Steven Gaal Posted September 18, 2011 Share Posted September 18, 2011 What Caroll Quigley predicted all coming true right before your eyes. See link below please see link http://www.activistpost.com/2011/09/eu-debt-crisis-being-used-to.html .... link will show its all becoming true before your eyes your eyes...... The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." -- Quote from Caroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, Chapter 20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOoooooooooOOOOOOOOXXXXXXXX ############################################################### PLEASE READ BELOW FOR AN UNDERSTANDING OF WHATS HAPPENING TODAY REGARDING THE WORLD ECONOMIC TROUBLES see links below a short and long summary of Quigley's Tragedy and Hope link http://www.wanttoknow.info/articles/quigley_carroll.tragedy_hope_banking_money_history (long summary Tragedy and Hope) link http://www.wanttoknow.info/articles/tragedy_hope_banking_money_history (short summary Tragedy and Hope) THIS BELOW A SHORT summary Quigely Book --------- the whole book also can be purchased online -------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------ooooooooxxxxxxxxoooooooo------------- History of Banking and Money Key Excerpts From Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope ---------------------------------------------------------- "The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." -- Quote from Caroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, Chapter 20 Carroll Quigley was a professor of history at Georgetown University from 1941 to 1976. He also taught at Princeton and at Harvard, and lectured at the Brookings Institution. He was a frequent lecturer at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, the Foreign Service Institute, and the Naval College at Norfolk, Virginia. In 1958, he served as a consultant to the Congressional Select Committee which set up the National Space Agency. Below are key excerpts on the history of money and banking from Prof. Quigley's masterpiece Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. Note: The below excerpts are taken from chapters 5, 9, 20, 65, and 77 of Tragedy and Hope, with a focus on Prof. Quigley's excellent discussion of the role of money and banking in world history. This is a 10-page summary. To go directly to a more in-depth 40-page summary, click here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 5—European Economic Developments Commercial Capitalism Western Civilization is the richest and most powerful social organization ever made by man. One reason for this success has been its economic organization, [which] has passed through six successive stages, of which at least four are called "capitalism." Each stage created the conditions which tended to bring about the next stage. The [first stage] of self-sufficient agrarian units (manors) was in a society organized so that its upper ranks—the lords, lay and ecclesiastical—found their desires for necessities so well met that they sought to exchange their surpluses of necessities for luxuries of remote origin. This gave rise to a trade in foreign luxuries (spices, fine textiles, fine metals) which was the first evidence of the stage of commercial capitalism. In this second stage, mercantile profits and widening markets created a demand for textiles and other goods which could be met only by application of power to production. This gave the third stage: industrial capitalism. The stage of industrial capitalism soon gave rise to such an insatiable demand for heavy fixed capital, like railroad lines, steel mills, shipyards, and so on, that these investments could not be financed from the profits and private fortunes of individual proprietors. New instruments for financing industry came into existence in the form of limited-liability corporations and investment banks. These were soon in a position to control the chief parts of the industrial system, since they provided capital to it. This gave rise to financial capitalism. The control of financial capitalism was used to integrate the industrial system into ever-larger units with interlinking financial controls. This made possible a reduction of competition with a resulting increase in profits. As a result, the industrial system soon found that it was again able to finance its own expansion from its own profits, and, with this achievement, financial controls were weakened, and the stage of monopoly capitalism arrived. In this fifth stage, great industrial units, working together either directly or through cartels and trade associations, were in a position to exploit the majority of the people. The result was a great economic crisis which soon developed into a struggle for control of the state—the minority hoping to use political power to defend their privileged position, the majority hoping to use the state to curtail the power and privileges of the minority. This dualist struggle dwindled with the rise of economic and social pluralism after 1945. The Primary Goal of Capitalism Capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest. But this same feature, which is a source of strength in providing economic motivation through the pursuit of profits, is also a source of weakness owing to the fact that so self-centered a motivation contributes very readily to a loss of economic coordination. Each individual, just because he is so powerfully motivated by self-interest, easily loses sight of the role which his own activities play in the economic system as a whole, and tends to act as if his activities were the whole, with inevitable injury to that whole. Capitalism, because it seeks profits as its primary goal, is never primarily seeking to achieve prosperity, high production, high consumption, political power, patriotic improvement, or moral uplift. Any of these may be achieved under capitalism, and any (or all) of them may he sacrificed and lost under capitalism, depending on this relationship to the primary goal of capitalist activity—the pursuit of profits. During the nine-hundred-year history of capitalism, it has, at various times, contributed both to the achievement and to the destruction of these other social goals. [The] stage of commercial capitalism became institutionalized into a restrictive system, sometimes called "mercantilism," in which merchants sought to gain profits, not from the movements of goods but from restricting the movements of goods. Thus the pursuit of profits, which had earlier led to increased prosperity by increasing trade and production, became a restriction on both trade and production, because profit became an end in itself rather than an accessory mechanism in the economic system as a whole. In the course of time, however, some merchants began to shift their attention from the goods aspect of commercial interchange to the other, monetary, side of the exchange. They began to accumulate the profits of these transactions, and became increasingly concerned, not with the shipment and exchange of goods, but with the shipment and exchange of moneys. In time they became concerned with the lending of money to merchants to finance their ships and their activities, advancing money for both, at high interest rates, secured by claims on ships or goods as collateral for repayment. The Operations of Banking Were Concealed So They Appeared Difficult to Master In sum, specialization of economic activities, by breaking up the economic process, had made it possible for people to concentrate on one portion of the process and, by maximizing that portion, to jeopardize the rest. The process was not only broken up into producers, exchangers, and consumers but there were also two kinds of exchangers (one concerned with goods, the other with money), with almost antithetical, short-term, aims. The problems which inevitably arose could be solved and the system reformed only by reference to the system as a whole. Unfortunately, however, three parts of the system, concerned with the production, transfer, and consumption of goods, were concrete and clearly visible so that almost anyone could grasp them simply by examining them, while the operations of banking and finance were concealed, scattered, and abstract so that they appeared to many to be difficult. To add to this, bankers themselves did everything they could to make their activities more secret and more esoteric. Their activities were reflected in mysterious marks in ledgers which were never opened to the curious outsider. In the course of time the central fact of the developing economic system, the relationship between goods and money, became clear, at least to bankers. This relationship, the price system, depended upon five things: the supply and the demand for goods, the supply and the demand for money, and the speed of exchange between money and goods. An increase in three of these (demand for goods, supply of money, speed of circulation) would move the prices of goods up and the value of money down. This inflation was objectionable to bankers, although desirable to producers and merchants. On the other hand, a decrease in the same three items would be deflationary and would please bankers, worry producers and merchants, and delight consumers (who obtained more goods for less money). The other factors worked in the opposite direction, so that an increase in them (supply of goods, demand for money, and slowness of circulation or exchange) would be deflationary [and vice versa]. Such changes of prices, either inflationary or deflationary, have been major forces in history for the last six centuries at least. Over that long period, their power to modify men's lives and human history has been increasing. Bankers Obsessed With Maintaining Value of Money Rising prices benefit debtors and injure creditors, while falling prices do the opposite. A debtor called upon to pay a debt at a time when prices are higher than when he contracted the debt must yield up less goods and services than he obtained at the earlier date, on a lower price level when he borrowed the money. A creditor, such as a bank, which has lent money—equivalent to a certain quantity of goods and services—on one price level, gets back the same amount of money—but a smaller quantity of goods and services—when repayment comes at a higher price level, because the money repaid is then less valuable. This is why bankers, as creditors in money terms, have been obsessed with maintaining the value of money, although the reason they have traditionally given for this obsession—that "sound money" maintains "business confidence"—has been propagandist rather than accurate. Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with the richer and more influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and foreign-exchange transactions. Since these were richer and more cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned with questions of political significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies, war and peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they became the financiers and financial advisers of governments. Moreover, since their relationships with governments were always in monetary terms and not real terms, and since they were always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges between one country's money and another, they used their power and influence to do two things: (1) to get all money and debts expressed in terms of a strictly limited commodity—ultimately gold; and (2) to get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and political authority, on the ground that they would be handled better by private banking interests. Bankers Create Money Out of Nothing For generations men had sought to avoid the one drawback of gold, its heaviness, by using pieces of paper to represent specific pieces of gold. We call such pieces of paper gold certificates. Such a certificate entitles its bearer to exchange it for its piece of gold on demand, but in view of the convenience of paper, only a small fraction of certificate holders ever did make such demands. It early became clear that gold need be held on hand only to the amount needed to cover the fraction of certificates likely to be presented for payment; accordingly, the rest of the gold could be used for business purposes, or, what amounts to the same thing, a volume of certificates could be issued greater than the volume of gold reserved for payment of demands against them. Such an excess volume of paper claims against reserves we now call bank notes. In effect, this creation of paper claims greater than the reserves available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing. The same thing could be done in another way, not by note-issuing banks but by deposit banks. Deposit bankers discovered that orders and checks drawn against deposits by depositors and given to third persons were often not cashed by the latter but were deposited to their own accounts. Thus there were no actual movements of funds, and payments were made simply by bookkeeping transactions on the accounts. Accordingly, it was necessary for the banker to keep on hand in actual money ... no more than the fraction of deposits likely to be drawn upon and cashed; the rest could be used for loans, and if these loans were made by creating a deposit for the borrower, who in turn would draw checks upon it rather than withdraw it in money, such "created deposits" or loans could also be covered adequately by retaining reserves to only a fraction of their value. The Dynasties of International Bankers The merchant bankers of London ... brought into their financial network the provincial banking centers, organized as commercial banks and savings banks, as well as insurance companies, to form all of these into a single financial system on an international scale which manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on the other. The men who did this, looking backward toward the period of dynastic monarchy in which they had their own roots, aspired to establish dynasties of international bankers and were at least as successful at this as were many of the dynastic political rulers. The greatest of these dynasties, of course, were the descendants of Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812) of Frankfort, whose male descendants, for at least two generations, generally married first cousins or even nieces. In concentrating, as we must, on the financial or economic activities of international bankers, we must not totally ignore their other attributes. They were, especially in later generations, cosmopolitan rather than nationalistic. They were usually highly civilized, cultured gentlemen, patrons of education and of the arts, so that today colleges, professorships, opera companies, symphonies, libraries, and museum collections still reflect their munificence. For these purposes they set a pattern of endowed foundations which still surround us today. Bankers Felt Politicians Could Not Be Trusted With the Monetary System The influence of financial capitalism and of the international bankers who created it was exercised both on business and on governments, but could have done neither if it had not been able to persuade both these to accept two "axioms" of its own ideology. Both of these were based on the assumption that politicians were too weak and too subject to temporary popular pressures to be trusted with control of the money system; accordingly, the sanctity of all values and the soundness of money must be protected in two ways: by basing the value of money on gold and by allowing bankers to control the supply of money. To do this it was necessary to conceal, or even to mislead, both governments and people about the nature of money and its methods of operation. In most countries the central bank was surrounded closely by the almost invisible private investment banking firms. These, like the planet Mercury, could hardly be seen in the dazzle emitted by the central bank which they, in fact, often dominated. Yet a close observer could hardly fail to notice the close private associations between these private, international bankers and the central bank itself. Two of the five factors which determined the value of money are the supply and the demand for money. The supply of money in a single country was subject to no centralized, responsible control in most countries over recent centuries. Instead, there were a variety of controls of which some could be influenced by bankers, some could be influenced by the government, and some could hardly be influenced by either. Central banks can usually vary the amount of money in circulation by "open market operations" or by influencing the discount rates of lesser banks. In open market operations, a central bank buys or sells government bonds in the open market. If it buys, it releases money into the economic system; if it sells it reduces the amount of money in the community. The change is greater than the price paid for the securities [due to the fractional reserve system]. Central banks can also change the quantity of money by influencing the credit policies of other banks. This can be done by various methods, such as changing the re-discount rate or changing reserve requirements. By changing the re-discount rate, we mean the interest rate which central banks charge lesser banks for loans. By raising the re-discount rate the central bank forces the lesser bank to raise its discount rate in order to operate at a profit; such a raise in interest rates tends to reduce the demand for credit and thus the amount of deposits (money). Lowering the re-discount rate permits an opposite result. The powers of governments over the quantity of money are of various kinds, and include (a) control over a central bank, ( control over public taxation, and © control over public spending. The control of governments over central banks varies greatly from one country to another, but on the whole has been increasing. Since most central banks have been (technically) private institutions, this control is frequently based on custom rather than on law. The powers of the government over the quantity of money in the community exercised through taxation and public spending are largely independent of banking control. Taxation tends to reduce the amount of money in a community and is usually a deflationary force; government spending tends to increase the amount of money in a community and is usually an inflationary force. The total effects of a government's policy will depend on which item is greater. An unbalanced budget will be inflationary; a budget with a surplus will be deflationary. Money Power—Controlled by International Investment Bankers—Dominates Business and Government On the whole, in the period up to 1931, bankers, especially the Money Power controlled by the international investment bankers, were able to dominate both business and government. They could dominate business, especially in activities and in areas where industry could not finance its own needs for capital, because investment bankers had the ability to supply or refuse to supply such capital. Thus, Rothschild interests came to dominate many of the railroads of Europe, while Morgan dominated at least 26,000 miles of American railroads. Such bankers went further than this. In return for flotations of securities of industry, they took seats on the boards of directors of industrial firms, as they had already done on commercial banks, savings banks, insurance firms, and finance companies. From these lesser institutions they funneled capital to enterprises which yielded control and away from those who resisted. These firms were controlled through interlocking directorships, holding companies, and lesser banks. They engineered amalgamations and generally reduced competition, until by the early twentieth century many activities were so monopolized that they could raise their noncompetitive prices above costs to obtain sufficient profits to become self-financing. But before that stage was reached a relatively small number of bankers were in positions of immense influence in European and American economic life. As early as 1909, Walter Rathenau, who was in a position to know (since he had inherited from his father control of the German General Electric Company and held scores of directorships himself), said, "Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves." The Power of Investment Bankers Over Governments The power of investment bankers over governments rests on a number of factors, of which the most significant, perhaps, is the need of governments to issue short-term treasury bills as well as long-term government bonds. Just as businessmen go to commercial banks for current capital advances to smooth over the discrepancies between their irregular and intermittent incomes and their periodic and persistent outgoes, so a government has to go to merchant bankers (or institutions controlled by them) to tide over the shallow places caused by irregular tax receipts. As experts in government bonds, the international bankers not only handled the necessary advances, but provided advice to government officials and, on many occasions, placed their own members in official posts for varied periods to deal with special problems. This is so widely accepted even today that in 1961 a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic Administration in Washington without significant comment from any direction. Naturally, the influence of bankers over governments during the age of financial capitalism (roughly 1850-1931) was not something about which anyone talked freely, but it has been admitted frequently enough by those on the inside, especially in England. In 1852 Gladstone, chancellor of the Exchequer, declared, "The hinge of the whole situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantive power in matters of Finance, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned." On September 26, 1921, The Financial Times wrote, "Half a dozen men at the top of the Big Five Banks could upset the whole fabric of government finance by refraining from renewing Treasury Bills." Montagu Norman and J. P. Morgan Dominate the Financial World In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures. Since most government officials felt ignorant of finance, they sought advice from bankers whom they considered to be experts in the field. The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally. Such advice could be enforced if necessary by manipulation of exchanges, gold flows, discount rates, and even levels of business activity. The powers of these international bankers reached their peak in the last decade of their supremacy, 1919-1931, when Montagu Norman and J. P. Morgan dominated not only the financial world but international relations and other matters as well. On November I l, 1927, the Wall Street Journal called Mr. Norman "the currency dictator of Europe." This was admitted by Mr. Norman himself before the Court of the Bank on March 21, 1930, and before the Macmillan Committee of the House of Commons five days later. On one occasion ... Mr. Norman is reported to have said, "I hold the hegemony of the world." It might be added that Governor Norman rarely acted in major world problems without consulting with J. P. Morgan's representatives. Chapter 9—The British Imperial Crisis Britain acquired the world's greatest empire because it possessed certain advantages which other countries lacked. We mention three of these advantages: (1) that it was an island, (2) that it was in the Atlantic, and (3) that its social traditions at home produced the will and the talents for imperial acquisition. Cecil Rhodes Organized a Secret Society in 1891 [Cecil] Rhodes (1853-1902) feverishly exploited the diamond and goldfields of South Africa, rose to be prime minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896), contributed money to political parties, controlled parliamentary seats both in England and in South Africa, and sought to win a strip of British territory across Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to Egypt and to join these two extremes together with a telegraph line and ultimately with a Cape-to-Cairo Railway. Rhodes inspired devoted support for his goals from others in South Africa and in England. With financial support from Lord Rothschild and Alfred Beit, he was able to monopolize the diamond mines of South Africa as De Beers Consolidated Mines and to build up a great gold mining enterprise as Consolidated Gold Fields. In the middle 1890's Rhodes had a personal income of at least a million pounds sterling a year [equivalent to about $100 million a year in current U.S. dollars] which was spent so freely for his mysterious purposes that he was usually overdrawn on his account. [An] association was formally established on February 5, 1891, when Rhodes and [William] Stead organized a secret society of which Rhodes had been dreaming for sixteen years. In this secret society Rhodes was to be leader; Stead, Brett, and Milner were to form an executive committee; Arthur (Lord) Balfour, (Sir) Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert (Lord) Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a "Circle of Initiates"; while there was to be an outer circle known as the "Association of Helpers" (later organized by Milner as the Round Table organization). In 1919 [Rhodes' followers] founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) for which the chief financial supporters were Sir Abe Bailey and the Astor family (owners of The Times). Similar Institutes of International Affairs were established in the chief British dominions and in the United States (where it is known as the Council on Foreign Relations) in the period 1919-1927. The power and influence of this Rhodes-Milner group in British imperial affairs and in foreign policy since 1889, although not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated. We might mention as an example that this group dominated The Times from 1890 to 1912, and has controlled it completely since 1912 (except for the years 1919-1922). In spite of the terms of the Rhodes wills, Rhodes himself was not a racist. Nor was he a political democrat. He worked as easily and as closely with Jews, black natives, or Boers as he did with English. His greatest weakness rested on the fact that his passionate attachment to his goals made him overly tolerant in regard to methods. He did not hesitate to use either bribery or force to attain his ends if he judged they would be effective. Chapter 20—The Period of Stabilization, 1922-1930 America Becomes the World's Greatest Creditor By 1914 Britain's supremacy as financial center, as commercial market, as creditor, and as merchant shipper was being threatened. At this critical stage in Britain's development, the World War occurred. This had a double result as far as this subject is concerned. It forced Britain to postpone indefinitely any reform of her industrial system to adjust it to more modern trends; and it speeded up the development of these trends so that what might have occurred in twenty years was done instead in five. The war changed the position of the United States in respect to the rest of the world from that of a debtor owing about $3 billion to that of a creditor owed $4 billion. This does not include intergovernmental debts of about $10 billion owed to the United States as a result of the war. At the same time, Britain's position changed from a creditor owed about $18 billion to a creditor owed about $13.5 billion. In addition, Britain was owed about $8 billion in war debts from her Allies ... and owed to the United States war debts of well over $54 billion. Most of these war debts and reparations were sharply reduced after 1920, but the net result for Britain was a drastic change in her position in respect to the United States. The basic economic organization of the world was modified in other ways. The more backward areas of Europe and the world had been industrialized to a great degree and were unwilling to fall back to a position in which they would obtain industrial products from Britain, Germany, or the United States in return for their raw materials and food. This refusal was made more painful for both sides by the fact that these backward areas had increased their outputs of raw materials and food so greatly that the total could hardly have been sold even if they had been willing to buy all their industrial products from their prewar sources. The result was a situation where all countries were eager to sell and reluctant to buy, and sought to achieve these mutually irreconcilable ends by setting up subsidies and bounties on exports, tariffs, and restrictions on imports, with disastrous results on world trade. The only sensible solution to this problem of excessive productive capacity would have been a substantial rise in domestic standards of living, but this would have required a fundamental reapportionment of the national income so that claims to the product of the excess capacity would go to those masses eager to consume, rather than continue to go to the minority desiring to save. Such a reform was rejected by the ruling groups in both "advanced" and "backward" countries, so that this solution was reached only to a relatively small degree in a relatively few countries. The system of international payments which had worked ... before 1914 worked only haltingly after that date, and practically ceased to work at all after 1930. The chief cause of these factors was that neither goods nor money obeyed purely economic forces and did not move as formerly to the areas in which each was most valuable. The chief result was a complete mal-distribution of gold, a condition which became acute after 1928 and which by 1933 had forced most countries off the gold standard. Money Power Seeks to Create a World System of Financial Control in Private Hands Able to Dominate Every Nation on Earth The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank, in the hands of men like Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Charles Rist of the Bank of France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world. Norman Was the Commander-in-Chief of the World System of Banking Control The commander in chief of the world system of banking control was Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, who was built up by the private bankers to a position where he was regarded as an oracle in all matters of government and business. In January, 1924, Reginald McKenna, who had been chancellor of the Exchequer in 1915-1916, as chairman of the board of the Midland Bank told its stockholders: "I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create money.... And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people." Montagu Norman's position may be gathered from the fact that his predecessors in the governorship, almost a hundred of them, had served two-year terms, increased rarely in time of crisis. But Norman held the position for twenty-four years (1920-1944). Norman was a strange man whose mental outlook was one of successfully suppressed hysteria or even paranoia. He had no use for governments and feared democracy. Both of these seemed to him to be threats to private banking. Strong-willed, tireless, and ruthless, he viewed his life as a kind of cloak-and-dagger struggle with the forces of ... [sound] money. Norman had a devoted colleague in Benjamin Strong, the first governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Strong owed his career to the favor of the Morgan Bank. He became governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as the joint nominee of Morgan and of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company in 1914. Two years later, Strong met Norman for the first time, and they at once made an agreement to work in cooperation for the financial practices they both revered. In the 1920's, they were determined to use the financial power of Britain and of the United States to force all the major countries of the world to go on the gold standard and to operate it through central banks free from all political control, with all questions of international finance to be settled by agreements by such central banks without interference from governments. Norman and Strong Were Mere Agents of the Powerful Bankers Who Remained Behind the Scenes and Operated in Secret It must not be felt that these heads of the world's chief central banks were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not. Rather, they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international cooperation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks. This dominance of investment bankers was based on their control over the flows of credit and investment funds in their own countries and throughout the world. They could dominate the financial and industrial systems of their own countries by their influence over the flow of current funds through bank loans, the discount rate, and the re-discounting of commercial debts. They could dominate governments by their control over ... government loans and the play of the international exchanges. In this system the Rothschilds had been preeminent during much of the nineteenth century, but, at the end of that century, they were being replaced by J. P. Morgan whose central office was in New York, although it was always operated as if it were in London (where it had, indeed, originated as George Peabody and Company in 1838). The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and a use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups. Money Power Creates an Ingenious Plan to Create and Control Giant Monopolies [Financial capitalists eventually] sought to sever control from ownership of securities, believing they could hold the former and relinquish the latter. On the industrial side, they sought to advance monopoly and restrict production, thus keeping prices up and their security holdings liquid. The efforts of financiers to separate ownership from control were aided by the great capital demands of modern industry. Such demands for capital made necessary the corporation form of business organization. This inevitably brings together the capital owned by a large number of persons to create an enterprise controlled by a small number of persons. The financiers did all they could to make the former number as large as possible and the latter number as small as possible. The result of this was that larger and larger aggregates of wealth fell into the control of smaller and smaller groups of men. While financial capitalism was thus weaving the intricate pattern of modern corporation law and practice on one side, it was establishing monopolies and cartels on the other. Both helped to dig the grave of financial capitalism and pass the reins of economic control on to the newer monopoly capitalism. On one side, the financiers freed the controllers of business from the owners of business, but on the other side, this concentration gave rise to monopoly conditions which freed the controllers from the banks. Chapter 65—American Confusions, 1945-1950 There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies ... but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known. Chapter 77—Conclusion The hope of the twentieth century rests on its recognition that war and depression are man-made and needless. They can be avoided in the future by turning from ... nineteenth-century characteristics ... and going back to other characteristics that our Western society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding an increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self-discipline. ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo end summary **** -------- Quigely thought that bankers controlling the world was the worlds 'great hope.' The 'tragedy' is that they (bankers) keep it secret. THANKS Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Caddy Posted September 18, 2011 Share Posted September 18, 2011 I took Prof. Quigley's mandated course "Civilization" when I was an undergraduate in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1956-60. He was brilliant and radiated charisma. I can still see him in my mind's eye giving a lecture and can still recite his six levels of civilization under which all societies should be judged a success or failure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted October 14, 2011 Author Share Posted October 14, 2011 (edited) I took Prof. Quigley's mandated course "Civilization" when I was an undergraduate in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1956-60. He was brilliant and radiated charisma. I can still see him in my mind's eye giving a lecture and can still recite his six levels of civilization under which all societies should be judged a success or failure. ))))))))))))))))))))))) Dear Douglas,Quigley was very ,very smart,however, Quigley thought world government would be a positive for the people,it will not be. UPDATE from WHATREALLYHAPPENED below the VVVoVVV line break ,all coming true by Quigley. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++o++++++++++++++++++++++++ What Caroll Quigley predicted all coming true right before your eyes. See link below please see link http://www.activistp...ng-used-to.html .... link will show its all becoming true before your eyes your eyes...... The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." -- Quote from Caroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, Chapter 20 VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVoVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVo UPDATE == A Coup in the European Union? By a close vote on 28 September 2011, the European Parliament passed the Commission’s plan—a far-reaching takeover of individual countries’ capacity to set their own budgets and to manage their own sovereign debts. From now on, the Parliament and the Council (with the Commission naturally overseeing the process) will be able to force governments to comply with the Maastricht Treaty recommendations—otherwise known as the “Stability and Growth Pact”–to which member States had recently paid precious little attention. After 2005 this Pact seemed almost a quaint relic. But now, thanks to the six-pack, no deficits greater than 3% and no national debts above 60% of GDP will be countenanced. What these people need is stern discipline, make no mistake. link http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/14/a-coup-in-the-european-union/ Edited October 25, 2011 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted October 25, 2011 Author Share Posted October 25, 2011 (edited) very much related -----------------* The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order ============================================= October 18, 2011 By RICHARD K MOORE ============================================= When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland had been the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically. In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favour investors over landowners. It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism. The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world. Unlike aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile – it flows to where the most growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the rusting industrial areas of America and Britain. This detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can ‘explain’ the wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandisement of monarchs and nations. A capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our elite banking families have financed both sides of most military conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time ‘explaining’ World War 1 in terms of national motivations and objectives. In pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win. Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real winner always turns out to be the house – the bankers who finance the war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners, and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able, over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own interests. Nations and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars, infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar reconstruction investments. From their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking elite have over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the elite banking gang (the ‘banksters’) is both absolute and subtle… Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere, so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. – President Woodrow Wilson The End of Growth – Banksters vs. Capitalism It was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit to economic growth. Industrialisation has enabled us to rush headlong toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally the paradigm of perpetual growth has reached the point of diminishing returns. Indeed, that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels. Hence globalisation, which moved production to low-waged areas, providing greater profit margins. Hence privatisation, which transfers revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries. Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the real world. For almost forty years, the capitalist system was kept going by these various mechanisms, none of which were productive in any real sense. And then in September 2008 this house of cards collapsed, all of a sudden, bringing the global financial system to its knees. If one studies the collapse of civilisations, one learns that failure-to-adapt is fatal. Is our civilisation falling into that trap? We had two centuries of real growth, where the growth-dynamic of capitalism was in harmony with the reality of industrial growth. Then we had four decades of artificial growth – capitalism being sustained by a house of cards. And now, after the house of cards has collapsed, every effort is apparently being made to bring about ‘a recovery’ – of growth! It is very easy to get the impression that our civilisation is in the process of collapse, based on the failure-to-adapt principle. Such an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its sell-by date, the bankster elite are well aware of that fact – and they are adapting. Capitalism is a vehicle that helped bring the banksters to absolute power, but they have no more loyalty to that system than they have to place, or to anything or anyone. As mentioned earlier, they think on a global scale, with nations and populations as pawns. They define what money is and they issue it, just like the banker in a game of Monopoly. They can also make up a new game with a new kind of money. They have long outgrown any need to rely on any particular economic system in order to maintain their power. Capitalism was handy in an era of rapid growth. For an era of non-growth, a different game is being prepared. Thus, capitalism was not allowed to die a natural death. Instead it was brought down by a controlled demolition. First it was put on a life-support system, as mentioned above, with globalisation, privatisation, currency markets, etc. Then it was injected with a euthanasia death-drug, in the form of real-estate bubbles and toxic derivatives. Finally, the Bank of International Settlements in Basel – the central bank of central banks – pulled the plug on the life-support system: they declared the ‘mark-to-market rule’, which made all the risk-holding banks instantly insolvent, although it took a while for this to become apparent. Every step in this process was carefully planned and managed by the central-banking clique. The End of Sovereignty – Restoring the Ancien Régime Just as the financial collapse was carefully managed, so was the post-collapse scenario, with its suicidal bailout programs. National budgets were already stretched; they certainly did not have reserves available to salvage the insolvent banks. Thus the bailout commitments amounted to nothing more than the taking on of astronomical new debts by governments. In order to service the bailout commitments, the money would need to be borrowed from the same financial system that was being bailed out! It’s not that the banks were too big to fail, rather the banksters were too powerful to fail: they made politicians an offer they couldn’t refuse. In the USA, Congress was told that without bailouts there would be martial law the next morning. In Ireland, the Ministers were told there would be financial chaos and rioting in the streets. In fact, as Iceland demonstrated, the sensible way to deal with the insolvent banks was with an orderly process of receivership. The effect of the coerced bailouts was to transfer insolvency from the banks to the national treasuries. Banking debts were transformed into sovereign debts and budget deficits. Now, quite predictably, it is the nations that are seeking bailouts, and those bailouts come with conditions attached. Instead of the banks going into receivership, the nations are going into receivership. In his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins explains how the third world has been coerced over the past several decades – through pressure and trickery of various kinds – into perpetual debt bondage. By design, the debts can never be repaid. Instead, the debts must be periodically refinanced, and each round of refinancing buries the nation deeper in debt – and compels the nation to submit to even more drastic IMF diktats. With the orchestrated financial collapse, and the ‘too big to fail’ scam, the banksters have now crossed the Rubicon: the hit-man agenda is now operating here in the first world. In the EU, the first round of nations to go down will be the so-called PIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. The fiction, that the PIGS can deal with the bailouts, is based on the assumption that the era of limitless growth will resume. As the banksters themselves know full well, that just isn’t going to happen. Eventually the PIGS will be forced to default, and then the rest of the EU will go down as well, all part of a controlled-demolition project. When a nation succumbs to debt bondage, it ceases to be a sovereign nation, governed by some kind of internal political process. Instead it comes under the control of IMF diktats. As we have seen in the third world, and is happening now in Europe, these diktats are all about austerity and privatisation. Government functions are eliminated or privatised, and national assets are sold off. Little by little – again a controlled demolition – the nation state is dismantled. In the end, the primary functions left to government are police suppression of its own population, and the collection of taxes to be handed over to the banksters. In fact, the dismantling of the nation state began long before the financial collapse of 2008. In the USA and Britain, it began in 1980, with Reagan and Thatcher. In Europe, it began in 1988, with the Maastricht Treaty. Globalisation accelerated the dismantling process, with the exporting of jobs and industry, privatisation programs, ‘free trade’ agreements, and the establishment of the regulation-busting World Trade Organisation (WTO). Events since 2008 have enabled the rapid acceleration of a process that was already well underway. With the collapse, the bailouts, and the total failure to pursue any kind of effective recovery program, the signals are very clear: the system will be allowed to collapse totally, thus clearing the ground for a pre-architected ‘solution’. As the nation state is being dismantled, a new regime of global governance is being established to replace it. As we can see with the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the new global system will make no pretensions about popular representation or democratic process. Rule will be by means of autocratic global bureaucracies, which will take their orders, directly or indirectly, from the bankster clique. In his book, The Globalization of Poverty, Michel Chossudovsky explains how globalisation, and the actions of the IMF, created massive poverty throughout the third world over the past several decades. As we can see, with the dramatic emphasis on austerity following the collapse and bailouts, this poverty-creation project has now crossed the Rubicon. In this new world system there will be no prosperous middle class. Indeed, the new regime will very much resemble the old days of royalty and serfdom (the ancien régime). The banksters are the new royal family, with the whole world as their dominion. The technocrats who run the global bureaucracies, and the mandarins who pose as politicians in the residual nations, are the privileged upper class. The rest of us, the overwhelming majority, will find ourselves in the role of impoverished serfs – if we are lucky enough to be one of the survivors of the collapse process. Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government. – Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderbergers meeting The End of Liberty – The Global Police State For the past four decades, since about 1970, we’ve been experiencing a regime-change process, from an old global system to a new global system. In the old system, first world nations were relatively democratic and prosperous, while the third world suffered under police state tyranny, mass poverty, and imperialism (exploitation by external powers). As discussed above, the transition process has been characterised by ‘crossing the Rubicon’ – the introduction of policies and practices into the first world, that were formerly limited, for the most part, to the third world. Thus debt bondage to the IMF crossed the Rubicon, enabled by the collapse-bailout scam. In turn, mass poverty is crossing that same Rubicon, due to austerity measures imposed by the IMF, with its new bond-holding powers. Imperialism is also crossing the Rubicon, as the first world comes under the exploitative control of banksters and their bureaucracies, a power nexus that is external to all national identities. Unsurprisingly, police state tyranny is also crossing the Rubicon: the imposition of third world poverty levels requires third world methods of repression. The anti-globalisation movement can be taken as the beginning of popular resistance to the process of regime change. Similarly, the police response to the Seattle anti-globalisation demonstrations, in November 1999, can be taken as the ‘crossing of the Rubicon’ for police state tyranny. The excessive and arbitrary violence of that response – including such things as holding people’s eyes open and spraying pepper into them – was unprecedented against non-violent demonstrators in a first world nation. Ironically, that police response, particularly as it was so widely publicised, actually strengthened the anti-globalisation movement. As demonstrations grew in size and strength, the police response grew still more violent. A climax of sorts was reached in Genoa, in July 2001, when the levels of violence on both sides began to resemble almost a guerilla war. In those days the anti-globalisation movement was dominating the international news pages, and opposition to globalisation was reaching massive proportions. The visible movement was only the tip of an anti-systemic iceberg. In a very real sense, general popular sentiment in the first world was beginning to take a radical turn. Movement leaders were now thinking in terms of an anti-capitalist movement. There was a political volatility in the air, a sense that, just maybe possibly, enlightened popular sentiment might succeed in shifting the course of events. All of that changed on September 11, 2001, the day the towers came down. The anti-globalisation movement, along with globalisation itself, disappeared almost totally from public consciousness on that fateful day. Suddenly it was a whole new global scenario, a whole new media circus – with a new enemy, and a new kind of war, a war without end, a war against phantoms, a war against ‘terrorism’. Earlier we saw how the orchestrated financial collapse of September 2008 enabled certain ongoing projects to be rapidly accelerated, such as the dismantlement of sovereignty, and the imposition of austerity. Similarly, the events of September 2001 enabled certain ongoing projects to be greatly accelerated, such as the abandonment of civil liberties and international law. Before the towers had even come down, the ‘Patriot Act’ had already been drafted, proclaiming in no uncertain terms that the police state was here (in the USA) in force and here to stay – the Bill of Rights was null and void. Before long, similar ‘anti-terrorist’ legislation had been adopted throughout the first world. If any anti-systemic movement were to again raise its head in the first world (as it did, for example, recently in Greece), arbitrary police powers could be brought to bear – as much as might be necessary – to put the resistance down. No popular movement would be allowed to derail the banksters’ regime-change designs. The anti-globalisation movement had been shouting, ‘This is what real democracy looks like’. With 9/11, the banksters replied: ‘This is what real oppression looks like’. The events of 9/11 led directly to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in general helped create a climate where invasions of sovereign nations could be readily justified, with one excuse or another. International law was to be as thoroughly abandoned as was civil liberties. Just as all restraint was removed from domestic police interventions, so was all restraint being removed from geopolitical military interventions. Nothing was to stand in the way of the banksters’ regime-change agenda. The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society… dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values… this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behaviour… Persisting social crisis, the emergence of a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain public confidence would be the stepping-stones in the piecemeal transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society… In addition, it may be possible – and tempting – to exploit for strategic political purposes the fruits of research on the brain and on human behaviour. – Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, 1970 The Post-Capitalist Era – New Myths for a New Culture 2012 might not be the exact year, but it’s difficult to see the endgame lasting much beyond that – and the masters of the universe love symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival strategies, anticipated alien interventions, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions, what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind symbolically for what is to come. Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the system. Whenever there is a change of era, the previous era is always demonised in a new mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is demonised – a revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to monotheism. With the rise of European nation states, the Catholic Church was demonised, and Protestantism introduced. When republics came along, the demonisation of monarchs was an important part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy and national sovereignty will be demonised. This will be very important, in getting people to accept arbitrary totalitarian rule… In those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity, anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better than predators in the wild. Nations had no long-term coherence; voters would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in transition and confusion. How did anyone ever think that masses of semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society? Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best expertise make the decisions for the whole globe. Capitalism is about growth, progress, and change. Under capitalism the virtues of ambition, initiative, and competitiveness are praised, because those virtues serve the dynamics of capitalism. People are encouraged to always accumulate more, and never be satisfied with what they have. Under capitalism, people need to have a bit of liberty, and a bit of prosperity, so that the dynamics of capitalism can operate. Without some liberty, ambition cannot be pursued; without some prosperity, how could accumulation be pursued? In the post-capitalist world, the capitalist virtues will be demonised. This will be very important, in getting people to accept poverty and regimentation… The pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system was inherently corrupt and wasteful. Anarchy reined in the marketplace, as corporations blindly pursued profit, with no concern for human needs or for the Earth. How much more sensible are our production brigades, producing only what is needed, and using only what is sustainable. Capitalism encouraged greed and consumption; people struggled to compete with one another, to ‘get ahead’ in the rat race. How much wiser we are now, to live within our ration quotas, and to accept our assigned duties, whatever they might be, in service to humanity. In this regime change, ushering in the post-capitalist era, we’re seeing a conscious orchestration of economics, politics, geopolitics, and mythology – as one coordinated project. A whole new reality is being created, a whole new global culture. When it comes down to it, the ability to transform culture is the ultimate form of power. In only a single generation, a new culture becomes ‘the way things are’. And what, we might inquire, might stand in the way of any future manipulations of the cultural regime that the bankster royal family might contemplate? Ever since public education was introduced, the state and the family have competed to control childhood conditioning – and it is in childhood that culture is transmitted to the next generation. In the micromanaged post-capitalist future, we’ll most likely see the ‘final solution’ of social control, which is for the state to monopolise child raising. This would eliminate from society the parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer is there a concept of relatives, just fellow members of the hive. The family must be demonised. Already, here in Ireland, there are daily TV spots dramatising the plight of children who are being abused or neglected by their parents… How scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had total control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with whatever neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to possess. How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house den of child abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognised for what it was? How much better off we are now, with children being raised scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught discipline and healthy values. RICHARD K MOORE, an expatriate from Silicon Valley, retired and moved to Ireland in 1994 to begin his ‘real work’ – trying to understand how the world works, and how we can make it better. Many years of researching and writing culminated in his widely acclaimed book Escaping the Matrix: How We the People Can Change the World (The Cyberjournal Project, 2005). His cyberjournal email list has been going since 1994 (cyberjournal.org). The book’s website is http://escapingthematrix.org, while his website http://quaylargo.com/rkm/ contains an extensive biography plus list of his articles. Richard can be contacted via email at rkm@quaylargo.com. The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 128 (September-October 2011). Edited November 10, 2011 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted January 25, 2012 Author Share Posted January 25, 2012 (edited) UPDATE THE BANKS MARCH ON ====== ---------------------------------------- very much related -----------------* The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order ============================================= October 18, 2011 By RICHARD K MOORE ============================================= When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland had been the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geopolitically. In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favour investors over landowners. It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism. The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world. Unlike aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile it flows to where the most growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the rusting industrial areas of America and Britain. This detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can explain the wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandisement of monarchs and nations. A capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our elite banking families have financed both sides of most military conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time explaining World War 1 in terms of national motivations and objectives. In pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win. Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real winner always turns out to be the house the bankers who finance the war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners, and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able, over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own interests. Nations and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars, infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar reconstruction investments. From their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking elite have over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the elite banking gang (the banksters) is both absolute and subtle… Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere, so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it. President Woodrow Wilson The End of Growth Banksters vs. Capitalism It was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit to economic growth. Industrialisation has enabled us to rush headlong toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally the paradigm of perpetual growth has reached the point of diminishing returns. Indeed, that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels. Hence globalisation, which moved production to low-waged areas, providing greater profit margins. Hence privatisation, which transfers revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries. Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the real world. For almost forty years, the capitalist system was kept going by these various mechanisms, none of which were productive in any real sense. And then in September 2008 this house of cards collapsed, all of a sudden, bringing the global financial system to its knees. If one studies the collapse of civilisations, one learns that failure-to-adapt is fatal. Is our civilisation falling into that trap? We had two centuries of real growth, where the growth-dynamic of capitalism was in harmony with the reality of industrial growth. Then we had four decades of artificial growth capitalism being sustained by a house of cards. And now, after the house of cards has collapsed, every effort is apparently being made to bring about a recovery of growth! It is very easy to get the impression that our civilisation is in the process of collapse, based on the failure-to-adapt principle. Such an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its sell-by date, the bankster elite are well aware of that fact and they are adapting. Capitalism is a vehicle that helped bring the banksters to absolute power, but they have no more loyalty to that system than they have to place, or to anything or anyone. As mentioned earlier, they think on a global scale, with nations and populations as pawns. They define what money is and they issue it, just like the banker in a game of Monopoly. They can also make up a new game with a new kind of money. They have long outgrown any need to rely on any particular economic system in order to maintain their power. Capitalism was handy in an era of rapid growth. For an era of non-growth, a different game is being prepared. Thus, capitalism was not allowed to die a natural death. Instead it was brought down by a controlled demolition. First it was put on a life-support system, as mentioned above, with globalisation, privatisation, currency markets, etc. Then it was injected with a euthanasia death-drug, in the form of real-estate bubbles and toxic derivatives. Finally, the Bank of International Settlements in Basel the central bank of central banks pulled the plug on the life-support system: they declared the mark-to-market rule, which made all the risk-holding banks instantly insolvent, although it took a while for this to become apparent. Every step in this process was carefully planned and managed by the central-banking clique. The End of Sovereignty Restoring the Ancien Régime Just as the financial collapse was carefully managed, so was the post-collapse scenario, with its suicidal bailout programs. National budgets were already stretched; they certainly did not have reserves available to salvage the insolvent banks. Thus the bailout commitments amounted to nothing more than the taking on of astronomical new debts by governments. In order to service the bailout commitments, the money would need to be borrowed from the same financial system that was being bailed out! Its not that the banks were too big to fail, rather the banksters were too powerful to fail: they made politicians an offer they couldnt refuse. In the USA, Congress was told that without bailouts there would be martial law the next morning. In Ireland, the Ministers were told there would be financial chaos and rioting in the streets. In fact, as Iceland demonstrated, the sensible way to deal with the insolvent banks was with an orderly process of receivership. The effect of the coerced bailouts was to transfer insolvency from the banks to the national treasuries. Banking debts were transformed into sovereign debts and budget deficits. Now, quite predictably, it is the nations that are seeking bailouts, and those bailouts come with conditions attached. Instead of the banks going into receivership, the nations are going into receivership. In his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins explains how the third world has been coerced over the past several decades through pressure and trickery of various kinds into perpetual debt bondage. By design, the debts can never be repaid. Instead, the debts must be periodically refinanced, and each round of refinancing buries the nation deeper in debt and compels the nation to submit to even more drastic IMF diktats. With the orchestrated financial collapse, and the too big to fail scam, the banksters have now crossed the Rubicon: the hit-man agenda is now operating here in the first world. In the EU, the first round of nations to go down will be the so-called PIGS Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain. The fiction, that the PIGS can deal with the bailouts, is based on the assumption that the era of limitless growth will resume. As the banksters themselves know full well, that just isnt going to happen. Eventually the PIGS will be forced to default, and then the rest of the EU will go down as well, all part of a controlled-demolition project. When a nation succumbs to debt bondage, it ceases to be a sovereign nation, governed by some kind of internal political process. Instead it comes under the control of IMF diktats. As we have seen in the third world, and is happening now in Europe, these diktats are all about austerity and privatisation. Government functions are eliminated or privatised, and national assets are sold off. Little by little again a controlled demolition the nation state is dismantled. In the end, the primary functions left to government are police suppression of its own population, and the collection of taxes to be handed over to the banksters. In fact, the dismantling of the nation state began long before the financial collapse of 2008. In the USA and Britain, it began in 1980, with Reagan and Thatcher. In Europe, it began in 1988, with the Maastricht Treaty. Globalisation accelerated the dismantling process, with the exporting of jobs and industry, privatisation programs, free trade agreements, and the establishment of the regulation-busting World Trade Organisation (WTO). Events since 2008 have enabled the rapid acceleration of a process that was already well underway. With the collapse, the bailouts, and the total failure to pursue any kind of effective recovery program, the signals are very clear: the system will be allowed to collapse totally, thus clearing the ground for a pre-architected solution. As the nation state is being dismantled, a new regime of global governance is being established to replace it. As we can see with the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the new global system will make no pretensions about popular representation or democratic process. Rule will be by means of autocratic global bureaucracies, which will take their orders, directly or indirectly, from the bankster clique. In his book, The Globalization of Poverty, Michel Chossudovsky explains how globalisation, and the actions of the IMF, created massive poverty throughout the third world over the past several decades. As we can see, with the dramatic emphasis on austerity following the collapse and bailouts, this poverty-creation project has now crossed the Rubicon. In this new world system there will be no prosperous middle class. Indeed, the new regime will very much resemble the old days of royalty and serfdom (the ancien régime). The banksters are the new royal family, with the whole world as their dominion. The technocrats who run the global bureaucracies, and the mandarins who pose as politicians in the residual nations, are the privileged upper class. The rest of us, the overwhelming majority, will find ourselves in the role of impoverished serfs if we are lucky enough to be one of the survivors of the collapse process. Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government. Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderbergers meeting The End of Liberty The Global Police State For the past four decades, since about 1970, weve been experiencing a regime-change process, from an old global system to a new global system. In the old system, first world nations were relatively democratic and prosperous, while the third world suffered under police state tyranny, mass poverty, and imperialism (exploitation by external powers). As discussed above, the transition process has been characterised by crossing the Rubicon the introduction of policies and practices into the first world, that were formerly limited, for the most part, to the third world. Thus debt bondage to the IMF crossed the Rubicon, enabled by the collapse-bailout scam. In turn, mass poverty is crossing that same Rubicon, due to austerity measures imposed by the IMF, with its new bond-holding powers. Imperialism is also crossing the Rubicon, as the first world comes under the exploitative control of banksters and their bureaucracies, a power nexus that is external to all national identities. Unsurprisingly, police state tyranny is also crossing the Rubicon: the imposition of third world poverty levels requires third world methods of repression. The anti-globalisation movement can be taken as the beginning of popular resistance to the process of regime change. Similarly, the police response to the Seattle anti-globalisation demonstrations, in November 1999, can be taken as the crossing of the Rubicon for police state tyranny. The excessive and arbitrary violence of that response including such things as holding peoples eyes open and spraying pepper into them was unprecedented against non-violent demonstrators in a first world nation. Ironically, that police response, particularly as it was so widely publicised, actually strengthened the anti-globalisation movement. As demonstrations grew in size and strength, the police response grew still more violent. A climax of sorts was reached in Genoa, in July 2001, when the levels of violence on both sides began to resemble almost a guerilla war. In those days the anti-globalisation movement was dominating the international news pages, and opposition to globalisation was reaching massive proportions. The visible movement was only the tip of an anti-systemic iceberg. In a very real sense, general popular sentiment in the first world was beginning to take a radical turn. Movement leaders were now thinking in terms of an anti-capitalist movement. There was a political volatility in the air, a sense that, just maybe possibly, enlightened popular sentiment might succeed in shifting the course of events. All of that changed on September 11, 2001, the day the towers came down. The anti-globalisation movement, along with globalisation itself, disappeared almost totally from public consciousness on that fateful day. Suddenly it was a whole new global scenario, a whole new media circus with a new enemy, and a new kind of war, a war without end, a war against phantoms, a war against terrorism. Earlier we saw how the orchestrated financial collapse of September 2008 enabled certain ongoing projects to be rapidly accelerated, such as the dismantlement of sovereignty, and the imposition of austerity. Similarly, the events of September 2001 enabled certain ongoing projects to be greatly accelerated, such as the abandonment of civil liberties and international law. Before the towers had even come down, the Patriot Act had already been drafted, proclaiming in no uncertain terms that the police state was here (in the USA) in force and here to stay the Bill of Rights was null and void. Before long, similar anti-terrorist legislation had been adopted throughout the first world. If any anti-systemic movement were to again raise its head in the first world (as it did, for example, recently in Greece), arbitrary police powers could be brought to bear as much as might be necessary to put the resistance down. No popular movement would be allowed to derail the banksters regime-change designs. The anti-globalisation movement had been shouting, This is what real democracy looks like. With 9/11, the banksters replied: This is what real oppression looks like. The events of 9/11 led directly to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and in general helped create a climate where invasions of sovereign nations could be readily justified, with one excuse or another. International law was to be as thoroughly abandoned as was civil liberties. Just as all restraint was removed from domestic police interventions, so was all restraint being removed from geopolitical military interventions. Nothing was to stand in the way of the banksters regime-change agenda. The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society… dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values… this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behaviour… Persisting social crisis, the emergence of a charismatic personality, and the exploitation of mass media to obtain public confidence would be the stepping-stones in the piecemeal transformation of the United States into a highly controlled society… In addition, it may be possible and tempting to exploit for strategic political purposes the fruits of research on the brain and on human behaviour. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: Americas Role in the Technetronic Era, 1970 The Post-Capitalist Era New Myths for a New Culture 2012 might not be the exact year, but its difficult to see the endgame lasting much beyond that and the masters of the universe love symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival strategies, anticipated alien interventions, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions, what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind symbolically for what is to come. Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together, geopolitically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic circumstances of the system. Whenever there is a change of era, the previous era is always demonised in a new mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is demonised a revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to monotheism. With the rise of European nation states, the Catholic Church was demonised, and Protestantism introduced. When republics came along, the demonisation of monarchs was an important part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy and national sovereignty will be demonised. This will be very important, in getting people to accept arbitrary totalitarian rule… In those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity, anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better than predators in the wild. Nations had no long-term coherence; voters would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in transition and confusion. How did anyone ever think that masses of semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society? Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best expertise make the decisions for the whole globe. Capitalism is about growth, progress, and change. Under capitalism the virtues of ambition, initiative, and competitiveness are praised, because those virtues serve the dynamics of capitalism. People are encouraged to always accumulate more, and never be satisfied with what they have. Under capitalism, people need to have a bit of liberty, and a bit of prosperity, so that the dynamics of capitalism can operate. Without some liberty, ambition cannot be pursued; without some prosperity, how could accumulation be pursued? In the post-capitalist world, the capitalist virtues will be demonised. This will be very important, in getting people to accept poverty and regimentation… The pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system was inherently corrupt and wasteful. Anarchy reined in the marketplace, as corporations blindly pursued profit, with no concern for human needs or for the Earth. How much more sensible are our production brigades, producing only what is needed, and using only what is sustainable. Capitalism encouraged greed and consumption; people struggled to compete with one another, to get ahead in the rat race. How much wiser we are now, to live within our ration quotas, and to accept our assigned duties, whatever they might be, in service to humanity. In this regime change, ushering in the post-capitalist era, were seeing a conscious orchestration of economics, politics, geopolitics, and mythology as one coordinated project. A whole new reality is being created, a whole new global culture. When it comes down to it, the ability to transform culture is the ultimate form of power. In only a single generation, a new culture becomes the way things are. And what, we might inquire, might stand in the way of any future manipulations of the cultural regime that the bankster royal family might contemplate? Ever since public education was introduced, the state and the family have competed to control childhood conditioning and it is in childhood that culture is transmitted to the next generation. In the micromanaged post-capitalist future, well most likely see the final solution of social control, which is for the state to monopolise child raising. This would eliminate from society the parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer is there a concept of relatives, just fellow members of the hive. The family must be demonised. Already, here in Ireland, there are daily TV spots dramatising the plight of children who are being abused or neglected by their parents… How scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had total control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with whatever neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to possess. How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house den of child abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognised for what it was? How much better off we are now, with children being raised scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught discipline and healthy values. RICHARD K MOORE, an expatriate from Silicon Valley, retired and moved to Ireland in 1994 to begin his real work trying to understand how the world works, and how we can make it better. Many years of researching and writing culminated in his widely acclaimed book Escaping the Matrix: How We the People Can Change the World (The Cyberjournal Project, 2005). His cyberjournal email list has been going since 1994 (cyberjournal.org). The books website is http://escapingthematrix.org, while his website http://quaylargo.com/rkm/ contains an extensive biography plus list of his articles. Richard can be contacted via email at rkm@quaylargo.com. The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 128 (September-October 2011). ===========================XXXXooooXXXX========================= ===========================XXXXooooXXXX========================= What Caroll Quigley predicted all coming true right before your eyes. See below Bob Chapman update ....(.which they plan to pass on January 30th in Mexico City) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooovvvvoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." -- Quote from Caroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, Chapter 20 see links below a short and long summary of Quigley's Tragedy and Hope link http://www.wanttokno...g_money_history (long summary Tragedy and Hope) link http://www.wanttokno...g_money_history (short summary Tragedy and Hope) --------- the whole book also can be purchased online -------------------- oXXX===============================================XXXo The Demise of State Sovereignty: Pressures on the Euro Amidst Rising Debt Levels by Bob Chapman link http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28857 While Greece is headed to the dustbin the European one-worlders are fighting for an ESM, European Exchange Mechanism, which they plan to pass on January 30th in Mexico City. This would put the ESM online in July with a treasure chest of $650 billion, which may be increased. Where all the funds will come from remains to be seen and wait until the voters in each country discover they have been sold out again, and that their sovereignty is gone and with it their freedom and liberty. The banks do not have any transparency on the issue, so the public is essentially in the dark. That is the way the elitists like to work, secretly behind the scenes because you do not have a need to know. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The term ESM explained link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Stability_Mechanism ============================oooooooo============= Edited January 25, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted January 25, 2012 Share Posted January 25, 2012 If the big bankers have so much control, how come they've screwed it up so bad? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted January 25, 2012 Author Share Posted January 25, 2012 (edited) If the big bankers have so much control, how come they've screwed it up so bad? ===========================o=================================== GEE BILL,Goldman manipulates/hurts Greece finance and then guy connected to Goldman Sachs becomes Greece head. (see Kos site blog at bottom) =============== Screw up in eye of beholder,bankers will get more power (post MEXICO ,see starting post),is the bottom line ordo ab chao (one of the oldest mottos of Craft Freemasonry) link http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/history/masonic_mottoes.html ================================oooo==================================== Orwell Today website has a good summary The puppetmasters create "dis order" so the people will demand "order". The price of "order" always entails a handing over of control and loss of freedom on the part of the citizenry. Out of "chaos" comes "order" - THEIR order - their new WORLD order. Orwell Today will list some historical and present-day examples of chaotic events that achieve the aims desired by the powers-that-be. This list is by no means complete but should give people the general idea. The trick of creating chaos and then seizing power under the pretense of putting things back in order is a tried and true method of deception and manipulation. It's the meaning behind the Latin motto: ORDO AB CHAO meaning ORDER OUT OF CHAOS. It's also referred to as the Hegelian Dialect after the philosopher Georg Hegel who wrote about its effectiveness. He described it as: THESIS -- ANTI-THESIS -- SYN-THESIS. Others have described it as: PROBLEM -- REACTION -- SOLUTION in that firstly you create the problem; then secondly you fan the flames to get a reaction; then thirdly (like Johnny-on-the-spot) you provide a solution. The solution is what you were wanting to achieve in the first place, but wouldn't have been able to achieve under normal circumstances. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------vvvvvvvv-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KOS site However, Greece has uncovered that the current speculation in the bond market is primarily being done by Goldman itself and 4 Hedge Funds. Big pocketed banks and funds like these can do significant damage to a small country, especially in collusion. The groups attacking Greece like a pinata have much more economic power than Greece. They are frontrunning trades in order to panic investors in Greek bonds, and thereby profit from it. I somehow doubt that they think they will cause a default and reap profits that way, but GS surely knows exactly what kind of exposure exists in Greece. After all, they sold the credit default contracts on the Greek currency swap deal to the National Bank of Greece. Now, those guys are some Greeks that you can blame. Unfortunately, calls for austerity measures in Greece will surely impact the ability of average Greeks to repay their loans to this huge bank, and that itself may create a run on the bank. If that bank defaults, we have problems everywhere, as the NBG has huge exposure in Eastern Europe, mainly together with Austria in new EU markets. But besides the NBG, who else dealt in insurance against Greek default? The Swiss are hugely exposed. The Germans too. One German Bank, Hypostate–owned by the German State currently–has $100 billion in exposure. Let’s think about this folks: how does any bank have $100 billion in exposure to a foreign country whose total debt is $300 billion? Do you think Hypostate lent Greece 1/3rd of its money? Or is it much likelier that Hypostate got involved with these exotic instruments sold to it by bankers far afield? In other words, the main thesis of this diary is that Greece is like the people who took subprime loans in the USA and who couldn’t meet their debt burden. Fine, in the USA, the subprime mess totaled about $200 to $400 billion. And we blame those people for taking those loans. But the people buying insurance contracts on those loans many times over were in debt in the range of many many trillions–perhaps hundreds of trillions–of dollars. That’s the real trouble. In fact, the original GS-Greece loan matters little when you put it up against the derivatives mess created by a potential Greek default, and none of that is really Greece’s fault or business (i.e. Greece has nothing to do with Goldman Sachs selling insurance on its debt). Beyond that, GS’s speculative attacks on Greece foster an environment for GS to not only make huge profits on trading in bonds, but it causes panic and drives Greece toward a default that will give GS a huge payday. It will spread like a contagion. Edited January 25, 2012 by Steven Gaal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted June 4, 2012 Author Share Posted June 4, 2012 EUROPE'S ECONOMIC CRISIS: Unraveling the "Welfare Safety Net". Europe Moves Closer to Banktatorship by Mike Whitney 6/3/12 ============================================================ Yields on 10-year Treasuries plunged to a record-low 1.56 percent on Thursday morning as panicky investors stormed out of European financial assets into German and U.S. government bonds. Deteriorating credit conditions, a flurry of ratings downgrades, and bank runs in Spain and Greece have triggered a flight-to-safety which has pushed the benchmark 10-year below its previous all-time low of 1.67 percent. Falling yields indicate that investors have lost confidence in the ability of EU policymakers to resolve the ongoing debt crisis, particularly as it relates to growing troubles in Greece and Spain. The present crisis, which is largely the result of excessive credit expansion and poor risk management by EU banks, is being used by the European Commission and the ECB to establish a euro-wide ”banking union” and to impose savage cuts to social programs, health care, and pensions. The response by EU policymakers is a social counterrevolution designed to transform the 17-member monetary union into a permanent ”austerity zone” ruled by corporate elites and big finance. Here’s more from Reuters: “The eurozone must boost growth and cut debt to regain investor confidence but it should also move towards a banking union, consider eurobonds and the direct recapitalisation of banks from its permanent bailout fund, the European Commission said on Wednesday as it laid out year-long recommendations.” “A closer integration among the euro area countries in supervisory structures and practices, in cross-border crisis management and burden sharing, towards a “banking union”, would be an important complement to the current structure” of Europe’s economic and monetary union, the Commission said. “In the same vein, to sever the link between banks and the sovereigns, direct recapitalisation by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) might be envisaged,” the document said.” (“EU calls for eurozone banking union, direct bank recapitalisations”, IFR, Reuters) The eurozone’s permanent bailout fund, the ESM, has not yet been ratified by all 17 members and already the European Commission wants to change its mandate to include direct bailouts to banks. The direct funding of underwater banks is a blatant power-grab, an attempt to establish the primacy of banks in the same way that the TARP was used to create Too Big To Fail in the US. TBTF means that the banks have merged with the state and that taxpayers provide blanket guarantees for their survival. Europe is moving fast towards this same model. German chancellor Angela Merkel is opposed to allowing the ESM to recapitalise Spanish banks, but she’s likely to capitulate if the crisis worsens. If she does give in, then the mismanaged banks will not be required to restructure their debt, wipe out bondholders and shareholders, remove bad assets, and replace management. All of the costs for such a bailout would fall on taxpayers, which is exactly what leaders of the European Commission and the ECB want. At the same time, the deepening crisis will be used to impose more fiscal reforms, which have already pushed unemployment to 20 year highs while submerging most of the south in a severe recession. Here’s more from Reuters: ”….ministers in private are clear about their wish to see European-wide bank deposit guarantee measures put in place quickly to avoid the risk of what could be a catastrophic event. There are signs the European Central Bank favors deposit guarantees. Problems are mounting on other fronts. With the cost of borrowing heading rapidly towards 7 percent and most foreign investors already shunning Spanish debt, the government will find it increasingly difficult to refinance 98 billion euros of debt and find another 52 billion euros to fund its deficit this year. Local banks are barely lending, or offering loans at prohibitively high rates, squeezing companies and increasing the risk of a chain of bankruptcies which could send the economy into a nosedive. The banking system’s total loans to the business sector were 44.6 billion euros at the end of March half of what they were at the end of the boom in 2007, and the contraction continues almost every month, according to Bank of Spain data. Consumers are postponing big purchases and cutting back spending. Spain’s soaring borrowing costs have become a national obsession since the crisis….The government acknowledges that the situation is critical.” (“Spain cries for help: is Berlin listening ?”, Reuters) The EU Commission and ECB are allowing the crisis to grow to achieve their goal, which is the creation of a fiscal union controlled by banks that has unlimited access to funding and the power to impose policy (“austerity”) through coercion. Here’s a clip from economist Mark Weisbrot who sees the political motive behind the debt crisis: ”I have argued for some time now that the recurring crisis in the eurozone is not driven by financial markets’ demands for austerity in a time of recession, as is commonly asserted. Rather, the primary cause of the crisis and its prolongation is the political agenda of the European authorities – led by the European Central Bank (ECB) and European commission. These authorities (which, if we included the IMF constitute, the “troika” that runs economic policy in the eurozone) want to force political changes, particularly in the weaker economies, that people in these countries would never vote for.” (“Europeans’ economic future has been hijacked by dangerous ideologues”, The Guardian) It’s all politics. Right wing politics. 100 percent of the reputable economists that have commented on the debt crisis have criticized the way it has been handled, particularly in regards to austerity measures. Do you really think that Merkel or Draghi think that they’re smarter than Stiglitz, Krugman, Reich, Eichengreen, Thoma, Weisbrot, Galbraith, Baker, Roubini, etc.? No. Merkel has no background in economics at all, and Draghi was formally an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. These people are not interested in fixing the EZ economy. They are engaged in a stealth campaign to radically restructure EU society, to unravel to welfare safety net, to roll back the progressive gains of the last century, and to reduce much of the continent to 3rd world poverty. A banking union will further solidify the power of big finance over the individual states, and that is the main objective. -----------------------------------------------------o------------------------------------------------------ Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com. ##################################### ##################################### The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." -- Quote from Caroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope, Chapter 20 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted June 4, 2012 Share Posted June 4, 2012 Get back to us when you can show recent events that have matched Quigley's predictions. See if you can sources more authoritative than obscure bloggers in support of your claims. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Gaal Posted June 4, 2012 Author Share Posted June 4, 2012 Guido Tabellini Professor of Economics at Bocconi University and CEPR Research Fellow New European institutions are the only solution If markets cannot do it, the European Commission must act as the intransigent guardian of public finances and budgetary discipline. •The first step is to drastically strengthen the EU control mechanisms over national decisions in matters of economic policy. However, control over public finances in not enough, as Ireland and Spain have taught us. •EU institutions should also have the right tools to prevent the accumulation of excessive debt in the national banking systems. All of this requires a substantial transfer of economic sovereignty from EU countries to EU authorities (either the Commission or regulatory agencies). The imminent stress tests for European banks will be the first occasion to assess the willingness to really move in this direction. However, it will be necessary to go beyond the stress tests, and strengthen the prerogatives of the newborn European Banking Authority. Clearly this transfer of sovereignty must involve all countries, France and Germany included, not only the so-called “European periphery”. http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6757 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9V3IQI02.htm ==================================== Europe mulls major step toward "fiscal union" Reuters - 14 hours ago That means for some time the European Central Bank will remain the ... control will now take place at a European level, and not at a national ... ################################# Is the U.S. Fading Down the Stretch Again?—Weekly Market Reviewhttps://www.oppenheimerfunds.com/.../article_05-07-12-110256.jspCached You +1'd this publicly. Undo ... and some loss of sovereignty for the highly indebted European countries. ... from the European Central Bank to the European banking system has severed the ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now