A Tycoon Linked to Haitian Gangs Has Died

Tycoon Linked to Haitian Gangs Has Died
Reportedly the wealthiest man in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Gilbert Bigio was sanctioned for ties to criminal gangs. He was 91.

A photo of Gilbert Bigio, holding a Torah scroll.
Gilbert Bigio in 2003 holding a Torah scroll. A scion of immigrant Sephardic Jews from Syria, he was Israel’s honorary consul in Haiti for 25 years.Credit...Larry Luxner

By Adam Nossiter
Oct. 19, 2026

Gilbert Bigio, a Haitian industrialist widely described as the country’s first billionaire, and who was sanctioned by Canada for ties to criminal gangs in his homeland, died on Sept. 29 in Florida. He was 91.

His death was reported in the Haitian press.

With interests in steel, energy, logistics, consumer goods, construction and banking, Mr. Bigio’s holding company, long known as the GB Group and eventually renamed BGO, touched the impoverished island nation’s economy in every corner.

Mr. Bigio’s family remain major players in what the International Monetary Fund and others have described as Haiti’s tiny economic elite. BGO supplies cooking oils and soap to Haitian households, steel from Haiti’s only steel mill to its builders and deepwater port facilities to its shippers. BGO became a regional economic force as well, owning gas stations in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

The elite plays an outsize role in Haiti’s chaotic politics, and Mr. Bigio appears not to have been an exception, though he stayed largely out of public view and rarely granted interviews. In December 2022, Canada sanctioned him, along with two other Haitian businessmen.

“Canada has reason to believe these individuals are using their status as high-profile members of the economic elite in Haiti to protect and enable the illegal activities of armed criminal gangs, including through money laundering and other acts of corruption,” a foreign ministry statement said.

“The sanctions Canada has imposed are intended to put pressure on those responsible for the ongoing violence and instability in Haiti,” the statement continued. “These people must stop providing funds and weapons to criminal gangs in Haiti.”

According to Reuters, the GB Group did not immediately reply to the sanctions; one Haiti expert, Jake Johnston, of the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington, said in an interview that Canada’s decision was a largely “symbolic” move with little practical impact. Members of Mr. Bigio’s family did not respond in recent days to queries for this obituary.

Mr. Johnston said Mr. Bigio’s immense wealth — he bought an ultraluxury $132,000 Mercedes Maybach from the estate of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, The Miami Herald reported — was important to contrast with the brutal poverty of his native land.

A Campaign to Address Global Economic Inequality

This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.

Friday, October 2, 2026 at 4:21 PM EDT

by Lawrence S Wittner
Community

Although the temper tantrums of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu dominated mass media coverage of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, which opened in September 2026, the event also included the announcement of a far more significant matter: a campaign to address the problem of worldwide economic inequality.

On September 24, standing in for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, told General Assembly delegates that “the promise of democracy and international cooperation wanes when we cannot demonstrate that they can address inequality and insecurity.” Thus, “together with Brazil, Norway, and Spain, South Africa calls on this Assembly to throw its weight behind the establishment” of an International Panel on Inequality (IPI). Based on the model of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPI would research inequality within and between countries and develop policies to close the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

That gap is enormous. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and other specialists have recently reported, “the richest 10 percent of adults globally receives more than half (53 percent) of the world’s income, whereas the poorest half receives 8 percent.” When it comes to wealth, that “is even more concentrated, with the richest 10 percent owning around three-quarters of global wealth while the poorest half owns just 2 percent.” And “almost two-thirds of people live in countries where inequality is rising.” In turn, this economic inequality leads to “unequal access to education, health care, housing and finance,” factors shaping “the opportunities that direct people’s lives.”

The speech at the General Assembly, as well as the specialists’ report, originated with developments within the G20, an international forum of nations with advanced and emerging economies seeking to coordinate global economic policy. In 2025, when the South African government held the presidency of the G20, it commissioned a study of global inequality by independent experts and chaired by Stiglitz. Appearing last November, the study maintained that “inequality is one of the most urgent concerns in the world today,” and that “combating it is necessary and possible.” Indeed, according to the study, the inequality emergency was on a par with the climate emergency, and an IPI, once established, would gather information on the problem and propose solutions to it.

Recently, the campaign for a global response to global economic inequality has picked up momentum. By mid-September 2026, when the UN General Assembly session was underway, more than 1,500 economists and academics from more than 100 countries had signed an open letter backing the creation of an International Panel on Inequality. Among the high-profile signatories were former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu, and numerous other prominent economists, including Thomas Piketty, Mariana Mazzucao, and Jayati Ghosh. In the letter, they maintained that “extreme concentrations of income and wealth translate into undemocratic concentrations of power, unravelling trust in our societies and polarizing our politics.”

United in debt: America has become a nation of fake rich people

by John Mac Ghlionn, opinion contributor - 09/26/26 1:00 PM ET

Phoenix-based content creator holds up a house margarita while filming content during the grand opening of Padeland, a venue for the racket sport padel in Chandler, Ariz., Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Noble)


The U.S. now functions as two distinct, fully realized nations occupying the same geographic coordinates. One exists in concrete and brick, where citizens drive 20-year-old sedans and buy generic eggs. The other exists within a six square-inch, forever-vibrating rectangle, where every third twenty-something is a lifestyle curator living a life built on reckless financial decisions.

A recent report by Empower, a major financial services company based in Colorado, found that 24 percent of Gen Zers experience intense pressure to display material wealth on social media, even as 41 percent of all Americans don’t consider themselves financially well-off. The math is simple, brutal and undeniable. Millions of broke people spend borrowed money to convince other broke people they live like oil barons.

Walk into a cafe in any major city on a Tuesday morning. The line stretches out the front door with men and women waiting to pay $7 for an oat milk latte. The transaction takes three seconds via a plastic card. The coffee is gone in ten minutes. The debt remains on the balance sheet for 30 days at a 28 percent annual percentage rate.

The person holding the cup takes four photos of the foam art before taking a single sip, uploading the image to an audience of 700 acquaintances doing the exact same thing three blocks away. It’s entirely absurd and slightly insane, but this is modern-day America, where a sandwich that costs more than most can reasonably afford becomes a status symbol for a sick, performative culture.

The physical economy relies on the illusion of endless prosperity. A $400 T-shirt made of standard cotton moves off the rack because it contains a small but highly visible logo. The owner wears it to a sit-down dinner, paid for with a buy-now-pay-later app that splits a $120 pasta bill into four easy installments due every two weeks.

Mamdani FREAKS OUT After His Family's MANSIONS On Three Continents Get EXPOSED

 

The Peril of Prosperity | Our High Calling - July 2

The Vatican and the Roman Catholic machine, wealth built in the shadows.

The Vatican and the Roman Catholic machine, wealth built in the shadows.

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Love of the World

42. Love of the World 

The temptation that was presented by Satan to our Saviour upon the exceeding high mountain is one of the leading temptations which humanity must meet. The kingdoms of the world in their glory were offered to Christ by Satan as a gift upon condition that Christ would yield to him the honor due to a superior. Our Saviour felt the strength of this temptation, but He met it in our behalf and conquered. He would not have been tested upon this point if man were not to be tried with the same temptation. In His resistance, He gave us an example of the course that we should pursue when Satan should come to us individually to lead us from our integrity.

No man can be a follower of Christ and yet place his affections upon the things of the world. John in his first epistle writes: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Our Redeemer, who met this temptation of Satan in its fullest power, is acquainted with man's danger of yielding to the temptation to love the world.

Christ identified Himself with humanity by bearing the test upon this point and overcoming in man's behalf. He has guarded with warnings those very points where Satan would best succeed in his temptations to man. He knew that Satan would gain the victory over man unless he was especially guarded upon the points of appetite and the love of worldly riches and honor. He says: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

Here Christ has brought before us two masters, God and the world, and has plainly presented the fact that it is simply impossible for us to serve both. If our interest in, and love for, this world predominate, we shall not appreciate the things, which, above all others, are worthy of our attention. The love of the world will exclude the love of God and make our highest interests subordinate to worldly considerations. Thus God will not hold so exalted a place in our affections and devotions as do the things of the world.

Our works will show the exact extent to which earthly treasures have our affections. The greatest care, anxiety, and labor are devoted to worldly interests, while eternal considerations are made secondary. Here Satan receives of man that homage which he claimed of Christ but failed to obtain. It is the selfish love of the world which corrupts the faith of the professed followers of Christ and makes them weak in moral power. The more they love their earthly riches, the further they depart from God, and the less do they partake of His divine nature that would give them a sense of the corrupting influences in the world and the dangers to which they are exposed. 

Columnist: Al Gore got rich by scaring ‘little kids witless’

By World Tribune on July 17, 2017




by WorldTribune Staff, July 17, 2017

None of Al Gore’s many apocalyptic climate scenarios have materialized, yet the former U.S. vice president has become a very rich man via that very scaremongering, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph wrote.

“Any normal person with such a woeful record of accuracy as Gore would be ashamed to show his face,” Miranda Devine wrote for the Telegraph’s July 16 edition.

Former US vice president Al Gore was recently in Sydney to promote his documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. / AAP / Keri Megelus

“Eleven years after his Inconvenient Truth movie scared little kids witless, his warnings of climate armageddon have come to nothing.”

The scaremongering continues in Gore’s new movie – An Inconvenient Sequel.

“I feel so scared” a young Asian man in one scene cries.

In Australia last week, Devine noted that Gore claimed Mother Nature was “screaming” and the world would ­descend into chaos “unless we buy his snake oil.”

“Silly Labor premiers bought that snake oil last week, pledging alongside the grinning Gore that Victoria, Queensland, the ACT and South Australia would embrace renewables to produce zero net emissions by 2050,” Devine wrote.

“They haven’t learned the lesson from SA’s extreme green experiment with renewable energy that has produced nothing but crippling blackouts and the highest electricity prices in the world.”

Gore had told us in his first movie that “unless we take drastic measures the world would reach a point of no return within 10 years.”

“Wrong,” Devine wrote. “In fact the world has just been through almost 20 years in which there has been a hiatus in global warming, even as carbon dioxide has increased: an ‘inconvenient pause’ as some wags put it.”

People around the world “are waking up to the fact that their leaders have been crying wolf, while their electricity bills go through the roof. Australia’s prosperity is built on the reams of cheap, abundant fossil fuel under our feet, and yet green zealots have forced us into an energy crisis.”

Devine continued: “But when Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly last week pointed out the logical fact that Australians will die because of high power bills, he was slammed as a ‘scaremonger’ by the very people who worship at Al Gore’s feet.”

And South Australia “is pretending that the world’s biggest battery built at huge taxpayer expense by another global green huckster, Elon Musk, is going to save the day.”

Coal “is nowhere near obsolete,” Devine wrote, citing the Australian Minerals Council which points out that coal is the world’s leading source of electricity and will be until at least 2040.

“In our region countries are busy building new clean coal plants. In East Asia alone 1,250 new plants are under construction or planned,” Devine wrote.

“Yet in the past eight years in Australia not a single new baseload coal or gas generation unit has been built. That has to change.”

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull “has now come around to that realization,” Devine noted.

Turnbull told the Liberal National Party state convention in Brisbane: “Those people who say coal and other fossil fuels have no future are delusional.”

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The NYC we love is disappearing: It's becoming a hollow city for hollow people

BY JEREMIAH MOSS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 

Monday, March 9, 2015, 2:58 AM

COURTESY OF NYCGO.COM./COURTESY OF NYCGO.COM.

A city or a brand?

Wherever the towers of big development rise, the rents rise with them. And as the rents hit nosebleed heights, New York vanishes. Neighborhood by neighborhood, borough by borough, this is how you kill a city.

From the glitzy corridor of the High Line in Manhattan, to the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood around the Barclays Center to Long Island City in Queens, where Mayor de Blasio’s buddy Rob Speyer is hoisting three extravagant slabs of glass into the sky, our city is dying. It is a victim of its own so-called success.

People want to come to New York. Taylor Swift urges them in, singing, “It’s been waiting for you,” as if the city had nothing better to do but anticipate the arrival of newcomers. Bloomberg filled the whole town with tourists until we were bursting at the seams. Global oligarchs come to stash their dirty money in empty penthouses atop sky-high splinters, giving us nothing in return but long, dark shadows.

JIM MCISAAC/GETTY IMAGES
The Barclays Center


Meanwhile, New Yorkers hurry from job to job, hustling to make enough to cover the rent. Median rent for vacant apartments is nearly 60% of median income, by one measure. If you make $100,000, a solidly middle-class sum in most places, you might qualify for low-income housing, but you’ll have to enter through a metaphorical poor door.

In between all this hustling, God forbid we should need our shoes repaired or shirts cleaned. Small businesses are being decimated. Every month, we lose another thousand mom-and-pops .

They’re not closing because business is bad. They’re closing because the landlords are doubling, tripling, even octupling the rents — or simply denying lease renewals. With no penalties to stop them, landlords leave the spaces vacant for months or years, waiting for a national chain, a bank or a high-end business to pay the asking price of $40,000, $60,000, $80,000 a month.

MARC STAMAS/GETTY IMAGES
Mayor de Blasio's buddy, Rob Speyer (pictured).

BRIAN BUMBY/MOMENT EDITORIAL/GETTY IMAGES
Michael Kors in the Time Warner Center.

Apparently, New York’s been waiting for you Starbucks, Olive Garden and Applebee’s. And for you Ralph Lauren, Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors.

Small businesses in New York City have no rights. You’ve been here 50 years and provide an important service? Tough luck — your space now belongs to Dunkin’ Donuts. You own a beloved, fourth-generation, century-old business? Get out — your landlord’s putting in a combination Chuck E. Cheese and Juicy Couture.

And despite de Blasio’s rhetorical fears about gentrification, his progressive pro-development push may well only hasten the trend.

That’s why I started the #SaveNYC campaign. We’re collecting video testimonials from New Yorkers and out-of-towners, celebrities and small business owners, asking City Hall to preserve the cultural fabric of the greatest city on earth.

First, we must pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act. This bill, languishing for decades and quashed by Christine Quinn when she was City Council speaker, would give small businesses a fair chance to negotiate lease renewals and reasonable rent increases. It would keep our neighborhoods cohesive, helping to slow the tsunami of chain stores and put an end to landlord warehousing of empty, blighted spaces. It is our best hope.

Imagine a city filled with empty super-condos, money vaults in the sky. Our streetscapes will be sleek windows on the dead space of bank branches and real-estate offices.

There will be no more bookstores, no more theaters, no more places for live music. No more places to sit on a stool and drink a beer with regular folks.

When that day comes, and in some ways it is already here, what city will this be? It will be a hollow city for hollow men.

In a poem, John Updike warned: “The essence of superrich is absence. They like to demonstrate they can afford to be elsewhere. Don’t let them in. Their riches form a kind of poverty.” He was right.

It is late, but it’s not too late.

Moss, who writes under a pseudonym, blogs atvanishingnewyork.blogspot.com. He runs savenyc.nyc.

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World's Richest People Meet, Muse On How To Spread The Wealth

by ARI SHAPIRO
May 27, 2014 2:38 PM ET

Prince Charles talks to Lynn Forester de Rothschild (left), organizer of the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism, and Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, before Tuesday's conference. The 250 corporate and financial leaders who attended control some $30 trillion, about a third of the world's investable assets.WPA Pool/Getty Images

Talk of economic mobility and the wealth gap is hardly new. From the Occupy movement to President Obama's re-election campaign, income inequality has been in the spotlight for years.

Even so, the "inclusive capitalism" conference in London on Tuesday broke new ground. Not because of the conversation, but because of the people having it.

The 250 people from around the world invited to attend this one-day conference do not represent "the 99 percent," or even the 1 percent. It's more like a tiny fraction of the 1 percent.

"We have $30 trillion of assets under management in the room," says conference organizer Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who runs E.L. Rothschild, a major investment firm she and her husband, of the storied Rothschild banking family, founded in 2003.

That amount — $30 trillion — is roughly one-third of the total investable wealth in the world. If money is power, then this is the most powerful group of people ever to focus on income inequality.

"If this bulk of capital decides that they are going to invest in companies that aren't only thinking about the short-term profit," says Rothschild, "then we will see corporate behavior change."

The titans of commerce and finance didn't necessarily fly to this meeting in London out of a sense of ethics or moral duty, though that may be a motivation for some. For many, says Rothschild, it's a sense of self-preservation. Capitalism appears to be under siege.

"It's true that the business of business is not to solve society's problems," she says. "But it is really dangerous for business when business is viewed as one of society's problems. And that is where we are today."

Prince Charles kicked off the morning's proceedings.

"What is so impressive about today's gathering is that every one of you, ladies and gentlemen, is so well placed to take the kind of action needed to create a new form of inclusive capitalism," he told the conference.

Defining Inclusive Capitalism

That phrase, "inclusive capitalism," is deliberately broad. People talked about it as valuing long-term investment over short-term profits. Some mentioned environmental stewardship; others focused on treating workers well.

Christine Lagarde, who runs the International Monetary Fund, said it is a way to rebuild trust in the financial system.

"So the big question is how can we restore and sustain trust?" she asked in her keynote speech. "First and foremost, by making sure that growth is more inclusive and that the rules of the road favor the many and not just the few."

She said this will be a hard slog, because there will be winners and losers, "and the likely losers are those who have the biggest voice, because they have the largest means."

Later in the day, the group heard speeches from former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Bank of England chief Mark Carney.

Critics suggest this may all be optics. The conference delegates didn't sign on to a specific action plan, or even publicly endorse a set of values.

"I suspect the return on investment in this conference is astonishingly low," says Scott Winship of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. "It sort of surprises me that you have a bunch of people in the investment community who view this as having a significant return on investment in some way, whether the return is in people patting them on the back and saying 'Thanks for caring about us,' or in actual changes to policies."

Conference organizer Rothschild says there will be follow-up with all of the delegates, but she made a conscious decision not to ask for any commitments up front.

"Even for me," she says laughing, "I thought that would be a little pushy."

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Atlanta archbishop apologizes over $2.2M mansion

By RAY HENRY 13 hours ago

View gallery

ATLANTA (AP) — The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Atlanta apologized Monday for building a $2.2 million mansion for himself, a decision criticized by local Catholics who cited the example of austerity set by the new pope.

Archbishop Wilton Gregory recently moved into a nearly 6,400-square-foot (595-square-meter) residence. Its construction was made possible by a large donation from the estate of Joseph Mitchell, nephew of Margaret Mitchell, author of "Gone With The Wind," the Civil War epic that made his family wealthy. When Mitchell died in 2011, he left an estate worth more than $15 million to the archdiocese on the condition it be used for "general religious and charitable purposes."

Gregory said that he has received criticism over the spending in letters, emails and telephone messages.

"I am disappointed that, while my advisors (sic) and I were able to justify this project fiscally, logistically and practically, I personally failed to project the cost in terms of my own integrity and pastoral credibility with the people of God of north and central Georgia," Gregory said in a column posted on the website of the archdiocesan newspaper, The Georgia Bulletin.

"I failed to consider the impact on the families throughout the Archdiocese who, though struggling to pay their mortgages, utilities, tuition and other bills, faithfully respond year after year to my pleas to assist with funding our ministries and services," he added.

The Catholic leader said he will discuss the situation with several diocesan councils, including a special meeting of its finance council. If church representatives want the bishop to sell the home, Gregory said he will do so and move elsewhere.

The purchase of the sprawling home was part of a real estate deal made possible by money from Joseph Mitchell's estate.

In his will, Mitchell requested that primary consideration be given to the Cathedral of Christ The King, where he worshipped. The cathedral received $7.5 million for its capital fund and spent roughly $1.9 million to buy the archbishop's old home, according to tax records. Cathedral officials are planning to spend an additional $292,000 to expand Gregory's old home so its priests can live there, freeing up space on the cathedral's cramped campus.

After selling his home, Gregory needed a new residence.

The archbishop said that he made a mistake while designing a home with large meeting spaces and rooms for receptions and gatherings.

"What we didn't stop to consider, and that oversight rests with me and me alone, was that the world and the Church have changed," Gregory said.

He demolished the one-story home on Mitchell's property, which was donated to the church, and replaced it with a Tudor-style mansion. In January, a group of local Catholics met with the archbishop and asked that he sell the large home and return to his old residence. They cited the example of Pope Francis, who turned down living quarters in a Vatican palace and drives a simple car.

"The example of the Holy Father, and the way people of every sector of our society have responded to his message of gentle joy and compassion without pretense, has set the bar for every Catholic and even for many who don't share our communion," Gregory said.

___

Gregory's column in The Georgia Bulletin: http://www.georgiabulletin.org/commentary/2014/03/the-archbishop-responds/


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Bill Gates reclaims top of Forbes billionaire list from Slim

By Jonathan Stempel

Mon Mar 3, 2014 4:40pm EST



Microsoft founder Bill Gates attends a session at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in this file photo from January 24, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Denis Balibouse/Files



(Reuters) - Bill Gates has returned to the top of Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's richest people, as rising stock markets swelled the ranks of billionaires, which included a record number of women.

With a net worth of $76 billion, the Microsoft Corp co-founder reclaimed the top spot after a four-year hiatus, toppling Mexico's telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim Helu, who placed second at $72 billion, Forbes said in announcing the list on Monday.

Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of clothing conglomerate Inditex SA, which includes the Zara fashion chain, ranked third at $64 billion.

Investing icon Warren Buffett, who runs Berkshire Hathaway Inc and is a frequent bridge partner for Gates, was fourth at $58.2 billion. Oracle Corp chief Larry Ellison came in fifth at $48 billion.

Gates has topped the list in 15 of the last 20 years.

A record 1,645 billionaires with a total net worth of $6.4 trillion made Forbes' list, up from 1,426 last year.

Just over 10 percent were female, with 172 women compared with 138 a year earlier.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc heiress Christy Walton was the highest-ranking woman, in ninth place, at $36.7 billion. France's Liliane Bettencourt, who got much of her wealth from cosmetics company L'Oreal SA, was next among women at $34.5 billion, and ranked 11th overall.

The Internet was well-represented. Google Inc founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin ranked 17th and 19th, worth a respective $32.3 billion and $31.8 billion, while Amazon.com Inc's Jeff Bezos was between them at $32 billion.

Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg, 29, more than doubled his net worth to $28.5 billion, and ranked 21st.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who left office two months ago, was 16th at $33 billion, built mainly through his eponymous media company.

Forbes said the year's biggest loser was Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista, whose net worth fell below $300 million from $10.6 billion as his oil and natural resources empire collapsed amid too much debt and falling output.

Roughly two-thirds of the world's billionaires, or 1,080, were self-made. The United States had the most billionaires, with 492, followed by China at 152 and Russia at 111. Algeria, Lithuania, Tanzania and Uganda joined the list with one each.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jan Paschal)


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A Locked Door, A Secret Meeting And The Birth Of The Fed

by Robert Smith and Jacob Goldstein
December 23, 2013 3:43 AM


Listen to this Story
Morning Edition

5 min 38 sec





J.P. Morgan: Not a pussycat. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1907, the U.S. economy was in the grip of a financial crisis. Unemployment was up. The stock market was down.

People started panicking. They were lining up overnight to pull their money out of healthy banks This can be deadly for an economy: Healthy banks have to shut down, businesses can't get credit, they lay people off, and the economy gets worse.

At the time, the U.S. government had no way to deal with the panic. There was no institution that could step in to stop the run on healthy banks. So the job of stopping the panic fell to one man: J.P. Morgan (of J.P. Morgan fame).

He summoned dozens of the leading financiers in New York to his private library on Madison Ave, and essentially ordered them to contribute to a $25 million pool that would be used to backstop the system. Then he locked them in and made them stay there through the night, until they all agreed to his plan.

The plan worked — it essentially ended the Panic of 1907.

But some powerful people in Washington wondered: what about the next panic? Do we really want the fate of the U.S. economy to hinge on one rich guy in New York?

One person in particular decided this was a problem: Senator Nelson Aldrich, chairman of the Senate finance committee. Aldrich knew there was something America could do so that it would no longer have to rely on one guy to end panics. The U.S. could create a central bank.

This was not a new invention. Countries in Europe already had central banks. And, during panics, the central banks basically did what J.P. Morgan did in the U.S.: Act as lenders of last resort for healthy banks. When depositors were lined up out the door yelling for their money, banks that were basically sound could borrow from the central bank.

But just consider that name: central bank. Throughout American history, both of those words — "central" and "bank" — had been deeply unpopular. The thought of a bunch of rich bankers in New York controlling a powerful central bank did not inspire confidence.

Still, Aldrich realized he needed bankers' help to draw up a plan for a central bank. So he came up with a plan to gather in secret.

He told a handful of New York bankers to come on a given night, one by one, to a train station in New Jersey. There they would find a private rail car hitched to the back of a southbound train. To conceal their identities, Aldrich told the bankers to come dressed as duck hunters and to address each other only by first name.

The train headed south, and the bankers got off in Georgia. They spent the next week holed up in a private club at a place called Jekyll Island. (Apparently, the name didn't sound as sketchy then as it does today.)

At Jekyll Island, Aldrich and the bankers came up with a plan. They knew many Americans thought a central bank could become too powerful, too influential in the economy. So they came up with a classic, American workaround: The decided the U.S. should create lots of little central banks, scattered all around the country.

The plan they came up with still had a long way to go. It got shot down the first time in Congress. The plan for a central bank was debated, changed significantly, renamed. But the basic idea held up. And on December 23rd, 1913 President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law.

Creating the Fed didn't solve the nation's economic problems. In fact, a few decades after the Fed was created, its policies made the Great Depression worse. And the Fed has changed significantly over the course of a century. But even after all those changes, there are still a dozen Federal Reserve banks scattered around the country in cities like Dallas, Richmond and, of course, New York.


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VATICAN BILLIONS: The Death Decree in the Digital Age

JR Cofer


Published on Nov 26, 2013


Prophecy identifies the ECONOMIC POWER of the MOTHER CHURCH and those enriched by her control of currencies and commodities. In the sermon VATICAN BILLIONS, Pastor JR Cofer walks the congregation down the prophetic view of Papal Economic WARFARE and the players on the geofinancial chess board in preparation for the Death Decree in the Digital Age.
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Jesus on Wealth Redistribution

13 And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.

14 And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?

15 And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Luke 12:13-15
King James Version (KJV) 

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With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible

17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?

18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
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 19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. 

20 And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth.

21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

22 And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.

23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!

24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!

25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

26 And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?

27 And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible. 

28 Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.

29 And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's,

30 But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

31 But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.

Mark 10:17-31

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German Catholic 'luxury bishop' summoned to Rome to explain lavish spending

Euronews

Published on Oct 14, 2013

The Catholic Church and German prosecutors are investigating a bishop over allegations of wildly...

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http://www.euronews.com/2013/10/14/ge...

The Catholic Church and German prosecutors are investigating a bishop over allegations of wildly extravagant spending and lying under oath.

Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is said to have flown first-class to India to visit the poor.

Summoned to Rome where he reportedly flew with Ryanair, he met senior Vatican officials who are set to decide whether he can stay in office.

While the new pope stresses humility and helping the poor, the bishop reportedly spent 31 million euros on a luxury home and office.

The head of the Church in Germany said a commission would investigate starting this week.

"They're experts in canon law, finance and construction. They must find out what the building costs should have been and how decisions were made," Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said.

A church audit revealed the bishop's building project in Limburg near Frankfurt went six times over-budget.


It featured a chapel, a museum, private flats and a 15,000 euro bath.

"It's catastrophic what the bishop has done. He needs to be deposed for wasting our money like that," said one local man.

"What the man has done is not good. He needs to be punished for that. You cannot do that with other people's money, you cannot beg for money all the time and then build a place like that," added another.

The case has thoroughly embarrassed the Catholic Church in Germany, just as Pope Francis had boosted its popularity.

The bishop has apologised for "any carelessness or misjudgement".

The German church's report is due by the end of the year.

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