Reading this Daily Beast story, “Vatican Banker Running Scared: Gotti Tedeschi Could Turn Whistle-Blower,” by Barbie Latza Nadeau, I had the most uncanny sense of déjà vu. This account perfectly fits within the broad context of power elite analysis regarding international banking (frequently discussed by Ron Paul) and the relationship between high governing elites, their possible connections to organized crime, money-laundering, and systemic financial instability of the entire fractional-reserve banking network.
These very topics were of course covered in-depth at the time of the earlier Vatican Banking scandal of the 1980s. That scandal had wide implications both internationally and in Italy and the United States in particular. An excellent example of this type of coverage was Penny Lernoux’s masterful book, In Banks We Trust: Bankers and Their Associates The CIA, The Mafia, Drug Traders, Dictators, Politicians, and the Vatican. Here is an outline of this book.
Lernoux starts her narrative with the Penn Square Bank scandal in Oklahoma City and moves outward from there to the financial world at-large. An excellent companion book is Pete Brewton’s The Mafia, CIA, & George Bush.
I was fascinated (almost obsessed) with all this at the time because it was my first real introduction to how the internecine web of connections within the world of finance, politics, intelligence, and organized crime interlocked. I read almost everything I could get my hands on.
As I have often observed at LRC, the “deep political” history of the 1970s and 1980s is substantially different than presented in popular accounts or establishment court history.
5:02 pm on June 20, 2012
