No. 5: W. Averell Harriman, commerce secretary, 1947-48
Estimated wealth in current dollars: $841 million
Harriman earned his money the old-fashioned way: He inherited most of it from his father, E.H. Harriman, founder of the Union Pacific Railroad.
No. 4: William C. Whitney, Navy secretary, 1885-89
Estimated wealth in current dollars: $1.1 billion
Whitney came into his money via political connections and by marrying Flora Payne, the sister of Oliver Hazard Payne, one of John D. Rockefeller’s close assistants and earliest investors.
No. 3: Penny Pritzker, commerce secretary, 2013
Estimated wealth in current dollars: $1.85 billion
Pritzker inherited a fortune and built it up from there. The seed of her fortune comes from the Hyatt hotel chain, which was developed by her father.
No. 2: Jesse Jones, commerce secretary, 1940-45
Estimated wealth in current dollars: $2.8 billion
During the Great Depression, Jones was the chairman of the powerful Reconstruction Finance Corp., the main financial arm of the New Deal. Jones was known at the time as “the fourth branch of government,” as his agency lent billions to restructure banks and to rebuild industry.
Jones earned his fortune in Texas real estate and banking and was also the owner and publisher of the Houston Chronicle.
Jones was a powerful political figure behind the scenes, nurturing the careers of Democrats such as Lyndon B. Johnson and John Connally.
No. 1: Andrew Mellon, Treasury secretary, 1921-32
Estimated wealth in current dollars: $50 billion
Along with brother Richard, Mellon took over his father’s bank in the 1880s and built it into one of the most powerful institutions in the country. Mellon invested in coal, steel, railroads, shipbuilding and petroleum. He helped to found Alcoa, Gulf Oil, Carborundum and U.S. Steel.
Mellon’s greatest political achievement was cutting income-tax rates, with the top rate falling from 77% to 24%.
(Assembled by Rex Nutting)
"No. 2: Jesse Jones, commerce secretary, 1940-45
ReplyDeleteEstimated wealth in current dollars: $2.8 billion
During the Great Depression, Jones was the chairman of the powerful Reconstruction Finance Corp., the main financial arm of the New Deal. Jones was known at the time as “the fourth branch of government,” as his agency lent billions to restructure banks and to rebuild industry.
From Thomas Fleming, _The New Dealer's War_, ISBN 0-465-024645:
"Balancing the liberals was bulky millionaire Houston newspaper-owner Jessie Jones, conservative head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The RFC was created by FDR's predecessor, Herbert Hoover, but the New Dealers decided it fit perfectly into their scheme of things, thanks to its ability to loan millions to banks and corporations with the stroke of a pen. Jones was there to let businessmen know that they had a friend in Washington - if they took the money and kept their mouths shut.
"Other questions revealed the awesome powers of the RFC...
""What are the limits? How far can it go?", Senator Bailey asked.
"We can lend anything that we think we should", Jones replied. "Any amount, any length of time, or [at] any rate of interest...to anybody that we feel is entitled to the loan."
CW
You write, Harriman earned his money the old-fashioned way: He inherited most of it from his father, E.H. Harriman, founder of the Union Pacific Railroad
ReplyDeleteI respond, that a timeline history of banking is provided by Andrew Hitchcock who writes "A history of the House of Rothschild"
1875: On January 1 of this year Jacob Schiff, now Solomon Loeb’s son- in-law after marrying his daughter, Teresa, takes control of the banking house, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. He goes on to finance John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, Edward R. Harriman’s Railroad Empire, and Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Empire. This is all with Rothschild money. He then identifies the other largest bankers in America at that time. They are, J.P. Morgan who controls Wall Street, and the Drexels and the Biddles of Philadelphia. All the other financiers, big and little, danced to the music of those three houses. Schiff then gets the European Rothschilds to set up European branches of these three large banks on the understanding that Schiff, and therefore Rothschild, is to be the boss of banking in New York and therefore America. This year Lionel De Rothschild also loans Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli the finance for the British government to purchase the shares in the Suez Canal, from Khedive Said of Egypt. This was done as the Rothschilds needed this access route to be held by a government they controlled, so they could use that government’s military to protect their huge business interests in the Middle East
1887: Opium trafficker in China, Edward Albert Sassoon, marries Aline Caroline de Rothschild, the grand daughter of Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild. Aline Caroline’s father, Gustave, together with his brother, Alphonse, took over the Rothschild’s French arm following their father Jacob’s death. The Rothschilds finance the amalgamation of the Kimberley diamond mines in South Africa. They subsequently become the biggest shareholders of this company, De Beers, and mine precious stones in Africa and India
1895: Edmond James de Rothschild the youngest son of Jacob (James) Mayer Rothschild visits Palestine and subsequently supplies the funds to found the first Jewish colonies there, this is to further their long term objective of creating a Rothschild owned country.
1897: The Rothschilds found the Zionist Congress to promote Zionism (a political movement with the sole aim of moving all Jews into a singularly Jewish nation state). Herzl is subsequently elected President of the Zionist Organisation which adopts the, “Rothschild Red Hexagram or Sign,” as the Zionist flag which 51 years later will end up as the flag of Israel. Edward Henry Harriman becomes a director of the Union Pacific Railroad and goes on to take control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. This is all financed by the Rothschilds.
1907: Rothschild, Jacob Schiff, the head of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., in a speech to the New York Chamber of Commerce, warns that,“Unless we have a Central Bank with adequate control of credit resources, this country is going to undergo the most severe and far reaching money panic in its history. Suddenly America finds itself in the middle of another typical run of the mill Rothschild engineered financial crisis.
1913: It is important to note that the Federal Reserve is a private company, it is neither Federal nor does it have any Reserve. It is conservatively estimated that profits exceed $150 billion per year and the Federal Reserve has never once in its history published accounts.