15 MAJOR CORPORATIONS YOU NEVER KNEW PROFITED FROM SLAVERY
occupywallstreet.net
The enslavement of African people in the Americas by the nations and peoples of Western Europe, created the economic engine that funded modern capitalism. Therefore it comes as no surprise that most of the major corporations that were founded by Western European and American merchants prior to roughly 100 years ago, benefited directly from slavery.
Lehman Brothers, whose business empire started in the slave trade, recently admitted their part in the business of slavery. According to the Sun Times, the financial services firm acknowledged recently that its founding partners owned not one, but several enslaved Africans during the Civil War era and that, “in all likelihood,” it “profited significantly” from slavery. “This is a sad part of our heritage …We’re deeply apologetic … It was a terrible thing … There’s no one sitting in the United States in the year 2005, hopefully, who would ever, in a million years, defend the practice,” said Joe Polizzotto, general counsel of Lehman Brothers.
Aetna, Inc., the United States’ largest health insurer, apologized for selling policies in the 1850s that reimbursed slave owners for financial losses when the enslaved Africans they owned died. “Aetna has long acknowledged that for several years shortly after its founding in 1853 that the company may have insured the lives of slaves,” said Aetna spokesman Fred Laberge in 2002. “We express our deep regret over any participation at all in this deplorable practice.”
JPMorgan Chase recently admitted their company’s links to slavery. “Today, we are reporting that this research found that, between 1831 and 1865, two of our predecessor banks—Citizens Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana—accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved individuals as collateral on loans and took ownership of approximately 1,250 of them when the plantation owners defaulted on the loans,” the company wrote in a statement.
Very interesting read, other players mentioned are, AIG, New York Life Insurance Company, Wachovia Corporation (Now owned by Wells Fargo), N M Rothschild & Sons Bank in London, Norfolk Southern, EW. Scripps and Gannett, FleetBoston, CSX, The Canadian National Railway Company, Brown Brothers Harriman, Brooks Brothers, Barclays.
What does that have to do with now?, many will ask. Well, that depends upon the level of understanding from which we operate.
The only real difference between the slave trade and globalization is that, instead of slaves actually being here, slave-labor products are freely imported here, keeping slave-labor practices out-of-sight-out-of-mind. There's no moral difference.
And it seems that big financial-sector interests are still profiting from the slave-labor (product) trade, because TPP Negotiators Get Big Bonuses From Wall Street. JPMorgan Chase is even mentioned by name in the linked article.
I guess old habits are hard to break.
Of course, it would almost be political malpractice to not mention that Democratic Presidential Primary candidate Hillary Clinton throughout her career has received sizable contributors from the same financial-sector interests who profited from the slave trade and who continue to profit from the modern-day slave-labor-product trade.
It's the same old folks, and they don't call them "Masters" of the universe for nothing.
