Who Needs To Know?
“Society has failed you,” Mammy Yoakum once told a spoiled brat, “but I won’t.” The Dogpatch matriarch then proceeds to wail tar out of the little hellion. Li’l Abner was syndicated in about 1000 newspapers before its last strip ran in 1977. The cartoon’s demise long preceded the time ‘too big to fail’ came into common circulation. Chrysler’s bailout arrived roughly two years after Mammy’s voice was forever extinguished.
Can ‘too big to fail’ ever amount to anything less than classic doublethink? ‘If it aint’ broke, don’t fix it’ is a small business axiom. Fly a little higher and it can equal fiscal heresy. Whatever they get caught red-handed doing, the rod cannot be taken to our betters on Wall Street or high in the Alps. In places other than skid row, you’d think, when balance sheets don’t reach black management must take its lumps. Not so at the tippy-top tiers of world finance; the suits will get their whipping boys. Guess who they always turn out to be? The corporal consequences of red books at meta-fiscal planes are always suffered by the lowest pay grades.
If you look at banking through a conventional lens, how is success measured? Would anyone find the results of the sub-prime mortgage crisis an example of responsible lending? The very foundation of the loaning business is good judgment on the capability – and inclination – of the borrower to pay the money back.
In 1930 The JP Morgan Group, Kuhn Loeb and other American banks were having trouble getting payments on what they lent Britain and France for WWI. The indebted nations told collectors that Germany had to pay them first. By that year, Allied accountants still hadn’t decided how much Germany could be taken for over The Great War. Some estimates had them paying through the nose into the 1970’s. What American bankers did know was that they were owed several King’s ransoms lent to France and England. Finances were tight the world over at the time. Still, there was nothing about shaking down losers in the terms when Wall Street extended those billions.
The “Jerries” were destitute and without means to make reparations payments. The ex-entente said that the debt couldn’t be settled until the Krauts were in a position to be leaned on again. Doesn’t that mean that several of the best addresses on Wall Street, including 23, would have been wiped out if the Allies had lost the war? It certainly goes to motive in April 1917. In any case, the intended fix was cooked up by Hjalmar Schacht, Charles Dawes, Owen Young and Montague Norman. It went by the name Bank for International Settlements based in Basel, Switzerland. Behind the front men stood JP Morgan Jr., Thomas Lamont and other American bankers afraid of getting stiffed.
Ninety-five years later it’s unclear what got fixed. The only sure thing the BIS accomplished was betrayal. During WWII the bank aided Nazi Germany facilitating international transactions. Their original mission was to get Deutschland to pony up. Despite never getting a reparating mark, the BIS is still with us. Why that is should be a mystery of international intrigue. It isn’t. The international banking clan is insatiable and won’t ease their grip on any ruse that eases the path toward absolutist management. The BIS, with no legit reason to exist for many decades, now demands to rule on all financial transactions. Presently, they make no secret of this. They prevail over Western central banking and most people have no idea they exist. That helps as they wrest decision making from average voters and depositors.
The Great Depression impeded much progress with reparations, and then Hitler came to power. Payments ceased altogether. Anyone second guessing the scheme to hand The Central Powers the whole tab for WWI a century ago is irrelevant today. Whatever the amount assessed, the world is burdened with a debt that will never be repaid. The first legacy of The Great War was amped up statism that revealed itself in the USSR, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, Nazi Germany and elsewhere. International Banks continue to collect interest in the form of fabulous benefits doled out by modern states. They are the ideological heirs of the guiltiest parties in 1914. And, like other usurers with enforcement goons, no one is safe with principal outstanding. The settlement of WWI was the ultimate boon to the universal church of statism. The first of its secret tenets is rule by stealth and deceit.
That sect has had its saints over the years. Their holy synod must switch them around from time to time. First on the list is the pivotal man who made it all possible.
HL Mencken was trying to be funny when Star-Spangled Men ran in The New Republic September 21, 1920. The piece lampooned the depths civilians stooped to flaunting ‘patriotism’ during the war. It’s most famous and quoted line advocates a medal for: “University presidents …” [who] “cashiered every-professor unwilling to support Woodrow for the first vacancy in the Trinity”. That placement — above sainthood — proved not far off.
When US senator Gerald Nye (R-ND) held hearings on war profiteering, they were known by the title of a book on the subject, Merchants of Death. Once the inquiry began in 1934 public support was overwhelming. Everybody knew Wall Street made a killing on the carnage and had ginned up support for US entry into the conflict. The media of the day covered proceedings with frequent headlines – Nye sold copy at a pace — but on The Hill other priorities prevailed. The sessions were abruptly halted February 24, 1936. Woodrow Wilson’s name had come up and into question — Democrats held 75 seats, Republicans 17 — the reigning party went into frenzy. You might have thought Jesus Christ himself was in the dock.
Carter Glass, Democrat of Virginia ruled appropriations; the so-called “southern gentleman” was widely renowned for demanding civility and decorum in the body. The first Democrat chief-exec of the 20th century, however, was too holy for reexamination. Any semblance of manners and self-restraint were instantly abandoned. What people get away with through displays of excess, artificial emotion is among the most disturbing – and manipulative — features of human nature.
Glass made a furious speech on the Senate floor, agonizing over any hint of stain upon the sacred memory of president 28, pounding his knuckles so hard on the desk they became bloody. Whether professors were actually cashiered or not – and some probably were – the “Merchants of Death” investigation certainly was. The erosion of Wilson’s reputation was a long slow process. By the time it finally reached the nadir it deserved the worldwide damage he’d unleashed had already crested.
In the meantime, international organizers were inspired by the Wilsonian vis
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
