, as they have been profoundly influential
organizations in their own right. The fact that
so many leading figures in those organizations
are leaders and participants in Bilderberg
meetings lends extra weight to the importance of the meetings.
Roger Altman, a Bilderberg steering committee
member and head of a large investment bank, wrote
in a May 2013 article in the Financial Times that
financial markets in the 21st century were “much
more powerful than any government leader,” noting
that the spread of austerity across Europe was
not driven by Angela Merkel of Germany or other
political leaders, but rather, by “private
lenders... who declined to finance further
borrowing by those countries,” and thus, “markets
triggered the Eurozone crisis, not politicians.”
The views and the desires of bankers and
financiers are important – and influential –
precisely because if these individuals don't get
what they want, they wield the power in numbers
on screens that can force the hands of even the
most powerful governments and politicians. As
such, the favored policies of bankers frequently
become the implemented policies of states.
Bilderberg - Part 5
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Occupy.com
Friday, Jan 16, 2015
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_68860.shtml?
Bilderberg is an inherently technocratic
institution. It brings together top "experts" and
decision-makers from a number of important
sectors to engage in off-the-record conversation,
speaking a "common language" in order to help
design and coordinate policies that more
accurately represent the interests of concentrated power.
As such, Bilderberg not only serves a
technocratic function, but it is also populated
with a number of the world’s most influential
technocrats who are members and invited guests:
top officials of central banks, finance
ministries, international organizations, think
tanks, foundations and universities. Their
participation in Bilderberg meetings provides
them with a "private" forum in which to engage
with the political, corporate and financial
oligarchy. More concretely, Bilderberg meetings
enable participants to promote the expansion and
further institutionalization of technocracy. But
to understand Bilderberg’s relevance to
technocracy, let's first define the concept.
What is Technocracy?
Technocracy is largely defined as "rule by
experts," or the exercise of power by
"professionals." As the Economist explained in
2011: “Technocracy was once a communist idea:
with the proletariat in power, administration
could be left to experts.” But the scientific
management of society “was popular under
capitalism too,” and the magazine noted there was
even a prominent "Technocratic Movement" in the
United States in the early 20th century.
The late 19th and early 20th century witnessed
rapid industrialization, new oligarchies, mass
migration, revolution, a clash of empires between
old and new, emerging technologies and
inventions, expanded literacy, new energy sources
and novel forms of communication and
transportation. It was an age of oligarchs and
unrest. Many of the most powerful societies
turned to technocracy to help manage the great
transitions of the era. As the oligarchs sought
to maintain their influence by institutionalizing
it within society, they also while sought to
manage the expectations and interests of the
population: by engaging in social engineering
with the objective of maintaining social control,
or what the ruling class called “stability.”
Capitalist, Communist (or State-Socialist) and
Fascist societies turned to technocracy and the
rule of experts to transform the structure of
modern civilization through a "scientific
management" of human society – where oligarchic
power is legalized and institutionalized, and the
population gives its consent, or is at least its
obedience, to the ruling structure.
The Chinese Communist Party and state is
largely ruled by unelected technocrats, as are
several military dictatorships and one-party
states. On occasion, even Western “democratic”
nations become ruled by unelected technocrats,
though as the Economist noted, “only for a short
time” and “in unusual circumstances.”
Recent examples include the imposition of
technocratic governments in Italy and Greece, in
late 2011 when democratically elected leaders
were removed from power and replaced with
economists and central bankers. Another recent
example was in Ukraine, where, following the
removal of the more pro-Russian president, the
management of the government was handed to a former central banker.
Despite these exceptions of direct technocratic
rule, there are technocratic institutions and
individuals who oversee major parts of our
society and determine important policies that
have profound consequences for hundreds of
millions, and often billions, of people around
the world. Central banks, finance ministries,
international organizations, think tanks,
foundations and universities are all highly
influential technocratic institutions, often
managed by high-level technocrats and governed
(or advised) by members of the financial and corporate oligarchy.
China’s Technocratic Tyranny
A November 2013 article in The Atlantic
described Chinese politics as “a nightmare” for
those who were “lovers of clear, concise
language.” The author, Matt Schiavenza, cited the
names of the top ruling body (Politburo Standing
Committee), the major conference establishing
policy and direction for the following years
(Third Plenary Session of the 18th Party
Congress), and the conference’s resulting
document that promised to "comprehensively deepen
reforms," and argued: “Chinese politics are
designed to attract as little attention as possible.”
The technicality and obscurity of the language
serves to hide the exercise and effects of power
behind an image of "expertise." Only those who
are experts in matters of law, finance,
economics, political science, etc., are capable
of understanding the language, and thus, the
implications of its use. In China, the
technocratic language of the Party and state hide
the rule of not only the visible top technocrats,
but of the powerful political and financial
oligarchs and dynasties behind them.
China’s political and economic power is
concentrated in the hands of a new aristocratic
class of what are called "Princelings," the
descendants of Communist China’s revolutionary
leaders. These leaders wielded formal political
power, and after the turn to capitalism, from the
late 1970s onward, the descendants of these
families came to dominate the economic resources
of the country. As Bloomberg noted, in China
“wealth and influence is concentrated in the
hands of as few as 14 and as many as several hundred families.”
For foreign businesses and banks to gain access
to the Chinese market, the most effective means
has been through the practice of hiring or
establishing relationships with the Princelings.
Major global banks, such as Deutsche Bank, Morgan
Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and others,
frequently hire princelings in order gain access
and influence within China’s leadership, since
the relatives of princelings themselves govern
the bureaucracies and state-owned industries,
determining the flow of money through society.
JPMorgan Chase has been under investigation by
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for
its practice of hiring hundreds of princelings in
China to gain access to its lucrative market. In
the words of Bloomberg, these princelings have
become China’s “new capitalist nobility.”
Wen Jiabao served as China's prime minister for
the decade leading up to 2012, and his family
amassed billions in assets, a practice consistent
for most (if not all) of China’s ruling political
figures, including its new president, Xi Jinping.
Almost all of the nine members of the ruling
Politburo Standing Committee under the previous
Chinese government were from families that
amassed enormous fortunes and controlled entire
areas of the economy, with corruption “more
severe than at any time in history,” as the
Financial Times quoted a veteran Communist Party member and journalist.
China is a one-party dictatorship with powerful
military and security forces and high-tech
surveillance. It is ruled by gangsters, oligarchs
and technocrats. China is, essentially, a
Mafiocracy. Yet the language of its technocratic
form of governance obscures this reality behind
the veneer of impartiality and expertise. Behind
the scenes, gangsters rule and families feud.
This reality of Chinese politics was revealed
in 2012 when one of China’s princelings and
rising political stars, who was set to gain a
seat on the Politburo Standing Committee in 2013,
became the subject of a dramatic downfall worthy
of the palace intrigue in ancient imperial China.
Bo Xilai’s rise to power was turned into a life
sentence in prison after his closest adviser
sought asylum in a U.S. consulate, fearing for
his life and telling the Americans that Bo
Xilai’s wife had murdered a British banker in a hotel room with cyanide.
The fall of Bo Xilai and his family was not a
subject the Chinese leadership wanted aired
publicly. The popular attention and implications
of the story were largely the result of social
media being used by an increasing percentage of
Chinese citizens. What was intended to be the
behind-the-scenes factional power struggles of
families vying for top-spots on the Politburo
Standing Committee, spilled out into the public
as the most dramatic news story since the
Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and changed the course of Chinese politics.
It is also interesting to note that one of
China’s top technocrats, Liu He, was invited to
the Bilderberg meeting in 2014. In China, Liu He
is one of President Xi Jinping’s top economic
advisers, considered to be largely “pro-market”
and seen as a prominent reformer. The Wall Street
Journal described Liu He’s job as “nothing less
than to craft an economic vision that will guide
China for the decade to come.” He has also been
referred to as “China’s Larry Summers.”
Technocracy in the West
Much like the powerful, dramatic and shocking
figures and processes hiding behind the bland
language of Chinese politics, the ambiguous
language of global economics and finance hides
its own ruthless realities. Behind the words and
actions of central bankers, finance ministers and
other top technocrats, we're able to see
countries collapse, governments overthrown,
populations impoverished, societies destroyed,
fascism and racism explode as people riot, rebel and revolt.
The language of "financial technocracy" belies
a world of mass impoverishment, exploitation,
domination and immense concentrations of power.
These technocrats define and manage global
financial and economic policy, construct the
ideology the justifies the rule of the oligarchy,
and implement policy which is intended to protect
and expand the interests of that oligarchy.
As central bankers demand “fiscal tightening”
and finance ministers implement “structural
reforms,” the populations of Greece, Portugal,
Ireland, Cyprus, Spain and Italy were plunged
into crisis. Meanwhile, poverty and unemployment
rise, fascist parties emerge, social unrest and
riots in the streets become common, suicide rates
increase, health and education systems come under
strain and collapse, and governing political
parties lose legitimacy and turn to police
repression to control the crowds. Economic
opportunity and political democracy become things
of the past. Behind the technocratic language of
economics lies a world of brutality.
Bilderberg’s structure, members and objectives
that promote and expand the power of technocracy
are inherently destructive to democracy. Europe’s
debt crisis, and the technocratic institutions
and individuals that managed it, have had
profoundly negative consequences on the lives of
hundreds of millions of people. The functions of
technocracy and the actions of Europe’s top
technocrats effectively serve the interests of
concentrated financial and corporate power.
--
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Twitter: @TonyGosling http://twitter.com/tonygosling
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http://www.youtube.com/user/PublicEnquiry
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Diggers350/
http://cryptome.org/2014/06/video-report-axed-2.htm
http://www.reinvestigate911.org/
http://www.thisweek.org.uk/
http://www.911forum.org.uk/
http://groups.google.com/group/uk-911-truth
[email protected]
"Capitalism is institutionalised bribery."
_________________
www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org
www.mediafor911truth.org
www.pilotsfor911truth.org
www.mp911truth.org
www.ae911truth.org
www.rl911truth.org
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www.abolishwar.org.uk
www.globalresearch.ca
www.public-interest.co.uk
www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Bristol+Broadband+Co-operative
www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1407615751783.2051663.1274106225&l=90330c0ba5&type=1
<http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf>http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic
poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
<https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/>https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered
that shall not be revealed; and nothing hid that
shall not be made known. What I tell you in
darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye
hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27
Die Pride and Envie; Flesh, take the poor's advice.
Covetousnesse be gon: Come, Truth and Love arise.
Patience take the Crown; throw Anger out of dores:
Cast out Hypocrisie and Lust, which follows whores:
Then England sit in rest; Thy sorrows will have end;
Thy Sons will live in peace, and each will be a friend.
http://tinyurl.com/6ct7zh6
--
--
Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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