EN — LARRY ROMANOFF — Nations Built on Lies — How the US Became Rich — Volume 1 – Part 5 — Asset Theft and Financial Crimes

 

Nations Built on Lies

Volume 1 - How the US Became Rich

Part 5

© Larry Romanoff, October, 2021 

Part 5 – Asset Theft and Financial Crimes

Part 4 of 6 

Contents Part 5

The Spoils of War

Japan's Golden Lily

Treasure Island

The Great Gold Robbery - Part I - The US FED

The Great Gold Robbery - Part II - Citibank

US Gold Purchase Act of 1933

US Silver Purchase Act of 1934

God Save the Queen

My Currency, But Your Problem

The World Bank and the IMF

 

The Spoils of War

I began one section on colonisation by describing Iraq as a cradle of civilisation. One result of that long history is the existence of archaeological artifacts, art treasures, scrolls and other items accumulated over the course of centuries, many of great financial value but also of immense historical significance. Most have disappeared. American troops looted most of the country, with many Iraqi museums today being completely empty. Valuables and historical artifacts were stolen not only from museums and libraries, but also from private homes. Iraq was looted in totality. Published estimates claimed that during combat actions at least 200,000 items of art and culture, many of which were of inestimable value to the history of the world, were stolen from Iraqi museums in Baghdad, Mosul, and other cities. The US government claims these were only a few rogue actions of which it disapproved, but the facts tell us otherwise, and indeed many of these items have appeared in museums and private collections – in Israel, among other places.

In Germany after the Second World War, the US violated solemn agreements it had made only months earlier when its troops entered the Soviet Occupation Zone and stole more than 100 tons of gold and silver bullion from the Reichsbank, in addition to priceless collections of Soviet art and documents. Some art was eventually returned under Soviet protest, but the gold and silver had somehow disappeared. The Soviet Union insists that the US still holds priceless collections of stolen Soviet art, a claim the US dismissed, but then was caught in a lie when researchers uncovered documents proving the US had indeed kept a huge amount of art treasures – which had by then disappeared into private collections by the usual group of suspects. There were also documented reports that at the end of the Second World War, the US military emptied a train of 24 cars filled with gold, silver and various expensive art objects estimated to be worth many billions at the time. As well, an additional several billions in gold disappeared from the Reichsbank at about the same time, and has never been accounted for.

The details of European treasure thefts are murky and very complicated, with claims and counterclaims, being easy and tempting to dismiss treasure-hunting stories about Germany as exaggerated tales of war. Today, (and for the last 70 years) we have been inundated with tales of the Germans looting precious metals and invaluable works of art throughout Europe, most particularly from the Jews, but there is a whole lot more to the story than this. For one thing, after the Jews completed their Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, they looted the entire country, beginning with all the gold in the central bank which was shipped to the US as payment to Jacob Schiff for financing the revolution. But Russia was looted of much more than gold, the relatively well-off middle class owning billions in precious metals, artifacts and invaluable works of art. Most of this was removed from the country, much of it to Germany and Austria, when the Bolsheviks were evicted. It is therefore likely that much of the art the Germans supposedly looted from the Jews had itself been looted from Russia, the lack of publicity and subsequent claims due primarily to the fact that the Bolsheviks massacred the entire middle class of Russia in their gulags, meaning the original owners were all dead and there was nobody left to complain. Still, the tales of looted European treasure persist to this day, with occasional new finds, new treasure maps and yet more new stories. Nevertheless, documentation does exist to evidence claims that the US and the FED did indeed loot Germany severely at the end of the war. Given the facts of Operation Paperclip, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Japan’s Golden Lily

However, there is another matter of looting, this one involving Japan, that is a bit more sinister and in a league of its own in terms of victors claiming spoils of war. To begin, we need to consider a few apparently unrelated facts.

The first is that, in terms of public knowledge of atrocities and war crimes during World War II, almost everyone is aware of the crimes, real and imagined, including the looting of gold and valuables, committed by Germany, but almost no one, most especially including the Japanese people themselves, is aware of the vast catalogue of almost unbelievable atrocities committed by the Japanese.