Wise Up Journal
06.13.2010
By Gabriel O’Hara

The following extracts are from two books. One by World War I president Woodrow Wilson and the other from an eminent professor and noted historian Carroll Quigley, whom Bill Clinton thanked in his 1992 presidential democrat acceptance speech. Did these men think childishly that powerful families have influence over corporate business and governments or do we believe childishly that powerful families don’t?

Extract from Woodrow Wilson’s The New Freedom (1913):

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”

Carrol Quigley wrote about this power in his history book entitled “Tragedy and Hope” but he was not against it as he stated in the book, “I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments.”

Extracts from Tragedy and Hope (1966):

“Indeed, some of them intended to contribute to both and to allow an alternation of the two parties in public office in order to conceal their own influence, inhibit any exhibition of independence by politicians, and allow the electorate to believe that they were exercising their own free choice.

“[in 1924] J. P. Morgan was able to sit back with a feeling of satisfaction to watch a presidential election in which the candidates of both parties were in his sphere of influence.

“Usually, Morgan had to share this political influence with other sectors of the business oligarchy, especially with the Rockefeller interest (as was done, for example, by dividing the ticket between them

“The Power of Investment Bankers Over Governments

“The power of investment bankers over governments rests on a number of factors, of which the most significant, perhaps, is the need of governments to issue short-term treasury bills as well as long-term government bonds. Just as businessmen go to commercial banks for current capital advances to smooth over the discrepancies between their irregular and intermittent incomes and their periodic and persistent outgoes (such as monthly rents, annual mortgage payments, and weekly wages), so a government has to go to merchant bankers (or institutions controlled by them) to tide over the shallow places caused by irregular tax receipts. As experts in government bonds, the international bankers not only handled the necessary advances but provided advice to government officials and, on many occasions, placed their own members in official posts for varied periods to deal with special problems. This is so widely accepted even today that in 1961 a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic Administration in Washington without significant comment from any direction.

“The Key International Banking Families

“The names of some of these banking families are familiar to all of us and should he more so. They include Raring, Lazard, Erlanger, Warburg, Schroder, Seligman, the Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet, Fould, and above all Rothschild and Morgan. Even after these banking families became fully involved in domestic industry by the emergence of financial capitalism, they remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways: (1) they were cosmopolitan and international; (2) they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts, including foreign government debts, even in areas which seemed, at first glance, poor risks, like Egypt, Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Imperial China, and Latin America; (3) their interests were almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in goods, since they admired ‘liquidity’ and regarded commitments in commodities or even real estate as the first step toward bankruptcy; (4) they were, accordingly, fanatical devotees of deflation (which they called “sound” money from its close associations with high interest rates and a high value of money) and of the gold standard, which, in their eyes, symbolized and ensured these values; and (5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life. These bankers came to be called ‘international bankers’ and, more particularly, were known as ‘merchant bankers’ in England, ‘private bankers’ in France, and ‘investment bankers’ in the United States. In all countries they carried on various kinds of banking and exchange activities, but everywhere they were sharply distinguishable from other, more obvious, kinds of banks, such as savings banks or commercial banks.”

“The Dynasties of International Bankers

“In time they brought into their financial network the provincial banking centers, organized as commercial banks and savings banks, as well as insurance companies, to form all of these into a single financial system on an international scale which manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on the other. The men who did this, looking backward toward the period of dynastic monarchy in which they had their own roots, aspired to establish dynasties of international bankers and were at least as successful at this as were many of the dynastic political rulers. The greatest of these dynasties, of course, were the descendants of Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812) of Frankfort, whose male descendants, for at least two generations, generally married first cousins or even nieces. Rothschild’s five sons, established at branches in Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris, as well as Frankfort, cooperated together in ways which other international banking dynasties copied but rarely excelled.”

“The Money Power—Controlled by International Investment Bankers—Dominates Business and Government

“As early as 1909, Walter Rathenau, who was in a position to know (since he had inherited from his father control of the German General Electric Company and held scores of directorships himself), said, ‘Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.’ Big Banking and Business Control the Federal Government The structure of financial controls created by the tycoons of ‘Big Banking’ and ‘Big Business’ in the period 1880-1933 was of extraordinary complexity, one business fief being built on another, both being allied with semi-independent associates, the whole rearing upward into two pinnacles of economic and financial power, of which one, centered in New York, was headed by J. P. Morgan and Company, and the other, in Ohio, was headed by the Rockefeller family

“By 1930 these 200 largest corporations held 49.2 percent of the assets of all 40,000 corporations in the country

“In fact, in 1930, one corporation (American Telephone and Telegraph, controlled by Morgan) had greater assets than the total wealth in twenty-one states of the Union.

“The influence of these business leaders was so great that the Morgan and Rockefeller groups acting together, or even Morgan acting alone, could have wrecked the economic system of the country”

The following extract from “Tragedy and Hope” shows a view of war different from the normal mind:

“The agrarian discontent, the growth of monopolies, the oppression of labor, and the excesses of Wall Street financiers made the country very restless In looking about for some issue which would distract public discontent from domestic economic issues, what better solution than a crisis in foreign affairs?

“Cleveland had stumbled upon this alternative, more or less accidentally, in 1895 when he stirred up a controversy with Great Britain over Venezuela. The great opportunity, however, came with the Cuban revolt against Spain in 1895. While the ‘yellow press,’ led by William Randolph Hearst, roused public opinion, Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt plotted how they could best get the United States into the fracas. They got the excuse they needed when the American battleship Maine was sunk by a mysterious explosion in Havana harbor in February 1898. In two months the United States declared war on Spain to fight for Cuban independence. The resulting victory revealed the United States as a world naval power, established it is an imperialist power with possession of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, whetted some appetites for imperialist glory”

This last extract was taken from near the end of the book on page 950 and it sums up the situation we are caught in and shows the highly respected historian’s view point on it:

“There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates to some extent in the way the Radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past an