Central Banks, Financial Markets, Oligarchs and Family Dynasties
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
10 March 2014
As part of The People’s Book Project, I have been heavily researching a number of different and interrelated subjects over long periods of time, collecting and cataloguing information, quotes, citations and analysis from a wide range of sources. My specific focus in the last several months have been on studying financial markets, the central banking-monetary system, and the role of financial and corporate family dynasties as institutional power structures within the wider global political economy. The objective of this research is to gather as much relevant information as possible related to these subjects so that I can begin the process of putting the information together, forming a larger, more expansive view of the global economic order while also bringing to light more of the little details, and roles of specific institutions and individuals. Trying to be both specific and expansive is quite challenge, but I’m up to the task.
This research initiative has led me to go through literally hundreds of speeches by central bankers, dozens upon dozens of academic journal articles, and hundreds of articles from the financial press. Through these efforts I am working to construct a more comprehensive institutional analysis of the global economic order than I have yet to come across.
Most people have little sympathy for banks in the wake of the global financial crisis, knowing that they have played a monumental role in causing the crisis, and then receiving extensive bailouts thereafter. My research aims to not simply explain what their role was in both causing and profiting from the crisis, but to explain what their function is within the wider global political economy. This includes examining the role of bond and equity markets, and thus, the global debt system. How do banks organize their interests institutionally and ideologically? What other institutions are involved? What are the role of hedge funds, private banks, consulting firms, exchange-traded funds and investment firms? Who runs these organizations, and who are they connected to?
My ongoing research and writing for Occupy.com’s Global Power Project has contributed a great deal to these efforts, providing institutional analyses of individual banks as well as highly influential groups such as the Institute of International Finance, the Group of Thirty, the International Monetary Conference, and many others. These groups bring together private bankers with central bankers and finance ministers. This adds further questions, seeking answers: What are the role of central banks in money creation, inflation, deflation, interest rates, and in social engineering? What are the ideologies and individuals that drive these organizations?
Another institution of importance that I have been studying is that of the ‘family dynasty’, namely, the prominent financial and corporate dynasties built up around famous names like Rockefeller, Rothschild, Agnelli, Wallenberg, Desmarais, and many others. How have they evolved as dynasties, how do they function, how do they rise and fall? How do family dynasties influence ideology, institutions, individuals and policy? How do they compete and cooperate with each other?
This is not a ‘conspiratorial’ analysis: I do not believe that one or two families “run the world,” nor that elites hold omnipotent power. Power is, ultimately, illusory: it is there because large groups of people believe it to be there, built around mythology and fantasy, but with real-world consequences. Instead, I want to understand and articulate the complexities of the power structures in our world, and notably, those that make up the global economic and financial order. If cash is King, I want to shine light on the royal court of the House of Hubris so that the mythology and fantasies surrounding our global order are better understood, and thus, better undermined.
To undertake this task, however, I need your support. In the past week, the People’s Book Project has raised $495 – bringing the total to $585 – in an effort to raise $2500 by March 25, so that I am able to continue doing research and to write the first volume of The People’s Book Project, focusing primarily upon this subject matter. Please help spread the word, donate, share through social media, promote and help in whatever ways you can. I cannot do this without you and your support, so please consider donating some time or money to help the People’s Book Project continue.
Thank you,
Andrew Gavin Marshall
