The Letter

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Please observe that the above faxed letter is addressed solely to the senate majority leader and speaker of the house. This premier group, the Bretton Woods Committee, doesn't bother with the lesser people, such as individual congressional critters.

Also, please note in the second and third paragraphs how they urge congress to kill the "Buy American" clause in the federal economic stimulus plan.

They were quite successful in effectively killing it, although the media, including the Bretton Woods Committee, reported that it was simply "watered down." (More on that later.)

And who is the Bretton Woods Committee?

Officially, they are an economics group promoting widespread knowledge of the IMF and World Bank.

In actuality, they are the American-based, international lobbyist group for the ultra-rich. (Please note the emphasis on "international.")

And why are they against the "Buy American" provision? Because the majority of goods imported to America from foreign factories and production centers, are multinational products originating from China - and elsewhere - so the members of the Bretton Woods Committee don't wish anything nor anyone to interfere with their colossal profits and profit margins!

Following that faxed letter to the senate majority leader and house speaker, was seventeen pages listing the BWC's membership. These members are international in scope, and those in the USA are spread among the top financial institutions, academia, GSE's, the elite law firms, and a variety of seemingly innocuous foundations and similar organizations.

Their membership includes the likes of David Rockefeller, Peter G. Peterson, James Baker III, Madeleine Albright, Spencer Abraham (a founding member of the neocon Federalist Society and former secretary of the Department of Energy under the Bush administration), C. Fred Bergsten (director of the Peterson Institute), Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros.

The financial institutions their members represent range from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and A.I.G. (remember them?) to Bank De France, Central Bank of Jordan, Deutsche Bank, European Central Bank and Bank for International Settlements (BIS). They include the private equity firms of the Blackstone Group, KKR, Citadel Investment Group as well as Halliburton, McKinsey Global Institute, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, Pfizer and the American Banker Association.

Interestingly, the BWC's letter is dated February 11, 2009, yet in their newsletter they claim the "Buy American" provision has been watered down by February 4, 2009. (Please note the verbiage located in the boxed area below.)

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This is from their quarterly newsletter, dated Winter 2009, Volume 4, Issue 1.

Perhaps they future-dated their fax, or perhaps the "watering down" wasn't sufficient, so a further missive was required?

Admittingly, without President Obama there would be no economic stimulus, and if the republicans were in control, there would be absolutely no stimulus of any kind, and they would have stopped referring to the people as citizens, and probably begun calling them serfs and peasants.

But the Chinese targeted their stimulus program solely to their domestic market, and thusly it was far more successful than the American economic stimulus. True, it helped keep many teachers and municipal workers on the payroll; a number of infrastructure/construction projects were realized -- but still, these were temporary fixes to an ongoing problem.

And had the "Buy American" provision been fully realized, the federal stimulus program should have been at least one thousand times more successful!

The Coincidence

So an international lobbyist group for the ultra-rich is deciding congressional legislation. Now if that isn't curious enough, consider their address below:

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The Bretton Woods Committee All Rights Reserved :: 1726 M Street NW Suite 200 :: Washington, DC 20036 :: (202) 331-1616 :: Fax: (202) 785-9423

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Now there is another international forum of financiers, established by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1978 called the Group of Thirty, or G30.

Please note the G30's address below:

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The Group of Thirty • 1726 M Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036 USA • Phone : 202-331-2472 • Fax: 202-785-9423 • E-mail: info@group30.org

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Curiousier and curiousier; the Bretton Woods Committee and that group of international financiers, the G30, both have the same exact office address and same exact fax numbers!!!!

So the letter which killed the "Buy American" provision originated from the address and fax used by both the Group of Thirty and the Bretton Woods Committee.

It is interesting to also take note that some of the members of the Group of Thirty also belong to either the Bretton Woods Committee or the Peterson Institute.

Also, please take note that a number of the members of the Bretton Woods Committee are either with the Obama Administration, or the previous presidential administrations of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon.

[SIDEBAR ON THE G30: Some historical background is in order regarding the Group of Thirty and structured finance. Back in the early '90s, the G30 communicated at some length with JP Morgan Chase on the subject of credit derivatives. After some discussion, the G30 formed a Global Derivatives Study Group and issued a series of reports. In one of these reports, the G30 both urged the widespread adoption of credit derivatives as well as warned of the necessity of removing "legal risk" -- a most crucial factor.

In the ensuing years, legal risk was indeed removed. And what outcomes derived from this?

In the aftermath of the S&L meltdown back in the '80s, approximately 1,000 bankers ended up going to jail.

In the aftermath of this global economic meltdown, which was at least one thousand-fold worse, nobody has gone to jail!

(The Bernie Madoff situation, while involving some structured finance deals, was primarily a straight forward Ponzi and pyramid scheme which burned anyone and everyone. It is not even a miniscule subset of the present meltdown.)

This removal of "legal risk" coincided with the IMF's and World Bank's urging and promoting a number of countries to adopt laws allowing for public-private partnerships - which have underlying structured financing, i.e., securitizations/credit derivatives - thereby removing legal risk in that arena. Ref: Please see my previous posts on public-private partnerships.]

The Conclusion

It would appear the USA might not be a sovereign nation after all?

Political Reading Recommendation

If you have a brief moment, the post at New Economic Perspectives site is well worth reading and so very analytically intelligent in nature.

Reading Recommendation

For fans of mystery and suspense, Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest is highly recommended.

This is the final book in Stieg's internationally-acclaimed, "Millennium Trilogy" (Millennium being the investigative journalism magazine which serves as the backdrop for his three novels).

The first two suspense novels in this trilogy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and The Girl Who Played With Fire, are also highly recommended, and the suggested process is to begin with these, but the third by itself is still excellent!

Mr. Larsson, who most unfortunately died at the age of 50 shortly after submitting this trilogy for publication, created a fictional heroine, Lisbeth Salander, of a unique personality and super-hacker skills with a Goth Punk aura, who serves as a veritable deus ex machina in this enervating mystery series.

And for those with a social conscience, Stieg Larsson wove an overall architecture of crimes and international crimes against women, aided and abetted by The State, with the third installment serving as the grand finale tying up his fictional version of justice.

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Notes

Bretton Woods Committee letter to congress, last accessed on April or May of 2009 (no longer online for some peculiar reason?):
http://www.brettonwoods.org/uploads/pages/224/Brettonwoods%20et%20al%20-...

BWC Quarterly Newsletter, Winter 2009, Volume 4, Issue 1 (Also difficult to come by, had to find a Russian site to retrieve it?)
http://www.mse-msu.ru/doc/BWC_Winter2009.pdf