a land where children can run free
Exodus
The Money Masters text
Website for the money masters
How Banks Create Money Out Of Thin Air
Swiss, B.I.S., Greenspan on board, or chair
Oligarchy definition
The New Kleptocracy The largest financial theft in American history, audio by economist
Check out the year 2000 wrtings of Paulson, when he was CEO of Goldman & Sachs.
Paulson there asks that the risk ratios for derivatives, be increased from , 15 to one, to 45 to one.
By 2004 this was done, and the joy ride to plutocracy began. The result being- MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
A nation of sheep will beget a government wolves.
Please note: I include reference to social theory because unbridled capitalism is not a perfect answer either.
The rich should of their own choice help the poor.
The rich should not trod the poor.
The rich should do unto the poor as they would have the poor do unto them.
The rich should lay up treasure in heaven, in eternity, by opening the doors of their storehouses to help the poor around them.
Why we need Marxist theory
What do we need theory for? We know there is a crisis. We know we are being robbed by our employers. We know we’re all angry. We know we need socialism. All the rest is just for the intellectuals.
You often hear words such as these from militant socialists and trade unionists. Such views are strongly encouraged by anti-socialists, who try to give the impression that Marxism is an obscure, complicated and boring doctrine.
Socialist ideas, they say, are ‘abstract’. They may seem all right in theory, but in real life common sense tells us something else entirely.
The trouble with these arguments is that the people who put them forward usually have a ‘theory’ of their own, even if they refuse to recognise it. Ask them any question about society, and they will try to answer it with some generalisation or other. A few examples:
‘People are naturally selfish.’
‘Anyone can get to the top if they try hard enough.’
‘If it weren’t for the rich there wouldn’t be any money to provide work for the rest of us.’
‘If only we could educate the workers, society would change.’
‘Declining morals have brought the country to its present state.’
Listen to any argument in the street, on the bus, in the canteen – you’ll hear dozens of such sayings. Each and every one contains a view of why society is like it is and of how people can improve their condition. Such views are all ‘theories’ of society.
When people say they do not have a theory, all they really mean is they have not clarified their views.
This is particularly dangerous for anyone who is trying to change society. For the newspapers, the radio, the television, are all continually filling our minds with attempted explanations for the mess society is in. They hope we will accept what they say without thinking more about the issues.
But you cannot fight effectively to change society unless you recognise what is false in all these different arguments.
This was first shown 150 years ago. In the 1830s and 1840s the development of industry in areas such as the north west of England drew hundreds of thousands of men, women and children into miserably paid jobs. They were forced to endure living conditions of unbelievable squalor.
They began to fight back against this with the first mass workers’ organisations – the first trade unions, and in Britain the first movement for political rights for workers. Chartism. Alongside these movements were the first small groups of people dedicated to winning socialism.
Immediately the problem arose as to how the workers’ movement could achieve its aim.
Some people said it was possible to persuade society’s rulers to change things through peaceful means. The ‘moral force’ of a mass, peaceful movement would ensure that benefits were given to the workers. Hundreds of thousands of people organised, demonstrated, worked to build a movement on the basis of such views – only to end defeated and demoralised.
Others recognised the need to use ‘physical force’, but thought this could be achieved by fairly small, conspiratorial groups cut off from the rest of society. These too led tens of thousands of workers into struggles that ended in defeat and demoralisation.
Still others believed the workers could achieve their goals by economic action, without confronting the army and the police. Again, their arguments led to mass actions. In England in 1842 the world’s first general strike took place in the industrial areas of the north, with tens of thousands of workers holding out for four weeks until forced back to work by hunger and privation.
It was towards the end of the first stage of defeated workers’ struggles, in 1848, that the German socialist Karl Marx spelt out his own ideas fully, in his pamphlet The Communist Manifesto.
His ideas were not pulled out of thin air. They attempted to provide a basis for dealing with all the questions that had been brought up by the workers’ movement of the time.
The ideas Marx developed are still relevant today. It is stupid to say, as some people do, that they must be out of date because Marx first wrote them down more than 150 years ago. In fact, all the notions of society that Marx argued with are still very widespread. Just as the Chartists argued about ‘moral force’ or ‘physical force’, socialists today argue about the ‘parliamentary road’ or the ‘revolutionary road’. Among those who are revolutionaries the argument for and against ‘terrorism’ is as alive as it was in 1848.
The idealists
Marx was not the first person to try to describe what was wrong with society. At the time he was writing, new inventions in factories were turning out wealth on a scale undreamt of by previous generations. For the first time it seemed humanity had the means to defend itself against the natural calamities that had been the scourge of previous ages.
Yet this did not mean any improvement in the lives of the majority of the people. Quite the opposite. The men, women and children who manned the new factories led lives much worse that those led by their grandparents who had toiled the land. Their wages barely kept them above the bread line; periodic bouts of mass unemployment thrust them well below it. They were crammed into miserable, squalid slums, without proper sanitation, subjected to monstrous epidemics.
Instead of the development of civilisation bringing general happiness and well being, it was giving rise to greater misery.
This was noted, not just by Marx, but by some of the other great thinkers of the period – men such as the English poets Blake and Shelley, the Frenchmen Fourier and Proudhon, the German philosophers Hegel and Feuerbach.
Hegel and Feuerbach called the unhappy state in which humanity found itself ‘alienation’ – a term you still often hear. By alienation, Hegel and Feuerbach meant that men and women continually found that they were dominated and oppressed by what they themselves had done in the past. So, Feuerbach pointed out, people had developed the idea of God –and then had bowed down before it, feeling miserable because they could not live up to something they themselves had made. The more society advanced, the more miserable, ‘alienated’, people became.
In his own earliest writings Marx took this notion of ‘alienation’ and applied it to the life of those who created the wealth of society:
The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range... With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men... The object which labour produces confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer...
In Marx’s time the most popular explanations of what was wrong with society were still of a religious kind. The misery of society, it was said, was because of the failure of people to do what God wanted them to. If only we were all to ‘renounce sin’ everything would turn out all right.
A similar view is often heard today, although it usually purports to be non-religious. This is the claim that ‘to change society, you must first change yourself’. If only individual men and women would cure themselves of ‘selfishness’ or ‘materialism’ (or occasionally ‘hangups’) then society would automatically get better.
A related view spoke not of changing all individuals, but a few key ones – those who exercise power in society. The idea was to try to make the rich and powerful ‘see reason’.
One of the first British socialists, Robert Owen, began by trying to convince industrialists that they should be kinder to their workers. The same idea is still dominant today among the leaders of the Labour Party, including its left wing. Note how they always call the crimes of the employers ‘mistakes’, as if a bit of argument will persuade big business to relax its grip on society.
Marx referred to all such views as ‘idealist’. Not because he was against people having ‘ideas’, but because such views see ideas as existing in isolation from the conditions in which people live.
People’s ideas are intimately linked to the sort of lives they are able to live. Take, for instance, ‘selfishness’. Present day capitalist society breeds selfishness – even in people who continually try to put other people first. A worker who wants to do their best for their children, or to give their parents something on top of their pension, finds the only way is to struggle continually against other people – to get a better job, more overtime, to be first in the queue for redundancy. In such a society you cannot get rid of ‘selfishness’ or ‘greediness’ merely by changing the minds of individuals.
It’s even more ridiculous to talk of changing society by changing the ideas of ‘top people’. Suppose you were successful in winning a big employer over to socialist ideas and he then stopped exploiting workers. He would just lose in competition with rival employers and be driven out of business.
Even for those who rule society what matters is not ideas but the structure of the society in which they hold those ideas.
The point can be put another way. If ideas are what change society, where do the ideas come from? We live in a certain sort of society. The ideas put across by the press, the TV, the educational system and so on defend that sort of society. How has anyone ever been able to develop completely different ideas? Because their daily experiences contradict the official ideas of our society.
For example, you cannot explain why far fewer people are religious today than 100 years ago simply in terms of the success of atheistic propaganda. You have to explain why people listen to atheistic ideas in a way they did not 100 years ago.
Similarly, if you want to explain the impact of ‘great men’, you have to explain why other people agree to follow them. It is no good saying that, for example. Napoleon or Lenin changed history, without explaining why millions of people were willing to
Socialism: Solution for USA | Homepage | 10.18.08 - 1:34 pm | #
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people (Translation: a dumb society breeds fascist governments)" - John Adams - Second President - 1797 - 1801
"Freedom is found at the school books." -The Doors
Socialism: Solution for USA | Homepage | 10.18.08 - 4:03 pm | #
Great Britain: What is it and where is it going?
by Cailean Bochanan
14th October, 2008
...Few nations can claim their origins in a conspiracy to invite a foreign financial, military and constitutional takeover. Such, however, was the coup d’etat of 1688. A small group of conspirators, in touch with William of Orange and the Whig exiles in Holland pulled off a plan of stunning boldness precipitating the greatest military invasion since the Roman Empire, and an accompanying influx of Dutch money on which the British empire was to be based.
This extraordinary operation, whose essential nature would have to be concealed from the British people in perpetuity, was only made possible by prolonged ideological preparation, a propaganda campaign which had been running for over a century. This “war on terror” was a device all too familiar to us today: but it was directed against Catholics, not Muslims. Just as today the evocation of the ‘Muslim threat’ has made all kinds of things possible which would not otherwise have been, so it was with the evocation of the “Catholic threat”. It even made the self-liquidation of English nationality possible.
The idea was essentially to create an offshore base in which to reproduce the financial system already developed...
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber...r.com/node/ 8674
atheo | 10.17.08 - 4:03 pm | #
HERE IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT HOW DID THIS EVIL GRAND THEFT SYSTEM OF CAPITALISM BEGAN
http://users.comcen.com.au/~marc...an/hmw/ hmw4.doc
One of the most ludicrous arguments you hear is that things could not be different to the way they are now. Yet things were different. And not on some distant part of the globe, but in this country, not so long ago. A mere 250 years ago people would have regarded you as a lunatic if you had described to them the world we live in now, with its huge cities, its great factories, its aeroplanes, its space expeditions – even its railway systems were beyond the bounds of their imagination.
For they lived in a society which was overwhelmingly rural, in which most people had never travelled ten miles outside their local village, in which the pattern of life was determined, as it had been for thousands of years, by the alternation of the seasons.
But already, 700 or 800 years ago, a development had begun which was eventually to challenge this whole system of society. Groups of craftsmen and traders began to establish themselves in towns, not giving their services for nothing to some lord as the rest of the population did, but exchanging products with various lords and serfs for foodstuffs. Increasingly they used precious metals as a measure of that exchange. It was not a big step to seeing in every act of exchange an opportunity to get a little extra of the precious metal, to make a profit.
At first the towns could only survive by playing one lord off against another. But as the skills of their craftsmen improved, they created more wealth, and they grew in influence. The ‘burghers’, the ‘bourgeois’ or the ‘middle classes’ began as a class within the feudal society of the Middle Ages. But they obtained their riches in a quite different way to the feudal lords who dominated that society.
A feudal lord lived directly off the agricultural produce he was able to force his serfs to produce on his land. He used his personal power to make them do this, without having to pay them. By contrast the wealthier classes in the towns lived off the proceeds of selling non-agricultural goods. They paid workers wages to produce these for them, by the day or week.
These workers, often escaped serfs, were ‘free’ to come and go as they liked – once they had finished the work for which they had been paid. The ‘only’ compulsion on them to work was that they would starve if they did not find employment with someone. The rich could only grow richer because rather than starve, the ‘free’ worker would accept less money for his work than the goods he produced were worth.
We will return to this point later. For the present what matters is that the middle class burghers and the feudal lords got their wealth from quite different sources. This led them to want society organised in different ways.
The feudal lord’s ideal was a society in which he had absolute power in his own lands, unbound by written laws, with no intrusion from any outside body, with his serfs unable to flee. He wanted things to stay as in the days of his father and grandfather, with everyone accepting the social station into which they were born.
The newly rich bourgeoisie necessarily saw things differently. They wanted restraints on the power of individual lords or kings to interfere with their trade or steal their wealth.
They dreamed of achieving this through a fixed body of written laws, to be drawn up and enforced by their own chosen representatives. They wanted to free the poorer classes from serfdom, so that they could work (and increase the burghers’ profits) in the towns.
As for themselves, their fathers and grandfathers had often been under the thumb of feudal lords, and they certainly did not want that to continue.
.
Socialism: Solution for USA | Homepage | 10.18.08 - 1:39 pm | #
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Posted by: Vexari Date: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 12:40:30 PM
In reply to: None Post # of 2518
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 meetings and conferences.
The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations.
Each central bank...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..
~ Carroll Quigley ~
Global Banking: The Bank for International Settlements
Who controls global monetary affairs? The BIS! Based in Basle, Switzerland, the BIS is central bank to central banks. The BIS has greater immunity than a sovereign nation, is accountable to no one, runs global monetary affairs and is privately owned. This is a must-read report to understand the globalization process.
Preface
When David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973, the intent was to create a "New International Economic Order" (NIEO). To this end, they brought together 300 elite corporate, political and academic leaders from North America, Japan and Europe.
Few people believed us when we wrote about their nefarious plans back then. Now, we look back and clearly see that they did what they said they were going to do... globalism is upon us like an 8.6 magnitude earthquake.
The question is, "How did they do it?" Keep in mind, they had no public mandate from any country in the world. They didn't have the raw political muscle, especially in democratic countries where voting is allowed. They didn't have global dictatorial powers.
Indeed, how did they do it?
The answer is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), self-described as the "central bank for central bankers", that controls the vast global banking system with the precision of a Swiss watch.
This report offers a concise summation of BIS history, structure and current activities.
Introduction
The famous currency expert Dr. Franz Pick once stated, "The destiny of the currency is, and always will be, the destiny of a nation."
With the advent of rampant globalization, this concept can certainly be given a global context as well: "The destiny of currencies are, and always will be, the destiny of the world."
Even though the BIS is the oldest international banking operation in the world, it is a low profile organization, shunning all publicity and notoriety. As a result, there is very little critical analysis written about this important financial organization. Further, much of what has been written about it is tainted by its own self-effacing literature.
The BIS can be compared to a stealth bomber. It flies high and fast, is undetected, has a small crew and carries a huge payload. By contrast, however, the bomber answers to a chain of command and must be refueled by outside sources. The BIS, as we shall see, is not accountable to any public authority and operates with complete autonomy and self-sufficiency.
Leading up to Founding
As we will see, the BIS was founded in 1930 during a very troubled time in history. Some knowledge of that history is critical to understanding why the BIS was created, and for whose benefit.
There are three figures that play prominently in the founding of the BIS: Charles G. Dawes, Owen D. Young and Hjalmar Schacht of Germany.
Charles G. Dawes was director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget in 1921, and served on the Allied Reparations Commission starting in 1923. His latter work on "stabilizing Germany's economy" earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925. After being elected Vice President under President Calvin Coolidge from 1925-1929, and appointed Ambassador to England in 1931, he resumed his personal banking career in 1932 as chairman of the board of the City National Bank and Trust in Chicago, where he remained until his death in 1951.
Owen D Young was an American industrialist. He founded RCA (Radio Corporation of America) in1919 and was its chairman until 1933. He also served as the chairman of General Electric from 1922 until 1939. In 1932, Young sought the democratic presidential nomination, but lost to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
More on Hjalmar Schacht later.
In the aftermath of World War I and the impending collapse of the German economy and political structure, a plan was needed to rescue and restore Germany, which would also insulate other economies in Europe from being affected adversely.
The Versailles Treaty of 1919 (which officially ended WWI) had imposed a very heavy reparations burden on Germany, which required a repayment schedule of 132 billion gold marks per year. Most historians agree that the economic upheaval caused in Germany by the Versailles Treaty eventually led to Adolph Hitler's rise to power.
In 1924 the Allies appointed a committee of international bankers, led by Charles G. Dawes (and accompanied by J.P. Morgan agent, Owen Young), to develop a plan to get reparations payments back on track. Historian Carroll Quigley noted that the Dawes Plan was "largely a J.P. Morgan production"1 The plan called for $800 million in foreign loans to be arranged for Germany in order to rebuild its economy.
In 1924, Dawes was chairman of the Allied Committee of Experts, hence, the "Dawes Plan." He was replaced as chairman by Owen Young in 1929, with direct support by J.P. Morgan. The "Young Plan" of 1928 put more teeth into the Dawes Plan, which many viewed as a strategy to subvert virtually all German assets to back a huge mortgage held by the United States bankers.
Neither Dawes nor Young represented anything more than banking interests. After all, WWI was fought by governments using borrowed money made possible by the international banking community. The banks had a vested interest in having those loans repaid!
In 1924, the president of Reichsbank (Germany's central bank at that time) was Hjalmar Schacht. He had already had a prominent role in creating the Dawes Plan, along with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen and other prominent German bankers and industrialists.
The Young Plan was so odious to the Germans that many credit it as a precondition to Hitler's rise to power. Fritz Thyssen, a leading Nazi Industrialist, stated
"I turned to the National socialist party only after I became convinced that the fight against the Young Plan was unavoidable if complete collapse of Germany was to be prevented." 2
Some historians too quickly credit Owen Young as the idea-man for the Bank for International Settlements. It was actually Hjalmar Schacht who first proposed the idea3, which was then carried forward by the same group of international bankers who brought us the Dawes and Young Plans.
It is not necessary to jump to conclusions as to the intent of these elite bankers, so we will instead defer to the insight of renowned Georgetown historian, Carroll Quigley:
"The Power of financial capitalism had another far reaching plan, 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 feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent 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 co-operative politicians by subsequent rewards in the business world."4 [Bold emphasis added]
So here we have a brief sketch of what led up to the founding of the BIS. Now we can examine the nuts and bolts of how the BIS was actually put together.
The Hague Agreement of 1930
The formation of the BIS was agreed upon by its constituent central banks in the so-called Hague Agreement on January 20, 1930, and was in operation shortly thereafter. According to the Agreement,
The duly authorised representatives of the Governments of Germany, of Belgium, of France, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of Italy and of Japan of the one part; And the duly authorised representatives of the Government of the Swiss Confederation of the other part Assembled at the Hague Conference in the month of January, 1930, have agreed on the following:
Article 1. Switzerland undertakes to grant to the Bank for International Settlements, without delay, the following Constituent Charter having force of law: not to abrogate this Charter, not to amend or add to it, and not to sanction amendments to the Statutes of the Bank referred to in Paragraph 4 of the Charter otherwise than in agreement with the other signatory Governments.5
As we will see, German reparation payments (or lack thereof) had little to do with the founding of the BIS, although this is the weak explanation given since its founding. Of course, Germany would make a single payment to the BIS, which in turn would deposit the funds into the respective central bank accounts of the nations to whom payments were due. (It would be the subject of another paper to show the shallowness of this operation: Money and gold were shuffled around, but the net amount that Germany actually paid was very small.)
The original founding documents of the BIS have little to say about Germany, however, and we can look directly to the BIS itself to see its original purpose:
“The objects of the Bank are: to promote the co-operation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international operations; and to act as trustees or agent in regard to international financial settlements entrusted to it under agreements with the parties concerned.” 6
Virtually every in-print reference to the BIS, including their own documents, consistently refer to it as "the central banker's central bank."
So, the BIS was established by an international charter and was headquartered in Basle, Switzerland.
BIS Ownership
According to James C. Baker, pro-BIS author of The Bank for International Settlements: Evolution and Evaluation, "The BIS was formed with funding by the central banks of six nations, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. In addition, three private international banks from the United States also assisted in financing the establishment of the BIS."7
Each nation's central bank subscribed to 16,000 shares. The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, did not join the BIS, but the three U.S. banks that participated got 16,000 shares each. Thus, U.S. representation at the BIS was three times that of any other nation. Who were these private banks? Not surprisingly, they were J.P. Morgan & Company, First National Bank of New York and First National Bank of Chicago.
On January 8, 2001, an Extraordinary General Meeting of the BIS approved a proposal that restricted ownership of BIS shares to central banks. Some 13.7% of all shares were in private hands at that time, and the repurchase was accomplished with a cash outlay of $724,956,050. The price of $10,000 per share was over twice the book value of $4,850.
It is not certain what the repurchase accomplished. The BIS claimed that it was to correct a conflict of interest between private shareholders and BIS goals, but it offered no specifics. It was not a voting issue, however, because private owners were not allowed to vote their shares.8
Sovereignty and Secrecy
It is not surprising that the BIS, its offices, employees, directors and members share an incredible immunity from virtually all regulation, scrutiny and accountability.
In 1931, central bankers and their constituents were fed up with government meddling in world financial affairs. Politicians were viewed mostly with contempt, unless it was one of their own who was the politician. Thus, the BIS offered them a once-and-for-all opportunity to set up the "apex" the way they really wanted it -- private. They demanded these conditions and got what they demanded.
A quick summary of their immunity, explained further below, includes
diplomatic immunity for persons and what they carry with them (i.e., diplomatic pouches)
no taxation on any transactions, including salaries paid to employees
embassy-type immunity for all buildings and/or offices operated by the BIS
no oversight or knowledge of operations by any government authority
freedom from immigration restrictions
freedom to encrypt any and all communications of any sort
freedom from any legal jurisdiction9
Further, members of the BIS board of directors (for instance, Alan Greenspan) are individually granted special benefits:
“immunity from arrest or imprisonment and immunity from seizure of their personal baggage, save in flagrant cases of criminal offence;”
“inviolability of all papers and documents;”
“immunity from jurisdiction, even after their mission has been accomplished, for acts carried out in the discharge of their duties, including words spoken and writings;”
“exemption for themselves, their spouses and children from any immigration restrictions, from any formalities concerning the registration of aliens and from any obligations relating to national service in Switzerland ;”
“the right to use codes in official communications or to receive or send documents or correspondence by means of couriers or diplomatic bags.”10
Lastly, all remaining officials and employees of the BIS have the following immunities:
“immunity from jurisdiction for acts accomplished in the discharge of their duties, including words spoken and writings, even after such persons have ceased to be Officials of the Bank;”[bold emphasis added]
“exemption from all Federal, cantonal and communal taxes on salaries, fees and allowances paid to them by the Bank…”
exempt from Swiss national obligations, freedom for spouses and family members from immigration restrictions, transfer assets and properties – including internationally – with the same degree of benefit as Officials of other international organizations.11
Of course, a corporate charter can say anything it wants to say and still be subject to outside authorities. Nevertheless, these were the immunities practiced and enjoyed from 1930 onward. On February 10, 1987, a more formal acknowledgement called the "Headquarters Agreement" was executed between the BIS and the Swiss Federal Council and basically clarified and reiterated what we already knew:
Article 2
Inviolability
The buildings or parts of buildings and surrounding land which, whoever may be the owner thereof, are used for the purposes of the Bank shall be inviolable. No agent of the Swiss public authorities may enter therein without the express consent of the Bank. Only the President, the General Manager of the Bank, or their duly authorised representative shall be competent to waive such inviolability.
The archives of the Bank and, in general, all documents and any data media belonging to the Bank or in its possession, shall be inviolable at all times and in all places.
The Bank shall exercise supervision of and police power over its premises.
Article 4
Immunity from jurisdiction and execution
The Bank shall enjoy immunity from criminal and administrative jurisdiction, save to the extent that such immunity is formally waived in individual cases by the President, the General Manager of the Bank, or their duly authorised representative.
The assets of the Bank may be subject to measures of compulsory execution for enforcing monetary claims. On the other hand, all deposits entrusted to the Bank, all claims against the Bank and the shares issued by the Bank shall, without the prior agreement of the Bank, be immune from seizure or other measures of compulsory execution and sequestration, particularly of attachment within the meaning of Swiss law. 12 [bold emphasis added]
As you can see, the BIS, its directors and employees (past and present) can do virtually anything and everything they want, with complete secrecy, immunity and with no one looking over their shoulders. It was truly a banker's dream come true, and it paved the international freeway for the rampant financial globalism that we see manifest today.
Day-to-Day Operations
Acting as a central bank, the BIS has sweeping powers to do anything for its own account or for the account of its member central banks. It is like a two-way power-of-attorney – any party can act as agent for any other party.
Article 21 of the original BIS statutes define day-to-day operations:
buying and selling of gold coin or bullion for its own account or for the account of central banks;
holding gold for its own account under reserve in central banks;
accepting the supervision of gold for the account of central banks;
making advances to or borrowing from central banks against gold, bills of exchange, and other short-term obligations of prime liquidity or other approved securities;
discounting, rediscounting, purchasing, or selling with or without its endorsement bills of exchange, checks, and other short-term obligations of prime liquidity;
buying and selling foreign exchange for its own account or for the account of central banks;
buying and selling negotiable securities other than shares for its own account or for the account of central banks;
discounting for central banks bills taken from their portfolio and rediscounting with central banks bills taken from its own portfolio;
opening and maintaining current or deposit accounts with central banks;
accepting deposits from central banks on current or deposit account;
accepting deposits in connection with trustee agreements that may be made between the BIS and governments in connection with international settlements.;
accepting such other deposits that, as in the opinion of the Board of the BIS, come within the scope of the BIS’ functions.13
The BIS also may
act as agent or correspondent for any central bank
arrange with any central bank for the latter to act as its agent or correspondent;
enter into agreements to act as trustee or agent in connection with international settlements, provided that such agreements will not encroach on the obligations of the BIS toward any third parties.14
Why is "agency" an important issue? Because any member of the network can obscure transactions from onlookers. For instance, if Brown Brothers, Harriman wanted to transfer money to a company in Nazi Germany during WWII (which was not "politically correct" at that time), they would first transfer the funds to the BIS thus putting the transaction under the cloak of secrecy and immunity that is enjoyed by the BIS but not by Brown Brothers, Harriman. (Such laundering of Wall Street money was painstakingly noted in Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, by Antony C. Sutton.)
There are a few things that the BIS cannot do. For instance, it does not accept deposits from, or provide financial services to, private individuals or corporate entities. It is also not permitted to make advances to governments or open current accounts in their name.15 These restrictions are easily understood when one considers that each central bank has an exclusive franchise to loan money to their respective government. For instance, the U.S. Federal Reserve does not loan money to the government of Canada. In like manner, central banks do not loan money directly to the private or corporate clients of their member banks.
How Decisions are Made
The board of directors consist of the heads of certain member central banks. Currently, these are:
Nout H E M Wellink, Amsterdam (Chairman of the Board of Directors)
Hans Tietmeyer, Frankfurt am Main (Vice-Chairman)
Axel Weber, Frankfurt am Main
Vincenzo Desario, Rome
Antonio Fazio, Rome
David Dodge, Ottawa
Toshihiko Fukui, Tokyo
Timothy F Geithner, New York
Alan Greenspan, Washington
Lord George, London
Hervé Hannoun, Paris
Christian Noyer, Paris
Lars Heikensten, Stockholm
Mervyn King, London
Guy Quaden, Brussels
Jean-Pierre Roth, Zürich
Alfons Vicomte Verplaetse, Brussels16
Of these, five members ( Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland) are currently elected by the shareholders. The majority of directors are "ex officio," meaning they are permanent and are automatically a part of any sub-committee.
The combined board meets at least six times per year, in secret, and is briefed by BIS management on financial operations of the bank. Global monetary policy is discussed and set at these meetings.
It was reported in 1983 that there is an inner club of the half dozen central bankers who are more or less in the same monetary boat: Germany, U.S., Switzerland, Italy, Japan and England.17 The existence of an inner club is neither surprising nor substantive: the whole BIS operation is 100% secret anyway. It is not likely that members of the inner club have significantly different beliefs or agendas apart from the BIS as a whole.
How the BIS works with the IMF and the World Bank
The interoperation between the three entities is understandably confusing to most people, so a little clarification will help.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) interacts with governments whereas the BIS interacts only with other central banks. The IMF loans money to national governments, and often these countries are in some kind of fiscal or monetary crisis. Furthermore, the IMF raises money by receiving "quota" contributions from its 184 member countries. Even though the member countries may borrow money to make their quota contributions, it is, in reality, all tax-payer money.18
The World Bank also lends money and has 184 member countries. Within the World Bank are two separate entities, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The IBRD focuses on middle income and credit-worthy poor countries, while the IDA focuses on the poorest of nations. In funding itself, the World Bank borrows money by direct lending from banks and by floating bond issues, and then loans this money through IBRD and IDA to troubled countries.19
The BIS, as central bank to the other central banks, facilitates the movement of money. They are well-known for issuing "bridge loans" to central banks in countries where IMF or World Bank money is pledged but has not yet been delivered. These bridge loans are then repaid by the respective governments when they receive the funds that had been promised by the IMF or World Bank.20
The IMF is the BIS' "ace in the hole" when monetary crisis hits. The 1998 Brazil currency crisis was caused by that country's inability to pay inordinate accumulated interest on loans made over a protracted period of time. These loans were extended by banks like Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and FleetBoston, and they stood to lose a huge amount of money.
The IMF, along with the World Bank and the U.S., bailed out Brazil with a $41.5 billion package that saved Brazil, its currency and, not incidentally, certain private banks.
Congressman Bernard Sanders (I-VT), ranking member of the International Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee, blew the whistle on this money laundry operation. Sander's entire congressional press release is worth reading:
IMF Bailout for Brazil is Windfall to Banks, Disaster for US Taxpayers Says Sanders
BURLINGTON, VERMONT - August 15 - Congressman Bernard Sanders (I-VT), the Ranking Member of the International Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee, today called for an immediate Congressional investigation of the recent $30 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout of Brazil.
Sanders, who is strongly opposed to the bailout and considers it corporate welfare, wants Congress to find out why U.S. taxpayers are being asked to provide billions of dollars to Brazil and how much of this money will be funneled to U.S. banks such as Citigroup, FleetBoston and J.P. Morgan Chase. These banks have about $25.6 billion in outstanding loans to Brazilian borrowers. U.S. taxpayers currently fund the IMF through a $37 billion line of credit.
Sanders said, "At a time when we have a $6 trillion national debt, a growing federal deficit, and an increasing number of unmet social needs for our veterans, seniors, and children, it is unacceptable that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being sent to the IMF to bailout Brazil."
"This money is not going to significantly help the poor people of that country. The real winners in this situation are the large, profitable U.S. banks such as Citigroup that have made billions of dollars in risky investments in Brazil and now want to make sure their investments are repaid. This bailout represents an egregious form of corporate welfare that must be put to an end. Interestingly, these banks have made substantial campaign contributions to both political parties," the Congressman added.
Sanders noted that the neo-liberal policies of the IMF developed in the 1980's pushing countries towards unfettered free trade, Privatization, and slashing social safety nets has been a disaster for Latin America and has contributed to increased global poverty throughout the world. At the same time that Latin America countries such as Brazil and Argentina followed these neo-liberal dictates imposed by the IMF, from 1980-2000, per capita income in Latin America grew at only one-tenth the rate of the previous two decades.
Sanders continued, "The policies of the IMF over the past 20 years advocating unfettered free trade, privatizing industry, deregulation and slashing government investments in health, education, and pensions has been a complete failure for low income and middle class families in the developing world and in the United States . Clearly, these policies have only helped corporations in their constant search for the cheapest labor and weakest environmental regulations. Congress must work on a new global policy that protects workers, increases living standards and improves the environment."
One can surmise that a financial circle exists where the World Bank helps nations get into debt, then when these countries can't pay their massive loans, the IMF bails them out with taxpayer money -- and in the middle stands the BIS, collecting fees as the money travels back and forth like the ocean tide, while assuring everyone that all is well.
BIS dumps gold-backed Swiss Francs for SDR's
On March 10, 2003, the BIS abandoned the Swiss gold franc as the bank's unit of account since 1930, and replaced it with the SDR.
SDR stands for Special Drawing Rights and is a unit of currency originally created by the IMF. According to Baker,
"The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries. SDR's are allocated to member countries in proportion to their IMF quotas. The SDR also serves as the unit of account of the IMF and some other international organizations. Its value is based on a basket of key international currencies."21
This "basket" currently consists of the euro, Japanese yen, pound sterling and the U.S. dollar.
The BIS abandonment of the 1930 gold Swiss franc removed all restraint from the creation of paper money in the world. In other words, gold backs no national currency, leaving the central banks a wide-open field to create money as they alone see fit. Remember, that almost all the central banks in the world are privately-held entities, with an exclusive franchise to arrange loans for their respective host countries.
Regional and Global Currencies: SDR's, Euros and Ameros
There is no doubt that the BIS is moving the world toward regional currencies and ultimately, a global currency. The global currency could well be an evolution of the SDR, and may explain why the BIS recently adopted the SDR as its primary reserve currency.
The Brandt Equation, 21st Century Blueprint for the New Global Economy notes, for instance, that
Since the SDR is the world's only means of meeting international payments that has been authorized through international contract, "The SDR therefore represents a clear first step towards a stable and permanent international currency"22 [bold emphasis added]
As to regional currencies, the BIS has already been hugely successful in launching the euro in Europe. Armed with new technical and social know-how, the BIS' next logical step is to focus on America and Asia.
For instance, according to BIS Papers No. 17, Regional currency areas and the use of foreign currencies,
"Canada, Mexico and the United States are members of the trade group NAFTA. Given the high proportion of Canada and Mexico’s trade with the United States, a NAFTA dollar or “Amero” has been proposed by some Canadian academics such as Grubel (1999). See also Beine and Coulombe (2002) and Robson and Laidler (2002)."23
Assuming that NAFTA permanently identifies Canada, the U.S. and Mexico as one trading block, then North America will look like the European Union and the Amero will function like the Euro. All of the work put into the SDR would be perfectly preserved by simply substituting the Amero for the U.S. dollar when they choose to bring the Amero to ascendancy over the dollar.
For those American readers who do not grasp the significance of the adoption of the euro by European Union countries, consider how one American globalist describes it.
C. Fred Bergsten is a prominent and core Trilateral Commission member and head of the Institute for International Economics. On January 3, 1999, Bergsten wrote in the Washington Post
"The adoption of a common currency is by far the boldest chapter of European integration. Money traditionally has been an integral element of national sovereignty ...and the decision by Germany and France to give up their mark and franc ...represents the most dramatic voluntary surrender of sovereignty in recorded history. The European Central Bank that will manage the euro is a truly supranational institution".24 [bold emphasis added]
Bergsten will have to rephrase this when the U.S. gives up the dollar for the amero -- that will become the most dramatic voluntary surrender of sovereignty in recorded history!
Conclusions
Our credo is "Follow the money, follow the power." This report has endeavored to follow the money. We find that:
The BIS is central bank to all major central banks in the world
It is privately owned by central banks themselves, most of whom are also private
It was founded under questionable circumstances by questionable people
It is accountable to no one, especially government bodies
It operates in complete secrecy and is inviolable
Movement of money is obscured and hidden when routed through the BIS
The BIS is targeting regional currency blocks and ultimately, a global currency
It has been hugely successful at building the New International Economic Order, along with its attendant initiatives on global governance.
As to "follow the power," another paper will more fully explore the influence of power that the BIS exerts over other banks, nations and governments. For your own consideration in the meantime, Proverbs 22:7 provides a useful compass: "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender".
NOTE: Carl Teichrib, World Research Library Senior Fellow, contributed to this report.
Footnotes
Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, (MacMillan, 1966), p.308
Edgar B Nixon, ec., Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, Volume III (Cambridge: Balknap Press, 1969) p. 456
Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, (GSC & Associates, 2002) p. 26
Quigley, op cit, p. 324
BIS web site, Extracts from the Hague Convention, http://www.bis.org/about/conv-ex.htm
BIS, Statutes of the Bank for International Settlements Article 3 [as if January 1930, text as amended on March 10,2003], Basic Texts (Basle, August 2003), p. 7-8
Baker, The Bank for International Settlements: Evolution and Evaluation, (Quorum, 2002), p. 20
ibid., p. 16
BIS, Protocol Regarding the Immunities of the Bank for International Settlements, Basic Texts, (Basle, August 2003), p. 33
ibid, Article 12, p.43.
ibid, p. 44
BIS, Extracts from the Headquarters Agreement, http://www.bis.org/about/hq-ex.htm
Baker, op cit, p. 26-27
ibid, p. 27
BIS, The BIS in profile, Bank for International Settlements flyer, June, 2005
BIS, Board of Directors, www.bis.org/about/board.htm
Epstein, Ruling the World of Money, Harper's Magazine, 1983
IMF web site, http://www.imf.org
World Bank web site. http://www.WorldBank.org
Baker, op cit, p. 141-142
IMF web site, http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/sdr.htm
The Brandt Equation: 21 st Century Blueprint for the New Global Economy. The Brandt Proposals – A Report Card: Money and Finances. See http://www.brandt21forum.info/1ckMoney.htm.
BIS, Regional currency areas and the use of foreign currencies, BIS Papers No. 17, September, 2003
Washington Post, The Euro Could Be Good for Trans-Atlantic Relations, C. Fred Bergsten, January 3, 1999
Books for Purchase:
Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, (MacMillan, 1966)
Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, (GSC & Associates, 2002)
Baker, The Bank for International Settlements: Evolution and Evaluation, (Quorum, 2002)
http://www.augustreview.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=4
I am now quite sure that 'Tragedy and Hope' was suppressed although I do not know why or by whom. ~ Carroll Quigley
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HERE IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT HOW DID THIS EVIL GRAND THEFT SYSTEM OF CAPITALISM BEGAN
http://users.comcen.com.au/~marc...an/hmw/ hmw4.doc
One of the most ludicrous arguments you hear is that things could not be different to the way they are now. Yet things were different. And not on some distant part of the globe, but in this country, not so long ago. A mere 250 years ago people would have regarded you as a lunatic if you had described to them the world we live in now, with its huge cities, its great factories, its aeroplanes, its space expeditions – even its railway systems were beyond the bounds of their imagination.
For they lived in a society which was overwhelmingly rural, in which most people had never travelled ten miles outside their local village, in which the pattern of life was determined, as it had been for thousands of years, by the alternation of the seasons.
But already, 700 or 800 years ago, a development had begun which was eventually to challenge this whole system of society. Groups of craftsmen and traders began to establish themselves in towns, not giving their services for nothing to some lord as the rest of the population did, but exchanging products with various lords and serfs for foodstuffs. Increasingly they used precious metals as a measure of that exchange. It was not a big step to seeing in every act of exchange an opportunity to get a little extra of the precious metal, to make a profit.
At first the towns could only survive by playing one lord off against another. But as the skills of their craftsmen improved, they created more wealth, and they grew in influence. The ‘burghers’, the ‘bourgeois’ or the ‘middle classes’ began as a class within the feudal society of the Middle Ages. But they obtained their riches in a quite different way to the feudal lords who dominated that society.
A feudal lord lived directly off the agricultural produce he was able to force his serfs to produce on his land. He used his personal power to make them do this, without having to pay them. By contrast the wealthier classes in the towns lived off the proceeds of selling non-agricultural goods. They paid workers wages to produce these for them, by the day or week.
These workers, often escaped serfs, were ‘free’ to come and go as they liked – once they had finished the work for which they had been paid. The ‘only’ compulsion on them to work was that they would starve if they did not find employment with someone. The rich could only grow richer because rather than starve, the ‘free’ worker would accept less money for his work than the goods he produced were worth.
We will return to this point later. For the present what matters is that the middle class burghers and the feudal lords got their wealth from quite different sources. This led them to want society organised in different ways.
The feudal lord’s ideal was a society in which he had absolute power in his own lands, unbound by written laws, with no intrusion from any outside body, with his serfs unable to flee. He wanted things to stay as in the days of his father and grandfather, with everyone accepting the social station into which they were born.
The newly rich bourgeoisie necessarily saw things differently. They wanted restraints on the power of individual lords or kings to interfere with their trade or steal their wealth.
They dreamed of achieving this through a fixed body of written laws, to be drawn up and enforced by their own chosen representatives. They wanted to free the poorer classes from serfdom, so that they could work (and increase the burghers’ profits) in the towns.
As for themselves, their fathers and grandfathers had often been under the thumb of feudal lords, and they certainly did not want that to continue.
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Socialism: Solution for USA | Homepage | 10.18.08 - 1:39 pm | #
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I
have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled
against me.
Law of the Spirit which is Life in Christ Jesus
1John 1:9 agree with God
Mat 6:33
Trust in the Name of the Lord our God
Yeshua
Isaiah 12:2
Power of life and death is in the tongue
Numbers 14:28
Call those things which be not as though they were
(Question for the day: Why do kings build castles with walls ?
To protect their peace of their family and things they love most. So we don't really need a ton of money, when what we want is peace to enjoy what we love the most....
so having sufficient, let us therewith be content
for contentment is a word dispised mostly in western cultures
but of great value to those who are wise, and in all the ancient writings, contentment with godliness is great gain
but to seek after riches is to bring problems....
there is a difference between doing good things that result in good results and just plain seeking after increase of money to the end of having it burst out the barns
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