Wakey Wakey, Rise and Shine

If there’s one thing that I think defines humanity, it’s the ability to take absolutely anything for granted. Expose anyone to something for long enough and they’ll think its normal. A child raised in a closet and visited daily by a pink goblin for readings from Dostoevsky will grow up thinking this is perfectly prosaic.

Our ability to assimilate virtually anything into our personal or social reality and put up with it has its uses. Living in a universe ravaged by forces not always conducive to the life forms that inhabit it could easily lead to this sort of behaviour as a survival trait, and has probably done exactly that.

However, when it comes to stuffing around with the human race and manipulating its members this tendency to accept anything at all that has been around for long enough becomes somewhat problematic.

Anyone who is in a position of power who is capable of contriving a particular state of affairs can rest safe in the knowledge that this state of affairs is likely to persist indefinitely if they can get just a single generation of the human species to live through it.

Take banking and money. I remember being a ten year old and asking why a piece of paper was worth something when there were other very similar pieces of paper close at hand that were worth nothing. I doubt I was the only child asking this question, as asking questions is precisely what children do before this habit is knocked out of them by their educations.

Nobody had an answer for me, and I concluded that some things (later I was to find that maybe the majority of things that bond groups of people in subservience) derive their significance purely from mass consensus and conformity. Everyone agreed money was worth something, therefore it was worth something, kind of like Garbage Pail Kid cards and marbles.

Twenty years down the line I discovered some interesting things about banking. Without going into a detailed history of banking, and the gradual evolution of common exchange systems into fractional reserve banking into central banking I’ll sum it up with the following statement made by William Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England:

"The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing."

Few people are aware of the fact that a number of central banks are privately owned institutions that legally and openly create money out of thin air and then lend it to governments at interest. Amongst these is the Federal Reserve Bank of America, which exists despite the best efforts of several generations of American patriots to attempt to prevent private interests from taking control of the money supply.

What Reserve Banks do, in essence, is loan money to Governments. This is all very well and good until you find out who repays those loans and the inevitable interest that comes with them. It is not, you might imagine, the politicians who sign off the loans that pay back them back. Instead it is the humble taxpayer who ends up footing the bill.

This interesting situation is only one step removed from simply printing money for one's own use, with that step being the intermediate process which sees the money finding its way into the pockets of central bankers via income tax levied on the citizens of countries.

Now before I go any further, I have to comment that I’m aware that I will, by now, probably have picked up at least one of the type of reader who either feels it is incumbent upon him or her to protect any institution that has functioned for more than a generation, or else reflexively attack any concept that generates the least bit of cognitive dissonance.

This is inevitably the type of person who would not feel put upon if the pink goblin mentioned earlier visited its reproductive apparatus rather than Dostoevsky upon their ears, so long as said goblin wore a suit and whispered sweet nothings in an Oxbridge accent.

Unfortunately, this piece might pick up more than one reader of this variety. I blame it on our education system where asking questions and challenging authority was never really part of the agenda.

Getting back to the point. Humanity finds itself in a rather bizarre situation. A relatively small group of people controls the money supply for profit. One of the more ridiculous things about this state of affairs is that most of the money now created is actually debt (with only the product of mints having any value).

Every time the European Reserve Bank or Federal Reserve Bank inject another hundred billion dollars into the world economy (to alleviate the debt crisis) they do so under the condition that interest is paid back on that debt by the lenders, i.e. the taxpayer.

Those who have re-conditioned themselves to actually question the world they live in will most likely ask the following question: “If someone lends our government $100,000,000 dollars at 20% interest, where will the $20,000,000 in interest actually come from? Aren’t we ultimately required to pay back more money than actually exists? Won’t we end up lending another $20,000,000 to pay back the interest, thereby generating more debt and a never-ending vicious circle?”

The answer to that question is a rather perfunctory “yes”. Of course few people ask that question, partially because they never learnt how to do that sort of thing and partially because the ancient laws against usury (lending at interest) are so clearly silly and outdated, and anyway they’re just so proud of their new car/house/phone that they’ll spend the next forever paying back.

The situation created by this cycle of debt, and its inevitable conclusion is quite disturbing. The more debt banks generate, the more people will be pulled under this debt, effectively paying the modern equivalent of a tithe into the pockets of bankers who expend an absolute minimum of effort to produce money out of thin air.

People at the top of the social heap are less likely to be affected by the ever increasing debt. However, the waters of debt slavery will continue to rise, lapping at ever higher levels of social privilege until only a tiny percentage of the planet’s population does not spend its existence totally drowned and enslaved by debt (and instead concerned that their exhaling will result in an increase in hurricanes).

If this situation doesn’t scare you, allow me to acquaint you with a basic principle shared by the most ruthless totalitarian societies in history: that is to destroy the economic independence of individuals, first by destroying agricultural subsistence farming, and then by generating unavoidable individual participation in the economic system (the compulsory hut tax imposed on black South Africans to get them to work on the mines is but one example).

If you’re prepared to accept the age old truism that money is power then you’ll quickly realise that we’re in a lot more trouble than just perpetual debt cycles. Throw in another handy axiom along the lines of ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ and maybe one or two things happening in the world will shift into crisper focus.

The strangest thing is it that this situation and its origins aren’t even really a secret. All this information is available on the public record, but those in power are so confident in the efficiency of their propaganda machinery, humanity's unwillingness to ask questions unless prompted, the ability of the scoffers of this world to live in complete denial and ignorance whilst attempting to ensure that they do not do so alone, and the general tendency towards public supine supplication to the latest anything that they haven’t been required to make much of an effort to hide it.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Thomas Jefferson

Footnotes:

1. Until the invasion of Iraq six countries in the world did not possess central banks. All of the remaining central bank-free nations enjoy the status of international pariahs, and include Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Libya.

2. Several presidents of the United States have attempted to revert to government controlled interest-free money supply. These included:
James Madison, 4th President of the Unites States
Quote: “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.”

Abraham Lincoln,16th President of the United States
Quote: “The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than the aristocracy, more selfish than the bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.”

James A Garfield, 20th President of the United States
Quote: "“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce… And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States


“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.”
Sir Josiah Stamp President of the Bank of England in the 1920’s