A WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Year Twenty-Nine ... Number Forty-Two ... October 29, 1982
"IF I WERE A RICH MAN"
Gleaned from "The Reaper"*
If I were a rich man, long ago I would have established a central bank to help me consolidate financial and following political power in the country; many years ago I would have established a graduated income tax to make it difficult for other men to obtain my elevated position of wealth and power; long ago I would have had abolished the states' selection of senators so that I could better consolidate power of the federal/empire level through their "popular" election; many years ago I would have seen to it that there were convinient world wars to destroy the wealth of hard-working and productive people, so that I could finance not only the war effort, but also the reconstruction effort and further increase and concentrate my wealth and power internationally; long ago I would have established a boom-bust inflationary and deflationary cycle triggered by my central bank, whereby I could profit from the extremes of inflation and deflation, further increasing my wealth and power; many years ago I would have seen to it that democracy was established, allowing people to vote for their own economic self-interest out of the federal treasury through spineless politicians, so that not only could the people be controlled, which is the case with all democracies, but so that also it would be easy for me to buy political power by making poor politicians rich; long ago, in my scheme to establish a one-world empire and condition the last free country on earth to slavery and poverty. I would have established the public school system, fought two no-win wars to demoralize the youth of the country, financed the drug trade to blow the minds of the nation's youth so that my socialistic one-world empire could be established and make leisure time and entertainment the focus of common folks' activities.
Now, my master plan is almost complete. My boys over at the Central Bank engineered an inflation in the 1970s that hooked nearly everyone in the private sector, both businesses and consumers, into excessive debt. Then my cronies at the Central Bank changed the game and brought about the devastating money crunch that crippled all the borrowers in the 1980s. And now, finally, when it's becoming obvious to all of us that we are headed for a tremendous crash and depression, the soothsayers of the day are pointing to me and my fellow cronies with financial and oil empires, saying that we are about to collapse. Sure, they know that there were two problems with my bank: 1. A devastated bond portfolio, and 2. Disasterous Third World loans. However, I'm not stupid. I've already solved by bond portfolio problems. Thanks to my friends at the Central Bank and cooperating economists, I loaded up on bonds long ago at the beginning of this year and made a killing as the price of bonds rose. Furthermore, I was able to unload the losers that I had in my bond portfolio on this rally. So much for that problem. Now, all I have to be concerned about is the loans that I have made to the Third World deadbeats. Approximately $200 billion of them are in trouble. Does this bother me? Not at all. Sure, I knew these loans would eventually be deadbeats long before I made them. But, the Third World is stupid. And by making loans to these Third World low lifes, I was able to make a killing in profits establishing my banks there, not to mention the tremendous increase in my wealth acquired by financing the development of these Third World countries which in turn gave me control over their political leaders. To back me up, I had my political cronies establish laws which forced the American taxpayers to use their hard-earned productivity to make contributions to the world development banks that I established, that both guaranteed my loans, bailed out my bad loans and subsidized my investments.
Frankly, I hope these Third World losers default. The tulip mania panic upside in gold has convinced almost everyone that this engineered, worldwide depression will bankrupt my international financial network, that my banks will fail, that there will be a run on the dollar, that the system will collapse, and we will have a revolution. Hogwash. I have already hedged against such a loss and a default on these loans. The American consumer will again pick up the tab. But am I glad that he was educated years ago in the public school to turn over all this hard-earned productivity, his money, to me and my banking cronies. By so doing, the American consumer has allowed us to wheel and deal with a ruthlessness seldom seen in human history. Little does the American taxpayer understand the price he has paid for being irresponsible with something as basic as his productivity, his earnings. But, that's another story...
A quick aside, Mexico was a real coup. I loaned them billions of dollars, bought off their corrupt politicians, saw to it that the country with its reckless spending and incompetence went bankrupt, so Mexico would default on its loans. Now, Mexico, my largest oil supplier, is forever in debt to me, providing me with effectively $8-a-barrel oil when the world market price is $32 a barrel. Pretty slick, eh? And, for icing on the cake, we'll have a socialist revolution in Mexico (socialist or communist, what's the difference?), leaving only this country as the final plum to be picked. But, back to my discussion on this depression.
One million jobs have vanished permanently since 1978. Dun and Bradstreet now declares that we are experiencing the highest number of bankruptcies for the last 50 years. The F.D.I.C. has 227 banks on its problem list. Office vacancies are the highest since the 1930s. The farmers are in the worst shape since the 1930s. The new tax bill, 60% of which hit business, will further ensure this depression. Effectively 80% of the new tax bill was a tax increase, but we sold it as a tax reform. My man on the Dole did a tremendous job. What suckers the American public are. We even let it out that nine of our largest banks in this country have a debt exposure to developing countries, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union equal to 220% of our capital. Little do they know how quickly we'll make this up on the downside of this stock and bond market, at their expense, as interest rates soar. Long ago I learned that all it takes is rumors and well-placed bits of information to achieve my desired purposes.
Having 20,000 Mexicans a day cross the southern U.S. border now has ensured social unrest in the independent and wealthy Southwestern United States, which will allow us, in time, to further centralize power and control, as hostilities between the races increase in that area of the country. Yes, my boys at Rand, Brookings, the Aspen Institute and at the Hudson Institute have served me well...
Can something go wrong? Well, yes, there are two things that are troublesome. This gold move up has started to get out of hand. Gold has retraced to its latest bear leg down by 50%. Godl has rallied to the $500 level of natural resistance. If gold blows fast and hard on through $500 an ounce, it could test the old high of $800 an ounce which, if this happens and is exceeded, could lead to a full blown panic out of the dollar (hyperinflation) and into all tangibles, including commodities, real estate, stocks, etc., in which case, higher interest rates and a belated attempt to salvage the dollar would not work. Then, we'd have to use Executive Orders to seize control of the country, as well as the Monetary Control Act of 1980. So, you can see why I can't cut this coming spike in interest rates too close. The public is almost at panic stage now, and the defaults by these Third World deadbeats (I loaned them your money) are forcing me to play my trump card more quickly than I would have liked.
My next problem? This concerns my old friend Israel. Now, you know that a lot of my cronies in these high placed financial circles are of the same religious persuasion as the folks in Israel. And, they have had a bias toward supporting Israel with U.S. taxpayer's money to the tune of $6 million a day. However, just as in the free market, where race and religion are not issues when it comes to money, so is it particularly true in the games we play at this epitome of the humanistic/evolutionary financial spiral. When it comes to power, control and money, religion be damned. If necessary, we'll cut Israel's throat. And it looks like we may just have to do that, I have already had my boys over at the largest New York daily newspaper turn aggressively against Israel, and thus begin conditioning American opinion to become pro-Arab. The Saudi Arabian threat to withdraw $100 billion out of my banks unless my president called off the Israelis from slaughtering the PLO in Lebanon scared the dickens out of me. We put out that fire just in time. The President got on the phone to the Prime Minister of Israel and told him to call off his military dogs, which he did.
Whew!
Now, I've heard rumors and, in fact have some intelligence to back it up, that suggests that Israel may have developed military technology that is superior, not only to that produced by my American military/industrial complex, but also to that of my military surrogate in the Soviet Union, which I have financed industrially and militarily for years and years. This could prove to be a problem. The PLO terrorists that I financed through my Soviet surrogate were causing so much trouble world-wide that my plan for the centralization of power was going along nicely. Terrorism always leads to increased government control. The Israeli move into Lebanon has disrupted that PLO operation significantly, throwing off my timetable to have my Russian surrogate, the Soviet military, move in to take over and control the Middle East, in the process possibly destroying Israel, and then establish iron-fisted control over Middle East oil. Once this is done, once the Soviet Union controls the Middle East and Middle East oil, I can ration the world's oil supply, set the world's oil price, shore up and increase the wealth of my financial empire, and effectively operate a one-world financial slave empire. I'll own everything in sight and bust the Libertarians, Right Wing and Christians, too. This has been the dream of men since the beginning of time. I am just on the verge of accomplishing it. Greedy, you say? "The love of money is the root of all evil." The Arabs can't stand against the Soviets. We financed the Arabs and put them in business in the first place with all our oil technology. The oil cartel we formed for them took the bad press for the skyward streaking oil prices in the 1970s when, in fact, it was me and my oil company sisters who profited the most from that Middle East oil concession. So, to sum it up, my only worries now are gold and Israel. Gold I hope to take care of in short order. Israel comes next spring and that could prove to be troublesome. But, then again, no one ever said you establish a one-world empire easily, and this one has taken nearly all this century.
In the foregoing treatise by R.E.McMaster, Jr., in reference to defaulting loans by Third World and Communist satellite countries, the writer says: "... I had my political cronies establish laws which forced the American taxpayers to use their hard-earned productivity to make contributions ... that both guaranteed my loans, bailed out my bad loans, and subsidized my investments." As though it were in direct confirmation of this statement comes the report of October 25, 1982, that "President Reagan will be asked today to sign an executive order authorizing the Commodity Credit Corp. to pay a further $346 million to 12 U.S. commercial creditors for defaulted government-backed laosn to Poland." The article by George Archibald in the Washington Times continues:
"Despite the recent outlawing of Solidarity by Poland's Communist rulers, the State Department seeks the authority for the CCC to continue paying off the Polish loans. (In February) the CCC made its first $2 million payment on a defaulted Polish loan to the Bank of Boston International ... Poland has been in technical default on its $26 billion debt to Western countries since 1981 ... From February to August the CCC made 110 payments totaling more than $259 to 10 banks and the two export companies that had made government-backed loans to pay for U.S. exports to Poland. Those receiving payments include: Bank of America, Chicago; First National Bank of Chicago, Girard Bank, Philadelphia; Marine Midland Bank, New York; European American Bank & Trust Co., New York; Chemical Bank, New York; Irving Turst Co. International, New York; Riggs National Bank, Washington; Morgan Guarantee Trust Co., New York; Bank of Boston International; Continental Grain Export Corp., New York; and Nissho-Iwai American Corp., New York. CCC plans to make $346 million in further payments to these lenders in fiscal year 1983, $225 million in 1984 and $9 million in 1985 ... Reagan delegated Secretary of State George Pratt Shultz to provide Congress with the necessary explanation. So Shultz wrote to Congress that "A declaration of default would reduce the liklihood that the U.S. government would recover these amounts from Poland." (so, the amounts will be recovered for the banks from U.S. taxpayers -- Ed.)
There was opposition. Dan M. Burt, president of the Capital Legal Foundation, filed suit in federal court against the CCC payments to the U.S. banks. He said: "These loan guarantees are the sleaziest thing going. The taxpayers are getting raped by this system. This administration didn't invent it, but they have no business promoting it. We (U.S. taxpayers) are paying for the soldiers who are sitting on the heads of the Polish workers."
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There are some of us who are old enough to remember that about 50 years ago there was a Great Worldwide Depression, Community banks were closed never to reopen. Industries failed. Businesses went bankrupt. Farm mortgages were foreclosed. There were breadlines, wholesale unemployment. People suffered horribly. But not all of the people ...
Today the situation is uncomfortably similar, industries are shutting down. U.S. steel operates at 40% capacity. Farmers are in hock. The construction industry is comatose. Unemployment and bankruptcy figures have reached rates not seen since that Great Depression. From Brussels to Buenos Aries, from Vienna to Washington, things are about the same. A West German business weekly reports: "Except for Japan and a few countries in Southeast Asia, the world has plunged into an economic depression comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s." There is yet another important comparison. Now, as then, there exists a ruling class, a self-chosen elite connected by family or associated interests to certain major banking and industrial firms. While others suffer, they will make billions. Read the biography of Bernard Baruch for confirmation of what happens to the few at the expense of the many. Today, with conditions so very similar to those in the 1930s, we can almost hear that Wall Street banker, super-politician and Permanent President, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, voicing that victory cry of the Conspirators: "We planned it that way." In the hope that McMaster's allegorical treatise: "If I were a Rich Man," will alert many more to the dangers we face, we hope for the largest possible distribution of this Plan of the Conspiracy.
* This article is reprinted from the September 10, 1982 issue of The Reaper, commodity advisory newsletter published monthly (44 times a year) by R.E. McMaster, Jr., P.O.Box 39026, Phoenix, Arizona 85069, $225 per year. Foreign air mail, add 40%.
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