4. The
overreach of the Wealthy - the
Wrecking
Ball of Humanity
This is the last of my series of articles on “America
– the Enemy from Within.” We previously covered
the dangers of Artificial Intelligence, of Politicians and Political Parties,
and of Freedom of the Press, all available in our index on the far left. Please take the time to read and share them
if possible. It is only appropriate to
save the best for last.
In each prior story I tried to acknowledge
that there is good and bad in each area of focus. My intent was not a general condemnation of
the area but identifying how the intent of the user can cast a dark shadow on
the result. Never underestimate the
power of evil to fool those of little faith.
The same can be said of the “wealthy.” Just because they are rich, enjoy access to
power, and get far more attention than Joe Six Pack, it does not make them good
or bad. It is how they use the wealth,
power, privilege and resources available to them combined with how the wealth
was acquired in the first place that will be the basis by God, not us, to judge
them.
Unlike the political moaners and groaners,
Democrat and Republican alike, or the believers in some pretty far out
conspiracy theories, who tend to blame the rich for all the woes of mankind, I
do not. There is no blanket condemnation
of the wealthy as a group in the Bible or the teachings of Jesus.
So why is it owners of wealth are so hated, scorned, feared and coveted by so many who are not wealthy? Because they have what we do not. Yet jealousy was never an adequate
justification for fear and loathing.
Hate is an emotional reaction, a pent-up
frustration, and a manifestation of the victim complex. It is based on false premises and irrational
expectations for oneself. The conclusion
is that being rich is bad, unfair and the result of corrupt activity. Certainly, there are bad rich, but all rich
are not necessarily bad.
Before I explore the issue farther, it is
important that we are on the same wavelength and we have our facts straight. Who precisely, are the wealthy or rich?
All rich are no more alike than the middle or
poor classes. The span of wealth and
backgrounds, the stark differences in how they view the world, and their
personal faith and acknowledgment in a higher good than mankind all impact on
their lives. Beyond that, there are rich
who built family fortunes and those who inherited them, some of almost
unimaginable wealth.
To me the wealthy can be divided into two
distinct groups, the “elite” rich and the “new” rich. The elite rich are those family fortunes that
are built and sustained, passed on from generation to generation, and they
continue to thrive and grow.
Call it “old” money, the blue bloods, or the
super-rich, their wealth is sustained through the generations, safe from seizure
by monarchs, dictators or governments, secure from political uprisings, and more
often than not quite invisible to the world.
Just a handful of the very old families have achieved this degree of
wealth in the world. In virtually all
cases the patriarchs who started the family dynasties, created the wealth, and
laid the foundation for the empires, are long gone.
Very few rich people had the vision, foresight,
tenacity, and determination to build a sustainable empire, one that could
withstand the test of time, the consistent changes in the evolution of humanity
and commerce, and fight off the multiple attempts to strip them of the power
and wealth.
As the world evolved, so did the governments
and economies, yet those families withstood the changes. In fact, in many cases the custodians of the
wealth in subsequent generations were able to change, adapt to the economic
upheavals, and emerge with even stronger empires.
Think about it. If your family wealth was a result of being
on the ground floor of the Industrial Revolution and was built by pioneering
the introduction of electricity, for example, you would soon face the ages of coal,
oil, railroads, automobiles, telephone, television, and the digital age of the
computers and Internet.
Most people have little interest and less
concept of history, and would find it hard to believe that in the entire span of
humans on earth, whether it be a few hundred thousand years or billions, it
took until 1869 before the first transcontinental railroad was completed, or 1882
before the first power plant was built in Manhattan to bring electricity to the
people of America. Both revolutionary
steps happened less than 150 years ago, not centuries ago.
So, it was the siblings and future heirs of
the old family fortunes who had to guide them through the constantly changing
economic landscape and that was no small task.
For the most part you will not find the custodians of old money in the
gossip columns, on Entertainment Tonight, or on most lists of the most powerful
people in the world. They have no need
for such nonsense and desire no public attention.
These are families who have watched kingdoms
and governments come and go as the family remained intact. My research indicates most are well
entrenched outside of America, safely tucked throughout the world but best organized
in Europe.
If there really is such a thing as the
powerful secret society called the Illuminati, the favorite target of
conspiracy hunters, the old families could be it but they would never let
outsiders into their club, although they might let outsiders think they are
part of it in order to control them.
Old families do control the national and
international banking systems, the arms dealers who dictate the outcomes of
wars, and vital natural resources for the world economy. Very few families have survived the rule of
the czars, warlords, dictators, kings and presidents, and the ruthless tyrants such as Hitler and Stalin, like the old money families.
However, there is every indication that their
iron grip on the world is slipping away as each new generation of heirs is
farther and farther removed from the strength of their founders. When it comes to bloodlines, a concern to
many of these families, as the monarchs of Europe discovered, they become
diluted over time. At the same time the
children of children of the patriarchs who are raised in wealth rather than building
the wealth, they do not share the hunger for success nor appreciation of what
it took to build it, they simply lose interest.
In spite of being in the middle of the
financial world and having the ability to supply arms to the highest bidder,
often determining who wins wars, you will normally not find them in the
underbelly of mankind feeding off the traditional criminal activity from human slavery
to drugs, addictions to scams and theft, for they know it would be risky to
their need to operate in secrecy and stability.
These families are the elite of the wealthy,
the one percent of the one percent. There
are attempts to expose them and the result is you can see how invisible they
have become. The greatest of all the old
families, the model for the rest, is the Rothschilds. I once wrote an article about the family
history and it got far over one million readers without ever appearing in the main
street media, an indication of the interest by people and the ignorance by the media of such families.
The difference between the handful of elite
wealthy families and the vast majority of the top one percent is the difference
between millions and billions of dollars.
For the elite their viewpoint is global, and their plans extend far into
the future. Their wealth is so shrouded
in complexity and secrecy it is virtually impossible to measure. Most top financial analysts know better than
to even guess.
Investigative reporters like myself have
spent years piecing together their wealth, yet current estimates are all over
the place. Take the Rothschilds, from
Germany, based in the UK, there are currently projections ranging from $2
trillion to $24 trillion to $124 trillion of their wealth.
The patriarch of the Rothschild family, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was born 23 February 1744, and died 19 September 1812. He was a German Jewish banker and the
founder of the Rothschild Family Dynasty.
He began his career as a bank apprentice in 1757, nineteen years before the
American revolution began. Two hundred
and sixty-two years later it is the wealthiest family in the world.
For comparison the annual budget of the
United States government is $4.4 trillion, our current National Debt is about
$22 trillion.
Ten Richest Families in World
Oldest
Bloodlines in World
1. The
Astor Bloodline
2. The Bundy Bloodline
3. The
Collins Bloodline
4. The DuPont Bloodline
5. The Freeman Bloodline
6. The Kennedy Bloodline
7. The
Li Bloodline
8. The Onassis Bloodline
9. The Rockefeller Bloodline
10.
The Russell Bloodline
11.
The Van Duyn Bloodline
12.
The Merovingian Bloodline
13. The Rothschild Bloodline
Old Money Families in America
The Randolph family is descended from William Randolph an
American colonist, who accumulated a vast fortune including over 20,000 acres
(81 km) of land as a planter and merchant, and played an important role in the
history and government of the English colony of Virginia. He arrived
in Virginia sometime between 1669 and 1673, and married Mary Isham a few years
later. Randolph's descendants have included many prominent Americans
including U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, US Chief Justice John Marshall,
Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Peyton Randolph, the first President of the Continental
Congress, and Edmund Randolph who served as the seventh Governor of
Virginia, the second US Secretary of State, and the first US Attorney
General as well as many other notable individuals in Virginia and U.S.
politics.
The Harrison family came to the colony of Virginia in
1630 and became wealthy as tobacco planters, accumulating thousands of acres of
land along the James River. The family was prominent in Virginia and US
politics for over two centuries. The family produced Benjamin Harrison V, a
signer of the Declaration of Independence several Governors of Virginia as
well as two US presidents, William Henry Harrison, and Benjamin
Harrison, and many other noteworthy individuals including J. Hartwell
Harrison a member of the medical team that received the 1961 Amory Prize
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for bringing kidney
transplantation to the world.
The Roosevelt family of Manhattan arrived from the
Netherlands as colonists and later became prominent in oil, banking, and
politics, producing Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt who, by blood or marriage, was related to eleven other former
presidents: John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren,
William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant,
Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft and, of course, Theodore Roosevelt,
FDR’s fifth cousin. He was also related to several other historic figures,
including Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur and two famed Confederate
leaders: Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
The Cabot family arrived in Salem from the Isle of Jersey
in 1700 and made fortunes in shipping. At the age of 21, Godfrey Lowell Cabot
(see Lowells below) founded the Cabot Corporation, the largest producer of
carbon black in the country.
The Lowell family descended from Boston colonists. Francis
Cabot began the fortune in shipping and later textiles. The family has
produced several noteworthy individuals, including Abbott Lawrence Lowell, who
presided over Harvard for 24 years.
The Du Pont family fortune began in 1803, but they became
an extraordinarily wealthy family by selling gunpowder during the American
Civil War. By World War I, the
DuPont family produced virtually all gunpowder in America. In 1968, Ferdinand
Lundberg declared the Du Pont fortune to be America's largest family
fortune. As of 2008 E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company ranked 81st
on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations.
The Forbes family of Boston made their fortune in the
shipping and later railroad industries as well as other investments. They have
been a prominent wealthy family in the United States for 200 years.
The Astor family made their fortune in the 18th century,
through fur trading, real estate, the hotel industry and other investments.
The Griswold family of Connecticut made their fortune in
shipping, banking, railroads, and industry. They have been prominent in
American politics, producing five governors and numerous senators and
congressmen.
Who are
the mysterious one percent in America?
Of course, it includes the old money, but how is it
statistically defined?
U.S. household net worth reached $107 trillion
in 2018. The wealthiest one percent
of American households own 40 percent of the country's wealth,
approximately $42.8 trillion, according to a new paper by economist Edward N.
Wolff.
The top one percent of income earners in the US is about 1.2
million with an average annual individual income of $300,800.00, a family
income of $430,600.00. There were 3,755 Americans earning more than $10 million in salary in 2017.
The remaining ninety-nine percent of the one percent wealthy have
more recently built their fortunes, many in new technology, but have not
withstood the test of time nor experienced the ravages of war after war after
war that has plagued the world the past two centuries.
Richest People in America
1. Jeff Bezos, $140 billion
2. Bill Gates, $97.5 billion
3. Warren Buffett, $84.5 billion
4. Amancio Ortega, $78 billion
5. Mark Zuckerberg, $72.4 billion
6. Carlos Slim, $68.7 billion
7. Larry Ellison, $60.4 billion
8. Bernard Arnault, $54.6 billion
9. David Koch, $48.5 billion
10. Charles Koch, $48.5 billion
The Elite rich learned the value of powerful
families working together long ago. The New
rich, because of the diversity of the market and the ability to secure financing for their programs and innovations, are far more independent and are almost as polarized as the
nation and the news media.
Unique to the New rich is how many individuals
in professional sports, music, movies, television and other forms of
entertainment are able to achieve substantial financial success on their own.
For example, the New York Yankees started in
1901 and are one of the oldest and most valuable sports franchises in the
world, worth about $4.4 billion today.
Yet many players for the Yankees and other teams have become
millionaires. Sadly, few players or
entertainers retain and grow their small fortunes so you will not find them on
the rich lists like the business owners.
What are some examples of overreach by the
wealthy that is a cause for concern by the public?
High
Frequency Market Trading
High frequency trading driven by algorithmic analysis
is estimated to now do 90% of all stock trading on Wall Street. A minimum trade of one million dollars is
required and billions of dollars a day are traded. In truth, this recent change has eliminated
human involvement in the stock market and the AI driven algorithms could easily
manipulate the daily markets, causing massive instantaneous changes in the
buying and selling patterns.
With the ability of the programs to cause
market shifts and predict the instant outcome of massive movements of money,
they could create their own market gyrations and profit every time the market
goes up or down. There is no value to
the companies whose stock they are manipulating.
Financial
Incentives and Lucrative Tax Shelters
Warren Buffett, when Congress was considering
the massive tax reform plan in 2017, pointed out the many ways the rich could
avoid taxes. Although he is one of the
richest people in the world, he only draws a $100,000 salary per year, yet he
has around $80 billion dollars in net worth.
There are many preferential and complex ways
for the wealthy to hide money from income tax liability by using much lower corporate,
capital gains, and other tax saving incentives or by keeping assets outside the
country.
Money
Managers
There are five types of money managers in the financial world;
Mutual Funds
Trust Funds
Pension Funds
Hedge Fund
Equity
fund management
Each type
offers opportunities to financial managers to influence the markets, commit
insider trading crimes, or find new ways to bilk investors of their money. This is where the subprime mortgage scandal and
many other financial scandals occur, with devastating consequences.
These and
many other financial techniques remain on the books and still can cause severe
damage to economies and bankruptcy to individuals and companies when greed becomes
the motivation.
Our task
is how to bring far more transparency to these areas, provide meaningful
oversight and prosecution, and eliminate the liability loopholes for industries
like pharmaceuticals and others. Beyond
that there are layers of conflicts of interest and potential ethical violations
that must be addressed.
While the
wealthy are among the primary benefactors of our system of government, they are
not without responsibilities to see it functions properly, and accountability to
identify and prosecute any efforts to hijack our government through actions for the benefit of a few.
In summary...
Here are links to the entire series.
In summary...
In summary, most of the new rich are far removed from normal
society because of their wealth. They have
minimal obligation to provide help to the masses in the form of protection, a
decent standard of living, jobs or benefits for the many. Those that do normally keep it limited to
their families and employees, not to the general public.
A few, like Buffett, Gates, Bezos, Allen and others spend
substantial sums to search for better ways to improve health care, education,
advance the fields of science and technology for the good of all, and create
thousands of new jobs for the benefit of many.
Far more of the new rich are in it for themselves, and are
willing to devote their resources to increasing their own wealth and status. When it comes to those in the high-flying
field of finance, many are driven by greed and tempted to cross the line of
good versus evil and will bend all the rules to maximize their profits.
The greatest financial scams in our history often begin with
the money managers on Wall Street. They deserve
no protection. This is the field where
overreach is dominant. They manipulate
the stock markets as if it were their own personal ATM. Billions of their dollars are invested in
politicians whose payback is layer after layer of tax shelters, loopholes for
new financial schemes, bailouts, or vast government contracts.
The greedier parasites find ways to feed the underbelly of
society, supplying the illegal drugs, illegal prescriptions, prostitutes, human
trafficking, sex slaves, and a host of sinister and corrupt addictions, all
designed to keep people enslaved.
Beyond that are the crooks and professional criminals working
for and with these parasites, whose lives of crime often prove far more
profitable than any normal job can offer.
Loan sharks, bill collectors and others generate huge revenues outside
our tax system.
A vast array of illegal, unethical, and immoral scams are
directed by them at the struggling elements of the public, most Middle class
and poor, desperate to survive. These
people are already slaves to the system from the excessive cost of education,
healthcare and happiness.
It is the
breeding ground of slavery on a scale we have never seen before.
Trillions of dollars a year are made at the expense of those
least able to afford it, a deplorable situation. A life of
crime is often a much easier alternative to the poor than a life of hardship
trying to get ahead by following the path of good. Those parents, families, teachers and friends
who try to save the souls of their youth receive very little help and support
from the rest of society. The deck is
stacked against them.
Overreach by some of the wealthy is a predatory abomination
and a social time bomb because people can only take so much before they will
finally be broken. To add insult to
injury, when there is a backlash or revolt against such malicious and predatory
practices it is never the wealthy who suffer.
Ignorance causes societal problems. Money supports and prospers from such
problems. Greed is the motivator,
slavery is the result. It is a tragic
consequence that has plagued humanity throughout our history.
Yet dissent and polarization by the victims and their
advocates only fuels depression and hopelessness in the suffering masses and
seldom results in any meaningful action to break the cycle of poverty,
suffering and slavery.
Perhaps it is finally time for a change in tactics, a recognition
that what we have does not work for all people.
Time to try working together for the benefit of all, not just those who
share an often biased and self-serving perspective. Communication, compassion, and creativity are
the only real answers to finding solutions, along with a healthy dose of
prayer.
Are you up to the task?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are links to the entire series.
Coltons Point Times Featured Series
Friday,
January 04, 2019
The Melchizedek Chronicles - What is Wrong with America? Why are
We the Unhappiest Superpower in the World?
Monday, January 07, 2019
1. Artificial Intelligence –
God of the Digital Empire
Monday,
January 07, 2019
2. Politics, Political
Parties and Self-Preservation
Wednesday, January 09, 2019
The
Melchizedek Chronicles – America – The Enemy from Within - Part 3 Freedom of the Press
3. The Futility of Freedom
of the Press
Friday, January 11, 2019
4. The overreach of the Wealthy – the Wrecking
Ball of Humanity
