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dominant branch. Lazard Brothers is Number 8. N.M. Rothschild is 

Number 9. Brown Shipley Company, the London branch of Brown 

Brothers Harriman, is Number 14. These five merchant banking firms of 

London actually control the New York banks which own the controlling 

interest in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The control over Federal Reserve System decisions is also founded in 

another unique situation. Each day, representatives of four other 

London banking firms meet in the offices of N.M. Rothschild Company 

in London to fix the price of gold for that day. The other four bankers 

are from Samuel Montagu Company, which ranks Number 5 on the list 

of seventeen London merchant banking firms, Sharps Pixley, Johnson 

Matheson, and Mocatta and Goldsmid. Despite the huge tide of 

paper pyramided currency and notes which are now flooding the 

world, at some point, every credit extension must return to be based, in 

however minuscule a fashion, on some deposit of gold in some bank 

somewhere in the world. Because of this factor, the London merchant 

bankers, with their power to set the price of gold each day, become 

the final arbiters of the volume of money and the price of money in 

those countries which must bow to their power. Not the least of these is 

the United States. No official of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 

or of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, can command the 

power over the money of the world which is held by these London 

merchant bankers. Great Britain, while waning in political and military 

power, today exercises the greatest financial power. It is for this reason 

that London is the present financial center of the world.

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61 McRae and Cairncross, Capital City, Eyre Methuen, London, 1963