George Bush is right. We can create great harm when we abandon our ethics at the nation's shores. Here's an example from history:
In 1924, a young senator-to-be was set up by his father in the banking Brown Brothers Harriman. One of his first responsibilities was to facilitate funding for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family. Fritz Thyssen was one of the first financial backers of the National socialist part.
Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade.
The story continues:The senator-to-be
was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world...During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz...
Were the actions of UBC illegal? Certainly they weren't illegal until Germany invaded Poland in 1939. But while Neville Chamberlain was giving away part of Czechoslovakia, our senator-to-be was helping finance the construction of a war machine. By 1941, the entanglements violated any number of laws; the assets were seized.
...on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which [the senator-to-be] was a director.
...it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
It's conclusion?
...stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC
But prosecutions never occurred, and part of the mystery was never resolved:
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
The senator? George Prescott Bush, who began his fortune in this way. The story? Still unresolved.
But those who live in glass houses built by Nazi money shouldn't throw stones.