In the movie Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart (playing the character Rick) is asked by one of Major Strasser’s Nazi associates “Can you picture us in London?” More than fifty years after that movie was made, Werner Seifert (the head of the Frankfurt-based Deutsche Borse) echoed that question, saying that he could picture himself headquartered in, and living in, London.
This broadcast sets forth the facts concerning the proposed merger between the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Borse (the German stock exchange). Far from being a “merger,” the combined exchange (to be called “iX”) will be dominated by the large German banks that control the Deutsche Borse.
Beginning with discussion of the details concerning German dominance of the proposed merger (the shareholders of the London Stock Exchange have yet to approve the merger), the program underscores the pending takeover as a partial realization of the Pan-German theories of Friedrich List. Writing in the 1840’s, List advocated that Germany should economically unite Europe under its control, as a vehicle for replacing Great Britain as the dominant power on earth.
Although Britain is no longer the world’s foremost colonial power, London had been the financial center of Europe. The proposed merger would change that. Significantly, the pending iX will have a link to NASDAQ, the American high-tech stock exchange, which it may ultimately absorb.
The second half of the program focuses on the control of the Deutsche Borse by three big German commercial banks: the Deutsche Bank, the Dresdner Bank and the Commerzbank. In turn, the broadcast sets forth the role of the above-named banks in the Third Reich and the Bormann Organization (the economic component of a Third Reich gone underground).
In charge of the banking activities of the Third Reich, Martin Bormann oversaw the integration of the financial structures of the countries of occupied Europe into Germany’s. The “Big Three” German banks were the central vehicles for this incorporation, the Deutsche Bank in particular. These banks then served as principal vehicles for the Bormann flight capital program, through which the Bormann Organization was realized.
The program also discusses the role of the Union Bank of Switzerland (now UBS-Warburg) in both the Bormann group and the Deutsche Borse.
Program Highlights Include: the pending supplanting of the LSE’s electronic system with the Deutsche Borse’s Xetra system; the eclipsing of the London Futures Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade with Eurex (the Deutsche Borse’s futures exchange); a review of List’s formula for German economic and political control of Europe; the role of the “Big Three” of German banking in the Swiss and Turkish elements of the Bormann flight capital program; the Bormann group’s investment in American blue chip corporations; Martin Bormann’s demand accounts in branches of major American commercial banks; the outgoing head of the London Exchange’s projection that the iX would eventually absorb NASDAQ. (Recorded on 5/20/2000 and 5/28/2000.)
Discussion
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