A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

by F. William Engdahl

1840’s–the tragic Irish Potato Famine of 1845-6 and its aftermath–was a direct consequence of this “free trade” policy of Britain.

Is this outcome free market policies since 1820 in Britain? If so, why did it take so long for impact to set in? Not clear if the free market laws are a contributing factor or ‘the factor’ for the famine

Now that bread basket itself was destroyed in pursuit of the fictional free trade.

What is wrong with free trade? Communist and protectionist policies don’t lead anywhere. Only to eventual doom. Survival of the fittest, adapt and progress. Why lament when the policies you unleashed come to bite you back. Double standards from a typical Europe snob

Efforts to pass legislation in the Berlin Reichstag in 1912-13 to establish a German state-owned company to develop and run the new found oil resources, independent of the American Rockefeller combine, were stalled and delayed until the outbreak of World War in August 1914 pushed it from the agenda.

Engdahl sounds like another apologist. In this case, it’s easy to blame Standard oil, but government of the time in Germany surely did most of the work to thwart its own supplies of future oil

Grey deliberately did not warn Germany beforehand of its secret alliance policy, whereby England would enter a war which engaged any one of the carefully-constructed web of alliance partners England had built up against Germany.9

What is wrong with this? Aren’t many of the agreements we see today secretive. Some of the military pacts are openly shared with public to act as deterrent to potential bellicose nations, but not necessarily all the time. It’s geostrategy for god’s sake

By 1958, the amount of steel used in a General Motors Chevrolet was cut to half that of the 1956 model. Needless to say, highway death rates soared as one result.

Could be a fallacious argument. How about this logic: because steel was used less and lighter substitutes used, cars could achieve higher speeds, which then contributed to accidents?

And the American worker paid a lot more for that 1958 Chevy. Slick Madison Avenue advertising, ever-larger tail fins, and chrome trim served to hide the reality. U.S. industry had been persuaded to commit systematic suicide, cheating the customer to make up for falling profits. But like the drunk falling from a 20-story window, who imagines at first that he is enjoying the free flight, most would not realize the real implications of this 1960s ‘post-industrial’ drift for another ten or twenty years.

Typical left leaning person’s view. It is exactly this mindset that has destroyed USSR

For their part, Chase Manhattan, Citibank and others took the chance to make windfall profits in Europe, often doubling what their money earned if they were to invest in municipal bonds to rebuild U.S. sewage systems, bridges, or housing stock.

Isn’t it the problem of elected representatives? Why expect private corps to expect to ‘selflessly’ serve without incentive.

The Stockholm 1972 conference created the necessary international organizational and publicity infrastructure such that by the time of the Kissinger oil shock of 1973-4, a massive anti-nuclear propaganda offensive could be launched, with the added assistance of millions of dollars readily available from oil-linked channels of the Atlantic Richfield Company, the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund and other such elite Anglo-American establishment circles. Among the groups which were funded by these people in this time were organizations including the ultra-elitist World Wildlife Fund whose chairman was the Bilderberg’s Prince Bernhard, and later Royal Dutch Shell’s John Loudon.

Load of meaningless drivel. A lot of smoke blowing with no real basis for the accusations being made.

By the middle 1970’s the government of the United States, with this secret policy declaration, had committed itself to an agenda which would contribute to its own economic demise as well as untold famine, misery and unnecessary death throughout the developing sector. The 13 target countries named by Kissinger’s study were Brazil, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia.

This part though, has a ring of truth. In 1976, India did indeed go through a mass sterilisation program. Almost of first of its kind state driven program. About 5-7 million people were sterilised, permanently https://qz.com/india/1414774/the-legacy-of-indias-quest-to-sterilise-millions-of-men/

The essence of the liberal 19th century free trade policies of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, which led to the abolition of the protective Corn Laws in England after 1846, and which opened the flood gates to ruinous cheap grain imports, led as noted earlier, to the predictable impoverishment of the greater majority of British citizens, and to the concentration of the wealth of the society into the hands of a small minority, the so-called “upper classes.”

Engdahl is contradicting himself. On one hand, he supports being protectionist. Other hand he spins conspiracy theories around countries when they’re indeed globalising.

According to the Thatcher Government claim, inflated prices could again be lowered, simply by cutting the supply of money to the economy, and, as the major source of “surplus money” she argued, was from chronic government budget deficits, government expenditure must be savagely cut, in order to reduce “monetary inflation.”

Another instance of a socialist think. Governments of the day have no business in doing business. A rather high percentage of government run institutions have proven over many decades that they lack the animal instinct to survive competition. Look at Indian telecom sector for example.

Businesses went bankrupt, unable to pay borrowing costs; families were unable to buy new homes; longterm investment into power plants, subways, railroads, and other infrastructure, ground to a virtual halt as a consequence of Thatcher’s monetarist revolution.

There’re always 2 or more ways to see same thing. Without knowing the ground reality, here’s my 2 cents worth. Let’s face it, the business that are running on tight margins and dependent on low interest rates must’ve gone. Those families that have not save enough and are pursuing low interest loan couldn’t have been able to buy houses, and therefore prevent a housing bubble. The balance in author’s views are non-existent

This law empowered Volcker’s Federal Reserve to impose reserve requirements on banks, even if not in the Federal reserve system, including Savings & Loan banks, ensuring Volcker’s credit choke succeeded in cutting the flow of credit sufficiently.

That is one way to see things. Doesn’t such requirement safeguard the money of depositors?

In addition, the new law phased out all legal ceilings on interest rates which banks could charge customers under what the Federal Reserve called “Regulation Q,” as well as repealing all state laws which had set interest rate limits, the so-called anti-usury laws.

In a capitalist system, money is the king. If the interest rates are prohibitively high, there won’t be any new businesses, which would in turn turn the money tap off. Surely Mr. Engdahl doesn’t understand this. The history of American entrepreneurship after 1980 is celebrated even today with the likes of IBM, Microsoft, apple, amazon, tesla leading the tech revolution. The author is absolutely mired in his idealistic utopian socialist world which has been demonstrated time and again as an absurd and failed concept.

Deregulation of government control over transportation was a central weapon of the policy. Trucking and airline transportation were “set free.” Non-union “cut-rate” airlines and trucking companies proliferated, often with low or no safety standards. Accident rates climbed, wage levels of union workers plunged. While the Reagan “recovery” was turning young stock traders into multi-millionaires with a seeming push of a computer key, it was reducing the skilled blue-collar workforce of the population into lower standards of living. No one in Washington paid much attention. After all, the conservative Reagan Republicans argued, trade unions were, “almost like communists.” A 19th century British-style “cheap labor” policy dominated official Washington as never before.

A good point is made in this chapter on the mafia like behaviour of powerful influence groups. However, things have changed around 1980s. Technology revolution was starting and there’s no point glorifying ‘blue collar’. Just shows lack of balance in thinking.

Within months, Japanese stocks had lost nearly $5 trillion in paper value. Japan Inc. was badly wounded.

How’s this even possible? The economy of entire Japan is less $5 trillion