David Rockefeller, Philanthropist and Head of Chase Manhattan, Dies at 101

[brooklynite]

Source: The New York Times

David Rockefeller, the banker and philanthropist with the fabled family name who controlled Chase Manhattan bank for more than a decade and wielded vast influence around the world even longer as he spread the gospel of American capitalism, died on Monday morning at his home in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. He was 101.

...snip...

Chase Manhattan had long been known as the Rockefeller bank, though the family never owned more than 5 percent of its shares. But Mr. Rockefeller was more than a steward. As chairman and chief executive throughout the 1970s, he made it “David’s bank,” as many called it, expanding its operations internationally.

His stature was greater than any corporate title might convey, however. His influence was felt in Washington and foreign capitals, in the corridors of New York City government, art museums, great universities and public schools.

Mr. Rockefeller could well be the last of an increasingly less visible family to have cut so imposing a figure on the world stage. As a peripatetic advocate of the economic interests of the United States and of his own bank, he was a force in global financial affairs and in his country’s foreign policy. He was received in foreign capitals with the honors accorded a chief of state.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/business/david-rockefeller-dead-chase-manhattan-banker.html?_r=0

[BumRushDaShow]

1. A BFEE favorite family

<...>

The Bushes and the military-industrial complex: George H. Walker and Samuel Prescott Bush were the dynasty's founding fathers during the years of and after World War I. Walker, a St. Louis financier, made his mark in corporate reorganizations and war contracts. By 1919, he was enlisted by railroad heir W. Averell Harriman to be president of Wall Street-based WA Harriman, which invested in oil, shipping, aviation and manganese, partly in Russia and Germany, during the 1920s. Sam Bush, the current president's other great-grandfather, ran an Ohio company, Buckeye Steel Castings, that produced armaments. In 1917, he went to Washington to head the small arms, ammunition and ordnance section of the federal War Industries Board. Both men were present at the emergence of what became the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Prescott Bush, the Connecticut senator and grandfather of the current president, had some German corporate ties at the outbreak of World War II, but the better yardstick of his connections was his directorships of companies involved in U.S. war production. Dresser Industries, for example, produced the incendiary bombs dropped on Tokyo and made gaseous diffusion pumps for the atomic bomb project. George H.W. Bush later worked for Dresser's oil-services businesses. Then, as CIA director, vice president and president, one of his priorities was the U.S. weapons trade and secret arms deals with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the moujahedeen in Afghanistan.

In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about how "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." That complex's recent mega-leap to power came under George H.W. Bush and even more under George W. Bush — with the post-9/11 expansion of the military and creation of the Department of Homeland Security. But armaments and arms deals seem to have been in the Bushes' blood for nearly a century.

Oil: The Bushes' ties to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil go back 100 years, when Rockefeller made Buckeye Steel Castings wildly successful by convincing railroads that carried their oil to buy heavy equipment from Buckeye. George H. Walker helped refurbish the Soviet oil industry in the 1920s, and Prescott Bush acquired experience in the international oil business as a 22-year director of Dresser Industries. George H.W. Bush, in turn, worked for Dresser and ran his own offshore oil-drilling business, Zapata Offshore. George W. Bush mostly raised money from investors for oil businesses that failed. Currently, the family's oil focus is principally in the Middle East.

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/08/opinion/op-phillips8

R.I.P.

[Retrograde]

2. John D. senior made the money, John D. junior spent it

California's Redwoods state park is mostly do to John D. junior (the father of David): the ancient trees were slated to be cut down, and he was prevailed upon to write a check for the asking price and donate the lands for public use.

I don't know that much about the David mentioned in the OP, but he and his brothers were raised with the belief that they owed something to the country that made the family rich. Maybe it was just a way of atoning for what John D. senior did, but collectively they had a record the Bush family can only envy.

[FreeStateDemocrat]

3. Played a key role in setting us up for 8 years of Ray-gun, thanks for the memories:

In November 1979, while chairman of the Chase Bank, Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when he and Henry Kissinger, along with John J. McCloy and Rockefeller aides, persuaded President Jimmy Carter through the United States Department of State to admit the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the United States for hospital treatment for lymphoma. This action directly precipitated what is known as the Iran hostage crisis and placed Rockefeller under intense media scrutiny (particularly from The New York Times) for the first time in his public life.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller

[Boomerproud]

4. Thank you for the important reminder.

That should be in every obit about the man. He really changed the course of history for the worse with that one.

[yurbud]

6. wow. I had missed his role in that. Let's hope his descendants do less harm with their money

and the rest of us figure out how to make it less possible for someone to get that much money and power and do that much harm.

[JackRiddler]

10. Long as you are hoping...

why not hope that his descendants and all billionaires are expropriated and their wealth socialized?

New motto for capitalism: "One hundred million is enough."

[yurbud]

11. a lot of the wealthy like the idea of a meritocracy--especially if they are trust fund babies

who have no merit themselves.

Trump, Baby Bush, Mitt...the list gets longer and longer of the lucky sperm club who prove the wealthy aren't genetically superior, harder working, smarter, or more creative than the rest of us.

If anything, they are missing a gene when it comes to morality.

[Buckeyeblue]

5. He also had a number of heart transplants.

[marybourg]

9. But It didn't help.

When he was running what was then Chase Manhattan Bank he said openly that he didn't want any "little people's" accounts.

[yurbud]

7. this is a bigger story than any Trump hearings to day. This is an OWNER of politicians & policy

[uriel1972]

8. Philanthropy...

Stealing your food, then giving back crumbs and expecting you to be grateful.

[nolabels]

12. I think the editor of the lead got the words mixed up, probably it was 'finagler' he was hearing