Ameya Narvekar 10

GLOBAL KLEPTOCRACY

 

 

Self-serving leaders throughout the world increasingly assume power with the goal of becoming rich at the expense of the majority of their population, and of the commonweal.

Dictators and oligarchs, presidents and prime ministers, bankers and corporate CEOs, intellectuals and technocrats, and assorted enablers and sycophants, are stealing their nations' wealth, and laughing all the way to their off-shore tax havens.

The endgame of this plunder will be obscene riches for the plutocratic minority and immiseration and oppression of the majority.

Now more than ever, it is critical to understand the nature of the global neoliberal economic system and the kleptocrats who thrive on it, and to give serious thought to survival options in a world increasingly controlled by and run for the benefit of thieves.

 

INSTITUTIONS OF GLOBAL POWER 

 

CENTRAL BANKS

BANK OF INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS
FEDERAL RESERVE
BANK OF ENGLAND
CENTRAL BANKS OF MOST NATIONS

 

GLOBAL BANKING CONGLOMERATES

THE 25 LARGEST BANKS IN THE WORLD (2012)

HSBC
BNP PARABIS
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL BANK OF CHINA
MITUBISHI
CREDIT AGRICOLE
BARCLAYS GROUP
ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND
JPMORGAN CHASE
BANK OF AMERICA
CHINA CONSTRUCTION BANK
MIZUHO FINANCIAL GROUP
BANK OF CHINA
CITIGROUP
AGRICULTURAL BANK OF CHINA
ING GROUP
BANCO SANTANDER
SUMITOMO MITSUI FINANCIAL GROUP
SOCIETE GENERALE
UBS
LLOYDS BANKING GROUP
GROUP BCPE
WELLS FARGO
UNICREDIT
CREDIT SUISSE
DEUTSCHE BANK

 

TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS

THE 25 CORPORATIONS WITH THE GREATEST GLOBAL IMPACT (2011)

1 - BARCLAYS PLC - GREAT BRITIAN
2 - CAPITAL GROUP COMPANIES INC. - UNITED STATES
3 - FMR CORP (Fidelity Management) - UNITED STATES
4 - AXA FR 6712 - SWITZERLAND
5 - STATE STREET CORPORATION - UNITED STATES
6 - JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. - UNITED STATES
7 - LEGAL & GENERAL GROUP PLC - GREAT BRITAIN
8 - VANGUARD GROUP, INC. - UNITED STATES
9- UBS AG - SWITZERLAND S
10 - MERRILL LYNCH & CO., INC. - UNITED STATES
11 - WELLINGTON MANAGEMENT CO. L.L.P. - UNITED STATES
12 - DEUTSCHE BANK AG - GERMANY
13 - FRANKLIN RESOURCES, INC. - UNITED STATES
14 - CREDIT SUISSE GROUP - SWITZERLAND
15 - WALTON ENTERPRISES LLC - UNITED STATES
16 - BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON CORP. - UNITED STATES
17 - NATIXIS - FRANCE
18 - GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC. - UNITED STATES
19 - T. ROWE PRICE GROUP, INC. - UNITED STATES
20- LEGG MASON, INC. - UNITED STATES
21 - MORGAN STANLEY - UNITED STATES
22 - MITSUBISHI UFJ FINANCIAL GROUP, INC. - JAPAN
23 - NORTHERN TRUST CORPORATION - UNITED STATES
24 - SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE - FRANCE
25 - BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION - UNITED STATES

ENERGY CORPORATIONS(a partial list)

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL
CHEVRON
BRITISH PETROLEUM
EXXON/MOBIL
TOTAL
CONOCO PHILLIPS

 

WEAPONS MANUFACTURERS(a partial list)

LOCKHEED MARTIN - USA
BOEING - USA
BAE SYSTEMS - BRITAIN
GENERAL DYNAMICS - USA
RAYTHEON - USA
NORTHROP GRUMMAN - USA
EADS - BRITAIN/FRANCE
L-3 COMMUNICATIONS - USA
FINMECCANICA - ITALY
UNITED TECHNOLOGIES - USA

 

FINANCIAL SERVICES INSTITUTIONS

LARGEST HOLDING COMPANIES (2013)

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION
CITIGROUP INC.
WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC.
MORGAN STANLEY
GENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION

 

LARGEST ASSET MANAGEMENT COMPANIES (2012)

BLACKROCK
UBS
ALLIANZ
VANGUARD GROUP
STATE STREET GLOBAL ADVISORS
PIMCO
FIDELITY INVESTMENTS
AXA
JP MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENT
CREDIT SUISSE

 

LARGEST HEDGE FUNDS (2011)

BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES
MAN GROUP
J.P. MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENT
BREVAN HOWARD ASSET MANAGEMENT
OCH-ZIFF CAPITAL MANAGEMENT GROUP
PAULSON AND CO.
BLACKROCK ADVISORS

ORGANIZATIONS, SOCIETIES AND CLUBS(a partial list)

UNITED NATIONS
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)
WORLD BANK
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR)
TRILATERAL COMMISSION (TC)
BILDERBERG GROUP
CHATHAM HOUSE / ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (RIIA)
CLUB OF THE ISLES
PILGRIMS SOCIETY
CLUB OF ROME

THINK TANKS(a partial list)

CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (CSIS)
BUSINESS ROUND TABLE
EUROPEAN ROUND TABLE OF INDUSTRIALISTS (ERT)
INTERNATIONAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (ICC)
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
WORLD BUSINESS COUNCIL FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (WBCSD)
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
RAND CORPORATION
HERITAGE FOUNDATION
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS(a partial list)

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
FORD FOUNDATION
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT
GATES FOUNDATION
SOROS OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION

TAX HAVENS, SECRECY JURISDICTIONS AND MONEY LAUNDERING CENTERS

HIDING THE WEALTH OF THE RICH AND INFAMOUS

TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS ARE "HIDDEN" IN OFFSHORE SECRECY JURISDICTIONS
WEALTH OF THE GLOBAL ELITE IS PRESERVED
TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AVOID PAYING TAXES
DRUG MONEY IS LAUNDERED THROUGH INTERNATIONAL BANKS
FUNDING OF GOVERNMENT COVERT OPERATIONS IS OBSCURE

CITY OF LONDON
"City of London" is the secrecy jurisdiction of choice for the global mega-wealthy
both directly and from Britain's overseas territories and crown dependencies

WALL STREET (NEW YORK CITY)

DELAWARE
NEVADA
FLORIDA
WYOMING
SOUTH DAKOTA

HONG KONG
MACAO

THE VATICAN

COUNTRIES
UNITED STATES
BRITAIN
PANAMA
SINGAPORE
TAIWAN
MALAYSIA
JAPAN
CHINA
BELIZE
ISRAEL
LEBANON
TURKEY
CYPRUS
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (DUBAI)
BAHRAIN
SWITZERLAND
GERMANY
LUXEMBOURG
MONACO
ANDORRA
LIECHTENSTEIN
NETHERLANDS
IRELAND
KENYA
MAURITIUS
SEYCHELLES
NUE
SAMOA
MARSHALL ISLANDS

TERRITORIES AND ISLANDS UNDER BRITISH INFLUENCEBritain's overseas territories and crown dependencies funnel
trillions of dollars of laundered money from around the world into London banks and real estate

GIBRALTAR
GUERNSEY
JERSEY
ISLE OF MAN
CAYMAN ISLAND
ANGUILLA
BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS
BAHAMAS
MONSERRAT
BERMUDA
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
BARBADOS
DOMINICA
GRENADA
ST. KITTS AND NEVIS
ST. LUCIA
ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
TURKS AND CAICOS

ISLANDS UNDER NETHERLANDS INFLUENCEARUBA
BONAIRE
CURAÇAO
ST. MAARTEN
NETHERLAND ANTILLES

MONEY LAUNDERING BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
{a partial list}

BANK OF AMERICA
JP MORGAN CHASE
CITIBANK
WELLS FARGO
WESTERN UNION
AMERICAN EXPRESS
CREDIT SUISSE
UBS
HSBC
STANDARD CHARTERED
BARCLAYS
LLOYDS OF LONDON
ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND

AND MANY OTHER BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD

 

DYNASTIC FAMILIES AND INSTITUTIONS

EUROPEAN DYNASTIC FAMILIES
HOUSE OF WINDSOR (Great Britain)
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
LIECHTENSTEIN
LUXEMBOURG
SPAIN
DENMARK
NORWAY
SWEDEN
MONACO
INTERNATIONAL BANKING DYNASTIES
ROTHSCHILDS
ROCKEFELLERS
KUHN LOEB
WARBURG
LAZARD
GOLDMAN SACHS
ISRAEL MOSES SEIF
LEHMAN

DYNASTIC BANKING INSTITUTIONS
ROTHSCHILD BANK OF LONDON
ROTHSCHILD BANK OF BERLIN
WARBURG BANK OF HAMBURG
WARBURG BANK OF AMSTERDAM
LAZARD BROTHERS OF PARIS
ISRAEL MOSES SEIF BANK OF ITALY
KUHN LOEB BANK OF NEW YORK
GOLDMAN SACHS OF NEW YORK
J. P. MORGAN CHASE BANK OF NEW YORK
LEHMAN BROTHERS OF NEW YORK (filed for bankruptcy in 2008)

 

THE CITY OF LONDON CORPORATIONTHE "CROWN", THE "CITY", THE "SQUARE MILE"

 

THE VATICAN
VATICAN BANK

 

DYNASTIC FAMILIES IN THE UNITED STATES(a partial list)

ROCKEFELLER
BUSH
CLINTON

 

DYNASTIC FAMILIES IN ASIA(a partial list)

BRUNEI
PHILIPPINES
CHINA (PRINCELINGS)

DYNASTIC FAMILIES IN MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
(a partial list)

SYRIA
JORDAN
MOROCCO
SAUDI ARABIA
KUWAIT
OMAN
QATAR
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (UAE)
BAHRAIN

 

 

WEBSITES TO VISIT

TRUTH-TELLERS

 

THIRD WORLD TRAVELER

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

 

EMPIRE OF CHAOS

 

PATHOCRACY: THE GLOBAL ORDER

 

PLUTOCRACY CARTEL

 

REAL WORLD ORDER

 

DISINFORMATION NATION

 

BEYOND THE MEDIA MATRIX

 

THE WAR RACKET

 

HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS

 

BARBARIANS IN SUITS

 

CRITICAL THINKER QUOTATIONS

 

 

MEET THE KLEPTOCRATS

"Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control."

English historian Lord Acton

 

"Kleptocrats have transformed politics to trade. They are traders who use their power, access and privileged information to generate wealth. And at the same time well-connected financiers and corporate leaders have made a business of politics. They come together to form a kleptocratic caste."

venitism.blogspot.com

 

"Families that have established modern dynasties typically rose to prominence through their concentration of power and wealth in financial, industrial and corporate spheres. From these positions, political power and influence became a necessity, or else the loss of economic power would be an inevitability."

Andrew Gavin Marshall

 

"Oxfam said wealth was being concentrated in the hands of increasingly fewer people, while the world's poorest continued to get poorer. In 2010 some 388 people owned as much as the world's poorest 50 percent."

www.aljazeera.com, 2016

 

"There is a group of a few thousand people among the corporate elite who effectively control perhaps $100 trillion, two-thirds of the world's total assets."

David Rothkopf

 

"These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest."

Samuel Johnson

 

"The Global Mafiocracy: the banks, corporations, asset management firms, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and holding companies that collectively own each other and the wider network of global corporate and financial institutions, manifesting as a relatively small cartel of roughly 150 large financial institutions that wield unparalleled financial power in the modern world.
Behind the major corporate and financial institutions are individuals and families, smaller units of concentrated power who own the largest shares and steer the operations of the global cartel. These individual oligarchs and family dynasties - from the Rockefellers in the US, to the Wallenbergs in Sweden, Agnellis in Italy, Desmarais' in Canada, to the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, Oppenheimer in South Africa, among others - control and/or influence large percentages of wealth within their respective nations and in the world of globalized financial and corporate networks."

Andrew Gavin Marshall

 

"The war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."

George Orwell

 

"Corporate raiders (now called private equity and hedge fund managers) buy up firms using borrowed money and make the acquired corporation pay back the loans. For pulling off the deal, they use some of that borrowed money to pay themselves enormous fees, right off the top. They also provide fat bonuses for the CEOs who are to run the acquired corporation. Most importantly, they change the way top officers are rewarded. From this point on, most of their incomes would derive from stock options. The more the stock price rose, the more the CEOs would pocket.
As a result, the new incentive would be focused solely on making the firm's stock price climb. Nothing else mattered. How do you do that? You use as much of the profits as possible to buy up your own stocks! And when profits are slim, you borrow more money to buy even more of your own stock. The more you buy, the fewer shares are in circulation, and therefore each share is worth more. The stock price climbs. Buying back your own stock became the new corporate way of life."

Les Leopold

 

"I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my time being a hlgh class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1910-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
In China in 1927 l helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
I had a swell racket. l was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. l might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents."

General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps Commandant, 1935

 

"The neoconservative aim is to change the shape of the trajectory along which Western civilization has been moving for the past two centuries. It is nothing less than to roll back Social Security, health care and pensions for labor, health care, education and other public spending, to dismantle the social welfare state, the Progressive Era of genuine democracy and ultimately even the very concept of classical liberalism."

sceptic.ca

 

"With the preservation and propagation of modern dynastic power has come the preservation and propagation of modern imperialism, no longer established as a formal colonial system of control. Instead, it is represented as a complex inter-dependency and interaction of institutions and ideologies that manifest as a system of globalized 'informal imperialism', with the United States at the center.
Some of the names of these dynasties are better known than others, like Rothschild and Rockefeller, while others are better known within their own countries or barely known at all, like Agnelli (in Italy), Wallenberg (in Sweden) and Desmarais (in Canada). Each family dynasty has their own unique history, with power concentrated in particular companies or family offices. Many, if not most, of these families also have significant connections with each other, acting as joint shareholders in various companies, sitting on the same boards and mingling in the same social circles. They cooperate and they compete with each other for influence in Globalization's 'Game of Thrones'."

Andrew Gavin Marshall

 

"By 2008-'09 corporate America was, in effect, using 75% of its profits to buy back its own stock. At the same time, loan and after loan was piled onto the corporate books to buy up even more stock. So that after buying the stock and paying off the loans, there was very little profit remaining to reinvest in the company.
To play this game, worker wages, R&D and new plant and equipment are cut to the bone. Older plants are eliminated. Production is outsourced to low-wage areas. Temporary workers replace permanent employees. Benefits like healthcare and pensions are reduced or eliminated. Unions are undermined. And bankruptcy is sometimes used to break contracts to further reduce these costs. The fees for all this "financial engineering" go to Wall Street. The stock-option-loaded CEOs become part of Wall Street-its onsite, wealth extraction overseers. Nearly all corporations whether raided or not, soon followed this lucrative model. Strip-mining the corporation became its fundamental activity."

Les Leopold

 

GOVERNMENT KLEPTOCRATSEXECUTIVE

  

Al Gore / Hillary Clinton / Bill Clinton

"The Clintons suffer from being snobs who like to hang around with rich people in spite of their populist pretensions. They are the ultimate social climbers, always willing to do one more thing to obtain acceptance from the 1% that really matters and ready to reap the rewards that they know come with it. Hillary claims that she and Bill were broke and in debt when they left the White House. They are now worth over $100 million and command as much as $800,000 for a single speaking engagement. Hillary's minimum paycheck to speak before a group is reported to be $200,000. Does anyone actually think that either Bill Clinton's sly smile or Hillary's shrill monotone is worth a speaking fee in the hundreds of thousands of dollars? Or are there expectations of other quid pro quos down the road for those who are coughing up the big money, to include something like $18 million from Goldman Sachs and other banksters who brought the nation to the brink of ruin in 2008?"

Philip Giraldi

 

"Bill and Hillary Clinton have in tandem made enormous sums of money since Bill left the White House. According to the Washington Post, they netted at least $136.5 million between 2001 and 2012."

Ken Silverstein

 

"Though an overwhelming majority of Americans, according to public opinion polls, believe that human rights should be a cornerstone of American foreign policy, Senator Hillary Clinton has repeatedly prioritized the profits of American arms manufacturers and the extension of Washington's hegemonic reach in parts of the world."

Stephen Zunes

 

"President Bill Clinton saw in the earthquake of 2010 his opportunity to become the new US High Commissioner of Haiti. Within four months of the earthquake, he formed the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH): a strictly pay-to-play group of officials/rich businessmen from the MINUSTAH countries and others who agreed to contribute armed personnel from their countries or money in return for a piece of the action in Haiti. After some arm twisting and bribery, the Haitian parliament was forced to declare a state of emergency for 18 months during which Clinton and his CIRH gang could do as they pleased with regard to reconstruction, without risk of liability. One year and a half came and went, and when the Haitian Senate observed that nothing much had been accomplished, the state of emergency was not renewed, and the CIRH was alleged to be fraudulent."

Dady Chery, 2014

 

"President Bill Clinton and other recent White House tenants condemned Haiti to a future of endemic poverty through a self-serving U.S. rice export policy."

a report from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 2010

 

"The American kleptocracy continues to suck the American people down a rabbit hole, into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere."

John Whitehead, 2018

 

"Up to $300 million has been raised by Bill and Hillary Clinton from the financial-services industry.
Goldman Sachs has donated between $250,000 and $500,00 to the monprofit Clinton Foundation and hosts many of its events.

The Nation magazine

 

"I am delighted to be here in these new Council on Foreign Relations headquarters. I have been often to the mother ship in New York City, but it's good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department.
We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won't have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's opening remarks during her speech to the Council on Foreign Relations , July 15, 2009

 

"According to a CNBC Millionaire Survey in 2014 (500 people with investable assets of $1 million or more, which represents the top 8 percent of American households), Hillary Clinton is the top choice for 31 percent of millionaires.
Clinton gets the support of 38 percent of women millionaires and 27 percent of male millionaires. Among male millionaires of both parties, Hillary is the top choice, with 27 percent."

Robert Frank

 

"As part of the country's "Reconstruction", the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund invested $2 million in the Royal Oasis Hotel, a deluxe structure to be built in a poverty-stricken metropolitan area filled with displaced-persons camps housing hundreds of thousands of Haitians."

Julie Lévesque, 2012

 

"Since 2009, George W. Bush has made upwards of $15 million giving speeches, sometimes for as much as $200,000 a pop.
W's very first speaking gig after leaving the White House, in October 2009, was a star-studded affair at the Ft. Worth Convention Center. Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and Christian motivational speaker Zig Ziglar addressed the crowd, too. The sponsor was an outfit called Get Motivated!
In other words, the 43rd president was making six-digit figures shilling for "get rich quick" schemes."

Joseph L. Flatley

 

"The Clintons have used their foundation [Clinton Foundation] for crass profiteering and influence peddling.
If the Justice Department and law enforcement agencies do their jobs, the foundation will be closed and its current and past trustees, who include Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton, will be indicted. That's because their so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich Clinton family friends."

Ken Silverstein

 

"I am delighted to be here in these new [Council on Foreign Relations] headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it's good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department.
We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won't have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's opening remarks during her speech to the Council on Foreign Relations , July 15, 2009

 

"Vice-president Cheney denied that he had any ties with Halliburton Company after he left his position as CEO of the company in 2000, but an investigation by the Congressional Research Service revealed that while Vice President, Cheney received deferred compensation from Halliburton to the tune of $500,000 to $1,000,000. While Cheney was Secretary of Defense for George H. W. Bush, the Pentagon contracted Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to study the cost effectiveness of outsourcing some military operations to private contractors. Based on the results of the study, the Pentagon hired Brown & Root to implement an outsourcing plan."

www.sourcewatch.org

 

"Al Gore, a career reportedly became a billionaire just a few years after leaving his last government job as Vice President of the United States. He achieved this miracle through various "green" business deals. Such deals usually involve the ancient mercantilist practice of bribing politicians for a special favor or subsidy. The bribe-giver becomes wealthy, and the politicians granting the favor/subsidy have the funds to finance the next campaign. Let's call it crony environmentalism."

Lew Rockwell

 

"Al Gore stands to benefit to the tune of billions of dollars if the carbon tax proposals he is pushing come to fruition in the United States.
... The former Vice President is poised to become the world's first "carbon billionaire," profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.
... Since he left office, Gore's personal net worth has skyrocketed on the back of his advocacy for global warming issues and the financial dividends this has reaped.
... The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the world's pre-eminent carbon credit trading market, has direct ties to Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for profit and social engineering. Gore's investment company, Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offset opportunities, is the largest shareholder of CCX."

Paul Joseph Watson, 2009

 

"As the first president of the new global era, Bill Clinton visited more than 70 countries, set up the WTO, boosted the international budget, maintained high levels of Pentagon spending, militarized the drug wars in South America, continued the military and economic assault on Iraq, laid the groundwork for "humanitarian" interventions, bombed the Sudan and Afghanistan, and carried out protracted aerial raids on Serbia. Enthused by prospects for total surveillance of the world, Clinton raised intelligence spending levels to more than 30 billion dollars, with increasing emphasis on the supersecret National Security Agency. The planned, systematic, and brutal destruction of the Serb infrastructure must be considered one of the great war crimes of the postwar years."

Carl Boggs

 

"The Clinton's are singular in terms of both their greed and their hubristic sense of entitlement... Bill has made at least $136.5 million, mostly from speaking engagements, between 2001 and 2012, and Hillary is now earning even more than he is per speech... The Clinton Foundation, administered separately from their private wealth, had assets totaling nearly $278 million at the end of 2013."

Philip Giraldi

 

"President Bill Clinton and his cronies had begun to search for a way to continue their economic stranglehold on Haiti, and this would include a suitable Haitian President: specifically, one who would be popular with the young but lack patriotism. They found their man in the musician Michel Martelly."

Dady Chery, 2014

 

"Al Gore, former U.S. vice president and Current TV founder reportedly made an estimated $70 million for his 20 percent stake when he sold his progressive cable network to Al Jazeera.
Gore sold Current TV in January 2013 for a reported $500 million. He also exercised shares of Apple stock - which netted him $30 million - two weeks later. His net worth is an estimated $200 million."

www.huffingtonpost.com, 2013

 

"Since her first Senate campaign in 1999, Goldman Sachs has been bankrolling Hillary Clinton to the tune of millions of dollars. Individual donors like Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein have been generous, but the firm has sought to purchase influence and good will through speaking fees as well as contributions to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation.
Goldman Sachs is not alone. Citigroup ranks No. 1 in lifetime donations to Clinton.
Hiring Hillary Clinton as a speaker is one way Goldman Sachs funnels cash to her. Clinton's standard speaking fee is $200,000."

The Nation magazine

 

"The Clinton Foundation has received more than $1 billion over the years to purchase HIV/AIDS drugs for poor people in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. However, a unit set up to receive the money-the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, Inc., which was run by Ira Magaziner, a Clinton administration veteran with close ties to Hillary-clearly spent far, far less than it took in. In fact, the unit's accounting practices were so shoddy that its license was revoked by the state of Massachusetts."

Ken Silverstein

 

"The North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] was peddled by the Clinton White House as an opportunity to raise the incomes and prosperity of the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA would also, we were told, stanch Mexican immigration into the United States.
... But NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, had the effect of reversing every one of Clinton's rosy predictions. Once the Mexican government lifted price supports on corn and beans grown by Mexican farmers, those farmers had to compete against the huge agribusinesses in the United States. Many Mexican farmers were swiftly bankrupted. At least 2 million Mexican farmers have been driven off their land since 1994.
... NAFTA was great if you were a corporation. It was a disaster if you were a worker.
... Bill Clinton's welfare reform bill, signed on August 22, 1996, obliterated the nation's social safety net. It threw 6 million people, many of them single mothers, off the welfare rolls within three years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care, rent subsidies, or continued Medicaid coverage.
... Clinton slashed Medicare by $115 billion over a five-year period and cut $25 billion in Medicaid funding.
... The Clinton administration, led by Lawrence Summers, signed into law the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which ripped down the firewalls that had been established by the 1933 GlassSteagall Act. Glass-Steagall established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It set in place banking reforms to stop speculators from hijacking the financial system. With Glass-Steagall demolished, and the passage of NAFTA, the Democrats, led by Clinton, tumbled gleefully into bed with corporations and Wall Street speculators."

Chris Hedges

 

CONGRESS

Senator Phil Gramm

"The technique, used by the monopolists to gouge society, was set forth in the early twentieth century by Frederick C. Howe in 'Confessions of a Monopolist'. First, says Howe, politics is a necessary part of business. To control industries it is necessary to control Congress and the regulators and thus make society go to work for you, the monopolist. So, according to Howe, the two principles of a successful monopolist are first to let Society work for you; and second to make a business of politics."

Antony C. Sutton in his book "Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution"

 

"Regimes throughout the Middle East, from Turkey to the United Arab Emirates, have gone on what appears to be a shopping spree for former members of Congress. Compared to the rest of the world, Middle East governments have accounted for more than fifty percent of the latest revolving door hires for former lawmakers during this time period."

Mike Krieger, 2015

 

"The Project on Government Oversight identified 224 high ranking government officials who moved through the revolving door to become lobbyists or high level executives of government contractors, and disclosed that at least two-thirds of the former members of Congress who lobbied for top 20 government contractors served on authorization or appropriations committees that approved programs or funds for their future employer or client while they served in Congress."

Jeremy Kuzmarov, Global Research, 2014

 

"Ex-congressman and GOP strategist Vin Weber and his lobbying firm, Mercury LLC, signed a lucrative lobbying contract with the Gulf State of Qatar,receiving a $465,000 advance."

VICE magazine, 2014

 

"The conventional wisdom out there is that businesses are going to Washington, writing checks and expecting big returns. But the other side of the story is that members of Congress may implicitly threaten businesses that if they don't change their policy, or if they are not heavily involved in the political process, that bad things might happen to them.
... Our government has become a clearing house for corporations and plutocrats whose dollars grease the wheels for lucrative contracts and easy regulation."

political scientist David Primo

 

"Billy Tauzin, former chair of the the Energy and Commerce Committee, which had oversight of the drug industry, after retiring from Congress in late 2004, became the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in January 2005."

www.sourcewatch.org

 

"Our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of "the people" - kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle."
William J. Astore

 

"In the late 1990s, Senator Phil Gramm, as chairman of the Senate Baking Committee, spearheaded the repeal of Glass-Steagall for the banks. As soon as it was done, he was made vice chairman of one of the largest international banks - Swiss global financial services company UBS AG - and paid a multi-million dollar income, and his only duties were to go around giving speeches."

Paul Craig Roberts

 

"Full investigation of the Enron scandal would have proven once and for all that there is almost no one in the US Congress not owned by some corporation."

T. P. Wilkinson

 

"The two party system is nothing but a ruse designed to keep the people believing they have a say in how things are run in this country. Both parties support the military industrial complex. Both parties support the militarization of police forces around the country. Both parties support the mass surveillance of its citizens. Both parties do the bidding of their rich corporate and special interest benefactors. Both parties favor deficit spending for eternity. Both parties believe the government should expand its role in our everyday lives. Both parties do the bidding for and protect the Wall Street interests who really run this country. No more proof is needed than what has occurred over the last five years, as criminal Wall Street bankers were rewarded for their malfeasance with trillions of dollars from taxpayers and their puppets at the Federal Reserve. While we were allowing ourselves to be distracted, amused, entertained, and indebted, the oligarchs were busy conducting a silent coup."

www.washingtonsblog.com, 2014

 

"Former US Senator Norm Coleman is a lobbyist who serves on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Since July, Coleman has been a registered lobbyist for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, hired in part to work on sanctions against Iran, a key priority of Saudi Arabia's ruling family. Shortly after signing up as a lobbyist for the Saudis, Coleman gave a speech on Capitol Hill imploring his congressional allies to realize that Israel and Saudi Arabia have many shared policy priorities, and that the United States should be hand in glove with our allies in the region.

Mike Krieger, 2015

 

"Once upon a time the GOP stood for Grand Old Party - now it stands for Guardians of Privilege, and this is payback time for everything from fracking to getting the big banks off the hook; from doing away with the minimum wage and coddling off-shore corporate tax avoiders to privatizing Medicare and Social Security; to gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency, even the U.S. Postal Service.
Democrats are so compromised by their own addiction to Big Money they have forgotten their history as champion of the working stiff, the little folks down there at the bottom. The great problems facing everyday people in America - inequality, stagnant wages, children in poverty, our degraded infrastructure and stressed environment - are not being seriously addressed because the political class is afraid to offend the people who write the checks - the corporations and the rich. Everyone else can be safely ignored."

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

 

"Monopolists never can be free-enterprise capitalists. Without exception, they embrace either socialism or some other form of collectivism, because these represent the ultimate monopoly. These government-sponsored monopolies are tolerated by their citizens because they assume that, by the magic of the democratic process and the power of their vote, somehow, it is they who are the benefactors. This might be true if they took the trouble to become informed on such matters, and if they had independent and honest candidates from which to choose, and if the political parties were not dominated by the super-rich, and if it were possible for men to win elections without vast sums of campaign money."

G. Edward Griffin, 2011

 

"From 2007 to 2012, the 200 most politically active corporations in the United States spent almost $6 billion for lobbying and campaign contributions. And they received more than $4 trillion in U.S. government contracts and other forms of assistance. That's $760 for every dollar spent on influence, a stunning return on investment."

Sunlight Foundation, www.blacklistednews.com

 

"Our government has become a clearing house for corporations and plutocrats whose dollars grease the wheels for lucrative contracts and easy regulation."

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

 

"The best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation."

Frederick C. Howe. "Confessions of a Monopolist" (1906)

 

"Government becomes the tool of the very forces that, supposedly, it is regulating. The regulations,
upon close examination, almost always turn out to be what the cartels have agreed upon beforehand, except that now they have the police power of the state to enforce them. And it makes it possible for these financial and political interests to become secure from the threat of competition."

G. Edward Griffin, 2011

 

"Former Michigan Representative Pete Hoekstra, who used to chair the House Intelligence Committee, appears regularly in the media to demand that the US increase its arms assistance to the Kurds in northern Iraq. Hoekstra has not disclosed that he has worked as a paid representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government."

Mike Krieger, 2015

 

"Between 2007 and 2012, 200 of America's most politically active corporations spent a combined $5.8 billion on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. What they gave pales compared to what those same corporations got: $4.4 trillion in federal business and support."

Sunlight Foundation study, www.blacklistednews.com

 

JUDICIAL

 Justice John Roberts

"The 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court case essentially enabled corporations and billionaires to be able buy US elections and politicians without government oversight... Rather than creating a level playing field, Citizens United gives disproportionate power to corporations and elites to decide elections. Meanwhile, most voters are left disempowered on the sidelines, pawns in elections that are largely fueled by clandestine corporate money."

Benjamin Dangl

 

"The rule of law in the U.S. has been divided into two branches: one in name only for the financial Elites and corporate cartels, and one for the rest of us mere citizens. Between corporate toadies on the Supreme Court who have granted corporations rights to spend unlimited money lobbying and buying legislators as a form of "free speech" ... The U.S. legal system is now a perfection of kleptocracy."

Charles Hugh Smith

 

"[The Supreme Court 'Citizen United' decision allowing unlimited money in politics] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election's over. The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody's who's already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who's just a challenger."

former President Jimmy Carter, Thom Hartmann Show, July 2015

 

"In its Citizens United decision, the U.S. Supreme Court took for granted that "favoritism and influence" are inherent in electoral democracy and that "democracy is premised on responsiveness" of politicians to those who support them."

Sunlight Foundation study, www.blacklistednews.com

"The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for corporate money to enter Washington. Campaign spending in the 2012 elections was unprecedented, totaling an astounding $6.3 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Spending on the 2014 elections, at $4 billion, made it the most expensive midterm election in history.
In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court ruled in their majority decision that corporate spending on federal elections would not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." A Sunlight Foundation (a government accountability group) study tested the Supreme Court's conclusion and instead found that political spending is just about the best investment a company can make in America.
Of the 200 companies studied, the report identified 29 companies that received 1,000 times more federal money than they spent on campaign contributions and political lobbying."

Alex Ellefson

 

"Under the 2010 Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, corporations now have few restrictions on campaign financing. Individuals and political action committees associated with the defense sector contributed more than $27 million to political candidates during the 2012 campaign cycle, with far more going to Republicans than Democrats: $16.4 million versus $11 million. In that year, DynCorp gave over $300,000 to Super PACs, 52 percent to Republicans, and CACI $137,000 to Republicans compared to $21,000 for Democrats."

Jeremy Kuzmarov, 2014

 

"The legal system in the United States no longer functions to protect ordinary Americans. It serves our oligarchic, corporate elites. These elites have committed $26 billion in financial fraud. They loot the U.S. Treasury, escape taxation, drive down wages, break unions, pillage pension funds, gut regulation and oversight, destroy public institutions including public schools and social assistance programs, wage endless and illegal wars to swell the profits of arms merchants, and authorize police to murder unarmed black men."

Chris Hedges

 

"Major trade groups that can now play an unlimited role in influencing elections, thanks to the Citizens United ruling, receive direct funds from corporations headquartered in foreign lands."

Mike Krieger

 

"By the end of the nineteenth century, the U.S. courts had declared that corporations were to be considered persons under the law - and then used this legal fiction of "personhood" to extend constitutional protections to corporations. The courts have ruled that corporate advertising and political campaign contributions are to be protected as free speech."

George Draffan