Posted July 11th, 2009 by Rugrat in Compilation, Podcasts | 2 Comments »

July11

“Your lovin’ give me a thrill
But your lovin’ don’t pay my bills.
Now gimme money that’s what I want.”

–Janie Bradbord & Berry Gordy

Have you ever tried to imagine a world without money?

Most of the world lives in abject poverty - no imagination required.

People are likely to associate poverty with a lack of money, but people don’t need money to live - they need love, wholesome food, clean water, and warm, dry shelter. All of these things can be provided for without money, but only if people have access to the skills and resources that can make it all happen - and only if certain socio-political forces aren’t deliberately preventing this from happening.

Despite what many mean-spirited ideologues will tell you, people don’t go hungry because they are lazy (hunger is a great motivator after all). They go hungry because they are physically prevented from feeding themselves.

Without access to land and resources, skills and education, and a stable environment, nobody can be expected to develop the kind of autonomy that would allow them the decency of subsistence, let alone the pursuit of happiness.

The path of civilization has brought about many cultural institutions (ye olde religion and politics) that have increasingly kept people poor and helpless, and money has almost always been at the core of these problems.

“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” –1 Timothy 6:10.

Considering the stranglehold that money has on our civilization, it’s funny that so many people associate it with liberty and freedom.

Like it or not, money is one of the primary wedges that keeps the kind of world we want from forming - a world of brotherly love, cooperation, community, commons, creativity and celebration.

With another global depression growling at our doorsteps, many of us must be wondering what can be done about it, but before we can even approach solutions we must consider how we got here in the first place.

Before the advent of modern banking systems that brought about the current “meltdown”, money was a unit of measure that represented the real productive value of the economy. It was a means to facilitate trade. Now we have been hoodwinked into believing that money is real wealth that can create more of itself. This defies common sense and proves that the reigning economic dogma is nothing remotely scientific - it is intellectual (and actual) fraud. Nothing can produce real wealth except the resources that nature provides and the utilization of them that comes from our own labour.

“The Shekel referred to an ancient unit of weight and currency. The first usage of the term came from Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and referred to a specific mass of barley which related other values in a metric such as silver, bronze, copper etc. A barley/shekel was originally both a unit of currency and a unit of weight… just as the British Pound was originally a unit denominating a one pound mass of silver.” —Wikipedia

In a subsistence culture, gold and silver have little to no intrinsic value, but as civilization advanced the properties of these two metals brought them into higher demand, and thus they became highly sought commodities that represented real wealth.

“And so we’re told this is the golden age, and gold is the reason for the wars we wage” —U2, from the song, New Year’s Day.

“The first gold coins in history were coined by Egyptian Pharaohs around 2,700 BC. These gold coins, of variable purity, were used primarily as gifts and not for commerce. Several centuries later, King Croesus, ruler of Lydia (560-546 BC), began issuing gold coins, with a standardised purity, for general circulation. King Croesus’ gold coins follow the first silver coins that were minted by King Pheidon of Argos around 700 BC.” —Wikipedia

As trade expanded, the coinage of gold and silver gradually became more widely accepted.

Banking was first created for trade and predates modern forms of money. It most likely originated from ancient temples dating back nearly 5000 years. Temples stored grains and other readily consumable commodities because they were built well, secure, and attended frequently . Temples were also sacred and this fact would deter most thiefs. The bible touches on this history in the story of Jesus chasing the merchants and money-changers from the temple.

Modern paper money started as “bills of exchange” that were used to facilitate the grain trade (and long-distance trade networks) in Italy. These “merchant” banks were started by Jews fleeing Spanish persecution. The word bank comes from the Italian, banca or bench, in reference to the benches that were used in the markets by the Jewish merchants. The word bankrupt comes from “banca rotta”, or broken bench, which would often be the violent result of disputes over a grain traders’ deposits. Hence the term being “broke” or “busted”.

Persecution against Jews kept them from owning property or joining guilds and participating in other sectors of the economy. Thus they were forced into frowned practices such as tax and rent collecting, and moneylending. This eventuality was used by political actors in order to distance themselves from their oppressive practices, shifting the burden onto the Jews.

This Italian history is why anti-semitism is so tied to money and usury. It inspired Shakespeare to pen “The Merchant of Venice”. Many have cried anti-semitism over the “Shylock” character, but it seems to me that the bard was actually trying to challenge the prevelance of anti-semitism within Christian culture. Shylock was no simple villain, he was a persecuted soul who suffered at the hands of the Christians, and thus his lust for revenge and his “pound of flesh” had a justifiable context:

“To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew: hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”—The Merchant Of Venice Act 3, scene 1, 58-68

Italy was still fractured into city states and troubled by conflict. Many of the Jewish merchants fled to the wheat growing regions of Germany and Poland, where they transplanted their banking systems. The Warburgs and Rothschilds were the heirs of this heritage and applied the same principles to their goldsmith businesses.

As bills of exchange (promisary notes, cheques, bank notes) became more widely accepted in trade, the goldsmiths realized that they only needed a small amount of gold on hand to cover day-to-day deposit liabilities and they began printing more notes than they had gold in their vaults. The bankers could then lend these as real money to be used in the economy. Thus the bankers were creating money for which there was no real value - an act of fraud.

To offset the complaints of “usury”, depositors were paid interest for the use of their gold as a security for these notes, but it is unlikely that depositors really understood the transactions they were engaged in. This became apparent when bank runs led to insolvency and depositors sought legal remedy through the courts:

“In the first half of the nineteenth century, several customers of British banks filed lawsuits against their banks, claiming that by “depositing” certain sums of money they intended to entrust the banker with the safekeeping of their property. They stressed that they did not intend to invest these sums in the bank, nor did they wish to authorize the bankers to use the money as they saw fit and hence did not consent to bearing the risk of losing a part or all of their investment. The bankers held that the opposite was true. They claimed that the money “deposited” with them was an investment and that by making this investment the customers consented to bearing the risk of eventual irredeemability. Now, in accordance with the principles of the common law, the British judges had to decide whether, in the cases under consideration, the money the banks had received constituted a bailment (that is, a warehouse deposit) or an investment. In all cases, they decided that the banks had received the money as an investment . . . From the point of view of economic theory, however, the judges committed a fateful error. Indeed, they justified their decisions not by using the facts of the particular cases under consideration, but by evoking a completely unwarranted and fallacious a priori principle. They argued that all sums of money received by banks are necessarily investments. In the words of Lord Cottenham, judge of the classic case Foley v. Hill and Others (1848):

“Money, when paid into a bank, ceases altogether to be the money of the principal; it is then the money of the banker, who is bound to an equivalent by paying a similar sum to that deposited when he is asked for it. . . . The money placed in the custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable to the principal if he puts it in jeopardy, if he engages in a hazardous speculation; he is not bound to keep it or deal with it as the property of his principal; but he is, of course, answerable for the amount, because he has contracted. (qtd. in Rothbard 1983, 94, who quotes from Holden 1970, 32)” —J. G. HÜLSMANN: Has Fractional-Reserve Banking Really Passed the Market Test?

Repeated banking failures led to support for central banking systems to stabilize the monetary system. While the first central banks were created in Europe in the 17th century (first with Riksbank in Sweden in 1668, followed in 1694 by the Bank of England), central banks did not become leading financial institutions until the 20th century.

President Woodrow Wilson signed the U.S. Federal Reserve Act in 1913. A few years later he wrote:

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

This new banking system replaced the issued notes of the various commercial banks with a single common note issued by the central bank. The theory was (at least from the point of view of the bankers) that a centrally managed scheme (with certain standards and oversight) would stabilize the fractional (and still fraudulent) reserve system and provide more confidence to depositors and investors.

Sixteen years later the stock market and banking system collapsed, and the great depression followed.

At the same time this fraudulent banking system was taking itself global under the auspices of the Bank of International Settlements. The BIS was created in 1930 to facilitate money transfers arising from settling obligations from the Treaty of Versailles. It eventually became the international clearing house for the world’s central banks.

After World War II, the Bretton Woods conference led to the establishment of the new Keynesian economic order, The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the establishment of the U.S. Federal Reserve dollar as the defacto world currency. It set a fixed exchange rate of $35 U.S. per ounce of gold. Many countries then fixed the exchange of their currencies with the U.S. dollar.

While central banks were created and empowered through legal statutes, their policies and operations remain controlled by private interests - namely, the commercial banks that schemed to create them in the first place.

The Bank of Canada is an unusual exception. Created as a private bank in 1934, it was nationalized in 1938 under Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who in 1935 said:

“Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation’s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.”

While the policies and operations of the Bank of Canada are set by the bank governor, they remain under the direct legal control of the Minister of Finance. Under section 18(j) of the Bank of Canada Act, the Bank of Canada may:

“make loans to the Government of Canada or the government of any province, but such loans outstanding at any one time shall not, in the case of the Government of Canada, exceed one-third of the estimated revenue of the Government of Canada for its fiscal year, and shall not, in the case of a provincial government, exceed one-fourth of that government’s estimated revenue for its fiscal year, and such loans shall be repaid before the end of the first quarter after the end of the fiscal year of the government that has contracted the loan.”

Thus, the Bank of Canada could create debt-free money for use by the government on behalf of the people. This was the policy of the Canadian government from the 1930s to the early 1970s, when the government adopted the economic policy of “monetarism”. The Bank of Canada openly admits that most money in Canada is now created through credit in private banks:

“Notes issued by the Bank represent only a small portion of all the money circulating in the economy at any one time. Commercial banks and other financial institutions provide the greater part of assets used as money through loans made to individuals and businesses. In that sense, financial institutions are creating money.”

It’s also important to note that all central bank notes are fiat now, including Canada. This means that they are no longer backed by gold. In fact, they are backed by nothing at all - just the confidence of the people in their currency as a means to conduct economic transactions. This confidence is reinforced by the fact that this currency is the only legal tender accepted by the government for the payment of taxes.

Massive spending for the Vietnam war had inflated the U.S. currency (against gold exchange liabilities) to a level that was impossible to maintain. In 1968, under president Charles de Gaulle, France began cashing in its U.S. dollar reserves to reduce U.S. economic influence in Europe. This further drained U.S. gold reserves and led U.S. president Richard Nixon to negotiate the Smithsonian Agreement with the G10 in 1971. The U.S. would no longer honour its gold exchange commitment. The Bretton Woods system was dead.

The end of the gold standard meant the value of the U.S. dollar was now “floating” and its value dropped sharply, causing import prices to rise sharply in the U.S. This was the main cause of the oil crisis, as OPEC countries began raising oil prices to offset U.S. dollar value losses.

In exchange for military protection from the U.S., OPEC nations agreed to sell their oil only in U.S. dollars, which created a false global demand for U.S. dollars. Although the Bretton Woods system had technically collapsed, international trade and finance was already organized around the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. The new OPEC “petro dollar” arrangement further reinforced the global position of the U.S. dollar. This is often referred to as U.S. Dollar Hegemony.

According to Henry C.K. Liu, dollar hegemony:

“has distorted globalization into a ‘race to the bottom’ process of exploiting the lowest labor costs and the highest environmental abuse worldwide to produce items and produce for export to US markets in a quest for the almighty dollar . . . The adverse effect of this type of globalization on the developing economies are obvious. It robs them of the meager fruits of their exports and keeps their domestic economies starved for capital, as all surplus dollars must be reinvested in US treasuries to prevent the collapse of their own domestic currencies.”

As detailed by Michael Hudson, the ‘dollar glut’ also finances America’s global military build-up, as it:

“forces foreign central banks to bear the costs of America’s expanding military empire . . . Keeping international reserves in U.S. dollars means recycling their dollar inflows to buy U.S. Treasury bills . . . issued largely to finance the military.”

Massive military spending is bankrupting the U.S. economy. According to the War Resistor’s League, the U.S. government plans to spend more than 54% of its 2009 budget on the military. In 2008, net outlays for the military were well over a trillion dollars. A great deal of debt servicing charges the U.S. government currently pays are for past military spending.

There has been a lot of talk about how U.S. Social Security has been “raided” to finance military “adventures” while simultaneously giving tax cuts to the rich. In reality, Social Security has always been connected to appropriation bills for government spending. This is because any Social Security funds left over at the end of each fiscal year are automatically invested - by law - in U.S. Treasury Securities (government debt obligations) - the prime source of government funding.

The Treasury certificates are paid back by future taxes. Right wing pundits love to blame Social Security for our economic ills, but since the Social Security funds have been largely spent on militarism, the target of their angst is misplaced.

Any talk of “fiscal responsibility” is fairly pointless when money is created as debt. When the money supply must grow in order to pay the interest on mounting debt, and all new money is created as debt, how can you ever get out of debt?

This is why Prime Minister King said usury would wreck the nation.

At some point in 2006 I warned my father that a big collapse was coming and perhaps another depression. He said “When? How?” I said it would be soon, but I didn’t know when. The how was simply a matter of the boom/bust cycles created by fractional reserve lending, but more specifically, the shadow-banking industry of off-balance sheet derivatives, that re-packaged debt and sold it in the marketplace.

I was also considering the massive military spending that had occurred since 11 September 2001. Vietnam played a role in the last international monetary crisis, and since so many monetary woes of the past had been linked to war, I didn’t see any reason why we would escape this time.

I was also watching dispatches from the IMF and they were getting fairly dire by 2007. The BIS was frantically trying to impose its new “capital accord” regime (Basel-II) that would increase reserve requirements for banks and a whole host of new rules for assessing risks. They knew something was coming, but it was too little too late. The new accord was useless anyhow, because it did nothing to address the fundamentally fraudulent banking system.

By nature of their operations, banks are insolvent by design. Liquidity is merely an operational term used by economists, politicians, and media pundits to obfuscate this fact. It is a shell game to keep the system alive. That entire schools of economics have convinced otherwise educated people of this is a curious phenomenon of intellectual depravity.

Even prominent economist Charles Goodhart has noted that, “Liquidity and solvency are the heavenly twins of banking, frequently indistinguishable. An illiquid bank can rapidly become insolvent, and an insolvent bank illiquid” —Bank of Canada: Financial System Review, 2008, p.47

Banking solvency is based entirely on confidence. How do you establish a scientific method of risk assessment behind something as pscyhological and abstract as confidence? If enough people lose confidence in their bank and demand their deposits, the bank is finished.

The reserves required to meet regular fluctuations in cashflow to depositors is managed through the central banks “open market operations”. This is where “liquidity” comes in. “Repos” and other schemes in securities lending/trading are used to keep reserves at statutory required levels.

But what happens when these schemes are not enough to meet increasing demands for deposits?

What happens when people are maxed out on credit and have lost their jobs and cannot pay their debts?

Then the money system begins to contract at the full amount it is leveraged. Let’s say a bank operates on a 10:1 leverage ratio (10% reserve). This means that for every $1 on deposit, the bank can create $9 more as credit - right out of thin air. But when a dollar is withdrawn, the bank must either find a new deposit, or else reduce available credit by $9 in loans. So you can see what this means for the economy as a whole of reserves begin to fall rapidly. This is why they call it a “credit cunch”.

Worse still, if one bank gets into trouble, they can all get into trouble, because they’re liquidity management is connected through the same central bank, the weak link that can bring down the whole shell game. Between 2007 and 2008, the world’s central banks began bending their legal mandates into pretzels trying to keep their member commercial banks from failing. When their liquidity “infusions” and other schemes of “last resort” failed, a bailout was inevitable.

A lack of oversight and enforced regulations in investment banking means that banks can create money from nothing that is then used to buy equities in the stock market. Gee, no conflict of interest there!

When Baer Sterns went down in flames, it was reported that they were leveraged 33:1 and higher. While this sounds obscene it is perfectly legal. Brokers are fronted credit in “call” loans. This money pours into the stock market and creates false trading values, but eventually the “bubble” must burst. When an investment bank gets into trouble, it starts “calling in” its brokerage loans and stock values drop sharply as traders begin dumping equities to cover their debts. This is what happened in the crash of 1929. It led to the Glass-Steagall Act, which seperated financial services to prevent conflicts of interest.

The current crisis created a serious problem in public relations for the established economic order, because it is the same establishment that has been brainwashing us into accepting the slashing of social spending in the interest of fiscal responsibility. These are the same people who warn us about “handouts” and a “creeping socialism”. The same people who tell us why we must spend more on militarism while telling us that universal health care and decent education don’t work and are too expensive. It’s funny then to see these same people trying to re-educate Joe and Jane Average as they come to the taxpayers with their hats in hand, eh?

I’d call them hypocrites if they weren’t so full of shit. They never believed any of that free market crap they sold us. They know there is no such thing as an invisible free hand. That’s because it’s their fist that’s being shoved up our arse.

But they knew with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake, we were bound to start asking some hard questions, and when the house of cards began to fall in 2008, our slave masters needed a scapegoat, so it manufactured one in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. Sure they gave us Madoff and other red herrings like the scandal of executive bonuses, but ultimately the main narrative we were sold was that banks were giving loans to people who were more likely to default. That’s a nasty little psychological wedge for those who are already suffering from massive debt and unemployment. Rather than focus their energies in fighting the economic system that had enslaved them, Joe and Jane could blame the poor.

Did you notice the amount of coverage the media gave to predatory lending practices and how Latinos and African-Americans were targetted? To many this would seem to expose the inheritant racism in the economic system, but for many people this will simply reinforce their racist beliefs that “spics” and “niggers” cannot be trusted with money, and that they have contributed to the economic situation, rather than the predators and the fraudulent banking system itself.

Whether intentional or not, this kind of media reporting can cause divisions amongst the people and cause many to blame the poor and underprivelaged. Meanwhile our slave masters get massive handouts to solve the liquidity crisis in their Ponzi scheme - the one that nobody in the media seems willing to expose.

The big players continue to close ranks around us. Rumours abound that the recent G20 summit was the first step towards a global currency under a new Bretton Woods regime. China and Russia recently met to discuss how they might collaborate to end U.S. dollar hegemony.

Conspiracy theorists rant on about a the coming of a New World Order, but it is already here.

The question is: What are we going to do about it?

As I mentioned previously, money has become a wedge that divides us all. It owns much more than our land, our resources, our labour, and our government, it owns our minds and our souls. That is what the bible quote from Timothy is all about. It is not money itself that is the problem, but the lust for it - not just in blind greed, but in real need. When our government, economy and entire way of life pivot on a corrupt money system that makes us all slaves to the “almighty dollar”, how can we possibly have a just society that provides for all and the “pursuit of happiness”?

Think of all the foreclosures happening now in the United States. Why hasn’t anyone done anything to stop this? Why have we not put our bodies in the way of this madness? We have been brainwashed to believe that hyperindividualism is some law of nature, like Ayn Rand’s “virtue” of selfishness. Pseduo-intellectual rationalizations for these “schools of thought” are beyond being cheap propaganda, they espouse a totalitarian moral bankruptcy.

Without money we still have each other, but without morals, without community, what do we have?

We can cry all we want about the corruption of bankers, corporations, and politicians, but no amount of reform is ever going to save us from these people. We need to stand up and take responsibility for ourselves and our communities.

We can only begin to “fight the power” when we hold some real autonomy. Perhaps some day we will destroy the corruption of international Ponzi-scheme banking, but we cannot make this even a remote possibility when we stand alone. So we must build community that can stand on its own two feet without the money system. We must learn to cooperate again. We must learn to trust and depend on each other again.

We must also learn more about the money system and what can be done about it. There is lots of great reading out there (feel free to post suggestions as comments), but here’s some starting material:

In Modern Money Mechanics, the Federal Reserve explains how it expands and contracts the money supply. What it reveals will surprise some and totally shock others. You can get a handle on the derivatives market and have a few dark laughs by reading Money and the Crisis of Civilization, by Charles Eisenstein. Follow that up with more from Charles in Money: A New Beginning. Finally, YES! Magazine examines the fraudulent international banking system in the Summer 2009 issue and talks about how we can create The New Economy.

Meanwhile, you can ponder the quotes below while you enjoy the music. Songs below marked* are also available as a podcast.

Bailout Blues for the Broke and Busted:

1) Pink Floyd - Money - 6:20 *
2) Rhett and Link - The Economic Meltdown Song - 2:12 *
3) Monty Python - Money Song - 0:55 *
4) The Money Hole (theonion.com) - 1:39 *
5) Count Basie & Tony Bennett - With Plenty of Money and You - 1:30
6) The Beatles - Can’t Buy Me Love - 2:10
7) The Beatles - Money - 2:54 *
8) The Beatles - Taxman - 2:34 *
9) The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon - 3:32 *
10) Merle Travis - Sixteen Tons - 2:48 *
11) Homegas - Die for a Dime - 1:51
12) Danny Schmidt - Better off Broke - 3:32 *
13) Gatemouth Brown & Roy Clark - Busted - 2:54 *
14) Funkadelic - Funky Dollar Bill - 3:17
15) The O’Jays - For The Love Of Money - 3:40 *
16) Hunter’s Point Riot - The Dollar Sign - 5:04 *
17) The Brecker Brothers - Don’t Get Funny With My Money - 4:33
18) Blue Room - The Money Game - 4:07
19) Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - When Money Becomes King - 5:10
20) Danny Schmidt - Serpentine Cycle of Money - 4:09
21) Billie Holiday - God Bless the Child - 3:09 *

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.” —Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England (appointed 1928). Reputed to be the 2nd wealthiest man in England at that time.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” —Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” —Thomas Jefferson

“The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.” —Thomas Jefferson

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.” —James Madison

“If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.” —Andrew Jackson

“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.” —Abraham Lincoln

“Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands.” —Theodore Roosevelt

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt (in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21, 1933)

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” —Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, 1815.

“The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilization.” —Otto von Bismark (1815-1898), German Chancellor, after the Lincoln assassination.

“Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history.” —Karl Marx writing in the Communist Manifesto (1848).

“That this House considers that the continued issue of all the means of exchange - be they coin, bank-notes or credit, largely passed on by cheques - by private firms as an interest-bearing debt against the public should cease forthwith; that the Sovereign power and duty of issuing money in all forms should be returned to the Crown, then to be put into circulation free of all debt and interest obligations…” —Captain Henry Kerby MP, in an Early Day Motion tabled in 1964.

“Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing.” —Ralph M Hawtry, former Secretary to the Treasury.

“… our whole monetary system is dishonest, as it is debt-based… We did not vote for it. It grew upon us gradually but markedly since 1971 when the commodity-based system was abandoned.” —The Earl of Caithness, in a speech to the House of Lords, 1997.

“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.” —William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England in 1694, then a privately owned bank.

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” —Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), founder of the House of Rothschild.

“The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.” —The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.

“I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create money. And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hand the destiny of the people.” —Reginald McKenna, as Chairman of the Midland Bank, addressing stockholders in 1924.

“The banks do create money. They have been doing it for a long time, but they didn’t realise it, and they did not admit it. Very few did. You will find it in all sorts of documents, financial textbooks, etc. But in the intervening years, and we must be perfectly frank about these things, there has been a development of thought, until today I doubt very much whether you would get many prominent bankers to attempt to deny that banks create it.” —H W White, Chairman of the Associated Banks of New Zealand, to the New Zealand Monetary Commission, 1955.

“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.” —Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer.

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” —Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company.

“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is, perhaps, the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banks can in fact inflate, mint and un-mint the modern ledger-entry currency.” —Major L L B Angus.

“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.” —John Kenneth Galbraith (1908- ), former professor of economics at Harvard, writing in ‘Money: Whence it came, where it went’ (1975).