When covering America’s interventionist foreign policy, certain departments and agencies come up a lot. The Defense Department, certainly. The CIA, usually. The State Department, the NSA, the list goes on. Rarely does the Treasury Department come up, but maybe it should.
Speaking at a conference for the American Bankers Association, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury David S. Cohen went into excruciating detail about his department’s role in ensuring that the American banking industry is on the front lines of fights the world over.
And it really is the world over. From propping up Mexico’s government in what he called “a courageous fight against the drug cartels” to preventing Iran from “developing nuclear weapons,” there appears to be no overseas endeavor in which Secretary Cohen doesn’t envision a massive role for the Treasury Department, and for the ostensibly private organizations that make up the banking industry.
Though Cohen made some interesting revelations with respect to Afghanistan, including the somewhat surprising claim that the Taliban is much better financed than al-Qaeda, the bulk of his speech detailed a chilling ambition to see the banking industry pulled ever deeper into the war at home as well as abroad, and his claim that “routine suspicious activity” could be the centerpiece of uncovering international terror networks suggest that the average person’s financial transactions will be under ever-increasing scrutiny.
I'm glad I pay attention to Ron Paul already know about the connection between banking and war.
You mean the criminal banksters support the criminal wars of the American Foriegn Policy Establishment. Birds of a feather flock together.
What a bunch of crap by this Ass't., Secretary about how the bankers can identify criminals or terrorists through banking. As for the laundering of drug money, globalization of capital makes it easier than ever. Just by walking around Cancun Mexico it can be determined what businesses are fronts for laundering money. It's no brainer. The DEA and other interested agencies don't even bother to put operatives on the ground because the bankers, especially, claim they can do it all by computer I guess. BANKERS WARS are not new, WW1 is known as the bankers war, the same bankers financing the opposing countries. It's even easier now especially with the "surge" when the Pentagon pays protection money to the Iraqi opposition to the US. occupation not to attack American troops there. The same country, the USA paying all the opposing forces, a bankers dream. In fact the reason for the opposition to the Soviet Union was that Lenin reneged on the bonds that the CZAR used for WW1. This USSR was kicked out of the international banking system which is why Lenin had to create an independent banking system. Anti Communism hysteria was used as the reason for opposing communism the tax paying public would be unlikely to support the defense costs for the sake of the bankers not being paid by the USSR because of the bonds the CZAR floated.
You can bet your sweet bippie American banks back U.S. interventions – especially the private banking cartel known as the FED! Corporations that make weapons need bank loans to run and expand their businesses. Politicians, who get political payola from the corporations to run for reelection, need the FED to create billions out of thin air so the government can buy weapons and pay the troops. Yep, a sweet deal all around for everyone, except; the thousands of soldiers who die or who are maimed for life, the hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians who die or who are maimed for life, and American taxpayers who pay the interest on the hundreds of billions of dollars the FED creates out of thin air. Lord Rothschild would be damned proud of his American protege. They learned their lessons well.