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William E. Conway Jr. - Wikipedia

William E. "Bill" Conway Jr. (born August 27, 1949) is an American businessman and investor. He serves as Co-Executive Chairman of the Board, Founder of the Carlyle Group. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E….

He started his career by serving in a variety of positions in corporate finance, commercial lending, workout loans and general management for almost ten years with First National Bank of Chicago.
First Chicago Bank was a Chicago-based retail and commercial bank tracing its roots

to 1863. Over the years, the bank operated under several names including The First National Bank of Chicago and First Chicago NBD (following its 1995 merger with the former National Bank of Detroit). In 1998, First Chicago NBD merged with Banc One Corporation to form Bank One

Corporation, today a part of Chase.

NBD was founded in 1933 in Detroit in the midst of widespread bank failures during the Great Depression. Spurred by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to help stabilize the nation's banking system, NBD's shares were initially equally

owned by General Motors (GM) and by the U.S. government under the RFC.

Charles T. Fisher Jr., of the automobile body manufacturing family became a Director and the President in 1938, serving until his death in 1958.

In 1919, the Fisher brothers sold sixty percent of their

company to General Motors Corporation (GM).

Son Charles Jr. became president of the National Bank of Detroit and a director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during World War II.
Sometime in 1930 a drain approaching the proportions of a run began on the large banks in

Detroit. In a period of about two and one-half years prior to February 11, 1933, about $250,000,000 was withdrawn from the First National Bank of Detroit, and large sums were also withdrawn from the Union Guardian Trust Company and the Guardian National Bank of Commerce. In order

to meet these withdrawals, the First National Bank was compelled to liquidate practically all of its liquid and unpledged assets, and the Union Guardian Trust Company was compelled to borrow from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and from the Ford interests. Mr.

Edsel Ford was Chairman of the Board of the Union Guardian Group.
Edsel became secretary of Ford in 1915, and married Eleanor Lowthian Clay (1896–1976), the niece of department store owner J. L. Hudson, on November 1, 1916.

Ford was a major art benefactor in Detroit and also

financed Admiral Richard Byrd's polar explorations.

Jesse Holman Jones (April 5, 1874 – June 1, 1956) was an American Democratic politician and entrepreneur from Houston, Texas. Jones managed a Tennessee tobacco factory at age fourteen, and at nineteen, he was put in charge of

his uncle's lumberyards.

Jones most important role was in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) (1932–1939), a federal agency originally created in the Herbert Hoover administration which played a major role in combating the Great Depression and financing industrial

expansion during World War II. After Hoover first appointed Jones to the board, President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the powers of the RFC and promoted Jones to the chairmanship in 1933. Jones was in charge of spending US$50 billion, especially in financing railways and

building munitions factories.

Jones helped to secure funding for the Houston Ship Channel.

President Wilson asked Jones to become director general of military relief for the American Red Cross during World War I, a position he held until 1919.

After President Hoover signed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) bill in 1932, the Republican chose Jones as one of the three to serve on its first board of directors. When Hoover sought advice from ranking Democrats about candidates for the board, Jones was the sole

recommendation of House Speaker John Nance Garner.

John Nance Garner III (November 22, 1868 – November 7, 1967), known among his contemporaries as "Cactus Jack", was an American Democratic politician and lawyer from Texas. The mud-chinked log cabin that Garner was born in no

longer exists but the large, white, two-story house he grew up in survives and is located at 260 South Main Street in Detroit, Texas.

“Dryhole” Byrd was also born in Detroit, Texas on April 24, 1900, the youngest of eight children of Mary Easley Byrd and Edward Byrd, and grew

up in Texas and Oklahoma.
Byrd's cousin, polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, named Antarctica's Harold Byrd Mountains for him. He is the co-founder of the Civil Air Patrol.

In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Jesse “Suite 8F Godfather” Jones the Chairman of the RFC,

while also expanding the RFC's powers to make loans and bail out banks. This led some to refer to Jones as "the fourth branch of government."

Jones criticized Hoover's execution of the RFC as too little and too late. Congress and the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt,

created a new Emergency Banking Act on March 9, 1933. President Roosevelt announced a "bank holiday," a moratorium on banking activity while federal bank inspectors examined the books in order to determine which financial institutions were viable.

The RFC was empowered to

invest financial institution through their preferred stocks. Seventy percent of America's banks reopened after just six days. Jones's task as the new chair of the RFC was to reopen another 2,000 banks. He began with the reorganization of two of Detroit's largest banks by

collaborating with Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors. They formed a new bank with matching investments from the RFC and General Motors, but more significantly, the RFC covered the deposits of the 800,000 frozen accounts from both failed banks with a loan of $230,000,000.

The RFC was an independent agency of the US Federal Government, and fully owned and operated by the government. The idea was suggested by Eugene Meyer of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, recommended by President Hoover, and established by Congress in 1932. It was modeled

after the US War Finance Corporation of World War I.

Under the New Deal, the powers of the RFC were greatly expanded. The agency now purchased bank stock and extended loans for agriculture, housing, exports, businesses, governments, and disaster relief. Roosevelt soon directed

the RFC to buy gold to change its market price. The original legislation did not call for identities of the banks receiving loans nor of any reports to Congress. This, however, was changed in July 1932 to make the RFC transparent.

Roosevelt saw this corporation as an advantage

to the national government. The RFC could finance projects without Congress approving them and the loans would not be included in budget expenditures. Soon the RFC was able to buy bank preferred stock with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. Buying stock would serve as collateral

when banks needed loans. This, however, was somewhat controversial because if the RFC was a shareholder than it could interfere with salaries and bank management. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was later created to help decrease bank failures and insure bank

deposits.

The second main assistance was to farmers and their crop lands. The Commodity Credit Corporation was established to provide assistance. The agriculture was hit hard with a drought and machinery like the tractor. One benefit it provided to these rural cities was

the Electric Home and Farm Authority, which provided electricity and gas and assistance in buying appliances to use these services.

The mortgage company was affected as well since families were not able to make their payments. This led the RFC to create its own mortgage company

to sell and insure mortgages. The Federal National Mortgage Association (also known as Fannie Mae) was established and funded by the RFC. It later became a private corporation. An Export–Import Bank was also created to encourage trade with the Soviet Union.

The RFC's powers,

which had grown even before World War II began, further expanded during the war. President Roosevelt merged the RFC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which was one of the landmarks of the New Deal. Oscar Cox, a primary author of the Lend-Lease Act and general

counsel of the Foreign Economic Administration, joined as well.

The RFC established eight new corporations and purchased an existing corporation. Its eight wartime subsidiaries were the Metals Reserve Company, Rubber Reserve Company, Defense Plant Corporation, Defense Supplies

Corporation, War Damage Corporation, US Commercial Company, Rubber Development Corporation, and Petroleum Reserve Corporation.

These corporations helped fund the development of synthetic rubber, the construction and operation of a tin smelter, and the establishment of abaca

(Manila hemp) plantations in Central America. Both natural rubber and abaca (used to produce rope products) had been produced primarily in South Asia, which came under Japanese control during the war. The RFC's programs encouraged the development of alternative sources of these

materials. Synthetic rubber, which was not produced in the United States prior to the war, quickly became the primary source of rubber in the postwar years.

The Petroleum Reserves Corporation was transferred to the Office of Economic Warfare, which was consolidated into the

Foreign Economic Administration, which was transferred to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and changed to the War Assets Corporation. The War Assets Corporation was dissolved after March 25, 1946. Most lending to wartime subsidiaries ended in 1945, and all such lending

ended in 1948.

After the war, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation established five large storage, sales, and scrapping centers for Army Air Forces aircraft. These were located at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma; Kingman

Air Force Base in Arizona; Ontario Air Force Base in California; and Walnut Ridge Air Force Base in Arkansas. A sixth facility for storing, selling, and scrapping Navy and Marine aircraft was located in Clinton, Oklahoma.

After World War II ended, the type of loans provided by

the RFC were no longer in demand. During the late 1940s RFC made a large loan to Northwest Orient Airlines earmarked for the purchase of ten Boeing Stratocruiser airliners. The loan became controversial, seen as a political favor to the Boeing Corporation.

The Michigan

Aeronautical Research Center (MARC) was one of America's leading air research organizations, run by the University of Michigan at Willow Run Airport. It played a leading role in the creation of the Bomarc Missile Program, alongside Boeing.

In 1946, Boeing started to study

surface-to-air guided missiles under the United States Army Air Forces project MX-606.

In 1932 several politicians from Texas assumed important positions of power in Washington. John Nance Garner became Speaker of the House of Representatives. Texans also became the chairmen of

very important committees. This included Samuel Rayburn (Interstate and Foreign Commerce), Joseph J. Mansfield (Rivers and Harbors Committee), Hatton W. Sumners (Judiciary Committee), Marvin Jones (Agriculture Committee) and Fritz Lanham (Public Buildings and Grounds Committee).

Several of these Texas politicians became involved in the Suite 8F Group, a collection of right-wing businessmen. The name comes from the room in the Lamar Hotel in Houston where they held their meetings. Members of the group included George Brown and Herman Brown (Brown & Root)

, Jesse H. Jones (multi-millionaire investor in a large number of organizations and chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation), Gus Wortham (American General Insurance Company), James Abercrombie (Cameron Iron Works), Hugh R. Cullen (Quintana Petroleum), William Hobby

(Governor of Texas and owner of the Houston Post), William Vinson (Great Southern Life Insurance), James Elkins (American General Insurance and Pure Oil Pipe Line), Morgan J. Davis (Humble Oil), Albert Thomas (chairman of the House Appropriations Committee), Lyndon B. Johnson

(Majority Leader of the Senate) and John Connally (Texas politician). Alvin Wirtz, Thomas Corcoran, Homer Thornberry and Edward Clark, were four lawyers who also worked closely with the Suite 8F Group.

Suite 8F helped to coordinate the political activities of other right-wing

politicians and businessmen based in the South. This included Robert Anderson (president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Treasury), Robert Kerr (Kerr-McGee Oil Industries), Billie Sol Estes (entrepreneur in the cotton

industry), Glenn McCarthy (McCarthy Oil and Gas Company), Earl E. T. Smith (U.S. Sugar Corporation), Fred Korth (Continental National Bank and Navy Secretary), Ross Sterling (Humble Oil), Sid Richardson (Texas oil millionaire), Clint Murchison (Delhi Oil), Haroldson L. Hunt

(Placid Oil), Eugene B. Germany (Mustang Oil Company), David Harold Byrd (Byrd Oil Corporation), Lawrence D. Bell (Bell Helicopters), William Pawley (business interests in Cuba), Gordon McLendon (KLIF), George Smathers (Finance Committee and businessman), Richard Russell

(chairman of the Committee of Manufactures, Committee on Armed Forces and Committee of Appropriations), James Eastland (chairman Judiciary Committee), Benjamin Everett Jordan (chairman of the Senate Rules Committee), Fred Black (political lobbyist and Serve-U Corporation) and

Bobby Baker (political lobbyist and Serve-U Corporation).

In 1942, Baker became a page for Senator Burnet Maybank, and quickly became friends with several important Democrats. When Lyndon Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948, John Connally took Baker in to introduce him to

Senator-elect Johnson. Johnson jumped up and said, 'Mr. Baker, they tell me you're the smartest son of a bitch over there.' I said, 'Well, whoever told you that lied.' I said, 'I know all of the staff on our side. I know who the drunks are. And I know whose word is good.' He

said, 'You're the man I want to know.'

Baker quickly became Johnson's protégé and was nicknamed “Lil’ LBJ”.

Baker knew Ellen Rometsch because she was the wife of a West German army officer stationed in Washington. She was ‘as pretty as Elizabeth Taylor’ and the trappings of

marriage did not stop her from making herself known to the President.
‘She really loved oral sex... She went to the White House several times. And President Kennedy called me and said it’s the best head-job he’d ever had, and he thanked me,’ Baker said to Politico.

Rometsch was sent to America by the Communist leaders in East Berlin who hoped that she would befriend powerful politicians and report back. She went to West Germany and married air force Rolf Rometsch who then moved with her to the United States.
She began working as a hostess

at the Quorum Club, a salon for male politicians that was organized by Baker. As part of her role there, she arranged prostitutes and went on dates with some of the men herself- which clearly led to influential connections. 

Her alleged dalliances did not stop at the White

House, as she also had relations with then-Congressman ‘Jerry’ Ford from Michigan, who went on to become president after Nixon resigned.
Ford’s relationship with Ms Rometsch allegedly took place during his time on the Warren Commission where he was tasked with investigating

President Kennedy’s assassination.
The affair was used against him by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover who was frustrated that the Warren Commission was not sharing their findings,
‘So, (Hoover) had this tape where Jerry Ford was having oral sex with Ellen Rometsch. You know, his

wife had a serious drug problem back then… Hoover blackmailed… Ford to tell him what they were doing,’ Baker said.
Meyer Lansky is credited with having "controlled" compromising pictures of a sexual nature featuring former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover with his longtime aide,

Clyde Tolson. In his book, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, biographer Anthony Summers cites multiple primary sources regarding Lansky's use of blackmail to gain influence with politicians, policemen and judges. One such stage for the acquisition of

blackmail materials were orgies held by late attorney and Lansky protégé Roy Cohn and liquor magnate Lewis Rosenstiel, who had lasting ties with the Mafia from his bootleg operations during Prohibition.
Gerald Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Grand Rapids,

Michigan, Ford attended the University of Michigan and Yale Law School.

Ford attended the University of Michigan, where he played center, linebacker, and long snapper for the school's football team and helped the Wolverines to two undefeated seasons and national titles in 1932

and 1933.

Ford was a member of the House of Representatives for 25 years, holding Michigan's 5th congressional district seat from 1949 to 1973.

Appointed to the House Appropriations Committee two years after being elected, he was a prominent member of the Defense

Appropriations Subcommittee.

On November 29, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Ford to the Warren Commission, a special task force set up to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ford was assigned to prepare a biography of accused assassin Lee

Harvey Oswald. He and Earl Warren also interviewed Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer.

The members of the Republican caucus that encouraged and eventually endorsed Ford to run as the House minority leader were later known as the "Young Turks" and one of the members of the Young Turks

was congressman Donald H. Rumsfeld from Illinois's 13th congressional district, who later on would serve in Ford's administration as the chief of staff and secretary of defense.

Ford became vice president as the Watergate scandal was unfolding. On Thursday, August 1, 1974,

Chief of Staff Alexander Haig contacted Ford to tell him to prepare for the presidency.

Fritz Gustav Anton Kraemer (July 3, 1908 – September 8, 2003) was an American military educator and advisor.

Kraemer, a Lutheran with a dislike for Nazis, escaped Nazi Germany for America

in 1939, leaving behind his wife and son. He was drafted and became a U.S. citizen as an inductee and joined the United States Army in April 1943 ("with two PhDs and one monocle") as an infantryman in the 84th Infantry Division (the "Railsplitter"). His time served at Camp

Ritchie classifies him as one of the thousands of Ritchie Boys.

A gifted talent scout and teacher, in 1944 he discovered young Henry Kissinger, whom Kraemer had recruited into Army division. In 1961 Kraemer also discovered Alexander Haig, and in 1969 Kraemer recommended Haig as

the Military Assistant to then National Security Advisor Kissinger. Sven Kraemer, Fritz G. A. Kraemer's son, also served in the Nixon-Kissinger National Security Council.

On August 20, Ford nominated former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to fill the vice presidency he had

vacated. Rockefeller's top competitor had been George H. W. Bush. Rockefeller underwent extended hearings before Congress, which caused embarrassment when it was revealed he made large gifts to senior aides, such as Henry Kissinger.

On September 8, 1974, Ford issued

Proclamation 4311, which gave Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes he might have committed against the United States while president.

On 11 December 1959, following the Cuban Revolution of January 1959, Colonel J.C. King, chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere

Division, sent a confidential memorandum to CIA director Allen W. Dulles. King argued that in Cuba there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries."
The group was presided

over by then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, as well as Dulles himself.[citation needed]
Tracy Barnes functioned as operating office of the Cuban Task Force.

On 17 March 1960, President Eisenhower signed a U.S. National Security Council directive on the anti-Cuban covert action program authorizing the CIA to organize, train, and equip Cuban refugees as a guerrilla force to overthrow the government of Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro.

In October 1960, they realize that this project has failed, and that is when Brigade 2506" was created, a CIA-sponsored group made up of 1,511 Cuban exiles who fought in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Brigade 2506 (Brigada Asalto 2506) was a CIA-sponsored group of Cuban

exiles formed in 1960 to attempt the military overthrow of the Cuban government headed by Fidel Castro.

When Ford assumed office, he inherited Nixon's Cabinet. During his brief administration, he replaced all members except Secretary of State Kissinger and Secretary of the

Treasury William E. Simon. Political commentators have referred to Ford's dramatic reorganization of his Cabinet in the fall of 1975 as the "Halloween Massacre". One of Ford's appointees, William Coleman—the Secretary of Transportation—was the second black man to serve in a

presidential cabinet (after Robert C. Weaver) and the first appointed in a Republican administration.

Ford selected George H. W. Bush as Chief of the US Liaison Office to the People's Republic of China in 1974, and then Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in late 1975.

Ford's transition chairman and first Chief of Staff was former congressman and ambassador Donald Rumsfeld. In 1975, Rumsfeld was named by Ford as the youngest-ever Secretary of Defense. Ford chose a young Wyoming politician, Richard Cheney, to replace Rumsfeld as his new Chief

of Staff; Cheney became the campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign.

Ford was confronted with a potential swine flu pandemic. In the early 1970s, an influenza strain H1N1 shifted from a form of flu that affected primarily pigs and crossed over to humans. On

February 5, 1976, an army recruit at Fort Dix mysteriously died and four fellow soldiers were hospitalized; health officials announced that "swine flu" was the cause. Soon after, public health officials in the Ford administration urged that every person in the United States be

vaccinated.

Ford continued the détente policy with both the Soviet Union and China, easing the tensions of the Cold War. Still in place from the Nixon administration was the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).

Ford attended the inaugural meeting of the Group of Seven (G7)

industrialized nations (initially the G5) in 1975 and secured membership for Canada.

The concept of a forum for the capitalist world's major industrialized countries emerged before the 1973 oil crisis. On 25 March 1973, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, George Shultz,

convened an informal gathering of finance ministers from West Germany (Helmut Schmidt), France (Valéry Giscard d'Estaing), and the United Kingdom (Anthony Barber) before an upcoming meeting in Washington, D.C. U.S. President Richard Nixon offered the White House as a venue, and

the meeting was subsequently held in its library on the ground floor; the original group of four consequently became known as the "Library Group".

Especially during the years 1974–1981 and 2005–2014, oil exporters amassed large surpluses of "petrodollars" from historically

expensive oil.(The word has been credited alternately to Egyptian-American economist Ibrahim Oweiss and to former US Secretary of Commerce Peter G. Peterson, both in 1973.)

President Richard M. Nixon and his globalist sidekick, Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, knew that

their destruction of the international gold standard under the Bretton Woods arrangement would cause a decline in the artificial global demand of the U.S. dollar.

Maintaining this "artificial dollar demand" was vital if the United States were to continue expanding its "welfare

and warfare" spending.
In a series of meetings, the United States — represented by then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — and the Saudi royal family made a powerful agreement.

The U.S. also agreed to provide the Saudis with weapons, and perhaps most importantly,

guaranteed protection from Israel.
The Saudi royal family knew a good deal when they saw one. They were more than happy to accept American weapons and a U.S. guarantee to restrain attacks from neighboring Israel.

One of Ford's greatest challenges was dealing with the continuing

Vietnam War. American offensive operations against North Vietnam had ended with the Paris Peace Accords, signed on January 27, 1973.

The agreements were negotiated by US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member Lê Đức Thọ.

As North

Vietnamese forces advanced, Ford requested Congress approve a $722 million aid package for South Vietnam, funds that had been promised by the Nixon administration. Congress voted against the proposal by a wide margin. Senator Jacob K. Javits offered "...large sums for

evacuation, but not one nickel for military aid"

1,373 U.S. citizens and 5,595 Vietnamese and third-country nationals were evacuated from the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon during Operation Frequent Wind. In that operation, military and Air America helicopters took evacuees

to U.S. Navy ships off-shore during an approximately 24-hour period on April 29 to 30, 1975, immediately preceding the fall of Saigon.

Ford was the target of two assassination attempts during his presidency. In Sacramento, California, on September 5, 1975, Lynette "Squeaky"

Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, pointed a Colt .45-caliber handgun at Ford and pulled the trigger at point-blank range.

After leaving the White House, the Fords moved to Denver, Colorado. Ford successfully invested in oil with Marvin Davis, which later provided an income

for Ford's children.

In 1981, Davis acquired 20th Century Fox for $722 million with financier Marc Rich and Pincus Green.

Banks would not provide any extension to the loan, and Diller pressed Davis for the new equity he had promised to put into Fox. Diller claims that Davis

stalled and suggested that Diller call Michael Milken for a $250 million junk-bond loan, which would have been Diller's, not Davis', responsibility.

Marc Rich had arranged with Davis for Davis to buy out his interest in 20th Century Fox for $116 million. Davis sold this interest

to Rupert Murdoch for $250 million in March 1984.

Following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Rich used his special relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, to buy oil from Iran despite the

American embargo. Iran would become Rich's most important supplier of crude oil for more than 15 years. Rich sold Iranian oil to Israel through a secret pipeline. Due to his good relationship with Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini, Rich helped give Mossad's agents contacts in Iran.

Glencore was founded in 1974 as Marc Rich & Co. AG by commodity traders Marc Rich and Pincus Green. In 1993, a number of Marc Rich employees, led by Claude Dauphin, left to set up another trading company, Trafigura.

The Qatar Investment Authority is its biggest shareholder as

of 2016.

ABC Radio reported in 2005 that Glencore "has been accused of illegal dealings with rogue states: apartheid South Africa, USSR, Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein", and has a "history of busting UN embargoes to profit from corrupt or despotic regimes". Specifically,

the CIA found that Glencore had paid illegal kickbacks to obtain oil in the course of the UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq. The company denied these charges, according to the CIA report quoted by ABC.

In April 2018, the company started to limit its exposure to Oleg Deripaska

by canceling the plan to swap an 8.75 percent stake in aluminum producer United Co. Rusal for shares in another one of Deripaska’s companies, London-listed En+ Group Plc.

In June 2020, it was reported that Tesla Motors partnered with Glencore for the future supply of cobalt

in their lithium-ion batteries.

In 2017, Chinese conglomerate CEFC will buy a 14.16 percent stake in Russian oil major Rosneft (ROSN.MM) for $9.1 billion from a consortium of Glencore (GLEN.L) and the Qatar Investment Authority, strengthening the energy

partnership between Moscow and Beijing.

Rosneft's market capitalization stands at $57 billion and the deal makes it one of the largest investments ever made by China into Russia.

Glencore and QIA agreed to buy a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft in December 2016 for over

10.2 billion euros to help the Kremlin plug budget holes.
The transaction coincided with expectations of political detente between Moscow and Washington after Donald Trump became U.S. president and pledged to improve ties with Moscow.
Rosneft is run by Igor Sechin, a close ally

or President Vladimir Putin, who awarded special state decorations to the head of Glencore Ivan Glasenberg for executing the transaction.

Lost in the controversy about the over-the-top public urging of China to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden is the fact that Hunter Biden

accepted a million dollar diamond, ostensibly for access to the UN World Food Program WFP, from Ye Jianming of CEFC China Energy, then an agent of the Chinese government and/or army and since disappeared. Also disappeared, or still undisclosed: money UN Secretary General

Antonio Guterres' took from Gulbenkian Foundation, linked to CEFC China Energy.

Now in July The New Yorker reported on CEFC and Hunter Biden, in his role with World Food Program USA The paragraphs: "Hunter was on the board of the World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that

generates support for the U.N. World Food Programme, and he had hoped that Ye would make a large aid donation. At dinner that night, they discussed the donation, and then the conversation turned to business opportunities. Hunter offered to use his contacts to help identify

investment opportunities for Ye’s company, CEFC China Energy, in liquefied-natural-gas projects in the United States. After the dinner, Ye sent a 2.8-carat diamond to Hunter’s hotel room with a card thanking him for their meeting....

In March 2018, Ye was detained for

questioning on suspicion of economic crimes. South China Morning Post reported that "Shanghai Guosheng Group [zh], a portfolio and investment agency controlled by Shanghai’s municipal government, had taken control of CEFC China Energy". The state controlled CITIC Group acquired

49% of CEFC Shanghai, a subsidiary of CEFC China Energy. CEFC Shanghai owned CEFC Europe.

Frontier Services Group is partially owned by CITIC Group, a state-run investment fund owned and controlled by the People's Republic of China. CITIC is FSG's largest shareholder.

Frontier

Services Group (FSG) is a Chinese Africa-focused security, aviation, and logistics company founded and led until April 2021 by Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide.

In 2019, FSG signed contracts to support China's One Belt and One Road initiative, including

building a series of bases in China's Xinjiang, where the internment camps of ethnic Uyghurs attracted widespread allegations of human rights abuse. Chinese Communist Party officials in Xinjiang reported that FSG's work would enhance the paramilitary Xinjiang Production and

Construction Corps. FSG's CEO, Dongyi Hua, was the key driver in investing the re-education camps.

The XPCC was founded by Wang Zhen in 1954 on orders from Mao Zedong.

After an initial commercial success, SCL expanded into military and political arenas. It became known for

alleged involvement "in military disinformation campaigns to social media branding and voter targeting". In 2005, "with a glitzy exhibit" at Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI), "the United Kingdom's largest showcase for military technology", SCL demonstrated its

capacity in "influence operations": "to help orchestrate a sophisticated campaign of mass deception" on the public of a big city like London.

SCL formed Cambridge Analytica to participate in the election process in the United States.

Cambridge Analytica is heavily funded by

Renaissance Technologies hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer.

Emerdata Limited was established in August 2017, by many of the people involved in Cambridge Analytica.

Emerdata's board of directors included Frontier Services Group officer Johnson Chun Shun Ko, a Hong Kong

businessman linked to Erik Prince (founder of Blackwater), Cambridge Analytica investor Rebekah Mercer, and Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix.

Jeff Epstein mentor James Simons ran Renaissance until his retirement in late 2009. Simons stepped down as Chairman in 2021. The

company is now run by Peter Brown (after Robert Mercer resigned).

Margaret Hamburg is married to Peter Fitzhugh Brown, a computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert. Brown is the chief executive officer of Renaissance Technologies.

Following her medical training,

Hamburg moved to Washington, D.C., to begin her career in public service. She served in several roles, including Assistant Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Hamburg as

Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She served in this policy role until 2001 when she became the founding Vice President for Biological Programs and later the Senior Scientist for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a

foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In that role, Hamburg spearheaded efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to both naturally occurring and deliberately caused biological threats.

The Nuclear Threat

Initiative was founded in 2001 by former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and philanthropist Ted Turner. It serves as the Secretariat for the "Nuclear Security Project", in cooperation with the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of

Defense William J. Perry, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Nunn (the “four horsemen of the nuclear apocalypse”) guide the project—an effort to encourage global action to reduce urgent nuclear dangers and build support for reducing reliance on nuclear weapons,

ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.

In 2008, NTI helped create the World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS), in Vienna, as part of its focus to secure nuclear materials worldwide.

NTI advisor Warren Buffett provided $50 million to jump-start the reserve, which

will be owned and managed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and located in Kazakhstan.

NTI also created the Connecting Organizations for Disease Surveillance (CORDS), which in 2013 launched as an independent NGO that links international disease surveillance networks,

supported by the World Health Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

After Berkshire Hathaway bought a stake in The Washington Post, publisher Katherine Graham and Buffett struck up a flirtatious relationship, with Susan Buffett's

permission.

They would reportedly jaunt off to Martha's Vineyard together, and Graham even had a habit of throwing her keys to the investor during charity events and parties.

Eugene Isaac Meyer (October 31, 1875 – July 17, 1959) was an American financier, public official, and

newspaper publisher. He published The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, and the paper stayed in his family throughout the rest of the 20th century. He served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933 and was the first President of the World Bank Group.

After college,

Meyer went to work for Lazard Frères, where his father was a partner, but quit in 1901 after four years and went out on his own. He was a successful investor and speculator, and owned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. He married Agnes Elizabeth Ernst, a Lutheran, in 1910;

they had five children, including the future Katharine Graham, and another daughter, Florence Meyer (Mrs. Oskar Homolka). By 1915, when he was forty, he was worth $40 million.
In 1920, Meyer teamed with William H. Nichols of General Chemical to help fulfill his vision of a

bigger, better chemical company. Meyer and Nichols combined five smaller chemical companies to create the Allied Chemical & Dye Corporation, which later became Allied Chemical Corp., which in turn became part of AlliedSignal, the forerunner of Honeywell’s specialty materials

business.

Meyer went to Washington, D.C., during World War I as a "dollar-a-year man" (his token salary) for Woodrow Wilson, becoming the head of the War Finance Corporation and serving there long after the end of hostilities. President Calvin Coolidge named him as chairman of

the Federal Farm Loan Board in 1927.
Herbert Hoover promoted him to Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 1930. He took on an additional ½-year post in 1932 as chief of the new Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was Hoover's unsuccessful

attempt to aid companies by providing loans to businesses. After Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, Meyer resigned his Fed position on May 10, 1933.

February 11, 1933, about $250,000,000 was withdrawn from the First National Bank of Detroit, and large sums were also

withdrawn from the Union Guardian Trust Company and the Guardian National Bank of Commerce.

After a month-long run on American banks, Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed a Bank Holiday, beginning March 6, 1933.

President Paul von Hindenburg to appointed Adolf Hitler as

chancellor on January 30, 1933.

Lewis William Seidman (April 29, 1921 – May 13, 2009) was an American economist, financial commentator, and former head of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, best known for his role in helping work to correct the Savings and Loan Crisis in the American financial

sector from 1988 to 1991 as head of the Resolution Trust Corporation.

After Richard Nixon's Administration was toppled by the Watergate scandal in 1974 and Nixon resigned from the Presidency, Gerald Ford - who had attended school with Seidman - became president during a time of

economic recession in America, and tapped Seidman for an economic advisory post to work on pressing economic problems (such as the choice of whether or not to bail out New York City from its pending bankruptcy - Ford later chose against doing this). Seidman served in this

capacity until 1976, then returned to the private sector.

In 1995, NBD merged with the First National Bank of Chicago; the combined bank was called First Chicago NBD. First Chicago NBD later merged with Bank One, which eliminated the NBD name. Bank One was itself purchased by

JPMorgan Chase & Co. As of March 2006, most former NBD branches carry the Chase name.

In April 1998, Travelers Group announced an agreement to undertake the $76 billion merger between Travelers and Citicorp, and the merger was completed on October 8, 1998. The possibility

remained that the merger would run into problems connected with federal law. Ever since the Glass–Steagall Act, banking and insurance businesses had been kept separate. Weill and John S. Reed bet that Congress would soon pass legislation overturning those regulations, which

Weill, Reed and a number of businesspeople considered not in their interest.
To speed up the process, they recruited to the Board of Directors former President Gerald Ford (Republican) and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (who served during the Democratic Clinton

Administration) whom Weill was close to.

Weill began serving as president of American Express Co. in 1983 and as chairman and CEO of American Express's insurance subsidiary, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, in 1984. Weill was succeeded by his protégé, Peter A. Cohen, who

became the youngest head of a Wall Street firm. While at American Express, Weill began grooming his newest protégé, Jamie Dimon, the future CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

After graduation from Harvard Business School, Sandy Weill convinced Jamie Dimon to turn down offers from Goldman

Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers to join him as an assistant at American Express. Although Weill could not offer the same amount of money as the investment banks, Weill promised Dimon that he would have "fun". Dimon's father, Theodore Dimon, was an executive Vice

President at American Express.

City of Paris (originally S. Lazard & Co.) was a dry goods store and eventually Los Angeles' first department store, operating from the 1850s through 1897, first as Lazard & Kremer Co., then Lazard & Wolfskill Co., then S. Lazard & Co., then with

the store name City of Paris operated by Eugene Meyer & Co., then by Stern, Cahn & Loeb.

Strasbourg, Alsace-born Marc Eugene Meyer (father of financier Eugene Meyer who would own The Washington Post and be president of the World Bank and Federal Reserve) joined Constant Meyer

and Nathan Cahn (or Kahn) to buy S. Lazard & Co. from Mr. Lazard in 1874, and from that point forward, operated as Eugene Meyer & Co. and named the store itself the City of Paris.

In January 1879, Eugene Meyer's cousin, Leon (Leopold) Loeb, was added as a partner to Eugene

Meyer & Co. Leon Loeb was the son-in-law of pioneer Harris Newmark (born in Löbau/Loebau, Prussia), and he was the father of Joseph P. Loeb.

The surname Kissinger was adopted in 1817 by his great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb, after the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen.

(The

Lazards, Weills, Kahns, and Meyers, all French, had frequently intermarried.)

In 1867, he married Harriet Newmark, daughter of rabbi Joseph Newmark (Harriet's sister Caroline had married Solomon Lazard) and sister of Myer J. Newmark; they had five daughters and three sons. His

son, Eugene Isaac Meyer, married Agnes Ernst. His daughter, Rosalie, married Sigmund Stern, the nephew of Levi Strauss and son of David Stern; and his daughter, Elise, married Sigmund's brother Abraham Stern. (Elise was later widowed and remarried Brazilian ambassador Luiz

Martins de Souza Dantas in 1933 who saved more than 400 people helping to escape Nazi persecution). His daughter, Florence Meyer Blumenthal, married George Blumenthal. His son, Edgar Joseph Meyer (married to Leila Saks, the daughter of Andrew Saks), perished in the sinking of the

RMS Titanic.

His daughter Aline Meyer, married Charles Joseph Liebmann, the son of brewer Henry Liebmann and grandson of Samuel Liebmann.[10] His granddaughters were Katharine Graham and Florence Meyer (daughters of his son Eugene Isaac). His great-grandson was Walter A.

Haas Jr. (grandson of his daughter Rosalie), who served as president of Levi Strauss & Co.

The company traces its origins to Zapata Petroleum Corporation, founded in 1953 by future U.S. President George H. W. Bush, along with his business partners John Overbey, Hugh Liedtke,

Bill Liedtke, and Thomas J. Devine. Overbey was a "landman" skilled in scouting oil fields and obtaining drilling rights cheaply. Bush and Thomas J. Devine were oil-wildcatting associates.

The initial $1 million investment for Zapata was provided by the Liedtke brothers and

their circle of investors, by Bush's father Prescott Bush and his maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker, and their family's circle of friends.

In 1954, Zapata Off-Shore Company was formed as a subsidiary of Zapata Oil, with Bush as president of the new company. He raised

some startup money from Eugene Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post, and his son-in-law, Philip Graham.

In 1960, Jorge Díaz Serrano of Mexico was put in touch with Bush by Dresser Industries. Dresser was owned by Prescott Bush's Yale friends Roland and W. Averell Harriman,

and had been George H.W. Bush's first employer upon his graduation from Yale, giving him his start in both the oil business and the defense contractor business. Serrano and Bush created a new company, Perforaciones Marinas del Golfo, aka Permargo, in conjunction with Edwin Pauley

of Pan American Petroleum, with whom Zapata had a previous offshore contract. The deal with Permargo is not mentioned in Zapata's annual reports, and SEC records are missing.

During the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Zapata allowed its oil rigs to be used

as listening posts.

In 1966, William Stamps Farish III, age 28, joined the board of Zapata.

On December 2, 2005, Zapata Corporation Chairman, Avram ("Avi") Glazer, announced the sale of 4,162,394 shares, 77.3%, of Safety Components International to Wilbur L. Ross Jr. for

$51.2 million.

Dresser Industries was a multinational corporation headquartered in Dallas, Texas, United States, which provided a wide range of technology, products, and services used for developing energy and natural resources. In 1998, Dresser merged with its main rival

Halliburton. Halliburton sold many of former Dresser non "oil patch" divisions, retaining the M W Kellogg Engineering and Construction Company and the Dresser oil-patch products and services that complemented Halliburton's energy and natural resource businesses.

In 1998, Dresser merged with its main rival Halliburton and became known as Halliburton Company. Dick Cheney negotiated the US$7.7 billion deal, reportedly having done so during a weekend of quail-hunting.

The president of its Israeli subsidiary is Effie Eitam. Genie Energy's Strategic advisory board is composed of: Dick Cheney since 2009 (former vice president of the United States),Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and chairman of News Corp), James Woolsey (former CIA director),

Larry Summers (former head of the US Treasury), Bill Richardson (former Governor of New Mexico, ex-ambassador to the United Nations and United States Energy Secretary), Michael Steinhardt, Jacob Rothschild, and Mary Landrieu, former United States Senator from Louisiana.