-VBIG KERS Gary Allen is author of None Dare Call It Conspiracy; The Rockefeller File; Kissinger; Jimmy Carter/Jimmy Carter; Ted Kennedy: In Over His Head. He is an AMERICAN OPINION Contributing Editor and also Editor of Insider Report. • IN PART ONE of this article we vestment bankers have not been ad­ introduced the arcane and seldom­ vocates of laissez-faire capitalism discussed field of investment bank­ but have actively sought government­ ing, and described some of the acti­ protected markets. Especially for vities in which investment bankers themselves. engage . After outlining their histori­ The price of deregulation is great­ cal background we examined the im­ er competition. This would be trau­ portant investment houses of Mor­ matic in a field which has tradition­ gan Stanley and Kuhn, Loeb. We ally had little price competition. The noted with special care that such in- securities industry has for years JAN UARY, 1984 35 been heavily regulated by a maze of heavily involved in supporting the rules from the Securities and Ex­ cause of a New World Order and in change Commission. The dominant encouraging strategic trade with houses in the field like it that way, Communist governments. because the regulations serve to pro­ Although Lazard's assiduously tect their oligopoly from interlopers strives to keep its powerful wheel­ who might give customers more at­ ings and dealings secret from the tractive alternatives. As Fortune public, it is known that the firm 's magazine admits, "Like other busi­ transactions involve an international nessmen who have faced the specter network which includes several im­ of deregulation (and lower profits), portant Swiss banks. In this country, many investment bankers are claim­ Lazard's has been a powerful ma­ ing that a freer market for new nipulator behind such megacorps as offerings will hurt not just them, R.C.A., I.T.T., Warner-Lambert, and but everybody." Engelhard Corporation. Of course, if we had a truly free Lazard Brothers of London - the market, that might put an end to the British franchise of the Lazard hegemony of the old clique of in­ operation - has, since the First vestment banking firms. And while World War, been in control of the some relatively mild deregulation of enterprises of the Cowdray family, the securities and underwriting field whose $200 million empire has in­ may occur under the Reagan Admin­ cluded ownership of London's Finan­ istration, do not look for more than cial Times and a fifty percent in­ sym bolic gestures. These bankers terest in the Economist. At one time constitute a very powerful interest no fewer than five British peers sat group, and "cut-throat competition" on the board of Lazard Brothers, the would upset their applecart. dominant force among these being Let us now return to the Establish­ Lord Kindersley, who also sat on the ment-connected investment bankers. board of the Bank of England. This time to the firms of Lazard Although considered by most to be Freres; Brown Brothers Harriman; a French company, Lazard Freres Salomon Brothers; Dillon, Read; and, was not founded in France but in Goldman, Sachs. the United States, and it started out not as a bank but as a dry-goods Lazard Freres business. Three brothers - Alexan­ More than a century old, Lazard dre, Simon, and Lazare Lazard ­ Freres & Company of New York has who had emigrated from France, set long been an important nexus in the up shop in New Orleans and opened web of Establishment power with for business there in 1848 with nine links to the Rothschilds of Europe, thousand dollars in capital (three the J.P. Morgan power complex in thousand from each brother). How­ America, and the Rhodes-Milner ever, in less than a year, the fledg­ Round Table conspirators of Britain. ling firm was wiped out in a fire Partners of Lazard Freres have long which destroyed a large portion of held directorships in major corpora­ the city. Undaunted by this ill for­ tions in the United States, Britain, tune, the Lazards packed up and France, and other countries. The moved to San Francisco. The Lazard firm influences foreign and do­ brothers prospered greatly during the mestic policies of a number of gov­ Gold Rush, selling to swarms of ernments, and major partners are prospectors and settlers everything 36 AMERICAN OPINION Elite investment bankers move their part­ ners in and out of government at top levels and profit enormously from manipulation and In­ side information. These Establishment-con­ nected conspirators actually name our key Cabinet Secretaries, our Federal Reserve Board, and the presidents of the major U.S. universities. from gold pans to woolen work cisco parent branch was sold to a clothes. Business was so good that group of California businessmen in they soon sent for a cousin, Alexan­ 1908 and later became the Crocker dre Weill, to come to America as their National Bank, one of the largest bookkeeper and financial consultant. banking chains in the state. Weill's financial experience and It was Alexandre Weill who even­ European connections rapidly made tually brought in Eugene Meyer, an­ him the main force behind the Lazard other Frenchman, to work at Lazard's enterprise. Under his leadership, it on Wall Street. Eugene had immi­ didn't take the firm long to figure grated as a youth with his father out that the big money to be made in Gunther, who was U.S. representa­ San Francisco was not in provision­ tive of Lazard Freres of Paris. De­ ing miners, but in dealing in the termined to follow in his father's yellow metal itself. The Lazards footsteps, young Eugene studied in­ quickly shifted their operations from ternational banking at Hamburg, woolens to gold ingots, and began to Paris, Berlin, and London before re­ move into the foreign-exchange turning to America to join the Wall markets as a major participant. Fa­ Street firm . He subsequently be­ cilitating the financing of the flow came a partner with Establishment of goods from international trade Insider Bernard Baruch in Alaskan required businessmen, like Weill and mining ventures. And it was Baruch the Lazards, who could readily arrange who arranged to bring Eugene Meyer contracts in other languages and who to Washington, D.C ., to head a divi­ had important commercial connec­ sion of the War Industries Board. tions in Europe. Baruch and Meyer held virtually dic­ By 1852 the Lazard brothers had tatorial control over America's war­ opened up a branch operation in time industries during World War I, Paris, Lazard Freres et Cie. With the and placed billions of dollars in war­ establishment of a London arm in production contracts with Establish­ 1877, and the opening of a New York ment friends and associates. office by Alexandre Weill three President Woodrow Wilson, at the years later, the Lazard bankers be­ urging of Baruch and top White came the largest U.S . shippers of House Insider Edward Mandell gold to and from Europe, and soon House, put Meyer in charge of the assumed the leadership role in trad­ War Finance Corporation to oversee ing commercial bills . The San Fran- the selling of America's war debt. JANUARY, 1984 37 This was like putting Gerry Studds in Establishment institutions for loot­ charge of a boys' camp. Meyer's ing and economic control. dealings in that capacity were shady, Moreover, this same Eugene to say the least. According to Con­ Meyer was directly involved in the gressman Louis McFadden, then creation of the Reconstruction Fi­ Chairman of the House Banking nance Corporation under the Hoover Committee: Administration. The RF.C. lent "I call your attention to House more than $13 billion to "stimulate" Report No. 1635, 68th Congress, 2nd commerce, industry, and agriculture Session, which reveals that at least during the Great Depression, serving twenty-four million dollars in bonds as a key element in F.D.R's corpo­ were duplicated. Ten billion dollars' rate-state adventures. The Recon­ worth of bonds were surreptitiously struction Finance Corporation Act, destroyed. Our Committee on Bank­ which created the federal agency, ing and Currency found the records was authored by none other than Eu­ of the War Finance Corporation un­ gene Meyer, who was made chairman der Eugene Meyer extremely faulty. of the RF.C. when the Act was While the books were being brought passed. Using his powerful position before our committee by the people as keeper of that money tree, Meyer who were the custodians of them helped finance Insider-controlled and taken back to the Treasury at firms and war industries during night, the committee discovered that World War II. He was of course a alterations were being made in the member of the Council on Foreign permanent records." Relations, the elitist gang which has Using money made from his for years controlled U.S. foreign World War I manipulations, Eugene policy. Meyer bought the Washington Post By the 1920s, Alexandre Weill's in 1933 in order to support the cor­ son, David David-Weill, became yet porate socialism of F.D.R's New another important agent of Lazard Deal. Eugene also wanted to squelch Freres, Although raised in the United investigations into how Meyer and his States, David-Weill devoted himself partners had helped maneuver the primarily to operations in France. As United States into the war as a pre­ a director of the Banque de France, liminary to helping themselves to he sat at the pinnacle of the French government contracts. Significant­ banking establishment. Along with ly, Meyer's first move as owner of Andre Lazard - the last of the the Post was to fire the paper's Lazards at the bank - he ran the edi tor for refusing editorially to Paris company of the Lazard com­ back U.S.