The Omega Agency Research Project ~UPDATED~, page 5

A key question about the Shadow Government is how does it make decisions and carry them out. Where is the center? Some think it lies in a few major financial institutions. Others that it lies in the intelligence apparatus. Still others that it has no permanent center, but operates by consensus, with shifting factions that confer through various mechanisms. Some think that those mechanisms are reflected in public associations such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Tri- lateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund.<5>

That the key personalities in every major institution should associate and confer through various associations is not in itself a matter of concern, if all that was involved was the development of a consensus. But there is evidence that a centralized decisionmaking process exists, because too much is done that could not otherwise occur, and that the process is contemptuous of the Constitution and increasingly willing to violate it. That suggests a permanent apparatus, a bureaucracy, and that points to the intelligence and financial bureaucracies. Therefore, the real decisions may be made not by public figures, but by faceless persons operating in secret.

Most available evidence indicates that the center is in the intelligence apparatus, and that it largely controls all the other components of the system, including the financial. However, it also appears that the control is imperfect, subject to resistance if it tries to go too far.

It also appears that there are some distinct factions involved, the two major contenders being those more highly motivated persons concerned about meeting the challenges we face, the other being the more corrupt ones trying to expand their power and wealth. The alliance between these factions appears to be increasingly strained as growing corruption begins to impair the effectiveness of the institutions of society to meet the perceived challenges.

An analogy might be to a sinking ship, in which some want to build and equip lifeboats and others who want to make sure they are the ones who get to go in them. Each needs the other, for the time being, but the latter are beginning to threaten the production and seaworthiness of the lifeboats.

What we have is in many ways a classic oligarchy, with multiple components in an uneasy alliance with one another. No one individual is paramount, and anyone can be replaced if he gets too far out of line, by some combination of the others, each of whom derives his power from the institutions and assets under his influence.

Of course, the ones who get trampled under this regime are the ordinary people, who receive just enough under the deal to keep them quiet. The Powers That Be fear above all that the people might rise up and overthrow them, something that the people could still do if they could ever act in concert. Social control therefore becomes a matter of keeping them placated, divided, and misinformed.

Unfortunately for their scheme, they face the same problem the Roman Empire did. To keep the people placated, they are forced to pay them off, and meet increasing demands for such payoffs, while growth of the productive sector falters, or even shrinks relative to the population. Economic growth and the solutions to our social problems are being impaired by the depredations of the corrupt elements of the Shadow Government, who are concentrating assets in a way and at a rate that threaten the viability of the economy. The Romans solved the problem of keeping their citizens supplied with bread and circuses by predation of outlying provinces. Modern capitalist nations tried the same thing, but that imperial order is breaking down, and the only thing left is economic growth. If that growth falters, the welfare state fails, and with it the social stability on which the Established Order depends.