Things they forgot to teach us in school: the role of corporate "Protectors"

TrendCompass KeyMarkets report for 21 November 2024

If you went to university you may have learned that corporations are persons, that they have shareholders, boards of directors and an executive suite consisting of the CEO, CFO, COO, etc. It was only yesterday that I learned that corporations also had "protectors," or at least some of them do. I learned this from Mr. Mikhail Khodorkovsky (MK), former member of "Sembankirshchina," the gang of seven bankers who ruled Russia during the 1990s and controlled most of its wealth (estimated at around 60% of Russia's GDP at the time). Mr. Khodorkovsky recently gave an interview and explained the concept of "protector," which they forgot to teach to us in school:

MK: "We made the decision to have a [company] "Protector" in the Trust, this is a person that watches everything that is happening [with the company]. In the Trust, this is a person that watches everything that is happening. He must be completely independent and absolutely trusted, because he only has one function. In the moment he sees that the person holding a controlling stake in the company acts not, acts err.. under pressure let's say - acts under pressure, then he should open an envelope and hand over this control package to another person who will be written in that package. Our second person was [Leonid] Nevzlin but we never discussed it because no one should know who is second, who is third, who is fourth, who is fifth." 

Q: This is in case you get killed?

MK: No, in case they kill it's simpler. It's for example, if they take someone from the family hostage and start blackmailing with something related to the company. Since the company cannot be jeopardized, in this case the "Protector" must notice that I act under pressure and take away my powers. And that happened when they put me in prison. So they put me in prison, the protector made the decision that from there I can make decisions [only] under pressure and he passed the package to the next person.

Q: Can you name who the Protector was?

MK: Yes, of course. This is just a figure of great character whose role in the company everyone discussed differently, but no one knew the reality. [It was] the recently deceased Lord Jack Rothschild. He had the function of Protector. 

How legal transfer of ownership can pass from one individual to another, just like that, at the discretion of some absentee "protector" residing in London, is a bit of a mystery, but it did indeed work this way. I explained this relationship in part in my 2017 book "Grand Deception," about the events in Russia, but the book was banned only 5 weeks after I published it. Also, the sources I used in describing this particular relationship between MK and Lord Jacob Rothschild had been scrubbed clean from the internet. As a rule, the role of the London money lender oligarchy is always elaborately concealed from the public, which is probably why such details are not taught in universities either. 

In the portrait on the left, Jack shows us some sort of triangle or pyramid sign with his thumbs. Maybe that’s just how his hands fall at rest and feel most comfortable.

At this point, someone will object: that happened in Russia, which is deficient in democracy and the rule of law, duh - we all know that!. In the West, the rule of law is just awesome, and we have democracy, and human rights, etc. However, I would object right back: are we quite sure about all that? We know for a fact that not even members of U.S. Congress may know the identities of the shareholders of certain large corporations like GE, JP Morgan, Exxon Mobil, etc. They are secret even from the nation's lawmakers. It is then appropriate to ask, what else might be secret about the ownership and control of corporations?

When John Pierport Morgan died, everyone believed that he was the world's wealthiest man. But then it turned out that he only owned about 9% of his bank and was acting merely as the trustee of the bank's real owners who were (and perhaps still are) in the City of London. Another example recounted in the book “The Great Red Dragon” was A. T. Stewart, the man who supposedly revolutionized (and nearly monopolized) the American retail industry back in the late 19th century. Just like Mr. Khodorkovsky, A. T. Stewart sprang to great fortune overnight and from nowhere. The Scotsman owned a small shop on Broadway, only a few feet wide, where he sold needles, thread and tape.

Then somehow he came to control a massive retail business in palatial buildings, employing hundreds of clerks. He also had stores in Glasgow, Belfast, Paris and in Germany. His wealth was estimated at about $100 million. However, when he died, he left his widow only a paltry $1 million. The rest of his fortune was transferred to a certain Judge Hilton, who was seemingly his handler and number two in line of substitute trustees (it was known that Mr. Stewart met with the judge weekly and dined together every Sunday). 

The media at the time concluded that the crafty judge had cheated poor Ms. Stewart out of her rightful inheritance and a court battle ensued where it was established that her husband in fact owned no interest in A.T. Stewart & Co. but only collected commissions on sales. Judge Hilton himself was also only an agent of some power that remained hidden. However, the company he inherited was soon run out of business by three new retail establishments. With good quality merchandise and low prices they drove A. T. Stewart & Co. and another 1,000 retail merchants in New York to bankruptcy.

The new business model soon spread throughout the U.S. and much of the developed world. It was understood at the time that it was "the money power" exercising control from the shadows. As one merchant said at the time, "If things go on as they are, in a few years more, the Money Power will have monopolized the retail traffic, as it has monopolized and is now monopolizing all the other branches of business in the country." To deflect people's attention away from the Money Power, the anger was directed at the Jews and the new retail establishments were commonly referred to as "the Jew stores." In fact, Judge Hilton himself blamed the Jews for A. T. Stewart & Co's failure. Mr. Stewart's rise to power wasn't an isolated case: most of the oligarchs of that era were trustees of London Money Power.

The same was true for the Russian oligarchs that emerged from the Soviet Communist party after the USSR's 1991 collapse. Someone might object again: all that happened a long time ago, or it was in Russia. Today, in this day and age, we surely have transparency, rule of law, sanctity of contract, property rights, democracy and freedom, independent media, etc.!?! But what if all those wonderful props are subtly suggested to us (including through our universities) so that we wouldn't suspect that there really was a secret oligarchy exercising power from behind the shadows? That the whole liberal democratic order was a sham?

Such secret arrangements would be very difficult to prove, but if they did exist, they would help explain the rise to power of today's oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, George Soros, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett (oh, yes, him too), Elon Musk, Eric Schmitt, Peter Thiel, Robert Mercer and many others. It would also explain why in one way or another they all end up in bed with the Deep State, the CIA, the Pentagon and with political parties. We're all encouraged to admire these people for their genius and entrepreneurial spirit, but what if that's the product of the PR machinery which nudges us to think of Bill Gates as the great benefactor, of Warren Buffett of the kindly old grandfather who happens to be a brilliant stock picker, etc. Really, when was the last time any journalist asked Bill Gates or Warren Buffett a tough question? 

All this was true about Russia's oligarchs in the 1990s; they were always presented as young maverick businessmen reforming the economy and breaking new grounds, bringing capitalist free markets to Russia, etc, etc. Then there was the case of Elizabeth Holmes who likewise came out of nowhere to become the youngest female self-made billionaire until her company, Theranos collapsed in disgrace and it turned out that she invented nothing and controlled nothing.

The disintegration of that business model showed for the whole world to see, that Ms. Holmes was a stand-in, controlled by her board of directors (every last member was a veteran of the Deep State and US defence establishment) and the people who funded the whole fraud (I dissected that fraud in the article titled, “Theranos Scandal: the real story” The video version of that report is below:

Returning to Mr. Khodorkovsky's revelations today, they also suggest the ultimate reasons why today we find ourselves at the precipice of nuclear war: Lord Rothschild stole Yukos fair and square and then came the evil Mr. Putin and took back Yukos, which accounted for 20% of Russian oil production. So of course, now we must bring freedom, democracy, human rights, transparency, rule of law and property rights back to Russia even at the cost of setting the whole world on fire in the process.

Trading signals for Key Markets, 21 Nov. 2024

With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following signals:

After today’s changes, your exposure should be as follows:

Full Key Markets portfolio report is available at the following link:

TrendCompass Key Markets portfolio report for 21 Nov. 2024.

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Best regards,

Alex Krainer