THE
SECRET LIFE OF AIC
PART 2 of 2
By
Jon Christian Ryter
March 31, 2009
NewsWithViews.com
The lives of the world's wealthiest families—the Money Mafia—are secrets shrouded by such complex layers of anonymity that the world knows nothing about them while believing they know everything. The Money Mafia encourages the fables—providing they downplay rather than magnify thheir wealth. In the opening days of the 20th century when JP Morgan took a young reporter from the New York American and Leslie's Weekly under his wing, he did so because Morgan wanted a conduit through which he could control the news. The reporter was Bertie Charles Forbes whom, with the help of Morgan, founded Forbes magazine.
In 1918, Forbes published his first list of the 30 richest America. Heading the list were the invisible rich whose wealth is never supposed to be mentioned by the media. Among them, alphabetically, were J. Ogden Armour, Vincent Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Pierre DuPont, Henry Clay Frick, Daniel Guggenheim, Cyrus McCormick, John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Russell Sage, Jacob Schiff, Charles M. Schwab, and William Vanderbit. Since all but a few of these names own shares of the Federal Reserve, it is unlikely that any of them became "less rich" over time. The business holdings of these men included oil, coal, railroads, steel, gold and silver mining, and investment banking. Rockefeller headed the Forbes list. His wealth in 1918 was conservatively estimated at $1.2 billion by Forbes?in an age when a bank president who earned $5,000.00 per year and was considered to be an extremely wealthy man.
These were the kingmakers of the New World Order at a time when the Old World Order—the royalty of Europe, and the vast landowners of Europe—began to lose their griip on global power as the 20th century broke on the horizon. The lofty and often utopian objectives of the princes of industry and barons of banking and business were at odds with the goals of the monarchs of Europe who had ruled vast kingdoms and municipal fiefdoms that have existed since medieval days. A New World Order was formed in the ashes of World War I, with the new wealth of the New World overwhelming the old wealth of Europe. The money barons wanted a world without borders with a common currency with which to trade anywhere in the world. A global economy with a global government .
Rockefeller demanded that Forbes pull his magazine off the store shelves in 1918—and reprint iit. Forbes did. From that day until now, none of the names of the wealthiest families in the world appear on any of the "wealthiest family" lists. Only the poor rich appear. The first layer of secrecy was in place.
The second layer of secrecy is confusion. Keep them guessing. When everyone is telling a different story about the histories of the accumulation of the wealth of the rich, no version is believable. Not even the measurable wealth of those associated with those who possess unfathomable wealth. American International Group [AIG] is a subsidiary of AIC. Internet searches suggest that AIG was created in 1919 by a 27-year old named Cornelius Vander Starr, a recently discharged US Army buck private from Fort Bragg, California (a military installation from 1859-64). However, the facts don't support the legend.
Sadly, on the Internet, when urban legends are repeated often enough they obfuscate the truth. Fiction becomes reality. Legend would have us believe a 27-year old, with no advanced education and no money, who served 8 months in the army at the end of WWI—and who never fought in the war and never took officer's training—was diischarged as a 2nd Lieutenant after 8 months of service. Legend would have us believed he joined an insurance brokerage firm, Shean & Deasy and virtually overnight became its manager, yet quit his dream job after only a few months to become a mail clerk with the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. Starr, the legend goes, wanted to see the world—which was why he purportedly joined the Armyy. (Note: In 1914 the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., was purchased by AIC to get the US mail contracts for Asia, and to serve as a toehold in Asia for AIC. AIC in 1914 had already embarked on the path to creating a global economy. The first attempt by the money mafia to create world government would come in the Treaty of Versailles in 1920. The United States never signed it.)
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C.V. Starr, who was born on Oct. 15, 1892, graduated from Fort Bragg High School in 1909. He began selling life insurance for the James Nelson Realty Co. in Fort Bragg around 1913. In 1914 he moved to San Francisco to sell auto insurance for the Pacific Coast Casualty Co. In 1917 he went to work for an insurance brokerage firm, Shean & Deasy, leaving them to join the army. Logic suggests he came out of the service 8 months later when the Armistice was signed as a buck private. As a soldier, he went no where and did nothing at a time when soldiers might spend one whole hitch waiting for one stripe. Some of Starr's biographers claim he came out of the army as a sergeant, others claim he made lieutenant. Neither makes sense and sound like someone remodeling Starr's past to give him a biography worthy of a wealthy man's latter-year stature.
Starr and Frank Raven formed American Asiatic Underwriters—an insurance agency selling pollicies, not issuing them. Raven had been selling insurance in China since 1904, and had been very successful. He amassed several million dollars, enough to begin underwriting policies. That history's probably correct. At some point, Starr and Raven formulated plans to create an insurance company that would actually insure the policyholders. That, too, is correct. But, that company was not AIG. It was AAU.
Starr returned to the United States and convinced several American insurers—in particular Globbe Life, Rutgers and National Union—to act as a re-insurer, coveriing AAU's risk. There may have been a stipulation that forced AAU to open sales offices in the United States since that happened. But now, at age 29, Starr was on his way. But not with AIG. The new company was American International Underwriters [AIU].
(My research revealed an American International Group IPO to purchase AIU. I could not determine the date of the IPO.) Starr and his partner managed to build a very lucrative, very successful insurance company with relatively low capital in about two decades. They were so successful that AIU was under contract to manage all of AIG's overseas property-casualty business. Using guesswork alone it's likely the IPO was exercised sometime between 1947 when Mao overran China and 1950 when Starr created a new entity, CV Starr & Company. Or, at the latest, in 1955 when he formed the CV Starr Foundation whose wealth was comprised largely of AIG stock that is now worth about $3.5 billion. None of the various websites contain the history of AAU, AIU, AIG or AIC. It's almost like all of them encourage legend building.
The third layer of secrecy like the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh layers of secrecy are, well...heavily shrouded secrecy. Piled on, layer after layer, to make it impossible for anyone to learn the truth about the wealth of the wealthiest families in the world. That wealth is so vast that it simply can't be measured in terms of dollars and cents.
The estimated "wealth" of the truly wealthy is calculated not on the total gross worth of the cash, investments and other wealth of that individual or family, but on the interest received on those those investments and holdings that are paid directly to that individual or family quarterly or annually and reported to the IRS as income. Roughly 99% of the wealth of these individuals is sheltered in tax-free trusts and foundations.
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When you examine the maze that obfuscates a man who was not part of the world's elite but merely brushed the shroud that shields them, you can begin to understand how, when you ask 20 different people who the six richest men in the world might be, you will get at least a dozen answers with few of them actually getting it right. That explains how one of the most powerful corporations in the world can simply slip through the cracks. For part one click below.
Click here for part -----> 1,
