All the Crap I Learned in High School - The Great Depression Revisited

Americans seem wedded to the story of the Great Depression, which began in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, as a tale of the follies of free market economies. Fortunately newer research is chipping away at these long cherished but mistaken lies.

 

We can only recall the lyrics of Kodachrome by Paul Simon which derides the fare of secondary education. Unfortunately he should have leveled his remarks at higher education which is a hotbed of deceits about much of the world but especially of the Great Depression whose aforementioned interpretation is a shibboleth of the well educated American.

 

The standard narrative asserts that greedy Americans and businesses engaged in a torrid orgy of stock market speculation whose bursting wiped out enormous paper wealth. The loss of this ephemeral wealth left the nation poorer while the hapless Hoover sat around doing nothing as Americans struggled for survival.

 

When Americans heard about Roosevelt’s grand plans and economic bailouts through massive government largesse, they realized that hope was on the way, voting with both feet and hands to elect their savior. After Roosevelt enacted his dramatically novel formulas for recovery, economic revival took root and America could sing Happy Days Are Here Again.

 

Many contemporary critics and a few subsequent scholars realized that the cherished myth was more a deceit rather than truth. Murray Rothbard understood early the mischievous role of the Federal Reserve Board in causing and extending the depression. In fact Lawrence Reed, in the vanguard of analysts challenging the conventional wisdom over the past 30 years, cites Rothbard’s alternative assessment, though not fully supportive of it. We take issue with Lawrence's disagreement but that is a topic for another post.

 

Lawrence observes that stock speculation was no more pronounced – perhaps less so – during the 1920s than in previous times, while other economists maintain that it was isolated to a very small minority of stock market players.

 

The Federal Reserve, whose great justification was that it would end market crashes through enlightened monetary management, committed two acts which would guarantee misery for millions of Americans for the next two decades starting in the mid 1920s when it used its many vaunted tools to massively expand the money supply by 60% during the middle part of the decade.

 

Then, fearing that it had created too much of a good thing, the Fed abruptly changed course in 1928, after the death of its chairman Benjamin Strong, by sharply raising interest rates and reserve requirements for banks. This sharp tightening of credit cut the supply of money, forcing many stock market investors into margin calls which led to a spiral of sell offs culminating in the great crash of October 1929.

 

At the time, you could probably count on both hands - with a finger or two left over - the number of Americans who understood the voodoo science of monetarism, the bedrock underlying the policy guidance of the central bank. It is quite likely that many in the Fed did not fully understand what they were doing. But, those in power are infallible, dontcha know? Thus there would be no relief to the nation from the central planners at the New York Fed.

 

Another common deceit about the Great Depression is that Hoover was a do nothing president. As Lawrence and others show, Hoover launched a frenzy of government spending and interventionist policies and agencies to deal with the crisis. In fact, Roosevelt adviser Rexford Tugwell conceded many years after the Roosevelt presidency that the New Deal was simply an expansion of the Hoover programs. Hoover had spent all of the 1920s strongly advocating government intervention in a time of economic crisis from which we conclude that the depression was a premeditated act.

 

Hoover, like his successor, broadly and sharply raised taxes on all as a means of financing government programs, vastly enlarging the government’s take of GDP and federal debt. The portion of the federal share rose from 16.1% to 22.5% toward the end of Hoover’s tenure.

 

In past depressions, most of which ended after 2 years, wages fell to adjust to new economic conditions. But with Hoover’s statist interventions, wages remained stubbornly high – just as they did under Roosevelt’s tutelage, whose union policies entrenched wages at unnaturally high levels.

 

But this poison was not the worst of Congress’ or Hoover’s potion. The Smoot – Hawley act of 1930 which raised tariffs dramatically cut the markets for American farm products and made many others economically prohibitive.

 

So the legacy of Hoover was higher taxes, higher government spending, higher wages, and higher tariffs, while at the same time, the Federal Reserve was drastically shrinking the money supply.

 

Roosevelt campaigned against what his vice president called socialism. In fact, Roosevelt sounded like a very conservative balanced budget limited government candidate. However, in many extraordinary about faces, Roosevelt put Hoover’s policies on steroids.

 

While many credit Roosevelt for saving the nation, the fact that it spent another 10 years in depression on his watch is far more a damnation of his policies than an endorsement. Roosevelt sent storm troopers into the garment district of New York to arrest men who would sew pants for 5 cents below the federally dictated rate. They carried axes to break down the doors of anyone suspected of violating government policies.

 

We must digress at this point. Why would the Roosevelt administration, which had inveighed against the excesses of government in its campaign for election, pursue policies identically enforced in the fashion of Adolph Hitler?

 

For that answer, we must turn to Roosevelt’s former son-in-law Curtis Dall who wrote an autobiography of his famous in-law long after the divorce from the president’s daughter. Dall was also surprised by the abrupt change in Roosevelt, having observed him first hand while governor of New York. Dall’s contention is that Roosevelt was surrounded by miscreant advisors who pursued an agenda of their own rather than of their boss.

 

This theory explains much and I further develop it to state that these advisors were working directly and indirectly for the very plutocrats who engineered the depression as a means of ushering in martial law. The very brutal enforcement methods of the New Deal share the finger print of the Nazis. But both of these systems of tyranny go back to the plutocrats who financed Mussolini, Hitler, and Lenin. World War 2 was in fact the brainchild of the Wall Street plutocrats against whom Roosevelt frequently inveighed and with good cause.

 

On the other hand, FDR was not an intellectual giant – a somewhat pompous frat boy – who valued politics above good governance and thus was supple putty in the hands of his manipulators. Indeed such manipulation was assisted not only by Roosevelt’s vanity, but also by his very frail health which enabled his advisors to fill the power vacuum during the president’s many absences and emergency visits to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

 

Returning to our narrative, FDR’s vast expansion of regulation, diversion of money from productive to non-productive pursuits, and confiscatory tax policies crippled the country for years to come. The Fed continued to tighten money, a combination which sent the economy into a relapse in 1938.

 

It is inconceivable that men could slaughter millions of animals, as Henry Wallace ordered, when millions of people were hungry and starving. The callous disregard of suffering which that administration evinced toward the citizenry was on a par with that of Stalin and additional support for our contention that powers outside the administration were wielding a strong hand.

 

FDR’s treasury secretary Henry Morganthau stated candidly in his diary that after all of the billions spent on solving the economic problems that unemployment was as high as when the New Deal started – essentially an utter failure.

 

In Roosevelt’s defense, there was indeed enormous corruption on Wall Street which desperately called for prosecution, a task which his administration and Congress pursued with some success. It is also true that industrialists in many instances were brutal animals in need of restraint. So while the Wagner act and other labor friendly legislation hindered economic activity, corrections of the excess of capitalists were long overdue. But this is far from an indictment of free enterprise – simply a call for supervision of irresponsible and inhuman management much as the Glass Steagal Act limited the excesses of Wall Street.

 

Lawrence presents a persuasive case that the Hoover-Roosevelt administrations were much more alike than different with both men advocates of strong statist interventions in the case of economic crisis. We also see that both the Fed and both administrations contributed in equal parts to the Depression as they and Congress fiddled while Rome burned.

 

Reference Lawrence Reed, Great Myths of the Great Depression, http://www.scribd.com/doc/108111838/Great-Myths-2011-Final-Web

Copyright 2010-12 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Did London Banksters Really Threaten America in 1865?

A famous editorial allegedly printed in The Times of London in 1865 stated that British financiers were devoted to destroying the American republic in order to preserve the power of banksters and monarchs. We find no evidence for such an editoral.

We reprint the quote in question, admittedly quite incendiary:

“If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”

This excerpt is frequently presented as the smoking gun to prove that international banksters have a long standing plan to gain control of the world. It is most likely that some of them have worked on such plans – plans to which chief bankster David Rockefeller acknowledges in his autobiography wherein he proudly admits to wishing to dismantle American sovereignty. Yet no one labels him a terrorist.

 

The editorial was presumably written in response to President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to bypass private bankers to finance the Civil War in favor of Treasury issued Greenbacks. This snub – predicated on strenuous objection to usury - supposedly infuriated the banksters who lost a golden opportunity for which they eventually thanked Lincoln with his assassination at Ford’s Theater in April 1865.

 

The aforementioned editorial is adduced to provide direct linkage to bankster ire, the Civil War, and Lincoln’s demise.

 

Because of the exotic nature of the quote and its implications, we wished to track down its provenance which we thought would be relatively straight forward, especially since it has been widely reproduced all over the world wide web. In each citation we consulted, we noted that no specific information was provided to document its source.

 

This lack of proper attribution alerted our suspicions which were confirmed in a WikeQuote.org discussion over this passage. One researcher noted that the earliest instance of it was September 2, 1898 in The Flaming Sword, Vol. XII. It subsequently appeared in ads for the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1898-99.

 

Although we suspect that others used the quote over the decades, one of the greater examples of its usage appeared in Gods of Money by F. William Engdahl published in 2011. The internet is rife with reproductions of the editorial extract – again, all without proper attribution.

 

The final nail in the coffin came from a researcher who stated that his search of the The Digital Times for the editorial yielded no results. To us, that is the final word on the subject. The editorial was the contrivance of a publicity seeking newspaper ad man.

 

While we agree that modern banking is sinister and inimical to freedom, we also deplore shoddy research and the use of myths and lies to advance a cause. Only the truth shall set you free. Hit it, James Brown.

Reference
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Money

Copyright 2010-12 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Did the Rockefellers Murder President Kennedy?

We have written of the Bush Crime Syndicate’s murder of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dealey Plaza, but we have not given much attention to their paymasters – possibly America’s most illustrious and wicked family – one which would not surprise Ida Tarbell.

 

One of our correspondents has presented us with information which should enshrine the Rockefeller Axis of Evil as the most traitorous cabal to descend on America in its 400 plus years of existence. Deputizing the Bush Crime Syndicate, the Rockefellers murdered the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.

 

There are many gems to be discovered on dusty neglected shelves, some of which came from Morris Bealle, a wealthy gentleman from Maryland who was forced from his editorship of a local newspaper by the industrialists of his day who threatened him with ruin if he continued to publish stories about the dishonest and heavy handed dealings of the power companies.

 

Since he did not need to work, Bealle sold his interest in the newspaper at a loss and turned his attention full time to investigative journalism, reeling from the revelation that the press in America was not at all free.

 

One of his projects was to turn his focus on the Rockefellers who were regarded among the most powerful and wealthy families in America. He published a book about them in 1959 for which he found great difficulty to find a publisher due to the retributive power of the Rockefeller machine.

 

But his bravest effort was publishing a book entitled Guns of the Regressive Right about how the Rockefeller cabal ordered and arranged for the murder of the president for various reasons including his monetary and tax reforms targeted at the banking and oil barons. In order to protect himself from an onslaught of lawsuits, he published his work as a novel on the advice of publishers who turned down the manuscript.

 

He used code names, such as for the Dutch rendering of Rockefeller wherein David figures prominently with a strong resemblance to the lead protagonist. Those moving among the closely knit elite would be able to easily decipher the coded language. The most remarkable point about the self published work is that Bealle published it in 1964 – almost immediately after the cabal murdered Kennedy.

 

This version of the murder story fits well with our previous findings about the Bushs who were intimately connected with the Harrimans who were in turn allies of the Rockefellers. Please do not let political affiliations deceive you – money is thicker than blood.

 

The Establishment controlled press did not pursue the president’s murder because the Rockefeller influence was too great to overcome as Bealle had discovered in the case of the power company – although the Rockefellers were not implicated in that imbroglio.

 

David Rockefeller has been most frank in recent years concerning his efforts for abolishing US sovereignty in order that the nation might be governed by an elite international plutocracy. The John Birchers and others accused of flighty imaginations have been fully vindicated by the confessions of the arch enemy of the United States – David Rockefeller. His murder of the President of the United States - which allegation we believe is most credible - is clear evidence that his hatred for this country runs long and deep. Conspiracies are indeed the province of a sick mind; exposing them is the duty of all true patriots.

 

Copyright 2010-12 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

Where in the World is Barbara Olson?

Barbara Olson (December 27, 1955 - ? ) was the television commentator who earned a few seconds of fame for her book about Hillary Clinton’s evil liberal ways, but who also earned enduring fame for her alleged death on American Airline’s alleged Flight 77 when the alleged plane allegedly hit the Pentagon. We think that there are too many allegations to assume that Mrs. Olson went to her death in flames.

 

Perhaps Carmen San Diego could tell us Mrs. Olson’s where abouts, but absent a sudden channeling from her, we doubt that Ms. Diego will be of much help. However, deconstructing the 9/11 lies of the government will help us find a suitable path of discovery.

 

We have published strong – nay unassailable – evidence that a plane did not hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 as the newsfakers in the state controlled media told us. But this raises the most intriguing question about the life of Ted Olson’s wife. Since there was no airplane which hit the Pentagon, the natural question is what happened to the famous personage?

 

There are several avenues to consider, but they fall basically into two camps. The first is that Olson was killed, while the second is that Olson lived beyond 9/11 and is perhaps still alive. At this time we do not have sufficient evidence to prefer either hypothesis.

 

It is possible that the real flight 77 took off as described, but was then hijacked to a location unknown – perhaps Canada. It is also possible that Olson was kidnapped on the ground and murdered at location unknown. But her murder raises additional questions about motive. Who in the Bush Crime Syndicate wanted her dead and for what cause?

 

Was her death a warning to Ted to tow the line on some matter? Was she murdered because she angered the Clintons with her scathing exposure of Hillary’s radical politics, which couple are card carrying members of the Bush Crime Syndicate or the Rockefeller Axis of Evil – we are not yet sure which?

 

The other major possibility concerning Barbara Olson is that she is still alive incognito. We read one report that she had major face surgery – a highly developed skill of the CIA – and was living in Germany. We can see this outcome a reward of the BCS for her services rendered in the BCS’s totalitarian aspirations. But why go to so much bother? Did she really want to get away from Ted that much?

 

After considering the matter, we are inclined to believe that Barbara Olson is dead although we don't know where she was buried or why she was murdered. Perhaps the most likely reason is that her death brought the tragedy to the White House, and thus attention away from it as the epicenter of the attack on America.

 

These many questions linger with us because we know for a  fact that no plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11 – only a remote controlled projectile of sorts. We ask any spooks with the cunning of an Edward Lansdale to come forth in helping us locate Mrs. Olson – dead or alive.  

 

Copyright 2010-12 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

When Did Howard Hughes Die?

Many are still alive who recall the Kim Kardashian like circus surrounding the sad last days of Howard Hughes. Although you may pass a history testing by giving the date of his death as April 5, 1976, the truthometer will buzz loudly with displeasure.

Yes there is much gratification is regurgitating the lies and fancies of the state controlled press, but it is much more satisfying to feast on the truth. In this case we believe that Howard Hughes died no later than 1971 and no earlier than 1957.

Enigmatic elusive Howard Hughes continues to fascinate historians, journalists, and gossips decades after his purported death. His alleged final gasps spawned a television movie, late night TV jokes, and a very sordid fascination with the peccadilloes of the successful billionaire.

What you don’t hear about in That 70s Show is the many death watches which were fodder for Saturday Night Live. Guessing when the next right winged dictator was ready to give up the ghost became something of a parlor game. When is the old coot going to kick the can, already? Franco, Kai-shek, Tito, and others were for years on their last breaths – breaths which we believe the CIA played a very heavy hand in taking away.

But Hughes’ vast wealth and exaggerated hypochondria made him more fascinating than the rest. How could a man who had risen to stellar heights fall to such hellish lows? Couldn’t his money cure him of his illness?

We believe that there is much more to the story than meets the eye. Our working thesis is that the CIA murdered Hughes for political and personal reasons – and aren’t the two so often the same? Hughes had become associated with Republican politics in a way which threatened big government, and he had technologies which could be employed in devious ways – especially if in the hands of a Spook.

 

Perhaps the best explanation for his demise lay in his companies' oil technologies which Hughes probably used to tighten the scews on the Eastern plutocrats.

The Canadian newspaper Midnight argued that Hughes was buried off of the Greek island of Skorpios in 1971. It suggested that John Kennedy had secretly survived his assassination and was held by Aristotle Onassis. Mae Brussell, who in contrast to the Midnight, was a respected and fact conscious assassination researcher, argued that Hughes died on April 16, 1971 and was buried in the same location.

There are some reasons we present below to support Hughes’ murder in 1971 but we can’t rule out 1957. The reports state that Hughes was kidnapped and severely incapacitated, possibly in a botched CIA job. A component of my current theory is that the CIA feared the growing alliance and influence Richard Nixon would wield if he were to tap fully into Hughes’ money. In conunction with Hughes' squeeze on Eastern plutocrats, his death was all but assured.

Since our original publication of this report, we have learned so much more about the Bush Crime Syndicate that we could easily see its principals wishing to cut Nixon off at the knees. Hence, they concocted a plan to incapacitate Hughes.

Whatever the reasons for Hughes’ murder, the last 20 years of his penumbrations were a long running CIA gag – one in which the spooks were rolling on the floor laughing their hind ends off as they created this garish caricature of a hypochondriac who was never seen. It was like an I Love Lucy episode where Lucy tries to avoid getting caught impersonating two people.

Hughes was never seen in public after 1957. A body double was hired to give fleeting glimpses of the man to maintain the illusion that he was still alive. The reason for this charade was to continue to tap his bank accounts. After all, if he were officially declared dead, the banks would close his accounts. Hughes died intestate – or his will was destroyed by the CIA, precluding any orderly liquidation of assets.

Noah Dietrich, Hughes close right hand man, retired in 1957, on very abrupt notice and under the most peculiar circumstances. It is our guess that he was fired by some CIA thug and Dietrich kept very quiet for good reason.

Hughes’ marriage to glamour actress Jean Peters – also in 1957 - was the most soaring performance of the latter’s career. Their non-marriage could always generate headlines – especially in conduits like CIA outlet Parade Magazine. During the entire period of the fake marriage, neither saw the other and communicated nearly always by phone. Peters kept all of the details about this “marriage” like the state secret which it was – meaning that it was a masquerade.

The CIA finally started winding down the hoax in 1971, just about the time which they sprung Watergate on us. Peters and Hughes “divorced” in that year with the former Mrs Hughes receiving 70,000 USD per year alimony – which was enough to be modestly comfortable at the time, but peanuts compared to Hughes’ vast fortune. But actors' salaries would not rocket into the stratosphere for a few years yet.

Though the divorce was finalized in June, it comports well with the theories for an April death.

The complete reclusiveness of Hughes was predicated upon his acute germ phobia. Again, I believe that this was a cover to provide plausible explanation of his hermetic behavior. Body doubles were used to provide his presence when absolutely necessary but these became increasingly rare and confusing wherein there was the healthy van dyke bearded Hughes juxtaposed with the frail gross looking Hughes with 6 inch finger nails.

The same clowns – CIA - who brought us Watergate also had a fun time destroying Howard Hughes. My theory is that they incapacitated him to wrest control of his money and projects. When they discovered that he was intestate they realized that they had a huge problem. Thus they kept him alive for years in order to uncover more details about his holdings and to safeguard their unfolding plans. This is a subject deserving more scrutiny.

At some point his health failed or they no longer needed him. My suspicion is that this occurred in April 1971. Then the CIA had the most hilarious uproarious time creating the comical hypochondriac whom they finally let die officially in April 1976.

This same showmanship over an incompetent or dead person was used years later with Osama bin Laden, leaving us another finger print of the CIA’s vicious activities.

 Copyright 2008-12 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.

The Madeleine Brown Hoax

Many who have investigated some of the more titillating aspects of the murder of John Kennedy have come across the Madeleine Brown story made even more popular by an episode in the History Channel’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy. It certainly is more colorful than many of the tales told and has all of the eeriness of a good ghost story told around the camp fire. Unfortunately, it is too good to be true and a complete crock of you know what. We think it would be a great vignette for a fictional movie.

The general synopsis of the story is that the great movers and shakers of American politics and commerce converged on the home of Clint Murchison, Sr in a final pow-wow of proleptic celebration and check-list completion regarding the impending assassination of President Kennedy. The purported purpose of the occasion was to honor Murchison’s long time friend J Edgar Hoover. Other luminaries said to be present included Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, John McCloy, George Brown, R. L. Thornton, H. L. Hunt and a host of other glitterati swarming at the Murchison residence.

Each guest is assigned a motive to make the story more credible. Nixon’s loss to Kennedy in 1960, Johnson’s impending removal from the ticket in 1964, Hoover’s fear and loathing of pink presidents, the oil men’s anger over the oil depletion allowance, and a smorgasbord of other incentives for Kennedy’s forcible removal are added to the mix.

The marquee of the story is Johnson’s alleged comment to Brown, “After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again— that’s no threat—that’s a promise!”

As we said it is great entertainment but it is reality built of fog, so we thought we would bring a little sunshine to the party to see how long the fog lingered. The first order of business is to figure out who was this personage alleged to be Johnson’s mistress. Madeleine Brown, nee Madeline F. Brown, (July 5, 1925 – June 22, 2002) was at best a raconteur and celebrity seeking hound who was allegedly a mistress of Lyndon Johnson and the father of her illegitimate son. It is thus her assumed proximity to Johnson which is supposed to lend credibility to her story.

After an excavation of her life and story it seems to be the case that the poor woman was pathological and given to fantasy to fill her empty life. She was found guilty of forgery but that verdict was over turned on a technicality.

Dave Perry does an extensive review of her ghost written autobiography which recounts this story and so much more, but finds error after error after error. It gets to the point that there is no evidence of any relationship with Johnson, let alone as father of her son. And the Murchison party has no foundation, being riddled with too many improbabilities.

For starters, Murchison was too ill to host such a party as he suffered a strong stroke in 1958 - in fact he was living near Palestine, TX at the time. The guest of honor, Hoover, was in Washington and could not have made the party given his known schedule, except perhaps by flying, but Hoover’s well known fear of flying makes that mode of locomotion highly suspect. Johnson did not arrive in Dallas until 11:07p with his motorcade at the hotel at 11:50p making it unlikely that he ventured to such a party. William Manchester reports him in his hotel staying up quite late. Nixon was seen at a night club with Joan Crawford at least until around 11p – again making it unlikely he would have disengaged and made it to the Murchison address in time for the alleged checkpoint among these well known men.

Brown refers to a story about the party in the social section of the Dallas Times Herald newspaper, but the section editor Val Imm said she never wrote such a story nor did such a story appear in the paper. In the whole, Brown has never been able to substantiate a relationship with Johnson. If such a liaison existed, Johnson’s premier biographer Robert Caro certainly did not find it.

Dave Perry asked Peter O’Donnell about the party as Brown alleges he was there. O’Donnell responded that he was not at the party because there was no such party. Perry also spoke with Clint’s chauffeur’s wife Eula Tilley about the party. She recalls no such party, stating that Murchison was too sick to have a party even if he wanted to.

We can however substantiate that Brown was charged and convicted of forgery leading to the generalization that she was a highly unreliable source.

It breaks our heart to dismiss this party as a lunatic invention because we definitely believe that conspiracy abounded in the planning and cover-up of the Kennedy murder. We even believe that some of the men so named as present at the party were either directly or indirectly involved in the conspiracy. Unfortunately the party never happened – plain and simple.

Reference
Dave Perry, writings

Copyright 2010-12 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.