Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen, and those that concern wealth and control of the world are especially attractive to us, the masses of the planet.

There is endless speculation, some not necessarily without merit, regarding these conspiracies which include the Bilderberg Group, the Masons, and of course the Rothschilds. What brought this subject to mind was a recent post on that venerable source of reliable truths, Facebook.Most Facebook memes and posts are as reliable as a three-dollar bill and unicorn photographs, but this one did intrigue me, having done some reading about the Rothschilds in the past, so I did some research.The subject at hand is this: A post claims that one person definitely benefited from the disappearance of Flight 370, the Malaysian Airline that disappeared last March when the transponders and pilot went off the air hours before the actual plane vanished from radar and the known world.Allegedly among the passengers were all but one of the last known holders of the semiconductor patent.The final holder was financier Jacob Rothschild. The meme implies that Rothschild is now the sole owner of the patent.An interesting conspiracy to lay at the feet of one of the current power brokers in the Rothschild family, but the question remains, is this true?The Rothschild story begins in 1760 in Germany with a Jewish banker named Mayer Amschel Rothschild. He began as a banker for the government of Landgraves of Hesse-Cassel.In what was an unusual circumstance, Rothschild was able to maintain his wealth and bequeath it to his five sons, who in turn collectively built one of the most powerful banking families in the world.Eventually the Austrian branch of the family managed to secure five hereditary Baronys in Austria while the British branch of the family attained two titles from Queen Victoria.By the 19th century, many believed that the Rothschilds were the wealthiest family in the world.This fortune was secured and hidden from the world by a strategy conceived by Mayer. To secure and keep hidden the exact amount of his family's wealth, Mayer made sure his sons married wives within the Rothschild family, carefully selecting first and second cousins within the family for his sons to marry.Next, they moved to various major cities throughout Europe: Amschel to Frankfurt, Saloman to Vienna, Nathan to London, Calmann to Naples and Jakob to Paris.With the sons located throughout Europe they continued to amass wealth and build the family fortunes. As generations passed, the Rothschilds began to intermarry with other financial families and European nobility, securing their legacies throughout the continent. The men all eventually became barons with titles bestowed by Austrian Emperor Francis I in 1818.Their network of banks enable them to capitalize on news as they kept each other informed of events in their cities and countries many times before the official messengers and news carriers reached their respective governments.This enabled the brothers to calculate and plan and amass great wealth through smart business decisions and actions, further growing their wealth and subsequent power.By the mid-1800s with the industrialization of Europe, the Rothschilds became the venture capitalists of their day and soon owned large shares of many major companies in the 19th century, including DeBeers, which became the world's foremost diamond mining company; Royal & SunAlliance or RSA Insurance; and Imerys, an industrial mineral company, among others.They became philanthropists, patrons of the arts and amassed great collections of the European masters' art.The Nazis plundered their mansions and palaces, stealing vast amounts of artwork and treasures during World War II, some of which was only returned in the last decade of the 20th century.Many of the family fled to the United States to avoid the Holocaust and returned to Europe after the war ended.Today the Rothschild group, a Switzerland based company, continues to manage a collection of family banks and holdings.In fact, each of the brothers' descendant companies have continued to be on the forefront of venture capitalism, high finance and the arts so they remain a force in the world today, but whether they control the world cannot definitely be determined.Returning to the meme in question which implies that Jakob Rothschild eliminated patent holders to retain total control of the semiconductor, I did some digging on the idea through some websites. Snopes.com, which researches legends and fanciful ideas and confirms or discredits them, had investigated this particular issue.They found that the patent in question is not necessarily "the" semiconductor patent, but one that helped improve part of the manufacturing process.It was registered by five parties, four Chinese engineers and the Blackstone group. The writer speculated the Blackstone group may have been the backer or employer of the engineers listed on the patent. Jakob Rothschild sits on the advisory board for this group.Two glaring holes exist in this accusation. First, none of the Chinese inventors were found on the passenger manifest for the flight and secondly, even if they were, their heirs and not Rothschild would retain interest in the patent unless they had signed them away, and there is no evidence they did.So while it was a nice try, it turns out this smoking gun misfires, and the conspiracies are saved for another day.Till next time …