145 lines
7.2 KiB
Plaintext
145 lines
7.2 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 11 Num. 13
|
|
=======================================
|
|
("Quid coniuratio est?")
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
FRENZIED FINANCE -- V
|
|
=====================
|
|
[Synopsis of *Frenzied Finance* by Thomas
|
|
W. Lawson. New York: Ridgway-Thayer, 1905]
|
|
|
|
-+- How The "System" Does Business -+-
|
|
|
|
Readers should know how the securities of a corporation are
|
|
manufactured, how "put upon the market," how admitted to the
|
|
Stock Exchange, how prices are made in the Stock Exchange, how
|
|
fictitious and fraudulent quotations are created and
|
|
disseminated, until the very shrewdest members of the Stock
|
|
Exchange cannot distinguish those which are real from the
|
|
fictitious in cases outside their own manufacturing. Then there
|
|
is an elaborate and ingenious procedure by which public opinion
|
|
is moulded, that is, by which people are made to believe that the
|
|
prices at which they buy and sell the stocks and securities are
|
|
bona fide; and this is a procedure as compact and as well
|
|
understood by the "System's" votaries as are the methods of the
|
|
bank-breaker or burglar -- who sends his "pals" ahead to "pipe"
|
|
the lay of the land -- by felony's votaries.
|
|
|
|
The underlying principle of the several organisms through which
|
|
the commerce of the country is conducted is the protection at
|
|
once of the interests of the individuals composing them and of
|
|
the public with which they do business. Provided this principle
|
|
is adhered to, no harm can be wrought to either. Most of the
|
|
contemporaneous swindles through which the people have been
|
|
plundered were perpetrated through the agency of corporations,
|
|
and this organism has become a sort of synonym for corrupt
|
|
practice. Yet the original corporation invention as I have
|
|
described it was devised to meet a real want of the people, and
|
|
it has merely been diverted from its proper use by the lawless
|
|
votaries of the "System."
|
|
|
|
Honest men in forming a corporation make publicly known the
|
|
character and worth of the properties or enterprises they are
|
|
organizing, what they have cost, what their profits are, and what
|
|
may reasonably be expected by investors. The tricksters and the
|
|
"System," with whom incorporation is generally but the first step
|
|
in a conspiracy for plunder, surround the proceeding with an air
|
|
of mystery and refuse information usually with: "We do our
|
|
business quietly and in silence, and those who do not like our
|
|
ways may keep out of this scheme." Their whole procedure is of
|
|
that high and mighty order which impresses the ordinary mortal
|
|
with a sense of confidence in the independence of its users and a
|
|
conviction that their scheme must be so good that they do not
|
|
care whether they sell or not. This is just the effect it is
|
|
intended to produce.
|
|
|
|
The next step is to lead the people toward the shambles. This is
|
|
done by "moulding public opinion," and for this interesting
|
|
function the "System" and Wall Street have an equipment of
|
|
magical potency. Public opinion is made through the daily press,
|
|
through financial publications of various kinds, and through
|
|
"news bureaus."
|
|
|
|
The first step toward "moulding public opinion" is taken when the
|
|
"System's" votaries send for the dishonest chief of a news
|
|
bureau, a man usually up in every trick of the trade. To this
|
|
man the "System's" votary will say something like this: "We are
|
|
going to work off blank millions of blank stock; it costs us thus
|
|
and so, and we want to sell for so and so many millions."
|
|
Nothing is kept back from this head panderer and procurer, for it
|
|
would be useless to attempt to deceive him. After the quality
|
|
and amount the "System" intends to work off in exchange for the
|
|
people's savings are explained, that part of the plunder which is
|
|
to come to the head news-bureau man is settled upon. The amount
|
|
varies with the size and quality of the robbery to be
|
|
perpetrated. In some cases as high as a million dollars in cash
|
|
or stock or their equivalent has been paid to a "moulder of
|
|
opinion" for simply so shaping up a game that the people might be
|
|
deceived into thinking one dollar of actual worth was four, six,
|
|
or eight dollars.
|
|
|
|
The head of the news bureau, having taken the contract to lay out
|
|
and carry through the deceptive part of the scheme by which the
|
|
people are to be buncoed, now begins operations. First, bargains
|
|
are made with conscience-less financial editors of the daily and
|
|
weekly newspapers, whereby for so much stock or for "puts" [1] or
|
|
"calls" [2] or both, they agree to insert in their paper's
|
|
financial column whatever yarns are fed them by the bureau man,
|
|
regardless of their truth or falsehood. To justify the attention
|
|
paid the subject by each editor, a certain amount of money is
|
|
spent in advertising, in the newspaper that employs him, the
|
|
merits of the enterprise. The financial journals are dealt with
|
|
on the same basis. The news-bureau man then puts his entire
|
|
staff to work inventing fairy tales of one kind or another to
|
|
excite the interest and attention of the people.
|
|
|
|
(To show the extent to which this "moulding of public opinion" is
|
|
carried, I know in one instance of a high-priced financial scribe
|
|
being sent to live in St. Petersburg [Russia] for no other
|
|
purpose than to send certain "news items" to a confederate
|
|
located in Germany, who would get these items to a reputable
|
|
English banking-house through whom they were given out in London
|
|
as news: the whole object of this complicated system being that
|
|
the news items might be sent back to New York without Wall Street
|
|
suspecting they were bogus.)
|
|
|
|
I must not be understood as meaning to say that all financial
|
|
editors, news gatherers, or news bureaus are (1905) engaged in
|
|
this, one of the lowest forms of swindling, for such is not the
|
|
case.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------<< Notes >>---------------------------
|
|
[1] A "put" is the right to sell to a certain firm or individual
|
|
shares of stock at a stated price for a stated period.
|
|
|
|
[2] A "call" is the right to buy from a certain firm or
|
|
individual shares of stock at a stated price for a stated period.
|
|
|
|
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
|
|
|
|
For related stories, visit:
|
|
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
|
|
http://feustel.mixi.net
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those
|
|
of Conspiracy Nation, nor of its Editor in Chief.
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
New mailing list: leave message in the old hollow tree stump.
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc?
|
|
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
|
|
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
|
|
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|