There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those with them. There are different rules for other players. The rich have it good. The system ensures that they stay wealthy. Money begets money. The law provides that the bulk of wealth remains within the confines of those who possess it. The legal system makes justice swifter for all the money that can be bought. The middle class stays put in a self-imposed restrictive loop. The middle class is trapped in a cocoon by concocting rules of morality as well as divine and social justice. Grabbing an obscene wealth escapes them and can only be an unattainable dream.
The middle class is often used as a scapegoat to show society that the system is fair. By periodically using them as sacrificial lambs, society sets an example to others of what can happen if they flaunt the law.
The word scapegoat has an interesting origin. It comes from the Book of Leviticus. In the Jewish ritual of Yom Kippur, a goat is symbolically burdened with the people's sins and released into the wilderness. This was a practice of atonement. In modern life, the poor are left high and dry to sanitise the wrongdoings of the community's upper echelon.
Gone are the days when people are judged by their virtues. Currently, man is assessed by the amount of wealth he amasses. It does not matter the means it was acquired. Once money jiggles in one's pocket, everything and anything can be sanitised. A middle-class person is no longer middle-class. He springboards to a different level and acquires a new set of rules. He is viewed as a success story. Society, hellbent on punishing him earlier, will now bend backwards to protect him. Anything friends in higher places cannot help; money will do that.
Lucky Baskhar is an interesting movie with twists at every corner. It is a make-believe story that shows how one can beat the system once one learns the trade of the game. Baskhar is a low-ranking bank teller who is springboarded to the post of Assistant General Manager after a minor scandal in the bank.
Little does he realise he is a pawn in the big boys' game of interbank loans, middleman brokers, share market rigging, and swindling the Reserve Bank of India. Baskhar cannot be a hero and expose everyone as his good name is also dragged into the muck. Baskhar, too, has his own economic woes and pressures from his family, father, siblings and in-laws. So, how does he kill two birds with one stone? Baskhar devises a complicated web of deceit that beats the big boys at their own game, solves his financial woes and gives everyone a run for their money.
The viewers always like to watch the little men whip up the powerful man at his own trade. This is it. The audience will leave feeling satisfied as if they had watched 'Catch Me If You Can'!
It is ironic the very thing that makes one loses his integrity bears the very same name that gives confidence. In the Tamil language, நாணயம் (Naanayam - the title of the movie), could indicate either integrity or coins as well as currency. The root word tells it all; coin/currency works based on trust. Once someone loses his trust in the economy of a, say banana republic, its whole financial institution collapses.
There is no problem that a little moolah cannot solve, they say. In a Tamil saying, it is mentioned that even a corpse would open its mouth at the mention of money. There is no stronger bond than the love for money. Even motherly love can be bought over. At the same time, money unleashes all the evil feelings that have been suppressed over the million years of our civilisation and the code of conduct that evolved from it. At the sight or suggestion of easy money, all integrity goes out of the window. When wealth is small, Man is its master. Conversely, money becomes the Master to man when it is humungous.
This movie came to the limelight after passing of the legendary SPB. He plays a pivotal character in the film and his son, SPB Cheran is the producer.
The plot of the film is nothing new. We have seen the same theme in umpteen Hollywood offering in various twists and turn. Here, the storyline gets marinated with lots of masala and music to whet the local appetite. It is a forgettable feat but makes one realise that any full proof security system is as good as the last. Sometimes one wonders, like the makers of COVID vaccine who could have conjured up the Wuhan virus in the first place, perhaps the security firm break their own 'unbreakable' system to market their next product.
The desire to usurp wealth is so great that positive human virtues like integrity, honesty, loyalty and such just get thrown off the window. Money buys everything. The similar attraction must apply to hunger, power and erotic ambitions.
Ravi, an ambitious young man, has his future set when he helps a banker in trouble. The banker employs him and plans to use the young man's security proposal for his bank. Ravi thought everything was falling in place when he met a pretty journalist. The next thing he knew was that her ex-husband appears and makes a ruckus. The ex-husband ends up dead, and Ravi is blackmailed and accused of killing the ex-husband. Then starts the cat-and-mouse game for Ravi to find out what was going on and hence prove his innocence.
The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire (Documentary; 2017)
Director, Producer: Michael Oswald
I always wondered how Britain, after 200 years of ruling over almost half of the globe, survived after losing everything after the Second World War. It is a mystery how they continued their role in being one of the economic powerhouses of the world. It is no secret that WW2 marked the beginning of setting of the sun over the British Empire. Slowly, one by one, its colonies demanded to be cut off their attachments to the Crown. The coup de grâce must have come after their disastrous 1956 campaign over the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by President Nasser. The value of the pound-sterling plummeted. Foreign investors withdrew their investments. A special market was created to circumvent the control of the monetary bodies of the UK. Hence was born the London Euro-Dollar market to keep investors' interest in Britain. This was the precursor to the setting up of the spider's web of secrecy jurisdiction in the remote off-shore tax havens. These tax havens were mostly British territories like Cayman Island, Virgin Islands, Bermuda and Jersey in the UK. Soon Americans set up their own concerns in the Caribbean with the same midis operandi - funnelling global funds which were obtained clandestinely and laundered into London and other Western markets. The web attracted bankers, lawyers, accountants and the elite of the society. It formed like a secret society that drew in ill-gotten spoils from drugs and corruption the world over to syphon it to finance more than 90% of international loans. Bankers are a protected species. No law so far has significantly brought down big banks. Bank of England and its affiliates carry out their tasks with impunity. The City of London, it seems, because of 1066 William the Conqueror's failure to capture this town, has its own council and elected its own Lord Mayor. (Cf. Mayor is a political post elected four years once; Lord Mayor of London is an annual apolitical appointment by the Sovereign.) The council is made up of a guild of businessmen, retired high-ranking civil servants and aristocrats who have no qualms using public funds for personal gains. They are also seen making use of public monies for dubious business ventures. They are experts in creating shell companies and concocting creative accounts to cover their trails. Just in case their endeavours go south, the general public can always be used to bail them out. They are, after all, protected by the law. Losers of the deal are also the citizens of Africa and other third world countries who are regularly looted by their elites with the help of these financial wizards. CIA is known to finance covert operations via this channel. One of the purposes of this offering is to make its viewers aware of the dealings of these big conglomerate. The general public, in turn, must demand greater transparency in their leaders' dealings. The national agreements should not be official secrets but must be assessed by concerned citizens.
No, this is not some kind of sci-fiction about a radioactive exposed and mutated creature that lurks in the vicinity of Jekyll Island. This book is, of the non-fiction variety, and it talks about our banking system. In fact, it tells of the devious manner that it operates. It was on this island that the monster called Federal Reserve System was created.
Jekyll Island is a real island off the coast of Georgia. In 1910, a group of seven individuals of politicians and bankers gathered in a holiday resort to discuss the future of banking in America. Together, they possessed a quarter of the world's wealth then. Earlier, at the beginning of the century, Americans had become wary of their banking system and did not trust bankers to handle their money. The purpose of this extremely secret meeting was to create the blueprint of the Federal Reserve System. Note the absence of bank in its name and the authentic sound of its title. At one look the intentions look noble, but when we scrutinise its whole setup, we can smell a rat. The entire operation was shrouded in secrecy as the American public wanted the bankers to be the last person given the responsibility of taking care of their money. In the not-so-distant American past then, many financial institutions had sprung up and followed in the line of customers being fleeced off their hard-earnings.
It was a covert operation for a group of European bankers, who had links with magnates like the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and JP Morgan and had a stronghold in the dealings of the world economy. Despite America's previous bad experiences with unregulated paper money, the USA decided to follow the very same path. That was the beginning of fiat money where wealth is made out of thin paper with no intrinsic value to the currency. It was built on the trust that people would take the money for its face value. It operates under the assumption that the public would not, all at once, demand back their deposits in cash.
The setup is like this. When the Congress needs money, it goes to the Treasury. The Treasury would not have money. Together, we would march to the Federal Reserve System (FRS). The FRS would issue a cheque for a certain sum (of money that it does not have). This paper money makes its way to the banks to be loaned. The banks can loan out up to 90% of the funds it received (which is non-existent) to customers who would repay with interest. In other words, the lay people are taxed to work to pay for the money that was created from nothing to run the whole system. The by-product of this entire exercise to finance the banking system and to fatten bankers.
Every now and then, the whole bubble would go burst when inflation sets in as the value of money dwindle as there is a lot of money circulating. To offset this, the banking system makes the taxpayers pay more taxes or decrease the interest rate for them to borrow more. The whole setup is based on credit.
The author, G. Edward Griffin, is a renowned conspiracy theorist who goes on to link the operation of the FRS to many of mishaps that happen around us. War and political upheavals spur economic activities which are, of course, beneficial to the bankers. Loans need to be taken.
Even as early as the American Civil War, financiers had the bad habit of financing both sides of the warring factions. In their mind, they are not tied down to nations but were citizens of the world. The Russian Revolution did not solely happen because peasants raised their sickles against the Tsar. Their course was partially finally sponsored by German bankers who wanted the Russians to be weak to defeat them. The Americans brought in aid under the guise humanitarian effort through the Red Cross to fund rebels. The financiers sponsored Trotsky, the Menshevik and even the Bolshevik to cripple the Russians. The sinking of Lusitania by the German U-boats marked the entry of the USA into World War 1. It was no mere coincidence that the cruise ship was hit. It entailed an elaborate plan of the bankers' interference in intercepting newspaper advertisement, false declaration of goods and blocking of navy communications.
As known to us, FRS through their lackeys, the World Bank and IMF, are quick to write off loans of despotic third world regimes by giving them more notable credits with a more extended tenure of repayment to make these countries eternally in debt. The biggest losers are the citizens who become debtors for generations altogether.
Loyalty is an alien to the bankers. Money, business, wealth and power is all that matters. The strategy of putting up a two-faced appearance go on all through time. They were around at the time when Germany was gung-ho in arming themselves to the teeth and going gangbuster into industrialisation. At a time midway through World War 2, they syphoned off legally gold to Europe to improve their economy. They support dictators in the modern era.
The Federal Reserve System has grown too large for comfort. The author proposes that it should be abolished as it runs like a cartel working against the public interest, advocating extreme usury, generates unfair tax, destabilises the economy, encourages war and is an instrument of totalitarianism.
The Seven Members of Jekyll Island
A satirical cartoon of 1848 depicts "Rothschild" pondering over which of Europe's rulers to favour with loans, while revolutionaries challenge the ancient order he is supporting.
We were told in our history lessons that the American Civil War stemmed from the noble intentions of the Union States to end slavery in North America whilst the Southern States opposed as they were of an agrarian society of which cotton and sugar plantations were labour intensive. Well, that is just part of the story. As in any back story to an event in history, there is always money involved.
The Southern States traded cotton to Europe and the rest of the world. They got their other supplies from Europe and the Northern States. The South found imports from Europe to be cheaper than from their counterparts in the North. To protect the local industries, the Union, mostly comprising the Northern states, started imposing a levy on the European imports.
This incurred the wrath of Europe who stopped purchasing American cotton. The South felt bullied. Resentment was brewing.
Meanwhile, in the European continent, the French, the British and the Germans were apprehensive of a stable booming economy in the other side of the Atlantic. After defeating the Spanish and sending their armada packing from the Caribbean, the Americans decreed the Monroe doctrine which dictated that any attack on Northern or Southern American continent by a foreign force would be considered as an invasion on American soil and the Americans would retaliate. This kept their enemies at bay. The enemies thought a divided America would make their task easier. Hence, the wounded foreign powers had all the reasons to instigate hatred between brothers.
In fact, during the Civil War, the French conquered Mexico to put up a puppet leader in Maximilian, who had a cordial relationship with the Confederate States. At that time too, the British tried to checkmate the Americans by placing troops in Canada. Russia, who had a bone to pick with the French-German-British alliance for attempting to break some Balkan and Scandinavian states away from the Tsar kingdom, placed their battleships in America to threaten the potential invaders.
Lincoln, who was no sympathiser of the African slaves' course and had superiority feeling of the white race over the coloured, just wanted to stop slavery and send them all back to Africa. The problem is that the Southerners had invested a lot of money into acquiring slaves. Losing them immediately would be disastrous. The slave owners actually planned to make slaves freemen over time. Making them free would mean that they were paid for their work. Slaves were getting lazy already.
Credit: mycivilwar.com
The threat of the Southern states to leave the Union was the reason the Americans went to war.
War was good for business, especially for the bankers. Financiers from the European continent moved in to support both sides of the Marcus-Dixon line. From then, money dictated the progression of the course of the war. Many new monetary policies were devised to finance the war. Fiat money was printed and legitimised by legislation. National banking system and war bonds were sold to fund the war. The losing party is the general public. They lost their life earnings. Northerners who demonstrated and opposed the war were shot and killed by the Union soldiers. Imagine, shooting your own people to save slaves!
Lincoln made enemies on both sides of the divide; the Southerners for losing, the Northerner businessmen who wanted to make a more significant killing from the South. It seems that John Wilkes Booth was a member of an organisation that wanted to take over America to establish a military government!
It is said that memory is a good thing. The memory of having the fingers' burnt, either by fire or the stock market, may act as a deterrent for one to repeatedly parboil his body parts. But then, the body also prunes its memories, to erase off some apparently too painful memories. Nature also becomes selfish by erasing the painful thoughts of childbearing just to continue progeny. If not for lactation and contraceptive measures, the business of baby making will never cease anytime soon.
Are painful thoughts really detrimental to the development of a person? Franz Kafka would certainly say so. Almost throughout his short life, he could not come to terms with his father's abusive alpha male type of behaviour and helpless unhelpful mother. His unfulfilled career and failed marriages were attributed by him to the unresolved issues with his upbringing. Perhaps this chronically depressed state of mind must have made him susceptible to laryngeal tuberculosis.
By then, he tried to ventilate his feelings through his writings, which he requested to be burned after his death but luckily nobody listened. His three Kafkaesque books (Metamorphosis, Trial, Castle) have become the poster children for people living under oppressive regimes. I suppose his clear memories of his bitter past unquestionably became an experience some of the victims could relate to and be a bedrock of hope to sail the choppy seas.
Well, memory is the theme in this 2013 British movie starring James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson. It is a tale of an assistant art auctioneer with an intractable gambling habit, a hypnotherapist whom he seems to treat his addiction and a band of art thieves who plan a heist during an auction.
The auctioneer predictably is drawn as an accomplice but unfortunately forgets where he hid the loot after sustaining an intracranial haemorrhage. The impatient crooks waste no time to try to get our hero to remember, through might, persuasion or even hypnosis!
The plot gets twisted as the hypnotherapist tries to explore the crevices of his brain to give us a dizzying journey between timelines akin to scenes in 'Interception'. It will fall into place with a few coincidences and logic-defying chain of events.
The Big Short (2015)
At the entrance to Aristotle’s Lyceum where intellectual discourses were in progress, a banner apparently read, 'Those who do not know geometry need not apply’! It only goes on to show how much mathematics was needed to grasp the finer aspects of human intellect. Intelligence and ability to articulate is of paramount importance to understand philosophy which in turn is the bedrock to comprehend the meaning of existence and purpose in life. On the whole, philosophers of the yesteryears, in unison agreed that our life on Earth is basically to appease the Agent Intellect. Some look at service to mankind as the way to reach divinity. In short, Mathematics were used to make life comfortable for everyone. And some things are pre-determined while others are malleable with free will.
Fast forward to 1990s. The world has only one master to feed, greed. They use mathematics and the knowledge of chance and probability to hoodwink the general public to fulfil their own bloated agenda of taking the money and running! The people in the system who are trusted to hold the fort to assure fair play is instead in the game and setting their rules as they go along. The invigilators are all sleeping on the job and are playing hokey-pokey with the people they are supposed to be looking over. When the bubble bursts, the affected parties are the general public who are clueless on the operations of monetary system but the only persuasive factor is greed and the desire to save for old age and loved ones. The bankers and the manipulators get away scot free and plot their next new conniving scheme.
This 2015 film tries to explain the events preceding and leading to the 1998 financial crisis. It shows the banking sector which operates rudderless under credit.
The Life of Hussain Najadi (An Autobiography; 2012)
He survived the feared Bahraini intelligence who worked under the hawkish eyes of their British colonial masters as he stirred his leftist ideas after the Algiers uprising through his rebel movement at the age of 16. The Bedouin travellers took a special liking to his as he escaped to Beirut through the mirage inducing hostile environment of the Arabic desert and its scorching heat. Somehow he even escaped the infamous Iranian SAVAK police. The storm aboard the vessel along the Mediterranean Seas did not dampen his spirits. By twist of fate he missed an ill-fated Swiss flight which crashed soon after take-off. And he averted an invitation aboard a Filipino flight which later crashed. He even survived an automobile accident on the notorious Malaysian highways. To cap it all, he even endured 8 years of imprisonment in a Bahraini prison after incurring the wrath of its royalty.
He raised the ladder of success and fell off it as quickly he climb on it again. This man's life story is a classical case of rag to riches - a son to a Persian immigrant fruit seller in the markets of Manama raising to levels where he mingled with world leaders and royalties and decided the destiny of many emerging economies and countries.
Sadly many of near misses, from which he was saved simply by 'kismet' (fate) and his mother's constant prayers, came to a tragic end in 2013, a year after this book, when he was shot in the back under mysterious circumstances in Kuala Lumpur.
Growing up in the British protectorate of Bahrain, it was a time of uprising. The colonial subjects have awoken from their slumber. They demanded self administration. Battle of Algiers set the nidus for the young to rebel. A young Hussein got himself entangled in the leftist activity. Working in a British petrol refinery, he had to abscond from his native country. Just like how his father had left Iran for better life in Bahrain with a young wife, Hussein had to run, but for his life. With plans to start life anew in Germany through a contact at his work place, he had worked out his itinerary.
A young Hussain Najadi meeting Tun Razak
He travelled through the brutal Arabian desert to reach Beirut. All through his travels, we get a feel as if there is guardian angel constantly by his side to pave his future, constantly clearing his path and meeting him with the right people.
His initial plan to travel to Germany was cut short through a chance meeting with a Persian gentleman who just happened to be walking in a park. A cursory conversation and next thing he knew, Hussain was flying to Iran. The gentleman turned out to be the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon! Hussain was referred to the leading bank in Teheran. He started his career in banking, enjoyed the good life and started working with the Canadian embassy a researcher. His stint was cut short by SAVAK, the Iranian secret police for his earlier political work in his homeland. He dashed out before he could be apprehended. Back he came to Lebanon. Broke, he finally made it to Germany by sea.
He blended nicely into the German culture at a time as Germany was making amends and trying to make it for the lost times after the devastations of a world war. Working in Mercedes Benz factory and learning the language and with the cordial relationship with his adopted family, he felt quite at home.
The next step in his life turned to be another turning point in his career/life. He join an international company in Switzerland selling mutual funds. It was something new to the Arab world. At a time when the Middle East was plush with money from the black gold, he travelled to the Bahrain now as an employee of a multinational company. His modus operandi has always the same - when you approach someone, always see someone with a lot of clout; and remember, people always want to hear what they like to hear! He also became an international player when he revitalised an ailing Swiss company making hovercraft (hydrofoil).
With many feathers in his cap, he became a deal maker. Being charismatic and multilingual, he moved with ease in the circles of royalties and dignitaries. He even try to broker the entry of an Italian petrol giant into Middle East to break the hegemony of the Anglo-American oil cartel, The Seven Sisters.
His hydrofoil business spread to Far East and he soon relocated to Singapore. There, after selling his company for a fortune, he set a business deal in Singapore. Slowly, his services were needed in his last home country, Malaysia, where he established Arab Malaysian merchant bank and even try to get International Islamic University off the ground with funds from Middle East investors.
Going through his life story, one cannot help but to think that it is too good to be true. Everything seem to fall nicely the way he wanted to. With so many adventures, suspense, element of surprise, bosomy blondes, marriage, near misses and politics, it has all the ingredients of Hollywood blockbuster. Even after his death, his name seem to herald the death knell of a certain current politician....
I could not help but notice that by omission or commission, there seem to be a discrepancy in events surrounding his near miss mishap in the 1963 Swiss Air tragedy and Enrico Mattei's aeroplane accident. It is said that the Swiss Air incident preceded Mattei's purportedly planned assassination. In actual fact, Mattei's jet plane crashed in October 1962 whilst the Swiss accident was in September 1963!
