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by
Patrick M. Wood
formerly titled 'For Sale: The United
States of America'
from
AugustReview Website
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How well has America fared
in the last 25 years?
As a country, are we financially
healthier or are we on the verge of a melt-down?
These issues are explored, along with some concrete
examples of how the "money-laundry" works.
The
Trilateral Commission's
1973 vision of a "New International Economic Order " has
swept the world like a hurricane. |
Introduction
In 1978,
Trilaterals Over Washington revealed the global strategy of
the Trilateral Commission and it's co-founders
David Rockefeller and
Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski, in particular, provided the
intellectual reasoning and political strategy for the "New
International Economic Order".
Brzezinski was also an astute political operator. He is credited as
the first person to take interest in Jimmy Carter, to mentor him in
globalism starting in 1973 when Carter was chosen to be part of the
Trilateral Commission.
Upon Carter's election victory in 1976,
Brzezinski was appointed National Security Advisor. By the end of
1976, Carter had appointed no less than 19 members of the Trilateral
Commission to high-ranking government positions. These 19 members
represented just under 20% of the entire U.S. delegation of the
Trilateral Commission.
The stage was now set for their power to become permanently
embedded.
Each successive Administration has been disproportionally
dominated by members of the Trilateral Commission:
Each administration
filled top posts from the Trilateral Commission. Think-tanks
connected to the Trilateral Commission cranked out volumes of
studies that droned on and on about the New International Economic
Order and the need for political change.
Looking backward to Brzezinski, however, is necessary because he
most clearly and lucidly embodied the heart and soul of the rush to
globalism. He created the watershed that initiated the plundering of
America and the buildup of the global corporate elite. This issue
intends to quantify the extent of this plundering.
Brzezinski was interviewed in 1974 by the Brazilian newspaper
Vega:
"How would you define this new world
order?"
Brzezinski declared,
"...the reality of our times is that
a modern society such as the U.S. needs a central coordinating
and renovating organ which cannot be made up of six hundred
people."
In his 1969 book Between Two Ages:
America's Role in the Technetronic Era, he wrote that the,
"nation-state as a fundamental unit
of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative
force: International banks and multinational corporations are
acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the
political concepts of the nation-state."
Indeed, members of the Trilateral
Commission chosen from north America, Europe and Asia (mostly
Japan), are all in agreement on this point -- the nation-state only
gets in the way of so-called "free trade" and therefore must be
closely manipulated for their own common good.
Collectively, they
have taken a self-induced quantum leap above national law, into an
elevated position of making their own rules as they go. We see some
direct evidence of such an attitude, for instance, when President
Bill Clinton had no particular legal qualms (or consequences) of
giving (free or for money) top-secret missile technology to
Communist China.
The gathering of corporate elites in the Trilateral Commission
started with names such as:
-
Coca Cola
-
Ford Motor
-
Deere & Co.
-
Hewlett-Packard
-
Cargill
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Chase Manhattan Bank
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Cummins Engine
-
Texas Instruments
-
Honeywell
-
Bechtel Corporation
-
Weyerhauser
-
General Motors
-
Boeing
-
and many others....
Today, we see the same kind
of makeup:
...just to name a few.
To summarize then, the real plundering of America started with the
founding of the Trilateral Commission in 1973 and the consolidation
of power in 1976 with the dominance of the Carter Administration.
When one begins to see the pattern emerging, many unanswered
questions start to clear up. Why does President George Bush so
pointedly want to eliminate the U.S./Mexican border? Why the
stampede to outsource American jobs, even to the hurt of our own
citizens? Why do people around the world intuitively hate the World
Trade Organization, NAFTA and CAFTA? (The last question suggests
that the U.S. is not the only nation-state being plundered these
days.)
Nations are financially disintegrating while global
corporations grow fantastically richer.
One might protest that the scope of this operation is just too
fantastic and huge to be real. This writer would remind the skeptic
that U.S. history is littered with monopolistic tycoons who tried to
get a lever on the societies they lived in. Monopolies are blind to
politics, except when politics can be manipulated to establish or
extend the Monopoly.
The vast majority of Americans are left
completely in the dark because American mainstream media,
collectively slanted toward globalism, has been dominated by the
very same globalists who founded the Trilateral Commission in the
first place:
-
New York Times
-
Time-Warner
-
Chicago Sun-Times
-
Los
Angeles Times
-
Foreign Policy Magazine
-
Comcast
-
CBS
-
Atlantic
Media
-
The Rand Corporation
-
Washington Post
-
Dow Jones & Company
-
U.S. News
-
World Report,
...all have direct representation on the
Trilateral Commission.
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One night, probably in
1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York
journalist, was the guest of honor at a banquet given
him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew
neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to 'the
independent press.'
.
Swinton outraged
his colleagues by replying:
"There is no such
thing, at this date of the world's history, in
America, as an independent press. You know it and I
know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your
honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand
that it would never appear in print. I am paid
weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the
paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid
similar salaries for similar things, and any of you
who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions
would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one
issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my
occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalists is to destroy
the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to
vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell
his country and his race for his daily bread.
.
You know it and I know
it, and what folly is this toasting an 'independent
press'?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the
scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the
strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities
and our lives are all the property of other men. We
are intellectual prostitutes."
(Source:
Labor's Untold Story,
by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais,
published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers
of America, NY, 1955/1979.) |
The reader is encouraged to read
Trilaterals Over Washington,
Volumes I and II, to get a deeper sense of background on these
issues.
The State of
the Nation
This issue attempts to give the reader a background and perspective
on the state of affairs of American business.
There are three factors to consider.
-
First, there is the government
itself.
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Second, there is private industry. Although they are very
different types of entities, they both can adequately be described
in terms of flows of income.
-
Third, we will look at the transfer of
ownership of U.S. based corporations to foreign ownership.
In the case of the government, there has been virtually no restraint
on keeping its spending within its income. Whenever it spent outside
of income-in-hand, borrowing whatever extra was needed was all too
easy.
You can quickly see what the last 37
years look like from the chart above. Prior to 1975, budget
deficits were very small. The upward trend started in earnest in
1975. A brief surplus was recorded between 1998 and 2001.
Presiding presidents are purposefully not mentioned because they are
irrelevant to the big picture.
It should also stand out that there are three troughs: the first
"peaked" in 1986, the second in 1992 and the third in 2005. The
extremity cycle is approximately 6 years long.
The cumulative effect of these deficits
on the U.S. national debt is quite dramatic. In 1970, the debt was
well under the $1 trillion level. Today, it stands over $8 trillion,
a 10-fold increase.
To put this in personal terms, every man, woman and child in America
owes $28,500 each. A family of 4 collectively owes $114,000. You
might say, "But, that's the government debt, not mine!" The fact is
though, we are the government. Except that taxpayers pay taxes, the
federal government would have no source of income whatever.
So, let's take a look at the business
economy now.
A trade deficit occurs when we import
more than we export. A surplus occurs when the reverse is true.
Whether positive or negative, the figure is called the "current
account".
Since 1981, America has been in the red every single year. The curve
is similar in nature to the National Debt curve: very low deficits
in the 70's and early 80's, then rising dramatically during the 90's
into the current decade.
In the chart to the right, you can see that the gap between imports
(orange line) and exports (purple line) is widening at an increasing
rate every year. The bottom curve shows the negative balance on the
current account as it accumulates more and more red ink. Currently,
the annualized rate of the current trade deficit is easily $600
billion.
By contrast, there were only two years in the decade of the 1970's
that had small trade deficits.
In March, the Business Telegraph in London reported that the March
(2005) deficit of $55 billion was well below the $60 billion that
was expected by the markets.
"It's a relief," said James
Glassman, senior economist at JP Morgan Chase in New York. "It
does dampen the fears that there was something bad going on in
the US economy."
The psychology at play here is amazing.
The fact that the trade deficit for a single month is $55 billion
instead of $60 billion is a cause for reassurance that nothing bad
is happening to the U.S. economy? On the other hand, note that
Glassman is senior economist at JP Morgan Chase bank which has been
at the very core of the New International Economic Order from the
beginning.
The third area to look at is transfer of ownership. Corporate
mergers are everywhere. It's so confusing that most people don't
have a clue who owns what anymore.
Outlays for New
Investment in the United States by Foreign Direct Investors,
1980-2003
(Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis)
During the 1960's, American business
increased its ownership in the U.S. every year except one. During
the 1970's, there were only 5 years that we increased our position.
Since 1982, there has not been one single year where foreign
investment did not outstrip our own... and dramatically so, to the
tune of $3.8 trillion.
You ask, "How can this happen?" Simple.
Mergers.
Consider a few mergers from recent history - do you recognize any of
these "American" names?
|
American Company |
Foreign Company |
Country |
Purchase Amount |
|
|
|
|
$48.17 Billion |
|
|
|
|
$27.22 Billion |
Texaco-US Refining &
Marketing
|
Shell Oil-Western US
Business
|
|
$3.964 Billion |
AirTouch Communications
Inc
|
|
|
$60.29 Billion |
VoiceStream Wireless
Corp
|
|
|
$29.40 Billion |
|
|
|
|
$40.47 Billion |
|
|
|
|
$5.60 Billion |
Simon & Schuster-Educ,
Prof
|
|
|
$4.60 Billion |
|
|
|
|
$2.432 Billion |
John Hancock Finl Svcs
Inc
|
|
|
$11.06 Billion |
|
|
|
|
$9.691 Billion |
|
|
|
|
$7.922 Billion |
These few examples are listed only to give you a flavor of the depth
of penetration of foreign purchases into the core of American
industry. In order to get to an aggregate of $3.8 trillion, you can
hardly imagine how many billion dollar deals there have been over 20
years. In short, America is literally being sold out from under us.
Let's summarize this now. In the past 35 years, the U.S. government
has racked up over $8 trillion in debt. The current trade deficit
for 2005 alone will likely exceed $600 billion (importing more than
we export). The $3.8 trillion of showcase American companies have
been sold to foreigners.
Is something wrong with this picture?
When this writer began to do research for Trilaterals Over
Washington in the late 1970's, we focused on the Trilateral
Commission because it was very apparent that it was laying the
groundwork for -- in their own words -- a "New International
Economic Order" The concept of the nation-state was outdated and we
were moving into an era of "interdependence."
David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral
Commission in 1973. It has been composed of slightly over 300
members chosen from North America, Europe and Asia (primarily
Japan). The members are literally the Who's Who of global elitists:
top politicians, think-tank philosophers, industrialists and
bankers.
We clearly documented in Trilaterals Over Washington that
the move toward global economic consolidation was well on its way.
Twenty-five years later, we are standing under an avalanche of
economic deterioration.
During these 25 years, America has literally "LOST its shirt". We
are technically quite bankrupt.
Corporate profits during this same time, however, have seen huge and
consistent profits. Those global-minded companies in particular
(e.g., corporate board members who belong to the Trilateral
Commission) have profited even more.
According to the BEA, aggregate corporate profits totaled $874
billion in 2002, $1.02 trillion in 2003 and $1.2 trillion in 2004.
Exxon increased its annual earnings from $21.5 billion in 2003 to
$25.33 billion in 2004. This was not uncommon.
Is it possible that the U.S. can be stripped to the bone while
multinational corporations get rich? Was it planned this way from
the beginning (circa 1973)? Yes, and yes.
There is another aspect of national bankruptcy that needs to be
mentioned, namely, the landslide loss of technological genius that
made America great in the first place.
Putting aside the legal and
illegal transfers of technology to China during the Clinton
administration, consider the case of IBM:
Lenovo, China's largest PC company,
has completed a $1.25 billion acquisition of IBM's Personal
Computing Division (PCD). Lenovo, which already has a third of
the Chinese PC market and shares in enterprise PC markets around
the world, says this deal makes it a new international IT
competitor and the world's third-largest personal computing
company.
The PCD acquisition, first announced in December,
means, according to newly named Lenovo CEO Stephen Ward, that
the company will have combined annual PC revenue of about $13
billion and volume of about 14 million units. Ward says Lenovo
expects immediate synergies through complementary customer
bases, product offerings and geographic coverage, among other
things.
(SA Computer Magazine, 5-3-2005)
That is, the very company that invented
the PC and literally revolutionized the world has now sold 100% of
their Personal Computing Division to a Communist nation who have
sworn many times that they will bury us. Chinese engineers will soon
be moving into IBM's Armonk, NY headquarters to take over.
Another example is that Steven Chen, a Taiwanese-born American
citizen and one of America's most brilliant and top supercomputer
designers, quit his post with Silicon Graphics and is moving to
mainland China. He is choosing to build his next generation
supercomputer in China
According to IDC, the premier intelligence resource and forecaster
in the computer world,
Attracting a leading supercomputer
designer like Chen is good news for the growing Chinese computer
industry. China has recently been primarily focusing its
high-performance technical computer designs on commodity
component clusters. In general, clusters provide very attractive
price-performance but lack some of the high-end capabilities
provided by traditional supercomputers. Chen plans to bridge the
gap by building high-performance blade-based clusters in China
and offering them for sale around the world.
If America's technology prowess is a
national treasure, then people like Steven Chen are national
treasures also. How is it that we cannot offer enough enticement to
keep such a talent in the United States?
In an age where sports
figures can command million of dollars per season for pure
entertainment, this seems rather odd. It's not just that Chen isn't
helping the U.S. but that he is helping a Communist government
develop technology that can be used against us - commercially and
militarily.
Example of a
"Blind Eye"
The New York Times carried an article on May 17, 2005, "Bush's
Choice: Anger China or Congress Over Currency."
China bought more
than $200 billion in Treasuries last year, bringing their total
ownership of U.S. debt to a whopping $650 billion. These purchases
essentially finance a comparable trade deficit with China. Because
China's currency, the yuan, is pegged to the U.S. dollar, China is
in a position to manipulate the system (undervaluing its currency)
and gain a whopping trade advantage over America.
U.S. Businesses have filed volumes of complaints with the U.S. Trade
Representative, Rob Portman, about issues ranging from China's
dumping of products at prices below cost of manufacturing, to
widespread copyright and patent violations. Congress is somewhat
sensitive to this issue and, bucking the president, is pushing for
tariffs and quotas against China to punish them for milking the
system.
Bush must now be critical of China (and infuriate China) or give
China a clean bill of health and say that everything is fine (and
infuriate Congress and the American people).
So, what do you do when you've invited an 800 pound gorilla into
your living room? You pray he doesn't get mad when you ask him to
leave.
Treasury Secretary John Snow is on the spot. In the past, he has
refused to criticize China openly, but rather seeks to rely on
"financial diplomacy" instead. He believes that China can be
persuaded that flexible exchange rates ought to be in its own
interest.
Mr. Snow, in an interview on Monday with CNBC, reiterated his
optimism that China would change policy on its own.
"I'm convinced they will move," Mr.
Snow said. "Now is the time. We're anxious to see them move.
It's time."
What evidence does Snow have that China
will voluntarily pull back from an opportunity to plunder the U.S.?
His wishful thinking that they might compliantly respond to our
being "anxious" to see them move?
It is easier to understand the conflict of interest if you look back
a few years at John Snow's career.
From 1994-1996, Snow was chairman
of the Business Roundtable, an association of 250 chief executive
officers of the largest corporations, representing over $3.7
trillion in combined revenues. During that time, he was a key player
in supporting the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA).
He recently received the Marco Polo Award (2001), awarded by the
U.S.-China Foundation for International Exchanges as the highest
honor that can be given to a foreign business leader. He is a
director of CarMax, U.S. Steel, Johnson & Johnson, Verizon
Communications, sits on the boards of Johns Hopkins University, is
chairman of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, and is a member
of the Business Council and Business Roundtable.
In short, Snow has been at the corporate center of promoting globalism and in particular, building China's trade for many years.
As Treasury Secretary, he is in an influential position of trust to
protect the American people from economic harm. But, will he?
To understand more completely, ask yourself this question. Who
invested money in, and built up, this 800 pound gorilla?
Take Bechtel for instance, one of the largest construction and
engineering companies in the world.
In 1994, Bechtel was the first
U.S. company to receive a construction license in China. It has
completed 80 major projects in China and has permanent offices
located in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong. Its latest
project is a $4.3 billion petrochemical complex in Daya Bay that
will produce 2.3 million tons of products annually. It's being
touted as one of the largest Sino-foreign investments to date, and
is 50% owned by a subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell.
If we say, "China is really profiting from the U.S.", to whom are we
really referring? It's true that the Chinese government is getting
an advantage from the increase in economic activity, but who are the
front-line collectors of revenue and aggregators of profit in China?
That's right, it's the same multinational corporations.
So, as noted above, when John Snow reiterates his optimism that
China will change policy on its own, you can see just how selective
his vision is. As long as China's policy remains as it is, America
gets plundered and the global corporations in China rack up record
profits.
This issue contends that America is For Sale.
The sale is "under the
table" in that the American people don't have a clue that it's being
slowly sold out from under their feet, one piece at a time. The sale
is deceptive because as the red ink grows larger and larger, we are
told by these same globalists that trade and budget deficits don't
really matter that much. The sale is dishonest because it was
planned from the beginning by elitist groups like
the Trilateral
Commission, to twist and manipulate the system to their own benefit.
The fact that America's downward financial spiral started in earnest
shortly after the Trilateral Commission was founded by David
Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not incidental.
The very
policies that brought us the "New International Economic Order"
(their own phrase) have wrecked our country. This is not an
anecdotal observation, as will be demonstrated over and over in
future issues of The August Review.
America is in a very grievous and trepid situation.
Any number of
isolated incidents could touch off a financial firestorm that burns
our house to the ground. When a company goes bankrupt, it is seldom
advertised in advance. Its customers, shareholders and debtors are
invariably in a state of shock when the bankruptcy occurs, even
though hind site shows that there were ample evidences of impending
bankruptcy. So it is with America: There is evidence everywhere of
what is happening to us, but there are few eyes to see it nor ears
to hear it.
In 30-40 short years, America has gone from the strongest and most
stable nation in the world, to one of the weakest and unstable.
Poor
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and had a great fall, but few people
will see the real truth that Humpty was actually pushed!
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