The Rothschild Conspiracy
Some believe that world governments and economies are secretly controlled by the Rothschild banking family.
Filed under Conspiracies
| Skeptoid #311 May 22, 2012 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode 311, May 22, 2012
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4311
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| Mayer Amschel Rothschild (Public domain image) |
Today we're going to point our skeptical eye at the famous Rothschild banking family, and the multitudinous conspiracy theories surrounding them. Just about every conspiracy theory website that presumes the world's governments act in willing concert under the guidance of some secret council points the finger at the Rothschilds. We're going to take a modern-day look at this mysterious family, see who they really are and what they really do, and see exactly what evidence there is that shows that they are actually directing world affairs. Why would superpowers such as the United States, Russia, and China willing give up their sovereignty, conducting wars and exerting control over markets according to instructions from above? The answer, according to the believers, is money.
Driven by their quest for money, the Rothschilds have been said to assassinate US Presidents, and to create virtually every war since the 1800s in order to finance both sides. Some say the Rothschilds (who are Jewish) caused the Holocaust, while others say they were the true power behind the creation of Israel. They would, and continue, to do anything for money. In fact one of the earliest and most influential Rothschilds, Nathan, is claimed to have said:
I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.
The Rothschilds' whole story is one of money, and it began in the 18th century. Their history is perhaps largely responsible for the modern belief that Jews control the world's money supply, which is not entirely unrooted in fact. Throughout Christian Europe, it was common for institutionalized anti-Semitism to prohibit Jews from owning property; so Jewish businesspeople had no choice but to work in the fields of commerce and finance, where money could be kept liquid and easily transferred or hidden. By denying Jews the stability of property ownership, Christians unwittingly forced Jews of the day into great financial expertise.
The greatest of these financial adepts was Mayer Amschel Rothschild, born in 1744 in a Jewish slum of Frankfurt. Not much is known about his early life, as his was one of tens of thousands of marginalized, outcast families. But once he came of age he became an apprentice at a small bank in Hamburg, where he learned the trade. Returning to Frankfurt at the age of 19, he offered his own banking services in a modest way, beginning with trading of rare coins and related investments. He was energetic, clever, and most of all he was charismatic. And he was smart, seeking out wealthy clientele, and associating with nobility whenever he could. By the age of 40, he had consolidated his most important business contact: the Landgrave William, the Elector of Hesse, one of only a tiny number of nobles empowered to elect the Holy Roman Emperor. When William was younger, he had engaged in the trading of rare coins with Mayer's father, and so the two had always known one another. When William inherited his own father's massive fortune, his friendship with Mayer Rothschild gave Mayer the ability to begin conducting larger international transactions.
This was the point at which the Rothschild name became first involved with the manipulation of money behind the scenes of wars. Mayer was a firm believer in family business, and insisted on using his own sons — by then he had five — as his business partners. What he did next became the model for many powerful Jewish financiers who followed: He installed each of his five sons as his agents in the five major financial centers of Europe: the eldest Amschel Mayer Rothschild in Frankfurt, Salomon Mayer Rothschild in Vienna, Nathan Mayer Rothschild in London, Calmann Mayer Rothschild in Naples, and the youngest Jakob Mayer Rothschild in Paris.
One of Mayer's earliest transactions was the start of the pseudohistory and hyperbole surrounding everything Rothschild. Napoleon was on the march through Europe, and the popular version of the story claims that William gave the entirety of his fortune to Mayer to protect it from being seized by Napoleon. Mayer was able to hide the money by sending it to his son Nathan in London. The London Rothschild office had to spend it somewhere, and loaned it to the British crown, in order to finance the British armies fighting Napoleon in Spain and Portugal in the Peninsular War. In fact, all William gave to Mayer were some important papers. Nathan had already long managed the bulk of William's money, and much of it was already invested with the British Crown. William was no stranger to such transactions; his father had gained much of that wealth in the first place through the financing of Britain's war on the American colonies, a few decades earlier.
Nevertheless, the Rothschilds' savvy investments of William's money paid off handsomely, netting sufficient interest that their own wealth eventually exceeded that of their original nest-egg client. This marked the birth of the Rothschild banking dynasty.
Four of Mayer's five sons had sons of their own, most of whom were sent to other financial centers to head new offices. By Mayer's edict, family members intermarried with first and second cousins, keeping the company sealed tight against outsiders. At their height, the Rothschilds' wealth, if it had been pooled, would have been the largest single fortune in world history. Europe was littered with dozens of staggering mansions owned by family members. Throughout the 19th century, N M Rothschild and Sons in London filled the role now held by the International Monetary Fund, stabilizing the currencies of major world governments. They profited heavily, but they also provided a crucial international service.
World Wars I and II, the costs of which exceeded the abilities of either the Rothschilds or any other banks to finance, and resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund, marked the end of this part of the Rothschilds' business. In addition, Nazi Germany devastated the Austrian Rothschilds and seized all of their assets. The family members escaped to the United States, but lost their entire fortunes to the Nazis, including a number of palaces and a huge amount of artwork. The banks' sizable assets became the property of Nazi Germany, and this is the only seed of truth to the claim that the Rothschilds "funded the Holocaust".
By the time of the state of Israel's creation in the late 1940s, there were hundreds of Rothschild descendants, many still in banking or asset management, many in philanthropy, and many in unrelated businesses. Some Rothschilds supported Israel; some were passionately opposed. The idea of a single unified Rothschild establishment was long gone. No doubt many financial institutions were involved in Israel's early days, some were Rothschild banks, many more were not. It is this twisting and spinning of ordinary events into dark powerful deeds that characterizes much of the Rothschild conspiracy claims.
Case in point: At the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, Rothschild couriers were able to deliver news of the British victory to Nathan a full day ahead of government messengers. Nathan bought bonds at a low price that was fluctuating with uncertainty, and did very well the next day when official news came and prices rose. The conspiracy theory version states that Nathan first dumped bonds on the market to fool other investors into thinking he had news that the battle was lost, and through this ruse, multiplied the family fortune. In fact there is no historical record of this prior to a 1940 German movie called Die Rothschilds Aktien auf Waterloo, described as "the Third Reich's first anti-Semitic manifesto on film." The truth is that the Rothschild bank was already heavily invested betting on a protracted war, and this short-term gain on bonds merely offset a long-term loss.
One of their most famous transactions came in 1825, when England's unregulated banks all went into crisis due to poor management of interest rates. Nathan Rothschild had earlier bought huge amounts of gold from the struggling Bank of England at a fire sale price and sold it to the French national bank. When the Bank of England suffered a liquidity crisis as depositors clamored for their funds, the bank was able to borrow that same money back from Nathan, and thus averted disaster. Virtually every conspiracy website claims that this is how the Rothschilds "took over the Bank of England". No. They gave them a loan, which was paid back. In later years one Rothschild descendant sat on the Bank of England's board for a time, but by no logic can it be defended that their 1825 transaction constituted "taking them over".
In fact, that famous quote from Nathan Rothschild about "controlling the British money supply" turns out to be a fabrication. I found no original source for the quote at all, though it's repeated in dozens of conspiracy books and on tens of thousands of conspiracy websites. I did a thorough search of all available newspaper archives from Nathan's lifetime, and had some friends check various university library systems. No such quote appears in the academic literature. After such a thorough search, I feel confident stating that he never made such a statement.
But the quote doesn't appear to be completely made up by the conspiracy theorists. It's most likely a revised and restyled version of this quote attributed to Nathan's father, the original Mayer Rothschild:
Give me control of a Nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.
But like the longer, more specific quote from Nathan, even this one turns out to be apocryphal. Author G. Edward Griffin did manage to track it down, though. He found that this saying was:
Quoted by Senator Robert L. Owen, former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency and one of the sponsors of the Federal Reserve Act, National Economy and the Banking System, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939), p. 99. This quotation could not be verified in a primary reference work. However, when one considers the life and accomplishments of the elder Rothschild, there can be little doubt that this sentiment was, in fact, his outlook and guiding principle.
And this is certainly true. In Rothschild's day, before banking regulation and antitrust laws existed, it was indeed possible for small groups to gain controlling interests in enough financial institutions that it could be argued that they "controlled" a nation's money supply. Evidently the Senator made up the quote to support whatever speech he was making, and attributed it to a famous name to give it some clout.
Some claim the Rothschilds own half the world's wealth. If they do, it's only in the same way that you do. Anyone with an interest-bearing bank account owns shares in whatever funds their bank invests in. Those funds own shares in other funds and public companies, and so on. At some level, virtually every financial entity owns, and is owned by, any other entity, in every country. It's exactly like the degrees of Kevin Bacon. The notion that anyone could "control the world's finances" is ludicrous.
There is no longer any such thing as a monolithic House of Rothschild with connections to any significant number of all the scores of today's independent Rothschild business ventures. The closest thing is Rothschilds Continuation Holdings AG, a Swiss company that manages interests in many Rothschild-founded institutions. There are no longer any Rothschild family members on its board (the last having retired in 2011), though about eight Rothschilds are believed to own stakes in it (like many holding companies, it's privately held, so its records are not public). Its other owners include Rabobank and Hong Kong based Jardine Matheson Holdings. The Rothschild funds it manages now focus on mergers and acquisitions. Make no mistake, it's a large and successful company; but with billions in assets, it's a relatively small fish in the sea of world financial institutions with trillions in assets, including Deutsche Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, HSBC Holdings, BNP Paribas, Japan Post Bank, Crédit Agricole Group, Barclays PLC, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and many others. Anyone trying to point the finger at the scattered Rothschilds as "controlling" world banks has an awfully tall order. That little factoid is about 100 years out of date.
By my analysis, the Rothschilds are best thought of not as an evil shadow conspiracy, but as a great success story of rags to riches, Jewish slum to financing the defeat of Napoleon. The price of gold is fixed twice a day by five members of the London Bullion Association: Barclays Capital, Deutsche Bank, Scotiabank, HSBC, and Societe Generale, and they conduct their twice-daily meeting over the telephone. Today this is mere financial necessity, but until 2004, it was also a century-old tradition as great as the ringing of the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. The five distinguished representatives included a Rothschild, and they met in person in a paneled room at the London office of N M Rothschild & Sons. That ritual is now a thing of the past, as is the power of the world's greatest financial dynasty.
© 2012 Skeptoid Media, Inc.
References & Further Reading
Anonymous. "Alleged Federal Reserve Ownership." Web Skeptic: Researching outrageous claims on the internet. Anonymous, 10 Oct. 2008. Web. 18 May. 2012. <http://webskeptic.wikidot.com/federal-reserve-ownership>
Editors. "Rothschild Family." RationalWiki. RationalWiki, 13 Apr. 2012. Web. 20 May. 2012. <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rothschild_family>
Ferguson, N. The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
Griffin, G. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. Westlake Village: American Media, 1994.
Kaplan, H. Nathan Mayer Rothschild and the Creation of a Dynasty: The Critical Years 1806-1816. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Neal, L. "The Financial Crisis of 1825 and the Restructuring of the British Financial System." Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Review. 1 May 1998, Volume 1998: 53-76.
Reeves, J. The Rothschilds: The Financial Rulers of Nations. London: Sampson Low Marston Searle and Rivington, 1887.
Thomas, L. "The Man Who May Become the Richest Rothschild." The New York Times. 9 Mar. 2007, Newspaper.
Reference this article:
Dunning, B.
"The Rothschild Conspiracy." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
22 May 2012. Web.
23 May 2013. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4311>
Discuss!
10 most recent comments | Show all 146 comments
The Luddites made the same arguments, Macky, yet the population continues to rise and people continue to get wealthier, healthier and live longer. The phenomenon you're talking about is mainly prevalent in Western societies (you'll forgive me if I include NZ in that). I don't see much automation and mechanization in the countries where multinationals have outsourced the work. And unemployed people still buy stuff.
I'm not saying that the Earth can support an infinite population - it clearly can't and that should definitely be addressed - or that the ultra-rich have only the best intentions but this idea that they are conspiring to kill the majority of us off is some kind of James Bond fantasy.
Darren, Liverpool, UK
May 01, 2013 11:31am
Well I don't support an agenda of the ultra-rich conspiring to kill us all off, as a blanket plot.
I will however assert that sections and even random numbers of the civilian population have been selected for unlawful and uninformed experimentation (sometimes fatal) from time to time, and there has been plenty of evidence of that.
That is outside the scope of a plan of wholesale culling, of course.
At least I hope so.
I merely presented a snapshot of the progress of machines and technology during my life, as I saw it. And it's true about even unemployed people still buying a great range of cheap electronic goods and plastic flowers from China etc.
However, the two most important material needs have been placed in a unsecure position by the employers (who ultimately are guided by the top members of govt and their ultra-rich influences), food and shelter.
Many people here in NZ have simply given up the idea of ever owning their own home, because while said electronic goods and plastic flowers from China are usually well within an unemployed person's budget, houses are not.
In fact houses are not even within many families' budget who have both parents working.
And food, along with water and electricity is steadily rising in price while wages continue to be driven down by short-sighted govt/business combined policies.
I guess it's not so obvious where you live, Darren, but even small businesses are suffering here because people just haven't got the cash any more.
Macky, Auckland
May 01, 2013 1:00pm
Oh, it's very obvious where I live, Macky, believe me!
I don't have a problem believing governments are incompetent and short-sighted and pander to the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of us.
What I have a hard time accepting is that there is a huge, decades-long conspiracy by a sinister cabal whose objective is either to stage 'false flag' terrorist attacks, impose martial law and herd the majority of us into camps or to kill us more subtly with GM crops, chemtrails or genetically engineered diseases. If that was what they wanted to do, they could have done it 50 years ago.
However, I am irritated by people who invest so much time and energy in weaving these 'X-Files' fantasies and who see every event through a weird prism, that they fail to see what's actually happening right in front of them. They're tilting at windmills when they should be getting angry about their governments lying to their faces, blaming victims, dismantling the parts of the state that are worth preserving and introducing legislation designed to make the lives of the powerless even worse. And they're not doing any of this in secret.
Darren, Liverpool, UK
May 01, 2013 4:55pm
You've got a lot of good things to say Darren.
I think it's safe to say in answer, and partly in agreement of your last paragraph, that most people have been reduced to focusing on next week payments to ensure their families' continued existence for another seven days.
Those few that have most of the nation's wealth, and those that are not far beneath them have no desire to change anything that is happening anyway.
I think it's a given that the general population will hold on to their hopes and dreams for as long as they can, until a critical event (fabricated or not) occurs, or a red line is descended to for enough people to finally go out and do something about it.
Poor people have only one option left when they see their govts lying to them and ignoring their pleas. They go out and riot.
The system I believe has been carefully engineered in our western countries so that most of the population still has something to lose, something to hope for.
The day that red line is breached, however, people will riot, as they do when their hope is all gone, and whatever you feel about 9-11, it was certainly a great excuse to bring down ever more repressive laws upon the population, with the rapid diminishing of individual citizens rights,or even their abolishment,in our countries.
And at least in the US,a large build-up of "home security" forces, paramilitary police, and surveillance equipment such as drones.
While not raving, I think it's a mistake to ignore all that.
Macky, Auckland
May 01, 2013 7:10pm
I agree with you that 9/11 and the specious 'War on Terror' was used as an excuse to implement policies and legislation that was both idiotic and detrimental to democracy. Sometimes with good intentions, it has to be said. Our leaders thought they were protecting us. From ourselves, if nobody else.
Where I think we disagree is that I don't believe it was staged. or deliberately allowed to happen, for that purpose, or any other.
Just because you exploit an opportunity, doesn't mean you created it.
Darren, Liverpool, UK
May 02, 2013 5:40am
One should note Darren's point over all conspiracism.
Yep. I knew from debriefing 6 years earlier and our management not supporting any voluntary redeployment under the UN that the weapons of mass destruction was not an issue.
But, 9/11 being used as an excuse for Iraq would have been a political (and hardly advised) position when there are probably three more mandates under the UN that were essentially ignored frustrating the US led ambition to stop the war on Iraqi citizens.
Sure the war was prosecuted poorly in hind sight. Wars tend to be like that.
had Desert Storm been prosecuted correctly the second Iraq war would have been a different affair, if at all necessary.
So all conspiracism aside... how does the Iraq war relate to a small number of terrorists committing a heinous crime on citizens involve any conspiracy?
In hind sight, it was a political and poor decision if you think wasting the lives of young people.
It was a political and poor decision not to pursue.
yet is was pursued on the one wrong reason when many real reasons were available to the UN.
Arm chair warriors such as I have no place commenting on the decisions of the UN nor the US and allies.
Mud, Sin City
May 02, 2013 8:09am
Darren
"Where I think we disagree is that I don't believe it was staged. or deliberately allowed to happen, for that purpose, or any other.
Just because you exploit an opportunity, doesn't mean you created it."
Yes I agree with your last sentence here. And let it be plainly understood that I do not assert that the US govt engineered or supported 9-11, mainly because I have no proof whatsoever.
What I have proven is that the US govt has been well capable and willing to covertly prey on its own citizens and indulge routinely in criminal and unethical actions inside its own borders, on an ongoing basis sometimes lasting for over a decade.
9-11 was a "one-dayer" and yet the official corruption and obstruction encountered by those who were tasked to investigate the 9-11 outrage, plus the storyline having no substance of factual evidence (at least in Flight 77) can't help but leave me a member of those, while not in the group of outright conspiracy theorists, are justly skeptical of the official version of 9-11.
Mud
"Arm chair warriors such as I have no place commenting on the decisions of the UN nor the US and allies."
Well I think you do have a place.
You certainly do if you have been adversely affected by UN and/or US decisions, and as a citizen of the western world, I see no reason why you should trust whatever the UN or US authorities decide, without scrutiny or question.
That is what is supposed to be living in a country of "freedom and democracy."
Macky, Auckland
May 02, 2013 6:56pm
America didn't have anything to do with 9/11, get your heads out of the sand guys.
Brad, Melbourne
May 15, 2013 11:46pm
Where did you get that from Brad ?
The 9-11 Commission Report ?
Macky, Auckland
May 18, 2013 10:35pm
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Great article. And instead of attacking the messenger here, because it does not fit in with your dogmas, belief-system or reality-tunnel, does not mean that this article is wrong. Read the books/sources, even Anonymous blew this back in 2008. Check the sources. Also check Forbes.com. Read books, let Internet entertain. Also, this family contribute with several millions every year to charity and education. I don't know this family, only the fact that some blind hen, sometimes, also might find a grain of gold..truths are not voted upon. Last time truth was voted upon, was in The Weimar Republic. You might say "screw the rich", and so do I, but this is a blind lead in this case. So read, don't believe anything you read on Internet. Truths costs, and when lies are for sale, don't buy in on it. Japanese Zen proverb.
Anon, Norway
May 01, 2013 9:05am