{"id":314956,"date":"2026-04-13T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=314956"},"modified":"2026-04-11T21:52:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T20:52:24","slug":"all-wars-are-bankers-wars-iran-and-the-bankers-endgame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/04\/all-wars-are-bankers-wars-iran-and-the-bankers-endgame\/","title":{"rendered":"All Wars Are Bankers\u2019 Wars: Iran and the Bankers\u2019 Endgame"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Prof. Caroll Quigley, Georgetown University, Tragedy and Hope (1966)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

11 Apr 2026\u00a0<\/em>– In February 2026, the United States and Israel launched surprise airstrikes on Iran. The officially proffered reasons \u2014 preventing Iran\u2019s acquisition of a nuclear weapon and forestalling its aggression \u2014 have not held up under scrutiny. As James Corbett documented<\/a>\u00a0in recent Corbett Report episodes, the nuclear pretext appears to be recycled propaganda, and the scale and timing of the strikes raise deeper questions about motive.<\/p>\n

The thesis that \u201cAll Wars Are Bankers\u2019 Wars\u201d was popularized by Michael Rivero in\u00a0a 2013 documentary<\/a>\u00a0by that name. His\u00a0accompanying article<\/a>\u00a0begins with a quote from Aristotle (384-322 BCE):<\/p>\n

\n

The most hated sort [of moneymaking], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural use of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rivero then traces how private banking interests have financed and profited from conflicts on both sides for centuries \u2014 from the founding of the Bank of England in 1694 to fund William III\u2019s wars to modern regime-change wars.<\/p>\n

Full-Spectrum Financial Dominance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Other commentators point to the report of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) titled \u201cRebuilding America\u2019s Defenses<\/a>\u201d (September 2000), which called for \u201cfull-spectrum\u201d U.S. military forces to achieve global preeminence. It postulated the need for a \u201ccatastrophic and catalyzing event \u2014 like a new Pearl Harbor\u201d to accelerate the military transformation the authors envisioned.<\/p>\n

This was followed by a 2007\u00a0Democracy Now<\/em>\u00a0interview in which Gen.\u00a0Wesley Clark revealed<\/a>\u00a0that weeks after 9\/11, he had been shown a classified Pentagon memo outlining plans to \u201ctake out seven countries in five years\u201d: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran. The first six have since been destabilized or regime-changed. Iran, considered the ultimate prize for Middle East dominance and oil control, remains the last one standing.<\/p>\n

Why those seven, and why was Iran the ultimate prize? Greg Palast\u2019s 2013 article titled \u201cLarry Summers and the Secret \u2018End-Game\u2019 Memo<\/a>\u201d supplied the missing financial logic. In 1999, the world was opened to unregulated derivatives trading, so that sovereign bonds, oil flows, shipping routes, and war-risk policies could all be collateralized, rehypothecated (pledged multiple times over), and gambled upon. The lynchpin was the 1997 WTO Financial Services Agreement (the Fifth Protocol to GATS), which became operational in 1999.<\/p>\n

None of the seven targeted countries joined the WTO, and they were also not members\u00a0of the Bank for International Settlements<\/a>\u00a0(BIS). That left them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers\u2019 central bank in Switzerland. Other countries that were later identified as \u201crogue states<\/a>\u201d were also not members of the BIS, including North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

As for Iran, it is not only the largest and strongest of the Islamic countries but operates the world\u2019s only fully interest-free (riba-free) banking regime. This stands in direct contrast to the conventional Western model, which relies on interest as its primary revenue mechanism. \u201cMoney making money out of itself\u201d underpins the global derivatives complex, which is built on rehypothecated, collateralized debt-at-interest.<\/p>\n

The last piece in the financial control grid was detailed in David Rogers Webb\u2019s 2024 book\u00a0The Great Taking<\/a>. The Everything Bubble, including what some commentators estimate to be more than a quadrillion dollars in derivative bets, is just waiting for a pin. When it bursts, it will trigger large institutional bankruptcies; and under the legal machinery Webb documents, the derivative players will take all.<\/p>\n

The 2026 Hormuz insurance crisis triggered by Lloyd\u2019s of London could be that pin. More on all that below.<\/p>\n

The City of London and Lloyd\u2019s Weaponize Chaos<\/strong><\/p>\n

For more than three centuries, the City of London \u2013 the \u201cSquare Mile\u201d that is London\u2019s financial center \u2014 has financed both sides of wars and sold insurance against the destruction that would follow. Lloyd\u2019s of London is the insurance pillar of the City\u2019s financial control grid. It is\u00a0not actually an insurance company<\/a>\u00a0but is a corporate body that \u201coperates as a partially-mutualized marketplace within which multiple financial backers, grouped in\u00a0syndicates, come together to pool and spread\u00a0risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lloyd\u2019s has built its reputation on always performing, but it performs at a cost. In 1898, it formalized long-standing practice by introducing the \u201cFree of Capture and Seizure\u201d clause, stripping war risks from standard policies so it could charge extortionate premiums when conflict erupted. It exercised that clause in both world wars and is exercising it in 2026.<\/p>\n

After the strikes on Iran, Lloyd\u2019s Joint War Committee expanded its \u201chigh-risk\u201d zone in the Middle East. Several of its underwriters issued 72-hour cancellation notices effective March 5, and\u00a0war-risk premiums for Hormuz transits jumped<\/a>\u00a0from 0.25% to 1\u20135% of hull value. Lloyd\u2019s has stressed that coverage remains available \u2014 at the right price. But for a $100 million oil tanker, that means an extra $1\u20135 million per voyage, a premium the owners are understandably reluctant to pay.<\/p>\n

The Private Credit Spark<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, other dark clouds are hovering over the market. Financial analyst\u00a0Stephanie Pomboy warns<\/a>\u00a0that the $1.5-3 trillion private credit market is in lockdown, forcing fire sales of liquid assets; and the much larger $5 trillion BBB-rated corporate bond market is teetering. Downgrades will force mass selling, and pensions face a $4 trillion shortfall.<\/p>\n

The Hormuz crisis supplies the perfect accelerant to this collateral crisis: higher oil prices create inflation, which raises bond yields (interest), collapsing the value of collateral and triggering margin calls across the derivatives game board. Margin calls then force private credit funds into fire sales.<\/p>\n

This is one reason some commentators\u00a0point to the City of London<\/a>\u00a0as the real architect of the Middle East chaos. The old war-insurance machine and the new derivatives machine operate together. One creates the chaos premium; the other harvests it through rehypothecation and legal seizure.<\/p>\n

Palast and the End Game Memo: Making the World Safe for Derivatives\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guaranteeing against shipping loss is one type of insurance, but a much bigger insurance trap is the derivatives market. Sold as a form of insurance against market risk, derivatives are a speculative betting game that extracts rents from all major economic flows.<\/p>\n

In his 2013 article, Greg Palast presented evidence of a secret 1997 memo to Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers from Timothy Geithner (then U.S. Ambassador to the WTO acting for Summers) describing the \u201cEnd-Game\u201d of the WTO Financial Services negotiations. Geithner wrote to Summers, \u201cAs we enter the end-game\u2026 I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs \u2026.\u201d The memo then listed the private phone numbers of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan, numbers which Palast confirmed were real.<\/p>\n

What was the end-game? Palast wrote:<\/p>\n

\n

US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.\u00a0 That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.\u00a0 It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.<\/em><\/p>\n

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:\u00a0\u201cderivatives trading.\u201d \u2026 Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.<\/em><\/p>\n

But what was the use of turning U.S. banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?<\/em><\/p>\n

The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five:\u00a0 eliminate controls on banks\u00a0in every nation on the planet\u00a0\u2013\u00a0in one single move.\u2026\u00a0The bankers\u2019 and Summers\u2019 game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026 The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives \u201cproducts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The WTO Financial Services Agreement became the battering ram for opening global markets to this derivative play. Every member nation was forced to open its banking system or face sanctions. In 1999, the portion of Glass-Steagall separating investment banking from depository banking in the U.S. was repealed, leaving depositors\u2019 money vulnerable to speculative risk. Derivatives then exploded. Sovereign bonds, oil contracts, shipping insurance policies, and war-risk premiums were all sliced into credit-default swaps, hedges, and other derivative products.<\/p>\n

Derivatives trading has since become one of the most concentrated and profitable businesses on the planet, and it is almost entirely controlled by a handful of megabanks. According to\u00a0data<\/a>\u00a0from the Bank for International Settlements and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the top five U.S. banks alone hold roughly 90% of all U.S. bank derivatives, with JPMorgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley dominating the global over-the-counter market. These institutions capture the lion\u2019s share of derivative profits, especially during periods of volatility when the \u201cchaos premium\u201d spikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Great Taking\u201d \u2014 the Legal Trap Granting Derivatives Super-Priority in Bankruptcy\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In\u00a0The Great Taking<\/em>, David Rogers Webb lays bare the final piece in this financial control grid: virtually every security today is dematerialized (digitized) and pooled in central depositories. Quiet changes to the Uniform Commercial Code and equivalent E.U. rules have turned ordinary investors into mere \u201centitlement holders\u201d holding only a legal claim against their brokerages.<\/p>\n

As for bank depositors, they have for centuries been categorized as mere \u201ccreditors\u201d of their banks. Once the money is deposited, legal title passes to the bank.\u00a0The depositor holds only a contractual claim<\/a>\u00a0(a demand liability) that ranks as an unsecured creditor position in the event of insolvency.<\/p>\n

In any insolvency, stocks, bonds, and deposits are legally collateral for the derivatives complex \u2014 collateral that has been rehypothecated multiple times over. And when the derivative collateral fails, the rehypothecated house of cards that has been built on it collapses. Margin calls cascade, super-priority is triggered, and the Great Taking begins. (For more on this quite complicated subject, see Webb\u2019s book and my earlier article\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Interest-Free Islamic Banking: The Structural Obstacle<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what did it matter if Iran and a handful of other countries declined to join in this lucrative bankers\u2019 game? The risk was that when depositors and shareholders realized that they did not actually own their funds, they would move their assets to those safe zones. The holdout countries were also safe from the sort of sanctions imposed by Western governments (and enforced by Western banks and clearing houses) on Russian central bank assets after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

Leading this band of holdouts was Iran, which since its 1983 Law for Usury-Free Banking Operations has run the world\u2019s\u00a0only fully interest-free (riba-free) banking regime<\/a>. Its banks use Sharia-compliant contracts \u2014 profit-sharing (musharakah<\/em>), cost-plus financing (murabaha)<\/em>, and leasing (ijara<\/em>) \u2014 instead of charging or paying interest. This banking model stands in direct contrast to the conventional Western model, which relies on interest as its primary revenue stream and underpins the global derivatives complex with collateralized, rehypothecated debt.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s system was designed to eliminate usury and align finance with real economic activity and risk-sharing rather than speculative debt. It has long been viewed as structurally incompatible with the interest-based, collateral-heavy architecture of City of London and Wall Street finance \u2014 an architecture that requires perpetual debt servicing and easily rehypothecated assets to feed the derivatives machine.<\/p>\n

By rejecting interest at the national level, Iran has thus insulated itself and its financial partners from the control grid that has made the global \u201cGreat Taking\u201d possible.<\/p>\n

The Insurance Chaos Has Softened but the \u201cBlack Swan\u201d Still Hovers\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Strait of Hormuz is not fully closed, but\u00a0traffic remains severely reduced<\/a>\u00a0under Iran\u2019s selective, permission-based transit regime. Only vessels from \u201cfriendly\u201d or non-hostile nations are being cleared after prior coordination with Iranian authorities. Significant backlogs persist, with more than 1,000 vessels reported waiting or diverted and over 34,000 shipping routes rerouted in the first four weeks of disruption.<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s $20 billion reinsurance facility announced on March 6 is now operational and has been\u00a0doubled to $40 billion<\/a>. Additional major U.S. insurers have joined, while Lloyd\u2019s of London has engaged in related discussions. The facility remains centered on American carriers with U.S. government backing. But analysts doubt it will restart widespread commercial traffic without broader liability protection and safer conditions.<\/p>\n

In short, the \u201cinsurance chaos\u201d trigger has eased but has not vanished. Premiums remain elevated, uncertainty lingers, and the collateral and derivatives pressures Webb described are still in play.<\/p>\n

Conclusions and Resolutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is now widely regarded as having been triggered by the unchecked explosion of unregulated derivatives \u2014 especially credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations \u2014 which turned subprime mortgages into\u00a0a systemic time bomb<\/a>. The damage was not confined to the United States:\u00a0developing countries suffered<\/a>\u00a0heavily as well.<\/p>\n

Today the risk of a crash is even greater than during the GFC. The\u00a0global OTC derivatives market<\/a>\u00a0has officially ballooned to a notional value of $846 trillion, more than seven times the size of the entire world economy.<\/p>\n

Long-range political solutions are possible. Congress could restore Glass-Steagall and impose a financial transaction tax. State governments could withdraw their approval of relevant portions of the UCC and form public banks that can protect against local bank bankruptcies. (See my earlier articles\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But the immediate need in the current context is to settle the conflict with Iran, and settle it fast, before another black-swan shock ignites the derivatives daisy chain and activates the final Great Taking on a global scale.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Ellen Brown is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, an attorney, founder\/chairperson of the\u00a0<\/em>Public Banking Institute<\/a>, and author of thirteen books including\u00a0<\/em>Web of Debt<\/a>,\u00a0The Public Bank Solution<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/em>Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age<\/a>.\u00a0Her articles are at\u00a0<\/em>ellenbrown.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ellenbrown.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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