A Concentration of Power

If your town obtained its water from a single well, and that well was in your back yard, you would be an important person in that town, whether you wanted to or not.

Perhaps you welcomed the importance given you by being the town's source of water, and felt that it would enable you to bring about the reforms which were sorely needed, in your opinion. With everyone in town dependent upon your well, you were in a position to give weight to your ideas.

For one thing, you would make as much water available to people as they wanted, but only as a loan. Each household would have the amount of water it consumed metered, and at the end of the year, that amount, plus 5% interest, would be returned to your well. This would have individual townspeople hustling to get that water for repayment, and the town as a whole would find it impossible. They would simply have to get some additional water in order to return 5% more than they had borrowed. But where would they get it? Why, from you! You would lend it to them, with interest, of course. This system would insure that the town would be perpetually in your debt. You would then be in a position to bring your enlightened leadership to the fore.

There would be no need to be heavy-handed about it. In fact, you could remain so far behind the scenes that the man on the street would be unaware of your influence upon his life. You would simply guarantee ample water, at extremely low interest rates, to important people who shared your ideas: editors, educators, pastors, broadcasters, writers, and, of course, politicians.

An interesting daydream, but nothing more. Water is still recognized by everyone as a tangible substance, not simply the word "water" written on a piece of paper. A gallon of it is four times a quart of it, not simply the same amount of paper with the larger number inscribed. And, being a tangible substance, water is available in finite supply, and the lending scheme would exhaust that supply.

Money, however, is a different matter, or non-matter. People have long lost the association between the word and the reality. Thus, the lending scheme outlined above works beautifully with money. The result? Bankers are the most powerful people on earth.

Sir Josiah Stamp, former president of the Bank of England, put it this way: "Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with a flick of a pen they will create enough to buy it back."

Sir Josiah's colleague, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rt. Honorable Reginald McKenna, agreed. "Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."

Another famous Englishman, Queen Victoria's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, pointed out that "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."

In this country, President James Garfield observed that "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." And we shouldn't forget old Anselm Rothschild, founder of the clan: "Give me the power to issue a nation's money; then I do not care who makes the laws." It would seem settled, and indeed is obvious, that the creator of money in any community is a power to be reckoned with.

A small bank, like a small government, cannot easily impose its will upon many people. You cannot encourage like-minded individuals in education or the media with endowments, low-interest loans, bequests, etc., if there is no institute of higher learning, or broadcasting facility, in your town. Merge with other banks in other towns, and your influence spreads. Unite with your colleagues to establish a bank for the entire country, and your influence becomes so vast as to be a clear and present danger.

Money, or what passes for it, has more than economic significance. It has enormous political significance as well. It is for this reason, as well as the desire to achieve otherwise unattainable profits, that bankers despise gold. They didn't produce gold, and with an alert populace, could not, for any protracted period, attempt to loan gold which did not exist. They were warehousemen in three-piece suits, guarding other people's wealth. Not good enough!

The advent of the Euro signifies the emergence of a single banking facility for Europe. Various banks may issue euros, but their regulation, perhaps informally, by a single unit, has obvious advantages for those who might like to extend their influence beyond national boundaries. The Euro will be extolled as of great benefit in European trade; the elimination of exchange rates alone will make it very attractive. However, no exchange rates would be required if European nations dealt in gold, of course, and the bankers are certainly not recommending that!

What will the future bring? Predictions are always risky, but we'll risk it: a single world-wide bank, with many branches, financing a single huge corporation, with many subsidiaries, operating under the aegis of a single world government, called different things in different places. Human freedom? Gone, except for the freedom to conform, for otherwise is to starve.

Power tends to become concentrated. Until relatively recently, Italy and Germany, for instance, were a collection of more or less independent feuding states, until unified as single nations. Earlier, Ferdinand and Isabella had unified a divided Spain. Japan was brought under the control of a dozen or so families. Why should it be different today, here? In our own country, we have seen the sovereignty of the individual states swallowed up by the federal government, whose jurisdiction was, according to the Constitution, to have been extremely limited. The acceptance by the states of the unconstitutional concept of a federal "legal tender" no doubt facilitated and accelerated this acceptance.

Local government provides its own checks and balances. If life is too oppressive here, move there. Offer maximum freedom, and people will come, and prosper. Make mistakes, and some people will be hurt, but the hurt will be limited. Extend your power, by the issuance of what is accepted for money, and any mistakes will be big ones. If life becomes oppressive here, where will one go?

Paranoid? I certainly hope so!