TRAGEDY AND HOPE Chapter 1&2 Analysis
* Turmel analysis has indented paragraphs, Quigley's text does not.
* R&R = Rothschilds and Rockefellers
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION: WESTERN CIVILIZATION IN ITS WORLD SETTING
Page 3
Each civilization is born in some inexplicable fashion and, after a
slow start, enters a period of vigorous expansion, increasing its size
and power, both internally and at the expense of its neighbors, until
gradually a crisis of organization appears. It becomes stabilized and
eventually stagnant. After a Golden Age of peace and prosperity,
internal crises again arise. At this point, there appears for the
first time, a moral and physical weakness.
JCT: I think it is interesting that Quigley has civilizations
arising "in some inexplicable fashion" whereas Astle suggests they
arise when a money system develops to allow the allocation of saved
surpluses among citizens. I have to agree that civilization cannot
arise without such a monetary mechanism though societies which barter
their surpluses may also be called civilizations though not what I'd
call an advanced civilization. So I accept Astle's suggestion that a
money system for allocation of surpluses is a necessary mechanism for
any advanced civilization to arise.
I find Quigley's assumption interesting that a crisis of
organization must inevitably appear. It is true that according to
David Astle, there have been many stabilized civilizations which were
unstabilized once usury and moneylending were introduced. Since most
of unrecorded history comprises those stables societies and since most
of recorded history comprises those unstable societies, it's
understandable that Quigley's studies of recorded history would think
these unstable effects are inevitable by-products of civilization. I
suggest that they are inevitable by-products of usury which creates a
death-gamble mortgage between its citizens and out of the death by
poverty of its citizens comes the inevitable crises.
I also accept that all civilizations which arise on all planets
in the universe will inevitably develop money systems and inevitably
be infected with usury which arises logically out of periods of
scarcity.
Page 5
The passage from the Age of Expansion to the Age of Conflict is
the most complex, most interesting and most critical of all periods of
the life cycle of a civilization. It is marked by four chief
characteristics: it is a period:
a) of declining rate of expansion;
b) of growing tensions and class conflicts;
c) of increasingly frequent and violent imperialist wars;
d) of growing irrationality.
JCT: See, class conflicts only arise when there exists the usury
function to separate citizens into the two classes, those who have
abundance and get even more and those who have no abundance and have
it taken away. That such a system is irrational is a given though its
irrationality is unseen by the great majority of its victims. One need
only study my Essence of Money debates with Professor Flaherty at my
web site to see how supposedly intelligent people can be reduced to
blathering contradicters who don't even realize they are contradicting
themselves. I don't think there's an easier proof of this growing
irrationality than to have people who don't realize, according to
Orwell's doublethink, can believe to contradictory points of view at
the same time.
I honestly do believe that the brain has to be damaged in order
that two contradictory points of view can both be held as true and
those debates show quite clearly that the study of Economics does
indeed damage their brains of their students. It's not for nothing
Christ said that when it comes to usury, "they will forever be hearing
without hearing and seeing without seeing or understanding," while
Mohammed said that those who devour usury are as as stands one whom
the Evil One by his touch hath driven to madness."
One might think that Christ and Mohammed were using hyperbole
when saying that money-lovers have been driven to madness but I have
no doubt that historians will use Professor Flaherty's contradictions
to demonstrate the madness incurred from studying Economics and
learning to love money.
Page 8
When we consider the untold numbers of other societies, simpler than
civilizations, which Western Civilization has destroyed or is now
destroying, the full frightening power of Western Civilization becomes
obvious.
JCT: But note that Western Civilization usually destroyed these
other civilizations in the quest for gold after being tricked into
usurious debt by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers of their day. I
don't think destroying neighbor civilizations is an inevitable
function of humanity though it is an inevitable function of a humanity
which must always expand to pay its expanding debt.
This shift from an Age of Conflict to an Age of Expansion is marked by
a resumption of the investment of capital and the accumulation of
capital on a large scale.
JCT: So all it takes is for the money-lenders to loosen the
purse strings and resume investment to permit an Age of expansion. If
the world-owners choose not to resume investment, the nations of the
world remain in a condition of conflict in the death-gamble fight to
survive bank foreclosure.
In the new Western civilization, a small number of men, equipped
and trained to fight, received dues and services from the overwhelming
majority of men who were expected to till the soil. From this
inequitable but effective defensive system emerged an inequitable
distribution of political power and, in turn, an inequitable
distribution of the social economic income. This, in time, resulted in
an accumulation of capital, which, by giving rise to demand for luxury
goods of remote origin, began to shift the whole economic emphasis of
the society from its earlier organization in self-sufficient agrarian
units to commercial interchange, economic specialization, and, a
bourgeois class.
JCT: Notice that a "defensive system" was necessary for this need
for an professional army to arise. It's fair to assume that usury was
well installed to necessitate such defences from their neighbors.
Page 9
At the end of the first period of expansion of Western Civilization
covering the years 970-1270, the organization of society was becoming
a petrified collection of vested interests and entered the Age of
Conflict from 1270-1420.
In the new Age of Expansion, frequently called the period of
commercial capitalism from 1440 to 1680, the real impetus to economic
expansion came from efforts to obtain profits by the interchange of
goods, especially semi-luxury or luxury goods, over long distances. In
time, profits were sought by imposing restrictions on the production
or interchange of goods rather than by encouraging these activities.
JCT: So the real push in the new Age of Expansion came from the
growth of middlemen profits who sought not to increase production but
to decrease it while they sought a monopoly.
Page 10
The social organization of this third Age of Expansion from 1770-1929
following upon the second Age of Conflict of 1690-1815 might be called
"industrial capitalism." In the last of the nineteenth century, it
began to become a structure of vested interests to which we might give
the name "monopoly capitalism."
We shall undoubtedly get a Universal Empire in which the United States
will rule most of the Western Civilization. This will be followed, as
in other civilizations, by a period of decay and ultimately, as the
civilizations grows weaker, by invasions and the total destruction of
Western culture.
JCT: Too bad he doesn't say where this decay arises. He simply
asks to assume such decay as a given.
EUROPE'S SHIFT TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Page 24
The belief in the innate goodness of man had its roots in the
eighteenth century when it appeared to many that man was born good and
free but was everywhere distorted, corrupted, and enslaved by bad
institutions and conventions. As Rousseau said, "Man is born free yet
everywhere he is in chains."
Obviously, if man is is innately good and needs but to be freed from
social restrictions, he is capable of tremendous achievements in this
world of time, and does not need to postpone his hopes of personal
salvation into eternity.
JCT: I think this philosophy makes the most sense. I think the
wish for power of one's fellow man is purely a function of insecurity.
Page 25
To the nineteenth century mind, evil, or sin, was a negative
conception. It merely indicated a lack or, at most, a distortion of
good. Any idea of sin or evil as a malignant force opposed to good,
and capable of existing by its own nature, was completely lacking in
the typical nineteenth century mind. The only evil was frustration and
the only sin, repression.
Just as the negative idea of the nature of evil flowed from the belief
that human nature was good, so the idea of liberalism flowed from the
belief that society was bad. For, if society was bad,the state, which
was the organized coercive power of society, was doubly bad, and if
man was good, he should be freed, above all, from the coercive power
of the state.
JCT: Of course, this is only when the state is front man for
loansharks' oppression. When the state was not in thrall to loansharks
and did not have to oppress its citizens with oppressive taxes to
service debt, there would be no reason for citizens to feel this way
nor would there be any reason for the state not to pass laws in favor
of the good life of its citizens.
"No government in business" was commonly called "laissez faire" and
would have left society with little power beyond that required to
prevent the strong from physically oppressing the weak.
This strange, and unexamined, belief held that there really existed,
in the long run, a "community of interests" between the members of a
society. It maintained that, in the long run, what was good for one
was bad for all. It believed that there did exist a possible social
pattern in which each member would be secure, free and prosperous.
JCT: Capitalistic laissez-faire would actually work for the
benefit of all if it weren't for some enjoying loanshark privileges.
How anyone could call capitalism where everyone has to pay a vicious
rake-off for the use of the currency "laissez-faire" or "free trade"
is quite a joke. True laissez-faire or true free trade can only be so
when the usurious shackles are abolished.
Page 26
Capitalism was an economic system in which the motivating force
was the desire for private profit as determined in a price system with
the seeking of aggrandization of profits for each individual.
JCT: I see nothing wrong with this in a "free market" which an
interest-based system is not.
Nationalism served to bind persons of the same nationality
together into a tight, emotionally satisfying, unit. On the other
side, it served to divide persons of different nationalities into
antagonistic groups, often to the injury of their real mutual
political, economic or cultural advantages.
JCT: Having a tight satisfying unit does not necessarily injure
your neighbors. This only occurs when people's are engaged in death-
gambles.
The event which destroyed the pretty dream world of 1919-1929 were the
stock market crash, the world depression, the world financial crisis.
JCT: The stock market crash, the depression and the world
financial crisis are not causes which destroyed the pretty "real"
world of Roaring Twenties. Why he'd call their real potential "dream"
escapes me though he confusing the symptoms with the cause could
explain it. It was a reduction in currency which brought stagnation to
a formerly vibrant world economy. The International Bankers had but to
reduce the amount of money in circulation to watch mankind sit down in
front of their trees with their hammers and chainsaws not unable to
house themselves. Let us remember that during the Great Depression,
the number of plants, the number of machines, the number of skilled
workers did not disappear, only the number of dollars disappeared.
Page 28
The twentieth century came to believe that human nature is, if
not innately bad, at least capable of being very evil. Left to
himself, man falls very easily to the level of the jungle or even
lower and this result can be prevent only by the coercive power of
society.
JCT: When man is forced to play financial death-gamble where the
losers are left with insufficient life-support tickets to survive, is
there any wonder that once the bankers have insisted on a "kill or be
killed" system that man falls to the level of the law of the jungle?
Along with this change from good men and bad society to bad men and
good society has appeared a reaction from optimism to pessimism. The
horrors of Hitler's concentration camps and Stalin's slave-labor units
are chiefly responsible for this change.
JCT: This is silly. None of these things would have happened had
all nations not been faced with impossible debts. Just because the
bankers have organized a deathgamble for mankind to play is no reason
to label the depths man has fallen to as a naturally occurring trait.
Yet, we do see that even good men go bad in a bad society.
And when it comes to mass murder, Hitler and Stalin's numbers
pale beside the hundreds of millions murdered by poverty that the
Rothschilds and Rockefellers can be held accountable for. And let us
never forget that Hitler and Stalin were financed by corporations
controlled by R&R and could never have been elevated to power without
their support.
I think Anthony Sutton's books "Wall Street and the Rise of
Hitler," and "Wall Street and the Rise of Bolshevism" (I'm not sure
of the second title) explain pretty clearly how Wall Street financiers
were the main supporters of both Hitler and Stalin. So we can lay
their victims at the feet of the International bankers too.
I guess by now, you must realize my abhorrence of these parasitic
families who can be likened to those who would take food from starving
children which they have done by the millions. Can anyone think of
anyone more odious than someone who would take the life-support
tickets away from a starving child. The Rothschilds and Rockefellers
have and even though many will want to have them punished after the
upcoming LETS financial revolution, my policy is to forgive and forget
because if the Lord can say that when the wicked cease their evil
ways, all their sins will be forgotten, who are we to do differently.
So though it's true that the thought of the Rothschilds and
Rockefellers make me want to puke, I'm prepared to leave them be as we
enter a millennium of peace and prosperity.
And remember that in my advocacy of "Amnesty, Anonymity,
Security," or "Forgive, Forget, Have some interest-free LETS credit,"
you'll notice the anonymity section which will permit the Rothschilds
and Rockefellers and other usurer families to change their names so no
one even knows that they were related to the monsters who enslaved and
murdered so many with their exponential debt.
If anyone thinks this is hyperbole, just remember that the
the first word in the name of their business, "mort-gage," translates
into "death."
And can there be any other reason that the usurers are the only
ones who were physically attacked by Christ in the temple?
So we are seeking an end to the death inflicted on mankind by
R&R's death-gambles which should see an almost instantaneous dawn of a
wonderful new age of peace and prosperity from the current deadly
jungle.
CHAPTER II: WESTERN CIVILIZATION TO 1914
WESTERN CIVILIZATION TO 1914
Page 39
The financial capitalist sought profits from the manipulation of
claims on money; and the monopoly capitalist sought profits from
manipulation of the market to make the market price and the amount
sold such that his profits would be maximized.
JCT: To the detriment of consumers since manipulating the value
of money and manipulating the market price does not aim at maximizing
production.
Page 41
Karl Marx,about 1850, formed his ideas of an inevitable class struggle
in which the groups of owners would become fewer and fewer and richer
and richer while the mass of workers became poorer and poorer but more
and more numerous.
JCT: Score a point for Marx in his analysis of the capitalist
malaise. As capitalist countries play "mortgage," it is inevitable
that more and more people are thrust into foreclosure and less and
less survive to be richer and richer owners.
Mass production required less labor. But mass production required mass
consumption.
JCT: And as long as robot paychecks go to only a few people and
not to the majority, especially of people who were replaced by those
robots, this dislocation will persist. Think of it as everyone owning
a robot slave to do one's work. No one would complain about losing
their job once their robot started doing it as long as they got their
usual paycheck.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Page 42
Investments in railroads, steel mills and so on could not be financed
from the profits and private fortunes of individual proprietors. New
instruments for financing industry came into existence in the form of
limited-liability corporations and investment banks. These were soon
in a position to control the chief parts of the industrial system
since they provided the capital to it. This gave rise to financial
capitalism.
JCT: Of course, King Henry's tally system of issuing currency for
large projects from the national treasury had been forgotten and
corporations and investment banks were the only way that it could
still be done while guaranteeing a large profit to the nation's rich.
Page 43
Great industrial units, working together either directly or through
cartels and trade associations, were in a position to exploit the
majority of the people. The result was a great economic crisis which
soon developed into a struggle for control of the state - the minority
hoping to use the state to defend their privileged position, the
majority hoping to use the state to curtail the power and privileges
of the minority.
JCT: So what's new? In every nation on Earth today, the minority
use the state to defend their privileged positions while the majority
have no luck at all in curtailing their power and privileges.
Capitalism, because it seems profits as its primary goal, is never
primarily seeking to achieve prosperity, high production, high
consumption, political power, patriotic improvement, or moral uplift.
JCT: And since that's what R&R want, it's want R&R get. Large
profits for the banking elite with little prosperity, never full
production unless in time of war, never high consumption and certainly
no moral uplift. I think Christ described a world ruled by Rothschild
and Rockefeller moneylenders as "like heaven but an alley where men
weep and gnash their teeth." Heck of a tribute to their control, isn't
it. What could have been a heaven for mankind in Eden has been turned
into a cesspool of misery by these banking families.
Page 44
Goods moved from low-price areas to high-price areas and money
moved from high-price areas to low-price areas because goods were more
valuable where prices were high and money was more valuable where
prices were low.
Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the
contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking
arises from failure to recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you
have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus
goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is
non-wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth.
JCT: I've never heard it described like this anywhere in
Economics or Accounting. As long as the cashier's cage is holding the
requisite amount of collateral for every token issued, there's nothing
wrong with treating the claim on wealth as wealth though once
economists have divorced money from collateral, problems do arise.
Page 45
In time, some merchants turned their attention from exchange of goods
to the monetary side of the exchange. They became concerned with the
lending of money to merchants to finance their ships and their
activities, advancing money for both, at high interest rates, secured
by claims on ships or goods as collateral for repayment and made it
possible for people to concentrate on one portion of the process and,
by maximizing that portion, to jeopardize the rest.
JCT: And jeopardize the rest they have. This should be R&R's
epitaph: they concentrated on the process while jeopardizing the rest.
Page 46
Three parts of the system, production, transfer, and consumption of
goods were concrete and clearly visible so that almost anyone could
grasp them simply examining them while the operations of banking and
finance were concealed, scattered, and abstract so that they appeared
to many to be difficult. To add to this, bankers themselves did
everything they could to make their activities more secret and more
esoteric. Their activities were reflected in mysterious marks in
ledgers which were never opened to the curious outsider.
JCT: David Astle repeatedly makes the same point. There's
something about bankers' operations that necessitate people not
finding out how it works. Still, given how the process has been
confused in the study of banking by economists, one has to wonder what
there was to hide. With professional economists leading the confusion,
today's world is in no better shape that societies in antiquity.
Still, the main goal was to hide the fact that people were in
fact borrowing new credit money and not someone else's savings. Though
you might accept paying interest for the use of someone's deferred
savings, it's hard to rationalize paying interest for no one's
deferred savings. This is the reason Economics spends so much time
instilling the infamous doublethink that loans are depositors' funds
while admitting that new money is also created.
So the mystery is over. Bankers do not lend out their depositors'
funds, no one is deferring their current consumption and no one needs
be rewarded with interest for that deferred consumption. Bankers lend
out new funds and scam the borrowers into paying interest on the false
belief that they're getting it from depositors who are deferring
consumption.
Changes of prices, whether inflationary or deflationary, have been
major forces in history for the last six centuries at least.
JCT: Probably for the last six millennia if we can believe
Astle's research. Still it's nice to have a major historian admit
that the financial manipulations of international bankers have been
the major forces of history. We'll see how over and over.
Page 47
Hundreds of years ago, bankers began to specialize, with richer and
more influential ones associated increasingly with foreign trade and
foreign-exchange transactions. Since these were richer and more
cosmopolitan and increasingly concerned with questions of political
significance, such as stability and debasement of currencies, war and
peace, dynastic marriages, and worldwide trading monopolies, they
became financiers and financial advisers of governments. Moreover,
they were always obsessed with the stability of monetary exchanges and
used their power and influence to do two things:
1) to get all money and debts expressed in terms of strictly limited
commodity - ultimately gold; and
JCT: And we'll read over and over how their concern over the
buying power of their gold superseded the well-being of the peoples
every time. The standard argument is that money given a high value by
scarcity was good for the people since their money bought them more.
The fact that this was great for those who had most of the money seems
to have dwarfed the realization that this was not great for the
majority who had little money.
2) to get all monetary matters out of the control of governments and
political authority, on the ground that they would be handled better
by private banking interests in terms of such a stable value of gold.
JCT: You'll hear this argument ad nauseam, that governments are
too irresponsible to be left in charge of the money system which
should be left to experts like bankers and economists. Given their
track records, I doubt this was such a great idea and I can't imagine
how any government could have caused as much calamity as these private
bankers have done with their control of the money. And if you're going
to genocide millions of people by poverty, shouldn't it at least be a
government doing the genocide rather than a few private families?
The problem is that governments usually get blamed for the
genocide of the poor by withdrawal of life-support tickets even though
they are not even in control; though they should be.
INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM, 1770-1850
Page 48
Britain's victories had many causes such as its ability to control the
sea and its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of
the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and
religious groups. Also, financially, England had discovered the secret
of credit and economically, it had embarked on the Industrial
Revolution.
JCT: England had discovered the secret of credit? I think it had
been discovered millennia ago though it was certainly kept secret as
best they could.
Credit had been known to the Italians and Netherlanders long before it
became one of the instruments of English world supremacy.
Nevertheless, the founding of the Bank of England by William Paterson
and his friends in 1694 is one of the great dates in world history.
For generations, men had sought to avoid the one drawback of gold, its
heaviness, by using pieces of paper to represent specific pieces of
gold. Today, we call such pieces of paper gold certificates which
entitles its bearer to exchange it for its piece of gold on demand,
but in view of the convenience of paper, only a small fraction of
certificate holders ever did make such demands. It early became clear
that gold need be held on hand only to the amount needed to cover the
fraction of certificates likely to be presented for payment;
accordingly, the rest of the gold could be used for business purposes,
or, what amounts to the same thing, a volume of certificates could be
issued greater than the volume of gold reserved for payment of demands
against them. such an excess volume of paper claims against reserves
we now call bank notes.
JCT: Once again we run into an explanation of the goldsmith scam
to explain how credit is just as valid a currency as actual commodity
tokens are.
In effect, this creation of paper claims greater than the reserves
available means that bankers were creating money out of nothing.
JCT: Of course, Economics professors Flaherty and Simms are still
teaching their students that bankers lend out their depositors' funds.
I'm sure most other Economics professors are teaching this false
belief too. Of course, that they were creating credit out of thin air
was one of the things bankers worked to hard at keeping secret and it
seems is still quite unknown to the majority of Economics teachers.
The same thing could be done in another way, not by note-issuing banks
but by deposit banks. Deposit bankers discovered that orders and
checks drawn against deposits by depositors and given to third persons
were often not cashed by the latter but were deposited to their own
accounts. Thus there were no actual movements of funds, and payments
were made simply by bookkeeping transactions on the accounts.
Accordingly, it was necessary for the banker to keep on hand in actual
money (gold, certificates and notes) no more than the fraction of
deposits likely to be drawn upon and cashed; the rest could be used
for loans and if these loans were made by creating a deposit for the
borrower, who in turn would draw checks upon it rather than withdraw
it in money, such "created deposits" or loans could also be covered
adequately by retaining reserves to only a fraction of their value.
Such created deposits also were a creation of money out of nothing,
although bankers usually refused to express their actions, either note
issuing or deposit lending, in these terms. William Paterson, on
obtaining the charter of the Bank of England, said "the Bank hath
benefit of interest on all moneys it creates out of nothing." This is
generally admitted today.
JCT: Again, such "created deposits" or "loans" were the creation
of money out of nothing even though Flaherty and Simms violently
disagree. They still think that piggy banks create money though I've
challenged them to explain where the piggy bank got the new money and
they've never been able to answer.
This organizational structure for creating means of payment out of
nothing, which we call credit, was not invented by England but was
developed by her to become one of her chief weapons in the victory
over Napoleon in 1815. The emperor, could not see money in any but
concrete terms, and was convinced that his efforts to fight wars on
the basis of "sound money" by avoiding the creation of credit, would
ultimately win him a victory by bankrupting England. He was wrong
although the lesson has had to be relearned by modern financiers in
the twentieth century.
JCT: Boy, did he ever blow it. Of course, LETS shows that pure
credit works as currency just fine and if Napeleon restricted his
money to metal base, then he was under the control of the bullion
brokers as every king of antiquity mentioned by Astle.
FINANCIAL CAPITALISM 1850-1931
Page 50
The third stage of capitalism is of such overwhelming significance in
the history of the twentieth century, and its ramifications and
influences have been so subterranean and even occult, that we may be
excused if we devote considerate attention to this organization and
methods.
JCT: Banking as subterranean and even occult? Why not? Given the
International bankers were planning the murder by war and famines of
millions, could be anything but subterranean and occult. I've always
said that such people would have to have an almost "alien" mentality
in order to calmly inflict poverty and starvation on millions of
people without any qualms.
When I watch the X-Files' suggestions of alien conspiracies, I'd
have no problem believing that if aliens were here and controlling the
planet, they would inevitably be international bankers in order to
control human activity and given their obvious lack of care for the
well-being of the humanoid population, I would have no trouble at all
with the hypothesis that the Rockefellers and Rothschilds are alien
life forms. I can't believe that humanoids could so callously have
condemned so many humans to death by poverty.
Of course, they're probably just humans who have become monsters
due to the inbreeding among the elite banking families. I find it hard
to believe that they belong to any part of a caring human race.
Essentially, what it did was to take the old disorganized and
localized methods of handling money and credit and organize them into
an integrated system, on an international basis, which worked with
incredible and well-oiled facility for many decades. The center of
that system was in London, with major offshoots in New York and Paris
and it has left, as its greatest achievement, an integrated banking
system and a heavily capitalized - if now largely obsolescent -
framework of heavy industry, reflected in railroads, steel mills, coal
mines and electrical utilities.
JCT: And of course, those who believe in the accidental theory of
history pooh-pooh the thought that these men would use their organized
integrated system for their own benefit to the murderous detriment of
the rest of humanity. Fortunately, the facts show that such an
accidental view of history is quite silly and leaves us with the only
conclusion that they in fact did use their control of the world's
money to manipulate the world's peoples into war after war and
depression after depression.
This system had its center in London for four chief reasons. First was
the great volume of savings in England. Second was England's
oligarchic social structure which provided a very inequitable
distribution of incomes with large surpluses coming to the control of
a small, energetic upper class. Third was that this upper class was
aristocratic but not noble, quite willing to recruit both money and
ability from lower levels and even from outside the country, welcoming
American heiresses and central-European Jews to its ranks almost as
willingly as it welcomed monied, able and conformist recruits from the
lower classes of Englishmen. Fourth (and by no means last) in
significance was the skill in financial manipulation, especially on
the international scene, which the small group of merchant bankers of
London had acquired.
JCT: So the knowledge of credit creation was still a secret but
these men knew about it, and how to use it to their advantage.
In time, they brought into their financial network the provincial
banking centers as well as insurance companies to form all of these
into a single financial system on an international scale which
manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to
influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on
the other.
JCT: So the Rothschilds and Rockefellers controlled both
governments and industries. It does explain why so many policies which
starved so many people paid off so handsomely for them. Even though
they always acted behind the scenes, it's pretty obvious that Quigley
places the control for world events in their hands. And of course, had
they chosen to finance food production instead of war production,
there would have been no wars possible. Certainly not the large, well-
financed productions they did organize for humankind.
The men who did this, looking backward toward the period of dynastic
monarchy in which they had their own roots, aspired to establish
dynasties of international bankers and were at least as successful at
this as were many of the dynastic political rulers. The greatest of
these dynasties, of course, were the descendants of Meyer Amschel
Rothschild (1743-1812) whose male descendants for at least two
generations, generally married first cousins or even nieces.
Rothschilds five sons, established at branches in Vienna, London,
Naples and Paris as well as Frankfort, cooperated together in ways
which other international banking dynasties copied but rarely
excelled.
JCT: And even though his five sons were lauded for their support
of each countries war efforts, the point is that they financed all
sides of those wars and without their support for all sides of those
wars, there wouldn't have been any wars. I find it funny how Quigley
will later say that they were forces for peace but we do find that he
often lauds these men who would steal food tickets from starving
children.
In concentrating, as we must, on the financial or economic activities
of international bankers, we must not totally ignore their other
attributes. They were cosmopolitan rather than nationalistic; they
were a constant, if weakening, influence for peace, a pattern
established in 1830 and 1840 when the Rothschilds threw their whole
tremendous influence successfully against European wars.
JCT: This is the joke about them being forces for peace I was
referring to. The guys who financed all the wars and without whose
financing there could have been no wars, are forces for peace. How
amusing.
They were usually highly civilized, cultured gentlemen, patrons of
education and of the arts, so that today, colleges, professorships,
opera companies, symphonies, libraries, and museum collections still
reflect their munificence. For these purposes they set a pattern of
endowed foundations which still surround us today.
JCT: Being patrons of the arts and giving gave back a bit of what
they'd stolen from the starving children doesn't make them saints in
my books. The fact is that they did not earn their ill-gotten gain and
the fact they gave some back doesn't change my impression of them in
the least.
The names of some of these banking families are familiar to all
of us and should be more so. They include Baring, Lazard, Erlanger,
Warburg, Schroder, Seligman, Speyers, Mirabaud, Mallet, Fould and
above all Rothschild and Morgan.
JCT: Names that will live in infamy. But once we've installed our
Global LETS, their descendants will all be allowed to change their
names though the history books will certainly treat the names of these
monsters accordingly.
Even after these banking families became fully involved in domestic
industry by the emergence of financial capitalism, they remained
different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways:
1) they were cosmopolitan and international;
JCT: Which accounts for their great power and the inability of
any national governments to control them. Rather control worked
the other way around.
2) they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with
questions of government debts, including foreign government debts,
even in areas which seemed, at first glance, poor risks, like Egypt,
Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Imperial China and Latin America;
JCT: Nothing better than having a government license your
creation of money and then getting in line so you can loanshark it to
them. In this way, governments are responsible for the tax collections
to pay the loansharks which certainly beats them having to do their
collections themselves.
3) their interests were almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in
goods since they admired "liquidity";
JCT: So their major interests did absolutely no good for the
people who were more interested in goods than bonds.
4) they were fanatical devotees of deflation (which they called
"sound" money from its close association with high interest rates and
a high value of money) and of the gold standard;
JCT: And the fact that millions of people who had no money
suffered so the owners of the bulk of the money could benefit by such
deflationary policies was of no concern to them. We'll read over and
over about how these deflationary policies cause misery and death
among the poor but continue to be pursued relentlessly by these non-
human monsters.
5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of
financial influence in political life. These bankers came to be called
"international bankers" and were known as "merchant bankers" in
England, "private bankers" in France and "investment bankers" in the
United States.
JCT: I wouldn't want the general population to be aware of the
misery I'd caused them either and I can understand why they'd want
their activities to be couched in secrecy.
Everywhere, they were sharply distinguishable from other, more
obvious, kinds of banks, such as savings banks or commercial banks.
One of their less obvious characteristics was that they remained as
private unincorporated firms offering no shares, no reports, and
usually no advertising to the public until modern inheritance taxes
made it essential to surround such family wealth with the immortality
of corporate status for tax-avoidance purposes. This persistence as
private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity
and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public
knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as inflation.
JCT: And if people realised what phenomenal profits they made
from the sufferings of the general population, they might rise up
against the bankers rather than their front governments for a change.
Notice that Christ's only incident of physical violence was not
against the Roman or Jewish government but against the money-lenders
who probably controlled the government as they do today. He wasn't
fooled into blaming the government when he knew that the ones
responsible for his generation's debt enslavement were the financiers
just as they are today.
Page 53
Firms like Morgan, like others of the international banking
fraternity, constantly operated through corporations and governments,
yet remained itself an obscure private partnership.
JCT: That way, the sheeple would blame the government for their
misfortunes rather than the moneylenders who actually were responsible
for their misery.
The influence of financial capitalism and the international bankers
who created it was exercised both on business and on governments, but
could have neither if it had not been able to persuade both these to
accept two "axioms" of its own ideology. Both of these were based on
the assumption that politicians were too weak and too subject to
temporary public pressures to be trusted with control of the money
system; accordingly, the soundness of money must be protected in two
ways: by basing the value of money on gold and by allowing bankers to
control the money supply. To do this it was necessary to conceal, even
mislead, both governments and people about the nature of money and its
methods of operation.
JCT: How well put. And we hear the same rationale today. Yet,
considering their track record, I'd have rather had government control
it. Especially considering the track records of government which
actually did control their money, examples of which I have already
detailed. Roman copper money, English tallies, Lincoln Greenbacks were
all Treasury currencies which benefited their citizens. Unfortunately,
these have been erased from economic histories being taught in every
Economics faculty in the world. Please do not think that these
omissions are accidental. It's just part of the secrecy they need to
keep the people ignorant of how money works. Of course, with
professional economists leading the confusion, it actually is a feat
of intellectual prowess to defeat the brainwashing and find out about
and understand how these interest-free models did work.
Page 54
Since it is quite impossible to understand the history of the
twentieth century without some understanding of the role played by
money in domestic affairs and in foreign affairs, as well as the role
played by bankers in economic life and in political life, we must take
a least a glance at each of these four subjects:
JCT: And yet, Quigley's is the only orthodox history I've ever
read which makes any mention at all of the effects of money in
manipulating human affairs.
DOMESTIC FINANCIAL PRACTICES
In each country, the supply of money took the form of an inverted
pyramid or cone balanced on its point. In the point was the supply of
gold and its equivalent certificates; on the intermediate levels was a
much larger supply of notes; and at the top, with an open and
expandable upper surface, was an even greater supply of deposits. Each
level used the levels below it as its reserves and these lower levels
had smaller quantities of money, they were "sounder."
Notes were issued by "banks of emission" or "banks of issue" and were
secured by reserves of gold or certificates held in some central
reserve. The fraction held in reserve depended upon banking
regulations or statute law. Such banks, even central banks, were
private institutions, owned by shareholders who profited by their
operations.
Deposits on the upper level of the pyramid were called by this name,
with typical bankers' ambiguity, in spite of the fact that they
consisted of two utterly different kinds of relationships:
1) "lodged deposits" which were real claims left by a depositor in a
bank on which a depositor might receive interest; and
2) "created deposits" which were claims created by the bank out of
nothing as loans from the bank to "depositors" who had to pay interest
on them.
Both form part of the money supply. Lodged deposits as a form of
savings are deflationary while created deposits, being an addition to
the money supply, are inflationary.
JCT: Pretty good explanation of how the world's money system
works though, like every economist, the idea of linking the issuance
of new chips to an increase in pledge collateral cannot be grasped. If
deposits are created at the pledging of new collateral, then it is not
inflationary. Every good casino cashier understands the link between
the increase in money matching the increase in collateral though very
few economists can understand this link.
Page 55
The volume of deposits banks can create, like the amount of notes they
can issue, depends upon the volume of reserves available to pay
whatever fraction of checks are cashed rather than deposited. In the
United States, deposits were traditionally limited to ten times
reserves notes and gold. In Britain it was usually nearer twenty times
such reserves. In most countries, the central bank was surrounded
closely by the almost invisible private investment banking firms.
These, like the planet Mercury, could hardly be seen in the dazzle
emitted by the central bank, which they, in fact, often dominated. Yet
a lost observer could hardly fail to notice the close private
associations between these private, international bankers and the
central bank itself. In France, in 1936, the Board of the Bank of
France was still dominated by the names of the families who had
originally set it up in 1800.
JCT: So even though most people think that the Bank of Canada,
the Bank of France, the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve are
controlled by government for the good of the people, they are actually
all controlled by the private bankers for the good of the private
bankers and the detriment of the people in general.
In England, a somewhat similar situation existed. In a secondary ring
are the "joint stock banks." Outside this secondary ring are the
savings banks, insurance firms, and trust companies.
In France and England the private bankers exercised their powers
through the central bank and had much more influence on the government
and foreign policy and less on industry. In the United States, much
industry was financed by investment bankers directly and the power of
these both on industry and government was very great.
JCT: The point is that government had no control over financial
policies which hurt so many people and helped so few bankers.
Page 57
The various parts of the pyramid of money were but loosely related to
each other. Much of this looseness arose from the fact that the
controls were compulsive in a deflationary direction and were only
permissive in an inflationary direction. This last point can be seen
in the fact that the supply of gold could be decreased but could
hardly be increased. If an ounce of gold was added to the point of the
pyramid, it could permit an increase in deposits equivalent to $2067
on the uppermost level. If such an ounce of gold were withdrawn from a
fully expanded pyramid of money, this would compel a reduction of
deposits by at least this amount, probably by a refusal to renew
loans.
JCT: So the guys who owned the gold could force the banks to call
in their loans and precipitate credit crunches just by moving gold
around. David Astle keeps pointing out how currencies based on gold or
silver are subject to this same control.
Throughout modern history, the influence of the gold standard has been
deflationary, because the natural output of gold each year, except in
extraordinary times, has not kept pace with the increase in the output
of goods. Only new supplies of gold or the development of new kinds of
money have saved our civilization over the last couple of centuries.
The three great periods of war ended with an extreme deflationary
crisis (1819, 1873, 1921) as the influential Money Power persuaded
governments to re-establish a deflationary monetary unit with a high
gold content.
JCT: Money Power persuaded governments to get back on gold which
subjected the people to poverty and death while profiting the bankers
to high interest rates. The usual bankers' prescription for financial
ills.
The obsession of the Money Power with deflation was partly a result of
their concern with money rather than with goods but was also founded
on other factors, one of which was paradoxical. The paradox arose from
the fact that the basic economic conditions of the nineteenth century
were deflationary, with a monetary system based on gold and an
industrial system pouring out increasing supplies of goods but in
spite of falling prices, the interest rate tended to fall rather than
rise. Moreover, merchant banking continued to emphasize bonds rather
than equity securities (stocks), to favor government issues rather
than private offerings.
JCT: Is it any wonder that the guys who own all the money and
control the creation of new money would want their money to buy them
more and more even though those who have no money end up with less and
less?
Another paradox of banking practice arose from the fact that bankers,
who loved deflation, often acted in an inflationary fashion from their
eagerness to lend money at interest. Since they make money out of
loans, they are eager to increase the amounts of bank credit on loan.
But this is inflationary.
JCT: It's only inflationary when they don't demand collateral for
the loan. And how many bankers don't demand collateral? So usually,
the creation of new money is not inflationary though a large injection
of new money, such as a gold strike, would certainly be inflationary.
The conflict between the deflationary ideas and inflationary practices
of bankers had profound repercussions on business. The bankers made
loans to business so that the volume of money increased faster than
the increase of goods. The result was inflation. When this became
clearly noticeable, the bankers would flee to notes or specie by
curtailing credit and raising discount rates. This was beneficial to
the bankers in the short run (since it allowed them to foreclose on
collateral for loans) but it could be disastrous to them in the long
run (by forcing the value of the collateral below the amount of the
loans it secured). But such bankers' deflation was destructive to
business and industry in the short run as well as the long run.
JCT: It was never disastrous to the bankers at all. When times
were good, they got large interest and large fees and when times were
bad, they got the foreclosed collateral for a song, even if its value
was less than the original value of the loan.
Page 59
The resulting fluctuation in the supply of money, chiefly deposits,
was a prominent aspect of the "business cycle." The quantity of money
could be changed by changing reserve requirements or discount
(interest) rates. Central banks can usually vary the amount of money
in circulation by "open market operations" or by influencing the
discount rates of lesser banks. In open market operations, a central
bank buys or sells government bonds in the open market. If it buys, it
releases money into the economic system; it if sells it reduces the
amount of money in the community. If the Federal Reserve Bank buys, it
pays for these by checks which are soon deposited in a bank. It thus
increases this bank's reserves with the Federal Reserve Bank. Since
banks are permitted to issue loans for several times the value of
their reserves with the FED, such a transaction permits them to issue
loans for a much larger sum.
JCT: Actually, here he repeats the same old Socred canard that
the banks can issue more in loans than their reserves. If they can
issue only 90% of the deposits, it is never possible to issue more
than the reserves. I explained this just recently. The loan must be
deposited before a new loan can be issued to cause another deposit to
permit a new loan to cause another deposit, etc. See my
http://turmelpress.com/bankmath.htm for a fuller treatment.
Central banks can also change the quantity of money by raising the
discount rate which forces the lesser banks to raise their discount
rates; such a raise in interest rates tends to reduce the demand for
credit and thus the amount of deposits (money). Lowering the discount
rate permits an opposite result.
JCT: If one believes that inflation is an increase in the money
supply, then restricting the growth in the money by raising interest
rates is the solution Shift A inflation. If one believes today's
inflation is a decrease in the goods supply being purchased by the
money created, then reducing the unpurchasable portion by lowering
interest rates is the solution to Shift B inflation. The fact that a
large injection of new local bond currency issued by Argentina
provinces in the mid 1980s lowered inflation is persuasive proof that
we are suffering inflation due to failure caused by interest rate
rather than inflation due to too much money.
It is noted that the control of the central bank over the credit
policies of local banks are permissive in one direction and compulsive
in the other. They can compel these local banks to curtail credit and
can only permit them to increase credit. This means that they have
control powers against inflation and not deflation - a reflection of
the old banking idea that inflation was bad and deflation was good.
JCT: Yes, this is a very interesting point. They can always
compel a depression while they can only permit a boom.
Page 60
The powers of governments over the quantity of money are:
a) control over a central bank;
JCT: What a joke. No government in the world controls its central
bank. The private banks do.
b) control over public taxation;
c) control over public spending;
JCT: Neither of these who controls the money supply, they only
shuffle money from our accounts to the governments or vice versa. What
governments really need to do is go the Third Way which is not even
mentioned here: Cut debt service.
Since most central banks have been (technically) private institutions,
this control is frequently based on custom rather than on law.
JCT: Very few people know this and very few economists accept it.
For instance, though it's not of major importance, the Federal Reserve
of the United States, though its directors are appointed by the
President, is not a government body but a purely private one. It has
never been audited by the government and it is not even listed with
the other government agencies in the telephone book. It is listed with
all other private corporations in the white pages.
This is not a major point given that the Bank of Canada is a
government agency which also acts independently of government. So even
when part of the government, they are left independent to further the
aims of the private bankers in their orbit.
Taxation tends to reduce the amount of money in a community and is
usually a deflationary force. Government spending is usually an
inflationary force.
JCT: As if the government takes money out of circulation via
taxes and doesn't spend it back. Considering that most governments
operate on deficits, this implies that every dollar taken in in taxes
is spent so there is no deflationary effect.
On the whole, in the period up to 1931, bankers, especially the Money
Power controlled by the international investment bankers, were able to
dominate both business and government. They could dominate business
because investment bankers had the ability to supply or refuse to
supply such capital. Thus Rothschild interests came to dominate many
of the railroads of Europe, while Morgan dominated at least 26,000
miles of American railroads. Such bankers took seats on the boards of
directors of industrial firms, as they had already done on commercial
banks, savings banks, insurance firms, and finance companies. From
these lesser institutions, they funneled capital to enterprises which
yielded control and away from those who resisted. These firms were
controlled through interlocking directorships, holding companies, and
lesser banks.
JCT: People tend to undervalue this power to deny loans of new
money to their enemies while authorizing loans to their friends so
they can buy the less-favored enterprises at auction after
foreclosure. As Astle points out, such power is too great for private
individuals and should be restricted to the rulers who, hopefully,
will be issuing such loans for the benefit of their citizens.
Page 61
As early as 1909, Walter Rathenau said, "Three hundred men, all of
whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and
choose their successors from among themselves."
JCT: These are the men responsible for the millions of deaths by
poverty and war in those times.
The power of investment bankers over governments rests on the need of
governments to issue short-term treasury bills as well as long-term
government bonds. Just as businessmen go to commercial banks for
current capital advances, so a government has to go to merchant
bankers to tide over the shallow places caused by irregular tax
receipts.
JCT: Of course, such power is only over governments stupid enough
to have taken the power to create money from their own Treasuries and
given it to private banks. Only the idiot government are in such a
ridiculous position. Unfortunately, this comprises all the governments
of today's world except for the Island of Guernsey and perhaps some of
the Argentinian provinces. Otherwise, all governments have given the
power to create money to private bankers and are in line with all
their citizens trying to borrow that money.
As experts in government bonds, the international bankers provided
advice to government officials and, on many occasions, placed their
own members in official posts. This was so widely accepted even today,
that in 1961 a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the
Treasury in a Democratic administration in Washington without
significant comment from any direction.
JCT: So the bankers have advised the governments to give them the
power to create the money and advised them to get into debt to them
and advised them to tax everyone to pay them interest.
Naturally, the influence of bankers over governments during the age of
financial capitalism (roughly 1850-1931) was not something about which
anyone talked about freely, but it has been admitted freely enough by
those on the inside, especially in England. In 1842, Gladstone,
chancellor of the Exchequer, declared "The hinge of the whole
situation was this: the government itself was not to be the
substantive power in matters of Finance, but was to leave the Money
Power supreme and unquestioned." On Sept. 26, 1921, the Financial
Times wrote, "Half a dozen men at the top of the Big Five Banks could
upset the whole fabric of government finance by refraining from
renewing Treasury Bills." In 1924, Sir Drummond Fraser, vice-president
of the Institute of Bankers, stated, "The Governor of the Bank of
England must be the autocrat who dictates the terms upon which alone
the Government can obtain borrowed money."
JCT: So these few men can be held responsible for the state of
the world in those years. He leaves no doubt that the international
bankers were in control just as Astle leaves no doubt that they were
in control in antiquity.
Page 62
In addition to their power over government based on government
financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in
ways they wished them to go by other pressures. Since most government
officials felt ignorant of finance, they sought advice from bankers
whom they considered experts in the field. The history of the last
century shows that the advice given to governments by bankers, like
the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for
bankers but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen and the
people generally.
JCT: Actually, genocidal for the people generally. The results of
their actions qualify these bankers as monsters in anyone's book.
Such advice could be enforced if necessary by manipulation of
exchanges, gold flows, discount rates, and even levels of business
activity. Thus Morgan dominated Cleveland's second administration by
gold withdrawals, and in 1936-13 French foreign exchange manipulators
paralyzed the Popular Front governments. The powers of these
international bankers reached their peak in 1919-1931 when Montagu
Norman and J.P. Morgan dominated not only the financial world but
international relations and other matters as well. On Nov. 11, 1927,
the Wall Street Journal called Mr. Norman "the currency dictator of
Europe." This was admitted by Mr. Norman who said, "I hold the
hegemony of the world."
JCT: International bankers admitted they ruled the world.
The conflict of interests between bankers and industrialists has
resulted in the subordination of the bankers (after 1931) to the
latter by the adoption of "unorthodox financial policies" - that is,
financial policies not in accordance with the short-run interests of
the bankers.
JCT: Interesting that "unorthodox financial policies" which
were in the interest of the people and not in the interests of the
bankers are not explained, only mentioned. As I've pointed out, these
unorthodox financial practices were the policies of the Roman Empire
with their Treasury's copper money, King Henry I with his Treasury's
wooden "tally money" and Abe Lincoln with his paper "Treasury notes"
which have disappeared down the economics history memory holes.
THE UNITED STATES TO 1917
Page 71
The civil service reform began in the federal government with the
Pendleton Bill of 1883. As a result, the government was controlled
with varying degrees of completeness by the forces of investment
banking and heavy industry from 1884 to 1933. Popularly known as
"Society," or the "400," they lived a life of dazzling splendor.
JCT: The bankers lived on their ill-gotten unearned interest
income while the rest of the population suffered in poverty. I wonder
what kind of Hell God has in store for them?
Page 72
The structure of financial control created by the tycoons of "Big
Banking" and "Big Business" in the period 1880-1933 was of
extraordinary complexity, one business fief being built upon another,
both being allied with semi-independent associates, the whole rearing
upward into two pinnacles of economic and financial power, of which
one, centered in New York, was headed by J.P. Morgan and Company, and
the other, in Ohio, was headed by the Rockefeller family. When these
two cooperated, as they generally did, they could influence the
economic life of the country to a large degree and could almost
control its political life, at least on the federal level.
The influence of these business leaders was so great that the Morgan
and Rockefeller groups acting together, or even Morgan acting alone,
could have wrecked the economic system of the country merely by
throwing securities on the stock market for sale, and having
precipitated a stock market panic, could then have bought back the
securities they had sold but at a lower price. Naturally, they were
not so foolish as to do this, although Morgan came very close to it in
precipitating the "panic of 1907," but they did not hesitate to wreck
individual corporations, at the expense of holders of common stock, by
driving them to bankruptcy. In this way, Morgan wrecked the New York,
New Haven and Hartford railroad before 1914 and William Rockefeller
wrecked the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad before
1925.
JCT: Seems pretty clear that the bankers controlled the US in
these years as they still do today. Of course, accidentalists will
argue that these pillars of power were never used and if used, their
genocidal results were accidental given their benign intentions. After
all, didn't these men donate some of the money to set up libraries?
Page 73
The discovery by financial capitalists that they made money out of
issuing and selling securities rather than out of production,
distribution and consumption of goods accordingly led them to the
point where they discovered that the exploiting of an operating
company by excessive issuance of securities or the issuance of bonds
rather than equity securities not only was profitable to them but made
it possible for them to increase their profits by bankruptcy of the
firm, providing fees and commission of reorganization as well as the
opportunity to issue new securities.
When the business interests pushed through the first installment of
the civil service reform in 1881, they expected to control both
political parties equally. Some intended to contribute to both and to
allow an alternation of the two parties in public office in order to
conceal their own influence, inhibit any exhibition of independence by
politicians, and allow the electorate to believe that they were
exercising their own free choice.
JCT: Such control continues today. Most of the influential
politicians of both the Democrats and Republicans belong to the
Council on Foreign Relations, a Rockefeller control group.
The inability of the investment bankers to control the Democratic
Party Convention of 1896 was a result of the agrarian discontent of
the period 1868-1896. This discontent was based very largely on the
monetary tactics of the banking oligarchy. The bankers were wedded to
the gold standard and at the end of the Civil War, persuaded the Grant
administration to curb the postwar inflation and go back on the gold
standard (crash of 1873 and resumption of specie payment in 1875).
JCT: So, going back on the gold standard to please the owners
of gold caused the crash of 1873 to the detriment of the majority of
Americans. We'll see this theme over and over in our studies.
Page 74
This gave the bankers a control of the supply of money which they did
not hesitate to use for their own purposes.
JCT: No kidding. Still, how will the accidentalists account for
all these benefits to their purposes?
The bankers' affection for low prices was not shared by farmers, since
each time prices of farm products went down, the burden of farmers'
debts became greater. As farmers could not reduce their costs or
modify their production plans, the result was a systematic
exploitation of the agrarian sectors of the community by the financial
and industrial sectors. This exploitation took the form of high
industrial prices and discriminatory railroad rates, high interest
charges, low farm prices and very low level of farm services.
JCT: Every time we hear of deflationary policies, we're talking
about higher interest rates for the owners of money, more foreclosure
for their debtors, and misery for the population in general. I've had
much experience helping people who were losing their homes fight their
foreclosures and there's nothing as heart-breaking to behold. Having
fought dozens of foreclosures, I feel eminently qualified to call the
men responsible for these policies in olden times or today as monsters
whose souls I hope will burn in Hell.
Unable to resist by economic weapons, the farmers turned to political
relief. They tried to work on the state political level through local
legislation (so-called Granger Laws) and set up third-party movements
(like the Greenback Party of 1878 or the Populist Party in 1892).
JCT: In the early 1980s, I contemplated calling my party a
Greenback party and they have a rousing history of political revolt
against their oppressors though they had no chance against Big Money
who could influence the majority of the booboisie.
By 1896, the capture of the Democratic Party by the forces of
discontent under William Jennings Bryant who was determined to obtain
higher prices by increasing the supply of money on a bimetallic rather
than a gold basis, presented the electorate with an election on a
social and economic issue for the first time in a generation. Though
the forces of high finance were in a state of near panic, by a mighty
effort involving very large-scale spending they were successful in
electing McKinley.
JCT: And things went on as usual though I'm not sure Astle would
agree that adding silver as a secondary base for the creation of new
money would be much of an improvement. Of course, any new source of
money with which to sell their products and pay their debts would have
been a help.
Though the plutocracy were unable to control the Democratic Party as
they controlled the Republican Party, they did not cease their efforts
to control both and in 1904 and 1924, Morgan was able to sit back with
a feeling of satisfaction to watch presidential elections in which the
candidates of both parties were in his sphere of influence.
JCT: Just as Rockefeller has controlled both parties for the last
50 years through his Council on Foreign Relations.
Page 75
The agrarian discontent, the growth of monopolies, the oppression
of labor, and the excesses of Wall Street financiers made the country
very restless between 1890-1900. All this could have been alleviated
merely by increasing the supply of money sufficiently to raise prices
somewhat, but the financiers were determined to defend the gold
standard no matter what happened.
JCT: What happened was wave after wave of foreclosures, suicides,
hunger and misery, all the things that bankers thrive upon.
In looking for some issue to distract public discontent from domestic
issues, what better solution than a crisis in foreign affairs?
Cleveland had stumbled upon this alternative in 1895 when he stirred
up controversy with England over Venezuela. The great opportunity came
with the Cuban revolt against Spain in 1895. While the "yellow press"
roused public opinion, Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt
plotted how they could best get the United States into the fracas.
They got the excuse they needed when the American battleship Maine was
sunk by a mysterious explosion in Havana Harbor in 1898. In two
months, the United States declared war on Spain to fight for Cuban
independence. The resulting victory revealed the United States as a
world naval power, established it as an imperialist power with
possession of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
America's entrance upon the stage as a world power continued with the
annexation of Hawaii in 1898, the intervention in the Boxer uprising
in 1900, the seizure of the Panama canal in 1903, the diplomatic
intervention in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, the military
occupation of Nicaragua in 1912, the military intervention in Mexico
in 1916.
JCT: It still works today too. It seems nothing gets a population
to rally around the leader better than killing a few foreigners. I
think Bill Clinton's use of Iraqi bombing at a propitious moment
during his problems certainly gained him a great measure of approval.
Though people love seeing their smart V2 bombs taking out targets on
TV, I think they would be well served to also see some television
coverage of the funerals that resulted.
Page 76
As an example of the more idealistic impulse we might mention the
creation of various Carnegie foundations to work for universal peace.
JCT: Again, I can't help snickering when I think of monsters with
the blood of millions of innocent debtors on their hands "working for
universal peace." I can believe that the only peace they really are
working for is the peace provided when they've achieved universal
bondage by debts.
As an example of the more practical point of view, we might mention
the founding of "The New Republic," a liberal weekly paper, by an
agent of Morgan financed with Whitney money (1914).
The combined forces of the liberal East and the agrarian West were
able to capture the Presidency under Woodrow Wilson in 1912.
JCT: The Agrarian West didn't capture the presidency under
Wilson. Wilson was a banker's all the way who will be most remembering
for his campaign pledge not to send their sons to any foreign wars
while he was planning to send their sons to foreign wars.
Wilson roused a good deal of popular enthusiasm with his talk of "New
Freedom" and the rights of the underdog, but his program amounted to
little more than an amateur attempt to establish on a federal basis
those reforms which agrarian and labor discontent had been seeking on
a state basis for many years.
JCT: As are most bankers agents, he was all talk and no action.
It might be called an amateurish attempt if it were an honest attempt
but considering it was probably not an honest attempt, I think it
would be better to have called his attempt to help the poor
"fraudulent."
Wilson was by no means a radical and there was a good deal of
unconscious hypocrisy in many of his resounding public speeches.
JCT: The most successful politicians are always the most
hypocritical liars. He was a great one leading voters to believe he
had their interests at heart while having Wall Street's interest truly
at heart.
His political and administrative reforms were a good deal more
effective than his economic or social reforms.
JCT: That's because political and administrative reforms don't
really help the debt slaves very much. That they have better ways of
being organized doesn't reduce their slavery as economic reforms
would. Bankers will always allow their paid mouthpieces to orate
useless reforms while the substantive never see the light of day.
The establishment of an income tax and the Federal Reserve System
justified the support which Progressives had given to Wilson.
JCT: And I'm sure that American are still cheering with Quigley
the establishment of the Federal Reserve System to promote interest
debt service on the government's debt and the establishment of an
Income tax to collect the interest payable on that national debt. Not.
Wilson did much to extend equality of opportunity to wider groups of
American people.
JCT: After enslaving them with government debt and a new tax
system to collect the debt service, he extended equality of
opportunity to pay it wider groups of American people. Considering
Quigley can laud monster usurers because they build a few libraries
with some of their unearned income, is it any wonder he'd laud the guy
who gave us the Fed and Income Taxes?
Again, I must point out that when I talk of bankes committing
genocide by poverty, it is not hyperbole. I have pushed 6 different
genocide charges against bankers right to the Supreme Court of Canada
and have initiated dozens, perhaps hundreds more appearances on the
same charges at various court levels. See:
http://turmelpress.com/scc3.htm .
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