Time ▾ Price ▴ Research: State Banking

Showing posts with label State Banking. Show all posts

Sunday, November 10, 2024

The Illusion of Control: The Fed's Quiet Coup d'État | Gerry Nolan

As Mike Lee states, the Executive Branch was meant to be under the President’s executive branch and direction. And yet, the Fed remains the ultimate untouchable, a fortress of financial power immune to democratic oversight or any real accountability. Let’s face it: The Fed is not about serving the people; it’s the nerve center of a Ponzi scheme so vast that it makes Wall Street look like pocket change.

» The Federal Reserve isn’t a public service, it’s the vault where the
sovereignty of the American people was locked away a century ago. «

For over a century, the Fed has held the American economy in a chokehold, dictating monetary policy in ways that serve the banking elites and global financiers, while keeping citizens in perpetual debt-enslavement. It’s not a “politically independent institution” as they like to spin it - it’s a profit machine, designed to siphon wealth upwards and keep the masses at bay with breadcrumbs of credit and endless inflation.

» The Fed is a profit machine, designed to siphon wealth upwards and keep

the masses at bay with breadcrumbs of credit and endless inflation. «

The Fed controls interest rates, injects trillions into the economy at will, and manipulates the currency supply, all without a single vote from the American people. True sovereignty would mean a government with control over its own currency, accountable to its citizens, not be held to private bankers. But ending the Fed? That would mean dismantling the very backbone of U.S. financial imperialism, a move that would bring about sovereign economic control, yet will never happen under the current system of oligarchic “democracy.”

The real question isn’t whether Trump (or any president) could rein in the Fed; it’s whether the American people will ever realize that the Federal Reserve isn’t a public service, it’s the vault where their own sovereignty was locked away a century ago.

The Fed's Ponzi machine may be untouchable, but the illusion of freedom is slipping. How long until the curtain falls?

Quoted from:

Gerry Nolan (November 9, 2024) - The Illusion of Control: The Fed's Quiet Coup d'État.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

BRICS Will Not Kill the Dollar—War Will | Martin Armstrong

The BRICS currency was created for geopolitical reasons when the neocons transformed the SWIFT system into an economic weapon and even threatened China with the same fate if they supported Russia. Once this occurred, the neocons turned the entire world’s monetary system into a weapon of war. This is why we have BRICS; it had nothing to do with killing the dollar or backing their currency with gold.

» All currency is fiat, even when it is gold. Just because a currency is

backed by gold does not eliminate inflation or deflation. «

Many hoped for an official announcement regarding a gold-backed currency, which failed to materialize. A gold-backed currency would be massively deflationary. The money supply could not expand with the population or in times of need without new discoveries. Just because a currency is backed by gold does not eliminate inflation or deflation. The gold discoveries of the 19th century in California, Alaska, and Australia caused significant economic upheaval, followed by wars. The fact that gold was the currency did not prevent inflation.

Spain defaulted seven times. The gold and silver they brought back from the New World led to massive inflation in Europe. Those who preach that a gold standard is the solution lack an understanding of history. They blame “fiat currency,” as if eliminating it will solve all problems. There were booms and busts throughout ancient times long before paper money existed. All currency is fiat, even when it is gold. I have shown that Southern India routinely imitated Roman gold coins because they held a premium over gold—this is fiat. Northern India and the Kushan Empire issued their own coinage primarily because they traded more with China. Southern India used imitation Roman gold coins for about 250 years, confirming that the Roman coinage was worth more than its metal content.

» The purchasing power of gold fluctuated at all times. The value of a currency is determined

by the productive capacity of its people, not by its gold reserves. «

Similar claims were made about the Euro, which also did not work out well. Why? The value of a currency is determined by the productive capacity of its people, not by its gold reserves. Japan and Germany lost the war yet rose to the top of the economic hierarchy because their populations were productive. The United States has the largest consumer-based economy, which means that everyone needs to sell their products here, requiring transactions in dollars. The US is also strong militarily, which further supports the currency's foundation.

It is time to abandon these outdated economic theories, remnants from the 18th and 19th centuries. The economy has evolved since then. The neocons are destroying the dollar and undermining the future of the United States. When we lose another one of their endless wars, financial capital will shift from New York to Beijing. Just as war diminished Britain, so will it diminish the dollar and the United States.

Quoted from:
Martin Armstrong (October 29, 2024) - BRICS Will Not Kill the Dollar—War Will.

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Financial Oligarchies vs. State Power | Michael Hudson

My articles about the origins of credit, money, and interest share a common frame of reference. From the inception of economic practices and enterprise in the ancient Near East, through classical antiquity and medieval Europe to today, wealthy classes have sought to transform themselves into an oligarchy that controls government and religion to protect, legitimize, and increase their wealth, especially their rent-extraction privileges as creditors, monopolists, or landlords.

Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 – 53 BC):

general, statesman, the richest man in Rome, and a textbook oligarch.

We see the same struggle through the ages, with financial elites opposing any government power capable of restricting their self-serving rent-seeking and creditor power at society’s expense. We see it today in the pro-creditor economic policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the ‘libertarian’ ideology, all of which seek to centralize power to allocate resources and plan economies within the financial sector instead of democratic governments. Today’s neoliberal idea is to eliminate government authority (except where it is controlled by rentier sectors) and let banks in the privatized financial sector control money and credit, which is the most important public utility.

That should be the context in which one examines every epoch’s economic view of the world, above all its perspective concerning how ‘free’ a market should be and just whose freedom is being endorsed. This has been the great question throughout the history of civilization—from the Bronze Age Near East, when rulers regularly proclaimed Clean Slates debt cancellations to restore economic order and check incipient oligarchies, through the five centuries of civil war in the Roman Republic and Jesus’s fight against the emerging Jewish oligarchy, to today’s civilizational struggle between the NATO West, dominated by U.S.-oriented rentier oligarchies, and the global majority now centered on the BRICS.

Rare Anomaly: Populist Pariah Oligarchs Proclaiming to Serve the Common Good — September 2, 2024.

China’s government has financed its remarkable industrial takeoff without having to borrow from private creditors. There was little money to borrow from its domestic population, so the Bank of China printed its own money. Unlike typical financial practice, it did not demand personal wealth be pledged as collateral because stock and bond holdings or substantial real estate did not yet exist. The government did not need to turn to bondholders to increase its public spending—and in any case, there were no domestic bondholders to borrow from in the wake of its Revolution. China did what any sovereign national government can do—what Abraham Lincoln did in the Civil War. It simply printed the money.

Quoted from:
Michael Hudson (September 1, 2024) - Reshaping Christianity and the Modern State: A Journey from Usury to Fiscal Power.

Friday, August 23, 2024

The Central Bank of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi | Stephen M. Goodson

From 1551 to 1911 Libya was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, by Italy from 1911 to 1943 and from 1943 to 1951 was under the military suzerainty of Britain and France. The Central Bank of Libya was founded in 1956 and was run as a typical central bank until the bloodless coup d’etat of 1 September 1969.

Mu’ammar Qathafi - A strict disciple of the Holy Q’uran, who abolished all forms of usury
and used the Central Bank of Libya for the sole benefit of the Libyan people.

Oil of an exceptionally high quality was discovered in 1959. However, King Idris al Mahdi as-Sanusi failed to capitalise on this bonanza or use it for the benefit of his people, and the bulk of the oil profits were siphoned into the coffers of the oil companies. On assuming power in 1969 Mu’ammar Muhammad al-Qathafi took control of most of the economic activities in the country, including the central bank, which for all practical purposes was run as a state bank. It operated as a banker of the local bankers and foreign bankers were not permitted to operate. Financing of government infrastructure did not atract riba (interest) and Libya had no national debt and no foreign debt. Its foreign exchange reserves exceeded $54 billion, which may be compared to reserves of developed countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, which in 2010 were $50 billion and $40 billion respectively. GDP growth during the period 2000-10 was 4.32% per annum and the official figure for inflation was -0.27%.

Mass manifestation in support of Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli, July 1, 2011.

Colonel Qathafi was described by the mainstream media as being a “terrible dictator and a blood-sucking monster”, but the reality was that with the exception of the city of Benghazi and its environs, he had the support of 90% of the population. The following benefits provided by Qathafi explain why he was so popular:

■   Free education. Free electricity. Free health care. Free housing (There were no mortgages).
■ Students were paid the average salary for which subject they were studying.
■ Students studying overseas were provided with accommodation, an automobile and €2,500 per annum.
■   Newly-wed couples received a gift of 60,000 dinar ($50,000) from government.
■ Automobiles were sold at factory cost free of interest.
■ Private loans were provided free of interest.
■   Bread cost 15 US cents per loaf. Gasoline cost 12 US cents per litre.
■ Portion of profits from sale of oil was paid directly into bank accounts of citizens.
■ Farmers received free land, seeds and animals.
■ Full employment with those temporarily unemployed paid a full salary as if employed.

Qathafi’s Jamahariya “state of the masses” ensured that the wealth of this country of 5.79 million inhabitants was fairly distributed to all of its people. Beggars and homeless vagrants did not exist, while life expectancy at 75 years was the highest in Africa and 10% above the world average. The literacy rate was 82%. Regarding human rights Libya stood at 61 in the International Incarceration Index. The lower the rating, the lower the standing. The no.1 spot is currently occupied by the United States. Another major achievement, which Qathafi initiated was the conversion of the Nubian Sandstone Fossil Aquifer System into the Great Man-Made River, which supplies 6,500,000m³ of fresh water daily to the cities of Tripoli, Sirte and Benghazi. The extracted water is ten times cheaper than desalinated water. The total cost of the project, estimated at $25 billion was financed without a single foreign loan.

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi's foreword to

A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind.

Although the central banks of Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, North Sudan and Syria do not fall under the direct control of the Rothschild banking syndicate, Libya had the only central bank run on genuine state banking lines, which exhibited the classic symptoms of full employment, zero inflation and a modern day workers’ paradise. The question arises as to why NATO intervened on the pretext of fabricated human rights abuses, the so called responsibility to protect. Since 1971 when the United States abandoned the gold exchange standard for the petrodollar with the connivance of Saudi Arabia, any attempt to displace the United States dollar as the premier reserve currency has been blocked and opposed with violence.

Ezra Pound - 1943.

In November 2000 Saddam Hussein of Iraq decreed that all oil payments would in future be made in euros, as he did not wish to deal “in the currency of the enemy”. As has already been proven, the possession of weapons of mass destruction pretext was a deliberately concocted hoax and it was this currency decision, which cost Saddam Hussein his life and the destruction of his country.

True, whether the quote is authentic or not.

In similar circumstances Qathafi announced in 2010 the creation of the gold dinar as a replacement for the settlement of all foreign transactions in a proposed region of over 200 million people. Libya at that time possessed 144 tons of gold. What was intended was not a return to the gold standard per se, but a new unit of account with oil exports and other resources being paid for in gold dinars. Qathafi crossed a red line and paid the ultimate price [he was assassinated by Western invasion forces in Sirte on October 20, 2011].

The Truth About Libya - Stephen Mitford Goodson, 2011.

Since 2007 Iran has stipulated that payments be made in euro currency. On 17 February 2008 the Iranian Oil Bourse for trading in petroleum, petrochemicals and gas using primarily the euro, Iranian rial and a basket of non-US currencies was established. The first oil shipments under the new system were sold through this market in July 2011. This event must be deemed as one of the prime causes for the constant Israeli and American threats to annihilate Iran.