Episode 64: JFK - the Steel Crisis & "the Ides of April"

We're so accustomed to Crony Capitalist Hell that it's difficult - if not impossible - for us to imagine a US President telling Big Business, "You're not gonna lie to us and steamroll the economy." And actually meaning it. And then paying the ultimate price for not playing ball the way Presidents are supposed to. 😞


Links:

https://consaracytheories.com/f/ttw-jfk-didnt-play-bullsht-with-us-steel

https://original.newsbreak.com/@eric-hancock-1751173/3308731844294-what-did-we-lose-that-day-a-comprehensive-guide

https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-30

https://www.amazon.com/Steel-Presidency-1962-Grant-McConnell/dp/0393330869

https://www.amazon.com/Battling-Wall-Street-Kennedy-Presidency/dp/1615776680

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/IdesOfApril.html

https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1439193886

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

Sara's book Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjöld is available now! Click here to buy it on Amazon. 

Transcript

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Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

JFK Steel Crisis, Ides of April, price hike, corporate greed, economic impact, defense contracts, labor unions, inflationary spiral, mainstream media, corporate America, Kennedy legacy, military industrial complex, public interest, economic strategy, crony capitalism.

 Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know well you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I want to talk about the steel crisis and the Ides of April. It's pretty ballsy for a mainstream media news outlet to allude to political murder, ie Julius Caesar, and Beware the Ides of March regarding a sitting US president, and then lo and behold, that same leader is publicly executed the following year. Things that make you go, Hmm, choose your frosty beverage of choice as we approach the Ides of April, and we will saddle up and take this ride last year on April 11 on the con-sara-cy theories blog, I wrote the post that time when JFK didn't play bullshit with us. Steel in this blog post, I also quote from my interview last year with news break. They asked me, What about the big business side of things, to which I replied in 62 steel prices were going up, and JFK felt that, in turn, would cause everything else to go up in price as well. An agreement was initially made that the steel industry would not raise prices, and the unionized workers would see a small overall increase without higher wages. Instead, the steel companies raised their prices. This leads to JFK private remark about how all businessmen are sobs probably even truer today than it was then publicly. He has a press conference on april 11 where he says that what the steel industry has done is a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest. He points out that the workers made a sacrifice while the executives wanted their fat payday. Of course, we know such things happen all the time. Now, he goes on in the same press conference to point out that the price hike of steel will be imitated across industries and lead to increases in everything from cars to homes to tools. If you listen to the recording of the conference, you can hear the irritation in his voice. One of JFK solutions is to take expensive defense contracts away from the companies participating in the hikes. In the face of this, the steel companies decide to cancel their price hikes, after all. But this is yet another facet of JFK legacy where disagreement abounds. Some view this as a victory against greedy corporate moguls and their dastardly ways, while others argue that JFK was meddling where he shouldn't have been, and even that he killed an already problem filled industry. It couldn't have been that the steel crisis of the 70s and 80s. No, we have to pin even the decline of the steel industry on JFK is unwillingness to be bullied by them. On and on it goes since his april 11 news conference is in the public domain, I want to play a few minutes of that for you, because it's so impactful to hear his words in his voice. I mean, you can hear the anger. You can just almost picture steam coming out of his ears as he's delivering his remarks about what the steel companies have decided to do. 

The simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest in this serious hour in our nation's history, when we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and Southeast Asia, when we are devoting our energies to economic recovery and stability, when we are asking reservists to leave their homes and families for months on end and service men to risk their lives and four were killed in the last two days In Vietnam, and asking union members to hold down their wage requests at a time when restrain and sacrifice are being asked of every citizen, the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans, if this rise in the cost of steel is imitated by the rest of the industry in. Instead of rescinded, it would increase the cost of homes, autos, appliances and most other items for every American family. It would increase the cost of machinery and tools to every American businessman and farmer. It would seriously handicap our efforts to prevent an inflationary spiral from eating up the pensions of our older citizens and our new gains and gains in purchasing power, it would add Secretary McNamara inform me this morning, an estimated $1 billion to the cost of our defenses at a time when every dollar is needed for national security and other purposes, it will make it more difficult for American goods to compete in foreign markets, more difficult to withstand competition from foreign imports, and thus more difficult to improve our balance of payments position and stem the flow of gold, and it is necessary to stem it for our national security if we're going to pay for our security commitments abroad, and it would surely handicap our efforts to induce other industries and unions to adopt responsible price and wage policies. The facts of the matter are that there is no justification for an increase in steel prices. The recent settlement between the industry and the Union, which does not even take place until July 1, was widely acknowledged to be non inflationary, and the whole purpose and effect of this administration's role, which both parties understood, was to achieve an agreement which would make unnecessary any increase In prices steel output per man is rising so fast that labor costs per ton of steel can actually be expected to decline in the next 12 months. And in fact, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics informed me this morning that and I quote employment costs per unit of steel output in 1961 were essentially the same as they were in 1958 unquote, the cost of major raw materials, steel, scrap and coal, has also been declining, and for an industry which has been generally operating at less than two thirds of capacity, its profit rate has been normal and can be expected to rise sharply this year, in view of the reduction in idle capacity, their lot has been easier than that of 100,000 steel workers thrown out of work in the last three years, the industry's cash dividends have exceeded $600 million in each of the last five years, and earnings in the first quarter of this year were estimated in the February 28 Wall Street Journal to be among the highest in history, in short, at a time when they could be exploring how more efficiency and better prices could be obtained, reducing prices in this industry in recognition of lower costs, their unusually good labor contract, their foreign competition, and their increase In production and profits which are coming this year, a few gigantic corporations have decided to increase prices in ruthless disregard of their public responsibilities. The Steel Workers Union can be proud that it abided by its responsibilities in this agreement, and this government also has responsibilities which we intend to meet. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are examining the significance of this action in a free, competitive economy. The Department of Defense and other agencies are reviewing its impact on their policies of procurement, and I am informed that steps are underway by those members of the Congress who plan appropriate inquiries into how these price decisions are so quickly made and reached, and what legislative safeguards may be needed to protect the public interest. Price and wage decisions in this country, except for a very limited restrictions in the case of monopolies and national emergency, strikes are and ought to be freely and privately made. But the American people. Will have a right to expect in return for that freedom a higher sense of business responsibility for the welfare of their country than has been shown in the last two days. Some time ago, I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country, and I asked the steel companies in the last 24 hours, we had their answer. 

In my blog post. I also write we're so accustomed now to crony capitalist hell that it's hard for us to imagine a US president conducting a news conference to lambast an entire industry for a price hike and actually meaning it JFK wanted to avoid a price hike on steel because he knew it would impact the entire economy and cause inflation. The labor unions agreed that they would take a small increase on benefits, but would not ask for a wage increase. In turn, the steel companies would not raise prices, as if we can trust corporations to be true to their word. Roger Blough, the CEO of US Steel, made an appointment to see JFK in the Oval Office, and handed him a memo stating that US Steel would enact a 3.5% price hike. After all, you gotta imagine the cojones on this guy to pass a piece of paper to the US president like boom MF-er, here's reality. Naturally, Kennedy is infuriated. He is made to look like an impotent fool, which presidents are in modern times, sock puppets of the real masters and the steel workers are also played for fools. In his book, promises kept, Irving Bernstein reported that JFK was so angry about this betrayal that there should have been a speedometer on his rocking chair. He doesn't mean to them, however, he looks at removing profitable defense contracts from the steel companies participating in the price hikes, and makes his feelings clearly known during the April 11 news conference, the steel companies acquiesced and canceled their price hike in the mainstream media the following month, Fortune publishes steel the Ides of April, calling to mind the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March. I guess when you refuse to let Corporal America screw everyone unmercifully, you can expect a public execution, which in fact, did happen on November 22 1963 in Dallas. In said article, Kennedy is accused of exerting jaw bone control over prices, and his April 11 news conference was called a vitriolic and demagogic assault. In October of 1962 Fortune compared Kennedy to Diocletian and called him a reactionary and occultist. So perhaps such heated rhetoric isn't overly surprising, and the relationship between the MSM and its corporate masters is certainly no shock. Nowadays, politicians claim they want peace, yet foment war. Claim they stand for the general public, yet line the pockets of the fat cats. Claim to stand for liberty, yet shutter mom and pop shops and let the conglomerates remain open claim they want fiscal responsibility, yet print up reams and reams of bullshit fiat currency. Are things so far gone that we can't expect anything different or better in modernity? Well, I'll answer my own question, yes, things are so far gone that we cannot expect anything different or better in maternity, in modernity, we are stuck in crony capitalist hell, and I just don't see that getting any better. In Donald Gibson's fantastic book, battling Wall Street the Kennedy presidency, which I highly recommend. I have a very well worn copy that I have visited and revisited many times. Go on Amazon. Go on thrift books like wherever you can find an affordable copy. I highly, highly recommend that you get a hold of this book. Chapter one is titled The steel crisis as a telltale event. And it's interesting, because before he can ever even get into the meat and potatoes of his book, in the introduction, which he titles finding Kennedy. He writes, there are too many John F Kennedys. There is the aimless Kennedy and the ambitious Kennedy. There is Kennedy the liberal and Kennedy the conservative. There is Kennedy the hawk and Kennedy the dove. There is the Kennedy who was a friend and servant of the East Coast big business interests and the Kennedy who was anathema to the power brokers, no joke. I mean, this is one of the reasons why. On the conspiracy theories vlog, I also did a series of posts about how sex stories are a big business. It's not that I myself really care about what he was doing with his pee-pee, yeah, I've said this before, like you think of vivid Julia Roberts's character in Pretty Woman, and how she says to Richard Gere, aka Edward Lewis, you're a rich, good looking guy, you can get a million girls for free. I think we sort of know the way that the world works. A guy that. Rich and powerful and good looking and charming, probably not going to have that much trouble getting some sexual action, probably not going to be a real challenge for somebody like that. But my point is, it's a business, it's a cottage industry, and it's also a smear campaign. And I feel like James D Eugenio does an excellent job in his essay for probe magazine, the posthumous pop pop of John F Kennedy of showing this. The idea is to drag his name through the mud. Whatever you want, whatever it is that turns you off, whether it's the guy was a philanderer, the Camelot myth wasn't true. It wasn't really King John and Queen Jackie, and they were just two little love birds sitting in a tree. He was cheating on her, and oh, he's supposedly in with the mafia, and oh, he's supposedly paying for back alley abortions. Oh, that doesn't scandalize you. Well, then we'll say he was trying to murder Castro. He was orchestrating political pop pops left and right. He was a scumbag. He was a drug head. He was freebasing coke and dropping acid in the middle of the White House. And you're like, Jesus Christ, man. How did he ever if, if even a fraction of these things were true? How did he ever accomplish anything? How did he take a bath? How did he eat a sandwich? How did he get up and give a speech if he was 24/7 Sex, drugs and rock and roll before we can even get into like, Hey, here's an example of Kennedy saying, I'm not going to bend over and take it from these titans of industry. We have to first say like there are too many JFKs, and that's because people have worked so hard. And by people, I really mean the MSM, the corporate cronies, the Charlie India, alpha, the foxtrot, Bravo India, etc. The real, the the people, some of the some of the actual power brokers, and the people that represent the interest of said power brokers have worked so damn hard to make him as hateable as possible. Yet, I think the optimistic thing there is the general public has said, Fuck you. We don't want to hear this. We don't care. We don't care. Your smear campaigns don't mean anything to us, and that's why JFK still has a posthumous approval rating of like 90% I think John and Jane Q Public have been able to find enough truth in the middle of a cesspool of lies that they're just not fucking buying it. So in chapter one the steel crisis as a telltale event, Donald Gibson writes the April 1962 face off between President Kennedy and the US and US Steel has been described as the most dramatic confrontation in history between a president and corporate management. This and other similar descriptions reflect the significance of this confrontation accurately, but various interpretations of this conflict either contain inconsistencies or generate generate conclusions at odds with acknowledged facts. Well, Kell sum that way with Kennedy's legacy, also something more was involved than the management of one corporation or even a group of corporations, President Kennedy was forced into a confrontation with a segment of the US economic establishment that was far more influential than merely a group of big business executives. End quote. Again, I think we have to acknowledge that within Kennedy scholarship, even when presumably, ostensibly, you would have an event where he clearly tried to stand up for John and j and q public to do what he felt was right for the economy, which would not be kicking off an inflationary cycle, there still has to be some way, damn it, some way of interpreting his action as being shitty. On and on. It goes, just like I said to news break, on and on. It goes, I'm going to read again from Donald Gibson's book. Part of Kennedy's overall economic strategy was to prevent or limit price increases that would have a negative impact on the whole economy. I'm just going to butt in right there and say, Can you imagine how different things would be now if we had somebody like that in office? Instead, we get the AND operation warp speed and reams and reams of fiat currency. I mean, who couldn't see this coming from a mile down the road? You print up currency that's not backed by anything willy nilly, and you hand out these dumb ass stimulus checks that didn't hardly cover anything you. So of course, you're going to kick off inflation. I mean, anybody with even the most basic sense of economic knowledge is going to understand this. So when I hear about somebody being in that office saying, I want to prevent, or at least significantly limit price increases that would have a negative impact on the whole economy, my hand is in the air. Man, I want to know more. Please, please tell me about your plan. I'll continue to read. Steel was one of those items which played an important role in the cost and price of a wide variety of other products. When JFK took office in 1961 steel prices had been stable for a couple of years, but in the view of some experts, rising steel prices had been the largest contributor to industrial price increases between 1947 and 1958 because steel was so important to the economy as a whole, Kennedy decided to involve himself and his administration in an effort to help the steel companies and the union arrive at An agreement that would maintain the very recent price stability in steel. President Kennedy also wanted the US steel industry to be efficient and successful. So while he was asking for their cooperation in holding prices down, he was attempting to help the companies in three ways. First, the discussions with the steel Union were aimed at getting a very modest agreement that would keep labor costs from pushing prices up. Second, the President was recommending measures to Congress that would promise 10s of millions of dollars of additional capital to the steel industry. Third, Kennedy's overall economic plan was intended to stimulate growth in the economy generally, and this would particularly benefit the steel industry, which at the time, was operating at only 65% of capacity. In addition, Kennedy said that he was willing to consider any other option that would help the companies and keep prices stable. End Quote, Now that to me, doesn't sound like somebody who is radically left wing, a communist, radically anti business, etc. It's just someone saying there's one particular thing you don't need to do, because it will have a ripple effect across the entire economy. I'm willing to work with you. I'm willing to figure out what we can do so that everybody walks away a winner, and big business decides to flip him the bird in 1963 grant McConnell of the University of Chicago published an entire book dedicated just to this event, and it's titled Steele and the presidency 1962 in chapter one, Ominously Titled, Friday the 13th, appropriately enough, Bom Bom. Bom, he writes, shortly before six o'clock on the evening of Tuesday, April 10, 1962 the chairman of the board of the United States Steel Corporation, Mr. Roger Blau, walked into the White House for an abruptly arranged appointment with President John F Kennedy. After only a few words of greeting, Blau handed the President a four page mimeograph statement, the president read the first paragraph and then raced through the rest of the document. He quickly sent for the Secretary of Labor, Arthur J Goldberg, who rushed to the White House from his office with a speed that was a tribute to the new administration's emphasis upon vigor. Goldberg was given the document Blough had brought, and when he had read it through, quickly launched into a heated lecture to Blough. Blough replied quietly, and after a few minutes departed, the document was a rather dry announcement in the form of a press release that United States Steel was going to raise the general level of its prices at noon the next day. It also contained a variety of figures about the corporation's borrowings, its investments and its profits. Nevertheless, this statement, which was sent off to the newspapers before Blau had left the White House, was one of the most explosive pieces of news which had come to Washington in many years. Its detonation in the President's Oval Office shook the government as it had not been shaken since the disaster at Cuba's Bay of Pigs, and perhaps as it had not been shaken since long before that, the reverberations were felt in the whole of the political community, and they struck at the foundations of the economy during the three days that followed, Washington became a scene of activity of almost wartime intensity, the President spoke from an anger which he had not shown before in office, and his actions betrayed a mood that was described as cold fury. End quote in both McConnell's book and in Gibson's book, we learn another really interesting factoid that the decision to do this price hike had actually been made by US Steel several weeks before they decided to inform Kennedy. So this means that the company fat cats waited around for the labor agreement to be negotiated. COVID and announced and then for Kennedy to get this little pat on the back out in the media for his involvement before they notified him. So is it really that surprising that he was so pissed off about it? It's essentially like, hey, look, guy, we'll allow you to get involved, and we will allow you to make sure that the unions clamp down. We'll take a modest little increase of benefits, but we won't ask for a wage increase. You get them right where we want them. You do what's the most convenient for us, and then we're going to show up with our price hike. And you know, thanks for making them putty in our hands. Thanks for screwing them for us. But we'll take it from here. That yet again. That takes some real cojones. I want to segue now to the mainstream media's reaction to the steel crisis. There's a stereotype nowadays in America, that the media, the mainstream media, has a decidedly Neo liberal bend, and that they like to cater to neoliberal agenda. They like to fawn over whoever is involved with the Democratic Party and then persecute, I'm using air quotes here persecute the Republicans and in particular the Orange Man. So it is interesting, I think, to take a look at their reaction to a Democratic president who was saying, I don't want big business to steamroll the American public. We can figure out a way that's equitable for everyone, but this one particular price hike you just don't need to do right now. I'm going now to the radical.org website. I'll drop a link so you can check all of these out for yourself. This was from Jim Douglas, the person who wrote JFK in the unspeakable. This is from Jim Douglas, and it's dated from November 20, 2009 in his reflections on Seven Days in May, John Kennedy had given himself three bay of pigs. Type conflicts with his national security state before a possible coup. What about six? As Douglas writes, number one, the Bay of Pigs to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Three, American university address. Four, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Five, the beginning of the back channel, dialog with Fidel Castro. Six, JFK order to withdraw US troops from Vietnam. Douglas continues this, however, is a short list of the increasing conflicts between Kennedy and his national security state, a short list we can add to the list a seventh Bay of Pigs, the steel crisis, in which he profoundly alienated the military industrial complex before the Cuban missile crisis even took place. The steel crisis was a showdown the President had with us, steel and seven other steel companies over their price fixing violations of an agreement he had negotiated between US Steel and the United Steel Workers Union, and ahead on confrontation with the ruling elite of big steel, JFK ordered the Defense Department to switch huge military contracts away from the major steel companies to the smaller, more loyal contractors that had not defied him after the big steel companies bitterly backed down from their price raises. JFK and his brother Robert were denounced as symbols of ruthless power by the Wall Street power brokers at the center of the military industrial complex by an editorial titled steel the Ides of March, the month in which Kennedy faced down the steel executives. Henry Luce's Fortune magazine called to readers minds the soothsayers warning in Shakespeare of the pop pop of Julius Caesar, Fortune was warning Kennedy that his actions had confirmed the worst fears of corporate America about his presidency and would have dire consequences, as interpreted by the most powerful people in the nation. The steel crisis was a logical prelude to Dallas. End quote, wow, wow. There's also an excerpt here from Jim Douglas's book JFK and the unspeakable. In this we read the depth of corporate hostility toward Kennedy after the seal crisis. Can be seen by an unsigned editorial in Fortune media's are Henry Luce's magazine for the most fortunate, the editors of Fortune knew the decision to raise steel prices had been made by the Executive Committee of us. Steel's board of directors, it included top level officers from other huge financial institutions such as the Morgan guarantee Trust Company, the First National City Bank of New York, the Prudential insurance company, the Ford Foundation and at&t. When Roger Blau handed us Steel's provocative press release to the president, he did so on behalf of not only US Steel, but also these other financial giants in the United States, the fortune editorial therefore posed an intriguing question, why did the financial interest behind us steel announce the. Price increase in such a way as to deliberately provoke the President of the United States into a vitriolic and demagogic assault with the authority of an insider's knowledge that it denied having fortune answered its own question. There is a theory, unsupported by any direct evidence, that Blau was acting as a business statesman rather than as a businessman, judging his market. According to this theory, Kennedy's prior appeal to steel executives not to raise prices, leading to the contract settlement between the company and the Union had poised over the industry a threat of job owned control of prices for the sake of his company, the industry and the nation Blau sought a way to break through the bland harmony that has recently prevailed between government and business in plainer language, the President was acting too much like a president, rather than just another office holder beholden to the powers that be. Just going to stop and give a round of applause. Yeah, you don't defy corporate America. You don't defy the power brokers. You don't defy Wall Street or the military industrial complex. No, no, you don't US Steel on behalf of still higher financial interests. Therefore, taunted Kennedy so as to present him with a dilemma, he either had to accept the price hike and lose credibility, or react, as he did, with power, to roll back the increase and thereby unite the business world against him. His unswerving activist response then served to confirm the worst fears of corporate America that the threat of Jawbone control was no mere bugaboo. Was born out by the tone of President Kennedy's reaction and the threats of general business harassment by the government that followed the affront. Thus, the steel crisis, in Fortune's view, threatened to propel an activist, anti business President toward a fate like that of Julius Caesar, as Shakespeare had it. Caesar was warned of His coming pop pop by a soothsayer, Beware the Ides of March. Fortune gave Kennedy a deadly morning of its own by the title of its editorial steel the Ides of April Robert Kennedy's Justice Department continued its anti trust investigation into the steel companies. This is another No, no, you shouldn't be going there. US Steel and seven other companies were eventually forced to pay maximum fines in 1965 for their price fixing activities between 1955 and 1961 the steel crisis defined John and Robert Kennedy as Wall Street enemies. The President was seen as a state dictator, as the Wall Street Journal put it in the week after big steel surrendered to the Kennedys, the government set the price, and it did this by the pressure of fear, by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police. US News and World Report gave prominence in its April 30 1962 issue to an anti Kennedy article on planned economy and suggested the President was acting like a Soviet Commissar. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, became a symbol of ruthless power to the business Titans He treated so brusquely, whose corporations He then found in violation of the law. Media controlled by the same interests adopted the characterization of RFK as ruthless until his murder six years later. I'm going to butt in and say whatever may have been written right after RFK was killed. We still in in modern times, tend to think of the Kennedys in general, but more specifically, RFK as being ruthless. That stereotype has stuck even through decades. I'll continue to read from Douglas as John Kennedy became persona non grata to the economic elite of the United States. His popularity increased elsewhere. Funny how that works. It's almost like John and J Q Public really don't like the crony capitalist hellscape that we find ourselves in. He said on May 8, 1962 to a warmly welcoming convention of the United Auto Workers. Last week, after speaking to the Chamber of Commerce and the presidents of the American Medical Association, I began to wonder how I got elected, and now I remember I said last week to the chamber that I thought I was the second choice for president of a majority of the chamber, anyone else was the first choice. John Kennedy, the son of a rich man who had fought Wall Street and the Roosevelt administration, was beginning to sound like a class heretic himself. He told the UAW Harry Truman once said there are 14 or 15 million Americans who have the resources to have representatives in Washington to protect their interests, and that the interests of the great mass of other people, the 150 or 60 million, is the responsibility of the President of the United States, and I propose to fulfill it. After the steel crisis, President Kennedy felt so much hostility from the leaders of big business that he finally gave up trying to curry their support. He told advisor. Sorenson O'Donnell and Schlesinger, I understand better every day why Roosevelt, who started out such a mild fellow, ended up so ferociously anti business. It is hard as hell to be friendly with people who keep trying to cut your legs off. If Fortune's editors were right in seeing a deliberate provoc provocation of Kennedy, the instigators had succeeded in alienating the business elite from the president and vice versa. JFK joked about what his corporate enemies would do to him if they only had the chance. A year after the steel crisis, he learned before giving a speech in New York that elsewhere in the same hotel, the steel industry was presenting Dwight D Eisenhower with its Annual Public Service Award, I was their man of the year last year, said the president to his audience, they wanted to come down to the White House and give me their award, but the Secret Service wouldn't let them do it for the dark humor to work, Kennedy and his audience had to assume a secret service committed to shielding the president. However, as secret service agent Abraham Bolden had learned before he left the White House detail, the agents around Kennedy were joking in a more sinister direction, that they would step out of the way if a pop popper aimed a shot at the president in Dallas, the Secret Service would step out of the way, not just individually, but collectively, in his deepening alienation from the Charlie, India, alpha, the Pentagon and big business John Kennedy was moving consciously beyond the point of no return. Kennedy knew well the complicity that existed among the Cold War's corporate elite Pentagon planners and the heads of intelligence agencies. He was no stranger to the way systemic power worked in and behind the national security state, but he still kept acting for the interest of the great mass of the other people, and as his brother Robert put it, to prevent the specter of the death of the children of this country and around the world that put him more and more deeply in conflict with those who controlled the system. End quote, wow. At the bottom of the page on radical.org you can also read the full article from Fortune steal the Ides of April. I'm going to return now to Donald Gibson's book battling Wall Street, and chapter one, the steel crisis is a telltale event in his analysis of the steel crisis, Roy hoops says that the corporate decision to raise prices was approved by an executive committee that included company executives and members of us Steel's board of directors. Among those directors were Henry Heald, John Myers, Jr, Alexander Nagel, Charles Ingersoll, Amory Houghton and Joseph Spang. All of these men were not only directors of US Steel, but also held important positions in other institutions. For example, Myers was a Senior Vice President at the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. Heald, was president of the Ford Foundation and a director of American telephone and telegraph and of the equitable Life Assurance society. Nagel was a director of the First National City Bank Prudential insurance company, national biscuit CO and American sugar Refining Company. The remaining members of the executive committee and of the US Steel board represented a large number of other major banks and corporations, as well as a variety of important non corporate organization. He goes in a footnote to list some of these out General Mills, international nickel, lever brothers, Bank of Montreal, Bell Telephone, Royal Bank of Canada, British American Oil Company, Metropolitan Life, Corning, glass, Schlumberger, Gillette, Hanover bank, Atlantic refining and John mansville Corporation. Gets rather thick. The plot thickens, doesn't it? I'll continue to read when Kennedy referred to those with great power, he was talking about a group of men representing a multitude of important institutions. They were something more than just businessmen. Why did they want to undermine Kennedy? The answer to that question will appear if we look carefully at what the President was attempting to do, we will also see that Kennedy was not timid nor aimless, nor submissive, writing about the immediate consequences of the steel crisis, Joseph A Loftus of The New York Times observed by his decisive action and swift triumph over the giant steel industry. 44 year old John F Kennedy bid a place in the pantheon of strong presidents. This was the first historic domestic issue in which President Kennedy swiftly summoned all the power and prestige of his office and triumphed. History will decide whether the story is a Profile in Courage. End quote. So what do you think that's a great place to leave this episode. What do you think for me, my whole life, you know, I've said many times before, I was born toward the end of Gen X, my entire life, really growing up and coming of age in the 80s and 90s, crony capitalism is all I've ever known when you're young. Yeah, you still buy into the mythology of red versus blue, donkey versus elephant, Democrat versus Republican. As you get older, hopefully and more wiser, not everyone does, to be sure, but hopefully older and wiser, you begin to see that there's barely a dime's worth of difference between the two. They both want the government to continue to grow. You have Neo cons and neolibs that are War Hawks. There used to be the stereotype that Democrats, neolibs, leftists in general, were anti war, and the right wingers were always the ones frothing at the mouth for some new war. Now they all do. They all want these forever wars. It's crazy. So I think people of my generation, as well as the younger ones, the millennials, the Gen Z ers, crony capitalism, the constant wars, the threats of wars, the threats of emergency breaking news. It's taken up so much of our lives. I mean, I am able to remember the days before 24 hour news the days before, every five seconds you'd see a red banner of breaking news if someone really came on one of the major networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, to say, We interrupt your programming to bring you this special news update, special news bulletin. You knew some serious shit had gone down, something bad had happened, but now it's breaking news all the time. We don't even really pay as much attention to it anymore. It's breaking news every five seconds. So I think for me, it is. It's not only admirable, it's shocking to hear somebody say, I'm not going to let corporate America get away with this. I'm not going to let big business and big interests and Wall Street trample over everybody else. I mean, it's it's just not done anymore. And let's face it, the powers that be certainly sent a clear and unmistakable message when they publicly executed him in broad daylight on November 22 I mean, when you see the Zapruder film, you're you're not going to you're not going to mistake what actually happened that day. Now, if you want to believe it was Oswald acting alone from the sixth floor of the book depository, and he was a crazy communist Cook, and who knows why he did it. Maybe he just wanted to be famous. Maybe he just thought that he was some kind of shrimpy underling, and that would really get the attention of the nation. I mean, you can believe any of that, if you want to. It seems to me a lot more plausible that when we look at the people who were pissed off at Kennedy that really had the means, motives and opportunities, not only to orchestrate the murder, but then the subsequent cover up, when we start looking at the military industrial and military intelligence complex, we start looking at real power brokers with absurd amounts of money, the kind of money that would make the Kennedy family money look paltry by comparison. I'm not really getting the vibe that it was Oswald acting alone from the tsbd. Okay, I'm just saying, but yeah, stories like this, you you read them now, and you're like, Wow, good for him for trying to stand up for the public. Good for him for going out at a news conference and saying, I asked people to make the sacrifice to decide what you would be able to do for your country. We've got servicemen abroad. We've got people refusing to take a pay increase. They're trying to do what they can. We're all trying to come together to keep the economy in good shape. And these fat cats said, a big fuck you to America. It's not just that they gave a fuck you to Kennedy. It's they gave a fuck you to the entire American economy because they want their money. We're also very accustomed to the idea that corporations only answer to the shareholders, the board of directors, the shareholders, and they don't give a shit about the public, even though we're supposed to believe that they do. We're supposed to have all of these ESG, their environmental impact, and do they have good diversity, equity and inclusion, when you look at their board of directors, is it all white Anglo Saxon, Protestant males? Usually it still is right. That's like the historians they trot out. You're only supposed to believe whatever white Anglo Saxon old men, dudes, old men, straight dudes. Tell you to believe about Jack Kennedy. Never call on a woman, never call on a minority, never call on a person of color. It's always supposed to be old ass white men from these ivory towers that tell you what you're supposed to believe about Kennedy. Okay, got it sure those same old rich waspy dudes are running the show. They care about their profits. They care about making sure that their stock goes up or that they sell stock when it's high, because they know the economy is about to crash as we go on these yo yo cycles of QE and Qt and all of that nonsense. It's powerful to see somebody stand up to them and say, No, we're not going to take it up the behind from you. You're going to have to you're going to have to come back to the tennis court and play ball in a different way, because we're just not going to accept bad behavior. That's my thought. What do you think was he trying to exercise jaw bone control? Was he trying to function as some Diocletian dictator? Was he trying to price fix the whole market and tell big business what they could and could not do? Or was he trying to just simply stand up for John Jane Q Public, fulfill the obligation of his office and do the right thing for the economy. Judge for yourself, stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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