“Reagan started out by denouncing the power elite and specifically the CFR and the Trilateralists, but wound up with that epitome of the Establishment, Skull-&-Bonesman George Bush as his vice president and successor. Bush is a longtime CFR director, and Trilateralist; most of his major cabinet officers, including his chairman of the joint chiefs, Colin Powell, were CFR members. The Clinton administration is similarly afflicted, from the President (CFR/Trilateral) on down through Donna Shalala (CFRJ Trilateral) and George Stephanopoulos (CFR), with the CFR honeycombed (as usual) throughout the State Department. In addition to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, other CFR members in the Clinton cabinet include Laura Tyson, chairman of the Council of Economic advisors, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, HUD honcho Henry Cisneros; and Alice Rivlin, 0MB director…”.

 Justin Raimondo, author of An Enemy of the State: the Life of Murray N. Rothbard and other books, is editor of Antiwar.co

Thanks to Scott Horton for the link  Raimondo’s latest piece on the stirring up of anti-Russian feeling (preparatory to what? a skirmish with Russia?) should give anyone pause.

Comment:

The crucial reason why bankers have managed to hijack the government is that banking based on a fractional reserve system (i.e. a system where the banks lend out a multiple of the money they hold as deposits) is by its nature inclined to favor debt…and thus to favor statism (that is, favor larger government). Here’s Rothbard on the subject, from the article linked above:

“Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists; they can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favors and privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences and values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism.

Commercial bankers, engaged as they are in unsound fractional reserve credit, are, in the free market, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Hence they are always reaching for government aid and bailout.

Investment bankers do much of their business underwriting government bonds, in the United States and abroad. Therefore, they have a vested interest in promoting deficits and in forcing taxpayers to redeem government debt. Both sets of bankers, then, tend to be tied in with government policy, and try to influence and control government actions in domestic and foreign affairs.”

[Just to clarify, a government bond is the way the government raises money for its programs – by selling bonds, either through auction or through underwriting bank/banks].

Cutting through all the fancy terminology – bonds are debt. Debt is money borrowed from someone on which interest is paid. People carrying debt (borrowers) have an innate preference for inflationary policies, since this reduces the level of their debt. Those who assume the risks of those loans have the same innate preference.  In addition borrowers and those who buy their debt have a motivation to prefer government policies which will let the public underwrite or pay off the debt or assume the risk of the debt…or all of the above.