The Spider Web of Wall Street
What could be duller than to write about interlocking directorates? To my mind, not much. However, when you see the pattern that I am about to demonstrate, you’ll understand why, in fact, this is explosive stuff.
While reading an article by Matthew Ehret, I encountered an old Associated Press photo from Feb 22, 1933 of Senator Norris presenting the culmination of what must have been months of work by him and his staff to map out the associations among the top eight banks of New York City at the time; J. P. Morgan & Co.; Guaranty Trust Co.; Bankers' Trust Co.; First National Bank; Central Hanover Bank; Irving Trust Co.; and National City Bank with large corporations on a chart that he named the “Spider Web of Wall Street.”
I knew next to nothing about Senator Norris and I had a difficult time researching the background on this particular image. I had to go to the congressional record from Feb 22, 1933 to extract what Norris himself said about the chart when he presented it. Imagine, it doesn’t even come up in Wikipedia nor did I find any mention of it in the Senator’s own autobiography!
Norris had the banks depicted as the legs of the spider encircled by one hundred and twenty corporations represented by their names on the outer rim. The corporations were an assortment of large companies drawn from among railroads, public utilities, insurance companies, banks, investment corporations, manufacturing enterprises, chain stores, and so forth.
Senator Norris introducing the “Spider Web of Wall Street” mural Feb 22, 1933 on the senate floor.
The lines connecting the legs with various corporations on the outer circle represented an interlocking directorate, which simply means they had a person in common who sat on both the board of the bank in question and the corporation.
So what’s all the fuss?
As you can see from the drawing, even though the print is fuzzy, most companies have multiple lines connecting them with the banking complex. Five hundred were connected to two or more and one hundred and sixty to three or more. Norris explained to his fellow senators, that this chart represented just a small microcosm of the interconnectedness between wall street and the major corporations of the day. [The attempt to picture all the connections and companies would make the chart too large and too complex]
Norris contended in his testimony, that the banks themselves were interconnected and in some cases could be thought of as mere subsidiaries of J.P. Morgan; a private bank, not required to disclose its financials. It is not hard to imagine the implication of significant control and influence within this type of cozy spider-like relationship.
Afterall, multiple “bank” board members on one corporate board holding the purse strings to current debt and/or future loans needed for growth could easily steer the ship of commerce from a smoke-filled room… miles away.
But wait there’s more; it’s a increasing trend. Obviously someone realized that this was a very advantageous arrangement.
In 1899, there were 1,762 directorships in other corporations held by 15 commercial banks of New York City.
In 1913, 14 years later, the same group of banks held directorships in 3,426 other corporations.
In 1931 the same group of banks held directorships in 5,432 other corporations.
Bad Timing on the Presentation?
Senator Norris’ presentation came on the heels of ten days of “explosive” testimony given by Hugh Baker and Harris Law, president and Secretary of the National City Company, before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, detailing abuses in the banking industry that contributed to the crash of 1929, ultimately leading to the passage of the Banking Act of 1933. The front pages were filled with scandalous details of wanton greed, obvious fraud and the devastating impacts on the most vulnerable of the community in draining what for some were their life savings.
Now, here was a rivoting story, a defined enemy and a plot to right the wrongs! The media was in a frenzy and at its finest.
Meanwhile back in the Senate chamber, the media’s response to the Spider Web of Wall Street? Yawn. I could find one lonely New York Times article produced by the Associated Press buried on page 11.
The opening line of the article…
With a long pointer in hand and a huge chart labeled the “Spider Web of Wall Street” as his subject, Senator Norris today lectured his colleagues on interlocking directorates.
Right, like I mentioned in the opening line, interlocking directorates—a real buzz kill.
But, a system of control over thouands of corporations? Monopolies masqarading as choice? The Big Trusts taking over more and more of private industry? An entirely different matter!
Senator Norris saw the long game.
Perhaps in his dreams, Norris was visited by the terrible offspring of these wolves of Wall Street, a “spawn of satan” rising in the future extending its reach over the entire globe.
If you have read One idea to Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda, I hope that bells are going off in your head connecting the “Spider Web of Wall Street,” with it’s grotesque offspring— the “Transnational Capitalist Class.”
At the hub of the spider (TCC), swollen to gigantic proportions, sits the seventeen giant global investment firms, interconnected among themselves as well as with the other near-giant investment firms and everything else global, like the top 1,500 global corporations including silicon valley, the military-industrial corporations, public-relations firms and the media.
It’s not just finance capital that is widely interconnected, but human capital that interconnects boards of all the global corporations, policy and economic councils, public relation firms and media. [See Giants: The global Power Elite by Peter Phillips]
Indeed the spider controls a great deal more than we know.
It has been designed so that we see infinite variety and choices galore, when in reality there are few. As an example, here is a chart showing the ten biggest food and beverage companies and the subsidiaries controlled by them.
from https://www.good.is/Business/food-brands-owners-rp
In 1933, Senator Norris stated what he thought it all meant.
It demonstrates very clearly, in my judgment, that the control of all the business of the United States is drifting rapidly toward corporations… it seems to me, that all of us soon will be hired men, working for some corporation.
Oh, how true his words are today. A true prophet —that man.
In 2022, C. J. Hopkins, the satirist, called this behemoth, Globalcap. He stated,
We no longer live in a world where nation-against-nation conflict is driving the course of political events. We live in a world where global capitalism is driving the course of political events. The economies of virtually every nation on the planet Earth are interdependent. Capitalist ideology pervades all cultures, despite their superficial differences. It is a globally hegemonic system, so it has no external enemies. None.
That’s one big spider!
Idea Syndicate
There is one more piece of the puzzle to add to the “boring” interlocking directorate story; the foundations. Rene Wormser, an attorney and general council for the Reese Committee tasked with the job of investigating the giant charitable foundations in 1954, stated that
An elite has thus emerged, in control of gigantic financial resources operating outside of our democratic process, which is willing and able to shape the future of this nation and of mankind in the image of its own value concepts. An unparalled amount of power is concentrated increasingly in the hands of an interlocking and self-perpetuating group.
The chart below is one I had made up to explain the interlock of the foundations among themselves, with various clearinghouses and even recipient organizations. Ultimately, the flow of money, resulted in the production of a variety of assets for “proving” whatever ideology was needed or desired —a virtual idea syndicate. [See Foundations: Their Power and Influence by Rene Wormser]
This syndicate is the most destructive of them all, for it ravages the free marketplace of ideas, the fountainhead of creativity within a society from which it draws the resources for renewal and regeneration. Instead, we find an orthodoxy of thought that once again consolidates power, resources and wealth in the hands of an elite few rather than actually solving the world’s problems.
Media Accomplices
As if we didn’t have enough of a battle contending with the spider of the TCC and the Idea Syndicate churning out proof for their orthodoxy; we find that the bastard media has joined the enemy camp though they feign allegence to the people.
The REAL job of the media is to hide true and deadly problems while helping to manufacture pseudo-problems that consolidate power for the elite. When I refer to pseudo-problems I don’t mean that are entirely fictitious although they could be, but rather they are always subordinate to the most pressing and urgent problems.
Essentially the media function as treasonous tribal elders cutting the legs out from under society and exposing it to increasing danger and even collapse.
Sure the banking act of 1933 curbed the risk of combining investment banking and commerical banking under the same roof, but as you can clearly see- being under a separate roof hardly ensures a clean or equitable system free of contraints and control by the banking cartel.
The media allowed the Spider to go untouched… and it always will.
Our job, if we are going to help set culture and society back on track, is to recognize the TRUE PROBLEMS and to get them front and center. Recognizing true problems has the additional benefit of making us more realistic on what can and can’t be done in the near future.
Personally, I don’t see any president breaking up the spider cartel on his own…ever.
Do You?
We all know what happened to the last one who tried.