BUSH WANTS TO GIVE BANKING GANSTERS aka BANKSTERS GREATER POWER! + The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control..
BUSH WANTS TO GIVE BANKING GANSTERS aka BANKSTERS GREATER POWER!
From Stan
Received by Email
Saturday, March 29, 2008 11:43 PM
“…The role Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues have been playing to shore up the financial system would be formalized in the administration plan by giving Fed officials greater power to detect where threats might be lurking in the system…”
More in: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080329/ap_on_go_pr_wh/fed_overhaul
Well, now is perfectly clear why there is a war in Iraq and there are financial crises in the US.
It was masterminded by Fed parasites (as it happened before – read about it in “The Money Masters”) to get more power.
“…Finally they reverted to the old central banker's formula- finance a war, to create debt and dependency. If they couldn't get their central bank any other way, America could be brought to its knees by plunging it into a War, just as they were said to have done in 1812, after the First Bank of the U.S. was not re-chartered.…”
Gangster Bush and his promoters in Banksters’ Fed are unstoppable because they are using old proven methods.
“…The problem is we have one of the worst monetary system sever devised - a central bank that operates independently of our government,which, with other private banks, creates all of our money with a parallel amount of interest-bearing debt. That's why we can never get out of debt. And that's why a deep depression is a certainty, for most of our citizens, whether caused suddenly in a severe economic crash, or gradually through continued relentless inflation. The Fed is creating it to enrich its private stock holders, just like it deliberately created the Great Depression the 1930s…
… Such is the power of these central banks that they soon
take total control over a nation's economy. It soon amounts to nothing but a
plutocracy - rule by the rich, and the bankers soon come to be the dominant
super-rich class. It is like putting control of the army in the hands of the
mafia. The danger of tyranny is extreme…”
"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will. - Governor Morris
More in: http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/money-masters.html
The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America
Commentary by Peter Myers
June 7, 2003; update January 24, 2006. My comments are shown {thus}.
You are at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/money-masters.html.
The Money Masters: How International Bankers Gained Control of America
Video Script
Produced by Patrick S. J. Carmack
Directed by Bill Still
Royalty Production Company 1998
{p. 1} 1. THE PROBLEM
There was a time in this country when to ask someone for whom he worked was considered somewhat insulting, as it implied he was an incompetent, incapable of gainful self-employment.
But now, property ownership (net wealth) is not a general feature of our society, as it was before the Civil War, and largely was still until the Great Depression. Rather, net debt and complete dependence on a precarious wage or salary at the will of others is the general condition.
Since the exercise of freedom often includes using material objects such as books, food, clothing, shelter, arms, transport, etc., the choice and possession of which requires some wealth, we are forced to admit that the general condition of Americans is one of increasing dependence and limitations on our freedom.
Since the turn of the century, there has occurred throughout the world a major increase in debt and a major decline in the freedom of individuals, and of states, to conduct their own affairs. To restore a condition of widespread, modest wealth is therefore essential to regaining and preserving our freedom.
What's going on in America today? Why are we over our heads in debt? Why can't the politicians bring debt under control? Why are so many people - often both parents now - working at low-paying, deadend jobs and still making do with less? What's the future of the American economy and way of life?
Why does the government tell us inflation is low, when the buying power of our paychecks is declining at an alarming rate? Only a generation ago, bread was a quarter and you could get a new car for $1,995 !
Are we headed into an economic crash of unprecedented proportions - one which will make the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression which followed look like a Sunday school picnic? If so, can we prevent it? Or, will we simply arrive at the same point through more inflation-caused poverty, robbing Americans of their savings, fixed incomes and wages by imperceptible degrees - reducing their purchasing power. What can we do to protect our families?
Some reliable experts say a crash is coming. They also say that there are simple, inexpensive things anyone can do to protect their families - to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads even in the worst of times. But to do that, we have to understand why a depression is coming, who's behind it, what they want, and how the perpetrators plan on protecting their families. Armed with this knowledge, any of us can ride out the coming storm.
Larry Bates was a bank president for eleven years. As a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, he chaired the committee on Banking and Commerce. He's also a former professor of economics and the author of the best-selling book The New Economic Disorder.
"I can tell you right now that there is going to be a crash of unprecedented proportions. A crash like we have never seen before in this country. The greatest shock of this decade is that more people are about to loose more money then at any
{p. 2} time before in history, but the second greatest shock will be the incredible amount of money a relatively small group of people will make at the same time. You see, in periods of economic upheaval in periods of economic crisis, wealth is not destroyed, it is merely transferred." - Larry Bates
Banker and former Presidential candidate Charles Collins is a lawyer, has owned banks, and served as a bank director. He believes we'll never get out of debt because the Federal Reserve is in control of our money.
"Right now, it's perpetuated by the Federal Reserve making us borrow the money from them, at interest, to pay the interest that's already accumulated. So we cannot get out of debt the way we're going now."
Economist Henry Pasquet is a tenured instructor in economics. He agrees the end is near for the U. S. economy.
"No, not when you are adding roughly a billion dollars a day. We just can't go on. We had less than 1 trillion dollars of national debt in 1980, now it's $5 trillion - 5 times greater in 15 years. It just doesn't take a genius to realize that this just can't go on forever."
The problem is we have one of the worst monetary systems ever devised - a central bank that operates independently of our government, which, with other private banks, creates all of our money with a parallel amount of interest-bearing debt. That's why we can never get out of debt. And that's why a deep depression is a certainty, for most of our citizens, whether caused suddenly in a severe economic crash, or gradually through continued relentless inflation. The Fed is creating it to enrich its private stockholders, just like it deliberately created the Great Depression the 1930s.
The Federal Reserve headquarters is in Washington, D.C. It sits on a very impressive address right on Constitution Avenue, right across from the Lincoln Memorial. But is it "Federal"? Is it really part of the United States government?
Well, what we are about to show you is that there is nothing federal about the Fed Reserve, and there are no reserves. The name is a deception created back before the Fed Reserve Act was passed in 1913 to make Americans think that America's new central bank operates in the public interest.
The truth is that the Fed is a private (or best, quasi-public) bank, owned by private National banks which are the stockholders, and run for their private profit.
"That's exactly correct, the Fed is privately-owned, for-profit corporation which has no reserves, at least no reserve to back up the Federal Reserve ot which are our common currency." - economist Henry Pasquet
The Federal Reserve Act was railroaded through a carefully prepared Congressional Conference Committee scheduled during unlikely hours of 1:30 a.m. to 4:30 a Monday, December 22, 1913, when most members were sleeping, at which 20-40 substantial differences in the House and Senate versions were supposedly described, deliberated, debated, reconciled and voted upon in a
{p. 3} near miraculous 4 1/2 to 9 minutes per item, at that late hour. As author Anthony C. Sutton noted:
"This miracle of speediness, never equaled before or after in the U.S. Congress, is ominously comparable to the rubber stamp lawmaking of the banana republics."
At 4:30 a.m. a prepared report of this Committee was handed to the printers. Senator Bristow of Kansas, the Republican leader, stated on the Congressional Record that the Conference Committee had met without notifying them and that Republicans were not present, and were given no opportunity to either read or sign the Conference Committee report.
The Conference report is normally read on the Senate floor. The Republicans did not even see the report. Some Senators stated on the floor of the Senate that they had no knowledge of the contents of the Bill. At 6:02 p.m., December 23rd, when many members had already left the Capitol for the Christmas holiday, the very same day the Bill was hurried through the House and Senate, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act of l913 into law.
The Act transferred control of the money supply of the United States from Congress to a pnvate banking elite. It is not surprising that a bill granting a few national bankers a private money monopoly was passed in such a corrupted manner.
As author Anthony C. Sutton noted:
"The Federal Reserve System is a legal private monopoly of the money supply operated for the benefit of the few under the guise of protecting and promoting the public intent."
Heroic Nebraska Senator Hitchcock, the only Senate Democrat working against the bill, had proposed numerous amendments to the bill aimed at making the Federal Reserve System a government agency (i.e. placing control in the Department of the Treasury), rather than a private monopoly, but these were all tabled - so great was the power of the Money Changers over Congress by then.
If there's still any doubt whether the Federal Reserve is a part of the U.S. government, check your local telephone book. It's not listed in the blue "government pages." It is correctly listed in the "business" white pages, right next to Federal Express, another private company. But more directly, U.S. Courts have ruled that the Fed is a special form of private corporation.
Let's take a look at the Fed shareholders: according to researcher Eric Samuelson, as of November, 1997, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (which completely dominates the other eleven branches through stock ownership, control, influence, having the only permanent voting seat on the Federal Open Market Committee and by handling all open market bond transactions), which has 19,752,655 shares outstanding, was majority-owned by two banks - Chase Manhattan bank (now merged with Chemical Bank) with 6,389,445 shares or 32.35%, and Citibank, N.A., with 4,051,851 shares or 20.51%. Together those two banks own 10,441,295 shares or 52.86%: majority control.
{p. 4} While majority ownership conclusively demonstrates effective control, it is not critical to control, which is often exercised in large, publicly-traded corporations by blocks of as little as 25%, and even 2%, when the other owners hold smaller blocks.
Why can't Congress do something about this dangerous concentration of power. Most members of Congress just don't understand the system, and the few who do are afraid to speak up. For example, initially a veteran Congressman asked us if he could be interviewed. However, both times our camera crew arrived at his office to do the interview, we were not able to film. The Congressman never appeared, and eventually got cold feet and withdrew.
Fighting the bankers is a good way to see one's opponent get heavily funded in the next election. But a few others in Congress have been bolder over the years. Here are three quick examples.
In 1923, Representative Charles A. Lindbergh, a Republican om Minnesota, the father of famed aviator, "Lucky" Lindy, put it this way,
"The financial system ... has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That board administers the finance system by authority of ... a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money."
One of the most outspoken critics in Congress of the Fed was the Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee during the Great Depression years, Louis T. McFadden (R-PA). He said in l932:
"We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board ... This evil institution has impoverished ... the people of the United States ... and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through ... the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it."
Senator Barry Goldwater was a frequent critic of the Fed:
"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international moneylenders ... The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and ... manipulates the credit of the United States"
Does that power affect you?
"The Fed really is more powerful than the federal government. It is more powerful than the President, Congress or the courts. Let me prove my case. The Fed determines what the average person's car payment and house payments going to be and whether they have a job or not. And I submit to you - that is total control. The Fed is the largest single creditor of the U.S.government. What does Proverbs tell us? The borrower is servant to the lender." - Larry Bates
{p. 5} What one has to understand is that from the day the Constitution was adopted right up to today, the folks who profit from privately owned central banks, like the Fed, or, as President Madison called them, the "Money Changers", have fought a running battle for control over who gets to issue America's money.
Why is who issues the money so important? Think of money as just another commodity. If you have a monopoly on a commodity that everyone needs, everyone wants, and nobody has enough of, there are lots of ways to make a profit and also exert tremendous political influence.
That's what this battle is all about. Throughout the history of the United States, the money power has gone back and forth between Congress and some sort of privately-owned central bank. The American people fought off four privately-owned central banks, before succumbing to the first stage of a fifth privately-owned central bank during a time of national weakness - the Civil War.
The founding fathers knew the evils of a privately-owned central bank. First of all, they had seen how the privately-owned British central bank, the Bank of England, had run up the British national debt to such an extent that Parliament had been forced to place unfair taxes on the American colonies.
In fact, as we'll see later, Ben Franklin claimed that this was the real cause of the American Revolution. Most of the founding fathers realized the potential dangers of banking, and feared bankers' accumulation of wealth and power. Jefferson put it this way:
"I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
That succinct statement of Jefferson is in fact, the solution to most of our economic problems today. James Madison, the main author of the Constitution, agreed. Interestingly, he called those behind the central bank scheme "Money Changers." Madison strongly criticized their actions:
"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."
The battle over who gets to issue our money has been the pivotal issue through the history of the United States. Wars are fought over it. Depressions are caused to acquire it. Yet after World War I, this battle was rarely mentioned in newspapers or history books. Why?
MEDIA CONTROL
By World War I, the Money Changers with their dominant wealth, had seized control of most of the nation's press.
In a 1912 Senate Privileges and Elections Committee hearing, a letter was introduced to the Committee written by Representative Joseph Sibley (PA), a Rockefeller agent in Congress, to John D. Archbold, a Standard Oil employee of Rockefeller's, which read in part:
{p. 6} "An efficient literary bureau is needed, not for a day or a crisis but a permanent healthy control of the Associated Press and kindred avenues. It will cost money but will be cheapest in the end."
John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, called by his peers "the Dean of his profession", was asked in 1953 to give a toast before the New York Press Club. He responded with the following statement:
"There is no such thing as an independent press in America, if we except that of litle country towns. You know this and I know it. Not a man among you dares to utter his honest opinion. Were you to utter it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week so that I may keep my honest opinion out of the newspaper for which I write. You too are paid similar salaries for similar services. Were I to permit that a single edition of my newspaper contained an honest opinion, my occupation - like Othello's - would be gone in less than twenty-four hours.
The man who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinion would soon be on the streets in search of another job. It is the duty of a New York journalist to lie, to distort, to revile, to toady at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or what amounts to the same thing, his salary.
We are the tools and the vassals of the rich behind the scenes. We are marionettes. These men pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our capacities are all the property of these men - we are intellectual prostitutes." (As quoted by T. St. John Gaffney in Breaking The Silence, page 4.)
That was the U.S. press in 1953. It is the mass media of America today.
Press control, and later electronic media control (radio and TV), was seized in carefully planned steps, yielding the present situation in which all major mass media and the critically important major reporting services, which are the source of most news and upon which most news is based, are controlled by the Money Changers.
Representative Callaway discussed some of this press control in the Congressional Record, Vol. 54, Feb. 9, 1917, p. 2947:
"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press..
They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers.. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."
{p. 7} G. Edward Griffin quoting Ferdinand Lundberg adds this detail:
"So far as can be learned, the Rockefellers have given up their old policy of owning newspapers and magazines outright, relying now upon the publications of all camps to serve their best interests in return for the vast volume of petroleum and allied advertising under Rockefeller control.
After the J.P. Morgan bloc, the Rockefellers have the most advertising of any group to dispose of. And when advertising alone is not sufficient to insure the fealty of a newspaper, the Rockefeller companies have been known to make direct payments in return for a friendly editorial attitude."
A few years ago, three-quarters of the majority stockholders of ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN were banks, such as Chase Manhattan Corp., Citibank, Morgan Guaranty Trust and Bank of America; ten such corporations controlled 59 magazines (including Time and Newsweek), 58 newspapers (including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal), and various motion picture companies, giving the major Wall Street banks virtually total ownership of the mass media, with few exceptions (such as the Disney Company's purchase of ABC).
Only 50 cities in America now have more than one daily paper, and they are oRen owned by the same group. Only about 25% of the nation's 1,500 daily papers are independently owned. This concentration has been rapidly accelerating in recent years and ownership is nearly monolithic now, reflecting the identical control described above.
Of course, much care is taken to fool the public with the appearance of competition by maintaining different corporate logos, anchorpersons and other trivia, projecting a sense of objectivity that belies the uniform underlying bank ownership and editorial control. This accounts for the total blackout on news coverage and investigative reporting of banker control of our country.
Nevertheless, throughout U.S. history, the battle over who gets the power to issue our money has raged. In fact it has changed hands back and forth eight times since 1694, in five transition periods which may aptly be described as "Bank Wars" (or more precisely: Private Central Bank vs. American People Wars), yet this fact has virtually vanished from public view for over three generations behind a smoke screen emitted by Fed cheerleaders in the media.
Until we stop talking about "deficits" and "government spending" and start talking about who creates and controls how much money we have, it's just a shell game - a complete and utter deception. It won't matter if we pass an iron-clad amendment to the Constitution mandating a balanced budget. Our situation is only going to get worse until we root out the cause at its source.
Our leaders and politicians need to understand, those few who are not part of the problem, what is happening, and how, as well as what solutions exist. The government must take back the power to issue our money, without debt.
Issuing our own debt-free money is not a radical solution. It's the same solution
{p. 8} proposed at different points in U.S. history by men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, numerous Congressmen and economists.
So, to sum the economic problem up: in 1913, Congress delegated to a privately owned central bank, deceptively named the Federal Reserve System, control over the quantity of America's money, virtually all of which is created in parallel with an equivalent quantity of debt.
Though the Federal Reserve is now one of the two most powerful central banks in the world, it was not the first. So where did this idea come from? To really understand the magnitude of the problem, we have to travel back to Europe.
2. THE MONEY CHANGERS
Just who are these "Money Changers" James Madison spoke of above?
The Bible tells us that two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ drove the Money Changers from the Temple in Jerusalem, twice. These were the only times Jesus used physical violence. What were Money Changers doing in the Temple?
When Jews came to Jerusalem to pay their Temple tax, they could only pay it with a special coin, the half shekel of the sanctuary. This was a half-ounce of pure silver, about the size of a quarter.
It was the only coin around at that time which was pure silver and of assured weight, without the image of a pagan Emperor. Therefore, to Jews the half-shekel was the coin acceptable to God. But these coins not plentiful. The Money Changers had cornered the market on them. Then, they raised the price of them - just like any other monopolized commodity - to whatever market would bear.
In other words, the Money Changers making exorbitant profits because they held a virtual monopoly on money. The Jews had to pay whatever they demanded. To Jesus injustice violated the sanctity of God's house.
3. ROMAN EMPIRE
But the money changing scam did not originate in Jesus' day. Two hundred years before Christ, Rome was having trouble with Money Changers.
Two early Roman emperors had tried to diminish the power of the Money Changers by reforming usury laws and limiting land ownership to 500 acres. They both were assassinated. In 48 B.C., Julius Caesar took back the power to coin money from the Money Changers and minted coins for the benefit of all.
With this new, plentiful supply of money, he built great public works projects. By making money plentiful, Caesar won the love common man. But the Money Changers hated him. Some believe this was an important factor in Caesar's assassination.
One thing is for sure, with the death of Caesar came the demise of plentiful money in Rome. Taxes increased, as did corruption.
{p. 9} Eventually, the Roman money supply was reduced by 90%. As a result, the common people lost their lands and homes - just as has happened and will happen again in America to the few who still own their own land or homes. With the demise of plentiful money and the loss of their property, the masses lost confidence in Roman government and refused to support it. Rome plunged into the gloom of the Dark Ages.
4. THE GOLDSMITHS OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
"Sorrow is knowledge; they who know he most, must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life."- Byron
The Chinese were the first to use paper money, known as "Flying Money," (a kind of banker's draft) in 618-907 A.D. About 1000 A.D. private Chinese merchants in Sichuan province issued paper money known as Jiao Zi. Due to fraud, the right to issue paper money was taken over by the Song dynasty in 1024, which then issued the first government paper money.
About that same time, Money Changers - those who exchange, create and manipulate the quantity of money - were active in medieval England. In fact, they were so active that acting together, they could manipulate the English economy. These were not bankers, per se. The Money Changers generally were he goldsmiths.
They were the first bankers because they started keeping other people's gold for safekeeping in their safe rooms, or vaults.
The first paper money in Western Europe was merely receipts for gold left at the goldsmiths, made from rag paper as the ditty goes:
"Rags make paper; paper makes money; money makes banks; banks make loans; loans make beggars; beggars make rags."
Paper money caught on because it was more convenient and safer to carry than a lot of heavy gold and silver coins. As a convenience, to avoid an unnecessary trip to the goldsmiths, depositors began endorsing these gold deposit receipts to others, by their signature.
Over time, to simplify the process the receipts were made out "to the bearer", rather than to the individual depositor, making them readily transferable without the need for a signature. This, however, broke the tie to any identifiable deposit of gold.
Eventually goldsmiths noticed that only a small fraction of the depositors or bearers ever came in and demanded their gold at any one time. Goldsmiths started cheating on the system.
They began by secretly lending out some of the gold that had been entrusted to them for safekeeping, and keeping the interest earned on this lending.
Then the goldsmiths discovered that they could print more money (i.e. paper gold deposit certificates) than they had gold and usually no one would be the wiser. Then, they could loan out this extra paper money and collect interest on it. This was the birth of fractional reserve lending - that is, loaning out more money than you have reserves on deposit. Obviously, it was fraud, often specifically outlawed, once understood.
{p. 10} The goldsmiths began with relatively modest cheating, loaning out only two or three times in gold deposit certificates the amount of gold they actually had in their safe rooms. But they soon grew more confident, and greedier, loaning out four, five, even ten times more gold certificates than they had gold on deposit.
So, for example, if $1,000 in gold were deposited with them, they could loan out about $10,000 in paper money and charge interest on it, and no one would discover the deception. By this means, goldsmiths gradually accumulated more and more wealth and used this wealth to accumulate more and more gold.
It was this abuse of trust, a fraud, which, after being accepted as standard practice, evolved into modern deposit banking. It is still a fraud and an unjust and unreasonable delegation of a sovereign government function - money creation - to private banks.
Today, this practice of loaning out more money than there are reserves is known as fractional reserve banking. In other words, banks have only a small fraction of the reserves on hand needed to honor their obligations. Should all their account holders come in and demand cash, the banks would run out before even three percent have been paid. That is why banks always live in dread fear of "bank runs". To banks, fractional reserve loans,
"... are a bright joy as brittle as glass accompanied by the haunting fear of a sudden break."
This is the fundamental cause of the inherent instability in banking, stock markets and national economies.
The banks in the United States are allowed to loan out at least ten times more money they actually have. That's why they do so on charging let's say 8% interest. It's not really 8% per year which is their interest income on money the government issues. It's 80%. That's why bank buildings are always the largest in town. Every bank is, de facto, a private mint (over 10,000 in the U.S.), issuing money as loans, for nothing, at no cost to them, except whatever interest they pay depositors.
Rather than issue more gold certificates than they have gold, modern bankers simply make more loans than they have currency (cash). They do this by making book entries creating loans to borrowers out of thin air (or rather, ink).
To give a modern example: A $10,000 bond purchase by the Fed on the open market results in a $10,000 deposit to the bond seller's bank account. Under a 10% (i.e. fractional) reserve requirement, the bank need keep only $1,000 in reserve, and may lend out $9,000. This $9,000 is ordinarily deposited by the borrower in either the same bank or in other banks, which then must keep 10% ($900) reserve, and may lend out the other $8,100. This $8,100 is in turn deposited in banks, which must keep 10% ($810) in reserve, and then may lend out $7,290, and so on.
Carried to the theoretical limits, the initial $10,000 created by the Fed, is deposited in numerous banks in the banking system, which gives rise (in roughly 20 repeated stages) to expansion of $90,000 in new loans, in addition to the $10,000 in reserves.
In other words, the banking system, collectively, multiplies the $10,000 created by the
{p. 11} Fed by a factor of 10. However, less than 1% of the banks create over 75% of this money. In other words, a handful of the largest Wall Street banks create money, as loans, literally by the hundred billion, charging interest on these loans, leaving crumbs for the rest of the banks to create. But because those crumbs represent billions too, the lesser bankers rarely grumble. Rather, they too support this corrupt system, with rare exceptions.
In actual practice, due to numerous exceptions to the 10% reserve requirement, the banking system multiplies the Fed's money creation by several magnitudes over 10 times (e.g. the Fed requires only 3% reserves on deposits under c. $50 million, and no reserves on Eurodollars and nonpersonal time deposits).
Thus the U.S. currency and bank reserve total of roughly $600 billion, supports a total debt structure in the U.S. of over $20 trillion in debt - roughly $80,000 in debt for every American, man, woman and child, which includes the national debt, bank debt, credit card debt, home mortgages, etc.
The Fed created only roughly 3% of this total, private banks created roughly 97% (including intra-government debt). All of this could and should have been created by the U.S. government, without the parallel creation of an equivalent quantity of interest-bearing debt, over the years and used to pay for government expenditures, thus reducing taxes accordingly.
MORAL ISSUES
But does all of this mean that all interest or all banking should be illegal? No. In the Middle Ages, Canon law, the law of the Catholic Church, forbade charging interest on loans. This concept followed the teachings of Aristotle as well as of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
They taught that the purpose of money was to serve the members of society as a medium of exchange to facilitate the exchange of goods needed to lead a virtuous life. Interest, in their belief, hindered this purpose by putting an unnecessary and inequitable burden on the use of money. In other words, interest was contrary to reason and justice.
Reflecting Church Law in the Middle Ages, all European nations forbade charging interest, except on productive loans (i.e. on loans generating a profit to be shared with the lenders as their "interest", as a partner, or "silent investor at risk", as we would say today), and made it a crime called usury.
As commerce grew and therefore opportunities for investment arose in the late Middle Ages, it came to be that to loan money had a cost to the lender in lost gain given up, and in risks. So such "extrinsic" charges were allowed, as was profit-sharing on productive investments, but not interest per se as pure (or "intrinsic") gain from a loan.
But all moralists, no matter what religion or what their position on usury, condemn fraud, oppression of the poor and injustice as dearly immoral. As we will see, fractional reserve lending is rooted in a fraud, results in widespread poverty, oppression of the poor, and reduces the value of everyone else's money. Ignorance of this technique has largely silenced moral condemnation of it.
Unfortunately, a few schools of some religions, limit their condemnation of fraud, oppression and injustice to that conducted
{p. 12} against their own people, only. This deplorable limitation, which arises out of an exclusiveness in justice and charity, is one of the causes of this banking problem. Other peoples inevitably come to be regarded as inferior or even subhuman.
This inevitably results in a weltanschauung or world view, according to which "peace" means the predominance of the "superior" peoples and the "superior" race - a gross form of crude materialism which is merely a concealed nationalism, even though it condemns the defensive nationalism it arouses in others. But the principal determinants of nationalism, in its last analysis, are merely psychological and variable, not any inherent "superiority".
Men forget that the human species is one great human race with a common origin, a common end, and equality of rational nature, in which there are no special "higher races", as linguistics, genetics, anthropology and other sciences increasingly affirm.
Even if there were superior races, surely they should be measured by excellence in virtue, not in cunning and deceit. But as it is, the differences in peoples should serve to enrich and embellish the human race by the sharing of their own peculiar gifts and by the reciprocal interchange of goods.
To return to the goldsmiths: they also discovered that extra profits could be made by "rowing" the economy between easy money and tight money. When they made money easier to borrow, then the amount of money in circulation expanded. Money was plentiful. People took out more loans to expand their businesses. But then the goldsmiths would tighten the money supply. They would mal loans more difficult to get.
What would happen? Just what happens today. A certain percentage of people could not repay their previous loans, and could not take out new loans to repay the old on. Therefore they went bankrupt, and had to sell their assets to the goldsmiths or at auction for pennies on the dollar.
The same thing is still going on today, or today we call this rowing of the economy, up and down, the "Business Cycle," or more recently in the stock markets, "corrections".
5. TALLY STICKS
King Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, ascended the English throne in 1100 A.D.
At that time, long before the invention of the printing press, taxes were generally paid in kind - i.e. in goods, based on the productive capacity of the land under the care of the tax-paying serf or lesser noble. To record production, medieval European scribes used a crude accounting device - notches on sticks or "tallies" (from the Latin talea meaning "twig" "stake"). Tally sticks worked better than faulty memory or notches on barn doors, as were sometimes used.
To prevent alteration or counterfeiting, the sticks were cut in half lengthwise, leaving one half of the notches on each piece, one of which was given to the taxpayer, which could compared for accuracy by reuniting the pieces. Henry adopted this method of tax record keeping in England.
Over time, the role of tally sticks evolved and expanded. By the time of Henry II taxes
{p. 13} were paid two times a year. The first payment, made at Eastertime, was evidenced by giving the taxpayer a tally stick notched to indicate partial payment received, with the same lengthwise split to record, for both parties, the payment made. These were presented at Michaelmas with the balance of taxes then due.
It takes only a little imagination to arrive at the next step: tallies were issued by the government in advance of taxes being paid in order to raise finds in emergencies or financial straits. The recipients would accept such tallies for goods sold at a profit or for coin, at a discount, and then would use them later, at Easter or Michaelmas, for the payment of the taxes. Thus, tallies took on some of the same functions as coin - they served as money for the payment of taxes.
After 1694 the government issued paper 'tallies" as paper evidence of debt (i.e. government borrowing) in anticipation of the collection of future taxes. Paper could be made easily negotiable, which made them the full equivalent of the paper bank note money issued by the Bank of England beginning in 1694. By 1697 tallies, bank notes and bank bills all began to circulate freely as interchangeable forms of money. Wooden stick tallies continued to be used until 1826. Doubtless, ways were found to make them circulate at discounts too, like the paper tallies.
One particular Tally Stick was quite valuable. It represented £25,000. One of the original stockholders in the Bank of England purchased his original shares with such a stick. In other words, he bought shares in the world's richest and most powerful corporation, with a stick of wood.
It's ironic that after its formation in 1694, the Bank of England attacked the Tally Stick system because it was money issued outside the control of the Money Changers.
Why would people accept sticks of wood for money? That's a great question. Throughout history, people have traded anything they thought had value and used that for money. You see, the secret is that money is only what people agree on to use as money. What's our paper money today? It's really just paper.
But here's the trick: King Henry ordered that Tally Sticks be used to evidence tax payments received by the government. This built in demand for tallies and eventually made them circulate and be accepted as money. And they worked well. In fact, no other money worked and for so long in the British Empire.
In the 1500's, King Henry VIII relaxed the laws concerning usury and the Money Changers wasted no time reasserting themselves. They made their gold and silver money plentiful for a few decades.
But when Queen Mary took the throne and tightened the usury laws again, the Money Changers renewed the hoarding of gold and silver coin, forcing the economy to plummet.
When Mary's half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I, took the throne, she was determined to regain control over English money. Her solution was to issue gold and silver coins from the public treasury and thus take the control over the money supply away from the Money Changers.
Although control over money was not the only cause of the English Revolution in 1642
{p. 14} - religious differences fueled the conflict - monetary policy played a major role. Financed by the Money Changers, Oliver Cromwell finally overthrew King Charles, purged Parliament, and put the King to death.
The Money Changers were immediately allowed to consolidate their financial power. The result was that for the next fifty years the Money Changers plunged Great Britain into a series of costly wars. They took over a square mile of property in the center of London, known as The City. This semi-sovereign area today is still one of the two predominant financial centers of the world (with Wall Street). It is not under the jurisdiction of the London police, but has its own private force of 2,000 men.
Conflicts with the Stuart kings led the Money Changers in England to combine with those in the Netherlands, which already had a central bank established by the Money Changers in Amsterdam in 1609, to finance the invasion of William of Orange, who overthrew the legitimate Stuarts in 1688. England was to trade masters: an unpopular King James II, for a hidden cabal of Money Changers pulling the strings of their usurper, King William III ("King Billy"), from behind the scenes.
This symbiotic relationship between the Money Changers and the higher British aristocracy continues to this day. The Monarch has no real power, but serves as a useful shield for the Money Changers who rule The City, dominated by the banking House of Rothschild:
"in theory still a real monarch, although in reality only a convenient puppet, to be used by the cabinet (The City) at pleasure to suit their awn ends; not able even to exercise the power of pardon that is a prerogative of a governor of an American state and of the President of the United States."
In 1934, (June 20), the New Britain Magazine of London cited a devastating assertion by former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George that,
"Brittan is the slave of an international financial bloc."
It also quoted these words written by Lord Bryce:
"Democracy has no more persistent and insidious foe than the money powers ..." and pointed out that "questions regarding the Bank of England, its conduct and its objects, be not allowed by the Speaker" (of the House of Commons).
6. THE BANK OF ENGLAND
By the end of the 1600s, England was in financial ruin. Fifty years of more or less continuous wars with France and sometimes the Netherlands had exhausted her.
Frantic government officials met with the Money Changers to beg for the loans necessary to pursue their political purpose The price was high - a government-sanctioned, privately-owned central which could issue money created out nothing, as loans.
It was to be the modern world's first privately-owned, national central bank in a powerful country, the Bank of England, though earlier deposit banks had existed in
{p. 15} Venice (1361), in Amsterdam (1609), and Sweden (1661) which issued the first bank notes in Europe that same year - 1661. Although it was deceptively called the Bank of England to make the general population think it was part of the government, it was not. Like any other private corporation, the Bank of England sold shares to get started.
The investors, whose names were never revealed, were supposed to put up one and a quarter million (British pounds) in gold coin to buy their shares in the Bank. But only £750,000 pounds was ever received.
Despite that, the Bank of England was duly chartered in 1694, and started out in the business of loaning out several times the money it supposedly had in reserves, all at interest.
In exchange, the new bank would loan British politicians as much as they wanted. The debt was secured by direct taxation of the British people.
So, legalization of the Bank of England mounted to nothing less than legalized counterfeiting of a national currency for private gain. Unfortunately, nearly every nation now has a privately controlled central bank, the local Money Changers using the Bank of England as the basic model.
Such is the power of these central banks that they soon take total control over a nation's economy. It soon amounts to nothing but a plutocracy - rule by the rich, and the bankers soon come to be the dominant super-rich class. It is like putting control of the army in the hands of the mafia. The danger of tyranny is extreme. Yes, we need a central monetary authority - but one owned and controlled by the government, not by bankers for their private profit.
Sir William Pitt, speaking to the House of Lords in 1770 stated:
"There is something behind the throne greater than the king himself."
This reference to the Money Changers behind the Bank of England gave birth to the expression "the power behind the throne."
In 1844, Benjamin Disraeli, in a veiled allusion to this same power wrote:
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
On November 21, 1933, President Franldin D. Roosevelt, in a letter to a confidant, wrote:
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson..."
[Note: Besides FDR's main point, this amounts to high praise for President Jackson, as we will see.]
The central bank scam is really a hidden tax, but one that benefits private banks more than the government. The government sells bonds to pay for things for which the government does not have the political wisdom or will to raise taxes to pay. But about 10% of the bonds are purchased with money the central bank creates out of nothing. The government then spends this new money. Once deposited, private banks use these new deposits to create ten times as much in new fractional reserve
{p. 16} loans. This provides the economy with the additional money needed to purchase the other 90% of the new bonds, without drying up capital markets and forcing up interest rates.
By borrowing the money (i.e. selling new bonds), the government spreads the inflationary effects out over the term of the bonds. Thus there is little to no immediate inflation.
More money in circulation makes your money worth less. The politicians get as much money as they want, and the people pay for it in inflation, which erodes the purchasing power of their savings, fixed income and wages. The perverse beauty of the plan is that not one person in a thousand can figure it out because it's deliberately hidden behind complex-sounding economics gibberish. The full effects of the inflation are only experienced much later - too late to stop.
With the formation of the Bank of England, the nation was soon awash in money. Prices throughout the country doubled. Massive loans were granted for just about any wild scheme. One venture proposed draining the Red Sea to recover gold supposedly lost when the Egyptian army drowned pursuing Moses and the Israelites.
By 1698, just four years later, government debt had grown from the initial 1-1/4 million pounds to 16 million. Naturally, taxes were increased and then increased again to pay for all this.
With the British money supply firmly in their grip, the British economy began a wild roller coaster series of booms and depressions exactly the sort of thing a central bank claims it is designed to prevent, as Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England, stated:
"There are two things which are intrinsic not just to the Bank of England, but to central banking generally. The first is an involvement in the formation of monetary policy with the specific objective of achieving monetary stability."
7. THE RISE OF THE ROTHSCHILDS
This is Frankfort, Germany. Fifty years after the Bank of England opened its doors, a goldsmith named Amschel Moses Bauer opened a coin shop - a counting house - in 1743, and over the door he placed sign depicting a Roman eagle on a red shield. The shop became known as the Red Shield firm, or in German Rothschild.
When his son, Meyer Amschel Bauer, inherited the business, he decided to change name to Rothschild.
Meyer Rothschild soon learned that loan money to governments and kings was more profitable than loaning to private individuals. Not only were the loans bigger, but they were secured by the nation's taxes.
Meyer Rothschild had five sons. He trained them all in the secret techniques of money creation and manipulation, then sent them to the major capitals of Europe to open branch offices of the family banking business. He directed that one son in each generation was to rule the family business; women were excluded.
His first son, Amschel, stayed in Frankfort to mind the hometown bank. His second son, Salomon was sent to Vienna. His third sob, Nathan was clearly the most clever. He was
{p. 17} sent to London at age 21 in 1798, a hundred years after the founding of the Bank of England. His fourth son, Karl, went to Naples. His fifth son, Jakob (James), went to Paris.
"There is evidence that when the five brothers spread out to the five provinces of the financial empire of Europe, they had some secret help for the accumulation of these enormous sums ... that they were the treasurers of this first Comintern .. But others say, and I think with better reason, that the Rothschilds were not the treasurers, but the chiefs .. " - C.G. Rakovsky
In 1785, Meyer moved his entire family to a larger house, a five story dwelling he shared with the Schiff family. This house was known the "Green Shield" house. The Rothschilds and the Schiffs would play a central role in the rest of European financial history, and in that the United States and the world. The Schiffs' grandson moved to New York and helped fund the Bolshevik coup d 'etat in 1917 in Russia.
The Rothschilds broke into dealings with European royalty in Wilhelmshohe, the palace of the wealthiest man in Germany - in fact, tbe wealthiest monarch in all of Europe - Prince William of Hesse-Cassel.
At first, the Rothschilds were only helping William speculate in precious coins. But when Napoleon chased Prince William into exile, William sent £550,000 (a gigantic sum at that time, equivalent to many millions of current U.S. dollars) to Nathan Rothschild in London with instructions from him to buy Consola - British government bonds also called government stock. But Rothschild used the money for his own purposes. With Napoleon on the loose, the opportunities for highly profitable wartime investments were nearly limitless.
William returned to Wllhelmshohe, sometime prior to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He summoned the Rothschilds and demanded his money back.
The Rothschilds returned William's money, with the 8% interest the British Consols would have paid him had the investment actually been made. But the Rothschilds kept all the vast wartime profits they had made using Wilhelm' s money-shady practice in any century.
Partly by such practices, Nathan Rothschild was able to later brag that in the seventeen years he had been in England, he had increased his original £20,000 stake given to him by his father by 2,500 times (=£50,000,000), a truly vast sum at that time, comparable to billions of current U.S. dollars in purchasing power.
As early as 1817, the director of the Prussian Treasury, on a visit to London, wrote that Nathan Rothschild had:
"... incredible influence upon all financial affairs here in London. It is widely stated ... that he entirely regulates the rate of exchange in the City. His power as a banker is enormous. "
Austrian Prince Metternich's secretary wrote of the Rothschilds as early as 1818 that:
"...they are the richest people in Europe".
By cooperating within the family, using fractional reserve banking techniques, the Rothschilds' banks soon grew unbelievably wealthy. By the mid-1800s, they dominated all European banking, and were certainly the
{p. 18} wealthiest family in the world. A large part of the profligate nobility of Europe became deeply indebted to them.
In virtue of their presence in five nations as bankers, they were effectively autonomous - an entity independent from the nations in which they operated. If one nation's policies were displeasing to them or their interests, they could simply do no further lending there, or lend to those nations or groups opposed to such policies. Only they knew where their gold and other reserves were located, thus shielding them from government seizure, penalty, pressure or taxation, as well as effectively making any national investigation or audit meaningless. Only they knew the extent (or paucity) of their fractional reserves, scattered in five nations - a tremendous advantage over purely national banks engaging in fractional reserve banking too.
It was precisely their international character that gave them unique advantages over national banks and governments, and that was precisely what rulers and national parliaments should have prohibited, but did not. This remains true of international or multi-national banks to this very day, and is the driving force of globalization - the push for one-world government.
The Rothschilds provided huge loans to establish monopolies in various industries, thereby guaranteeing the borrowers' ability to repay the loans by raising prices without fear of price competition, while increasing the Rothschild's economic and political power.
They financed Cecil Rhodes, rnaking it possible for him to establish a monopoly over the gold fields of South Africa and the deBeers over diamonds. In America, they financed the monopolization of railroads.
The National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in Congressional hearings as one of three Rothschild banks in the United States, provided John D. Rockefeller with the money to begin his monopolization of the oil refinery business, resulting in Standard Oil.
Jacob Schiff, who had been born in the Rothschild "Green Shield" house in Frankfort and who was then the principal Rothschild agent in the U.S., advised Rockefeller and developed the infamous rebate deal Rockefeller secretly demanded from railroads shipping competitors' oil.
These same railroads were already monopolized by Rothschild control through agents and allies J.P. Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb & Company (Schiff was on the Board) which together controlled 95% of all U.S. railroad mileage.
By 1850, James Rothschild, the heir of the French branch of the family, was said to be worth 600 million French francs - 150 million more than all the other bankers in France put together.
James had been established in Paris in 1812 wih a capital of $200,000 by Mayer Amschel. At the time of his death in 1868, 56 years later, his annual income was $40,000,000. No forune in America at that time equaled even one year's income of James. Referring to James Rothschild, the poet Heinrich Heine said:
"Money is the god of our times, and Rothschild is his prophet."
{p. 19} James built his fabulous mansion, called Femeres, 19 miles northeast of Paris. Wilhelm I, on first seeing it exclaimed, "Kings couldn't afford this. It could only belong to a Rothschild." Another 19 century French commentator put it this way;
"There is but one power in Europe and that is Rothschild."
There is no evidence that their predominant standing in European or world finance has changed, to the contrary, as their wealth has increased they have simply increased their "passion for anonymity". Their vast holdings rarely bear their name.
Author Frederic Morton wrote of them that they had "conquered the world more thoroughly, more cunningly, and much more lastingly than all the Caesars before..."
Now let's take a look at the results the Bank of England produced on the British economy, and how that later was the root cause of the American Revolution.
8. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
By the mid-1700s, the British Empire was approaching its height of power around the world. Britain had fought four wars in Europe since the creation of its privately-owned central bank, the Bank of England. The cost had had been high. To finance these wars, the British Parliament, rather than issuing its own debt-free currency, had borrowed heavily from the Bank.
By thie mid-1700s, the government's debt was £140,000,000 - a staggering sum for those days. Consequently, the British government embarked on a program of trying to raise revenues from its American colonies in order to make the interest payments to the Bank.
But in America, it was a different story. The scourge of a privately-owned central bank had not yet landed in America, though the Bank of England exerted its baneful influence over the American colonies after 1694.
Four years earlier, in 1690 the Massachusetts Bay colony printed its own paper money - the first in America. This was followed in 1703 by South Carolina and then by other colonies. In the mid-1700s, pre-Revolutionary America was still relatively poor. There was a severe shortage of precious metal coins to trade for goods, so the early colonists were increasingly forced to experiment with printing their own home-grown paper money. Some of these experiments were successful. Tobacco was used as money in some colonies with success.
In 1720 every colonial Royal Governor was instructed to curtail the issue of colonial money. This was largely unsuccessful. In 1742 the British Resumption Act required that taxes and other debts be paid in gold. This caused a depression in the colonies - property was seized on foreclosure by the rich for one-tenth its value.
Benjamin Franklin was a big supporter of the colonies printing their own money. In 1757, Franklin was sent to London to fight for colonial paper money. He ended up staying for the next 18 years - nearly until the start of the American Revolution. During this period, ignoring Parliament, more American colonies began to issue their own money.
{p. 20} Called Colonial Scrip, the endeavor was successful, with notable exceptions. It provided a reliable medium of exchange, and it also helped to provide a feeling of unity between the colonies. Remember, most Colonial Scrip was just paper money - debt-free money - printed in the public interest and not really backed by gold or silver coin. In other words, it was a fiat currency.
Officials of the Bank of England asked Franklin how he would account for the new-found prosperity of the colonies. Without hesitation he replied:
"That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers...
In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one."
This was just common sense to Franklin, but you can imagine the impact it had at the Bank of England. America had learned the secret of money, and that genie had to be returned to its bottle as soon as possible.
[1st American Central Bank War (1764-1776); Bank of England; 12 years duration]
As a result, Parliament hurriedly passed the Currency Act of 1764. This prohibited colonial officials from issuing their own money and ordered them to pay all future taxes in gold or silver coins. In other words, it forced the colonies on a gold and silver standard. This initiated the first intense phase of the first "Bank War" in America, which ended in defeat for the Money Changers beginning with the Declaration of Independence, and concluded by the subsequent peace Treaty of Paris 1783.
For those who believe that a gold standard is the answer for America's current monetary problems, look what happened to America after the Currency Act of 1764 was passed. Writing in his autobiography, Franklin said:
"In one year, the conditions were so reversed that the era of prosperity ended, and a depression set in, to such an extent that the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployed."
Franklin claims that this was even the basic cause for the American Revolution. As Franklin put it in his autobiography:
"The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the Colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction."
In 1774, Parliament passed the Stamp Act which required that a stamp be placed on ever instrument of commerce indicating payment of tax in gold, which threatened the colonial paper money again. Less than two weeks later, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety passed a resolution directing the issuance of more colonial currency and honoring the currency of other colonies.
On June 10 and June 22, 1775, the "Congress of the Colonies" resolved to issue million in paper money based on the credit and faith of the "United Colonies". This flew in
{p. 21} the face of the Bank of England and Parliament. It constituted an act of defiance, a refusal to accept a monetary system unjust to the people of the colonies.
"Thus the bills of credit [ie. paper money] which historians with ignorance or prejudice have belittled as instruments of reckless financial policy, were really the standards of the Revolution. They were more than this: they were the Revolution itself." - Alexander Del Mar, historian
By the time the first shots were fired in Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, the colonies had been drained of gold and silver coin by British taxation. As result, the Continental government had no choice but to print its own paper money to finance the war.
At the start of the Revolution, the U.S. (colonial) money supply stood at $12 million. By the end of the war, it was nearly $500 million. This was partly a result of massive British counterfeiting. As a result, the currency was virtually worthless. Shoes sold for $5,000 a pair.
George Washington lamented, "A wagon load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon of provisions."
Earlier, Colonial scrip had worked because just enough was issued to facilitate trade and counterfeiting was minimal. Today, those who support a gold-backed currency point to this period during the Revolution to demonstrate the evils of a fiat currency. But remember, the currency had worked so well twenty years earlier during times of peace that the of England had Parliament outlaw it, and during the war the British deliberately sought
{p. 21} to undermine it by counterfeiting it in England and shipping it "by the bale" to the colonies.
[2nd American Central Bank War (1781-1785); Bank of North America; 4 years]
9. THE BANK OF NORTH AMERICA
Towards the end of the Revolution, the Continental Congress, meeting at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, grew desperate for money. In 1781, they allowed Robert Morris, their Financial Superintendent, to open a privately-owned central bank in hopes that would help. Incidentally, Morris was a wealthy man who had grown wealthier during the Revolution by trading in war materials.
Called the Bank of North America, the new bank was closely modeled after the Bank of England. It was allowed to practice (or rather, it was not prohibited from) fractional reserve banking - that is, it could lend out money it didn't have, then charge interest on it. If you or I were to do that, we would be charged with fraud, a felony. Few understood this practice at the time, which was, of course, concealed from the public and politicians as much as possible. Further, the bank was given a monopoly on issuing bank notes, acceptable in payment of taxes.
The Bank's charter called for private investors to put up $400,000 worth of initial capital. But when Morris was unable to raise the money, he brazenly used his political influence to have gold deposited in the bank which had been loaned to America by France. He then loaned this money to himself and his friends to
{p. 22} reinvest in shares of the bank. The second American Bank War was on.
Soon, the dangers became clear. The value of American currency continued to plummet, so, four years later, in 1785, the Bank's charter was not renewed, effectively ending the threat of the Bank's power. Thus the second American Bank War quickly ended in defeat for the Money Changers.
The leader of the successful effort to kill the Bank, a patriot named William Findley, of Pennsylvania, explained the problem this way:
"This institution, having no principle but that of avarice, will never be varied in its object ... to engross all the wealth, power and influence of the state."
Plutocracy, once established, will corrupt the legislature so that laws will be made in its favor, and the administration of justice, to favor the rich.
The men behind the Bank of North America - Alexander Hamilton, Robert Moms, and the Bank's President, Thomas Willing - did not give up.
Only six years later, Hamilton - then Secretary of the Treasury - and his mentor, Morris, rammed a new privately-owned central bank through the new Congress.
Called the First Bank of the United States, Thomas Willing again served as the Bank's President. The players were the same, only the name of the Bank was changed.
10. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
In 1787, colonial leaders assembled in Philadelphia to replace the ailing Articles of Confederation. As we saw earlier, both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were unalterably opposed to a privately-owned central bank. They had seen the problems caused by the Bank of England. They wanted nothing of it. As Jefferson later put it:
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
During the debate over the future monetary system, another one of the founding fathers, Governor Morris, headed the committee that wrote the final draft of the Constitution. Morris knew the motivations of the bankers well.
Along with his old boss, Robert Morris, Governor Morris and Alexander Harnilton were the ones who had presented the original plan for the Bank of North America to the Continental Congress in the last year of th Revolution.
In a letter he wrote to James Madison on July 2, 1787, Governor Morris revealed what was really going on:
"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will. ... They will
{p. 23} have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by [the power of] government, keep them in their proper spheres."
Despite the defection of Governor Morris from the ranks of the Bank, Hamilton, Robert Morris, Thomas Willing, and their European backers were not about to give up.
They convinced the bulk of the delegates to the Constitution Convention not to give Congress the power to issue paper money. Most of the delegates were still reeling from the wild inflation of the paper currency during the Revolution. They had forgotten how well Colonial Scrip had worked before the War. But the Bank of England had not. The Money Changers could not stand to have America printing her own money again.
Many believed the Tenth Amendment, which reserved powers to the States which were not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, made the issuance of paper money by the federal government unconstitutional, since the power to issue paper money ws not specifically delegated to the federal government in the Constitution. The Constitution is silent on this point. However, the Constitution specifically forbade the individual States to "emit bills of credit" (paper money).
Most of the framers intended the Constitution's silence to keep the new federal government from having the power to authorize money creation. Indeed, the journal of Convention for August 16 reads as follows:
"It was moved and seconded to strike out words 'and emit bills of credit,' and the motion...passed in the affirmative."
But Hamilton and his banker friends saw this silence as an opportunity of keeping the government out of paper money creation which they hoped to monopolize privately. So both bankers and anti-banking delegates, for opposing motives, supported leaving any federal government authority for paper money creation out of the Constitution, by a four to one margin. This ambiguity left the door open for the Money Changers, just as they had planned.
Of course, paper money was not itself the main problem, fractional reserve lending was the greater problem since it multiplied any inflation caused by excessive paper currency issuance by several times. But this was not understood by many, whereas the evils of excessive paper currency issuance were.
In their belief that prohibiting paper currency was a good end the framers were well advised. Prohibiting all paper currency would have severely limited the fractional reserve banking then practiced, since the use of checks was minimal and would, arguably, have been prohibited as well. But bank loans, created as book entries, were not addressed, and so were not prohibited.
As it happened, the federal and state governments were widely regarded as prohibited from paper money creation, whereas private banks were not - it being argued that this power, by not being specifically prohibited, was reserved to the people (including legal persons, such as incorporated banks).
The contrary argument was that bank corporations were instruments or agencies of the states which incorporated them and so were prohibited from "emitting bills of credit" as were the states themselves. This argument was ignored by the bankers, who proceeded to
{p. 24} issue paper bank notes based on fractional reserves, and it lost all force once the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that even the federal government could charter a bank (the 1st BUS) which could issue paper money.
In the end, only the states were prohibited from issuing paper money, not the federal government, and neither private banks nor even municipalities were prohibited from issuing paper money (as happened in c. 400 cities during the Great Depression).
Another error not often understood concerns the authority given the federal government "to coin money" and "to regulate the value thereof." Regulating the value of money (that is to say its purchasing power, or value relative to other things) has nothing to do with quality or content (e.g. so many grains of gold or copper, etc,), but has to do with its quantity - the supply of money. It is quantity that determines its value, and never has Congress legislated any total quantity of money in the U.S.
Legislating a total money supply (including currency, checks and all bank deposits) would, in fact, regulate the value (purchasing power) of each dollar. Legislating the rate of growth of the money supply would then determine its future value. Congress has never done either, though it clearly has the constitutional authority to do so. It has left this function to the Fed and the 10,000+ banks which create our money supply.
[3rd American Central Bank War (1791- 1811); lst BUS; 20 years duration]
11. FIRST BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
In 1790, less than three years after the Constitution had been signed, the Money Changers struck again. The newly-appointed first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton proposed a bill to the Congress calling for a new privately-owned central bank. Coincidentally, that was the very year that Meyer Rothschild made his pronouncement from his flagship bank in Frankfort:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes its laws."
Alexander Hamilton was a tool of the international bankers. He wanted to create another private central bank, the Bank of the United States, and did so. He convinced Washington to sign the bill over Washington's reservations and over Jefferson's and Madison's opposition.
To win over Washington, Hamilton developed the "implied powers" argument used so often since to eviscerate the Constitution. Jefferson correctly predicted the dire consequences of opening such a Pandora's box which would allow judges to "imply" whatever they wished.
Interestingly, one of Hamilton's first jobs after graduating from law school in 1782 was as an aide to Robert Morris, the head of the Bank of North America. In fact, the year before, Hamilton had written Morris a letter, saying: "A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing," A blessing to whom?
{p. 25} After a year of intense debate, in 1791, Congress passed Hamilton's bankbill and gave it a 20-year charter. The new bank was to be called the First Bank of the United States, or BUS. Thus the third American Bank War began.
"Never was a great historic event followed by a more feeble sequel. A nation arises to claim for itself liberty and sovereignty. It gains both of these by immense sacrifice of blood and treasure. Then, when victory is gained and secure, it hands the nation 's credit - that is to say a national treasure - over to private individuals, to do as they please with." - Alexander Del Mar, historian
The first Bank of the United States was headquartered in Philadelphia. The Bank was even given authority to print currency and make loans, based on fractional reserves, even though 80% of its stock would be held by private investors. The other 20% would be purchased by the U.S. Government, but the reason was not to give the government a piece of the action, it was to provide the initial capital for the other 80% owners.
As with the old bank of North America and the Bank of England before that, the stockholders never paid the full amount for their shares. The U.S. government put up their initial $2,000,000 in cash, then the Bank through the old magic of fractional reserve lending, made loans to its charter investors so they could come up with the remaining $8,000,000 in capital needed for this risk-free investment.
Like the Bank of England, the name of the Bank of the United States was deliberately chosen to hide the fact that it was privately controlled. And like the Bank of England, the names of the investors in the Bank were never revealed.
"Under the surface, the Rothschilds long had a powerful influence in dictating American financial laws. The law records show that they were the power in the old Bank of the United States" - Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes.
The Bank was promoted to Congress as a way to bring stability to the banking system and to eliminate inflation. So what happened? Over the first five years, the U.S. government borrowed $8.2 million from the Bank of the United States. In that period, prices rose by 72%.
Jefferson, as the new Secretary of State, watched the borrowing with sadness and frustration, unable to stop it.
"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution - taking from the federal government the power of borrowing."
President Adams denounced the issuance of private bank notes as a fraud upon the public. He was supported in this view by all conservative opinion of his time. Why continue to farm out to private banks, for nothing, a prerogative of government?
Millions of Americans feel the same way today. They watch in helpless frustration as the Federal government borrows the American taxpayer into oblivion; borrowing from private banks and the rich the money the government has the authority and duty to issue itself, without debt.
{p. 26} So, although it was called the First Bank of the U.S., it was not the first attempt at a privately-owned central bank in this country. As with the first two, the Bank of England and the Bank of North America, the government put up the cash to get this private bank going, then the bankers loaned that money to each other to buy the remaining stock in the bank.
It was a scam, plain and simple. And they wouldn't be able to get away with it for long, but first we have to travel back to Europe to see how a single man was able to manipulate the entire British economy by obtaining the first news of Napoleon's final defeat.
12. NAPOLEON'S RISE TO POWER
Here in Paris, the Bank of France was organized in 1800 just like the Bank of England. But Napoleon decided France had to break free of debt and he never trusted the Bank of France, even when he put some of his own relatives on the governing Board.
He declared that when a government is dependent upon bankers for money, the bankers, not the leaders of the government are in control:
"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."
He clearly saw the dangers, but did not see the proper safeguards or solution. Back in America, unexpected help was about to arrive.
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson narrowly defeated John Adams to become the third President of the United States. By 1803, Jefferson and Napoleon had struck a deal. The U.S. would give Napoleon $3,000,000 in gold in exchange for a huge chunk of territory west of the Mississippi River - the Louisiana Purchase.
With that three million dollars, Napoleon quickly forged an army and set off across Europe, conquering everything in his path. But England and the Bank of England quickly rose to oppose him. They financed every nation in his path, reaping the enormous profits of war. Prussia, Austria, and finally Russia all went heavily into debt in a futile attempt to stop Napoleon.
Four years later, with the main French Army in Russia, 30-year-old Nathan Rothschild - the head of the London office of the Rothschild family - personally took charge a bold plan to smuggle a much-needed shipment of gold right through France to finance an attack by the Duke of Wellington from Spain. Nathan later bragged at a dinner party in London that it was the best business he ever done. He made money on each step the shipment. Little did he know that would do much better business in the near future.
Wellington's attacks from the south, and other defeats, eventually forced Napoleon to abdicate, and Louis XVIII was crowned King. Napoleon was exiled to Elba, a tiny island off the coast of Italy, supposedly exiled from France forever. While Napoleon was in a on Elba, temporarily defeated by England with the financial help of the Rothschilds - America was trying to break free of its central bank as well.
{p. 27} 13. DEATH OF THE FIRST BANK/THE WAR OF 1812
In 1811, a bill was put before Congress to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. The debate grew very heated and the legislature of both Pennsylvania and Virginia passed resolutions asking Congress to kill the Bank.
The press corps of the day attacked the Bank openly, calling it "a great swindle", a "vulture", a "viper", and a "cobra". Oh, to have an independent press once again in America.
A Congressman named P.B. Porter attacked the bank from the floor of Congress, prophetically warned that if the bank's charter were renewed, Congress,
"will have planted in the bosom of this Constitution a viper, which one day or another will sting the liberties of this country to the heart."
Prospects didn't look good for the Bank. Some writers have claimed that Nathan Rothschild warned that the United States would find itself involved in a most disastrous war if the Bank's charter were not renewed.
But it wasn't enough. When the smoke had cleared, the renewal bill was defeated by a single vote in the House and was deadlocked in the Senate. By now, America's fourth President, James Madison, was in the White House. Remember, Madison was a staunch opponent of the Bank. His Vice President, George Clinton, broke a tie in the Senate and sent the Bank, the second privately-owned central bank based in America, into oblivion. Thus, the third American Bank War, lasting twenty years, ended in defeat for the Money Changers.
Within 5 months, as Rothschild was said to have predicated, England attacked the U.S. and the War of 1812 was on. But the British were still busy fighting Napoleon, and so the war of 1812 vended in a draw in 1814.
It is interesting to note that during this war, the Treasury printed some government paper money, not bearing interest, to fund the war effort. This was not repeated until the Civil War.
Though the Money Changers were temporarily down, they were far from out. It would take them only another two years to bring a fourth private central bank back - bigger and stronger than before.
14. WATERLOO
But now let's return for a moment to Napoleon. This episode aptly demonstrates the cunning of the Rothschild family in gaining control of the British stock market after Waterloo.
In 1815, a year after the end of the War of 1812 in America, Napoleon escaped his exile and returned to Paris. French troops were sent out to capture him, but such was his charisma that the soldiers rallied around their old leader and hailed him as their Emperor once again. Napoleon returned to Paris a hero. King Louis fled into exile and Napoleon again ascended to the French throne - this time without a shot being fired.
In March of 1815 Napoleon equipped an army which Britain's Duke of Wellington
{p. 28} defeated less than 90 days later at Waterloo. He borrowed 5 million pounds to rearm from the Ouvard banking house in Paris. Nevertheless, from about this point on, it was not unusual for privately-controlled central banks to finance both sides in a war.
Why would a central bank finance opposing sides in a war? Because war is the biggest debt-generator of them all. A nation will borrow any amount for victory. The ultimate looser is loaned just enough to hold out the vain hope of victory, and the ultimate winner is given enough to win. Besides, such loans are usually conditioned upon the guarantee that the victor will honor the debts of the vanquished. Only the bankers cannot lose.
Waterloo is a battlefield about 200 miles northeast of Paris, in what today is Belgium. There, Napoleon suffered his final defeat, but not before thousands of French and English men gave their lives on a steamy summer day in June of 1815.
On June 18, 1815, 74,000 French troops met 67,000 troops from Britain, and other European nations. The outcome was certainly in doubt. In fact, had Napoleon attacked a few hours earlier, he would probably have won the battle. But no matter who won or lost, back in London, Nathan Rothschild planned to use the opportunity to try to seize control over the British stock and bond market. Following is the account the Rothschilds hotly dispute:
Rothschild stationed a trusted agent, a man named Rothworth, on the north side of the battlefield - closer to the English Channel.
Once the battle had been decided, Rothworth took off for the Channel. He delivered the news to Nathan Rothschild a full 24 hours before Wellington's own courier. Rothschild hurried to the Stock Market and took up his usual position in front of an ancient pillar.
All eyes were on him. The Rothschilds had a legendary communication network. If Wellington had been defeated and Napoleon were loose on the Continent again, Britain's financial situation would become grave indeed. Rothschild looked saddened. He stood there motionless, eyes downcast. Then suddenly, he began selling. Other nervous investors saw that Rothschild was selling. It could only mean one thing. Napoleon must have won. Wellington was defeated. The market plummeted. Soon, everyone was selling their Consols - their British government bonds, and other stocks - and prices dropped. Then Rothschild and his financial allies started secretly buying through agents.
Myths, legends, you say? One hundred years later, the New York Times ran a story which said that Nathan's grandson had attempted to secure a court order to suppress a book with this stock market story in it. The Rothschild family claimed the story was untrue and libelous. But the court denied the Rothschilds' request and ordered the family to pay all court costs.
What's even more interesting about this story is that some authors claim that the day after the Battle of Waterloo, in a matter of hours, Nathan Rothschild and allied financial interests came to dominate not only the bond market, but the Bank of England as well (an interesting feature of some Consols was that they were convertible to Bank of England stock).
Intermarriage with the Montifiores, Cohens and Goldsmiths, banking families established in
{p. 29} England in the century before the Rothschilds, enhanced the Rothschilds' financial control. This control was further consolidated through the passage of Peel's Bank Charter Act of 1844.
Whether or not the Rothschild family and their financial allies seized outright control in this manner of the Bank of England - the first privately-owned central bank in a major European nation, and the wealthiest - one thing is certain, by the mid-1800s, the Rothschilds were the richest family in the world, bar none. They dominated the new government bond markets and branched into other banks and industrial concerns worldwide. They also dominated a constellation of secondary, lesser families such as the Warburgs and Schiffs, who allied their own vast wealth with that of the Rothschilds'.
In fact, the rest of the 19th century was known as the "Age of Rothschild." One author, Ignatius Balla, estimated their personal wealth in 1913 at over two billion dollars. Keep in mind, the purchasing power of the dollar was over 1,000% greater then than now. Despite this overwhelming wealth, the family has generally cultivated an aura of invisibility. Although the family controls scores of banking, industrial, commercial, mining and tourist corporations, only a handful bear the Rothschild name. By the end of the 19th century, one expert estimated that the Rothschild family controlled half the wealth of he world.
Whatever the extent of their vast wealth, it is reasonable to assume that their percentage of the world's wealth has increased dramatically since then, as power begets power and the appetite therefor. But since the turn of the century, the Rothschilds have carefully cultivated the notion that their power has somehow waned, even as their wealth and that of their financial allies increases and hence their control of banks, debt-captive corporations, the media, politicians and nations, all through surrogates, agents, nominees and interlocking directorates, obscuring their role.
[4th American Central Bank War (1816- 1836); 2nd BUS; 20 years duration]
15. SECOND BANK OF THE U.S.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, in 1816, just one year after Waterloo and Rothschilds' alleged takeover of the Bank of England, the American Congress passed a bill permitting yet another privately-owned central bank - the fourth American Bank War had begun.
This bank was called the Second Bank of the United States. The new Bank's charter was a copy of the previous Bank's. The U.S. government would own 20% of the shares. Of course, the Federal share was paid by the Treasury up front, into the Bank's coffers. Then, through the magic of fractional reserve lending, it was transformed into loans to private investors who then bought the remaining 80% of the shares. Sound familiar by now?
Just as before, the primary stockholders remained secret. But it is known that, at a n~ir~ the largest single block of shares- about one-third of the total- was held by foreigners. As one observer put it:
"It is certainly no exaggeration to say that the Second Bank of the United States was
{p. 30} rooted as deeply in Britain as it was in America."
So by 1816, some authors claim the Rothschilds and their allies, some by now related by marriage, had taken control over the Bank of England and backed the new privately-owned central bank in America (the 2nd BUS) as well. With Napoleon's defeat about the same time, they began to dominate the Bank of France as well.
16. ANDREW JACKSON
After about a decade of monetary manipulations on the part of the Second Bank of the U.S., the American people, once again, had had just about enough. Opponents of the Bank nominated a famous senator from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, to run for president. His home he named "The Hermitage". No one gave Jackson a chance initially. The Bank had long-ago learned how the political process could be controlled with money.
To the surprise and dismay of the Money Changers, Jackson was swept into office in 1828. Jackson was determined to kill the Bank at the first opportunity, and wasted no time to trying to do so. But the Bank's 20 year charter didn't come up for renewal until 1836, the last year of his second term - if he could survive that long. During his first term, Jackson contented himself with rooting out the Bank's many minions from government service. He fired 2,000 of the 11,000 employees of the federal government.
In 1832, with his re-election approaching, the Bank struck an early blow, hoping Jackson would not want to stir up controversy. It asked Congress to pass a bank charter renewal bill four years early. Congress complied, and sent it to the President for signing. But Jackson weighed in with both feet. "Old Hickory," never a coward, vetoed the bill. His veto message is one of the great American documents. It clearly lays out the responsibility of the American government towards its citizens - rich and poor.
"It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our Government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners... It is easy to conceive that great evils to our country and its institutions might flow from such a concentration of power in the hands of a few irresponsible to the people.
Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country?... Controlling our currency, receiving our public moneys, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence... would be more formidable and dangerous than a military power of the enemy...
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes... If [government] would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favor alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing..
In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have
{p. 31} besought us to make them richer by act of Congress...
If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy.
I have now done my duty to my country. If sustained by my fellow-citizens, I shall be grateful and happy; if not, I shall find in the motives which impel me ample grounds for contentment and peace. In the difficulties which surround us and the dangers which threaten our institutions there is cause for neither dismay nor alarm. For relief and deliverance let us firmly rely on that kind Providence which I am sure watches with peculiar wisdom over our countrymen. Through His abundant goodness and their patriotic devotion our liberty and Union win be preserved." - Andrew Jackson
Jackson also declared:
"If Congress has the right to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, and not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. "
Later that year, in July 1832, Congress was unable to override Jackson's veto. Now Jackson had to stand for re-election. Jackson took his argument directly to the people. For the first tirne in U.S. history, a candidate took a presidential campaign on the road. Before then, presidential candidates stayed at home and looked presidential. His campaign slogan was "Bank and no Jackson, or no Bank and Jackson!"
Incredibly (unless one understands who funds university endowment funds and research dollars), some modern historians have completely overlooked this war between Jackson and the Bank. Yet, his presidency has little meaning without understanding this issue.
The National Republican Party ran Senator Henry Clay against Jackson. Despite the fact that the Bank poured in over $3,000,000 into Clay's campaign, an enormous sum at that time, Jackson was re-elected by a landslide in November of 1832.
Despite his presidential victory, Jackson knew the battle was only beginning: "The hydra of corruption is only scotched, not dead," said the newly-elected President. Jackson ordered his new Secretary of the Treasury, Louis McLane, to start removing the government's deposits from the Second Bank of the U.S. and to start placing them in state banks. McLane refused to do so. Jackson fired him and appointed William J. Duane as the new Secretary of the Treasury. Duane also refused to comply with the President's requests, and so Jackson fired him as well, and then appointed Roger B. Taney to the office. Taney did as told and withdrew government funds from the bank, starting on October 1, 1833. Jackson was jubilant: "I have it chained. I am ready with screws to draw every tooth and then the stumps." But the Bank was not through fighting yet.
Its head, Nicholas Biddle, used his influence to get the Senate to reject Taney's nomination.
{p. 32} Then, in a rare, public display of arrogance, Biddle threatened to cause a national economic depression if the Bank were not rechartered. He declared war:
"This worthy President thinks that because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned Judges, he is to have his way with the Bank. He is mistaken."
Next, in an unbelievable fit of honesty for a central banker, Biddle admitted that the bank was going to make money scarce in order to force Congress to restore the Bank:
"Nothing but widespread suffering will produce any effect on Congress... Our only safety is in pursuing a steady course of firm [monetary] restriction -and I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and the re-charter of the Bank."
What a stunning revelation! Here was the pure truth, revealed with shocking clarity. Biddle intended to use the money contraction power given to the Bank to cause a massive depression until America gave in. Unfortunately, this has happened time and time again throughout U.S. history, though without the blunder of Biddle's arrogant admission, and may be about to happen again in our time.
So much for the importance to the common good of central bank independence (or so called "autonomy") from political accountability and cont