The Political Economy of Global Government Excerpt from "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century" by Andrew Gavin Marshall | |
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Global Research, February 2, 2011 | |
Global Research is pleased to announce the publication of a new book entitled The Global Economic Crisis, The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors.
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The following text is the Preface of The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall (Editors), Montreal, Global Research, 2010, which is to be launched in late May.
Each of the authors in this timely collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people's lives.
The complex causes as well as the devastating consequences of the economic crisis are carefully scrutinized with contributions from Ellen Brown, Tom Burghardt, Michel Chossudovsky, Richard C. Cook, Shamus Cooke, John Bellamy Foster, Michael Hudson, Tanya Cariina Hsu, Fred Magdoff, Andrew Gavin Marshall, James Petras, Peter Phillips, Peter Dale Scott, Bill Van Auken, Claudia von Werlhof and Mike Whitney.
Despite the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives presented within this volume, all of the contributors ultimately come to the same conclusion: humanity is at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history.
For details on the book click here. The book can be ordered directly from Global Research
The Global Economic Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century
Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall (Editors)
Montreal, Global Research Publishers. Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), 2010.
ISBN 978-0-9737147-3-9 (416 pages)
PREFACE
In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a "war without borders" led by the United States of America and its NATO allies. The conduct of the Pentagon’s "long war" is intimately related to the restructuring of the global economy.
We are not dealing with a narrowly defined economic crisis or recession. The global financial architecture sustains strategic and national security objectives. In turn, the U.S.-NATO military agenda serves to endorse a powerful business elite which relentlessly overshadows and undermines the functions of civilian government.
This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve and the Council on Foreign Relations, behind closed doors at the Bank for International Settlements, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken from computer terminals linked up to major stock markets, at the touch of a mouse button.
Each of the authors in this collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people’s lives. Our analysis focuses on the role of powerful economic and political actors in an environment wrought by corruption, financial manipulation and fraud.
Despite the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives presented within this volume, all of the contributors ultimately come to the same conclusion: humanity is at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history.
The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The "bank bailouts" were implemented on the instructions of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an insurmountable public debt.
With the worldwide deterioration of living standards and plummeting consumer spending, the entire structure of international commodity trade is potentially in jeopardy. The payments system of money transactions is in disarray. Following the collapse of employment, the payment of wages is disrupted, which in turn triggers a downfall in expenditures on necessary consumer goods and services. This dramatic plunge in purchasing power backfires on the productive system, resulting in a string of layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies. Exacerbated by the freeze on credit, the decline in consumer demand contributes to the demobilization of human and material resources.
This process of economic decline is cumulative. All categories of the labor force are affected. Payments of wages are no longer implemented, credit is disrupted and capital investments are at a standstill. Meanwhile, in Western countries, the "social safety net" inherited from the welfare state, which protects the unemployed during an economic downturn, is also in jeopardy.
The Myth of Economic Recovery
The existence of a "Great Depression" on the scale of the 1930s, while often acknowledged, is overshadowed by an unbending consensus: "The economy is on the road to recovery".
While there is talk of an economic renewal, Wall Street commentators have persistently and intentionally overlooked the fact that the financial meltdown is not simply composed of one bubble – the housing real estate bubble – which has already burst. In fact, the crisis has many bubbles, all of which dwarf the housing bubble burst of 2008.
Although there is no fundamental disagreement among mainstream analysts on the occurrence of an economic recovery, there is heated debate as to when it will occur, whether in the next quarter, or in the third quarter of next year, etc. Already in early 2010, the "recovery" of the U.S. economy had been predicted and confirmed through a carefully worded barrage of media disinformation. Meanwhile, the social plight of increased unemployment in America has been scrupulously camouflaged. Economists view bankruptcy as a microeconomic phenomenon.
The media reports on bankruptcies, while revealing local-level realities affecting one or more factories, fail to provide an overall picture of what is happening at the national and international levels. When all these simultaneous plant closures in towns and cities across the land are added together, a very different picture emerges: entire sectors of a national economy are closing down.
Public opinion continues to be misled as to the causes and consequences of the economic crisis, not to mention the policy solutions. People are led to believe that the economy has a logic of its own which depends on the free interplay of market forces, and that powerful financial actors, who pull the strings in the corporate boardrooms, could not, under any circumstances, have willfully influenced the course of economic events.
The relentless and fraudulent appropriation of wealth is upheld as an integral part of "the American dream", as a means to spreading the benefits of economic growth. As conveyed by Michael Hudson, the myth becomes entrenched that "without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down." Such flawed logic of the business cycle overshadows an understanding of the structural and historical origins of the global economic crisis.
Financial Fraud
Media disinformation largely serves the interests of a handful of global banks and institutional speculators which use their command over financial and commodity markets to amass vast amounts of money wealth. The corridors of the state are controlled by the corporate establishment including the speculators. Meanwhile, the "bank bailouts", presented to the public as a requisite for economic recovery, have facilitated and legitimized a further process of appropriation of wealth.
Vast amounts of money wealth are acquired through market manipulation. Often referred to as "deregulation", the financial apparatus has developed sophisticated instruments of outright manipulation and deceit. With inside information and foreknowledge, major financial actors, using the instruments of speculative trade, have the ability to fiddle and rig market movements to their advantage, precipitate the collapse of a competitor and wreck havoc in the economies of developing countries. These tools of manipulation have become an integral part of the financial architecture; they are embedded in the system.
The Failure of Mainstream Economics
The economics profession, particularly in the universities, rarely addresses the actual "real world" functioning of markets. Theoretical constructs centered on mathematical models serve to represent an abstract, fictional world in which individuals are equal. There is no theoretical distinction between workers, consumers or corporations, all of which are referred to as "individual traders". No single individual has the power or ability to influence the market, nor can there be any conflict between workers and capitalists within this abstract world.
By failing to examine the interplay of powerful economic actors in the "real life" economy, the processes of market rigging, financial manipulation and fraud are overlooked. The concentration and centralization of economic decision-making, the role of the financial elites, the economic thinks tanks, the corporate boardrooms: none of these issues are examined in the universities’ economics programs. The theoretical construct is dysfunctional; it cannot be used to provide an understanding of the economic crisis.
Economic science is an ideological construct which serves to camouflage and justify the New World Order. A set of dogmatic postulates serves to uphold free market capitalism by denying the existence of social inequality and the profit-driven nature of the system is denied. The role of powerful economic actors and how these actors are able to influence the workings of financial and commodity markets is not a matter of concern for the discipline’s theoreticians. The powers of market manipulation which serve to appropriate vast amounts of money wealth are rarely addressed. And when they are acknowledged, they are considered to belong to the realm of sociology or political science.
This means that the policy and institutional framework behind this global economic system, which has been shaped in the course of the last thirty years, is rarely analyzed by mainstream economists. It follows that economics as a discipline, with some exceptions, has not provided the analysis required to comprehend the economic crisis. In fact, its main free market postulates deny the existence of a crisis. The focus of neoclassical economics is on equilibrium, disequilibrium and "market correction" or "adjustment" through the market mechanism, as a means to putting the economy back "onto the path of self-sustained growth".
Poverty and Social Inequality
The global political economy is a system that enriches the very few at the expense of the vast majority. The global economic crisis has contributed to widening social inequalities both within and between countries. Under global capitalism, mounting poverty is not the result of a scarcity or a lack of human and material resources. Quite the opposite holds true: the economic depression is marked by a process of disengagement of human resources and physical capital. People’s lives are destroyed. The economic crisis is deep-seated.
The structures of social inequality have, quite deliberately, been reinforced, leading not only to a generalized process of impoverishment but also to the demise of the middle and upper middle income groups.
Middle class consumerism, on which this unruly model of capitalist development is based, is also threatened. Bankruptcies have hit several of the most vibrant sectors of the consumer economy. The middle classes in the West have, for several decades, been subjected to the erosion of their material wealth. While the middle class exists in theory, it is a class built and sustained by household debt.
The wealthy rather than the middle class are rapidly becoming the consuming class, leading to the relentless growth of the luxury goods economy. Moreover, with the drying up of the middle class markets for manufactured goods, a central and decisive shift in the structure of economic growth has occurred. With the demise of the civilian economy, the development of America’s war economy, supported by a whopping near-trillion dollar defense budget, has reached new heights. As stock markets tumble and the recession unfolds, the advanced weapons industries, the military and national security contractors and the up-and-coming mercenary companies (among others) have experienced a thriving and booming growth of their various activities.
War and the Economic Crisis
War is inextricably linked to the impoverishment of people at home and around the world. Militarization and the economic crisis are intimately related. The provision of essential goods and services to meet basic human needs has been replaced by a profit-driven "killing machine" in support of America’s "Global War on Terror". The poor are made to fight the poor. Yet war enriches the upper class, which controls industry, the military, oil and banking. In a war economy, death is good for business, poverty is good for society, and power is good for politics. Western nations, particularly the United States, spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to murder innocent people in far-away impoverished nations, while the people at home suffer the disparities of poverty, class, gender and racial divides.
An outright "economic war" resulting in unemployment, poverty and disease is carried out through the free market. People’s lives are in a freefall and their purchasing power is destroyed. In a very real sense, the last twenty years of global "free market" economy have resulted, through poverty and social destitution, in the lives of millions of people.
Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites, have installed a "Big Brother" police state, with a mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social dissent.
The economic and social crisis has by no means reached its climax and entire countries, including Greece and Iceland, are at risk. One need only look at the escalation of the Middle East Central Asian war and the U.S.-NATO threats to China, Russia and Iran to witness how war and the economy are intimately related.
Our Analysis in this Book
The contributors to this book reveal the intricacies of global banking and its insidious relationship to the military industrial complex and the oil conglomerates. The book presents an inter- disciplinary and multi-faceted approach, while also conveying an understanding of the historical and institutional dimensions. The complex relations of the economic crisis to war, empire and worldwide poverty are highlighted. This crisis has a truly global reach and repercussions that reverberate throughout all nations, across all societies.
In Part I, the overall causes of the global economic crisis as well as the failures of mainstream economics are laid out. Michel Chossudovsky focuses on the history of financial deregulation and speculation. Tanya Cariina Hsu analyzes the role of the American Empire and its relationship to the economic crisis. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff undertake a comprehensive review of the political economy of the crisis, explaining the central role of monetary policy. James Petras and Claudia von Werlhof provide a detailed review and critique of neoliberalism, focusing on the economic, political and social repercussions of the "free market" reforms. Shamus Cooke examines the central role of debt, both public and private.
Part II, which includes chapters by Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Phillips, analyzes the rising tide of poverty and social inequality resulting from the Great Depression.
With contributions by Michel Chossudovsky, Peter Dale Scott, Michael Hudson, Bill Van Auken, Tom Burghardt and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Part III examines the relationship between the economic crisis, National Security, the U.S.-NATO led war and world government. In this context, as conveyed by Peter Dale Scott, the economic crisis creates social conditions which favor the instatement of martial law.
The focus in Part IV is on the global monetary system, its evolution and its changing role. Andrew Gavin Marshall examines the history of central banking as well as various initiatives to create regional and global currency systems. Ellen Brown focuses on the creation of a global central bank and global currency through the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Richard C. Cook examines the debt-based monetary system as a system of control and provides a framework for democratizing the monetary system.
Part V focuses on the working of the Shadow Banking System, which triggered the 2008 meltdown of financial markets. The chapters by Mike Whitney and Ellen Brown describe in detail how Wall Street’s Ponzi scheme was used to manipulate the market and transfer billions of dollars into the pockets of the banksters.
We are indebted to the authors for their carefully documented research, incisive analysis, and, foremost, for their unbending commitment to the truth: Tom Burghardt, Ellen Brown, Richard C. Cook, Shamus Cooke, John Bellamy Foster, Michael Hudson, Tanya Cariina Hsu, Fred Magdoff, James Petras, Peter Phillips, Peter Dale Scott, Mike Whitney, Bill Van Auken and Claudia von Werlhof, have provided, with utmost clarity, an understanding of the diverse and complex economic, social and political processes which are affecting the lives of millions of people around the world.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Maja Romano of Global Research Publishers, who relentlessly oversaw and coordinated the editing and production of this book, including the creative front page concept. We wish to thank Andréa Joseph for the careful typesetting of the manuscript and front page graphics. We also extend our thanks and appreciation to Isabelle Goulet, Julie Lévesque and Drew McKevitt for their support in the revision and copyediting of the manuscript.
Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Montreal and Vancouver, May 2010
Capitalism has always changed and morphed; it has adapted to changes in the world and has forced the world to adapt to its changes. Capitalism has never, and never will be, entirely consistent in its structure and institutions. The global economic crisis has sped up developments that have been underway for a long time, specifically within the last century. In the midst of a global crisis, these changes, which have been slow and evolutionary, are being rapidly sped up and accelerated.
Introduction
The global political economy is being transformed into a global government structure at the crossroads of a major financial crisis. However, far from the assumptions of many students of Capitalism and the global political economy, these changes are not natural and inevitable; these changes are planned, organized, socialized and institutionalized. The process towards creating a global government is not a new one; several institutions and organizations throughout the world have slowly been directing the world down this path.
This chapter examines the process of constructing a global government, with a particular focus on the major organizations that have and are currently shaping this transformation. What is being undertaken is the deconstruction of the global economy and national polity in order to rebuild the global political economy into a singular governance structure. Thus, destruction becomes a form of creation; the global economic crisis must be viewed in this context.
The Council on Foreign Relations
Nearing the end of the 19th century, American bankers and industrialists, specifically J.P. Morgan, were gaining close connections with major European banking interests. On the European side, specifically in Britain, the elite was largely involved in the Scramble for Africa at this time. Infamous among them was Cecil Rhodes, who made his fortune in diamond and gold mining in Africa, monopolizing the gold mines with financial help from Lord Rothschild.[1] Interestingly, "Rhodes could not have won his near-monopoly over South African diamond production without the assistance of his friends in the City of London: in particular, the Rothschild bank, at that time the biggest concentration of financial capital in the world."[2] As historian Niall Ferguson explained, "It is usually assumed that Rhodes owned De Beers, but this was not the case. Nathaniel de Rothschild was a bigger shareholder than Rhodes himself; indeed, by 1899 the Rothschilds’ stake was twice that of Rhodes."[3]
Cecil Rhodes was also known for his radical views regarding America, particularly in that he would "talk with total seriousness of ‘the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire’."[4] Rhodes saw himself not simply as a moneymaker, but even more so as an "empire builder." As historian Carroll Quigley explained, in 1891, three British elites met with the intent to create a secret society. The three men were Cecil Rhodes, William T. Stead, a prominent journalist of the day, and Reginald Baliol Brett, a "friend and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential adviser of King Edward VII and King George V." Within this secret society, "real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a ‘Junta of Three.’ The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner."[5]
In 1901, Rhodes chose Milner as his successor within the society, of which the purpose was:
The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor, and enterprise... [with] the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.[6]
Essentially, it outlined a British-led cosmopolitical world order, one global system of governance under British hegemony. Among key players within this group were the Rothschilds and other leading banking interests.[7]
The creation of the Federal Reserve in the United States in 1913, cemented the connection between European and American banking interests, as the Fed created a very distinct alliance between New York and London bankers.[8]
In the midst of World War I, a group of American scholars were tasked with briefing "Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world once the Kaiser and imperial Germany fell to defeat." This group was called, "The Inquiry." The group advised Wilson mostly through his trusted aide, Col. Edward M. House, who was Wilson’s "unofficial envoy to Europe during the period between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the intervention by the United States in 1917," and was the prime driving force in the Wilson administration behind the establishment of the Federal Reserve System.[9]
"The Inquiry" laid the foundations for the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most powerful think tank in the U.S., and "the scholars of the Inquiry helped draw the borders of post World War I central Europe." On May 30, 1919, a group of scholars and diplomats from Britain and the U.S. met at the Hotel Majestic, where they "proposed a permanent Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs, with one branch in London, the other in New York." When the scholars returned from Paris, they were welcomed by New York lawyers and financiers, and together they formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921. The "British diplomats returning from Paris had made great headway in founding their Royal Institute of International Affairs." The Anglo-American Institute envisioned in Paris, with two branches and combined membership was not feasible, so both the British and American branches retained national membership, however, they would cooperate closely with one another.[10] They were referred to, and still are, as "Sister Institutes."[11]
The Milner Group, the secret society formed by Cecil Rhodes, "dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it."[12] There were other groups founded in many countries representing the same interests of the secret Milner Group, and they came to be known as the Round Table Groups, preeminent among them were the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States, and parallel groups in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.[13] This had the effect of establishing a socializing institution for the elites of each nation, from which they would exert political, economic, academic and social influence.
The CFR, established less than ten years after the creation of the Federal Reserve, worked to promote an internationalist agenda on behalf of the international banking elite. It was to alter America’s conceptualization of its place within the world from an isolationist industrial nation to an engine of empire working for international banking and corporate interests. Where the Fed took control of money and debt, the CFR took control of the ideological foundations of such an empire, encompassing the corporate, banking, political, foreign policy, military, media and academic elite of the nation into a generally cohesive overall world view. By altering one’s ideology to that of promoting such an internationalist agenda, the big money that was behind it would ensure one’s rise through government, industry, academia and media. The other major think tanks and policy institutions in the United States are also represented at the CFR.
Before America even entered World War II in late 1941, the Council began a "strictly confidential" project called the War and Peace Studies, in which top CFR members collaborated with the U.S. State Department in determining U.S. policy, and the project was entirely financed by the Rockefeller Foundation.[14] The post-War world was already being designed by members of the Council who would then go into government in order to make those designs into a reality.
The policy of "containment" towards the Soviet Union that would defined American foreign policy for nearly half a century was envisaged in a 1947 edition of Foreign Affairs, the academic journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. So too were the ideological foundations for the Marshall Plan and NATO envisaged at the Council on Foreign Relations, with members of the Council recruited to enact, implement and lead these institutions.[15] The Council also played a role in the establishment and promotion of the United Nations,[16] which was subsequently built on land bought from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.[17]
In 1944, representatives of the 44 Allied nations met for the Bretton Woods conference (the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference) in New Hampshire, in an effort to reorganize and regulate the international financial and monetary order following the war. The UK was represented by John Maynard Keynes; the American contingent was represented by Harry Dexter White, an American economist and senior U.S. Treasury department official. It was out of this conference that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), now part of the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now institutionalized in the World Trade Organization (WTO), originated. They were designed to be the institutionalized economic foundations of exerting American hegemony across the globe; they were, in essence, engines of economic empire.
In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which created the position of Secretary of Defense overseeing the entire military establishment, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff; it created the CIA modeled on its war time incarnation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS); the Act also created the National Security Council, headed by a National Security Adviser, designed to give the President further advice on foreign affairs issues separate from the State Department. Essentially, the Act created the basis for the national security state apparatus for empire building.
The founding of the CIA was urged by the War and Peace Studies Project of the Council on Foreign Relations in the early 1940s. The architects of the CIA, designing the shape and organization of the Agency, as well as its functions were all Wall Street lawyers, largely made up of members of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Deputy Directors of the CIA for the first two decades were all "from the same New York legal and financial circles."[18]
The Bilderberg Group
In 1954, the Bilderberg Group was founded in the Netherlands, holding secretive meeting once a year, drawing roughly 130 of the political-financial-military-academic-media elites from North America and Western Europe as "an informal network of influential people who could consult each other privately and confidentially."[19] Regular participants included the CEOs of some of the largest corporations in the world, oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, and Total SA, as well as various European monarchs, international bankers such as David Rockefeller, major politicians, presidents, prime ministers and central bankers of the world.[20]
Joseph Retinger, the founder of the Bilderberg Group, was also one of the original architects of the European Common Market and a leading intellectual champion of European integration. In 1946, he told the Royal Institute of International Affairs (the British counterpart and sister organization of the Council on Foreign Relations), that Europe needed to create a federal union and for European countries to "relinquish part of their sovereignty." Retinger was a founder of the European Movement (EM), a lobbying organization dedicated to creating a federal Europe. Retinger secured financial support for the European Movement from powerful U.S. financial interests such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefellers.[21] However, it is hard to distinguish between the CFR and the Rockefellers, as, especially following World War II, the CFR’s main finances came from the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation and most especially, the Rockefeller Foundation.[22]
The Bilderberg Group acts as a "secretive global think-tank," with an original intent to "to link governments and economies in Europe and North America amid the Cold War."[23] One of the Bilderberg Group’s main goals was unifying Europe into a European Union. Apart from Retinger, the founder of the Bilderberg Group and the European Movement, another ideological founder of European integration was Jean Monnet, who founded the Action Committee for a United States of Europe, an organization dedicated to promoting European integration, and he was also the major promoter and first president of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the precursor to the European Common Market.[24]
Declassified documents (released in 2001) revealed that "the U.S. intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement."[25] Furthermore:
America was working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European state. One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully-fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA...
Washington’s main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then. The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years...
The leaders of the European Movement - Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak - were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE’s funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government.[26]
The European Coal and Steel Community was formed in 1951, and signed by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Newly released documents from the 1955 Bilderberg meeting show that a main topic of discussion was "European Unity":
The discussion affirmed complete support for the idea of integration and unification from the representatives of all the six nations of the Coal and Steel Community present at the conference...
A European speaker expressed concern about the need to achieve a common currency, and indicated that in his view this necessarily implied the creation of a central political authority...
A United States participant confirmed that the United States had not weakened in its enthusiastic support for the idea of integration, although there was considerable diffidence in America as to how this enthusiasm should be manifested. Another United States participant urged his European friends to go ahead with the unification of Europe with less emphasis upon ideological considerations and, above all, to be practical and work fast.[27]
Thus, at the 1955 Bilderberg Group meeting, they set as a primary agenda, the creation of a European common market.[28]
In 1957, two years later, the Treaty of Rome was signed, which created the European Economic Community (EEC), also known as the European Community. Over the decades, various other treaties were signed, and more countries joined the European Community. In 1992, the Maastricht Treaty was signed, which created the European Union and led to the creation of the Euro. The European Monetary Institute was created in 1994, the European Central Bank was founded in 1998, and the Euro was launched in 1999. Etienne Davignon, Chairman of the Bilderberg Group and former EU Commissioner, revealed in March of 2009 that the Euro was debated and planned at Bilderberg conferences.[29]
This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken.
Each of the authors in this timely collection digs beneath the gilded surface to reveal a complex web of deceit and media distortion which serves to conceal the workings of the global economic system and its devastating impacts on people`s lives.
Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent writer both on the contemporary structures of capitalism as well as on the history of the global political economy. He is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
“This important collection offers the reader a most comprehensive analysis of the various facets – especially the financial, social and military ramifications – from an outstanding list of world-class social thinkers.” -Mario Seccareccia, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
“In-depth investigations of the inner workings of the plutocracy in crisis, presented by some of our best politico-economic analysts. This book should help put to rest the hallucinations of ‘free market’ ideology.” -Michael Parenti, author of God and His Demons and Contrary Notions
“Provides a very readable exposé of a global economic system, manipulated by a handful of extremely powerful economic actors for their own benefit, to enrich a few at the expense of an ever-growing majority.” -David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited
The complex causes as well as the devastating consequences of the economic crisis are carefully scrutinized with contributions from Ellen Brown, Tom Burghardt, Michel Chossudovsky, Richard C. Cook, Shamus Cooke, John Bellamy Foster, Michael Hudson, Tanya Cariina Hsu, Fred Magdoff, Andrew Gavin Marshall, James Petras, Peter Phillips, Peter Dale Scott, Bill Van Auken, Claudia von Werlhof and Mike Whitney.
Despite the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives presented within this volume, all of the contributors ultimately come to the same conclusion: humanity is at the crossroads of the most serious economic and social crisis in modern history.
"This meticulous, vital, timely and accessible work unravels the history of a hydra-headed monster: military, media and politics, culminating in “humanity at the crossroads”; the current unprecedented economic and social crisis… From the first page of the preface of The Global Economic Crisis, the reasons for all unravel with compelling clarity. For those asking “why?” this book has the answers." –Felicity Arbuthnot, award-winning author and journalist based in London.
"The current economic crisis, its causes and hopefully its cure have been a mystery for most people. I welcome a readable exposition of the global dimensions of the crisis and hope for some clarity on how to better organize money locally and internationally for the future." -Dr. Rosalie Bertell, renowned scientist, Alternative Nobel Prize laureate and Regent, International Physicians for Humanitarian Medicine, Geneva
"This work is much more than a path-breaking and profound historical analysis of the actors and institutions, it is an affirmation of the authors’ belief that a better world is feasible and that it can be achieved by collective organized actions and faith in the sustainability of a democratic order." -Frederick Clairmonte, distinguished analyst of the global political economy and author of the 1960s classic, The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism: The Making of the Economic Gulag
"Decades of profligate economic policies and promiscuous military interventions reached a critical mass, exploding in the meltdown of globalization in 2008. Today, the economic meltdown is reconfiguring everything – global society, economy and culture. This book is engineering a revolution by introducing an innovative global theory of economics." -Michael Carmichael, prominent author, historian and president of the Planetary Movement
The Global Economic Crisis
The Great Depression of the XXI Century
Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall (Editors)
TO READ THE PREFACE, CLICK HERE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall
PART I THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS
Chapter 1 The Global Economic Crisis: An Overview Michel Chossudovsky
Chapter 2 Death of the American Empire Tanya Cariina Hsu
Chapter 3 Financial Implosion and Economic Stagnation John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff
Chapter 4 Depression: The Crisis of Capitalism James Petras
Chapter 5 Globalization and Neoliberalism: Is there an Alternative to Plundering the Earth? Claudia von Werlhof
Chapter 6 The Economy’s Search for a “New Normal” Shamus Cooke
PART II GLOBAL POVERTY
Chapter 7 Global Poverty and the Economic Crisis Michel Chossudovsky
Chapter 8 Poverty and Social Inequality Peter Phillips
PART III WAR, NATIONAL SECURITY AND WORLD GOVERNMENT
Chapter 9 War and the Economic Crisis Michel Chossudovsky
Chapter 10 The "Dollar Glut" Finances America's Global Military Build-Up Michael Hudson
Chapter 11 Martial Law, the Financial Bailout and War Peter Dale Scott
Chapter 12 Pentagon and Intelligence Black Budget Operations Tom Burghardt
Chapter 13 The Economic Crisis “Threatens National Security” in America Bill Van Auken
Chapter 14 The Political Economy of World Government Andrew Gavin Marshall
PART IV THE GLOBAL MONETARY SYSTEM
Chapter 15 Central Banking: Managing the Global Political Economy Andrew Gavin Marshall
Chapter 16 The Towers of Basel: Secretive Plan to Create a Global Central Bank Ellen Brown
Chapter 17 The Financial New World Order: Towards A Global Currency Andrew Gavin Marshall
Chapter 18 Democratizing the Monetary System Richard C. Cook
PART V THE SHADOW BANKING SYSTEM
Chapter 19 Wall Street’s Ponzi Scheme Ellen Brown,
Chapter 20 Securitization: The Biggest Rip-off Ever Mike Whitney
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Notes
[1] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1966, p. 130.
[2] Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York, Basic Books, 2004, p. 186.
[3] Ibid., p. 186-187.
[4] Ibid., p. 190
[5] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, GSG & Associates, 1981, p. 3.
[6] Ibid., p. 33.
[7] Ibid., p. 34.
[8] William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, London, Pluto Press, 2004, p. 51.
[9] H.W. Brands, "He Is My Independent Self", The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060801104.html, 11 June 2006.
[10] CFR, "Continuing the Inquiry", History of CFR, http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/inquiry.html.
[11] Chatham House, "Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs)", Background. Chatham House History,http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/history/.
[12] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, op. cit., p. 5.
[13] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, op. cit., p. 132-133.
[14] CFR, "War and Peace", CFR History, http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/war_peace.html.
[15] William P. Bundy, "The History of Foreign Affairs", The Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/about/history/foreign_affairs.html, 1994.
[16] CFR, "War and Peace", CFR History, http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/war_peace.html.
[17] UN, "1945-1949", Sixty Years: A Pictorial History of the United Nations, http://www.un.org/issues/gallery/history/1940s.htm.
[18] Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007, p. 12.
[19] CBC, "Informal Forum or Global Conspiracy?", CBC News Online, http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/bilderberg-group/, 13 June 2006.
[20] Holly Sklar (ed.), Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, South End Press, 1980, p. 161-171.
[21] Ibid., p. 161-162.
[22] CFR, "The First Transformation", CFR History, http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/first_transformation.html.
[23] Glen McGregor, "Secretive Power Brokers Meeting Coming to Ottawa?", Ottawa Citizen, http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=ff614eb8-02cc-41a3-a42d-30642def1421 &k=62840, 24 May 2006.
[24] William F. Jasper, "Rogues’ Gallery of EU Founders", The New American, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_14_20 /ai_n25093084/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1, 12 July 2004.
[25] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Euro-Federalists Financed by US Spy Chiefs", The Telegraph,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Euro-federalists-financed-by-US-spy-chiefs.html, 19 June 2001.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Bilderberg Group, "Garmisch-Partenkirchen Conference", The Bilderberg Group, p. 7, http://wikileaks.org/leak/bilderberg-meetings-report-1955.pdf, 23-25 September 1955.
[28] The Sunday Herald, "Who are These Bilderbergers and What Do They Do?", The Sunday Herald, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_19990530/ai_n13939252, 30 May 1999.
[29] Andrew Rettman, "‘Jury’s out’ on Future of Europe, EU Doyen says", EUobserver, http://euobserver.com/9/27778, 16 March 2009.
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