Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits: Part I
Inside the Financial World, Government Agencies and their Private Contractors Lies a Hidden System of Money Laundering, Drug Trafficking and Rigged Stock Market Riches
Inside the Financial World, Government Agencies and their Private Contractors Lies a Hidden System of Money Laundering, Drug Trafficking and Rigged Stock Market Riches
By Catherine Austin Fitts
Catherine Austin Fitts, a former board member of Dillon, Read & Co. investment firm and Assistant Secretary of Housing under President George H.W. Bush, has a unique perspective on both the financial world and the workings U.S. government agencies.
A Six-Part Series for The Narco News Bulletin
February 27, 2006
"Make a Law, Make a Business"
- Old New Jersey street saying
There is a strongly held myth in America. The myth says that large corporations are efficient. They have big profits. They have lots of capital to hire the best people, the best accountants and the best law firms. Everyone looks so spiffy. Their technology is the latest. The best thing for the economy, sings the siren song, is for inefficient government to defer to corporate leaders and corporate "survival of the fittest." Powerful corporations, the myth goes, earned their power through performance in the marketplace by providing the best services and products.
The real truth on the corporate model is far darker, however, and can be found by understanding our current central banking-warfare economic model and the resulting total economic return of activities. That means not just looking at the corporate profits and growth in stock price, but the true cost to people, the environment and government of a particular corporate activity. This necessitates understanding the economy as an ecosystem that is a dynamic living system in places. If corporate profits come from laundering narcotics trafficking used to destroy communities, and from government contracts used to build expensive prisons crammed full of small time non-violent drug distributors and customers, then they are part of a "negative return on investment" economy. This is an economy where the real cost of things is hidden behind secret black budgets, complex government finances, under-the-table deals, market manipulations and economic and military warfare, until they finally show up in the most irrefutable ways: environmental destruction and the exhaustion and death of communities. I refer to this destructive economic force as "the tapeworm" — a financial parasite that weakens and even kills its host.
"Dillon Read & Co. Inc. & the Aristocracy of Prison Profits" is a case study in "tapeworm economics" and how the tapeworm game is played, written by a former partner and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read whose life and business were intimately affected by the events described. Through this one case study we see the patterns of the dominant business model operating in our politically managed economy today. We see how private investors arrange for new laws which are contrary to societies’ best interests. With the help of revolving doors between board rooms, law firms and high level government positions, large government contracts and purchases are engineered which increase the value of private stock investments. Those who enjoy rich stock market profits then funnel large political contributions to the political parties and politicians who engineer the laws and contracts.
And so a cycle of public-private profiteering grows that drains real productivity, and increasingly threatens life itself. As we see the Wall Street/Washington merry-go-round unfold, we realize that what we’re watching is a deeply bipartisan system that reflects a golden triangle of high finance full of corporate leaders, central bankers, politicians, investors, economic hit men and kingpins of organized crime. Ultimately, through our retirement savings, our personal investments, our bank deposits, our donations and our purchases, most of us are complicit in helping to finance and promote the system. This is a system that cannot be changed through traditional electoral politics but by a fundamental reordering and "coming clean" of who and what we are. This includes where we bank, who we invest in, the charities and universities that we support, the media we give our attention to, how we bring transparency and accountability to the government resources in our community and for whom and what we "vote" for with our time, attention and money.
This series is both an exposé and an invitation to shift the power of wealth creation from those things that diminish and destroy to those which support freedom and productivity in transformative ways.
