S&P and the Bilderbergers: All Part of the Plan?

by Ellen Hodgson Brown / August 19th, 2011

What just happened in the stock market? Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose or fell by at least 400 points for four straight days, a stock market first.

The worst drop was on Monday, 8-8-11, when the Dow plunged 624 points. Monday was the first day of trading after US Treasury bonds were downgraded from AAA to AA+ by Standard and Poor’s.

But the roller coaster actually began on Tuesday, 8-2-11, the day after the last-minute deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling — a deal that was supposed to avoid the downgrade that happened anyway five days later. The Dow changed directions for eight consecutive trading sessions after that, another first.

The volatility was unprecedented, leaving analysts at a loss to explain it. High frequency program trading no doubt added to the wild swings, but why the daily reversals? Why didn’t the market head down and just keep going, as it did in September 2008?

The plunge on 8-8-11 was the worst since 2008 and the sixth largest stock market crash ever. According to Der Spiegel, one of the most widely read periodicals in Europe:

Many economists have been pointing out that last week’s panic resembled the fear that swept financial markets after the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

Then as now, banks stopped lending each other money. Then as now, banks’ cash deposits at the central bank doubled within days.

On Tuesday, August 9, however, the market gained more points from its low than it lost on Monday. Why? A tug of war seemed to be going on between two titanic forces, one bent on crashing the market, the other on propping it up.

The Dubious S&P Downgrade

Many commentators questioned the validity of the downgrade that threatened to collapse the market. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in a statement:

The Treasury Department revealed that S&P’s decision was initially based on a $2 trillion error in accounting. However, even after this enormous error was corrected, S&P went ahead with the downgrade. This suggests that S&P had made the decision to downgrade independent of the evidence. [Emphasis added.]

Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, was also skeptical, stating:

[E]verything I’ve heard about S&P’s demands suggests that it’s talking nonsense about the US fiscal situation. The agency has suggested that the downgrade depended on the size of agreed deficit reduction over the next decade, with $4 trillion apparently the magic number. Yet US solvency depends hardly at all on what happens in the near or even medium term: an extra trillion in debt adds only a fraction of a percent of GDP to future interest costs . . .

In short, S&P is just making stuff up — and after the mortgage debacle, they really don’t have that right.

In an illuminating expose posted on Firedoglake on August 5, Jane Hamsher concluded:

It’s becoming more and more obvious that Standard and Poor’s has a political agenda riding on the notion that the US is at risk of default on its debt based on some arbitrary limit to the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is no sound basis for that limit, or for S&P’s insistence on at least a $4 trillion down payment on debt reduction, any more than there is for the crackpot notion that a non-crazy US can be forced to default on its debt. . . .

It’s time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves.

Who Drove the S&P Agenda?

Jason Schwarz shed light on this question in an article on Seeking Alpha titled “The Rise of Financial Terrorism”. He wrote:

[A]fter the market close on Friday August 5th, we received word that S&P CEO Deven Sharma had taken control of the ratings agency and personally led the push for a U.S. downgrade. There is a lot of evidence that he has deliberately tried to trash the U.S. economy. Even after discovering that the S&P debt calculations were off by $2 trillion, Sharma made the decision to go ahead with the unethical downgrade. This is a guy who was a key contributor at the 2009 Bilderberg Summit that organized 120 of the world’s richest men and women to push for an end to the dollar as the global reserve currency.

[T]hrough his writings on “competitive strategy” S&P CEO Sharma considers the United States the PROBLEM in today’s world, operating with what he implies is an unfair and reckless advantage. The brutal reality is that for “globalization” to succeed the United States must be torn asunder . . .

Also named by Schwarz as a suspect in the market manipulations was Michel Barnier, head of European Regulation. Barnier triggered an alarming 513-point drop in the Dow on August 4, when he blocked the plan of Hans Hoogervorst, newly appointed Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, to save Europe by adopting a new rule called IFRS 9. The rule would have eliminated mark-to-market accounting of sovereign debt from European bank balance sheets. Schwarz writes:

We all should be experts on the dangers of mark-to-market accounting after observing the U.S. banking crisis of 2008/2009 and the Great Depression in the 1930s. Mark-to-market was repealed at 8:45 a.m on April 2, 2009, which finally put a stop to the short term liquidity crisis and at the same time ushered in a stock market recovery. Banks no longer had to raise capital as long term stability was brought back to the system. The exact same scenario would have happened in 2011 Europe under Hoogervorst’s plan. Without the threat of failure by those banks who hold high amounts of euro sovereign debt, investors would be free to move on from the European crisis and the stock market could resume its fundamental course.

Schwarz notes that Barnier, like Sharma, was a confirmed attendee at past Bilderberger conferences. What, then, is the agenda of the Bilderbergers?

The One World Company

Daniel Estulin, noted expert on the Bilderbergers, describes that secretive globalist group as “a medium of bringing together financial institutions which are the world’s most powerful and most predatory financial interests.” Writing in June 2011, he said:

Bilderberg isn’t a secret society. . . . It’s a meeting of people who represent a certain ideology. . . . Not OWG [One World Government] or NWO [New World Order] as too many people mistakenly believe. Rather, the ideology is of a ONE WORLD COMPANY LIMITED.

It seems the Bilderbergers are less interested in governing the world than in owning the world. The “world company” was a term first used at a Bilderberger meeting in Canada in 1968 by George Ball, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs and a managing director of banking giants Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb. The world company was to be a new form of colonialism, in which global assets would be acquired by economic rather than military coercion. The company would extend across national boundaries, aggressively engaging in mergers and acquisitions until the assets of the world were subsumed under one privately-owned corporation, with nation-states subservient to a private international central banking system.

Estulin continues:

The idea behind each and every Bilderberg meeting is to create what they themselves call THE ARISTOCRACY OF PURPOSE between European and North American elites on the best way to manage the planet. In other words, the creation of a global network of giant cartels, more powerful than any nation on Earth, destined to control the necessities of life of the rest of humanity.

. . . This explains what George Ball . . . said back in 1968, at a Bilderberg meeting in Canada: “Where does one find a legitimate base for the power of corporate management to make decisions that can profoundly affect the economic life of nations to whose governments they have only limited responsibility?

That base of power was found in the private global banking system. Estulin goes on:

The problem with today’s system is that the world is run by monetary systems, not by national credit systems. . . . [Y]ou don’t want a monetary system to run the world. You want sovereign nation-states to have their own credit systems, which is the system of their currency. . . . [T]he possibility of productive, non-inflationary credit creation by the state, which is firmly stated in the US Constitution, was excluded by Maastricht [the Treaty of the European Union] as a method of determining economic and financial policy.

The world company acquires assets by preventing governments from issuing their own currencies and credit. Money is created instead by banks as loans at interest. The debts inexorably grow, since more money is always owed back than was created in the original loans. (For more on this, see here.) If currencies are not allowed to expand to meet increased costs and growth, the inevitable result is a wave of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and sales of assets at firesale prices. Sales to whom? To the “world company.”

Battle of the Titans

If that was the plan behind the market assaults on August 4 and August 8, however, it evidently failed. What turned the market around, according to Der Spiegel, was the European Central Bank, which saved the day by embarking on a program of buying Spanish and Italian bonds. Sidestepping the Maastricht Treaty, the ECB said it would engage in the equivalent of “quantitative easing,” purchasing bonds with money created with accounting entries on its books. It had done this earlier with Greek and Irish sovereign debt but had resisted doing it with Spanish and Italian bonds, which were much larger obligations. On Tuesday, August 16, the ECB announced that it was engaging in a record $32 billion bond-buying spree in an attempt to appease the markets and save the Eurozone from collapse.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was also expected to come through with another round of quantitative easing, but his speech on August 9 made no mention of QE3. As blogger Jesse Livermore summarized the market’s response:

. . . [T]he markets sold off rather rapidly as no announcement was made about QE3. . . . It wasn’t until . . . the last 75 min of market activity [that] the DJIA gained 639 pts to close at a day high of 11,242. That begs the question, where did that injection of capital come from? The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets? Or did the “policy tools” to promote price stability by any chance include the next round of Quantitative Easing unannounced?

Was that QE3 Incognito, Ben?

Titanic Battle or Insider Trading?

There could be another explanation for the suspicious downgrade that was announced despite the fact that the government had just made major concessions to avoid default, and despite the embarrassing revelation that S&P’s figures were off by $2 trillion. On August 12, MSN.Money reported that the downgrade “wasn’t much of a surprise”:

Wall Street had heard a rumor early on that the downgrade was coming. News sites reported the rumor all day.

Unless it was all a huge coincidence, it’s likely that someone in the know leaked the information. The questions are who and whether the leak led to early insider trading.

The Daily Mail had the story of someone placing an $850 million bet in the futures market on the prospects of a US debt downgrade:

The latest bet was made on July 21 on trades of 5,370 ten-year Treasury futures and 3,100 Treasury bond futures, reported ETF Daily News.

Now the investor’s gamble seems to have paid off after Standard and Poor’s issued a credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA+ last Friday.

Whoever it is stands to earn a 1,000 per cent return on their money, with the expectation that interest rates will be going up after the downgrade.

The Securities Exchange Commission announced on August 8 that it is investigating the downgrade. According to the Financial Times, the move is part of a preliminary examination into potential insider trading.

Whatever was going on in the market in the first two weeks of August, it was unprecedented, unnatural, and bears close observation.

Ellen Brown is an attorney in Los Angeles and the author of 11 books. In Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free, she shows how a private banking cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Read other articles by Ellen, or visit Ellen's website.

This article was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Economy/Economics, Markets.

Boycott Koch Brothers

Six Extreme Right-Wing Attacks by ALEC in State Governments

Posted on August 3, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

“Model” bills voted on by corporations through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) touch almost every aspect of American life. The Center for Media and Democracy has analyzed and made available over 800 ALEC model bills to allow other reporters and the public to track corporate influence in state legislatures across the country (and in Congress) at ALECExposed.org. Six of the many “hot” topics on the ALEC corporate-politician agenda this year.

• Disenfranchising American Citizens Through Voter ID
• Union-Busting
• Undoing Efforts To Address Climate Change
• Filling For-Profit Prisons Through Anti-Immigrant Bills
• Opposing Health Insurance Reform
• Privatizing K-12 Education

Read details at PR Watch

Posted in ALEC, Exposing the Kochs | Leave a comment

ALEC Love-Fest In The Big Easy

Posted on August 3, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

They’re getting ready for another round of imposing the plutocrats’ will on America:

Today, the American Legislative Exchange Council kicks off its annual meeting in the Big Easy. State legislators from across the country will arrive in New Orleans to be wined and dined by corporate lobbyists. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, for example, has invited legislators to a big smoke at its cigar reception on Bourbon Street. But the meeting is not all fun and games. Legislators will be sitting down with some of the biggest corporations in the world – Koch Industries, Bayer, Kraft, Coca-Cola, State Farm, AT&T, WalMart, Philip Morris and more — behind closed doors. There, they approve one-size-fits-all changes to the law that ALEC legislators take home and introduce as their own brilliant policy innovations.

pr-watch

Posted in ALEC, Infiltration & Influence | Leave a comment

ALEC Protest Planned

Posted on August 3, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

According to the “Protest ALEC” website (which is not affiliated with CMD), advocates will hold a number of workshops devoted to examining the ALEC agenda, corporations, and politicians. The session will culminate with a program followed by a “March to the Marriott” from the Hale Boggs Federal Building. Scheduled speakers and performances include Jordan Flaherty, journalist and community organizer; Bob Sloan, prison industry investigative consultant and author; David Rovics, musician; and representatives from the AFL-CIOand Interfaith Worker Justice.

The story

Posted in Exposing the Kochs, Protests | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Man Files Complaint Against Americans For Plutocrats

Posted on August 2, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

After receiving an absentee ballot form mailed to him by AFP (The Kochs’ Americans For Plutocrats), a Wisconsin man has filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board charging voter suppression by AFP. His complaint:

I received an absentee ballot request form from Americans For Prosperity. It intentionally listed to return up to Aug. 11. The date of the election is Aug. 9. If I followed their instructions, my ballot would not be legal. I think they purposely intended to discount my vote. I understand such activity to be against the law. I believe I was targeted by this group because I am a Democrat and a senior citizen.

The story

Posted in AFP: Americans For Plutocrats, Politics | Leave a comment

Kochsters Brag About “Defining The Debate” In The Disgraceful And Disgusting Budget Cap Battle

Posted on August 2, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

They have the audacity to claim bragging rights:

“We defined the contours of the debate and made it impossible to raise the debt ceiling without achieving serious spending cuts,” said Phil Kerpen, head of policy at the prominent Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity.

Kerpen estimated that of the 66 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted against the final compromise, on the grounds that it does not cut public spending enough, about a half were Tea Party affiliated. The group included Michele Bachmann, a candidate to be the Republican presidential nominee.

The story

Yeah, the Kochs must be smiling and sipping champagne.

Posted in AFP: Americans For Plutocrats, Attacking working Americans | Leave a comment

Kochs Lose Their Toilet Paper Lawsuit

Posted on August 1, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

Yeah, they sued another toilet paper manufacturer for making toilet paper with a “diamond quilted” design — like their “Quilted Northern” TP.

They sure know how to gang up:
670,000 pages of documents and a dozen witnesses.

The judge tossed out the case, saying the design is functional and therefore can’t be trademarked.

Posted in Koch Industries | Leave a comment

Do The Kochs Own A University’s Economics Department

Posted on August 1, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

“Free market economics”: Government bad. Rich people good.

The Kochs promote “free market economics” in several ways. One of them is by paying money to university economics departments, sometimes in return for having an influence in who gets hired. Koch involvement at Florida State University has previously been uncovered. Now it’s Utah State:

“Free market economics”, for example, promotes for-profit schools (“charter schools”) and for-profit prisons. The Kochs would like to popularize their brand of “free market” thinking. Influencing teaching staff at universities is one way to do that.

News sources noted that a free-market thinker (one of several in recent years) joined the John M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Some of these are earning salary supplements provided by the conservative Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Full story

Posted in Free Market Promotion, Infiltration & Influence | Leave a comment

Kochs Buying Property, Spending Money, In Iowa

Posted on August 1, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

There’s some curiosity in Iowa about the Kochs’ buying and spending spree in Iowa:

Land records on file in 20 Iowa counties reveal that Koch Industries or its subsidiaries now own 18 commercial and industrial facilities valued at nearly $90 million, including four ethanol plants purchased earlier this year.

As the Kochs’ business holdings here have grown, so, too, has their interest in Iowa politics. KochPac, the company’s political action committee, has contributed more than $130,000 to candidates for the Legislature and statewide office since 2003, records show.

The story

I believe the Kochs have discovered the best way to get their far-right ideology imposed is at the state level.

Posted in Infiltration & Influence, Koch Industries | Leave a comment

Kochsters Accused Of Engaging In Deception In Wisconsin

Posted on August 1, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

Americans For Plutocrats is doing what it can to keep its Republicans in office.

Upcoming Republican recall elections:

Americans for Prosperity is sending absentee ballots to Democrats in at least two Wisconsin state Senate recall districts with instructions to return the paperwork after the election date.

The fliers, obtained by POLITICO, ask solidly Democratic voters to return ballots for the Aug. 9 election to the city clerk “before Aug. 11.”

Politico

Posted in AFP: Americans For Plutocrats | Leave a comment

Who Needs Government? Kochsters Hold Their OWN “Town Hall” Meetings

Posted on August 1, 2011 by DamnedLiberal

Given the success of ALEC in getting right-wing legislation introduced in state legislatures, it’s obvious the best way to shape government to your liking is to take control of it.

Here’s another way: Hold your own “town hall” meetings.

Americans for Prosperity-Ohio kicks off a statewide series of Taxpayer Town Halls on August 16th in the Greater Cincinnati Area. AFP-Ohio is partnering with Tea Parties, 9-12 Groups, and other liberty organizations to host these town halls

The story

Posted in AFP: Americans For Plutocrats, Infiltration & Influence | Leave a comment

Almost Everything You Need To Know About The Koch Brothers

Think Progress


Everything You Need To Know About The Koch Brothers

Our guest blogger is Tony Carrk, Policy Director for Progress Central.

Today, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released a report shedding light on the vast Koch network and how it operates. The report shows that Charles and David Koch have used the considerable wealth (they are worth a combined $44 billion) to push policies that put their profits ahead of the interests of most Americans.

The report finds:

• Grassroots organizing for big business. The Koch brothers use their considerable wealth to bankroll the right wing, including the Tea Party. This serves the purpose of furthering not only their right-wing ideology but also their bottom line. Koch Industries has a lot to gain from gutting government oversight and electing candidates who oppose government regulation, especially in the oil-and-gas industry.
• $85 million to 85 think tanks. Identification of at least $85 million the Koch brothers have given to at least 85 right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups over the past decade and a half.
• State organizing. The Koch brothers are active at the state level, spending $5.2 million on candidates and ballot measures in 34 states since 2003. They donated directly to 13 governors that won election last year.
• Over 70% of the GOP Freshman. The Kochs donated directly to 62 of the 87 members of the House GOP freshman class.
• 2012. The Kochs are not going away. In fact, they have already pledged to raise $88 million for the 2012 election and have started scheduling events for potential Republican presidential candidates.

Read the full report here.

This report is intended to be a guide to help progressives map out the vast network of influence the Koch brothers have built over the last decades. By exposing the Koch brothers’ agenda and shedding light on how they operate, progressives can force a public debate that will show that the Koch brothers are outside the mainstream of most Americans and that they are putting their self-interest and right wing agenda ahead of middle-class families.

Tags:

• David Koch
• Koch Industries

American Association for Justice

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Koch Brothers Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America

The Koch Brothers, big tobacco, insurance companies, and the drug industry: all behind the shadowy corporate front group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). On the surface, ALEC is mostly comprised of thousands of state legislators, each paying a nominal fee to attend ALEC retreats and receive model legislation. In reality, corporations pay ALEC a king’s ransom to access legislators to distribute radical legislation that puts corporate interests over American workers and consumers.

So, while the membership appears to be public sector, corporate money dominates ALEC. In fact, public sector membership dues account for only around one percent of ALEC’s annual revenues. ALEC claims to be nonpartisan, but its pro-corporate, anti-consumer mission is clear.

Read about ALEC’s hand in protecting oil companies, chemical manufacturers and Wall Street banks in AAJ’s report here:

ALEC: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America >>

AAJ Release: Report Lifts Veil on ALEC’s Pro-Corporate, Anti-Consumer Mission >>

Executive Summary:

Few have ever heard of it, but the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, is the ultimate smoke filled back room.

On the surface, ALEC’s membership is mostly comprised of thousands of state legislators. Each pays a nominal membership fee in order to attend ALEC retreats and receive model legislation. ALEC’s corporate contributors, on the other hand, pay a king’s ransom to gain access to legislators and distribute their corporate-crafted legislation.

So, while the membership appears to be public sector, the bankroll is almost entirely private sector. In fact, public sector membership dues account for only around one percent of ALEC’s annual revenues. ALEC claims to be nonpartisan, but in fact its free-market, pro-business mission is clear.

The result has been a consistent pipeline of special interest legislation being funneled into state capitols. Thanks to ALEC, 826 bills were introduced in the states in 2009 and 115 were enacted into law.

Behind the scenes at ALEC, the nuts and bolts of lobbying and crafting legislation is done by large corporate defense firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon. A law firm with strong ties to the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, it has long used ALEC’s ability to get a wide swath of state laws enacted to further the interests of its corporate clients.

ALEC’s campaigns and model legislation have run the gamut of issues, but all have either protected or promoted a corporate revenue stream, often at the expense of consumers. For example, ALEC has worked on behalf of:

• Oil companies to undermine climate change proponents;
• Pharmaceutical manufacturers, arguing that states should be banned from importing prescription drugs;
• Telecom firms to block local authorities from offering cheap or free municipally-owned broadband;
• Insurance companies to prevent state insurance commissioners from requiring insurers to meet strengthened accounting and auditing rules;
• Big banks, recommending that seniors be forced to give up their homes via reverse mortgages in order to receive Medicaid;
• The asbestos industry, trying to shut the courthouse door to Americans suffering from mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases; and,
• Enron to deregulate the utility industries, which eventually caused the U.S. to lose what the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) estimated as $5 trillion in market value.

Koch Brothers' Products -- We're Surrounded.


If you have been following news about the Koch brothers, you might be curious as to which products they manufacture.

Lots! List of koch brothers products



































Georgia-Pacific also distributes paper towels, napkins and soap dispensing systems used in commerical settings. Some GP commercial toilet paper brands: Envision, Coronet®, SCA, Tork and Fort James. GP produces Pacific Garden liquid soaps...







Georgia-Pacific produces ink and office paper under the GP label and the Spectrum® family of office paper products.




Wood Products:


Georgia-Pacific is the largest manufacturer of plywood in the U.S..

Including Plytanium Plywood®, DryPly® plywood, Ply-Bead®.

Georgia-Pacific is one of the country's largest suppliers of corrugated boxes and containers.

Various, numerous wood products, dimensional lumber and building materials.

ToughRock®, Fireguard®, DensArmor and DensShield® gypsum board.




Textiles and Plastics
via Invista Products:

• Stainmaster
• Dacron
• Lycra
• CoolMax
• SolarMax
• Polarguard
• Thermolite
• Antron
  Comforel fiberfill
• DBE® dibasic esters
  Tactel
  Tactesse Carpet Fibers
• Terathane
• ADI-Pure®
• Polyshield®
• Polyclear®
• Oxyclear™
• Performa®
  Cordura fabric
  Supplex® Fabric
  Somerelle® Bedding
  
  

Invista produces a large selection of products under this business, including polyethylene terephthalate (PET) polymers for carbonated soft drink, water, beer, juice, food and custom container applications. Production also includes polyester intermediate feedstocks, film products, fibers, and specialty polymers for a variety of applications, inlcuding PBT-based engineering polymer.




Chemicals, Coal & Oil:

Through its subsidiaries Koch operates refineries in Alaska, Minnesota and Texas, with a combined crude oil processing capacity of more than 800,000 barrels per day. Koch Industries owns or operates about 4,000 miles of pipelines that transport crude oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas liquids and chemicals. Koch Minerals and its affiliates are among the world’s largest dry-bulk commodity handlers, marketing and trading more than 40 million tons of coal, coke, cement and other related products annually. Flint Hills Resources produces about 9 billion pounds of building-block chemicals per year. Koch is a leading producer of paving and roofing asphalt. www.kochind.com

Koch Industries Produces:


* Gasoline
* Diesel
* Jet fuel
* Naphtha
* Asphalt
* Benzene
* Toluene
* Metaxylene
* Paraxylene
* Orthoxylene
* Cumene
* Cycohexane
* Heavy reformate
* Pseudocumene
* Sure Sol ® 100
* Sure Sol ® 150
* Purified Isophthalic Acid
* Maleic Anhydride
* Trimellitic Anhydride
* Ethylene
* Chemical Grade Propylene
* Polypropylene
* Polyethylene



"In Flint Hills Resources manufacturing plants, various hydrocarbon products are the basic feedstocks. At the refineries, the main feedstock is crude oil. The refineries produce a wide range of transportation fuels for motorists, truckers and the airline industry. In the olefins plants, the company processes natural gas liquids into ethylene and propylene. In the polymers plants, those two products are processed into various forms of olypropylene, which are key ingredients in products such as consumer and healthcare products, packaging and other plastic products. In the aromatics plant, products produced during the crude oil refining process become xylenes, cumenes and other light products. Those products are the building blocks for many other chemicals and plastics."* www.fhrstage.fhr.com

Koch Carbon, LLC and its affiliates globally trade and transport petroleum coke, coal, cement, pulp and paper, sulfur and other related commodities through a network of bulk import/export terminals in the United States and Europe. The C. Reiss Coal Company is a leading supplier of coal and related products typically used in industrial applications or to generate electricity.

Koch Exploration Company, LLC and its affiliates acquire, develop and trade petroleum and natural gas properties in the United States, Canada and Brazil.




Pipelines:

Koch Pipeline Company, L.P. and its affiliates own or operate about 4,000 miles of pipelines that transport crude oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas liquids and chemicals.

Koch Alaska Pipeline Company, LLC owns an approximate 3 percent interest in the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Another Koch company has a 28 percent interest in Colonial Pipeline Company, owner and operator of the world’s largest-volume refined products pipeline.




Fertilizer:

Koch Fertilizer, LLC and its affiliates; have the capability to manufacture, market and distribute more than 10 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer products annually. They distribute to dealers, so their product has many a label. "Fertilizer today is an intensely industrial business more akin to oil refining or chemical production."* www.kochind.com




Equipment:

Koch-Glitsch, LP and its affiliates are global leaders in the design, manufacture and installation of mass transfer and mist elimination equipment. The company’s products are found in refineries and chemical plants worldwide.

Koch Membrane Systems, Inc. develops and manufactures membrane separation systems for a variety of applications worldwide, including membranes for microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis.

John Zink Company, LLC and its affiliates are global leaders in ultra-low emission process burners, boiler burners, duct burners, flares and thermal oxidizers. The companies are also global suppliers of flare gas/vapor recovery and vapor combustor systems.




Cattle:

Koch Agriculture Company, operates three ranches with a total of 15,000 head of cattle in Kansas, Montana, and Texas. "Matador Ranch in Texas offers a number of hunting packages that include first-class accommodations. Everything is provided to ensure an enjoyable experience." www.kochind.com




Services:

Koch Supply & Trading companies around the world trade and provide risk management services in crude oil; refined petroleum products; natural gas and gas liquids; gas, power and emissions; industrial metals; and other commodities and financial instruments.

Optimized Process Designs, Inc. provides consulting, engineering, design, procurement, fabrication and construction services for the natural gas and gas processing industries worldwide. OPD has been the general contractor on some of the largest natural gas plants built in the U.S.

Koch Knight LLC and its affiliates are leaders in acid proof solutions. The companies offer construction, engineering and services through a global network of manufacturing and outsourcing facilities. Their products, made from state-of-the-art ceramics and plastic materials, are available worldwide.

IPT provides the resources and know how to deliver world-scale technology for licensing to a growing portfolio of technologies in the polyester, polyurethane and nylon value chains.




European brands:

• 
  Colhogar®
• Delica®
• Demak'Up®
• Inversoft®
• Kitten Soft®
• Lotus®
• Moltonel®
• Nouvelle®
• Okay
• Tenderly®
• Tutto®

Source = www.kochind.com

Logos property of Koch Industries www.worldofkoch.com

Georgia-Pacific Products
One more time:

• 
  Angel Soft®
• Brawny®
  Coronet®
• Dixie®
• Mardi Gras®
  MD Bathroom Tissue
• Quilted Northern®
• Soft ‘n Gentle®
• Sparkle®
  Vanity Fair®
• Zee®

Pollution:


University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute, shows Koch Industries as one of the nation’s top 10 polluters/emitters. See detailed emissions breakdowns - www.peri.umass.edu/toxic_index




A Sampling of Environmental Charges Verses Koch:


September 2000, a federal grand jury in Corpus Christi, Texas returned a 97-count indictment against Koch Industries Inc., Koch Petroleum Group for violating federal clean air and hazardous waste laws, due to the release of at least 91 metric tons of uncontrolled, untreated carcinogenic benzene. www.justice.gov


March 2000, Koch petroleum which operates a refinery in Rosemount, Minn., was sentenced to pay a $6 million criminal fine and pay an additional $2 million in remediation costs. This is the largest federal environmental fine ever paid in Minnesota. Koch admitted that it negligently discharged 200,000 - 600,000 gallons of aviation fuel into a wetland and an adjoining waterway. In addition, their way of recovering the fuel (a year and a half later) destroyed a portion of the surrounding ecosystem and wildlife habitat. In a separate offense, Koch dumped a million gallons of wastewater with high ammonia content on the ground between November 1996 and March 1997 and also increased its flow of wastewater into the Mississippi River on weekends when no one monitored discharges. These actions allowed Koch to circumvent the weekly monitoring and reporting requirements of its wastewater discharge permit. The case was investigated by EPA's Criminal Investigation Division, the FBI and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and was prosecuted by the U. S. Attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota. www.ehso.com

Koch's Sterling butane pipeline had a leak in Lively, Texas, on August 24, 1996. Two teenagers on the way to report the leak drove into the unseen butane cloud, and were killed when the gas exploded and burned. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that severe external pipeline corrosion was the cause of the failure. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries

In 1999, a federal jury found that Koch Industries had stolen oil from government and American Indian lands and had lied about its purchases more than 24,000 times. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries

In January 2000, Koch Pipeline, agreed to a $35 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Texas as fines for the firm's three hundred oil spills (300 million gallons) in Texas and five other states going back to 1990. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries



Climate Change Denial:


A March 2010 Greenpeace report shows that Koch Industry foundations have contributed (2005-2008) nearly $25 million to organizations that oppose clean energy and climate policy. That does not include oil and gas lobbying of $37.9 million. For more info on Koch Industries' funding of Climate Denial Groups -- See GreenPeace's report "Koch Industries Funding the Climate Denial Machine" www.greenpeace.org

In the August, 2010 New York Magazine article 'Covert Operations,' oil tycoon David Koch was quoted as saying, global warming will be a good thing for the planet and will help "support enormously more people because a far greater land area will be available to produce food." www.newyorker.com



Revenue:


Koch Industries currently brings in $100 billion in revenue annually.
Each brother is personally worth $21.5 billion. Together 43 billion.*
Koch Industries spent a total of $37.9 million on oil and gas lobbying
from January 2006 to December 2009. www.sourcewatch.org
*www.thinkprogress.org



Voting:


Since the Citizen's United decision, corporations can now attempt to influence their employees' votes. The Koch Brothers jumped on that band wagon right away and mailed out lists of Koch supported candidates to their 50,000 employees during the last election. See info and a copy of a recommended election packet at www.thenation.com


University Affairs:

"Billionaire's role in hiring decisions at Florida State University raises questions" They give as long as they can pick the teachers. www.tampabay.com

Not Just Florida State...Utah, West Virginia, etc... www.insidehighered.com

The Mercatus Center is a conservative Think Tank at George Mason University’s Arlington campus. It is a university-based research center that makes its research findings available to the media and public policy makers. According to GreenPeace the Mercatus Center has received over 10 million dollars worth of funding from the Koch Brothers. Mercatus also fights environmental regulation, opposes clean energy legislation and lobbys to prevent curbs on industrial pollution. www.greenpeace.org mercatus.org


Photo of Coal Plant: ©2008 Walter Siegmund.

The Koch Brothers Have Bought America and Americans

The Koch brothers: all the influence money can buy

Not just liberals but conservatives should be deeply worried by a revelatory investigation of the libertarian billionaires' lobbying

Paul Harris
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 8 April 2011 16.30 BST
Article history

David Koch, founder of Americans for Prosperity. Photograph: astroturfwars.com

The idea that Charles and David Koch are liberal bêtes noires is not new. Over the past year, the elderly brothers, head of the vast Koch Industries business empire, have occupied top spot in the demonology of the left.

Across a range of activities – from the birth of the Tea Party to undermining unions in Wisconsin, to opposing efforts to curb global warming – they have been believed by many Democrats to be forever lurking behind the headlines. Now, a brilliant piece of investigative reporting by the Washington-based watchdog Centre for Public Integrity has detailed the Kochs' vast political and lobbying operations. It makes sobering and deeply disturbing reading. After all, it is one thing to believe that out there somewhere the devil exists, but reading the CPI report feels a little like being given his phone number.

The sums of money spent in furthering Koch (pronounced like the drink coke, no matter how tempting it is to rhyme it with rock) interests and power are staggering. But what is most disturbing is how rapidly they are growing. In 2004, the CPI found, the Kochs spent a "mere" $857,000 on lobbying. In 2008, that had grown to $20m dollars. Over the next two years, they then spent a further $20.5m.

The causes are varied but self-centred around the vital interests of Koch Industries such as oil, energy, chemicals and financial products. Employing no less than 30 lobbyists in Washington, Koch Industries has lobbied to change more than 100 pieces of federal legislation. They included trying to loosen regulations on potentially poisonous substances like dioxins, benzene and asbestos. They have pushed back against restrictions on carbon emissions and funded thinktanks and groups that promote efforts to discredit climate change science. They tried to soften attempts at financial reform where the Kochs operate in the derivatives market. Wherever a law touched on a Koch corporate interests, there were the company's lobbyists trying to gut, deaden or defeat any attempt at regulation.

The Kochs defenders argue that none of this should be surprising. The Kochs are fiercely political libertarians and thus believe much of government is wrong and that companies should be freed from the shackles of regulation. They openly fund libertarian organisations and, surely, have every right to promote their political ideology in any (legal) way they can. Just as every other American does.

That is true. Or at least it would be if the Kochs' activities were consistent with their proclaimed ideology. But the genius of the CPI's work is exposing that it is not. The Kochs (who, remember, oppose government intervention as anti-capitalist) should have nothing to do with the heavily subsidised ethanol industry. Yet, in fact, the Kochs are responsible for buying and marketing about one tenth of all ethanol produced in the US, effectively cashing in on government largesse. Likewise, the Kochs have vociferously opposed a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions in the US. Yet, in Europe, the Kochs make millions from trading in emissions credits.

When fighting government regulation helps them maximise profits – even by putting the rest of us at risk from cancer-causing chemicals – they are all about libertarianism. Yet when government rules or subsidies provide an opportunity to make some money, that free-market ideology is quietly shelved.

No wonder Koch lobbyists also fought for the recent tax breaks for the rich. For the Kochs (tied at 18th place in Forbes' latest rich list) are worth $22bn apiece. The brothers must have been laughing all the way to the bank when those tax breaks got passed. Reading the CPI report, it becomes clear that the Kochs are not really ideological at all: what really motivates them is simply cold, hard cash.

So when it comes to worrying about the Kochs' influence on the political system in the US, conservatives should really be joining liberals in getting nervous.

The Koch Brothers War Against President Obama

New Yorker

A Reporter at Large

Covert Operations

The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

by Jane Mayer August 30, 2010

David H. Koch in 1996. He and his brother Charles are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes.

n May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small.

The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him.

One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.

With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch—who, years ago, bought out two other brothers—among the richest men in America. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the “radical press” had turned his family into “whipping boys,” and had exaggerated its influence on American politics. But Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin. Though Koch freely promotes his philanthropic ventures, he did not attend the summit, and his name was not in evidence. And on this occasion the audience was roused not by a dance performance but by a series of speakers denouncing President Barack Obama. Peggy Venable, the organizer of the summit, warned that Administration officials “have a socialist vision for this country.”

Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

How the Billionaires Broke the System

George Monbiot

How the Billionaires Broke the System

August 1, 2011

The US deficit reduction plan makes no sense – until you remember who’s behind the Tea Party movement.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 1st August 2011

There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. Raising taxes means taking money from the rich. Cutting spending means taking money from the poor. Not in all cases of course: some taxation is regressive; some state spending takes money from ordinary citizens and gives it to banks, arms companies, oil barons and farmers. But in most cases the state transfers wealth from rich to poor, while tax cuts shift it from poor to rich.

So the rich, in a nominal democracy, have a struggle on their hands. Somehow they must persuade the other 99% to vote against their own interests: to shrink the state, supporting spending cuts rather than tax rises. In the US they appear to be succeeding.

Partly as a result of the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and 2005 (shamefully extended by Barack Obama), taxation of the wealthy, in Obama’s words, “is at its lowest level in half a century”(1). The consequence of such regressive policies is a level of inequality unknown in other developed nations. As the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out, in the past 10 years the income of the top 1% has risen by 18%, while that of blue collar male workers has fallen by 12%(2).

The deal being thrashed out in Congress as this article goes to press seeks only to cut state spending. As the former Republican senator Alan Simpson says, “the little guy is going to be cremated.”(3) That, in turn, will mean further economic decline, which means a bigger deficit(4). It’s insane. But how did it happen?

The immediate reason is that Republican members of Congress supported by the Tea Party movement won’t budge. But this explains nothing. The Tea Party movement mostly consists of people who have been harmed by tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor and middle. Why would they mobilise against their own welfare? You can understand what is happening in Washington only if you remember what everyone seems to have forgotten: how this movement began.

On Sunday the Observer claimed that “the Tea Party rose out of anger over the scale of federal spending, and in particular in bailing out the banks”(5). This is what its members claim. It’s nonsense.

The movement started with Rick Santelli’s call on CNBC for a tea party of city traders to dump securities in Lake Michigan, in protest at Obama’s plan to “subsidise the losers”(6). In other words, it was a demand for a financiers’ mobilisation against the bail-out of their victims: people losing their homes. This is the opposite of the Observer’s story. On the same day, a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP) set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organising Tea Party events(7). The movement, whose programme is still lavishly supported by AFP, took off from there.

So who or what is Americans for Prosperity? It was founded and is funded by Charles and David Koch(8). They run what they call “the biggest company you’ve never heard of”(9), and between them they are worth $43 billion(10).

Koch Industries is a massive oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals company. Over the past 15 years the brothers have poured at least $85m into lobby groups arguing for lower taxes for the rich and weaker regulations for industry(11). The groups and politicians the Kochs fund also lobby to destroy collective bargaining, to stop laws reducing carbon emissions, to stymie healthcare reform and to hobble attempts to control the banks. During the 2010 election cycle, Americans for Prosperity spent $45 million supporting its favoured candidates(12).

But the Kochs’ greatest political triumph is the creation of the Tea Party movement. Taki Oldham’s film AstroTurf Wars shows Tea Party organisers from all over the Union reporting back to David Koch at their 2009 Defending the Dream summit, explaining the events and protests they’ve started with AFP help. “Five years ago,” he tells them, “my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It’s beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation.”(13)

AFP mobilised the anger of people who found their conditions of life declining, and channelled it into a campaign to make them worse. Tea Party campaigners appear to be unaware of the origins of their own movement. Like the guard in Geoffrey Household’s novel Rogue Male who has been conned into working for the enemy, they take to the streets to demand less tax for billionaires and worse health, education and social insurance for themselves.

Are they stupid? No. They have been systematically misled by another instrument of corporate power: the media. The Tea Party movement has been relentlessly promoted by Fox News, which belongs to a more familiar billionaire. Like the Kochs, Rupert Murdoch aims to misrepresent the democratic choices we face, in order to persuade us to vote against our own interests and in favour of his.

What’s taking place in Congress right now is a kind of political coup. A handful of billionaires has shoved a spanner into the legislative process. Through the candidates they’ve bought and the movement that supports them, they are now breaking and reshaping the system to serve their interests. We knew this once, but now we’ve forgotten. What hope do we have of resisting a force we won’t even see?

Follow George Monbiot on Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/04/13/remarks-president-fiscal-policy

2. http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/31/us-debt-crisis-washington-poverty

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html

5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/31/us-debt-congress-tea-party

6. http://www.cnbc.com/id/29283701/Rick_Santelli_s_Shout_Heard_Round_the_World

7. http://astroturfwars.org/

8. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all

9. http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/10/15/Profile-of-Billionaire-David-Koch/index3.html

10. http://www.forbes.com/wealth/forbes-400

11. Tony Carrk, April 2011. The Koch Brothers: What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right. Center for American Progress Action Fund. http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2011/04/pdf/koch_brothers.pdf

12. As above.

13. http://astroturfwars.org/