Today in the Sobel Timeline: March 22

On March 22, 1922, Mexican President Emiliano Calles gave an address before Congress calling for plebiscites to be held in the U.S.M.'s five client states of Guatemala, New Granada, Hawaii, Alaska, and Siberia. Calles acted against the advice of his chief advisor, Secretary of State Albert Ullman, who had urged him to cultivate the support of the country's Anglo-Hispano elite. Since Kramer Associates controlled the economies of the client states, K.A. President Douglas Benedict was certain to oppose Calles' proposal.

On March 22, 1944, Mexican President Alvin Silva announced that he was nationalizing all Kramer Associates assets in the U.S.M., as part of the war effort against Japan and Australia. For reasons that Sobel never made clear, K.A. President John Jackson had chosen to oppose Silva's plan to conquer Japan, and had been subsidizing the Japanese war effort against Mexico. Sobel repeats Stanley Tulin's assertion that the complexity of K.A.'s corporate structure ensured that Silva's nationalization scheme gained him only one fifth of the company's assets, or even as little as one tenth. Sobel also states that the mass resignations of K.A. employees after the seizures crippled the Mexican war effort.