Click here if you wish to access the edited transcript featuring financial journalist Lars Schall's 50 minute interview with author Naomi Prins. (Note: One should have at least a rough knowledge of the history of finance in the US in order to follow this interview.)
Prins is a person who had a career in banking, became disillusioned with all the scandals she witnesses, and started a deep examination of the roots of the crises and the realities that lay behind them.
All of her findings suggest a powerful group of banking families who use their close ties, usually money ties, with government officials to increase both their power and their wealth. It is a history starting from 1907 of the financial sector which lies just behind the industrial power of capitalism, where the former's power is based on the control of money (stored wealth) and where it is used, and the latter is based on the ownership of productive facilities which generates wealth. Together they make up the capitalist class whose power is based on the private ownership of capital. But, it is the control and ownership of money that makes up the most power segment of the ruling capitalist class.
She also explains how the banksters have undergone a major shift in their ambitions and perspectives since the 1970s when the US dollar went off the gold standard and was replaced with petrodollars. (See "Dollar fiat money" in an article at this link for further details.)
Her studies provide an empirical validation of much of Marxism. Although she does not use his theories or terms in her studies, her findings prove the class nature of power based on private ownership of wealth in the US and throughout the world.
