Showing posts with label financial world. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial world. Show all posts

Friday, January 11, 2019

The Melchizedek Chronicles – America – The Enemy from Within – Part 4 The overreach of the Wealthy



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...


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
The Melchizedek Chronicles – America - The Enemy from Within - Part 1 Artificial Intelligence
1.  Artificial Intelligence – God of the Digital Empire

Monday, January 07, 2019
The Melchizedek Chronicles – America - The Enemy from Within - Part 2 Politics
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
The Melchizedek Chronicles – America – The Enemy from Within – Part 4 The overreach of the Wealthy
4.  The overreach of the Wealthy – the Wrecking Ball of Humanity