Showing posts with label Banksters Paradise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Banksters Paradise. Show all posts

Monday, February 27, 2023

The US' Economic Hegemony: Looting and Exploitation | MFA of PRC

After World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including "approval by 85 percent majority," and its domestic trade laws and regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar's status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting "seigniorage" from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America's political and economic strategy.
 

The United States exploits the world's wealth with the help of "seigniorage." It costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations.

The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the international financial market and substantial depreciation of other currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly what Nixon's secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that "the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem."
 
With its control over international economic and financial organizations, the United States imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in line with America's strategy. According to the Review of International Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 additional political conditions had been attached.

The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion. In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to control and use the latter in service of America's strategic goal of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese economy, leaving Japan to what was later called "three lost decades."

America's economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and "long-arm jurisdiction," the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world's population. "The United States of America" has turned itself into "the United States of Sanctions." And "long-arm jurisdiction" has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.

 

Monday, September 26, 2022

Wall Street's Revolutionary Socialism for Mexico | Anthony C. Sutton

Anthony C. Sutton (1974) - Another case of revolution supported by New York financial institutions concerned that of Mexico in 1915-16. Von Rintelen, a German espionage agent in the United States, was accused during his May 1917 trial in New York City of attempting to "embroil" the U.S. with Mexico and Japan in order to divert ammunition then flowing to the Allies in Europe. 
 
Iconic image of revolutionary Pancho Villa in Ojinaga, a publicity still taken
by Mutual Film Corporation photographer John Davidson Wheelan, January 1914
 
Payment for the ammunition that was shipped from the United States to the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, was made through Guaranty Trust Company. Von Rintelen's adviser, Sommerfeld, paid $380,000 via Guaranty Trust and Mississippi Valley Trust Company to the Western Cartridge Company of Alton, Illinois, for ammunition shipped to El Paso, for forwarding to Villa. This was in mid-1915. On January 10, 1916, Villa murdered seventeen American miners at Santa Isabel and on March 9, 1916, Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, and killed eighteen more Americans. 
 
Columbus, New Mexico, after being raided by Pancho Villa
 
Wall Street involvement in these Mexican border raids was the subject of a letter (October 6, 1916) from Lincoln Steffens, an American Communist, to Colonel House [Edward Mandell House], an aide' to Woodrow Wilson: My dear Colonel House: Just before I left New York last Monday, I was told convincingly that "Wall Street" had completed arrangements for one more raid of Mexican bandits into the United States: to be so timed and so atrocious that it would settle the election [...]
 
Venustiano Carranza, 44th President of Mexico,
First Chief of the Constitutionalist Army, 1920
 
Once in power in Mexico, the Carranza government purchased additional arms in the United States. The American Gun Company contracted to ship 5,000 Mausers and a shipment license was issued by the War Trade Board for 15,000 guns and 15,000,000 rounds of ammunition. The American ambassador to Mexico, Fletcher, "flatly refused to recommend or sanction the shipment of any munitions, rifles, etc., to Carranza." However, intervention by Secretary of State Robert Lansing reduced the barrier to one of a temporary delay, and "in a short while [the American Gun Company] would be permitted to make the shipment and deliver."

The raids upon the U.S. by the Villa and the Carranza forces were reported in the New York Times as the "Texas Revolution" (a kind of dry run for the Bolshevik Revolution) and were undertaken jointly by Germans and Bolsheviks. The testimony of John A. Walls, district attorney of Brownsville, Texas, before the 1919 Fall Committee yielded documentary evidence of the link between Bolshevik interests in the United States, German activity, and the Carranza forces in Mexico.

Consequently, the Carranza government, the first in the world with a Soviet-type constitution (which was written by Trotskyites), was a government with support on Wall Street. The Carranza revolution probably could not have succeeded without American munitions and Carranza would not have remained in power as long as he did without American help.
 
[...] We also identified documentary evidence concerning a Wall Street syndicate's financing of the 1912 Sun Yat-sen revolution in China, a revolution that is today hailed by the Chinese Communists as the precursor of Mao's revolution in China. Charles B. Hill, New York attorney negotiating with Sun Yat-sen in behalf of this syndicate, was a director of three Westinghouse subsidiaries, and we have found that Charles R. Crane of Westinghouse in Russia was involved in the Russian Revolution.

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Lenin. Money. Revolution. | Serhii Hrabovsky

The themes linked to Lenin, money, and revolution present an inexhaustible source of inquiry for historians, psychologists, and satirists. Just imagine: we have a man who, after the complete victory of communism, urged that toilet bowls in public restrooms be made of solid gold; a man who never had to earn a living through hard work; a man who was comfortably off even in prison and exile, and barely knew what money was, yet at the same time made a considerable contribution to the theory of commodity-money relations.

How exactly did he manage to do that? Not through brochures and articles, of course, but through his revolutionary activities. It was Lenin who, between 1919 and 1921, introduced non-monetary “natural” barter between towns and the countryside. This led to the total collapse of the economy, a complete standstill in agriculture, mass famines, and, consequently, mass uprisings against the regime of the Russian Communist Party. Only then, just before his death, did Lenin perceive the true meaning of money and introduce the NEP (New Economic Policy), a kind of “manageable capitalism” under the supervision of the Communist Party.
 
 
However, our purpose here is not to explore these fascinating subjects, but to investigate where Vladimir Lenin got the enormous sums necessary to fund party activities before the revolution. Over recent decades, some very interesting materials have been published, but much remains obscure. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, the underground newspaper 'Iskra' was funded by a mysterious benefactor (individual or collective), disguised in party documents as the “Californian gold mines.” Some researchers believe this was an instance of radical Russian revolutionaries being sponsored by American Jewish bankers, mostly Russian expatriates and their descendants, who hated Tsarism for its official anti-Semitic policies.

During the revolution of 1905-07, the Bolsheviks were funded by American oil corporations aiming to push their rivals out of the world markets (specifically, Nobel’s oil cartel in Baku). At that time, American banker Jacob Schiff also provided money to the Bolsheviks, as he himself confessed. Other donors included Yermasov, a manufacturer from Syzran, and Morozov, a merchant and industrialist near Moscow. Later, the Bolshevik party gained another financial supporter in Schmidt, the owner of a furniture factory in Moscow. It is curious that both Savva Morozov and Nikolai Schmidt eventually committed suicide, allowing the Bolsheviks to inherit a considerable portion of their fortunes. Of course, large sums also came from the so-called “ex’es” (a truncated form of “expropriation”), or, in simpler terms, bank robberies, post office heists, and railway ticket-office hold-ups. These actions were masterminded by two characters with criminal monickers: Kamo and Koba, i.e., Ter-Petrosian and Dzhugashvili.

Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of rubles invested in revolutionary activities could at best only shake the Russian Empire. Despite its shortcomings, the empire’s institutions were relatively solid—at least in peacetime. With the outbreak of World War I, however, new financial and political opportunities opened up for the Bolsheviks, and they didn’t fail to take advantage of them. On January 15, 1915, the German ambassador in Istanbul sent a report to Berlin regarding his meeting with Russian subject Aleksander Gelfand (aka Parvus), an active participant in the 1905-07 revolution and owner of a large trade company. Parvus revealed his plan for the Russian revolution and was immediately invited to Berlin, where he met with influential members of the German cabinet and advisors to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. Parvus suggested that the Germans provide him with a large sum of money to help promote, first, the national movements in Finland and Ukraine, and second, to support the Bolsheviks, who advocated for the defeat of the Russian Empire in the unjust war in order to overthrow the “regime of landlords and capitalists.” The Germans accepted his proposal and, by Kaiser Wilhelm’s personal order, gave him two million German marks as the first contribution to “the cause of the Russian revolution.” Later, other installments followed, some of them for even larger sums. According to a receipt from Parvus, on January 29, 1915, he received 15 million Russian rubles for the development of the revolutionary movement in Russia. The money was allotted with typical German efficiency.

In Finland and Ukraine, Parvus’ (and the German general staff’s) agents turned out to be of secondary importance. Their influence on the independence movements in these countries was insignificant compared to the broader processes of nation-building in the Russian Empire. However, in regard to Lenin, Parvus hit the bull’s-eye. Parvus claimed that he told Lenin that, at that moment, revolution was only possible in Russia and only as a result of Germany winning the war. In response, Lenin sent his proxy Fuerstenberg (aka Ganetsky) for close cooperation with Parvus, which lasted until 1918. Another installment from Germany, although not as large, came to the Bolsheviks via Swiss parliamentarian Karl Moor—amounting to only $35,000. More investments came from the Nia Bank in Stockholm, which, on the order of the German Imperial Bank, opened personal accounts for Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Bolshevik leaders. Order No. 7433 of March 2, 1917, allocated funds for the “services” of Lenin, Zinoviev, Kollontai, and others in spreading public peace propaganda in Russia after the Tsarist regime had just been overthrown.

The enormous sums were wisely administered. The Bolsheviks published their own newspapers, which were distributed free of charge in every town and village. A network of professional propagandists covered the entire territory of Russia, and “Red Guard” units were formed openly. Of course, this was not done with German money alone. Although the “poor” political émigré Trotsky had $10,000 confiscated by Canadian customs in Halifax in 1917 while en route from America to Russia, it is clear that he still managed to smuggle vast sums from banker Jacob Schiff to his supporters.

Even greater funds were raised during the “expropriation of the expropriators” (in simpler terms, robbing the wealthy), initiated in the spring of 1917. Has it ever occurred to anyone to question the Bolsheviks' occupation of the palace of ballerina Kshesinskaya or the Smolny Institute?

The Russian democratic revolution broke out unexpectedly in early spring 1917 for all its political subjects, both inside and outside the empire. It was a spontaneous, grass-roots movement both in Petrograd and on the empire's outskirts. Lenin, who was in exile in Switzerland, had publicly doubted only a month earlier whether the politicians of his generation (those in their 40s and 50s) would live to see a revolution in Russia. However, it was the radical Russian politicians who were the quickest to change their ways and seize the opportunity, aided by German assistance.

All in all, the Russian revolution was not accidental. It is even strange that it did not break out a year earlier. The social, political, and national problems in the Romanov empire had reached their breaking point. From a formal economic perspective, industry was developing dynamically, and the stockpile of weapons and ammunition had increased considerably. Yet, the utter inefficiency of central power and the corruption of the elite—inevitable in any autocracy—took their toll. The deliberate corruption of the army, the undermining of the rear, the sabotage of any attempts to constructively address urgent problems, and the incurable chauvinistic centralism typical of virtually all Great Russian political forces exacerbated the crisis. During the 1917 campaign, Entente troops were supposed to launch a simultaneous general offensive on all European fronts, but the Russian army was unprepared. Consequently, in April, the Anglo-French forces at Rheims failed, with casualties exceeding 100,000 dead and wounded. In July, Russian troops attempted an offensive towards Lviv, but eventually had to retreat from Galicia and Bukovina, and nearly gave up Riga in the north without resistance. Finally, the Battle of Caporetto in October resulted in the disastrous defeat of the Italian army, with 130,000 Italians dead and another 300,000 taken prisoner. Only the English and French divisions, urgently shipped from France, stabilized the front and prevented Italy from withdrawing from the war. After the November uprising in Petrograd, when the Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries came to power, an armistice was declared on the Eastern front—first de facto and then de jure, with Russia, Ukraine, and Romania.

These changes on the Eastern front were largely made possible by funds allotted by Germany to demoralize the Russian army from the rear. The military operations on the Eastern front, prepared and executed with large-scale success, were considerably facilitated by undermining activities within Russia, conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "Our chief goal in this activity was to further strengthen the nationalist and separatist sentiments, and support the revolutionary elements. We are continuing this activity even at present and completing an agreement with the political division of the General Staff in Berlin" (Captain von Huelsen).

"Our joint efforts have yielded considerable results. Without our constant support, the Bolshevist movement could never have reached the scale and influence it has now. Everything testifies to the further growth of this movement." These were the words of German Secretary of State Richard von Kuehlmann, written on September 29, 1917. A month and a half before the Bolshevik revolt in Petrograd, von Kuehlmann knew what he was talking about. He was an active participant in all those events; soon after, he would conduct peace negotiations with Bolshevik Russia and the Ukrainian People's Republic in Brest in early 1918. He controlled huge financial currents, amounting to tens of thousands of German marks, and had contacts with key figures in this historic drama. “I have the honor of asking Your Excellence to allot a sum of 15 million marks at the disposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for political propaganda in Russia, referring to paragraph 6, section II of the extraordinary budget. Depending on the development of events, I would like to stipulate in advance the possibility of addressing Your Excellence again for additional funds,” von Kuehlmann wrote on November 9, 1917.

No sooner had news of the Petrograd revolt (soon to be labeled the Great October Revolution) arrived than Kaiser Germany allocated new funds for propaganda in Russia. This money went primarily to support the Bolsheviks, who first demoralized the army and then withdrew the Russian Republic from the war, freeing millions of German soldiers for operations in the West.

Despite all this, the Bolsheviks managed to maintain the image of unselfish revolutionaries and romantic Marxists until today. Even now, not only “official” adepts of the Marxist-Leninist creed but also some non-party left intellectuals remain convinced that Lenin and his followers were sincere internationalists and noble champions of the popular cause.

In 1958, Oxford University published secret documents from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (including von Kuehlmann’s telegrams) which proved the massive financial and organizational assistance provided by the German authorities to the Bolsheviks. Germany’s goals were clear: the radical revolutionaries were to undermine the military potential of one of the principal rivals of the Central Powers, i.e., the Russian Empire. Thousands of books have been published providing further convincing evidence. Yet, even today, many communist historians and some liberal researchers deny these self-evident historical facts. As German Secretary of State von Kuehlmann noted on December 3, 1917, “Only when the Bolsheviks began to receive constant investments from us via various channels and under various labels were they able to firmly establish their major printed organ, 'Pravda', develop active propaganda, and significantly enlarge their party base, which was rather narrow at the beginning.” Party membership grew a hundredfold within just a year after the overthrow of Tsarism.

Colonel Walter Nicolai, head of German military intelligence during World War I, described Lenin in his memoirs as follows: “Like anyone else at the time, I knew nothing about Bolshevism; as for Lenin, I only knew that he was living in Switzerland as a political émigré. Under the cryptonym ‘Ulianov,’ he provided my service with valuable information on the situation in Tsarist Russia against which he was fighting.”

In other words, without constant German assistance, the Bolsheviks would hardly have become one of the leading Russian parties in 1917. This would have meant a completely different development of events, probably much more anarchical, which would hardly have led to the establishment of a dictatorship, let alone a totalitarian regime. The most likely scenario would have been a different version of the disintegration of the Russian Empire, as World War I was primarily about the destruction of empires. The independence of Finland and Poland was effectively a fait accompli around 1916.

The Russian Empire, or even the Russian Republic, would likely have followed the same process of collapse triggered by World War I. Consider that Britain was forced to grant independence to Ireland, India was pushing for independence right after the war, and many other colonial territories followed suit. The revolution itself was, to some extent, marked by national-liberation struggles, as it was the Life Guards Volhynia Regiment that first rebelled against autocracy in early 1917. At that time, the Bolsheviks were a tiny party, barely known to anyone (with only about four thousand members, mostly in exile and emigration). They had no significant role in overthrowing Tsarism.

Assistance continued after Lenin’s government came to power. "You are free to operate large sums, as we are extremely interested in the stability of the Bolsheviks. You have Riesler’s funds at your disposal. If necessary, wire us how much more you need." (Berlin, May 18, 1918). Von Kuehlmann addressed the German embassy in Moscow, confirming the continuing German support for the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks held fast, and by the fall of 1918, they were channeling huge sums from the Russian imperial treasury into revolutionary propaganda in Germany, hoping to incite world revolution.

In Germany, a revolution did break out in early November 1918. Money, weapons, and qualified professional revolutionaries shipped from Moscow played their role. However, local communists failed to lead this revolution. Subjective and (more importantly) objective factors worked against them. A totalitarian regime was only established in Germany 15 years later, but that is a different story. Meanwhile, in 1921, the democratic Weimar Republic's renowned social democrat Eduard Bernstein published an article in his party's central organ 'Vorwärts' titled “A Shady Story,” in which he revealed that, as early as December 1917, he had received confirmation from “a certain competent person” that Germany had given money to Lenin. According to Bernstein, the Bolsheviks alone were paid more than 50 million German marks in gold. This sum was later officially mentioned in a session of the Reichstag's foreign policy committee. When the communist press accused Bernstein of libel, he invited them to sue him, which led to an immediate cessation of the campaign. Since Germany was in desperate need of friendly relations with Soviet Russia, the discussion of this topic in the press was abruptly shut down.

Aleksander Kerensky, one of the Bolsheviks’ main political opponents, concluded from his own investigation that the total sums received by the Bolsheviks before and after coming to power amounted to 80 million German marks in gold. In fact, Lenin never even tried to conceal this from his party colleagues. At a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (a Bolshevik quasi-parliament) in November 1918, Lenin stated: “I am often accused of having carried out our revolution with German money; I do not deny it, but with Russian money, I am going to carry out the same revolution in Germany.” And he tried to do so, throwing away tens of millions of rubles. However, he failed: the German social democrats, unlike their Russian counterparts, quickly recognized the situation and arranged for the timely assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. This was followed by the disarmament of the “Red Guards” and the physical elimination of their leaders.

They had no other option. Perhaps, if Kerensky had found the courage to order the shooting of Smolny along with all its "red" inhabitants, even the Kaiser’s millions wouldn’t have helped them. We might round off here, were it not for a report from 'The New York Times' in April 1921, stating that in 1920 alone, 75 million Swiss francs were sent to Lenin’s account in a Swiss bank. According to the newspaper, Trotsky had $11 million and 90 million francs in his accounts; Zinoviev had 80 million francs; the “knight of the revolution,” Dzerzhinsky, had 80 million; and Ganetsky-Fuerstenberg had 60 million francs and 10 million dollars. Lenin, in his secret note to Cheka leaders Unschlicht and Bokiy on April 24, 1921, demanded they find the source of this information leak. However, it was never discovered.

Was this money also intended for the world revolution? Or was it some form of kickback from politicians and financiers in countries where Lenin and Trotsky’s “red horses” were not ordered to go? We can only speculate. Even now, a significant portion of Lenin’s papers remains top secret.

Quoted from: 
See also:

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

The Conspiracy of the Counterfeiters | Nikolai Starikov

Everything was going smoothly until 1965. Almost right after having been reelected to the post of President of France, Charles de Gaulle announced that his country would start to use real gold for international payments. According to the Bretton Woods Agreement he demanded that the USA exchange 1.5 billion dollars, kept by France, for real gold at a price of 35 dollars per ounce. It was the worst nightmare of a banker, when all creditors of his bank came to demand their ‘deposits’, as all FRS dollars were just obliging to pay the holders a certain amount of the precious metal. However, the required amount of gold had never existed, and consequently it was especially important to prevent the precedent. 
 
 Georges Pompidou, successor of President Charles de Gaulle, in 1969.
Guy de Rothschild's stooge in the Elysée.

The USA started to bias obstinate de Gaulle, who had already caused them trouble during his first presidential term, and even before that, when he was leading the Opposition in 1944-1945. Then during his second presidential term de Gaulle catastrophically endangered the mere fact of the ‘printing machine’s’ existence. Furthermore, the French President was determined, and when pressed, he withdrew from NATO and drove its formations out of his country. The USA had to exchange paper money for gold. In turn Germany, Canada and Japan made similar demands, though not in public like France, but secretly. Finally, the gap between the global amount of dollars and gold reserves in the USA was reduced even further. From 1960 until 1970 the dollar reserves kept in other countries tripled (and in 1970 came to 47 billion dollars, whereas the gold reserves of the USA came to 11.1 billion dollars at that time). It was necessary to urgently find a way out of this situation, but firstly the one who had entrenched the ‘printing machine’ must be punished. In 1967 de Gaulle returned the paper cash to the USA, and in May 1968 disturbances in France began. Demonstrations, the confrontation with the police, walkouts […] After almost a year of pressure Charles de Gaulle had to resign on 28 April, 1969. On 9 November, 1970 the ‘gravedigger’ of the dollar died due to heart failure.

The system established by the bankers was close to collapse. The gold default of the dollar concurred with the military defeat of the Americans in Vietnam. [...] Being aware that the capability of the USA to exchange dollars for gold at a fixed rate would be increasingly distrusted, they decided to get over this precipice in several steps. On 17 March, 1968 the Americans cancelled the dollar conversion into gold at a fixed rate for private traders. Central banks still could exchange dollars for gold at an official rate of 35 dollars per 1 troy ounce. At this, all ‘independent’ central banks in all countries were privately commanded to prevent such conversion by any means. On 15 August, 1971 the USA President Nixon, during his speech on the national (!) TV, incidentally announced the temporary taboo on the dollar conversion into gold at an official rate in central banks.

 Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron, the latest Rothschild stooge in the Elysée.
La république en marche. Allons enfants de la patrie.

That was a scandal indeed. However, it could become even greater, when it appeared that in the period up to the end of July 1971 the gold reserves of the USA descended to a threshold of less than 10 billion dollars. The affair proceeding any further could lead to complete catastrophe. On 17 December, 1971 the USA devalued the dollar by 7.89% in relation to gold. The official price of gold increased from 35 to 38 dollars per one troy ounce, but, curiously enough, the exchange of dollars for gold did not recommence. On 13 February, 1973 the dollar descended even lower in relation to gold, the rate became 42.2 dollars per 1 troy ounce. However, gold could not be acquired at this price, either. The American currency was not trusted anymore, and nobody hurried to sell their gold. The USA and Great Britain therefore had to share the benefits from the reserve currency emission with other countries.
 
The only way out of the dead end was to print more paper money, which the global financial community would agree to treat like absolute values. It must be assumed though that this money was not financially assured by anything. On 16 March, 1973 during the International Conference in Paris, a compromise was found. The gold content of the dollar was officially cancelled. It goes without saying that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) confirmed and approved this decision, which would cancel all the principles of the financial system of that time and the system of the IMF itself. The epoch of floating exchange rates began in the world.

Quoted from:
 
The Gold Price (U.S.Dollars / Troy Ounce) 1792 to date
The Gold Price (U.S.Dollars / Troy Ounce) 1257 to date

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Trading with Nothing for Something | Islamic Perspectives on Fiat Money

Money must have intrinsic value ... Fiat currency and
banking are acts of crime ...
(HERE)
 

"[...] Money must have intrinsic value due to it being the measure and store of the value of things. A form of 'money' that is open to total artificial manipulation and subjective valuation will not be able to perform these two functions of money.

[...] Fiat currency and banking are acts of crime, in fact, among the worst crimes in human history. Banking institutions must be held accountable for the continuous campaigns of wars and colonialism – today, corporate colonialism – which are undeniably their biggest and lucrative money-making opportunities. They have left behind clear fingerprints and traces for the world to see. They are also directly responsible for the impoverishment of countries shackled by unpayable debts owed to internationally recognized bloodsucking money lenders and financiers.  

[...] The monetary system based on fiat currency ensures that the amount of debts created will always be far more than the actual money supply, which means that many will never be able to repay the original sum, what more the interest. Many will be forced to default, declare bankruptcy and watch as their possessions are confiscated before their eyes. This does not happen to individuals only, but also to countries and nations which are forced to sell their resources for a measly price due to their inability to repay their international debts.

Muhammad Mahathir - Malaysian Prime Minister (2008):
» Quantitative Easing is a privilege for the rich nations only. When Greece lost money, it could not print currency notes or issue cheques to pay debts.Greece needs to borrow money from European countries to repay loans. Again no currency notes would be involved. The amount lent would be credited to the Central Bank of Greece which then would issue cheques to the commercial banks... Rightly both the United States and United Kingdom should be bankrupt. To recover they should be selling all their banks, industries and other assets at fire-sale prices. That was what the Asian countries were forced to do after the currency traders forced many of them almost into bankruptcy. But the bankrupt powerful countries of the West don’t have to do that. They carry out Quantitative Easing, print money and refinance their banks and bankrupt industries. And they talk about transparency in business practice. «
 
[...] One-third of the world's population now lives in a state of poverty. This is not due to the lack of natural resources or intellectuals, but due to the mischief of the robbers, i.e., the international bankers who went around the world selling their loans while hiding behind the pretext of offering technological progress and modernity to the 'backward' countries.

[...] The criminal act of banking (lending other people’s money on interest without their consent and earning through that without any risk of loss or without any labor involved) cannot be separated from fiat currency. Without fiat currency, banks today will not be able to function as how they are functioning. From the very beginning, it was the introduction of promissory notes (which have now devolved to fiat currency) that allowed the banks to engage in this misuse of the money that was entrusted to their safe-keeping by the unsuspecting masses. Both the practice of banking and the use of fiat currency are based strongly on Riba [usury].

[...] Fiat currency today cannot be a measure of value or a store of value as it constantly loses its illusory 'value' due to it not having natural or intrinsic value. In reality, it is nothing presented as something. This is why fiat money and chronic inflation are not separable; both are the results of each other. Nothingness will only return to nothingness and history is a witness to this.

Imran N. Hosein  (2013) - The International Monetary System:
» When the poor are permanently poor, and the rich permanently rich, that is oppression! All around the world today that oppression exists, and is constantly increasing - the poor grow poorer and the rich richer. Riba [usury] is the cause! A predatory global elite, centered in the West, but also around the world, is constantly sucking the wealth of mankind and impoverishing the masses through riba. Their ultimate objective is to utterly enslave all of mankind in a new sophisticated slavery.Political, legislative, judicial and legal systems, the media etc.,  are all created by the oppressor, and all function to preserve the system of economic oppression. Television is used to transport the masses to fantasy-land so that they remain unaware while riba is used to enslave them. «
 
[...] When inflation occurs, the purchasing power of the money we hold (fiat currency) falls, that is to say, the money that we use today buys lesser and lesser constantly. As time passes, the purchasing power of money only falls, hence people can only buy lesser with the money they have.

 [...] This fall in its purchasing power does not happen based on real situations where the money supply circulating in the nation naturally exceeds the goods and services available in the same nation. The resultant increase in the price of goods and services is due to the artificial creation of money out of nothing. This artificial creation of money out of thin air - one of it - is due to what bankers call Fractional Reserve Banking. This has never ceased to happen since banking took control of the money supply of a country and as a result, the price of goods and services are deliberately forced to be raised and as an inevitable result, the value of the money in our possession (purchasing power) keeps falling. This is intended rip off [Al-Bakh].

Riba-nomics
 
[...] Therefore, trading with fiat as a means of exchange, in reality, is trading with nothing for something. There is no equality; it is zulm [oppression], a clear act of injustice especially from the part of the issuer of the money.

[...] We do not need to bring down, attack or destroy the banking industry. The usurers will themselves bring the banks down since usury is baatil [falsehood], and baatil is bound to perish. What we have to do is to bring the haq [truth] and haq does not need the majority to give it any extra strength.

[...] Many shops and traders around the world have started to accept the Dinar [gold] and Dirham [silver] as payment. Some have also started using it as their mahar and some have went a step further by signing business contracts with the Dinar and Dirham being the capital as well as the profit.

Tarek El Diwany, 2014: » An economically educated person should ask why a man would go to prison for creating money at home, while the bankers do it for a living. Still the question goes unanswered. Why does the crime of counterfeiting become a respectable profession through the act of incorporation as a limited company? Can you give me one example in Shari’ah where something that is haram [forbidden] becomes halal [legal] by the granting of a commercial license?
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