Greens for Monetary Reform

Reflections on Money Power

by Rita Jacobs

I have not had time to write much for this newsletter, as I have been swept up in following the events of the war in Ukraine. I am a long-time peace activist and member of the Green Party Peace Action Committee. I also served as its co-chair for a couple of years and retain my active status by keeping informed through a wide variety of news sources, and assisting in writing for the committee when I can.

The last couple of months have brought forth some frightening aspects of the power of money. While I have often written and presented information about the power of bankers through their ownership of controlling interest in most of the largest corporations, as well as money spent in campaign contributions and lobbying that has allowed them to control the government, I have not given much thought to some of the interconnectedness that has resulted from this control.

It is quite clear why the two major political parties have no problem with bipartisanship when it comes to funding wars, giving special tax breaks to large corporations, ignoring the climate crisis, and essentially doing nothing about wealth inequality. I have read on different occasions about how our elected representatives in Washington spend their time throughout the day. They are expected to spend several hours each day fundraising for their respective political parties. Failure to perform well results in a pecking order that leaves them without appointments to certain powerful committees. It also causes difficulty in procuring government funding for some programs that might have special significance for their constituents. So, they are expected to welcome the lobbyists from the big corporations and banks, give preference to their requests, or face the lack of funding and support from their political parties. This situation has grown worse since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that makes it easier to provide election funding through various PACs.

The growth of large corporations and corresponding billionaires has allowed them to gain ownership of the mainstream media outlets and control their content. I have long been aware of the omission by the mainstream media of many important facts and events that are seldom or never discussed on their selective presentation of news events. I have supplemented my knowledge of current events by depending on alternate news sources, that often contain reports by investigative journalists who have been denied the opportunity to use their talents in the large news organizations. This arrangement is not working very well since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

I was not prepared for the effect the war in Ukraine would have on the availability of alternate sources of information. Day after day the news about Ukraine is blasted throughout the mainstream media in a manner that demonizes Russia without any news coverage of what led up to this invasion, the presence and the funding by the US of Nazi groups, the orchestration by the US of the coup that overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014, and the ensuing attack on the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine and citizens of Russia living in Ukraine by the Nazi battalions of the Ukrainian military. The media even covered the coup in 2014 which they now deny happened. Then came the ensuing censorship of various media outlets. Television shows by Chris Hedges and Lee Camp were forced to close, and YouTube removed the archives of many years of past shows. All the while the mainstream media spews government propaganda and misinformation with no evidence provided – only what sounds like government-prepared statements about what is transpiring. Facebook and Twitter have suspended or closed accounts because of what is deemed "misinformation." NewsGuard is investigating the Grayzone because of reports of suspected false information being published. Google has warned that it will prevent revenue from advertising to publishers that write about certain kinds of news about the war in Ukraine. And PayPal blocked the accounts of MintPress News and other alternative media, preventing contributions to the publishers through PayPal because it doesn't like the content of their news. These large corporations that can limit and control the availability of information to the public are obviously all acting in concert to protect the effectiveness of the propaganda being handed out by the government through the mainstream media. This is class war at its ugliest. It reminds me of a meme I saw on Facebook: "THEN THEY TOOK CONTROL OF THE MEDIA. AFTER THAT WE DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED."

And the final icing on the cake is the announcement by the Biden administration of its formation of a Disinformation Governance Board established under the Department of Homeland Security. Its announced purpose is to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia. What do you do when the government itself is the source of the misinformation? Is this Biden's Ministry of Truth being set up to promote doublethink and suppress crimethink? This is what the money power has created for us. We can do much better.

“Change the money, no better way to turn the world around…”

PART 9 THE MONEY MATRIX: Control of the News, 1900-1939

By Sue Peters

Introduction

“When a commercial bank makes a loan contract with a borrower, the bank CREATES the deposit in the borrower’s account.” Have you repeated this fact 15,000 times yet?

Private banks CREATE what we use as money. This ‘money power’ can also be called Finance Capitalism or Wall Street. Those who control this ‘money power,’ have power over the entire society — they decide who gets loans — new bank-money.

Private banks should not have the power to create our money and decide who gets it. When the banks create bank-money (bank credit) out of debt, they are concentrating wealth in their hands and the hands of the elites.

This power should be in the hands of Congress. Congress should issue sovereign money, like the Greenbacks of Abraham Lincoln. When the Congress authorizes sovereign money as an asset, wealth is fairly distributed to the citizens. Here is Edward Kellogg in 1883: “The most fundamental law in any nation is that which institutes money; for money governs the distribution of property, and thus affects in a thousand ways the relations of man to man.” (1)

Background

This essay will begin to share information about the control of our media by the financial elites from 1900 to 1940. Their control has only gotten exponentially stronger today.

Towards the end of the 19th century, wealthy elites took over control of the economy, by creating financial-industrial cartels (1). Bankers and industrialists like J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, etc., used the ‘money power’ – the private banking system CREATING bank-money in the account of a borrower – to do this. Here are the words of author William Engdahl: “At the dawn of the 20th century, some sixty ultra-rich families, through dynastic intermarriage and corporate, interconnected shareholdings, had gained control of American industry and banking institutions.” (2)

The most powerful of the investment banks was J.P. Morgan and Company, who formed cartel alliances with other investment banks and commercial banks.

Analysis by Ferdinand Lundberg of Media and Banking Control

In 1937, this well-respected journalist and author published the book, America’s 60 Families. In it, he gives an overview of the status of the U.S. press:

• The rural and small-town press: “‘Practically 75 per cent of the county press — the smaller papers of the country, are straight Republican. The remaining 25 per cent are Democratic’.” … derives a decisive portion of its revenue from the state and national political committees, and is attentive to the prejudices of the ruling families which finance the political parties …” (3)
• The middle layer of “independent” newspaper: “… neither very independent nor very numerous … ” (4) “… has been the only socially wholesome feature of the American press. In this division belonged Joseph Pulitzer, the only successful metropolitan newspaper publisher who…consistently criticized the powerful and wealthy figures of all camps. (5) “… Since the World War … more and more newspapers from this “independent” stratum have gone out of business … nearly one thousand newspapers … (6)
• Biggest metropolitan newspapers and great national magazines are owned or secretly controlled by the 60 families. (7)

On January 20, 1925, The Wall Street Journal, central organ of finance capital, wrote: “A newspaper is a private enterprise, owing nothing whatever to the public, which grants it no franchise.” (8) The author Lundberg comments: “The newspaper, in short, reflect actuality as does a convex mirror at Coney Island. The freedom of the press…constitutes merely the freedom to distort and to suppress news.” (9)

Example of the ‘Money Power’ Suppressing the News — Entrance of U.S. into World War/The Page Memo

During the U.S. period of “neutrality” (August,1914–April,1917), Morgan had shipped $5 billion worth of war materials, the economy was booming, and the U.S. had become the leader of world finance. Morgan himself loaned a half billion dollars to the Allies. By the beginning of 1917, the Allies were desperate for more loans, but Morgan had reached his limit. On March 5, 1917, the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain informed President Wilson that the Allies would lose the war unless they got more loans. Ambassador Page wrote: “If the U.S declared war on Germany, our government could extend such loans and the U.S. could continue to supply war materials. Our prosperity and trade would continue.” (10) On April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked congress for a declaration of war since “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

From Lundberg: “On October 14, 1934, the New York World-Telegram published the text of the cable sent by Ambassador Page to President Wilson in 1917 … Although the sensational message had never previously appeared in the press, only three out of twenty leading metropolitan newspapers copied it. … The United Press carried the text of the Page message in its dispatches of the day, but newspapers …struck it out. The Associated Press, the International News Service (Hearst), and the Universal Service (Hearst) ignored the Page cable. Most newspaper readers today [1937] are still unaware that such a cable message exists.” (11)

Example of the ‘Money Power’ Suppressing the News — Controlling Book Reviews

In 1922, Thomas Lamont, a Morgan partner, privately financed Henry Canby to found The Saturday Review of Literature, a weekly magazine reviewing books and containing editorials “which has for nearly two decades given J.P. Morgan and Company a strategic foothold in the book-publishing business.”(12) “The New York World-Telegram (April 7, 1936) revealed that Candy had admitted turning over to Lamont the proofs”(13) of a book that discussed war preparations and criticized J.P. Morgan and Company. Canby said he wished Lamont to suggest a reviewer. Lamont suggested Charles Seymour, a Yale professor, and an associate with Lamont at the Versailles Peace Conference. Seymour attacked the book, and “has since promulgated far and wide the Morgan thesis that the [U.S.] was brought into the war by the German submarine warfare. (14)

Concluding Thoughts

There are many, many other examples, in the first third of the 20th century, of the control of the press by the Money Power.

The Money Power has only gotten more powerful today. Do you really think we have a ‘free press’ today?

My high school history text taught me that a major reason the U.S. entered World War I was the German submarine warfare.

• (1) (Kellogg, Edward. Labor and Capital; A New Monetary System: The only means of securing the respective rights of labor and property, and of protecting the public from financial revulsions. Edited by his daughter, Mary Kellogg Putnam. New York, New York: John W. Lovell Company, 14 and 16 Vesey Street, 1883, p.17.
• (2) F. William Engdahl. Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century. Wiesbaden, Germany: edition.engdahl, 2009, p.28.
• (3) Lundberg, Ferdinand. America’s 60 Families. New York: The Citadel Press, 1946, p.246.
• (4) Ibid., p. 279.
• (5) Ibid., p. 246.
• (6) Ibid., pp. 246-247.
• (7) Ibid., pp. 247-279.
• (8) Ibid., p. 289.
• (9) Ibid., p. 291.
• (10) Hendrick, Burton J. The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page: Vol II. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923, pp. 269-271.
• (11) Lundberg, op.cit., pp. 295-296.
• (12) Ibid., p. 256.
• (13) Ibid., p. 316.
• (14) Ibid., p. 317.

The most valuable history is the history we don't know.

By Howard Switzer

During the US Constitutional Convention the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton stated:

"Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself?"

That quote is a bit misleading since it was Alexander Hamilton who was largely responsible for that to become a reality when he convinced Congress to give the Money Power to a private financier, his friend and future partner, Robert Morris. Robert Morris, of the firm of Willing and Morris, became the richest merchant in America from revolutionary war profits and was also an important factor in arranging credits for fighting the war when the Continental lost its value due to the massive British counterfeiting operation. The Bank of England knew how to fight monetary war knowing that money is the critical factor for any war.

Morris attempted several times to assume the monetary power of the nation. He first tried to establish a bank, but failed to get the expected financing from abroad. Then his firm tried to issue private money in Philadelphia, but were blocked by other merchants. At the Constitutional Convention Hamilton supported establishing a national bank to be run by Robert Morris.

Hamilton's original instincts were for a bank based on land, to be half owned by the government. Morris's intentions were more on the private Bank of England model which Hamilton soon embraced as he wanted the nation to become an industrial power house. First he transformed the Pennsylvania Bank into the Bank Of North America, a bank of issue which could create money. Its notes were not legal tender, but were accepted for state taxes and duties, the same formula originally used by the Bank of England. This alteration was approved by a committee of four. Only Madison was vehemently against it. The proposal passed Congress by one vote. From that point on the nation was harnessed to a private and very profitable debt-based monetary system dominated by its beneficiaries, the wealthy elite.