Talk:Nathan Mayer Rothschild

message: I removed a section of quotes added by an anon -- they are highly POV and from dubious sources, not suitable for an encyclopedia article:
====Quotes====
*"One cause of his [Nathan's] success was the secrecy with which he shrouded, and the tortuous policy with which he misled those who watched him the keenest."  John Reeves, The Rothschilds, Financial Rulers of the Nations, 1887, page 167. 
*Nathan is described by the historian John Reeves as being a very shrewd, unscrupulous and uncouth man, and exceedingly close fisted.  He says that, "He never paid his employees a farthing more than was necessary for their bare subsistence, or at least not a farthing more than they could compel him to pay."  George Armstrong, "The Rothschild Money Trust", 1940, pg. 26
--mervyn 15:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply."  This quote is found on many conspiracy-oriented web sites.  I would love if someone could definitively show it to be either true or a hoax. I find it improbable that a man who supposedly "controlled the British Empire" would openly and arrogantly say so. 174.24.109.124 (talk) 13:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Biased quotes

message: *"One cause of his [Nathan's] success was the secrecy with which he shrouded, and the tortuous policy with which he misled those who watched him the keenest."  John Reeves, The Rothschilds, Financial Rulers of the Nations, 1887, page 167. 
*Nathan is described by the historian John Reeves as being a very shrewd, unscrupulous and uncouth man, and exceedingly close fisted.  He says that, "He never paid his employees a farthing more than was necessary for their bare subsistence, or at least not a farthing more than they could compel him to pay."  George Armstrong, "The Rothschild Money Trust", 1940, pg. 26
--mervyn 15:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply."  This quote is found on many conspiracy-oriented web sites.  I would love if someone could definitively show it to be either true or a hoax. I find it improbable that a man who supposedly "controlled the British Empire" would openly and arrogantly say so. 174.24.109.124 (talk) 13:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Quotes

message: * This section should assume a neutral point of view. Some people claim the story is legendary, others believe it is true in whole or part. It should be noted also that the Rothschild family lost their 1912 injunction seeking to suppress the story as libelous. See  Karpouzi (talk) 22:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As noted above, according to Frederic Morton's authorized 1962 family portrait, the story is true:
Chapter 4: Rothschild vs. Napoleon
Round Four: The Scoop of Scoops
"The Battle of Waterloo established England as the foremost European power. To the Rothschilds, her chief financial agents, Waterloo brought a multimillion-dollar scoop. The fame of that scoop has endowed it, in later years, with carrier pigeons and other legendary appurtenances. But like most family feats, it was based on very hard work and very cold cunning. The hard work had started a long time before. As soon as the boys had fanned out from Frankfurt, they had started sending each other industriously, endlessly, items of commercial or general interest. Soon a private news service developed. (At the London house it survived down to World War II in the form of a dozen blue-clad couriers ready to fly off at a moment's notice to Rio, Melbourne or Nairobi.) Rothschild coaches careered down highways; Rothschild boats set sail across the Channel; Rothschild messengers were swift shadows along the streets. They carried cash, securities, letters and news. Above all, news---latest, exclusive news to be vigorously processed at stock market and commodity bourse. And there was no news more precious than the outcome of Waterloo. For days the London 'Change had strained its ears. If Napoleon won, English consols were bound to drop. If he lost, the enemy empire would shatter and consols rise. For thirty hours the fate of Europe hung veiled in cannon smoke. On June 19, 1815, late in the afternoon a Rothschild agent named Rothworth jumped into a boat at Ostend. In his hand he held a Dutch gazette still damp from the printer. By the dawn light of June 20 Nathan Rothschild stood at Folkstone harbor and let his eye fly over the lead paragraphs. A moment later he was on his way to London (beating Wellington's envoy by many hours) to tell the government that Napoleon had been crushed. Then he proceeded to the stock exchange. Another man in his position would have sunk his worth into consols. But this was Nathan Rothschild. He leaned against "his" pillar. He did not invest. He sold. He dumped consols. His name was already such that a single substantial move on his part sufficed to bear or bull an issue. Consols fell. Nathan leaned and leaned, and sold and sold. Consols dropped still more. "Rothschild knows," the whisper rippled through the 'Change. "Waterloo is lost." Nathan kept on selling, his round face motionless and stern, his pudgy fingers depressing the market by tens of thousands of pounds with each sell signal. Consols dived, consols p1ummeted---until, a split second before it was too late, Nathan suddenly bought a giant parcel for a song. Moments afterwards the great news broke, to send consols soaring. We cannot guess the number of hopes and savings wiped out by this engineered panic. We cannot estimate how many livened servants, how many Watteaus and Rembrandts, how many thoroughbreds in his descendants' stables, the man by the pillar won that single day."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.233.160.78 (talk) 10:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

text: Unfortunately, Morton's book is very dated, very journalistic, and doesn't give much sourcing for his stories. --Lessogg (talk) 16:21, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: His sources were the family archives to which he was granted special access; this was an authorised family story. The date it was written is immaterial - information does not automatically become more reliable the more modern it is. User Kraxler above is therefore wrong when he says there is no proof to the legend. Yes there is - the family have essentially acknowledged the part played by one of their ancestors in allowing Morton's work to be published. Unfortunately we are unlikely to get any more explicit admission than this but the fact remains that those who claim there is no proof to the "legend" are suffering from wishful thinking or wilfull blindness.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.233.160.78 (talk) 11:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Or perhaps users such as Kraxler are agents of the family trying to cover it up!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.235.33.208 (talk) 00:01, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Waterloo

message: "However, whether Nathan's profit on the London Stock Exchange was a million pounds or less, the fact remains that he was willing to bankrupt a large number of people and destroy them financially in order to gain more wealth."
This is the ending to the section on the Waterloo legend.  If the point is that the story of Rothschild scoring millions from Waterloo knowledge is false, this seems like a weird way to end it.  To me, it sounds like "Even if the story isn't literally true, it is the kind of thing he would have done."  Perhaps not NPOV?  DrNietzsche (talk) 05:29, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are we happy with this?