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Introduction - The Incunabula
In late May and early June of this year (2003), at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees, in Stresa, Italy, a supersecret conclave of about 600 of the wealthiest and most powerful people on Earth met behind closed doors in abject secrecy, to discuss and plan the fate of the world. Although the meetings have been going on since their first at their namesake Bilderberg Hotel in 1954, this confab was covered by only a smattering of European media, and by American Free Press in the US.
Other than that the entire North American media maintained a total and utter press black-out. Such is their power, and so much for the mythical “Free Press”. This year’s Bilderberger Conference attendees included
There were unconfirmed rumors that George W. Bush, who may have taken a brief day trip to the meeting while in Rome, was called on the carpet by this group to explain his current policies on the Middle East which they think has “gotten out of hand”. But these fantastically wealthy and influential people are all simply puppets to the real power behind the throne. This year’s honorary Bilderberger chairman, Belgian Banker Etienne Davigon, acts as a liason and taskmaster for a board of 15 controlling inner members.
The highest ranking member, a Spanaird with longish, greying hair, known only by his code-name "15", is a brilliant scientist, whose brain has been cybernetically enhanced to unimaginable levels, and whom many consider the ruling C.E.O. of planet Earth. You will never see these peoples names or faces in the press or on a list of company board members or anywhere for that matter. Their identities are so secret that in many cases their deaths have been manufactured and they have been simply lifted from “existence”.
They are global architects of the MATRIX who control policy at the very highest levels, thinking DECADES ahead, rather than mere quarters, months or years. In many circles it means certain death to even whisper their name: THE INCUNABULA.
The credo for these members is like that from the popular motion picture:
But HOW is this power attained and after that, maintained? A careful study of the methods of these Black Magicians can allow us to see through the veil, into the code of the MATRIX woven around us. With the veil lifted, it gives us wisdom, insight, and empowers us in all that we do and in how we deal with the web they have spun around us. Everybody loves a good mystery. So here is a little light summer reading for you my children. A story of a young man who awakens to a Brave New World where all is not as it seems. A series of lessons, given by the greatest, and most diabolical minds, on Earth, constructed to enlighten in a fanciful and imaginative way.
Are you sitting comfortably? Good.
And so... Once Upon a Time...
In this thin volume you will find the transcripts of your initiation into the secrets of my empire. Read them again not for the arcane knowledge which is now second nature to you, but in order to re-experience the shock and awe you felt twenty years ago when at age thirty the fabulous scope of my power was revealed to you by my trusted, and now mostly The Occult Technology of Power departed advisors. Remember the surprise, to the point of disbelief, with which you beheld the invisibly delicate, but invincible chains of deceit, confusion, and coercion with which we finance capitalists enslave this chaotic world.
Remember the feats of will and strategy that have been required to retain our position. Then, inspect your retinue carefully. Your heir must be equal to and eager for the task much as you were. Choose him carefully. As I lie here waiting for the end I can afford to relish the thought our empire lasting forever as I never dared while in charge.
Rational power calculations, so easily disrupted by the thrill of power, are now entirely in your hands.
My Introduction to Your Initiation
My Son, the time has arrived to make formal what you have confidently awaited for some years. Of all your brothers, sisters, and cousins, as well as the offspring of my close allies, I have chosen you to be heir to my empire. All the trust funds, foundations, and accounts through which my empire is controlled shall pass into your hands upon my retirement. All my alliances, understandings, and enmities with my handful of peers around the globe shall gradually become yours. Over the next twenty years we shall collaborate closer and closer, you and I, until, we finally act as one.
For ten years you have toured my empire in a succession of managerial assignments and are now familiar with the outward operations of my crucial banking, foundation, governmental, and think tank organizations. Until now, my advisors and I have deflected your questions as to how and if my diverse operations and holdings, which seem autonomous and even contradictory, are integrated into an organic whole to serve the dynasty’s interests.
The fact that you asked these questions, rejecting my carefully nurtured public image as an idle, coupon clipping philanthropist, was a major factor in the high esteem in which I hold you. Most of your competitors found puppet leadership in any one of my organizations so awesome and gratifying that they immediately eliminated themselves from the contest for the top position which you have won. Such men of limited vision are necessary for my success. They bend unconsciously to the subtle pressures to which I expose them.
They can be led in any direction I choose by simple-minded rationalizations aimed at their vanity without being privy to my motives which would be short lived secrets in their undisciplined and envious minds. Most important in your selection as my successor, however was your psychological nature which has been faithfully reported to me over the years by my associates many of whom have advanced psychological training. A man in my position must have total mastery over his emotions.
All actions affecting the power of the dynasty must be taken on the basis of coldly reasoned power calculations if the dynasty is to survive and prosper at the expense of its subjects and rivals. All power is impossible to those whose pursuit is ruled by sentimentality, love, envy power-lust revenge, prejudice, hatred, justice, alcohol, drugs, or sexual desire. Sustained power is impossible to those who repress all their irrational longings into their subconscious only to have them return in compulsive, out of control behavior that inevitably leads to their ruin. Although often clothed in the rationalizations of power calculation, compulsive behavior is at root, the emotionalism of a frightened child, desperately projecting his inner agony into a reality he is afraid to under stand, much less master.
Although you now must begin to pursue it consciously you have already displayed the alienation from your emotional nature that is so essential to achieving real worldly power. You must recognize your emotional nature as a primitive survival mechanism that was appropriate for the jungle and perhaps useful to common men, but useless for the tasks that confront us finance capitalists. Attachment to what you do, just because you do it, is the primary psychological characteristic of ordinary mortals. Such cognitive dissonance spells disaster for us. Our emotional mechanism makes our lives worth living, but is no guide to the occult arts of intrigue.
So, continue to gratify your senses and emotions fully at your leisure. As long as the empire prospers you will have the resources to indulge in systematic gratification which will leave your irrational urges sated and, therefore, powerless. You will never be in the unenviable position of the middle class strivers who must, from lack of resources, repress their emotional natures if they are to attain any power whatever during their lives. Typically, they end up taking their pleasure from the victories and cruelties of their struggle.
Thus, their end ceases to be power and they eventually defeat themselves with reckless behavior in pursuit of dominant thrills. I have brought you into seclusion with my most trusted advisors in order to inaugurate a new phase of your instruction. Your formal training in the “official” political economic world is now complete.
This weekend will mark the beginning of your training in the occult technology of power that lurks behind outer appearances. As your tutors will explain, “occult” or secret knowledge is the basis of all power in human society, so I use the word “occult” advisedly, in its pristine usage. As I am sure you are aware by now, productivity in itself does not secure power and therefore does not secure the gratifications of life. After all, slaves can be productive. None of my organizations in which you served so well are concerned with advancing the techniques of satisfy my human needs and desires.
Rather, all are dedicated to the surreptitious centralization of productive, but especially coercive, efforts in my hands or in creating the intellectual climate in which such veiled control would be tolerated in the future. I destroy or paralyze productive efforts that cannot be ensnarled in my web. After a break Professor A. will take the floor in order to put finance capitalism into full biological perspective. His short talk will be followed by similar abbreviated summaries by his six associates, all of whom you know well.
The rest of the weekend will be devoted to forthright fielding of your questions.
Professor A. On the Role of Fraud in Nature
Organisms typically base their success primarily on deception and rely on actual force or mutually advantageous trade (symbiosis) as little as possible. This should be nearly self-evident, but is generally overlooked due to the moral codes we elitists foist on our subjects. Let me give a few examples in case the moral culture has to some extent impaired your powers of objective observation. Camouflage is universal among predators and victims alike. Blossoms imitate fragrances and colors which are sexually attractive to certain insects in order to effect pollination.
Dogs bark ferociously and feign attack on enemies of whom they are, in fact, terrified. The Venus Fly Trap plant lures flies to their deaths. Men proclaim their altruism to others and even themselves while they selfishly scramble for personal advantage. If you doubt that fraud is normal in nature you should read section 3 of the first chapter of Robert Ardrey’s, The Social Contract for a wealth of fascinating examples. (Of course Ardrey fails to grasp the full application to contemporary human society of his brilliant insights into man’s animal nature.)
Human mental prowess and communicative powers have merely provided superb elaboration on nature’s old theme of fraud and added its own distinctive feature: self delusion. Primitive animal hierarchies are based on bluff and bluster, and each member is well aware of and accepts, at least temporarily, its position in the hierarchy. The same wild enthusiasm and fascination for dominance and submission rages in human hearts. However, fraud is taken one step further. Not only is fraudulent bluff and bluster used to achieve dominance but fraudulent altruism and collective institutions are used to conceal dominance once achieved.
Human hierarchies, in contrast to the animal variety, are best sustained when the members are deluded regarding the oppressive nature, or better, even the very existence of the hierarchy!
Visible rulers are highly vulnerable. Thus we see visible rulers claiming to be representatives of God, the common good, the material forces of history, the general will (either through vote or intuition), tradition, or other intellectual “spooks” that serve to lessen the envy of the ruled for the rulers. Encouraging such self delusions among the masses of the ruled is universal for visible governments.
However, such spooks are little protection for the leaders of such systems against their sophisticated elite rivals and no protection against men like your father. The Roman Empire was unquestioned by the mass of its subjects for centuries, but the Emperors lived in constant fear of coup and assassination . By embracing deception wholeheartedly at every level, finance capitalism, or rule through money, has fashioned the ultimate system yet devised for the secure exercise of power.
Men like your father, the hidden masters of finance capitalism, govern those who govern, produce, and think through invisible financial tentacles, the operations of which will be elucidated later by my colleagues. Dominance in all aspects of society is surreptitiously accomplished while the great majority of the ruled, and even most of the visible leaders, believe themselves to be fairly autonomous, if harried, members of a pluralistic society.
Nearly everyone believes major decisions to be the vector sum of autonomous pressures exerted by business, labor, government, consumers, social classes, and other special interests. In fact, the vectors of societal power are carefully balanced by us so that any net movement is in a direction chosen by us. The only fly in the ointment is the occasional, but extremely messy, interferences by competing financial dynasties. This disconcerting problem will not be a major topic for this weekend.
I now yield to Professor Q. who will elucidate the central secrets of your father’s immense money power.
Professor Q. On Occult Power as the Key to Power
Throughout history, secure ruling elites arise through secret, or occult knowledge which they carefully guard and withhold from outsiders The power of such elites or cults diminishes as their occult knowledge is transformed into “scientific” knowledge and vanishes as soon as it becomes “common sense.”
Before analyzing the secrets of the finance capitalist money cult let us glance for historical perspective at occult astronomy, the oldest source of stable rule known to man of which astrology is hut the pathetic remnant. As soon as men abandoned the life of wandering, tribal hunters to till the soil they needed to predict the seasons. Such knowledge was required in order to know when to plant, when to expect floods in fertile valleys, when to expect rainy seasons, and so on. Months of back breaking work were wasted by the unavailability of the calendar, a convenience we take for granted.
The men who first studied and grasped the regularities of sun, moon, and stars that presage the seasons had a valuable commodity to sell and they milked it to the fullest at the expense of their credulous fellowmen. The occult priesthoods of early astronomers and mathematicians such as the designers of Stonehenge, convinced their subjects that they alone had contact with the gods, and thus, they alone could assure the return of planting seasons and weather favorable to bountiful harvests.
The staging (predicting) of solar and lunar eclipses was particularly effective in awing the community. The general success resulting from following the priesthood’s tilling, planting, nurturing, and harvesting time tables insured the priesthood’s power. Today’s Christmas holiday season continues the tradition set by ancient priesthoods, who conducted rituals on the winter solstice to reverse the retreat of the sun from the sky.
Their invariable success was followed by wild celebrations. Popular knowledge of seasonal regularities was discouraged by every manner of mysticism and outlandish ritual imaginable. Failures in prediction were blamed on sins of the people and used to justify intensified oppression. For centuries people who had literally no idea of the number of days between seasons and couldn’t count anyway, cheerfully gave up a portion of their harvests, as well as their most beautiful daughters, to their “faithful servants” in the priesthoods. The power of our finance capitalist money cult rests on a similar secret knowledge, primarily in the field of economics. Our power is weakened by real advances in economic science. Fortunately, the public at large and most revolutionaries remain totally ignorant of economics. However, we established money lords have been able to prolong and even reverse our decline by systematically corrupting economic science with fallacious and spurious doctrines.
Through our power in the universities, publishing, and mass media we have been able to reward the sincere, professorial cranks whose spurious doctrines happen to rationalize in terms of “common good” the government supported institutions, laws, and economic measures upon which our money powers depend. Keynesianism is the highest form of phony economics yet developed to our benefit. The highly centralized, mixed economy resulting from the policies advocated by Lord Keynes for promoting “prosperity” has all the characteristics required to make our rule invulnerable to our twin nemeses: real private competition in the economic arena and real democratic process in the political arena.
Laissez Faire or free market, classical economics was our original attempt to corrupt economic science. Its beautiful internal consistency blinded economists for many years to the fact that it had virtually nothing to do with current reality. However, we are so powerful today that it is no longer possible to conceal our imposing institutions with the appearances of free competition Keynesianism rationalizes this omnipotent state which we require, while retaining the privileges of private property on which our power ultimately rests.
Although the interim reforms advocated by Marx in his Communist Manifesto such as central banking, income tax, and other centralizing measures can be corrupted to coincide exactly with our requirements, we no longer allow Marxist movements major power in developed countries. Our coercive in institutions are already in place. Any real steps toward communism would mean our downfall. Of course, phoney Marxism is an excellent ideological veil in which to cloak our puppet dictators in underdeveloped areas. Secondarily, the power of the lords of money rests on an occult knowledge in the area of politics and history.
We have quite successfully corrupted these sciences. Although many people are familiar with our secrets through such books as 1984 by the disillusioned George Orwell, few take them seriously and usually dismiss such ideas as paranoia. Since real politics is motivated by individual self-interest, history is viewed most accurately as a struggle for power and wealth. We do our best to obscure this self-evident truth by popularizing the theory that history is made by the impersonal struggles between ideas, political systems, ideologies, races, and classes.
Through systematic infiltration of all major intellectual, political, and ideological organizations, using the lure of financial support and instant publicity, we have been able to set the limits of public debate within the ideological requirements of our money power. The so-called Left-Right political spectrum is our creation. In fact, it accurately reflects our careful, artificial polarization of the population on phony issues that prevents the issue of our power from arising in their minds. The Left supports civil liberties and opposes economic or entrepreneurial liberty. The Right supports economic liberty and opposes civil liberty. Of course neither can exist fully (which is our goal) without the other.
We control the Right-Left conflict such that both forms of liberty are suppressed to the degree we require. Our own liberty rests not on legal or moral “rights,” but on our control of the government bureaucracy and courts which apply the complex, subjective regulations we dupe the public into supporting for our benefit . Innumerable meaningless conflicts to divert the attention of the public from our operations find fertile ground in the bitter hatreds of the Right-Left imbroglio. Right and Left are irreconcilable on racial policy, treatment of criminals, law-enforcement, pornography, foreign policy, women’s lib, and censorship to name just a few issues.
Although censorship in the name of “fairness” has been useful in broadcasting and may yet be required in journalism, we generally do not take sides in these issues. Instead we attempt to prolong the conflicts by supporting both sides as required. War, of course, is the ultimate diversionary conflict and the health of our system. War provides the perfect cover of emergency and crisis behind which we consolidate our power. Since nuclear war presents dangers even to us, more and more we have resorted to economic crisis, energy shortages, ecological hysteria, and managed political drama to fill the gap. Meaningless, brushfire wars, though, remain useful. We promote phony free enterprise on the Right and phony democratic socialism on the Left.
Thus, we obtain a “free enterprise” whose “competition” is carefully regulated by the bureaucracy we control and whose nationalized enterprises are controlled directly through our government. In this way we maintain a society in which the basis of our power, legal titles to property and money, remain secure, but in which the peril of free, unregulated competition is avoided and popular sovereignty is nullified. The democratic process is a sitting duck for our money power. Invariably we determine the candidates of the major parties and then proceed to pick the winners.
Any attempts at campaign reforms simply put the rules of the game more firmly under our government’s control. Totalitarianism of the fascist of communist varieties is no danger to us as long as bastions of private property remain to serve as our bases of operation. Totalitarian governments of both Right and Left, because of the vulnerability of their highly visible leaders to party rivals, can be manipulated easily from abroad.
Primarily, totalitarian dictatorships efficiently prevent new money lords that could challenge our power from arising in whole continents, civilizations, and races. Perhaps a few words on ideology proper are in order before I conclude. The only valid ideology, of course is rational egoism, that is, the maximization of the individual’s gratification by whatever means prove practical. This requires power over nature, especially, when possible, power over other humans who are the most versatile and valuable tools of all.
Fortunately, we do not have a society of egoists. Money lords would be impossible in such a society as the mental spooks and rationalizations by which we characteristically manipulate and deceive would be a laughing stock. Under such circumstances a policy of live and let live or true “laissez_faire” anarchy might be the only alternative. Certainly a hierarchical order would be difficult to maintain by force alone. However, in the current era, while minds are yet in the thrall of altruistic collectivistic, and divine moralistic spooks, the egoist’s rational course is to utilize such spooks to control others.
The next speaker, Professor M., will detail the key institution of our power: Central Banking.
On the Economics of Central Banking
As you have a doctorate degree in economics from a great university I will touch as lightly as my verbosity allows on facts accepted by economic “science” and proceed to occult aspects of Central Banking. Since the division of labor is the key to all human achievement and satisfaction, a system of exchange is crucial. Barter is hopelessly complicated. A command economy, in which each does and receives what be is told, is also hopelessly cumbersome and fails to take advantage of individual initiative, ability, and concrete knowledge. A medium of exchange, money, is the obvious solution. (Even our highly centralized economies on the socialist model now enthusiastically embrace money as an indispensable simplifying tool in their economic planning.)
When left to themselves people of a given geographical area settled upon a durable luxury commodity, usually gold or silver, to use as money. Because money is a store of value as well as a medium of exchange, people saved part of their gold income rather than spending it all. This gold was often stored in the vaults of a local goldsmith, the precursor of the modern banker, for safe-keeping. The depositor received a receipt that entitled him to an equal quantity and quality of gold on demand from the goldsmith.
At some point the goldsmith realized that there was no reason he could not loan out some of the gold for interest as long as he kept gold on hand sufficient to meet the fairly predictable withdrawal rate. After all, he simply promised to pay on demand, not bold the gold as such. Better yet, be could simply issue more receipts for gold than be had gold and the receipts, renamed notes, could circulate freely among the populace as money. However, be soon found that there was a definite limit set on this process by reality. Not all the extra notes issued circulated forever among the public.
The rate of note redemption began to increase rapidly as the receipts passed into the hands of people unfamiliar with his reputation and especially when competitive goldsmiths, always eager for more gold reserves, came into possession of his notes. To prevent a disastrous run on his gold reserves, note issuance had to be kept within bounds. But the spending power of over-issuance was a grave temptation. Especially relished was the power over governments, industry, and merchants that the miraculous loan power of the goldsmith could obtain.
Many succumbed to temptation, overextended themselves and brought ruin to their depositors while others slowly became wealthy bankers by pursuing conservative loan policies. At this point, according to economic “science,” Central Banks are instituted to protect the public from periodic financial catastrophe at the hands of unscrupulous fractional reserve bankers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Central Banks are established to remove the limitation on over issuance that reality places on competitive banking systems. As early as ancient Babylon and India, Central Banking, the art of monopolizing the issuance of money, had been developed into a perfect method for looting the general public. Even today many bankers copy the traditions of the earlier exploitive priesthoods and design their banks to resemble temples! Defenses of Central Banking are simply part of the deception that lies at the heart of all power elites. Let us look at the way a new Central Bank is created where none has existed previously.
We bankers approach the Prince or ruling assembly (both of whom always want more money to fight wars or to curry favor with the people and, typically, are ignorant of economics) with a compelling proposal:
For a while this system seems to work remarkably well with full employment for everyone. The government and public does not notice that we issuers of the new notes are using the notes we create out of thin air to surreptitiously build economic empires at the expense of established interests. Because of the legal tender laws, few of the new notes issued by the Central Bank are returned for redemption in gold. In fact, private banks and even a few foreign banks may begin to use the Central Bank’s notes as reserves for further issuance of credit.
Soon enough, though, prices begin to rise as the added notes increase demand relative to the quantity of goods and services. As the value of their savings decline more and more foreigners in particular begin to question the value of the Central Bank’s notes and start to demand redemption in gold. We, of course do not take responsibility for the rampant inflation when it comes.
We blame inflation on evil speculators who drive up prices for personal gain, as well as the greed of organized labor and business who are promptly made subject to wage and price controls. Even the consumer can be made to feel guilty for agreeing to pay the high prices! Mistaking symptoms for causes the government accepts the banker’s analysis of the problem and continues to give the Bank free reign in monetary policy. By slowing the rate of note issuance periodically, the ultimate crisis stage is postponed until many decades after the original Central Bank Charter was granted.
Before the rapidly dwindling gold reserves on which faith in our Bank depends is exhausted we abruptly contract our loan volume to private industry and government as well. With the contraction of the money supply a great deflationary crash begins in earnest with all its attendant unemployment, bankruptcies, and civil strife. We do not take responsibility for the depression. We blame it on evil hoarders who are refusing to spend their money and the prophets of doom who are spoiling business confidence.
The government accepts this analysis and leaves monetary policy in our hands. If things go well we bankers channel the fury and unrest into puppet movements and pressure groups that carry our agents into full control of the government. Once in charge we devalue our outstanding bank notes in terms of gold and make them inconvertible for all but possibly foreign Central Banks and begin plans to restore a “prosperity” that will be totally ours.
When lucky, we are able to confiscate the gold of private citizens as punishment for hoarding during the climax of the depression. Once the old order is subdued during the chaos of the crash and desperation of the depression, the field is open for our full finance capitalist system to be realized. If the money lords behind the Central Bank can avoid lapsing into political and economic competition among themselves a new and lasting order can be established. A war timed for this period of consolidation provides the perfect excuse for the regimentation required to crush all opposition.
Professor B., a former Chairman of a Central Bank, will explain the functioning of the Central Bank in the typical, fully developed finance capitalist system.
Professor B. On the Functions of the Central Bank in the Mature Finance Capitalist System
In its pristine form a Central Bank is a private monopoly of a nation’s money and credit issuance supported by the coercive power of the state. That the Central Bank be directly in our hands is vital until our new order is firmly established throughout the governmental, business, intellectual and political spheres of society. After our order is consolidated, formal nationalization of the Central Bank with great fanfare is usually advisable in order to dispel any lingering suspicion that it is operated for private gain.
Of course only loyal agents of the dynasty are allowed to obtain high offices in the Bank and our power remains intact. Obvious private monopolies are always the targets of sharp reformist agitators. Only the most paranoid, however, can see through the public facade to the private monopoly of the nationalized or quasi-nationalized Central Bank.
The Central Bank is the primary monopoly on which all our monopoly power depends. The occult power of the Central Bank to create money out of nothing is the fountainhead that fuels our far-flung financial and political empire. I will make a quick survey of a few of the ways this secret money power is brought to bear. Basically, the power of our Central Bank flows from its control over the points of entry into the economy of new, inflationary money that it creates out of thin air.
Ordinarily, bills of exchange, acceptances, private bonds, government bonds and other credit instruments are purchased by the Central Bank through specially privileged dealers in order to put the new money, often only checking accounting entries, into circulation. The dealers are allowed a large profit since they are fronts operated by our agents.
Our purchase of government securities pleases the government, as our purchase of private debt pleases private debtors. As a quid pro quo to assure “good management” our agents are given directorships, managerial posts, and offices in the corporations and government’s so benefited. As the addiction to the narcotic of inflationary easy credit grows and grows we demand more and more control of our dependent entourage of governments and corporations. When we finally end the easy credit to “combat inflation” the enterprises and governments either fall directly into our hands, bankrupt, or are rescued at the price of total control. Also, we ruling bankers control the flow of money in the economy through the wide authority of the Central Bank to license, audit, and regulate private banks.
Banks that loan to interests outside the loyal entourage are “audited” by the Central Bank and found to be dangerously overextended. Just a hint of insolvency from the respected Central Bank authorities is enough to cause a run on the disobedient bank or at least dry up its vital lines of credit. Soon the banking establishment learns to follow the hints and nods of your father’s agents at the Central Bank automatically.
Further, the periodic cycles of easy money and tight money that we initiate through our control of the Central Bank cause corresponding fluctuations in all markets. Our inner circle knows in advance the timing of these cycles and, therefore reaps windfall profits by speculating in commodity, stock, currency, gold, and bond markets. Monopolistic stock and commodity Exchanges are a vital adjunct to our power made possible by our Central Bank power. We do not allow a fair auction market to exist, but make a great show of “tough” government regulation to create a false sense of confidence among small investors.
With the aid of our regulatory charade and financial power we are able to maintain Exchanges tailored to our entourage’s need to manipulate stock prices at the expense of independent investors. Our privileged specialists on the floors of our Exchanges, aided by the propaganda of our financial press and brokerage houses, continually play on naiveté and greed to drain the savings of the unwary into our coffers.
The stock, commodities, and securities held in trading accounts by the Exchange and brokerage houses provides us with a clout far beyond our own actual holdings with which we can manipulate prices and win proxy fights for corporate takeovers. Little danger to our lucrative racket exists from public spirited regulation. Our manipulations are so complex that only the most brilliant experts could comprehend them. To most economists our Exchange operations appear to be helpful efforts to “stabilize” the market. We ruling bankers, if able to keep peace among ourselves, become richer and richer as time passes without the annoyance of exerting productive effort of benefit to others.
The next speaker, Professor G. will discuss the secrets of social legislation and policy that do so much to cement our power.
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