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Bank Crimes Pay: Under the Thumb of the Global Financial Mafiocracy
Bank Crimes Pay: Under the Thumb of the Global Financial Mafiocracy
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
27 November 2015
Originally posted at Occupy.com
On Nov. 13, the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced it was charging 10 individual bankers, working for two separate banks, Deutsche Bank and Barclays, with fraud over their rigging of the Euribor rates. The latest announcement shines the spotlight once again on the scandals and criminal behavior that have come to define the world of global banking.
To date, only a handful of the world's largest banks have been repeatedly investigated, charged, fined or settled in relation to a succession of large financial scams, starting with mortgage fraud and the Libor scandal in 2012, the Euribor scandal and the Forex (foreign exchange) rate rigging. At the heart of these scandals, which involve the manipulation of interest rates on trillions of dollars in transactions, lie a handful of banks that collectively form a cartel in control of global financial markets – and the source of worldwide economic and financial crises.
Banks such as HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS anchor the global financial power we have come to recognize as fraud. The two, after all, are not mutually exclusive. In more explicit terms, this cartel of banks functions as a type of global financial Mafia, manipulating markets and defrauding investors, consumers and countries while demanding their pound of flesh in the form of interest payments. The banks force nations to impose austerity measures and structural reforms under the threat of cutting off funding; meanwhile they launder drug money for other cartels and organized crime syndicates.
Call them the global Mafiocracy.
In May, six major global banks were fined nearly $6 billion for manipulation of the foreign exchange market, which handles over $5 trillion in daily transactions. Four of the six banks pleaded guilty to charges of "conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged." Those banks were Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, while two additional banks, UBS and Bank of America, were fined but did not plead guilty to the specific charges. Forex traders at Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and other banks conspired to manipulate currency prices through chat room groups they established, where they arrogantly used names like "The Mafia" and "The Cartel."
The FBI said the investigations and charges against the big banks revealed criminal behavior "on a massive scale." The British bank Barclays paid the largest individual fine at around $2.3 billion. But as one trader at the bank wrote in a chat room conversation back in 2010, "If you aint cheating, you aint trying." The total fines, while numerically large, were but a small fraction of the overall market capitalization of each bank – though the fine on Barclays amounted to some 3.4% of the bank's market capitalization, the highest percentage by far among the group.
Despite the criminal conspiracy charges covering the years 2007 through 2013, the banks and their top officials continue to lay the blame squarely at the feet of individual traders. Axel Weber, the former president of the German Bundesbank (the central bank of Germany), who is now chairman of Switzerland's largest bank, UBS, commented that "the conduct of a small number of employees was unacceptable and we have taken appropriate disciplinary actions."
Looking at the larger scale of bank fines and fraud in the roughly eight years since the global financial crisis, the numbers increase substantially. In addition to a 2012 settlement for mortgage-related fraud in the U.S. housing market, which amounted to some $25 billion, several large banks paid individual fines related to mortgage and foreclosure fraud – including a $16 billion fine for Bank of America, and $13 billion for JPMorgan Chase. Added to these are fines related to the rigging of the Libor rate (the interest rate at which banks lend to each other) and the Forex rigging, as well as money laundering, violating sanctions, manipulating the price of gold, manipulating the U.S. electricity market and assisting tax evasion, among other crimes.
According to a research paper published in June, the total cost of litigation (fines, penalties, settlements, etc.) paid by 16 major global banks since 2010 has reached more than $300 billion. Bank of America paid the most, amounting to more than $66 billion, followed by JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds, Citigroup, Barclays, RBS, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Santander, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, UBS, National Australia Bank, Standard Chartered and Société Générale.
Virtually all of these banks also appear on a list of data, compiled through 2007, revealing them to be among the most interconnected and powerful financial institutions in the world. This core group of corporations forms part of a network of 147 financial institutions that Swiss scientists refer to as the "super-entity," which, through their various shareholdings, collectively controland own each other and roughly 40% of the world's 43,000 largest transnational corporations.
In other words, the big banks – along with large insurance companies and asset management firms – do not simply act as a cartel in terms of engaging in criminal activities, but they form a functionally interdependent network of global financial and corporate control. Further, the banks work together in various industry associations and lobbying groups where they officially represent their collective interests.
The largest European banks and financial institutions are represented by the European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), whose membership consists of the CEOs or Chairmen of roughly 25 of the top financial institutions on the continent, including Deutsche Bank, AXA, HSBC, Allianz, RBS, ING, Barclays, BNP Paribas, UBS, and Credit Suisse, among others.
In the United States, the Financial Services Forum (FSF) represents the largest American along with some European banks and financial institutions. The Forum's membership consists of less than 20 executives, including the CEOs or Chairmen of such firms as Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, HSBC, AIG, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street Corporation, Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo, among others.
And on a truly global scale, there is the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the premier global association representing the financial industry, with a membership of nearly 500 different institutions from more than 70 countries around the world, including banks, insurance companies, asset management firms, sovereign wealth funds, central banks, credit ratings agencies, hedge funds and development banks.
In addition to these various groups and associations, many of the same large banks and their top executives also serve as members, leaders or participants in much more secretive groups and forums – for example, the International Monetary Conference (IMC), a yearly meeting of hundreds of the world's top bankers hosted by the American Bankers Association, which invites selected politicians, central bankers and finance ministers to attend their off-the-record discussions. In addition, there is the Institut International d'Etudes Bancaires (International Institute of Banking Studies), or IIEB, which brings together the top officials from dozens of Europe's major financial institutions for discussions with central bankers, presidents and prime ministers in "closed sessions" with virtually no coverage in the media.
These financial institutions are major owners of government debt, which gives them even greater leverage over the policies and priorities of governments. Exercising this power, they typically demand the same thing: austerity measures and "structural reforms" designed to advance a neoliberal market economy that ultimately benefits those same banks and corporations. The banks in turn create the very crises that require governments to bail them out, racking up large debts that banks turn into further crises, pressuring economic reforms in return for further loans. The cycle of crisis and control continues, and all the while, the big banks and financial institutions engage in criminal conspiracies, fraud, manipulation and money-laundering on a massive scale, including acting as the financial services arm of the world's largest drug cartels and terrorists organizations.
Welcome to the world governed by the global financial Mafiocracy – because if you're not concerned, you're not paying attention.
Global Power Project: Bilderberg and the Global Financial Mafia
Global Power Project: Bilderberg and the Global Financial Mafia
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
11 December 2014
Originally posted at Occupy.com
This is the fourth installment in a series that examines the activities and individuals driving the Bilderberg Group. Read the first part, second part and third part.
In the previous Bilderberg article, I wrote that financial markets were "a type of global parasite with unprecedented power capable of determining the fate of nations and peoples." In truth, the "super-entity" known as financial market power functions like a cartel, or an organized criminal network: a Mafia. This installment examines some of the members of the global financial mafia who are present at Bilderberg meetings and thus are given unparalleled access to political leaders behind closed doors.
At Bilderberg meetings, participants frequently include leading officials and advisers to banks like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and AXA, among others. The participation of leaders and advisers to these and other large financial institutions provides world leaders with direct, "private" access to some of the leading voices at the core of global financial markets. The interests and actions of financial markets can thus be articulated to the leaders of powerful political, media, military, intelligence and technocratic institutions. The "invisible hand" may voice where and when it might smack.
Through Bilderberg, leaders in financial markets are given an inside look at, and access to, those who shape and wield foreign and economic policy in the world's most powerful nations. Their interests become a part of that process, just as geopolitical interests are integrated into the actions of financial markets. While financial markets command no armies, they determine the flow and functions of money upon which all armies are dependent, and to which nations are obedient. Bilderberg brings these institutions and individuals together for an off-the-record, private chat about global affairs and policy.
Martin Feldstein, who serves on the International Council of JPMorgan Chase, attended all but one Bilderberg meeting between 2010 and 2014. Feldstein is one of the most influential American economists over the past several decades, serving as a professor at Harvard, a member of the Group of Thirty, the Trilateral Commission, the International Advisory Board of the National Bank of Kuwait, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He advised President George W. Bush as a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board between 2007 and 2009, a position in which he was given access to top-secret intelligence information. He had previously served as one of Ronald Reagan's chief economic advisers, and President Obama appointed him in 2009 to serve on the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, advising on how to manage the "recovery" following the financial crisis.
Feldstein's views are well known. Relating to Europe's debt crisis, for which Bilderberg meetings hold a great deal of significance, Feldstein wrote in the Financial Times in July of 2013 that governments that bowed to "popular political pressure" to lessen the brutal austerity measures widely seen as the cause of mass unemployment, poverty and social unrest, were at risk of facing rising interest rates and "a new fiscal crisis."
In other words, if governments bend to the will of the people, financial markets will seek to bend them back. A "fiscal crisis" only takes place when creditors (financial markets) decide to stop funding the government. In Europe, nations are largely dependent upon banks to provide them with credit to function. Thus, if the heads of financial markets don't like the policies of nations, they can cut off their funding, creating a major crisis and even collapsing the government. This leverage forces nations to follow policies favored by financial markets, such as austerity and various other "structural reforms." Meanwhile, the policies combine to impoverish the population, enrich the elite, allow for mass exploitation of resources and labor, and consolidate control of the economy into the hands of relatively few, large global banks and corporations.
Another key Bilderberg member and leading figure in financial markets is Josef Ackermann, whom I have written about previously. Ackermann has been one of Europe's most powerful bankers over the past decade, as the CEO of Deutsche Bank and a major power player throughout the debt crisis holding key leadership positions in large industry associations such as the Institute for International Finance (IIF).
The current chairman of the Bilderberg Group, Henri de Castries, is chairman and CEO of the French insurance giant, AXA, one of the top companies on the Swiss study's list of the "super-entity" of banks and insurance giants. De Castries is also a member of the European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), a lobby group made up of the chairmen and CEOs of Europe's largest financial institutions.
In 2012, the Financial Times referred to Henri de Castries as one of France's "best known captains of industry," having served as an unofficial adviser to former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and been school classmates with the current President Francois Hollande. De Castries is considered "as establishment as you can get in France."
In the wake of the European debt crisis, Henri de Castries supported the policies of austerity and structural reform, warning in 2012 that the crisis would continue for some time. He suggested that governments needed to learn how to "spend less" and the only way to "win back our competitiveness" was "through business investment and not by public spending," adding: "What we need is a profound cultural change."
Marcus Agius, a member of Bilderberg's steering committee, is the chairman of PA Consulting, having previously served as the chairman of Barclays, the bank listed in the number one spot on the list compiled by the Swiss study. As chair of Barclays between 2007 and 2012, Agius also served as chairman of the British Bankers Association, was a director of the BBC from 2006 to 2013, and served as a Business Ambassador of the Trade and Investment Ministry of the British government. Agius also married the daughter of Edmund de Rothschild, bringing him into the family of one of the most prestigious and influential financial dynasties in the world.
Agius resigned from Barclays in 2012 as a result of the massive global financial fraud revealed by the Libor rate scandal, whereby some of the world's largest banks – including Barclays – formed a cartel at the British Bankers Association to manipulate the interest rate at which banks lend to each other, influencing prices throughout the global economy. Despite the resulting scandal for Agius and others, which forced resignations in 2012, he stayed on the bank's payroll as an adviser until March of 2014, a full 20 months following his official resignation.
Douglas J. Flint, who is chairman of HSBC, has attended every Bilderberg meeting since 2011. He is also chairman of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), and is a member of the European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), the Financial Services Forum, the International Monetary Conference (IMC), and serves on advisory boards to the Mayors of Shanghai and Beijing.
W. Edmund Clark, the chair of one of Canada's largest banks, TD Bank, has attended every Bilderberg meeting since 2010.
Peter Sutherland has been a long-time Bilderberg participant, and serves as the chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
Robert Zoellick, former World Bank president and Bilderberg participant at every meeting between 2010 and 2014, now serves as the chairman of the Board of International Advisers of Goldman Sachs.
Peter R. Orszag, a Vice Chairman at Citigroup, attended Bilderberg meetings between 2010 and 2012.
The Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, J. Michael Evans, attended Bilderberg meetings in 2012 and 2013.
This is but a small sampling of some of the names of the leaders of financial institutions represented at Bilderberg meetings over the past few years. Apart from leading individual banks and financial institutions, many of the financiers who attend Bilderberg meetings simultaneously hold leadership positions within other large banking lobby groups, industry associations, and major international conferences.
For example, Bilderberg members and participants frequently hold simultaneous leadership positions at the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the International Monetary Conference (IMC), and the Group of Thirty (G30), all of which have been the focus of previous installments of the Global Power Project, as they have been profoundly influential organizations in their own right. The fact that so many leading figures in those organizations are leaders and participants in Bilderberg meetings lends extra weight to the importance of the meetings.
Roger Altman, a Bilderberg steering committee member and head of a large investment bank, wrote in a May 2013 article in the Financial Times that financial markets in the 21st century were "much more powerful than any government leader," noting that the spread of austerity across Europe was not driven by Angela Merkel of Germany or other political leaders, but rather, by "private lenders… who declined to finance further borrowing by those countries," and thus, "markets triggered the Eurozone crisis, not politicians."
The views and the desires of bankers and financiers are important – and influential – precisely because if these individuals don't get what they want, they wield the power in numbers on screens that can force the hands of even the most powerful governments and politicians. As such, the favored policies of bankers frequently become the implemented policies of states.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a freelance writer and researcher based in Montreal, Canada.
Globalization's Game of Thrones, Part 2: Managing the Wealth of the World's Dynasties
Globalization's Game of Thrones, Part 2: Managing the Wealth of the World's Dynasties
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
27 May 2014
In part 1 of this series ("Globalization's Game of Thrones") I examined the concept of corporate and financial dynasties holding significant power in the modern world. In this, part 2 of the series, I examine the realities of the 'wealth management' industry in being responsible for handling the wealth and investments of the world's richest families, and the role of a unique institution dedicated to protecting and propagating dynastic wealth: the family office.
A Family Affair
In 2010, Forbes – a major financial publication which publishes an annual list of the world's richest people – noted that the richest of the richest 400 Americans were members of prominent corporate and financial dynasties, with six of the top ten wealthiest Americans being heirs to prominent fortunes, as opposed to being 'self-made' billionaires. What's more, since the financial crisis began in 2007 and 2008, the fortunes of these dynasties – and the other super-rich who made the Forbes list – had only increased in value.
Corporate America can frequently be seen as the emblem of the 'self-made' rich, a representation of a supposedly democratic, capitalist society, where firms are run by "professional managers" who received the right education and developed the appropriate talents to make successful companies. The reality, however, is that roughly a third of the Fortune 500 companies (that is, many of the world's largest multinational corporations) are in fact "family businesses," frequently run by family members, and often outperforming the "professionally managed" firms "by a surprisingly large margin," noted the New York Times.
In other words, in the United States – the beacon of the 'self-made' millionaire – a huge percentage of the most successful companies are owned by family dynasties, and most of the richest individuals are heirs to these family dynasties. The picture that begins to emerge better reflects that of an aristocracy, rather than a democracy.
As the New York Times noted in 2010, "the increasing use of so-called dynasty trusts" was undermining the notion that America was a meritocracy (where people 'rise through the ranks' of society based upon merit instead of money, access or family lineage). Dynastic trusts allow super-rich families "to provide their heirs with money and property largely free from taxes and immune to the claims of creditors," not only providing for children, but "for generations in perpetuity – truly creating an American aristocracy." In laws that predate the formation of the United States as an independent nation, such family trusts were only able to limit the term of the existing trust to roughly 90 years, after which the property and wealth which was consolidated into the trust would be owned directly by the family members. However, in changes that were implemented through Congress in the mid-1980s and in state legislatures across the U.S. in the 1990s, the rules were amended – with the pressure of the banking lobby – to allow family trusts to exist "forever," a quiet coup for the existing and emerging aristocratic American class.
Thus, the modern dynasty trust was officially sanctioned as a legal entity – a type of private family company – that would be responsible for handling the collective wealth – in money, property, land, art, equities (stocks), bonds (debt), etc. – of the entire family, for generation after generation. The focus is on long-term planning to maintain, protect and increase the wealth of the dynasty, and to hold it 'in trust' against the inevitable in-fighting that accompanies dynastic succession and generational differences. This would prevent – in theory – one generation or patriarch from mishandling and squandering the entire family fortune.
The legal structure of a family trust differs greatly from public corporations, in that their focus is not on maximizing short-term quarterly profits for shareholders, but in maintaining multi-generational wealth and prestige. Family trusts are increasingly used to manage the wealth of the world's super-rich dynasties, alongside private banking institutions and other wealth management and consulting firms. There is an entire industry dedicated to the management of money, wealth and investments for the super-rich, and it is focused largely – and increasingly – on family dynasties.
Of Rockefellers and Rothschilds
One of the world's most famous family trusts – the "family office" – is that of Rockefeller & Co., now known as Rockefeller Financial. It was founded in 1882 by the oil baron industrialist John D. Rockefeller as the 'family office' to manage the Rockefeller family's investments and wealth. Roughly a century after it was founded, in the 1980s, Rockefeller & Co. began selling its 'expertise' to other rich families, and by the year 2008, the trust had roughly $28 billion under management for multiple clients.
When the CEO of Rockefeller & Co., James S. McDonald, shot himself in an alley behind a car dealership in 2009, the family looked for and found a successor in the former Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs for the Bush administration, Rueben Jeffery III, a former partner at Goldman Sachs. Jeffery was responsible for handling the family's wealth throughout the global financial crisis, and by 2012, the assets under management by Rockefeller Financial had grown to $35 billion.
As of late 2012, Rockefeller & Co. had approximately 298 separate clients, providing them with "financial, trust, and tax advice." The typical clients for Rockefeller & Co. are families with more than $30 million in investments, and the group charges new clients a minimum annual fee of $100,000. However, the family office has increasingly been attracting clients beyond other family dynasties, including major multinational corporations awash with cash in a world where nation states are flooded in debt. David Harris, the chief investment officer of Rockefeller Financial, explained in a 2012 interview with Barron's (a magazine for the super-rich), that as the world's nations were stuck in a debt crisis, triple-A rated multinational conglomerates represented "the new sovereigns" with "unprecedented" amounts of cash to be invested.
And while prominent family trusts have become increasingly attractive for other rich families and institutions to handle their wealth, they have also become attractive investments in and of themselves. One of Europe's largest banks, the French conglomerate Société Générale (SocGen) purchased a 37% stake in Rockefeller & Co. in June of 2008. However, with the European debt crisis, the bank had to cut a great deal of its assets, and so in 2012 Rueben Jeffery III managed the sale of the 37% stake in the Rockefeller enterprise from SocGen to RIT Capital Partners, the investment arm of the London Rothschild family, one of the world's most famous financial dynasties.
Barron's magazine noted that the official union of these two major financial dynasties "should provide some valuable marketing opportunities" in such an uncertain economic and financial landscape, where "new wealth" from around the world would seek "to tap the joint expertise of these experienced families that have managed to keep their heads down and their assets intact over several generations and right through the upheavals of history."
Early in 2012, the Rothschild family, with various banks and investment entities spread out across multiple European nations and family branches, was making a concerted effort to begin the process of "merging its French and British assets into a single entity," aiming to secure "long-term control" over the family's "international banking empire," reported the Financial Times. The main goal of the merger was "to cement once and for all the family's grip on the business," giving the family a 57 percent share in the voting rights, thus protecting the merged entity from hostile takeovers. Thus, as the Rothschild banking dynasty was seeking to consolidate its own family interests across Europe, they were simultaneously looking to expand into the U.S. through the Rockefellers.
Thus, when Lord Jacob Rothschild – who managed the British Rothschild's family trust, RIT Capital Partners – announced that RIT would be purchasing a 37% stake in Rockefeller Financial Services in May of 2012 for an "undisclosed sum," it was announced as a "strategic partnership" that would allow the Rothschilds to gain "a much sought-after foothold in the US," representing a "transatlantic union" that officially unites the two family patriarchs of David Rockefeller and Jacob Rothschild, "whose personal relationship spans five decades."
At the time of the announcement, David Rockefeller, who was then 96-years-old, commented that, "Lord Rothschild and I have known each other for five decades. The connection between the two families is very strong." Rockefeller & Co.'s CEO, Rueben Jeffery III, declared that, "there is a shared vision, at the conceptual and strategic level, that marrying the two names with particular products, services, geographic market opportunities, can and will have resonance. These are things we will want to act on as this partnership and overall relationship evolves." In a world where families hold immense wealth and power, the official institutional union of two of the world's most famous and recognizable dynastic names makes for an attractive investment for newer dynasties seeking propagation and preservation.
The Family Office
As the Financial Times noted in 2013, the "family office" for the world's wealthy dynasties, which had "long been cloaked in a shroud of secrecy as rich families have sought to keep their personal fortunes private" has become more popular with "the explosion of wealth in the past few decades and dissatisfaction with the poor performance of portfolios handled by global private banks." Still, many so-called "single family offices" continue to operate in secrecy, managing the wealth of a single dynasty, but the emergence of "multi-family offices" (MFOs) has become an increasing trend in the world of wealth management, handling the wealth and investments of multiple families.
The world's largest private banks have specific "family office arms" which are dedicated to managing dynastic wealth, and these banks continue to dominate the overall market. Bloomberg Markets published a list of the top 50 MFOs in 2013, with HSBC Private Wealth Solutions topping the list, advising assets totaling $137.3 billion, with other banks appearing on the top ten list such as BNY Mellon Wealth Management, Pictet and UBS Global Family Office. Despite the fact that the family office arms of the world's top private banks dominate the list, many of the oldest family offices made the list, such as Bessemer Trust and Rockefeller & Co. A top official at HSBC Private Bank was quoted by the Financial Times as saying: "Very wealthy families are becoming more and more globalized. It's not just the fact that they are acquiring assets – like real estate – in several jurisdictions, but family members are scattered around the globe and need to be able to transact in those countries." In effect, we are witnessing the era of the globalization of family dynasties.
Such a view is shared by Carol Pepper, a former financial adviser and portfolio manager at Rockefeller & Co. who established her own consulting firm – Pepper International – in 2001, specializing in advising families with more than $100 million in net worth. In a 2013 interview with Barron's, Pepper explained that with the globalization of higher education – where the super-rich from around the world send their children to the same prominent academic institutions – as well as with the emergence of associations designed to bring wealthy families together, "the 19th century [is] coming back," referring to the era of Robber Baron industrialists and co-operation between the major industrial and financial fortunes of the era. Pepper explained that in the present global environment, she was witnessing "a lot more exchange of ideas among wealthy families from different countries than there ever was before," with such families increasingly investing in and with each other, noting that "inter-family transactions" had increased by 60% in the previous two years.
The globalization of family dynasties and the 'return' to the 19th century is an institutional phenomenon, facilitated by elite universities, business and family associations, international organizations, conferences and other organizations. Thus, regardless of geographic location, the world's wealthiest families tend to send their children to one of a list of relatively few elite universities, such as Wharton, Harvard or the London School of Economics. At these and similar schools, noted Carol Pepper, the future heirs of family fortunes attain "both the know-how and the contacts for forging overseas collaborations between family businesses."
So-called 'non-profit' associations like the International Family Office Association, the Family Business Network, and ESAFON, among others, are institutional representations of "intentional efforts by rich clans to rub shoulders with one another." Instead of a rich family in one region hiring an outside firm to introduce them to a new market, they simply are able to reach out directly to the wealthy families within that market, and, as Pepper explained, their interests will be increasingly aligned and "hopefully you'll all make money together."
Instead of relying on banks as intermediaries between markets, rich families with more than $47 million to invest are pooling their wealth into the multi-family offices (MFOs). The Financial Times explained that such wealthy families were "crying out for something financial institutions have singularly failed to provide: a one-stop shop to manage both their business and personal interests." Further, as banks have been coming under increased scrutiny since the financial crisis, "there is still a clandestine nature to the family-office world that will continue to attract clients." Explaining this, the Financial Times appropriately quoted advice by the character Don Corleone from The Godfather, when he told his son: "Never tell anybody outside the family what you're thinking."
As the Wall Street Journal noted, family offices "are private firms that manage just about everything for the wealthiest families: tax planning, investment management, estate planning, philanthropy, art and wine collections – even the family vacation compound." As such, regardless of where many family fortunes are made, the family office has come to represent the central institution of modern dynasties. And the growth of multi-family offices has been astounding, with the number increasing by 33% between 2008 and 2013, with more than 4,000 in the United States alone, the country with the highest number of wealthy families and individuals, including 5,000 households that have more than $100 million in assets. The Wall Street Journal noted: "You don't have to be a Rockefeller to join a family office." However, it does help to have hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 2012, the list of the largest multi-family offices were largely associated with major banks, including HSBC, BNY Mellon, UBS, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, but Rockefeller Financial maintained a prominent position as the 11th largest multi-family office (according to assets under advisement and number of families being served). And beyond the specific arm of the 'multi-family office' to the list of the top wealth management groups as a whole, private bank branches of some of the world's most recognizable bank names dominated the list: Bank of America Global Wealth & Investment Management, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo & Company, UBS Wealth Management, Fidelity, and Goldman Sachs, among others. However, after the top 19 wealth management companies in the world – all of which were arms of major global banking and financial services conglomerates – came number twenty on the list: Rockefeller Financial.
Indeed, things have never been better for the super-rich. A 2012 poll of 1,000 wealthy Americans by the Merrill Lynch Affluent Insights Survey revealed that 58% of respondents felt more financially secure in 2012 than they did the previous year. In 2013, U.S. Trust, the private banking arm of Bank of America, released a survey of 711 individuals with more than $3 million in investable assets, of whom 88% reported that they were more financially secure today than they were before the financial crisis in 2007. Further, the main goal for the super-rich in 2013 was reported to be "asset appreciation" as opposed to "extreme caution", as the survey reported for 2012.
In 2013, Bloomberg Markets Magazine reported that the number of wealthy people in the world with more than $1 million in investable assets had increased by 9.2% over 2012, reaching a new record of 12 million individuals, and the assets by the rich increased by roughly 10%, reaching a combined total of roughly $46.2 trillion. With this growth in extreme wealth, the wealth management business is itself becoming a major growth industry, with independent firms competing against the big banks in a race to manage the spoils of the world's super-rich.
And the world's big banks want to get more of this investable wealth. For example, Goldman Sachs has boosted its private wealth management services. The number of partners at the bank working in asset management in 2010 represented 4.5% of the bank's total partners, a number which grew to 12% by 2012. Tucker York, the head of private wealth management in the U.S. for Goldman Sachs, noted: "This is a relationship business, and long-term relationships matter… The focus for us is to have the right quality and caliber of people come into the business and stay in the business for a long, long time."
The managing director and chief investment officer of Goldman Sachs' private wealth management arm, Mossavar-Rahmani, told Barron's in 2012: "This is the time to be a long-term investor… There are very few market participants in today's environment who can truly be long-term investors. Who can really afford to be a long-term investor? The ultra-high-end client is the only one we could think of, because they generally have more money than their spending needs." In addition, he noted, "their assets are multigenerational," and, what's more, "they are not accountable to anyone."
In a world of immense inequality, with the super-rich controlling more wealth than the rest of humanity combined, the wealth management industry – and within it, the 'family office' – have become growth industries and increasingly important institutions. The whole process of globalization has facilitated not only the internationalization of financial markets, multinational corporations and the economies they dominate, but it has in turn facilitated the globalization of family dynasties themselves, whose wealth is largely based on control over corporate and financial assets and institutions.
In globalization's 'Game of Thrones', the world's super-rich families compete and cooperate for control not simply over nations, but entire regions and the world as a whole. As dynasties seek perpetuation, most people on this planet are concerned with survival. Whoever wins this 'Game of Thrones,' the people lose.
The research for this series has been undertaken as part of The People's Book Project. For this – and similar – research to continue, please consider making a donation today:
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He is Project Manager of The People's Book Project, chair of the Geopolitics Division of The Hampton Institute, research director for Occupy.com's Global Power Project and the World of Resistance (WoR) Report, and hosts a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.
EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Documents from Secretive Meeting of Global Bankers at the 2013 International Monetary Conference (IMC)
EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Documents from Secretive Meeting of Global Bankers at the 2013 International Monetary Conference (IMC)
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
6 March 2014
The International Monetary Conference (IMC) is an annual gathering of roughly 200 of the world's most influential bankers who meet in private with some of the leading finance ministers, regulators and central bankers of the industrial world. The meetings have been ongoing from 1954 until present-day, and have been influential forums for discussion, establishment of consensus, and the articulation and formation of policy related to global economic, financial and monetary issues.
The following document which I obtained is the program for the 2013 IMC meeting which took place in Shanghai, including the list of events and speakers at the annual gathering. Among the participants and speakers at the June 2013 International Monetary Conference (IMC) are some of the world's most influential private bankers, including: Baudouin Prot (Chairman of BNP Paribas), Douglas Flint (Chairman of HSBC), Axel Weber (Chairman of UBS), Jacob A. Frenkel (Chairman of JPMorgan Chase International), Jamie Dimon (Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase), Jürgen Fitschen (Co-Chairman of Deutsche Bank), John G. Stumpf (Chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo), Francisco Gonzalez (Chairman and CEO of BBVA), and Peter Sands (Chief Executive of Standard Chatered.
Since the IMC took place in Shanghai, it also drew some notable names from the elite within China, including: Hen Zheng (Member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China – CPC – Central Committee and Secretary of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee), Jiang Jianqing (Chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China), Shang Fulin (Chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission), Tian Guoli (Chairman of the Bank of China), and Zhou Xiaochuan (Governor of the People's Bank of China, China's central bank).
Zhao Xiaochuan was not the only central banker present at the meeting, however. Also present were: Mario Draghi (President of the European Central Bank), Jaime Caruana (General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements), and Janet Yellen, who was then the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, now the Chair of the Federal Reserve System.
Download the full program here: International Monetary Conference 2013 Program
Banking on Criminality: Drug Money and the Above-the-Law Global Banking Cartel
Banking on Criminality: Drug Money and the Above-the-Law Global Banking Cartel
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
In what the New York Times declared as a "dark day for the rule of law" on December 11, 2012, HSBC, the world's second largest bank, failed to be indicted for extensive criminal activities in laundering money to and from regimes under sanctions, Mexican drug cartels, and terrorist organizations (including al-Qaeda). While admitting culpability, and with guilt assured, state and federal authorities in the United States decided not to indict the bank "over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the world's largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system." Instead, HSBC agreed to pay a $1.92 billion settlement.
The fear was that an indictment would be a "death sentence" for HSBC. The U.S. Justice Department, which was prosecuting the case, was told by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve that taking such an "aggressive stance" against HSBC could have negative effects upon the economy. Instead, the bank was to forfeit $1.2 billion and pay $700 million in fines on top of that for violating the Bank Secrecy Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act. In a statement, HSBC's CEO stated, "We accept responsibility for our past mistakes… We are committed to protecting the integrity of the global financial system. To this end, we will continue to work closely with governments and regulators around the world." With more than $7 billion in Mexican drug cartel money laundered through HSBC alone, the fine amounts to a slap on the wrist, no more than a cost-benefit analysis of doing business: if the 'cost' of laundering billions in drug money is less than the 'benefit,' the policy will continue.
As part of the settlement, not one banker at HSBC was to be charged in the case. The New York Times acknowledged that, "the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail." HSBC joins a list of some of the world's other largest banks in paying fines for criminal activities, including Credit Suisse, Lloyds, ABN Amro and ING, among others. The U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer referred to the settlement as an example of HSBC "being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight." Lanny Breuer, who heads the Justice Department's criminal division, which was responsible for prosecuting the case against HSBC, was previously a partner at a law firm (along with the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder) where they represented a number of major banks and other conglomerates in cases dealing with foreclosure fraud. While Breuer and Holder were partners at Covington & Burling, the firm represented notable clients such as Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, among others. It seems that at the Justice Department, they continue to have the same job: protecting the major banks from being persecuted for criminal behaviour.
With a great deal of focus on the $1.9 billion in fines being paid out by HSBC, little mention was made of the fact that HSBC had roughly $2.5 trillion in assets, and earned $22 billion in profits in 2011. But not to worry, HSBC's executive said that they "accept responsibility for our past mistakes," and added: "We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again." So not only did the executives of the world's second largest bank apologize for laundering billions in drug money (along with other crimes), but they apologized… again. Thus, they pay a comparably small fine and face no criminal charges. I wonder if a crack dealer from a ghetto in the United States could avoid criminal prosecution if he were to apologize not once, but twice. Actually, we don't have to wonder. In May of 2012, as HSBC executives were testifying before the U.S. Senate in Washington D.C., admitting their role in drug money laundering, a poor black man was convicted of peddling 5.5 grams of crack cocaine just across the river from the U.S. Capitol building, and he was given 10 years in prison.
Back in August the bank stated that they had put aside $700 million to pay fines for illegal activities, which conveniently was the exact amount they were fined by the U.S. Justice Department (not including the forfeiture of profits). Lanny Breuer declared the settlement to be "a very just, very real and very powerful result." Indeed, one could agree that the results are "powerful" and "very real," in that they provide a legal state-sanctioned decision that big banks will not be persecuted for their vast criminal activities, precisely because they are big banks. The "very real" result of this is that we can guarantee that such criminal behaviour will continue, since the banks will continue to be protected by the state. With news of the settlement, HSBC's market share price rose by 2.8%, a clear sign that "financial markets" also reward criminal behaviour and the "pervasively polluted" culture at HSBC (in the words of the U.S. Senate report).
Jack Blum, a Washington attorney and former special counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who specializes in money laundering and financial crimes stated that, "If these people aren't prosecuted, who will be?" He further asked: "What do you have to do to be prosecuted? They have crossed every bright line in bank compliance. When is there an offense that's bad enough for a big bank to be prosecuted?" But the Justice Department's Lanny Breuer explained that his department had to consider "the collateral consequences" of prosecutions: "If you prosecute one of the largest banks in the world, do you risk that people will lose their jobs, other financial institutions and other parties will leave the bank, and there will be some kind of event in the world economy?"
In other words, the U.S. Justice Department decided that big banks are above the law, because if they weren't, there would be severe consequences for the financial system. And this is not just good news for HSBC, the "favourite" bank of Mexican drug cartels (according to Bloomberg), but it's good news for all banks. After all, HSBC is not the only bank engaged in laundering drug money and other illegal activities. Back in 2010, Wachovia (now part of Wells Fargo) paid roughly $160 million in fines for laundering some $378.4 billion in drug money. Drug money has also been found to be laundered through other major financial institutions, including Bank of America, Banco Santander, Citigroup, and the banking branch of American Express. Nearly all of the world's largest banks have been or are currently being investigated for other crimes, including rigging interest rates (in what's known as the Libor scandal), and other forms of fraud. Among the banks being investigated for criminal activity by U.S. prosecutors are Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Bank of America, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, Credit Suisse, Lloyds, Rabobank, Royal Bank of Canada, and Société Générale, among others. Regulators and investigators of the Libor scandal – "the biggest financial scandal ever" – report that the world's largest banks engage in "organized fraud" and function like a "cartel" or "mafia."
The pervasive criminality of this "international cartel" is so consistent that one commentator with the Guardian has referred to global banks as "the financial services wing of the drug cartels." But indeed, where could be a better place for drug cartels to deposit their profits than with a financial cartel? And why would banks give up their pivotal role in the global drug trade? While the pharmaceutical drug industry records annual revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars (which is nothing to ignore), the global trade in illicit drugs, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, amounted to roughly 2.3-5.5% of global GDP, around $2.1 trillion (U.S.) in 2009. That same year, the same United Nations office reported that billions of dollars in drug money saved the major global banks during the financial crisis, as "the only liquid investment capital" pouring into banks. Roughly $325 billion in drug money was absorbed by the financial system in 2009. It is in the interest of banks to continue profiting off of the global drug trade, and now they have been given a full green light by the Obama administration to continue.
Welcome to the world of financial criminality, the "international cartel" of drug money banks and their political protectors. These banks not only launder billions in drug money, finance terrorists and commit massive fraud, but they create massive financial and economic crises, and then our governments give them trillions of dollars in bailouts, again rewarding them for creating crises and committing criminal acts. On top of that, we, the people, are handed the bill for the bailouts and have to pay for them through reduced standards of living by being punished into poverty through 'austerity measures' and have our labour, resources, and societies exploited through 'structural reform' policies. These criminal banks dominate the global economy, and dictate policies to national political oligarchies. Their greed, power, and parasitic nature knows no bounds.
The fact that the Justice Department refused to prosecute HSBC because of the effects it could have on the financial system should be a clear sign that the financial system does not function for the benefit of people and society as a whole, and thus, that it needs to be dramatically changed, cartels need to be destroyed, banks broken up, criminal behaviour punished (not rewarded), and that people should dictate the policies of society, not a small network of international criminal cartel banks.
But then, that would be rational, so naturally it's not even up for discussion.
For a more detailed analysis of the criminal activities of the "international cartel" of banks, which scientists have referred to as a "super-entity", see: "The Global Banking 'Super-Entity' Drug Cartel: The "Free Market" of Finance Capital."
If your money isn't being laundered through a cartel, please consider making a donation to The People's Book Project, so that I can continue analyzing and exposing the activities and institutions of this cartel.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People's Book Project. He also hosts a weekly podcast show, "Empire, Power, and People," on BoilingFrogsPost.com.
The Global Banking 'Super-Entity' Drug Cartel: The "Free Market" of Finance Capital
The Global Banking 'Super-Entity' Drug Cartel: The "Free Market" of Finance Capital
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
This essay is the product of research undertaken for the first volume of The People's Book Project. Please donate to help the first volume come to completion: a study of the institutions, ideas, and individuals of power and resistance in a snap-shot of the world today, looking at the global economic crisis, war and empire, repression and the global spread of anti-austerity and resistance movements.
I would like to introduce you, the reader, to some realities of our global banking system, resting on the rhetoric of free markets, but functioning, in actuality, as a global cartel, a "super-entity" in which the world's major banks all own each other and own the controlling shares in the world's largest multinational corporations, influence governments and policy with politicians in their back pockets, routinely engaging in fraud and bribery, and launder hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money, not to mention arms dealing and terrorist financing. These are the "too big to fail" and "too big to jail" banks, the centre of our global economy, what we call a "free market," implying that the global banks – and corporations – have "free reign" to do anything they please, engage in blatantly criminal activities, steal trillions in wealth which is hidden offshore, and never get more than a slap on the wrist. This is the real "free market," a highly profitable global banking cartel, functioning as a worldwide financial Mafia.
Scientific Research Proves the Existence of a Global Financial "Super-Entity"
In October of 2011, New Scientist reported that a scientific study on the global financial system was undertaken by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The conclusion of the study revealed what many theorists and observers have noted for years, decades, and indeed, even centuries: "An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy." As one of the researchers stated, "Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market… Our analysis is reality-based." Using a database which listed 37 million companies and investors worldwide, the researchers studied all 43,060 trans-national corporations (TNCs), including the share ownerships linking them.[1]
The mapping of 'power' was through the construction of a model showing which companies controlled which other companies through shareholdings. The web of ownership revealed a core of 1,318 companies with ties to two or more other companies. This 'core' was found to own roughly 80% of global revenues for the entire set of 43,000 TNCs. And then came what the researchers referred to as the "super-entity" of 147 tightly-knit companies, which all own each other, and collectively own 40% of the total wealth in the entire network. One of the researchers noted, "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network." This network poses a huge risk to the global economy, as, "If one [company] suffers distress… this propagates." The study was undertaken with a data set established prior to the economic crisis, thus, as the financial crisis forced some banks to die (Lehman Bros.) and others to merge, the "super-entity" would now be even more connected, concentrated, and problematic for the economy.[2]
The top 50 companies on the list of the "super-entity" included (as of 2007): Barclays Plc (1), Capital Group Companies Inc (2), FMR Corporation (3), AXA (4), State Street Corporation (5), JP Morgan Chase & Co. (6), UBS AG (9), Merrill Lynch & Co Inc (10), Deutsche Bank (12), Credit Suisse Group (14), Bank of New York Mellon Corp (16), Goldman Sachs Group (18), Morgan Stanley (21), Société Générale (24), Bank of America Corporation (25), Lloyds TSB Group (26), Lehman Brothers Holdings (34), Sun Life Financial (35), ING Groep (41), BNP Paribas (46), and several others.[3]
In the United States, five banks control half the economy: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs Group collectively held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, which equals roughly 56% of the U.S. economy. This data was according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve. In 2007, the assets of the largest banks amounted to 43% of the U.S. economy. Thus, the crisis has made the banks bigger and more powerful than ever. Because the government invoked "too big to fail," meaning that the big banks will be saved because they are very important, the big banks have incentive to make continued and bigger risks, because they will be bailed out in the end. Essentially, it's an insurance policy for criminal risk-taking behaviour. The former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis stated, "Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that too-big-to-fail is fully intact." Remember, "market" means the banking cartel (or "super-entity" if you prefer). Thus, they build new bubbles and buy government bonds (sovereign debt), making the global financial system increasingly insecure and at risk of a larger collapse than took place in 2008.[4]
When politicians, economists, and other refer to "financial markets," they are in actuality referring to the "super-entity" of corporate-financial institutions which dominate, collectively, the global economy. For example, the role of financial markets in the debt crisis ravaging Europe over the past two years is often referred to as "market discipline," with financial markets speculating against the ability of nations to repay their debt or interest, of credit ratings agencies downgrading the credit-worthiness of nations, of higher yields on sovereign bonds (higher interest on government debt), and plunging the country deeper into crisis, thus forcing its political class to impose austerity and structural adjustment measures in order to restore "market confidence." This process is called "market discipline," but is more accurately, "financial terrorism" or "market warfare," with the term "market" referring specifically to the "super-entity." Whatever you call it, market discipline is ultimately a euphemism for class war.[5]
The Global Supra-Government and the "Free Market"
In December of 2011, Roger Altman, the former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton administration wrote an article for the Financial Times in which he explained that financial markets were "acting like a global supra-government," noting:
They oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so. They force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes. Their influence dwarfs multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, leaving aside unusable nuclear weapons, they have become the most powerful force on earth.[6]
Altman continued, explaining that when the power of this "global supra-government" is flexed, "the immediate impact on society can be painful – wider unemployment, for example, frequently results and governments fail." But of course, being a former top Treasury Department official, he went on to endorse the global supra-government, writing, "the longer-term effects can be often transformative and positive." Ominously, Altman concluded: "Whether this power is healthy or not is beside the point. It is permanent," and "there is no stopping the new policing role of the financial markets."[7] In other words, the 'super-entity' global 'supra-government' of financial markets carries out financial extortion, overthrows governments and impoverishes populations, but this is ultimately "positive" and "permanent," at least from the view of a former Treasury Department official. From the point of view of those who are being impoverished, the actual populations, "positive" is not necessarily the word that comes to mind.
In the age of globalization, money – or capital – flows easily across borders, with banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions acting as the vanguards of a new international order of global governance. Where finance goes, corporations follow; where corporations venture, powerful states stand guard of their interests. Our global system is one of state-capitalism, where the state and corporate interests are interdependent and mutually beneficial, at least for those in power. Today, financial institutions – with banks at the helm – have reached unprecedented power and influence in state capitalist societies. The banks are bigger than ever before in history, guarded by an insurance policy that we call "too big to fail," which means that despite their criminal and reckless behaviour, the government will step in to bail them out, as it always has. Financial markets also include credit ratings agencies, which determine the supposed "credit-worthiness" of other banks, corporations, and entire nations. The lower the credit rating, the riskier the investment, and thus, the higher the interest is for that entity to borrow money. Countries that do not follow the dictates of the "financial market" are punished with lower credit ratings, higher interest, speculative attacks, and in the cases of Greece and Italy in November of 2011, their democratically-elected governments are simply removed and replaced with technocratic administrations made up of bankers and economists who then push through austerity and adjustment policies that impoverish and exploit their populations. In the age of the "super-entity" global "supra-government," there is no time to rattle around with the pesky process of formal liberal democracy; they mean business, and if your elected governments do not succumb to "market discipline," they will be removed and replaced in what – under any other circumstances – is referred to as a 'coup.'
Banks and financial institutions provide the liquidity – or funds – for what we call "free markets." Free markets in principle would allow for free competition between companies and countries, each producing their own comparative advantage – producing what they are best at – and trading with others in the international market, so that all parties rise in living standards and wealth together. The "free market" is, of course, pure mythology. In practice, what we call "free markets" are actually highly protectionist, regimented, regulated, and designed to undermine competition and enforce monopolization. The "free markets" serve this purpose for the benefit of large multinational corporations and banks.
When we use the term "free markets" we are generally referring to the "real" economy, legitimate and legal. When it comes to illegitimate markets, for example, the global drug trade, we do not tend to refer to them as "free markets" but rather, "illegal" and run by "cartels." Cartels, like corporations, are hierarchically organized totalitarian institutions, where decisions and power and exercised from the top-down, with essentially no input going from the bottom-up. Large multinational corporations, like large international cartels, seek to control their particular market throughout entire nations, regions, and beyond. Often, co-operation between corporations allow them to function in an oligopolistic manner, where the collectively dominate the entire market, carving it up between them. Major oil companies, agro-industrial firms, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, military contractors and water management corporations are well-known for these types of activities.
Cartels have often been known to engage in a similar practice, though typically they are more competitive with each other. When interests are threatened – which is defined as when a corporation or cartel is at risk of losing its total dominance of its market in a particular region – conflict arises, and often violently so, with the potential for coups, assassinations, terror campaigns, and war. This is when the state intervenes to protect the market for the cartel or corporate interests. Thus, a market like the global drug trade functions relatively similar to those of the "legitimate" economy, pharmaceuticals, energy, technology, etc. The illicit trade in drugs is as much a "free market" as is the trade in automobiles or oil. And of course, the money ends up in the same place: the global supra-government of "financial markets."
Banking Cartel or Drug Cartel… or What's the Difference?
In 2009, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that billions of dollars in drug money saved the major banks during the financial crisis, providing much-needed liquidity. Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime stated that drug money was "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of collapse, with roughly $325 billion in drug money absorbed by the financial system. Without identifying specific countries or banks, Costa stated that, "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."[8]
In 2010, Wachovia Bank (now owned by Wells Fargo) settled the largest action ever under the U.S. bank secrecy act, paying a fine of $50 million plus forfeiting $110 million of drug money, of which the bank laundered roughly $378.4 billion out of Mexico. The federal prosecutor in the case stated, "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations." The fine that the bank paid for laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money was less than 2% of the bank's 2009 profit, and on the same week of the settlement, Wells Fargo's stock actually went up. The bank admitted in a statement of settlement that, "As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk" of holding such an account, but "despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business." The leading investigator into the money laundering operations, Martin Woods, based out of London, had discovered that Wachovia had received roughly six or seven thousand subpoenas for information about its Mexican operation from the federal government, of which Woods commented: "An absurd number. So at what point does someone at the highest level not get the feeling that something is very, very wrong?" Woods had been hired by Wachovia's London branch as a senior anti-money laundering officer in 2005, and when in 2007 an official investigation was opened into Wachovia's Mexican operations, Woods was informed by the bank that he failed "to perform at an acceptable standard." In other words, he was actually doing his job. In regards to the settlement, Woods stated:
The regulatory authorities do not have to spend any more time on it, and they don't have to push it as far as a criminal trial. They just issue criminal proceedings, and settle. The law enforcement people do what they are supposed to do, but what's the point? All those people dealing with all that money from drug-trafficking and murder, and no one goes to jail?[9]
As the former UN Office of Drugs and Crime czar Antonio Maria Costa said, "The connection between organized crime and financial institutions started in the late 1970s, early 1980s… when the mafia became globalized," just like other major markets. Martin Woods added that, "These are the proceeds of murder and misery in Mexico, and of drugs sold around the world," yet no one went to jail, asking, "What does the settlement do to fight the cartels? Nothing – it doesn't make the job of law enforcement easier and it encourages the cartels and anyone who wants to make money by laundering their blood dollars. Where's the risk? There is none." He added: "Is it in the interest of the American people to encourage both the drug cartels and the banks in this way? Is it in the interest of the Mexican people? It's simple: if you don't see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 30,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point." Woods, who now runs his own consultancy, told the Observer in 2011 that, "New York and London… have become the world's two biggest laundries of criminal and drug money, and offshore tax havens. Not the Cayman Islands, not the Isle of Man or Jersey. The big laundering is right through the City of London and Wall Street."[10]
Just as the "too big to fail" program acts as an insurance policy for the big banks to engage in constant criminal activity, taking ever-larger financial risks with the guarantee that they will be bailed out, the settlements and lack of criminal prosecutions for banks laundering drug money provides the incentive to continue laundering hundreds of billions in drug money, because so long as the fine is smaller than the profit accrued from such a practice, it comes down to a simple cost-benefit analysis: if the cost of laundering drug money is less than the benefit, continue with the policy. The same cost-benefit analysis goes for all forms of criminal activity by banks and corporations, whether bribery, fraud, or violating environmental, labour and other regulations. So long as the penalty is less than the profit, the problem continues.
An article in the Observer from July of 2012 referred to global banks as "the financial services wing of the drug cartels," noting that HSBC, Britain's biggest bank, had been called before the U.S. Senate to testify about laundering drug money from Mexican cartels, holding one "suspicious account" for four years on behalf of the largest drug cartel in the world, the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.[11] In fact, a multi-year investigation into HSBC revealed that the bank was not only a major international drug money-laundering conduit, but also laundered money for clients with ties to terrorism. In July of 2012, as the Senate was publicly investigating HSBC, Antonio Maria Costa stated, "Today I cannot think of one bank in the world that has not been penetrated by mafia money." The global drug trade is estimated to be worth roughly $380 billion annually, with most of the money made in the consumer markets of North America and Europe. Using the example of the $35 billion per year cocaine market in the United States, only about 1.5% of these profits make their way to the coca-leaf producers (mostly poor peasants) in South America (who became the target of our bombing and chemical warfare campaigns in the "war on drugs"), while the international traffickers get roughly 13% of the profits, with the remaining 85% earned by the distributors in the U.S. HSBC was accused of laundering the profits of the distributors.[12]
The U.S. Senate report concluded that HSBC had exposed the U.S. financial system to "a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing," including billions in "proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States." HSBC acknowledged, in an official statement, that, "in the past, we have sometimes failed to meet the standards that regulators and customers expect." Among those "standards" that HSBC "sometimes failed to meet," according to the Senate investigation, were financing provided to banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh which were tied to terrorist organizations, while the bank's regulator failed to take a single enforcement action against HSBC.[13] Among the terrorist organizations which potentially received financial assistance from HSBC through Saudi banks was al-Qaeda. HSBC put aside $700 million to cover any potential fines for such activities, which is not uncommon for banks to do. Banks like ABN Amro, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Lloyds and ING had all reached major settlements for admitting to facilitating transactions and engaging in money laundering for clients in Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Sudan.[14]
As executives from HSBC appeared in the U.S. Senate, the bank's head of compliance since 2002, David Bagley, resigned as he testified before the committee, commenting, "Despite the best efforts and intentions of many dedicated professionals, HSBC has fallen short of our own expectations and the expectations of our regulators."[15] As Ed Vulliamy reported in the Observer, in May of 2012, a poor black man named Edward Dorsey Sr. was convicted of peddling 5.5 grams of crack cocaine in Washington D.C. and was given 10 years in jail. Meanwhile, just across the river from where Dorsey had committed his crime, executives from HSBC admitted before the U.S. Senate that they laundered billions in drug money, just as Wachovia had admitted to the previous year, with no one going to prison.[16] The lesson from this is clear: if you are poor, black, and are caught with a couple grams of crack-cocaine, you can expect to go to prison for several years (or in this case, a decade); but if you are rich, white, own a bank, and are caught laundering billions of dollars (or hundreds of billions of dollars) in drug money, you will be fined (but not enough to make such practices unprofitable), and may have to resign. Too big to fail is simply another way of saying "too big to jail."
Of course, it's not fair to put all the blame for international drug money-laundering on the shoulders of HSBC and Wachovia, as Bloomberg reported, Mexican drug cartels also funneled money through the Bank of America and even the banking branch of American Express, Banco Santander, and Citigroup.[17] Even the FBI has accused Bank of America of laundering Mexican drug cartel funds.[18] But it's not just drug money that banks launder; all sorts of illicit funds are laundered through major banks, many of which have been fined or are now being investigated for their criminal activities, including JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse, Lloyds, Barclays, ING, and the Royal Bank of Scotland, among others.[19] Another major Swiss bank, UBS, has been very consistent in committing fraud and engaging in various conspiracies, a great deal of which was committed against Americans, though the bank was given "conditional immunity" from the U.S. Department of Justice.[20]
Financial Fraud and the 'Get Out of Jail Free Card'
The major banks of the world have been caught in conspiracies of ripping off small towns and cities across the United States, which allowed banks like JPMorgan Chase, GE Capital, UBS, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, Bear Stearns, and others, to steal billions of dollars from schools, hospitals, libraries, and nursing homes from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to a court settlement on the issue. The theft was done through the manipulation of the public bidding process, something that the Mafia has become experts in with regards to garbage and construction industry contracts. In short, the banking system actually functions like a Mafia cartel system, not to mention, taking money from the Mafia and cartels themselves.[21] Banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs engaged in bribery, fraud, and conspiracies which resulted in the bankruptcy of counties all across the United States.[22] Still, they continue to be 'respected' by the political class which refuses to punish them for their criminal activity, and instead, rewards them with bailouts and follows their instructions for policy.
Over the summer of 2012, another major banking scandal hit the headlines, regarding the manipulation of the London inter-bank lending rate known as the Libor. The Libor rate, explained the Economist, "determines the prices that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings," as it is used as a benchmark for establishing payments on an $800 trillion derivatives market, covering everything from interest rate derivatives to mortgages. Essentially, the Libor is the interest rate at which banks lend to each other on the short term, and is established through an "honour system" of where 18 major banks report their daily rates, from which an average is calculated. That average becomes the Libor rate, and reverberates throughout the entire global economy, setting a benchmark for a massive amount of transactions in the global derivatives market. Whereas the derivatives market is a massive casino of unregulated speculation, the Libor scandal revealed the cartel that owns the casino.
The scandal began with Barclays, a 300-year old bank in Britain, revealing that several employees had been involved in rigging the Libor to suit their own needs. More banks quickly became implemented, and countries all over the world began opening investigations into this scandal and the role their own banks may have played in it. By early July, as many as 20 major banks were named in various investigations or lawsuits related to the rigging of the Libor.[23]
Among the major global banks which are being investigated by U.S. prosecutors are Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, UBS, Bank of America, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, Credit Suisse, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank, Royal Bank of Canada, Société Générale, and others. Prosecutors in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Japan were investigating collusion between the major banks on the manipulation of the Libor. In June of 2012, Barclays paid a fine to US and UK authorities, admitting its culpability in the rigging with a $450 million settlement.[24] With information and documents pouring out, implicating further banks and institutions in the scandal, a general consensus was emerging that the Libor had been manipulated since at least 2005, though, as one former Morgan Stanley trader wrote in the Financial Times, the rigging had began as early as 1991, if not before. The British Banker's Association was responsible for setting the Libor rate by polling roughly 18 major banks on their highest and lowest rates daily. Thus, rigging by one bank would require the co-operating of at least nine other banks in purposely manipulating their rates in order to have any effect upon the Libor. Douglas Keenan, the former Morgan Stanley trader, wrote that, "it seems the misreporting of Libor rates may have been common practice since at least 1991."[25]
Rolf Majcen, the head of a hedge fund called FTC Capital told Der Spiegel that, "the Libor manipulation is presumably the biggest financial scandal ever." As regulators were using words like "organized fraud" and "banksters" to describe the growing scandal, it was becoming common to refer to the major banks as functioning like a "cartel" or "mafia."[26] The CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, resigned in disgrace, as did Marcus Agius, the Chairman of Barclays (who also serves as a director on the board of BBC, and is married into the Rothschild banking dynasty). The "cartel" manipulated the Libor for a great number of reasons, among them, to appear to be in better health by rigging their credit ratings upwards.[27] The Business Insider referred to the Libor rigging as a "criminal conspiracy" from the start, essentially designed to promote manipulation as the Libor was determined by an "honor system" for banks to properly report their rates.[28] Imagine giving a pile of credit cards to a group of credit card fraud convicts and establishing an "honour system." Could one truly be surprised if it didn't work out? Well, the Libor scandal is effectively based upon the same logic, except that the repercussions are global in scope.
Traders at the Royal Bank of Scotland referenced, in internal emails, to their participation in operating a "cartel" that made "amazing" amounts of money through the manipulation of interest rates, with a former senior trader at RBS writing that managers at the bank had "condoned collusion." The same trader, who was later hung out to dry by RBS as a scapegoat, wrote in an email to a trader at Deutsche Bank that, "It is a cartel now in London," where the Libor is established.[29]
The cartel, however, did not simply include the major banks, but also required the cooperation or at least negligence of regulators and central banks. Documents released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England show correspondence between then-President of the NY Fed Timothy Geithner (who is now Obama's Treasury Secretary) and Bank of England Governor Mervyn King discussing how Barclays was manipulating the Libor rates during the 2008 financial crisis. While the NY Fed corresponded with both the Bank of England and Barclays itself on the acknowledgment of interest rate manipulation, it never told the bank to stop the rigging practice. An official at Barclays even informed the NYFed in 2008 that the bank was under-reporting the rate at which it could borrow from other banks so that Barclays could "avoid the stigma" of appearing to be weaker than its peers, adding that "other participating banks were also under-reporting their Libor submissions."[30]
A Barclays employee told the New York Fed in an April 2008 phone call that, "We know that we're not posting um, an honest Libor… and yet we are doing it, because, um, if we didn't do it, it draws, um, unwanted attention on ourselves." The New York Fed official replied: "You have to accept it… I understand. Despite it's against what you would like to do. I understand completely." Several months later, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed official that the Libor rates were still "absolute rubbish."[31]
While the New York Fed expressed sympathy for the poor and helpless global banks need to engage in fraud and interest rate manipulation in order to lie and appear to be healthier than it was, the Bank of England went a step further, when Paul Tucker, the head of markets at the BoE wrote a note to Barclays CEO Bob Diamond in 2008 suggesting that Barclays lower its Libor rate, thus encouraging the rigging itself, instead of just expressing sympathy for the "need" to commit fraud.[32]
The main British banking lobby group, the British Banker's Association (BBA), which was responsible for overseeing the Libor rate process (no conflict of interest there, right?), was, in late September of 2012, stripped of its right to oversee the Libor, to be replaced with a formal regulator. The BBA's "oversight" of Libor dates back to 1984, when the City of London (Britain's Wall Street) had begun an experiment to establish a new way of setting interest rates, asking the banking lobby group to set the rate in 1986 when the Libor began.[33] The BBA's Foreign Exchange and Money Markets Committee is responsible for setting the Libor, and they meet every two months to review the process in secret without any minutes being published, and even the membership of the Committee is kept a secret. Spokespersons at Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS refused to comment on whether they had any representatives on the committee, while Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Bank of America and Citigroup didn't even respond to emailed inquiries about their involvement with the committee, as Bloomberg reported. A British regulator, in the understatement of the century, stated, "There is an apparent lack of transparency," adding that the BBA's committee "doesn't appear to be sufficiently open and transparent to provide the necessary degree of accountability to firms and markets with a direct interest in being assured of the integrity of Libor."[34] When the fox guards the henhouse, it takes a great deal of stupidity to be "surprised" when some hens go missing.
In an April 2008 meeting with officials at the Bank of England, Angela Knight, the head of the British Banker's Association, suggested that the BBA perhaps should no longer be responsible for oversight of "the world's most important number," which had become too big for the BBA to manage. No one at the meeting cared enough to do anything about it, however, and so nothing changed.[35] Where was the incentive to change the system, after all? Yes, massive fraud was taking place, and this was well understood by the banks committing it, as well as the regulators and central banks overseeing it. But on the plus side, everyone was getting away with it. So indeed, there was no incentive to change the system. From the point of view of those managing it, the Libor was functioning as it should. A cartel was established because a cartel was desired. The fact that it was all highly illegal, fraudulent, and immoral was – and is – beside the point. Mexican drug cartels do not worry about the legality of their operations because they are, by definition, illegal. They worry simply about getting away with their illegal operations. The same can be said for the global banking cartel. So long as they get away with criminal cartel operations, there is no incentive to change the system, and instead, there is only an incentive to expand and further entrench the cartel's operations.
Canada's antitrust regulator began an investigation into the "international cartel" of banks rigging the Libor, focusing on the role played by banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Royal bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Citigroup, among others. A law professor at the University of Toronto who was hired by the regulator to study the case commented that, "international cartels are of a significant concern for the Canadian economy."[36] We have truly reached an impressive circumstance when the actual regulators of the banks refer to the banking system as an "international cartel."
A lawsuit was being filed by several homeowners in the U.S. who were attempting to sue some of the world's largest banks for fraud, as the Libor manipulation sparked increases on their mortgages, resulting in illegal profits for banks. The class action lawsuit filed in New York in October of 2012 accused banks such as Bank of America, Citigroup, Barclays, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and others of fraud over a period of ten years.[37] For U.S. states and municipalities that bought interest-rate swaps before the financial crisis, the Libor rigging was poised to more than double their losses. Banks had sold roughly $500 billion of interest-rate swaps (in the derivatives market) to municipalities before the financial crisis, with roughly $200 billion of those swaps tied to the Libor. As one legal expert who studies derivatives told Bloomberg, "Almost all interest-rate swaps begin with Libor." This prompted several states in the U.S. to begin their own investigations into how the Libor-rigging may have negatively affected them.[38]
Punishing the World's Population into Poverty: Life Under the Global Cartel
While the global cartel of criminal banks rig rates, launder drug money, fund terrorists, engage in bribery, fraud and demand multi-trillion dollar bailouts from our governments (effectively selling their bad debts to the public), and then give themselves massive bonuses, they are also demanding – through what is called "market discipline" – that our governments deal with our debts by undertaking policies of "austerity" and "structural reform," which are euphemisms for impoverishment and exploitation. Thus, after the cartel helped create a massive financial crisis, and after our governments rewarded them for their criminal activity, the cartel now demands that our governments punish their populations into poverty and open their economies, resources and labour up for cheap and easy exploitation by banks and multinational corporations. This is referred to as the "solution" for getting out of the 'Great Recession,' and which is sure to great a Great Depression. Greece is now two and a half years into its "austerity" and "adjustment" reforms, with its debt growing as a result, poverty exploding, misery spreading, health, education, welfare rapidly declining, suicide rates and hunger increasing, as the Greek people are subjected to a program of "social genocide." Market discipline demands austerity and adjustment, or in other words, class warfare creates poverty and exploitation.[39]
Countries that refuse to implement programs of austerity and adjustment are subjected to financial terrorism by the "international cartel," as financial markets engage in "market discipline" by using the derivatives market to speculate against that particular country's ability to pay its interest or debt, thus making its credit ratings decrease and borrowing rates increase, plunging the country into a deeper crisis. In any other scenario, this is called terrorism or in the very least, extortion: do what I say or I will punish you and destroy you. This is what former U.S. Treasury official Roger Altman referred to in the Financial Times as the new "global supra-government" who can "force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes," and thus, "have become the most powerful force on earth."[40] Countries, regional, and international organizations all bow down to the dictates of the "international cartel" of the "global supra-government," and so countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal, organizations like the European Union, European Central Bank, powerful states like Germany, France, Britain, and the U.S., and other international organizations like the IMF, Bank for International Settlements, and the OECD all demand and implement austerity measures and structural "reforms." Either they follow the orders of the "cartel" – which we commonly refer to as the "invisible hand" of the "free market – or they directly challenge "the most powerful force on earth." In the global economy, a small country like Greece standing up to the "global supra-government" is much like a small Greek restaurant trying to stand up to the city Mafia.
In the U.S., states that were defrauded in the billions of dollars by the cartel, and took on major debts as a result, are now the harbingers of austerity in America. Beginning in 2010, roughly 20 states across the U.S. began implementing austerity measures, and have been doing much worse economically as a result (the predicted effect of austerity). Even the institutions which are the most militant in demanding austerity measures, such as the European Union and the IMF, have acknowledged in recent reports that countries which pursue austerity to supposedly reduce their debts end up getting much larger debts as a result, and that such measures are actually extremely damaging to economies. This is not news, of course, since there is a rather large sample of data from the past 30 years of forced austerity and adjustment measures across Africa, Asia, and Latin America (at the behest of the IMF, World Bank, western governments, and of course, the "cartel"), which show quite clearly the effect that austerity and adjustment have in rapidly expanding poverty and facilitating exploitation. As austerity is hitting several U.S. states, jobs are lost and poverty increases with debt, standards of living decline and the recession deepens into a depression. The population is essentially punished for the crimes of the global cartel, while public employees, pensioners, welfare recipients, teachers and workers get the blame.[41]
In late October of 2012, the CEOs of 80 major corporations and banks in the United States banded together (as any well functioning cartel does) in order to pressure Congress, regardless of who the next President is, to pursue an agenda of harsh austerity measures and structural reforms. In a statement to Congress signed by the 80 CEOs, the American branch of the global cartel (its most significant branch), demanded that policies be enacted immediately, though implemented gradually, "to give Americans time to prepare for the changes in the federal budget." Among the demands are to reform Medicare and Medicaid, healthcare, Social Security, increase taxes, and generally reduce spending. All of this amounts to a large federal program of austerity, to cut social spending and increase taxes on the population, thus impoverishing the population. This, in the words of the letter to Congress, "must be bipartisan and reforms to all areas of the budget should be included."[42] Among the signatories to the letter were the CEOs of AT&T, Bank of America, BlackRock, Boeing, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical Company, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, Time Warner, and Verizon, among many others.[43]
This followed roughly one week after a group of 15 major global bank CEOs sent a letter to President Obama and the U.S. Congress lecturing the U.S. political class on "moral authority," giving their formal orders to the U.S. political establishment, that regardless of Democratic or Republican administrations, they are losing patience with the democratic apparatus of the state, and warned: "The solvency, productive capacity, and stability of the United States, as well as its moral authority as a global leader, require that its fiscal challenges be credibly met." Among the signatories to the letter were the CEOs of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. The Wall Street Journal, reporting on this letter, commented that even for "a dying democracy, it's embarrassing enough to see bankers telling our government what to do," but in this letter, "we even see foreign bankers telling our government what to do," as other CEOs of the global cartel signed the letter, from banks such as UBS, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank. The "consequences of inaction" on the U.S. debt, read the letter, "would be very grave." In other words, the U.S. political class has received a threat from the global cartel that it is now time to implement austerity and adjustment measures, or to face the consequences of financial terrorism.[44]
Hiding the Loot: The Offshore Economy in the Age of the Global Plutonomy
While people are being forced into poverty to pay off the bad debts of the "super-entity" global banking cartel of drug-money laundering banks which make up the "global supra-government," the richest people in the world have been hiding their wealth in offshore tax havens, and of course, with the help of those same banks. James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey, a major global consultancy, published a major report on tax havens in July of 2012 for the Tax Justice Network, compiling data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the IMF and other private sector entities which revealed that the world's superrich have hidden between $21 and $32 trillion offshore to avoid taxation. Henry stated: "This offshore economy is large enough to have a major impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt ratios; and – most importantly – to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax bases of 'source' countries." John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network commented that, "Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people… This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich." Roughly 92,000 of the super-rich, globally, hold at least $10 trillion in offshore wealth. In many cases, the worth of these offshore assets far exceeds the debts of the countries that they flow from, the same debts that are used to keep these countries and their populations in poverty and a constant state of exploitation.[45]
The estimated total of hidden offshore wealth amounts to more than the combined GDP of the United States and Japan, hidden in secretive financial jurisdictions like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The process of hiding this wealth is largely facilitated by the major global banks, which compete with one another to attract the assets of the world's super-rich. James Henry explained that the wealth of the world's super-rich is "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy;" more of that "free market" magic. The top ten banks in the world, which include UBS and Credit Suisse (based in Switzerland) as well as Goldman Sachs in the United States, collectively managed roughly $6.4 trillion in offshore accounts for 2010 alone. As the report revealed, "for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world," debts which are largely illegitimate as it stands. This trend is exacerbated in the oil-rich states of the world such as Nigeria, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The report stated: "The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments." With roughly half of the world's offshore wealth belonging to the top 92,000 richest individuals, they represent the top 0.001%, a far more extreme global disparity than that which is invoked by the Occupy movement's 1% paradigm. Henry commented: "The very existence of the global offshore industry, and the tax-free status of the enormous sums invested by their wealthy clients, is predicated on secrecy."[46] Remember, "free market" means that those who own the market (the global cartel), and free to do anything they please.
A 2005 report from Citigroup coined the term "plutonomy," to describe countries "where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few," and specifically identified the U.K., Canada, Australia, and the United States as four plutonomies. Keeping in mind that the report was published three years before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the Citigroup report stated: "Asset booms, a rising profit share and favourable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper and become a greater share of the economy in the plutonomy countries," and that, "the rich are in great shape, financially."[47] It's only everyone else that is suffering, which by definition, is a "well functioning" economy. As the Federal Reserve reported, "the nation's top 1% of households own more than half the nation's stocks," and "they also control more than $16 trillion in wealth — more than the bottom 90%." The term 'Plutonomy' is specifically used to "describe a country that is defined by massive income and wealth inequality," and that they have three basic characteristics, according to the Citigroup report:
1. They are all created by "disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist friendly cooperative governments, immigrants…the rule of law and patenting inventions. Often these wealth waves involve great complexity exploited best by the rich and educated of the time."
2. There is no "average" consumer in Plutonomies. There is only the rich "and everyone else." The rich account for a disproportionate chunk of the economy, while the non-rich account for "surprisingly small bites of the national pie." [Citigroup strategist Ajay] Kapur estimates that in 2005, the richest 20% may have been responsible for 60% of total spending.
3. Plutonomies are likely to grow in the future, fed by capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity and globalization.[48]
Kapur, who authored the Citigroup report, stated that there were also risks to the Plutonomy, "including war, inflation, financial crises, the end of the technological revolution and populist political pressure," yet, "the rich are likely to keep getting even richer, and enjoy an even greater share of the wealth pie over the coming years."[49]
In February of 2011, Ajay Kapur, the author of the Citigroup report who is now with Deutsche Bank, gave an interview in which he explained that, "the world economy is even more dependent on the spending and consumption of the rich," and that, "Plutonomist consumption is almost 10 times as volatile that of the average consumer." He further explained that increased debt levels are a sign of plutonomies:
We have an economy today where a large fraction of the population doesn't pay federal income taxes and, because of demand for entitlements, we have a system of massive representation without taxation. On the other hand, you have plutonomists who protect their turf and the taxation amounts are not enough to pay for everyone's demand. So I've come to the conclusion that budget deficits are biased toward getting bigger and bigger. Budget deficits are going to become a manifestation of a plutonomy.[50]
The plutonomy is largely characterized by a lack of a consuming and vibrant middle class. This is a trend that has been accelerating for several decades, particularly in North America and Britain, where the middle class population is heavily indebted. The middle class has existed as a consumer class, keeping the lower class submissive, and keeping the upper class secure and wealthy by consuming their products, produced with the labour of the lower class.
The most advanced plutonomies in the world are the most advanced industrial and technological nations, where the major corporations and banks are highly subsidized and protected by the state, as is typical for a state-capitalist society. While the industrial and rich northern state-capitalist societies were able to industrialize and grow rich through highly protectionist measures, the poor south of the world (Africa, Asia, Latin America) were subjected to "free market" policies which opened up their economies to be exploited and plundered by the rich northern nations. No country has ever become an industrial power by implementing free market policies, but rather, by doing the exact opposite: heavy subsidies and state protection for key industries, technologies, and corporate entities.
While the 'Third World' was forced to implement "free market" policies in order to get loans, the predictable result took place: mass impoverishment and exploitation. The 'Third World' states were run by tiny elites who dominated the countries politically and economically, and who hid their stolen wealth in foreign banks and offshore tax havens. Now, in the midst of the global economic crisis which has been ravaging the world for the past four years, the rich northern countries are themselves implementing the same "free market" policies, though designed to subject their populations to "market discipline" while maintaining – and in fact increasing – the protectionist and subsidized policies for the multinational corporations and banks. It is important to note that "market discipline" and actual "free market" policies are exclusively designed for the general population, not the elite. Workers, students, the elderly, the poor and the many are to be subjected to "market discipline" while the banks and multinational corporations continue to be heavily subsidized (as the largest national welfare recipients) and protected by the state. Thus, just as our banks and corporations have plundered the Third World with rapacious delight over the past three decades, now they will be able to do the same to the populations of the rich nations themselves. The state will transform, as it did in the 'Third World', into a typically totalitarian institution which is responsible for protecting the super-rich and controlling, oppressing, or, in extreme cases of resistance, eliminating the 'problem populations' (i.e., the people).
Welcome to the global plutonomy in the age of austerity, the result of living under – and tolerating – a global "super-entity" corporate-financial cartel. Truly, one must pause and, if only for a moment, appreciate the ability of this global cartel to function so effectively in spite of its blatant criminal activities, and face almost absolutely no repercussions. Something truly is wrong with a society when a poor black man caught with 5 grams of crack-cocaine goes to prison for ten years, while rich white bank executives admit to laundering billions of dollars in drug money and receive only a fine and a slap on the wrist (maybe).
The lesson is clear: if you are a thief, steal by the billions or trillions, and then no one can do anything about it. If you are in the drug trade: handle only billions (or hundreds of billions) in drug money, and then you will get away with it. If you don't want to pay taxes, be a member of the top o.oo1% of the world's super-rich and hide your billions in offshore tax-free accounts. If you want more, create a global economic crisis, demand to be saved by the state to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars, and then, tell the state to punish their populations into poverty in order to pay for your mistakes.
In other words, if you want to indulge your criminal fantasies, lie and steal, profit from death and drugs, dominate and demand, be king and command, become the highly-functioning socially-acceptable sociopath you always knew you could be… think big. Think BANK. Serial killers, bank robbers and drug dealers go to jail; bankers get bailouts and get an unlimited insurance policy called "too big to fail."
Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, writing on a number of social, political, economic, and historical issues. He is also Project Manager of The People's Book Project. He also hosts a weekly podcast show, "Empire, Power, and People," on BoilingFrogsPost.com.
[1] Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie, "Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world," New Scientist, 24 October 2011:
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] David J. Lynch, "Banks Seen Dangerous Defying Obama's Too-Big-to-Fail Move," Bloomberg, 16 April 2012:
[5] Dean Baker, "The eurozone crisis is not about market discipline," Al-Jazeera, 18 December 2011:
[6] Roger Altman, "We need not fret over omnipotent markets," The Financial Times, 1 December 2011:
[7] Roger Altman, "We need not fret over omnipotent markets," The Financial Times, 1 December 2011:
[8] Rajeev Syal, "Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor," The Observer, 13 December 2009:
[9] Ed Vulliamy, "How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs," The Observer, 3 April 2011:
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ed Vulliamy, "Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels," The Observer, 21 July 2012:
[12] John Paul Rathbone, "Money laundering: Taken to the cleaners," 20 July 2012:
[13] Agustino Fontevecchia, "HSBC Helped Terrorists, Iran, Mexican Drug Cartels Launder Money, Senate Report Says," Forbes, 16 July 2012:
[14] Roberto Saviano, "Where the Mob Keeps its Money," The New York Times, 25 August 2012:
[15] Dominic Rushe, "HSBC 'sorry' for aiding Mexican drugs lords, rogue states and terrorists," The Guardian, 17 July 2012:
[16] Ed Vulliamy, "Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels," The Observer, 21 July 2012:
[17] Michael Smith, "Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal," Bloomberg, 29 June 2010:
[18] Alexander Eichler, "Mexican Drug Cartel Laundered Money Through BofA, FBI Alleges," The Huffington Post, 9 June 2012:
[19] Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Edward Wyatt, "In Laundering Case, a Lax Banking Law Obscured Money Flow," The New York Times, 8 August 2012:
Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Ben Protess, "
Money-Laundering Inquiry Is Said to Aim at U.S. Banks," The New York Times, 14 September 2012:
[20] James B. Stewart, "For UBS, a Record of Averting Prosecution," The New York Times, 20 July 2012:
[21] Matt Taibbi, "The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia," Rolling Stone, 21 June 2012:
[22] William D. Cohan, "How Wall Street Scams Counties Into Bankruptcy," Bloomberg, 1 July 2012:
[23] "The Libor Scandal: The Rotten Heart of Finance," The Economist, 7 July 2012:
[24] Shahien Nasiripour, "Nine more banks added to Libor probe," The Financial Times, 26 October 2012:
[25] Douglas Keenan, "My thwarted attempt to tell of Libor shenanigans," The Financial Times, 26 July 2012:
[26] "The Cartel: Behind the Scenes in the Libor Interest Rate Scandal," Der Spiegel, 1 August 2012:
[27] Matt Taibbi, "Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal?" Rolling Stone, 3 July 2012:
[28] Raúl Ilargi Meijer, "LIBOR Was A Criminal Conspiracy From The Start," The Business Insider, 11 July 2012:
[29] Steven Swinford and Harry Wilson, "RBS traders boasted of Libor 'cartel'," The Telegraph, 26 September 2012:
[30] Jill Treanor and Dominic Rushe, "Timothy Geithner and Mervyn King discussed Libor worries in 2008," The Guardian, 13 July 2012:
[31] Mark Gongloff, "New York Fed's Libor Documents Reveal Cozy Relationship Between Regulators, Banks," The Huffington Post, 13 July 2012:
[32] Chris Giles, "Libor scandal puts BoE in line of fire," The Financial Times, 17 July 2012:
[33] Jill Treanor, "British Bankers' Association to be stripped of Libor rate-setting role," The Guardian, 25 September 2012:
[34] Liam Vaughan, "Secret Libor Committee Clings to Anonymity Following Scandal," Bloomberg, 21 August 2012:
[35] David Enrich and Max Colchester, "Before Scandal, Clash Over Control of Libor," The Wall Street Journal, 11 September 2012:
[36] Andrew Mayeda, "Canada Regulator Says Has Power to Probe Libor 'Cartel'," Bloomberg, 22 June 2012:
[37] Halah Touryalai, "Banks Rigged Libor To Inflate Adjustable-Rate Mortgages: Lawsuit," Forbes, 15 October 2012:
[38] Darrell Preston, "Rigged Libor Hits States-Localities With $6 Billion: Muni Credit," Bloomberg, 9 October 2012:
[39] Andrew Gavin Marshall, "Austerity, Adjustment, and Social Genocide: Political Language and the European Debt Crisis," Andrewgavinmarshall.com, 24 July 2012:
[40] Roger Altman, "We need not fret over omnipotent markets," The Financial Times, 1 December 2011:
[41] Ben Polak and Peter K. Schott, America's Hidden Austerity Program," The New York Times, 11 June 2012:
Jason Cherkis, "A Thousand Cuts: Austerity Measures Devastate Communities Around The World," The Huffington Post, 17 July 2012:
Editorial, "The Austerity Trap," The New York Times, 23 October 2012:
Derek Thompson, "American Austerity: Why the States Cutting Spending Are Doing Worse," The Atlantic, 21 June 2012:
[42] "CEOs Deficit Manifesto," The Wall Street Journal, 25 October 2012:
[43] "Executives Who Signed the Fix the Debt Declaration," The Wall Street Journal, 25 October 2012:
[44] Al Lewis, "Bankers Face the Abyss," The Wall Street Journal, 21 October 2012:
[45] Heather Stewart, "Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, research reveals," The Observer, 21 July 2012:
[46] Heather Stewart, "£13tn hoard hidden from taxman by global elite," The Observer, 21 July 2012:
[47] We're living in a plutonomy, The Telegraph, 2 April 2006:
[48] Robert Frank, Plutonomics, The Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2007:
[49] Ibid.
[50] Gus Lubin, Deutsche Bank Says The 'Global Plutonomy' Is Stronger Than Ever, And That Means 10X More Volatility, Business Insider, 17 February 2011: