Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds to me like a highly ineffective secret society, given the slow but steady decline of Anglo-American hegemony since the cold war.
Ineffective is an ungenerous appraisal, when we consider what the world looked like mid 19th century when this project got started, and how it does now. They were quite effective up to the demise of USSR. The entire world speaks English. William Engdahl's book Gods of Money [ch. 18 - Theft of a Nation] addresses the period you mention and what was happening. There was also an ideological shift in this period, since a…
The 20th century saw the rise of American military, economic, and cultural imperialism, which carried Anglo-American culture further as the British Empire declined relatively.
Sure, I'll concede that there are shady people in government trying to do things that are broadly objectionable and sometimes illegal, but to think this means certain individuals or secret societies have a "stranglehold" on global politics or economics goes much too far. There are far too many factors at play for a small group of people to wield the level of outsize power necessary to guide these processes. It's really a very large and ever-changing group of people who "control everything", and this happens in a highly uncoordinated manner.