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Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals & Institutions of American Imperialism - Lauren Johnson - 21-07-2013
In May, JPMorgan Chase was listed as the largest bank in the world with assets at roughly $4 trillion -- some $1.53 trillion of it in derivatives. This was reported a month after the announcement that the bank had posted a record first-quarter profit of $6.5 billion. Also See: Global Power Project, Part 1: Exposing the Transnational Capitalist Class; Global Power Project, Part 2: Identifying the Institutions of Control; and Global Power Project, Part 3: The Influence of Individuals and Family Dynasties.
Jamie Dimon, the bank's CEO and Chairman, has faced a host of scandals in relation to his management of the megabank, including the loss of roughly $6 billion through the London branch of the bank -- losses that Dimon was accused of hiding. A 300-page report by the U.S. Senate, investigating the "creative accounting" of JPMorgan, noted that the bank "hid losses, did not share information with its regulators, and misled the public" in what one banking regulator referred to as "make believe voodoo magic." Stated bluntly in The New York Times, JPMorgan Chase, the largest derivatives dealer in the world, "is too big to regulate."
In the midst of the scandal, the bank faced a potential "revolt" of its shareholders in a bid to strip Dimon of his dual role as CEO and Chairman. In confidential government reports which were leaked to The New York Times, the bank was accused of "manipulative schemes" which transformed "money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers" while executives made "false and misleading statements" under oath.
Yet even in the midst of scandal, Jamie Dimon was praised in a storm of support by billionaires, corporate kingpins and media barons. Calling JPMorgan Chase "as good a bank as there is," New York City mayor and billionaire media baron Michael Bloomberg went on to call Dimon "a very smart, honest, great executive." News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch praised Dimon as "one of the smartest, toughest guys around," while Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, referred to him as a "great leader" and said he had earned the "right to hold both Chairman and CEO titles." To top it off, billionaire investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, dubbed Dimon "a fabulous banker."
And the adoration goes all the way to the top rung. In 2009, The New York Times referred to Jamie Dimon as "President Obama's favorite banker." In 2010, Obama told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that he didn't "begrudge" bank CEOs like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs for their massive bonuses of $17 and $9 million, respectively. Obama explained: "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system." The president added, "I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen."
In May of 2012, Obama rushed to Jamie Dimon's defense in light of the financial scandals, stating that Dimon was "one of the smartest bankers we got." The Financial Times referred to Dimon as "the last king of Wall Street." And when finally faced with the decision to strip Dimon of his dual role as chairman and CEO, Obama's "favorite banker" ended up winning "a decisive victory" by maintaining both his roles.
But this is just the surface of JPMorgan Chase's financial manipulations. The bank, in fact, was at the forefront of creating Credit Default Swaps (CDS), a key aspect of the derivatives market that led to the inflation and subsequent blowout of the housing bubble. JPMorgan developed these "financial instruments" as a type of insurance policy in 1994, allowing the bank to trade its debt (in the form of loans to corporations and governments) to third parties, thus handing off the risk and removing the debts from its accounts, which allowed it to make further loans. JPMorgan opened up the first CDS desk in New York in 1997, "a division that would eventually earn the name the Morgan Mafia for the number of former members who went on to senior positions at global banks and hedge funds." Back in 2003, the same Warren Buffet who would later praise Dimon referred to credit default swaps as "financial weapons of mass destruction."
JPMorgan was also at the forefront in the United States pushing for financial deregulation, particularly the slow-motion dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act that had been put in place in 1933 in response to the financial speculation which had helped spark the Great Depression. After hearing proposals from banks such as Citicorp, JP Morgan and Bankers Trust, which advocated the loosening of "restrictions" put in place by Glass-Steagall, the Federal Reserve Board in 1987 voted to ease many of the regulations. That same year, Alan Greenspan, who had previously been a director of JP Morgan, became the chairman of the Fed. In 1989, the Fed approved an application submitted by JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, Citicorp and Bankers Trust to further reduce the regulations imposed by Glass-Steagall. In 1990, JP Morgan became "the first bank to receive permission from the Federal Reserve to underwrite securities."
Financial deregulation accelerated under President Clinton, much to the delight of Wall Street banks, which were then permitted to merge into megabanks, with JPMorgan merging with Chase Manhattan to form JPMorgan Chase. As early as 2006 and 2007, multiple megabanks were beginning to bet against the housing market through various hedge funds, allowing them to make profits on the housing collapse they created. JPMorgan continued to sell mortgages as it bet against the mortgage market, passing on the risk while it hedged its bets to profit from the failure and losses of others. In 2011, the bank paid a $153 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle allegations of "securities fraud."
In the midst of the financial crisis in 2008, JPMorgan Chase became not only a major criminal, but also a prime beneficiary. In 2007, the global investment bank Bear Stearns was named by Fortune magazine as the second "most admired" financial securities company in the United States, while Lehman Brothers was put in first place. As the financial crisis erupted, Bear Stearns executives "discovered" that they were "nearly out of cash" in March of 2008. The CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Schwartz, made a phone call to Jamie Dimon -- JPMorgan Chase was the clearing agent for Bear Stearns -- asking for an overnight loan. Dimon, who also sat on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, turned there instead of providing the loan through his own bank. The president of the New York Fed who was elected by the banks that own the New York Fed was Timothy Geithner. Geithner began discussions with Bear Stearns, and the following morning he held a meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, where they agreed to an emergency loan for Bear Stearns, providing the funds through JPMorgan Chase.
Over the following day, Geithner and Paulson informed Bear Stearns that it must sell the bank within days, and a deal was negotiated in which JPMorgan Chase would purchase Bear Stearns at $2 per share. Though Dimon had first refused to purchase the failed bank, he now engaged in negotiations with Geithner who won over Dimon by guaranteeing $30 billion for JPMorgan to purchase the sunken bank. Long story short: through the New York Fed, the U.S. government purchased billions of dollars in bad debts made by Bear Stearns, including $16 billion in credit default swaps that were downgraded to "junk" assets, while JPMorgan Chase acquired $360 billion in Bear Stearns assets with little or no risk.
With the purchase of Bear Stearns facilitated by the New York Fed, and for the benefit of JPMorgan, Geithner continued in his role as willing servant to the banks who had elected him as president. Then, in September of 2008 when the insurance conglomerate American International Group (AIG) plunged into crisis and sought support from the government, the Fed and Treasury initially refused. AIG turned to JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, who went to the government to pressure for state support. The New York Fed, with Geithner at the helm, again organized a secret bailout of the institution, valued at $85 billion. In October, the government added an extra $38 billion to the AIG bailout, and the New York Fed provided a further $40 billion in November. Overall, U.S. taxpayers bailed out the insurance giant with $150 billion.
Because many banks kept junk assets with AIG which didn't affect its balance sheets, the insurance giant was allowed to continue making risky loans. Meanwhile, the New York Fed, noted Bloomberg journalist David Reilly, acted as "a black-ops outfit for the nation's central bank," and as a "quasi-governmental institution [which] isn't subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests." The AIG bailout, wrote Reilly, revealed what could be described as a "secret banking cabal." Through AIG, bailout funds went to American, French, German, British, Swiss, Dutch and even Canadian banks. Goldman Sachs received over $12 billion, and billions also went to Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase.
JPMorgan Chase was using bailout money from the government to purchase other banks and companies. As one executive at the bank commented in regards to a $25 billion bailout from the government, "I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment." The banks repaid the bailout loans from other bailout funds they got from government, siphoning off taxpayer money back and forth and rewarding them for their risky behavior. One university study noted that banks with political access whether through lobbying efforts or board membership on the Fed were more likely to get bailout funds, and in bigger numbers, than other banks. Notably among the most politically connected banks were Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley.
According to a 2012 study by the International Monetary Fund and Bloomberg magazine, JPMorgan Chase continues to receive government support far beyond the bailouts, as it is a major recipient of corporate welfare and state subsidies. In fact, according to the study, the biggest bank in the world gets roughly $14 billion per year in state subsidies and welfare, largely helping "the bank pay big salaries and bonuses."
The Biggest and Most Connected Bank
Not only is JPMorgan Chase the biggest bank in the world with over $4 trillion in assets, but its power and influence extends far beyond financial matters. It is a major political force in the world, highly integrated within the network of global elites who make up the plutocratic ruling class. As the subject of study for the Global Power Project, I examined 55 people at JPMorgan Chase, including all members of the executive committee, the board of directors and the international advisory council.
Of the 55 individuals examined at the bank, a total of 13 (or roughly 24%) of the individuals were either members or held leadership positions (previously or presently) with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR has been at the heart of the foreign-policy elite of the United States since it was created in 1921. Further, a total of eight JPMorgan officials held leadership positions in the World Economic Forum, the second most represented institutional affiliation of the bank. Holding yearly conferences that bring together thousands of participants from elite financial, corporate, political, cultural, media and other institutions, the WEF is one of the principal forums for the global elite, with JPMorgan operating right there at the center.
The next most represented institution is the Trilateral Commission, with 5 individuals at JPMorgan Chase holding membership in the international think tank or "global policy group" uniting elites from North America, Western Europe and Japan (and now also including China, India, and other Pacific-rim nations). The Trilateral Commission itself was founded in 1973 by the CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank which later merged into JPMorgan Chase David Rockefeller.
In descending order, the other most highly represented institutions having cross membership between leadership positions with JPMorgan Chase are: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (4), the Business Council (4), Citigroup (4), Bilderberg (4), the Group of Thirty (4), Sara Lee Corporation (3), Harvard (3), American Express (3), American International Group (3), the Business Roundtable (3), Rolls Royce (3), the Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS (3), the European Round Table of Industrialists (3), the Peterson Institute for International Economics (2), the U.S.-China Business Council (2), and the National Petroleum Council (2).
Institutions which hold two individual cross leadership positions with JPMorgan Chase include: the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the University of Chicago, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., General Electric, Asia Business Council, the U.S. President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Coca-Cola Company, National Bank of Kuwait Advisory Board, INSEAD, China-United States Exchange Foundation, Mitsubishi, the Carlyle Group, and the IMF.
Meet the Elites at JPMorgan Chase
It's worth taking a look at some specific individuals who serve in a leadership and/or advisory capacity to JPMorgan Chase to get an idea of the composition of some of these global plutocrats.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, sits on the boards of directors of: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard Business School, and Catalyst. He is a Trustee of the New York University School of Medicine, a member of the Executive Committee of the Business Council, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Financial Services Forum, and a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Members of the board of JPMorgan Chase include James A. Bell, former President of Boeing and a current member of the board of Dow Chemical; Crandall C. Bowles, a director of Deere & Company and the Sara Lee Corporation, a former director of Wachovia, a Trustee of the Brookings Institution, on the Governing Board of the Wilderness Society, and a member of the Business Council and the Economic Club of New York. Other JPM board members include Stephen B. Burke, CEO of NBC Universal and Executive Vice President of Comcast Corporation; David M. Cote, the Chairman and CEO of Honeywell International who sits on President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, on the advisory panel to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), and is a member of the Trilateral Commission; and Lee Raymond, director of the Business Council for International Understanding, who sits on the advisory panel to KKR, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and former Chairman of the National Petroleum Council as well as former Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, from which he retired in 2006 with a compensation package of $398 million.
JPMorgan Chase has an International Council which provides advice to the bank's leadership on economic, political and social trends across various regions and around the world. The International Council is chaired by Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK, who also sits as an adviser to Zurich Financial. The Council includes Khalid A. Al-Falih, the President and CEO of Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabian Oil Company), the world's largest oil company, who also sits on the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is also on JPMorgan's International Council, and sits as Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Annan is also on the boards of the United Nations Foundation, the World Economic Forum, and he is a member of the Global Board of Advisors of the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Council includes the third richest man in Mexico, Alberto Bailléres, as well as the Chairman and CEO of Telecom Italia, Franco Bernabé, who was the former CEO of Eni, one of the world's largest oil companies (and Italy's largest corporation), as well as the former Vice Chairman of Rothschild Europe. Bernabé sits on the board of PetroChina, China's largest oil company. Bernabé is also a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists (a group of roughly 50 major European CEOs who directly advocate and work with EU political leaders in designing and implementing policy), he was a former Advisory Board member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the board of FIAT, and is actively a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings.
Martin Feldstein, a prominent Economics professor at Harvard and the President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research, is another member of the International Council. Feldstein was the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Ronald Reagan and sat on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (an "independent" group that advises the president on intelligence matters) under President George W. Bush (from 2007-2009). President Obama appointed Feldstein to the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and he also sits on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a member of the Trilateral Commission, a participant in Bilderberg Meetings, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait.
Gao Xi-Qing is the Vice Chairman, President and Chief Investment Officer of the China Investment Corporation (CIC), China's sovereign investment fund. He was referred to by the Atlantic as "the man who oversees $200 billion of China's $2 trillion in dollar holdings." Another notable Chinese member of the International Council is Tung Chee Hwa, the former Chief Executive and President of the Executive Council of Hong Kong, a core policy-making institution in the government of Hong Kong. Tung Chee Hwa is also the Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a major political advisory group in the People's Republic of China, once chaired by Mao Zedong. Tung Chee Hwa as well is the founder and Chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, and a former member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Carla A. Hills is the only woman on the JPMorgan International Council, and is Chairman and CEO of Hills & Company International, a global consulting firm. She was the former United States Trade Representative in the George H.W. Bush administration, where she was the primary negotiator for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She is also the Co-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations, and sits on the International Boards of Rolls Royce and the Coca-Cola Company, as well as sitting on the board of directors of Gilead Sciences. Hills is a Counselor and Trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major American think tank where she also sits as Co-Chair of the Advisory Board (alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission). In addition, Hills is a member of the Executive Committee of both the Trilateral Commission and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, as well as sitting on the boards of the International Crisis Group and the US-China Business Council, as Chair of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and Chair of the Inter-American Dialogue.
Henry Kissinger former U.S. Secretary of State, National Security Adviser to President Richard Nixon, and Secretary of State to President Ford also sits on the International Council of JPMorgan. Kissinger was a former adviser to Nelson Rockefeller, who recruited Kissinger as director of the Special Studies Project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in the 1950s. Kissinger was a director of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1977-1981, is a member of the Trilateral Commission, a former member of the Steering Committee and continuous participant in the Bilderberg Meetings, and is founder and chair of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting and advisory firm. Kissinger Chaired the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America during the Reagan administration, which provided justification for Reagan's wars in Central America, and he was also a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1984-1990, advising both Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Alongside Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger was a member of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy of the National Security Council and Defense Department, established in the late 1980s to develop a long-term strategy for the United States in the world. Kissinger has also been a member of the Defense Policy Board, providing "independent" advice to the Pentagon leadership on matters of foreign policy, from 2001 to the present, for both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Kissinger is also a Counselor and Trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Honorary Governor of the Foreign Policy Association, an Honorary Member of the International Olympic Committee, an adviser to the board of directors of American Express, and is a Trustee Emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition, Kissinger is a director of the International Rescue Committee, the Atlantic Institute, and is on the advisory board of the RAND Center for Global Risk and Security, as well as Honorary Chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation.
Mustafa V. Koc is also a member of the International Council, and is Chairman of Koc Holding AS, Turkey's largest multinational corporation. He also sits on the International Advisory Board of Rolls Royce, the Global Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings, a former member of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, and is Honorary Chairman of the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen's High Advisory Council.
Gérard Mestrallet is the Chairman and CEO of GDF Suez, one of the largest energy conglomerates in the world, and is on the board of Suez Environment (one of the major water privatization companies in the world), and also sits on the supervisory board of AXA, a major global French financial conglomerate. He is also an advisory board member of Siemens, and is a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists and the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.
John S. Watson is the Chairman and CEO of Chevron Corporation. He is on the board of the American Petroleum Institute and is a member of the National Petroleum Council, the Business Roundtable, the Business Council, the American Society of Corporate Executives, and the Chancellor's Board of Advisors of the University of California Davis. He is also a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.
The Chairman of JPMorgan Chase International, Jacob A. Frenkel, is Chairman and CEO of the Group of Thirty, and a member of the International Council. He is also a former Vice Chairman of American International Group (from 2004 to 2009, when it was rescued with the massive government bailout); the former Chairman of Merrill Lynch International (from 2000 to 2004), and the former Governor of the Bank of Israel (from 1991 to 2000). Frenkel was an Economic Counselor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund (from 1987 to 1991) and prior to that he was the David Rockefeller Professor of International Economics at the University of Chicago (from 1973 to 1987). In addition, Frenkel is the former Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank, and a former member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations. Frenkel is currently a member of the board of directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a member of the Trilateral Commission, member of the International Advisory Council of the China Development Bank, member of the board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, member of the Economic Advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, member of the Council for the United States and Italy, member of the Investment Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of Turkey, and sits on the board of Loews Corporation.
To sum: it should be clear, from the evidence, that the leadership of JPMorgan Chase is not an isolated group of individuals involved in finance and exclusively relegated to the banking world, but a highly networked and influential group consisting of central figures in the global plutocracy referred to as the "Transnational Capitalist Class" with significant economic, social and political power. To refer to JPMorgan Chase simply as "a bank" is like referring to the United States as just "a country." A geopolitical force unto itself, and a conglomerate embedded within a transnational network of elite institutions and individuals, JPMorgan Chase goes beyond the financial indicators. Put simply, it is one of the most powerful banks in the world.
Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals & Institutions of American Imperialism - Lauren Johnson - 21-07-2013
Anyone who has paid even minimal attention to the global economic and financial crises gripping the world since 2007 has heard the name Goldman Sachs. One of the largest banks in the United States, Goldman Sachs was central to the process of creating the housing bubble that popped in 2007-8, which led to the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. As Matt Taibbi famously documented in Rolling Stone, Goldman has been involved in "every major market manipulation since the Great Depression," profiting along the way as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
Let's go back to a little history.
In 2006 and 2007, as Goldman was selling high risk securities on home mortgages worth $40 billion, it was simultaneously betting against the housing market, ensuring that as the housing market crashed, the bank would make a significant profit. Thus, "the nation's premier investment bank pass[ed] most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies."
In late 2007, as the mortgage crisis was accelerating, executives at Goldman Sachs sent each other emails explaining that they would make "some serious money" betting against the housing market. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bank helped the market crash harder and faster.
A U.S. Senate investigation into Goldman Sachs concluded that the bank "profited from the financial crisis [which it helped cause] by betting billions against the subprime mortgage market, then deceived investors and Congress about the firm's conduct," and referred the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the bank for criminal or civil action.
As Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein himself stated: "We focused a lot of ourselves on trying to benefit from the crisis that happened... we were going to use that opportunity to make ourselves a better firm."
In 2012, however, President Obama's Justice Department announced that it would not pursue criminal charges against the bank. This, after the bank received over $12 billion in bailouts from the U.S. government to save the bank from the crisis that it created and profited from.
This, after Goldman Sachs helped create the Greek debt crisis for which entire populations of European countries are being punished into poverty while allowing the bank (among other banks) to continue to profit from the deepening depression and crisis in Europe.
This, after Goldman Sachs (along with other investment banks) helped create a global food crisis by speculating on food prices, sending the prices sky-high, then making immense profits while tens of millions of people around the world were pushed into hunger and starvation.
Obama's decision not to prosecute the bank, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that Goldman Sachs was one of the top contributors to the Obama campaign in 2008 and again to his re-election campaign in 2012.
CEO Blankfein turned more heads when he told CBS News in November of 2012: "You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people's expectations the entitlements and what people think that they're going to get, because it's not going to they're not going to get it." Suggesting that benefits like social security, Medicare and Medicaid were providing too much "support" to everyday people, Blankfein explained that "entitlements have to be slowed down and contained... because we can't afford them."
Apparently, the fact that Goldman Sachs received more than $10 billion in government welfare in exchange for its role helping to create a national and global financial crisis did not strike Blankfein as hypocrisy. The lesson he imparted: there is plenty of money to support the bank but not old-age pensioners. Because as Blankfein lectured the public about its need to "lower expectations" and lose its social benefits, bonuses for Wall Street executives were going up, with Goldman Sachs's bonuses and salaries for 2012 topping $13 billion.
Goldman's Reach into Other Institutions
For the Global Power Project, we examined a total of 83 individuals at Goldman Sachs, including executives, the board of directors, and several advisory boards. The most highly represented institution was Harvard University, where 12 (or 14%) of the 83 individuals hold leadership positions
.
Following Harvard was the Council on Foreign Relations, where 10 Goldman Sachs representatives are members. The University of Pennsylvania and the World Economic Forum each have five individuals sharing leadership positions with the bank; four individuals are affiliated with the Bilderberg Meetings, four with Columbia University; and three with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Brookings Institution, Rockefeller University, the Nature Conservancy, the Securities Industry Association, and the World Bank.
And the list goes on from there, as Goldman Sachs shares two individual leadership positions or affiliations with Tsinghua University, Cornell University, the Partnership for New York City, Wal-Mart, the Aspen Institute, New York University, Fannie Mae, Yale University, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Credit Suisse, Oxford, Barnard College, Prudential, the Bank of England, EastWest Institute, the London School of Economics, the Trilateral Commission, DiamlerChrysler, the OECD, the Central Park Conservancy, the Museum of Modern Art, Caterpillar, the International Rescue Committee and the Asia Society. The bank also includes two former European Commissioners.
Goldman Sachs shares one leadership position past or presently with the following institutions: the Financial Services Forum, Catalyst, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Stanford, Investor AB, Stockholm School of Economics, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, George W. Bush's National Economic Council, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Honeywell International, Target, UnitedHealth Group, Perseus, EADS, PepsiCo, Royal Philips Electronics, Zurich Financial, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BP, Allianz, European Round Table of Industrialists, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Siemens, the Bank of Spain, IMF, the Group of Thirty, the Population Council, the European Central Bank, Princeton, Soros Fund Management, New York Stock Exchange, the Ford Foundation, Google, BHP Billiton, and the People's Bank of China, among many others.
Meeting the Elites
There are several individuals holding leadership positions with Goldman Sachs who represent what we refer to as the global ruling class or global plutocracy by virtue of their multiple positions on numerous boards and advisory groups, think tanks, educational institutions, and other important institutions of influence, giving them unparalleled access to policy-makers around the world.
Let's start with Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who has been chairman and CEO of the bank since 2006, and who is also a member of the Dean's Advisory Board of Harvard Law School, a member of the Dean's Council of Harvard University and is a member of the Advisory Board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. Blankfein is also a member of the Board of Overseers of Weill Medical College at Cornell University, the board of directors of the Partnership for New York City, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is additionally a member of the board of Catalyst, Chairman of the Financial Services Forum and is a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Stephen Friedman is on the board of directors of Goldman Sachs and has been Chairman of Stone Point Capital since 2005. He was previously Chairman of President George W. Bush's Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board from 2006 to 2008, and was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York between 2008 and 2009. Friedman was also the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council in George W. Bush's White House from 2002 to 2004, and was previously the Chairman of Goldman Sachs. He is a Trustee of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a Trustee of Columbia University, a Trustee of the Aspen Institute, a former director of Wal-Mart and Fannie Mae, and is a member of the board of advisers of the Center for New American Security and the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Also on the board of Goldman Sachs is Lakshmi N. Mittal, a director of ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company, and is also a director of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) N.V., as well as a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Kellogg School of Management, a member of the Executive Committee of the World Steel Association, a member of the Foreign Investment Council of the Government of Kazakhstan, a member of the Indian Prime Minister's Global Advisory Council, a member of the International Advisory Board to the President of Mozambique, and a member of the Domestic and Foreign Investors Advisory Council to the President of the Ukraine.
The Chairman of Goldman Sachs International is Peter D. Sutherland, former Attorney General of Ireland from 1981 to 1984, who was European Commissioner for Competition Policy in the EU from 1985 to 1989, after which he was Chairman of Allied Irish Banks from 1989 to 1993. Between 1990 and 1995, Sutherland was Chairman of the European Institute of Public Administration, and was the Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) from 1993 and the first Director-General when it became the World Trade Organization (WTO), which he led until 1995. Sutherland was the Chairman of BP from 1997 to 2009, the former CEO of Ericsson, a former Director of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and former Chairman of the General Assembly and President of the Advisory Council of the European Policy Center. Sutherland was additionally the former European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission from 2000 to 2009, and remains at the Trilateral Commission as a member and Honorary European Chairman. He was previously the Vice Chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists, from 2006 to 2009. He is a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, the Supervisory Board of Allianz SE, a member of the boards of BW Group and Koc Holding, and President of the Federal Trust. He is a former member of the Council of International Advisors to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, ia member of the Board of Directors Emeriti of the European Institute, and is on the International Advisory Board of BritishAmerican Business. Sutherland is also the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN for Migration and Development and has been the Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (financial adviser to the Pope).
Senator Judd Gregg, a member of the International Advisory Board of Goldman Sachs, is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1980 to 1988, former Governor of New Hampshire from 1989 to 1993, and a U.S. Senator from 1993 to 2011. As a Senator, Gregg was the Chief Negotiator for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (the bailout bill), and is a member of President Obama's Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. He is also a Senior Adviser to New Mountain Capital, and is on the boards of IntercontinentalExchange and Honeywell International.
Another member of Goldman Sachs' International Advisory Board is Lord Griffiths of Forestfach, a member of the British House of Lords and member of the board of directors of Times Newspaper Holdings Ltd and Telereal Trillium. He is Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, was a former Professor at the London School of Economics, former Dean at City University Business School, and was a director of the Bank of England from 1983 to 1985. Between 1985 and 1990, he was the head of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit, where he "was a chief architect of the government's privatization and deregulation programs." In 2009, following a record-breaking $22 billion that was given out to Goldman Sachs executives and leadership in payment and bonuses, Lord Griffiths told a British audience that they should "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all."
Victor Halberstadt, a member of the International Advisory Board of Goldman Sachs, is also a Professor of Economics at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and former Crown-Member of the Netherlands Social-Economic Council. He is former Chairman of the International Advisory Board of DiamlerChrysler, former advisor to the Secretary-General of the OECD, former member of the Council on Defence for the Government of the Netherlands, and former Informateur to the Queen of the Netherlands, as well as the former President of the International Institute of Public Finance. Halberstadt is a former Honorary Secretary-General of the Bilderberg Meetings, where he remains as a member of the Steering Committee, and is a director of ING Group, Stork, DiamlerChrysler, KPN and PA Consulting Group. He is a member of the board of Koc University, the Lee Kuan Yew School for Public Policy in Singapore, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Population Council. He is additionally Chairman of the Board of the American European Community Association (AECA), a member of the board of the Netherlands Opera and is a member of the Faculty of the World Economic Forum.
A Senior Director of Goldman Sachs is John C. Whitehead, who was former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State in the Reagan administration from 1985 to 1989, the founding Chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and was an employee, partner, Co-Chairman and Senior Partner for Goldman Sachs between 1947 and 1976. He is a former member of the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange, former Chairman of the Securities Industry Association, former Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, former Chairman of the United Nations Association, the International Rescue Committee, International House, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and former Chairman of the Harvard Board of Overseers. Whitehead is an Honorary Life Trustee and former Chairman of the Asia Society, Chairman Emeriti of the International Rescue Committee, a former director of the Nature Conservancy, a board member emeriti of the Watson Institute for International Studies and a director emeriti of the EastWest Institute. He is former Chairman of the Hungarian-American Enterprise Fund, a former member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings, Chair Emeriti of the Brookings Institution, a Commissioner of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a member of the board of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
It's not surprising that with individuals like Stephen Friedman, Peter Sutherland and John C. Whitehead holding leadership positions with Goldman Sachs, the bank has established a highly influential network of affiliations with some of the world's major institutions and policy-makers. The "vampire squid" has indeed spread its tentacles far beyond mere financial influence; through its affiliations with global plutocrats who serve on its boards, Goldman is a cosmopolitical conglomerate with ever-expansive power.
Even mother nature can't seem to take on Goldman Sachs. When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in November of 2012, power was knocked out for more than 1 million New Yorkers. But the bank's 200 West Street headquarters were shining bright, "lights glowing and music playing." With heaps and sandbags surrounding the building and generators running, Goldman sent off a lone, ominous blue glow into the stormy night: a symbol to all that even in the worst of circumstances, amid a sea of human suffering, Goldman Sachs remains ever present, lights on...doing business and making money.
Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals & Institutions of American Imperialism - Jan Klimkowski - 21-07-2013
It's all there.
Hidden in plain sight.
But anyone who dares articulate these truths is branded "a Conspiracy Theorist".
They are cast out and their analysis is delegitimized.
Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals & Institutions of American Imperialism - Lauren Johnson - 05-09-2013
This July, Bank of America was expecting to report an earnings increase of 32% from last year. The Washington Business Journal declared the bank among the top 10 "most improved brands" of the year. Bank of America is the second-largest bank in the United States following JPMorgan Chase.
So why does this bank deserve such an "improved" reputation? Perhaps it's worth looking at a little of the bank's record for some clarity.
During the first year of the global financial crisis, which the big banks helped to create and which they profited enormously from, the government stepped in to bail out Bank of America. They rewarded the bank $20 billion for its massive financial crimes, as well as a special guarantee for nearly $100 billion of potential losses on the balance sheets of Merrill Lynch, which Bank of America acquired during the crisis.
As it turns out, Bank of America and other big banks continue to get "backdoor bailouts" through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which acts as a legal guarantor and protector of the Wall Street chain gang of criminal conglomerates. The bank was recently added to a list, compiled by a corporate watchdog group, of the "dirty dozen" criminal financial institutions for its role deceiving investors, committing mortgage and foreclosure abuses and engaging in municipal bond rigging and illegal payments.
When Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone that Bank of America was "a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time," he wasn't exaggerating. Thebank foreclosed on tens of thousands of Americans through a "mass perjury" scheme and pushed worthlessmortgages on pension funds and unions. As several big banks including BofA, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup agreed to pay a $25 billion settlement with the government over "abusive mortgage practices," the Department of Justice granted the banks what amounted to legal immunity "from civil government claims over faulty foreclosures." In January, Bank of America settled to pay $11.6 billion to the government-controlled mortgage company Fannie Mae in response to a legal battle over "bad loans."
In June of 2013, six former BofA employees and one contractor issued sworn statements in which they accused the bank of lying to homeowners, fraudulently denying loan modifications and paying bonuses to staff who pushed people into foreclosure. One of the whistleblowers commented, "we were told to lie to customers." Employees that pushed ten or more homeowners per month into foreclosure would receive a $500 bonus, and the Bank also "gave employees gift cards to retail stores like Target or Bed Bath and Beyond as rewards for placing accounts into foreclosure."
Further, anyone who "questioned the ethics" of the bank's practices was summarily fired - a policy that led to a lawsuit in which homeowners accused the bank of racketeering "to defraud homeowners who sought modifications and then acted as the kingpin of that [racketeering] enterprise."
Of course, it doesn't end there. Bank of America, along with multiple other big banks, has been accused of laundering money for Mexican drug cartels. The FBI confirmed that BofA was involved in laundering drug money for the Los Zetas drug cartel in Mexico. However, in a twist of fine news for the bank, U.S. government regulators indicated they would not hold the bank responsible for its actions.
Banking on Influence
So how does a massive criminal enterprise engaging in large-scale fraud, racketeering and money laundering get a free pass from the U.S. government? The bank's financial clout in the economy certainly plays a part. But so too do its affiliations with dominant national and international organizations, institutionalizing the bank within the larger global power structures and the elites who run them.
Research conducted for the Global Power Project found 28 individuals at Bank of America, including executives and members of board of directors, with institutional affiliations. Four of the individuals who hold leadership positions at BofA are also affiliated with the major foreign-policy think tank in the United States: the Council on Foreign Relations. Three individuals are connected to Morgan Stanley, another major financial institution, while two affiliations exist with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (promoting big business "solutions" to environmental crises), the Business Council, Catalyst, Duke University, Stanford University, and BlackRock.
The following institutions each also hold one individual affiliated with Bank of America: Royal Dutch Shell, DuPont, Deere & Company, the World Wildlife Fund, the President's Export Council, Harvard, the World Economic Forum, Brookings Institution, Sara Lee Corporation, Monsanto, CBS Corporation, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Walt Disney Company, President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, the Rockefeller Foundation, Business Roundtable, Financial Services Forum, PepsiCo, Carlyle Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, Goldman Sachs, the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait.
Meet the Elites
Bank of America's CEO, Brian T. Moynihan, was a former executive vice president at Fleet Boston and director of BlackRock. He is currently a member of the Business Roundtable and Vice Chairman of the Financial Services Forum, as well as being a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Charles O. Holliday, Jr. is the Chairman of the Board of Bank of America and a director of Royal Dutch Shell, and was the CEO of DuPont from 1998 to 2009. He was the former Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Business Council, Catalyst, the Society of Chemical Industry, and is a founding member of the International Business Council. Holliday is a director of Deere & Company, a member of the board of Planet Forward, Climate Works Foundation, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, and is a member of the board of directors of the National Geographic Education Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Mukesh D. Ambani is a member of the board of Bank of America and is the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries. He is a member of the Global Board of Advisors of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry for the Government of India, a member of the board of governors of the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi, and a member of the Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group. Ambani is also a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Indo-U.S. CEOs Forum, a member of the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, Vice Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Additionally Ambani is a member of the Business Council, the India-Russia CEO Council, Co-Chair of the Japan-India Business Leader's Forum, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, and is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution.
Monica C. Lozano is Chairman and CEO of ImpreMedia and CEO of La Opinion, as well as a member of the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company. She is also a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California, a Trustee of the University of Southern California and a director of the Weingart Foundation, as well as a member of the board of directors of the Commission of the 21st Century Economy. Lozano was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board from 2009-2011, and has since been a member of President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Charles O. Rossotti is a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group and was the Commissioner of the IRS from 1997 to 2002, also sitting on the board of directors of Booz Allen Hamilton, Quorum Management Solutions, Primatics Financial and AES Corporation. He too is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Linda P. Hudson, who sits on the board of BofA, is the President and CEO of the military contractor BAE Systems, and former Vice President of General Dynamics. Hudson sits on the board of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and on the executive committee of the Aerospace Industries Association. She is a member of the University of Florida Foundation Board and the International Women's Forum.
Anne M. Finucance, who is the Global Strategy and Marketing Officer at Bank of America, is also a director of Partners HealthCare System, CVS Caremark Corporation, a trustee of Stonehill College and Carnegie Hall, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Finucance sits on the boards of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the American Ireland Fund, the International Center of Journalists, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
Banking on America?
Bank of America is, in short, a profound symbol of much that is wrong on Wall Street: massive fraud, money laundering, racketeering, conspiracy, and weighty influence in Washington and beyond. Surely it's comforting to know that a woman who sits on the board of BofA, Monica Lozano, also sits on President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, advising the president as to how to appropriately manage the economic "recovery". In terms of the media reporting on Bank of America's crimes, Lozano, as CEO of a media company and board member of the Walt Disney Company, along with BofA board member Charles K. Gifford who sits on the board of directors of CBS Corporation signal that a "fair" portrayal of the bank's activities aren't exactly what the public should expect.
What is clear is that Bank of America, like all big banks in our era, isn't merely a financial institution but simultaneously acts as an influential institution in the media, military industrial complex, think tanks, chemical companies and government circles.
The bank is too big to fail. Too big to jail. And too connected to change.
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2013/07/17/global-power-project-part-6-banking-on-influence-with-bank-of-america/
Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals & Institutions of American Imperialism - Lauren Johnson - 05-09-2013
In the second quarter of 2013, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, Citigroup, posted a 42% increase in profits which CEO Michael Corbat praised as a "well balanced" result of "cost cutting" programs, including the firing of 11,000 workers.
This big bank has a sordid history of predatory profiteering and criminal activity, not unlike all the other large banks. In the early 20th century, what was then National City Bank was the main bank for the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests. Over ensuing decades and mergers it eventually came to be Citibank, and in the late 1990s, Citigroup. At that time, the bank was dealing with accusations that it had aided in the laundering of roughly $100 million in payoffs by Mexican drug cartels.
In 2000, the mega-bank was accused of abusing borrowers and clients through predatory lending practices. The bank aroused further controversy by helping Enron evade financial rules which allowed the company to hide its real financial reporting from government regulators. In 2005, Citigroup paid a $2 billion settlement to Enron investors who had filed a class-action lawsuit against the bank for helping Enron hide billions of dollars in debt.
A 2005 report by Citigroup created the term plutonomy' to describe the modern state capitalist system in which there is only the rich "and everyone else"; an economy in which the rich increasingly become the consuming class, driven to a significant degree by "disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, [and] capitalist friendly cooperative governments."
Referencing the United States, the U.K., Australia and Canada as modern plutonomies, Citigroup global strategist Ajay Kapur noted, "The Plutonomy is here, is going to get stronger, its membership is swelling," and while the "risks" of plutonomies include "war, inflation, financial crises, the end of the technological revolution and populist political pressure," Kapur noted that "the rich are likely to keep getting even richer, and enjoy an even greater share of the wealth pie over the coming years." Indeed, Citigroup would ensure that this was the case.
In the 1990s, Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin helped to deregulate Wall Street and allow for massive mergers and the proliferation of dangerous financial instruments in the derivatives market, which helped create the future housing crisis. After leaving the White House, Rubin became an adviser to Citigroup, and ultimately the bank's chairman, where he helped push the mega-bank further down the path taken by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to build up an unprecedented housing bubble. When the inevitable happened, Citigroup owned tens of billions of dollars in bad debts. Meanwhile, Robert Rubin was appointed as an economic adviser to the transition team for President Obama.
Citigroup was subsequently bailed out by the federal government, that is, the U.S. taxpayer, and became the largest single recipient of bailout funds totaling some $476.2 billion in cash and guarantees. Citigroup was essentially put into receivership by the government, which decided to reward the bank after its highly effective and efficient participation in the destruction of the economy. The U.S. Treasury eventually sold the last of its shares in Citigroup in 2010.
Since that time, the bank has been quietly settling civil complaints and lawsuits, further proving that criminal activity by major financial institutions comes down to a cost-benefit analysis: if the cost of committing massive crimes is less than the benefit of engaging in such criminal activity, there is little incentive to obey the law rather than pay comparably lower fines after breaking it.
Between 2003 and 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Citigroup of securities fraud five separate times, with the bank agreeing to pay settlements in each case, amounting to a slap on the wrist from the SEC. As a Bloomberg report stated bluntly, for Citigroup "obeying the law is too damn hard." Or rather, simply, it is unnecessary.
In 2011, Citigroup paid a $285 million settlement with the SEC for defrauding investors. In 2012, the bank paid another settlement of $590 million for defrauding investors, though it made sure not to admit guilt as the payment was "solely to eliminate the uncertainties, burden and expense of further protracted litigation." In 2013, Citigroup agreed to pay a further $968 million to Fannie Mae over the bad mortgage loans it sold to the company in the run-up to the financial crisis.
But before you assume that Citigroup simply defrauded investors and other institutions, know this: the bank also undertook foreclosures on hundreds of U.S. military members during the financial crisis, often while the military personnel were in Iraq or Afghanistan. After illegally foreclosing on military personnel while they were overseas fighting wars for the America's imperialists and profiteers, Citigroup made a later appearance in Iraq, announcing in 2013 that it would be the first U.S. bank to open a branch in Bagdad "as major international oil groups as well as industrial and construction companies are looking to invest in Iraq."
Iraq is just the latest hub of overseas criminal financial activities for Citigroup, which has meanwhile been struggling to "comply" with anti-money laundering laws after also participating in the largest financial scam in history: the Libor rate-rigging scandal. At the same time, the bank has been dooming the European Union's crisis countries (namely Greece) to a faster decline, issuing self-fulfilling reports that suggest the region is headed for further crisis, thus reducing investor confidence and pushing the crisis-hit economies into even deeper crisis.
In sum, Citigroup's fraudulent lifestyle with its increased quarterly profits is one more example of how the institutions of the financial system function as criminal conglomerates on a scale far surpassing any Mafia on record. And of course, for such criminal activity to go unpunished, the institution cannot exist in isolation. In fact, like all other big banks, Citigroup is heavily integrated in the national and increasingly international structure of elite institutions, with cross-membership between major corporations, think tanks, governmental positions, media and educational institutions.
Thirty-seven individuals on the executive committee and board of directors of Citigroup were examined for the Global Power Project. The most represented institution was the Council on Foreign Relations, with six individual affiliations, followed by Morgan Stanley, Banco Nacional de Mexico (Banamex), American Express, the Foreign Policy Association, IBM, the Brookings Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University, and Stanford University, among many others.
Meet the Elites
On the board of directors of Citigroup is Franz B. Humer, the chairman of Roche Holding, a major pharmaceutical conglomerate. Humer also sits on the International Advisory Council of JPMorgan Chase, and is chairman of INSEAD, chairman of Diageo Plc, a member of the international advisory board of Allianz SE, a member of the board of Jacobs Holdings, and a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists (which advises EU leaders on promoting policies beneficial to large corporate and financial interests). Humer also serves, comfortingly, as chairman of the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Judith Rodin, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, is on the board of Citigroup. Rodin also served as the President of the University of Pennsylvania from 1994-2004, after which she remained as President Emerita. A former Provost of Yale University, Rodin also serves as a director of Comcast Corporation, AMR Corporation, the World Trade Memorial Foundation and Carnegie Hall. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former honorary director of the Brookings Institution. Additionally, Rodin is a member of the board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) a joint venture between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote the advancement of GMOs in Africa and she served as a member of the High Level Panel of the African Development Bank. Rodin currently serves as a member of the international advisory council of the Mary Robinson Foundation, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. She is also a participant in the World Economic Forum, the Global Humanitarian Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative's "poverty alleviation track," and she is a board member of Obama's White House Council for Community Solutions.
Another member of the Citigroup board is Ernesto Zedillo, the former President of Mexico from 1994 to 2000, who was pivotal in implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), much to the benefit of big banks and corporations, and to the detriment of poor and working people. Zedillo had previously served a number of positions in the Mexican government, including deputy director of the Bank of Mexico. Currently, Zedillo is the director of the Center for the Study of Globalization and an International Economics and Politics professor at Yale University. He is a member of the Group of Thirty, on the board of directors of Alcoa and Procter & Gamble, and on the international advisory boards of both BP, Rolls-Royce and ACE Ltd.. He is additionally an adviser to the Credit Suisse Research Institute, a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, a former member of the Trilateral Commission, the former chairman of the Global Development Network, a former chair of the High Level Commission on Modernization of the World Bank Group Governance, a former member of the international advisory board of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Coca-Cola Company, a former member of the Global Development Program Advisory Panel of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and he is currently a member of the board of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
William R. Rhodes, another Citigroup board member, serves as a senior advise to Citi and is president and CEO of William R. Rhodes Global Advisors. A director of the Private Export Funding Corporation, Rhodes is a senior adviser to the World Economic Forum, the global management firm Oliver Wyman, vice chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a director of the Korea Society and the U.S.-China Business Council, a member of Korean President Lee's Council of Global Advisors, a member of the international advisory board of the National Bank of Kuwait, a senior adviser to the Dalian Government in China, a member of the private sector advisory board of the Inter-American Development Bank, a member of the international policy committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a member of the board of the Foreign Policy Association, and a trustee of the Asia Society and the Economic Club of New York. Rhodes is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Group of Thirty, the Lincoln Center Consolidated Corporate Fund Leadership Committee, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Business Committee, and he sits on the advisory council of the Brazilian American Chamber of Commerce. He is a former vice chairman of the Institute of International Finance, a chairman emeritus of the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas, a director of the U.S.-Russia Business Council and the U.S.-Hong Kong Business Council, a chairman of the U.S.-Korea Business Council, a trustee and member of the board of governors of the New York Presbyterian Hospital, a chairman of the board of trustees of the Northfield Mount Hermon School, and a member of the board of overseers of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
Like all the big banks, Citigroup is heavily integrated with other dominant institutions in American and international society, which helps explain why the bank can break so many laws and get away with it. It's not simply financial weight that makes this bank "too big to fail" and "too big to jail." It's the institutional affiliations that also help make it that way.
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2013/07/24/global-power-project-part-7-banking-on-influence-with-citigroup/
Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals & Institutions of American Imperialism - Lauren Johnson - 05-09-2013
Morgan Stanley, one of the largest banks in the United States, reported a 66% increase in earnings in July over the same period last year. Morgan Stanley had taken more than $107 billion of U.S. taxpayer money through the bailout programs in the wake of the financial crisis that it helped to create, making it the largest U.S. recipient of bailout funds.
Like the other big banks, Morgan Stanley had been busy paying settlements for the massive criminal fraud conspiracies it engaged in, particularly related to the housing crisis. In 2011, the banks came to a $40 million settlement with the state of Nevada over mortgage fraud.
In 2012, Morgan Stanley paid a settlement of $4.8 million regarding electricity price-fixing charges leveled against the bank in New York State, costing consumers roughly $300 million, after generating $22 million in revenue for the bank. In a settlement over foreclosure fraud in 2013, the bank along with Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $557 million to more than 200,000 homeowners who had been foreclosed on.
A former real estate executive for Morgan Stanley pleaded guilty in 2012 to violating anti-corruption laws, and was "charged with secretly acquiring millions of dollars' worth of property investments for himself and a Chinese government official." In 2012, one Morgan Stanley executive was charged with a hate crime for using racial slurs and stabbing a cab driver of Egyptian descent, after having refused to pay the cab fare.
And yet it's not simply enough for this financial behemoth to defraud the American public and profit from the economic crisis it helped create. It has also managed to profit from increasing hunger and land grabs across the so-called Third World. As big banks speculate on food prices, they drive the costs of food up, sparking food riots and increasing hunger across much of the world while making banks a nice profit in the process.
The three financial institutions most active in food speculation are Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Thus, as millions more people get pushed into hunger, rest assured: Morgan Stanley will be there to swoop up the profits, as untold numbers of people get displaced and foreign investors purchase their lands at giveaway prices. In just one example, Morgan Stanley bought 40,000 hectares of land in Ukraine.
Thus, based on mortgage fraud, the housing crisis, bailouts, the food crisis and the great global land grabs, it's fair to say that Morgan Stanley is a bank seeking profits at the expense of people, the environment and the world at large. The Global Power Project investigated 24 individuals on both the executive committee and board of directors of Morgan Stanley. The most highly represented institution shared by elites at Morgan Stanley is the Council on Foreign Relations, with six individual affiliations between the two organizations.
It is followed by four mutual affiliations with McKinsey & Co., and three affiliations each between the bank and the former Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America), Columbia University, the Brookings Institution, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Further, the bank has two individual affiliations with each of the following: the World Economic Forum, the Business Council, Merck & Co., President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the Conference Board, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Stanford University and Alcoa.
Meet the Elites
James P. Gorman is Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, a former executive at Merrill Lynch, and a former Senior Partner at McKinsey & Co. He is a current member of the Board of Overseers of Columbia Business School, a member of the Business Council, the Partnership for New York City, the Financial Services Forum, the board of directors of the Institute of International Finance, and the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Klaus Kleinfeld is on the board of directors of Morgan Stanley, and is Chairman and CEO of Alcoa, the world's leading aluminum producer. Kleinfeld is also the former CEO of Siemens and a former director of Citigroup. He is a member of the Supervisory Board of Bayer AG, Chairman of the Board of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, a Trustee of the Conference Board, and a member of the Business Roundtable, the Board of Trustees of the Brookings Institution, the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, the board of directors of the World Economic Forum USA, the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Meetings.
Hutham S. Olayan is Senior Executive Director of the Olayan Group, President and CEO of Olayan America Corporation, and is a Trustee of the American University of Beirut. She is a member of the board of directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a member of the International Board of the U.S.-Middle East Project, and a member of the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution. She is founding member of the Arab Bankers Association of North America, a member of the board of the MasterCard Foundation, a member of the International Advisory Board of the Blackstone Group, a member of the boards of Georgetown University and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and is a Counselor of the Conference Board. Olayan is a member of the Advisory Council of the Carnegie Middle East Center and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
James W. Owens is the former Chairman and CEO of Caterpillar, and a member of the board of directors of IBM, Alcoa and the Council on Foreign Relations. Owens is also Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, a Senior Advisor to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), a former Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Business Council, and a former member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of North Carolina State University.
Laura Tyson, who sits on the board of Morgan Stanley, is Professor of Global Management at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, and is former Dean of the London Business School and former Dean of Haas Business School. Tyson was the former National Economic Adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1996 and was a member of President Clinton's National Security Council and Domestic Policy Council, as well as Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Tyson was director of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1997 to 2007, where she remains as a member, and is also a member of the MIT Corporation, as well as a former member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. A Senior Advisor to McKinsey Global Institute, Credit Suisse Research Institute, The Rock Creek Group, and a Senior Fellow of the Center for American Progress, Tyson is currently a member of President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Policy Board to the U.S. Secretary of State since 2011. She is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project, a member of the board of AT&T, a former member of the board of Eastman Kodak Company from 1997 to 2011, and a member of the board of CB Richard Ellis and Silver Spring Network. Tyson is additionally a former director of New America Foundation, a former member of the board of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, and currently sits as a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum, the advisory board of Generation Investment Management and H&Q Asia Pacific, as well as a member of the National Academies' Board on Science, Technology and Economic Policy and on the board of directors of the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget.
At Morgan Stanley, like elsewhere among the big Wall Street banks, an elite class of individuals connected through their institutional affiliations and social groups exert incredible influence over finance, corporations, the government, media, policy, educational institutions and global society at large. Regardless of the immense suffering that Morgan Stanley and its like institutions inflict on the world, so long as it is able to profit from that suffering, it considers itself safe and secure.
Too big to fail. Too big to jail. Too cancerous to care.
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2013/08/09/global-power-project-part-9-banking-on-influence-with-morgan-stanley/
Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals & Institutions of American Imperialism - Lauren Johnson - 05-09-2013
TransCanada Corporation describes itself as "a leader in the responsible development and reliable and safe operation of North American energy infrastructure." Beginning in 2005, the company announced plans for the Keystone XL pipeline. In 2010, Canada's National Energy Board (NEB) approved the full pipeline project, stating that it was in the "public interest" to transport Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast in the United States.
If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline would transport oil from Alberta through six U.S. states: Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Russ Girling, President and CEO of TransCanada, said the project would "improve U.S. energy security and reduce dependence on foreign oil from the Middle East and Venezuela."
As opposition to the pipeline project increased and dramatically so in the wake of BP's 2010 Gulf oil spill Girling stated, "There is no way we could have ever predicted that we would become the lightning rod for a debate around fossil fuels and the development of the Canadian oil sands...The pipeline itself is routine. It's something we do every day. It will be a safe pipeline."
Canada's National Energy Board, however, said that TransCanada had failed to meet safety standards for its pipeline within Canada. While the company "considered itself compliant," a former TransCanada employee blew the whistle on TransCanada's "culture of noncompliance" of environmental and safety regulations that posed "significant public safety risks," and referred to the company's approach as "organized crime."
In the United States, TransCanada has been suing American citizens who refuse to allow the pipeline to cross their property, threatening to confiscate their lands through the application of "eminent domain," which allows for the confiscation of private property if "it is judged to serve a larger public good."
The U.S. State Department was responsible for undertaking an "environmental assessment" of the pipeline to determine whether or not it would be approved. Declassified documents revealed an intense lobbying effort by TransCanada with the State Department, including several officials with the company holding multiple meetings with high-level State Department officials.
TransCanada has hired multiple lobbying firms and individuals, many of whom have direct ties to the Obama administration. This potentially even includes ties to Obama's personal lawyer as well as to a former campaign adviser. In the first half of 2013, TransCanada spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying the United States on the Keystone project.
In 2013, the Canadian government announced its intentions to fund a massive $16 million PR campaign for the Canadian oil and energy industry in the United States, with a "key part" of the funding going toward promoting the Keystone project. This is part of an agenda decided in March of 2010, when officials from the Canadian federal government and the Alberta government met with oil and gas industry CEOs to discuss "upping their game" in promoting the tar sands.
By 2013, there were roughly 48 different groups lobbying the U.S. government on the issue of the Keystone project, and all but two appeared to be lobbying in favor of the project. While a good deal of the promotions for the project emphasized that it would create thousands and potentially tens of thousands of jobs, these jobs were almost exclusively temporary, and the State Department's own assessment noted that the actual number of full-time jobs that would be created by the pipeline would be 20.
Then, in early March of 2013, the State Department released a 2,000-page draft report assessing the environmental impact of the Keystone project. The State Department had contracted the writing of the report to "experts" who had previously worked for TransCanada. In fact, TransCanada even paid the consultancy firm to write the report, which was subsequently considered an official government document of the State Department.
Not surprisingly, the Canadian government and the oil industry praised the report, while environmentalists and climate scientists criticized it as "deeply flawed." Both the EPA and the Department of Interior have subsequently slammed the report as "insufficient" and "inaccurate."
The government of Canada has, for years, been writing laws and implementing major policies at the direct suggestion of the oil industry, and has increasingly been demonizing those who protest against the policies, especially indigenous and environmental groups.
The Canadian government has been increasingly equating protest groups with "terrorists," and Canada's spy agencies have been providing information about protesters directly to energy corporations, and even infiltrating such groups in an effort to disrupt their actions. TransCanada provided training information to police agencies across the U.S. in which they refer to anti-pipeline protests as "terrorism."
Meet the Elites at TransCanada Corporation
Russell K. Girling is the president and CEO of TransCanada and is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), an interest group that consists of Canada's top 150 CEOs and was the main driving force behind corporate treaty projects like NAFTA. Girling is also a member of the U.S. National Petroleum Council and the U.S. Business Roundtable, as well as being a board member of Agrium Inc., an agribusiness conglomerate. Girling was also the co-chair of the City of Calgary 2012 United Way campaign.
Derek Burney, who sits on the board of TransCanada, is a senior advisor to the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, chairman of the international advisory board of GardaWorld, a member of the advisory board of Paradigm Capital, and a member of the board of governors of Ottawa Hospital. Burney is the former chairman of the board of CanWest Global Communications Corporation (formerly Canada's largest newspaper conglomerate) from 2006 to 2010, former president and CEO of CAE Inc. (1999 to 2004), former chairman and CEO of Bell Canada (1993 to 1999), and was the former lead director of Shell Canada from 2001 to 2007.
On top of that, Burney was the Canadian ambassador to the United States from 1989 to 1993, following two years serving as chief of staff to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in which time he was a pivotal figure involved in the negotiations of NAFTA. Burney was also the Prime Minister's personal representative to the G-7 Summits between 1990 and 1992. He is the chancellor of Lakehead University, and was the head of the Conservative Transition Team in 2006 for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, after which time he was appointed to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan (2007 to 2008). Burney is a distinguished alumni of the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute and is a member of the distinguished advisory council of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
Richard E. Waugh is a member of the board and CEO of The Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank), a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), a director of the International Monetary Conference (IMC), an international meeting of bankers, and is vice chair of the board of directors of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the largest and most influential international banking lobbying group. Waugh is also a member of the Council of the Americas, a member of the international advisory council of The Americas Society, a board member and chair of the Canada advisory board of Catalyst. He is also a member of the advisory councils of the Schulich School of Business at York University, the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, as well as being the former campaign chair for the United Way of Toronto, and the current co-chair of the Canada-Brazil CEO Forum.
Members of the board of TransCanada sit on the boards of multiple other energy and oil companies, media conglomerates, military contractors, banks, interest groups and think tanks, as well as having served in top government positions. The elites at TransCanada have the connections to push the Keystone pipeline down the throats of North Americans, to destroy the environment, and make a handsome profit in the process.
As Utah Phillips once wrote, "The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses."
- See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/global-power-project-part-10-transcanada-corporation-kings-keystone-pipeline#sthash.jSvQhHjo.dpuf