Laurence, regarding the Panama Canal: perhaps this is the appropriate time to refresh LRC readers on how the U.S. obtained the Canal and the territory surrounding it. In one of his best examples of power elite analysis, Murray N. Rothbard, provides the unsavory details of this imperialistic land grab for the benefit of the Wall Street elite dominating the American state at the time. Some of the same nefarious firms are still in the saddle directing the leviathan today as senior partners of the deep state.