One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, Training Day, is even more relevant today than it was when we all received most of our news from the TV and newspapers. Alonzo Harris, played by Denzel Washington, had this to say about newspapers:

Alonzo Harris: This is a newspaper right? Its 90% bullshit, but it’s entertaining. That’s why I read it because it entertains me. YOU won’t let me read it, so you entertain me with your bullshit. Tell me a story right now, go…

In fact, what my generation, the millennial generation, has done is essentially the same. We have thrown out the newspaper and stopped watching TV news to be entertained by someone else’s bullshit. That could be on Facebook, Tumbler or any of the other social media apps that dominate many people’s time today. The way we communicate and disseminate information has changed, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I am not going to hark back to the days when TV and print media institutions controlled the flow of what the public was fed. The internet is a tool that empowers the small guy in terms of spreading information quickly and to a large mass of readers.

As consumers of information though, we have to be discerning and I think this is where a lot of people get into trouble. In the past, when most people received their news from institutional sources, information was filtered by trained journalists. They did the dull drudgery of verifying sources and defending the truthfulness of their findings or claims before an experienced editor before it was disseminated to the public.  Nowadays, it is easy to find a Facebook page of people who agree with whatever you may think no matter how misinformed or ill-advised the source of your ideas may be. Very few if any people, then check the accuracy of the sources or the information they are being fed.

The problem with this is it is easy to fall into our ideological or ignorance inspired fact light comfort zone. Many of us have not had the opportunity to engage on a broad range of topics in depth with someone with different experiences and perspective than ourselves. It can be jarring for the first time that someone experiences hearing an opinion or a story that completely clashes with their worldview. Sometimes, the natural reaction to encountering a different opinions is not to hear them out and try to understand them, but to lurch even further back into your own thought process or opinion. These people may then seek out others who agree with them to defend their view more vigorously.

Of all the things I took away from high school, there was one thing I never forgot, because it is so simple yet not often acknowledged. I had a media class where we dissected why stories were written, who the intended audience was, and why it was written in a certain way. In discussing these topics, I recall the teacher telling us that every newspaper is a reflection of an opinion. How is that? I wondered. The teacher followed this up by elaborating.

He explained that every editorial decision, from putting something on the top fold of a newspaper, to the first story run on the nightly news, is someone’s opinion on what they think YOU should find important. That person’s worldview and experience may not have anything to do with yours and you need to remember that when consuming news.

We also have to remember that news creates a buzz and attracts readers and viewers by sensationalism. Feeding into panic and anger can be profitable for news sources and the more controversial topics get more people talking.

Back to How This Affects Your Bottom Line

So why am talking about all of this? What does the news we get have anything to do with personal finance and getting your ducks in a row for your future? The answer is that there is a dangerous misinformation campaign spread by many conspiracy theorists and anti-establishment actors which can seek to not only misinform people but have them believing that the entire world financial system is a hoax or somehow set up to exploit them. They often claim that increasing your knowledge of how the system works is all a mirage in order to enslave you in to some sort of master plan. Usually, the architects of the plan these conspiracy theorists describe are purported to be some supranational group or body which is the secret mechanism behind all financial markets and transactions. This group is usually motivated by greed or some form of world domination.

I am all for different opinions and views. Many people may not agree with mine, but what is most dangerous in my opinion, is a conspiracy that seeks to dissuade seeking knowledge and therefore provide a guise and a justification for ignorance. I believe that this kind of mentality actually achieves the opposite of its goal. By rejecting learning how the financial system works and how one can use it to their advantage, this mentality rejects all incentive to build financial knowledge, scares people into putting their money under the mattress in cash, where over time, inflation eats it away until they have lost the value of their work. Or worse, it encourages them to just spend it away.

Let’s Look at One Example – The Rothschild Conspiracy

I came across this short video one day that someone shared on Facebook.

Initially, I had to laugh because when I first watched it, the video claimed that the Rothschild family was worth $350 trillion. $350 trillion is more than the entire GDP of the world but apparently someone must have pointed this out and this was changed to show billion instead.

Anyway, the video claims that the Rothschild family controls the Federal Reserve and the banking system and is next plotting to move into all the countries that are not currently integrated into the global financial system which it (incorrectly) points out are Cuba, North Korea and Iran. Knowing that most people don’t go out and check these claims (since they will claim the Rothschild family created all the disinformation to lure you away from the truth anyway, which is convenient because it means it justifies the viewer’s laziness into not looking into this in more detail), I decided to quickly look into this because in actuality, all of this is boring publicly available information.

First of all, on the claim that the Rothschilds own the Federal Reserve. Let’s see who the Federal Reserve itself says owns it:

A network of 12 Federal Reserve Banks and 24 branches make up the Federal Reserve System under the general oversight of the Board of Governors. Reserve Banks are the operating arms of the central bank.

Each Reserve Bank’s board of directors oversees the management and activities of the District bank. Reflecting the diverse interests of each District, these directors contribute local business experience, community involvement and leadership. The board imparts a private-sector perspective to the Reserve Bank. Each board appoints the president and first vice president of the Reserve Bank, subject to the approval of the Board of Governors.

All member banks hold stock in Reserve Banks and receive dividends. Unlike stockholders in a public company, banks cannot sell or trade their Fed stock. Reserve Banks interact directly with banks in their Districts through examinations and financial services and bring important regional perspectives that help the entire Federal Reserve System do its job more effectively.

Source: https://www.federalreserveeducation.org/about-the-fed/structure-and-functions

OK, so it looks like the private banks own the Federal Reserve, because they own the stock, and the reserve banks they control, report to the Board of Governors. Let’s see who they are:

The Board of Governors, also known as the Federal Reserve Board, is the national component of the Federal Reserve System. The board consists of the seven governors, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Governors serve 14-year, staggered terms to ensure stability and continuity over time. The chairman and vice-chairman are appointed to four-year terms and may be reappointed subject to term limitations.

OK maybe banks are financing the politicians who appoint the Governors, maybe, but that is a different issue. We are trying to get down to who owns the Federal Reserve. So governors are appointed by the president and the banks own shares in the Federal Reserve Banks. So who owns the banks? This must be how the Rothschild family does it.

Fortunately, the largest banks in the US are publicly listed and we easily can look up who owns them. Let’s look into the biggest of all JP Morgan. A quick search for majority owners of JP Morgan leads to Yahoo Finance where I found the info.

 

So it must be through the institutional investors that they own the banks and therefore the Federal Reserve System banks right? Well a scroll down led to some not so sensational information.

Here are the names of all the big institutional investors and I already know that most of their assets are made up of retirement funds of individuals and pensions funds that are owned by ordinary people like you and me.

The irony here is we think the banks are controlling us, when in actuality, if you have any savings for retirement on the stock market YOU are likely one of the millions of owners of these companies that the conspiracy theorists claim control the world. On top of that, you vote for the government that appoints the board that oversees the banks. Kind of a letdown. I wish there was some crazy story behind it all but that’s it. People save for retirement and they want the value of their assets to increase, some of these assets are in banks, so we demand they make more money so our nest egg can grow and these banks do what they can to satisfy investors, simple as that. So the big secret is the big evil banks controlling the world are probably owned by you, a squirrel just trying to get a nut.

So What About the Rothschild Family?

So why have people been connecting the Rothschild family to world domination through the banking system? The sad truth is that this theory has its origins in European anti-Semitism linked to the Battle of Waterloo over 200 years ago.  In 2015, a magazine called The Independent, discussed the history behind this in an article describing the origins of the Rothschild conspiracy theory on the 200^th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.

In the summer of 1846, a political pamphlet bearing the ominous signature “Satan” swept across Europe, telling a story which, though lurid and improbable, left a mark that can be seen to this day.

The pamphlet claimed to recount the history of the richest and most famous banking family of the time – the Rothschilds – and its most enduring passage told how their vast fortune was built upon the bloodshed of the battle of Waterloo…

… Satan was in reality a left-wing controversialist called Georges Dairnvaell, who made no attempt to hide his loathing for Jews –and the Rothschilds in particular. Though they had been little known in 1815, by 1846 the Rothschilds had become the Rockefellers or the Gateses of their age, their name a byword for fabulous wealth. Nathan himself had died in 1836 and so could not rebut the claims.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-rothschild-libel-why-has-it-taken-200-years-for-an-anti-semitic-slur-that-emerged-from-the-10216101.html

This article was written by Brian Cathcart, who also wrote a book on the subject called ‘The News From Waterloo’.

This may explain where the linkage to The Rothschild family controlling the world came about, but how did they get linked to the Federal Reserve? I did some quick research and found that information on the website of The Anti-Defamation League (ADF).

In 1983, the charge that Rothschild banks and other international banking concerns, mostly with Jewish names, controlled the Federal Reserve was published (probably from earlier sources) in the newsletter of a local Pennsylvania chapter of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) — not an extremist group. The article stated that the Federal Reserve System “is not a Federal entity but a private corporation owned in part by the following: Rothschild banks of London and Berlin, Lazard Brothers bank of Paris, Israel Moses Seif banks of Italy, Warburg bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam, Lehman Bros. bank of New York, Chase Manhattan bank of New York, Kuhn, Loeb bank of New York, Goldman Sachs bank of New York.”

 In fact the Federal Reserve Bank of New York —the largest and most significant of the Fed’s 12 banks —lists the banks in the Second Federal Reserve District that are members and stockholders in the New York Federal Reserve Bank. With the exception of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the institutions cited by the NARFE newsletter as allegedly owning and controlling the Federal Reserve system (“Rothschild …Lazard Brothers …Israel Moses Seif …Warburg …Lehman Brothers …Kuhn, Loeb …Goldman, Sachs”) were not members of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Source: http://archive.adl.org/special_reports/control_of_fed/print.html

In addition this page highlights other earlier examples of anti-Semitic authors who connected the Federal Reserve System with the Jews and praised Hitler as a savior.

For many people I may not have disproved anything and that is fine. However, the spreading of ignorance and believing you are just a cog in an evil wheel helps no one, especially not yourself. Asking the hard questions and seeing through the smoke and mirrors can hopefully help some people to empower themselves and take advantage of the information that is out there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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