At 100, Rockefeller scion faces questions about world order

With a grandfather who became the world's first billionaire, David Rockefeller has seen it all and has more ahead of him, writes Kyran Fitzgerald.

David Rockefeller is not a household name, yet this is a man who has helped to shape the global economy and by extension the world’s political system over the past half century.

The last surviving grandchild of the founder of Standard Oil, John D Rockefeller, David cele-brated his 100th birthday on Friday.

He has arguably done more than anyone else to bring together the elites of the rising economies across the planet, founding and populating the Trilateral Commission in 1972 as a force aimed at combating protectionism and drawing countries such as Japan more closely into the international system.

As early as 1973, Rockefeller travelled to Beijing to meet with prime minister Zhou Enlai during the latter days of the rule of Chairman Mao.

He also met with Fidel Castro, generating a storm of criticism in the process.

For decades, Rockefeller has worked closely with Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s foreign policy chief. Kissinger has always believed in supping with the devil in pursuit of what he considers to be the greater good, carrying a rather short spoon on many occasions.

The duo have attracted plenty of criticism and some question whether Rockefeller has not inadvertently helped to create a runaway monster in the form of economic globalisation.

Rockefeller’s net worth is estimated at $3bn (€2.66bn) by Forbes. Last year, his charitable donations reached $79m.

The expression ‘noblesse oblige’ comes to mind. However, the Rockefellers weren’t always rich and cuddly.

Grandfather John D was born in 1839, the son of a conman who believed in cheating his children so as to toughen them up. In 1870, he founded Standard Oil along with his brother William and a group of friends.

Rockefeller grew rich on the back of soaring demand for kerosene and, later, gasoline. He became the world#s first billionaire, controlling around 90% of the country’s oil refining and marketing at his peak.

In 1882, a corporate trust was created to get around state restrictions.

Standard Oil was described by the New York World as “the most impudent, pitiless, grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country”.

The nation’s top judges concurred. In 1911, the Supreme Court ordered the break-up of Standard Oil into 90 independent companies.

The two largest, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of New York eventually became Exxon and Mobil, two of the famous ‘seven sisters’ which dominated the oil business until 1971 when the OPEC cartel grabbed control.

David’s father, John Davidson Rockefeller, was a lifelong teetotaller who founded the US Council on Foreign Relations and donated the land for the UN headquarters in New York.

He became one of the largest real estate owners in New York, developing the Rockefeller Centre there in the 1930s partly as a means of providing work in Depression era America.

The young David was formed by those years. He joined the staff of Chase National Bank, later Chase Manhattan, in 1946 as an assistant manager in the foreign department. By 1960, he was bank president, and between 1969 and 1980, its chairman and chief executive.

In 1973, he established the first branch of a US bank in the Soviet Union and after his meeting with Zhou, Chase was granted the plum position as the National Bank of China’s first correspondent bank.

The Rockefellers came within a heartbeat of the summit of power when David’s brother Nelson became US vice-president in 1974.

David’s high point came during the troubled reign of Jimmy Carter, a president who believed in soft power rather than the fire and brimstone favoured by others in the hot seat.

Rockefeller was driven to action by the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 which inaugurated a decade of turbulence.

The recycling of the new oil wealth led in turn to the international debt crisis of the early 1980s.

However, it is the rise of China since the opening achieved by its leader Deng Xiaoping which has proved the seminal event of our times, one that Rockefeller played a central part in.

Hundreds of millions of east ans south Asians have joined the middle classes, but there have also been losers from globalisation and the accompanying technological revolution, including countless blue collar wage earners in advanced countries and countless more in regions such as North Africa and the Middle East, regions which might otherwise have benefited from close trade links with Europe.

The storm clouds are gathering close to the Mediterranean, a development not unconnected with the huge levels of unemployment among the rising Arab youth.

It is arguable that some of these problems could have been addressed by means of regional trade agreements between the EU and areas such as the Maghreb aimed at addressing the problem of mass unemployment.

The problem with globalisation, in its current form, is that China has ended up scooping much of the pool. This is hardly the outcome David Rockefeller and his allies might have anticipated.

They would argue that a People’s Republic of China integrated into the global system is far preferable to a huge country with a nuclear arsenal roaming in angry, isolated freedom, acting as a force for world instability.

Rockefeller once stated that “the free flow of investment capital goods and people across borders will remain the fundamental factor in world economic growth and the strengthen-ing of democratic institutions everywhere”.

In the wake of the financial crisis and the spread of political forces opposed to immigration (France, Italy, and South Africa, to name but three) not to mention the rise of China, these words today come across as well intentioned but a bit naive.

They are words spoken from a well-appointed boardroom, high up in the clouds. It is what happens on the street that will really count in the years to come.