VOICES FROM THE DUST
Before ever the lust seized the Greeks for the precious metal pieces on
which were recorded their laws in respect to the unit of exchange; that is,
before Greece became completely thrall to the international bullion and
slave interests, money had existed among them in various forms for a long
time previously. (1)
Little knowledge remains of such systems of exchange as
existed prior to the assumption of international bullion and slave interests
of total hegemony over a great deal of Greece, but exist such systems did,
and the significance of its monetary units issued against state expenses,
and as opposed to issue by private persons as against collateral security,
was understood, as the evidence of the Sparta of Lycurgus indicates...
On this subject Babelon, French Numismatist of the 19th Century says:
..."Having established the existence of these salmons or spits of iron that
were the circulating money of the Peloponnese, it will be easy for us to
define clearly the part played by this prince (Pheidon). He was not
inventor of money, but the same as Servius Tullius, a reformer. He
introduced into the Peloponnese a definite system of weights and measures,
instead of the numerous systems that had thrown confusion and disorder into
commercial relations; he adapted the weight of the new money to the new
system of weights, and he officially abolished the old and cumbersome iron
money, of which he consecrated several samples in the Temple at Argos..."
(2)
Numismatists airily dismiss the suggestions of the symbols of money as being
indicated in ancient times on leather, wood, or baked clay, which are found
in both Cedrenus, Suidas, and Seneca, (3) but study of so-called primitive
currencies of today, such as the shell moneys of Oceania, leave little doubt
that our forefathers, fully understanding of the true philosophy of money,
may very well have used such intrinsically valueless materials to record the
values of their tangible money, prior to the commencement of precious metal
coinage; in the same way as the Melanesians and Micronesians have used
shells for such purpose, from time immemorial. (4)
There can be no doubt that those social organizations such as existed prior
to the establishment of precious metals as a standard by which values were
assessed, were often, in the case of the Northern Mediterranean and
Anatolia, erected on a structure, of which integral part was system of
exchange constructed according to the teachings of such philosophy.
However, that the numismatists dismiss the significance of such money and
question it as having ever existed, is not surprising considering that they
merely record the money towards the creation of which the controllers of
bullion supplied the material; thus in a way controlling its issue and such
order of society as it gave rise to, and therefore the numismatists
themselves...
Consequently the dismissal by the numismatists of other
materials for money and its symbols, not internationally desirable or
controllable by their masters might be expected.
According to Professor Fritz Heichelheim in his Ancient Economic History,
Suidas ascribes the monetary use of leather and "ostrakina" (pieces of shell
and pottery) to the Romans previous to Numa Pompilius. shells appear on the
coins of Magna Graecia, especially those of Tarentum, which may be an
indication that shell money was known in the italy (5) of historical memory,
at that time...
Oyster shells discovered by Heinrich Schlieman in the
Royal graves at Mycenae together with obsidian weapons, indicate that in an
age when obsidian weapons were still in use, also remained respect for
certain shells that in former times had been evincement of stored wealth
(6)... But equally as any other, such a currency only had value insomuch as
it carried with it the will of the ruler.
In the Hittite language there are many words almost identical to their
counterpart in Latin: (7)
Troy fell to the Greeks under Agamemnon in 1250 B.C. according to the modern
dating and the opinion of Herodotus.
That Troy was the outpost of the
Hittite empire that controlled the Dardanelles, and that the rulers of Troy
spoke a Hittite language, is reasonable supposition. (8) The destruction of
Bog-Haz Koi, the Hittite capital is now accepted as being 1225 B.C. This
event, which could only have taken place as the result of investment by
experienced, disciplined, and well organized forces, with an excellent
engineering corps, considering that so many well walled cities had fallen
before them, brought the Hittite world to fragmentation. (9)
Therefore during the years from the time of the crossing of the Dardanelles
and the sack of Troy, to the time of the total collapse that must have
followed the destruction of Bog-Haz Koi, refugees would have sought freedom
by sailing westward, which direction it seems was the only way to go.
To
the North and North-West were the "Peoples of the Sea", to the south-east
was assyria, obviously ally of the same "Peoples of the Sea", and to the
south, ugarit and alalakh were empty ruins, and the coast to the sinai
border occupied by the enemies of the hittites.
Therefore it seems reasonable that the legend of the settlement of Aeneas,
refugee from Troy in the territory of Latinus as recorded by Livy (10) the
same as most legends, had a basis of fact. This is further shown by the
close resemblance between the Hittite, Trojan, Latin languages as pointed
out above. According to Dawson (11) the production of leather in the
Hittite world was a state monopoly. Such monopoly of leather production
would suggest the possibility, if not the likelihood of leather as the
material on which the symbols of their money were recorded...
For any state to be as strong as indeed was the Hittite state for a
relatively long period of time, and, moreover, stable, it had to control,
not merely the issue of the unit of exchange, but also the material of which
its visible symbols were made; which, of course had to be total monopoly.
The fact that the Hittite state appears to have been one constructed to the
same order as those early Mesopotamian cities, that is, of God, Priest-King
and priesthood and the devoted living in natural order, makes this deduction
the more likely.
The similarity of language, together with the legend relative to Troy would
certainly suggest the forefathers of the patricians of Rome derived from
Northern Anatolia, and therefore from within the Hittite (or Bog-Haz Koi)
sphere of influence. If so, would it not be natural for them to reinstitute
the same monetary system amongst themselves as they had known in their
homelands?
The numismatists and historians date the Aes Grave, considered by them to be
the first true metallic currency of Rome, from 338 B.C. (12) accepting the
opinion of Professor Haeberlin (13)...
What then did Rome use for money
prior to that date considering the relatively exact property valuations and
taxes of Servius?
That they used rough lumps of copper (Aes Rude) as
everyday money, cannot be accepted. There is no vestige of a doubt that a
refined system existed by no means unrelated to the exchange systems
definitely known to have existed in Greece, and in which a form of "Credit",
too often a privately created abstract money, was made use of. this system
may have been no more related to silver bullion, than it may have been to
any other commodity, and international silver bullion interests would
exercise no definite control therein.
There would be no reason whatsoever to discredit Suidas' remarks in respect
to leather and clay money previous to Numa Pompilius. The clay "scarabs"
still being unearthed in Etruria may very well represent evidence of the
clay units. leather money of course would long since have perished. nor is
there reason to think that the fiduciary money of clay undoubtedly issued by
the bankers of Athens in the 5th century b.c., (14) was in anyway a new idea.
As throughout the Near East clay was the principal medium for the keeping
of records, the use of clay money follows naturally, and might well be
expected in Etruria or wherever the agents of the Babylonian or Greek
bankers traded; the clay coin itself also being record; a tangible evincement of the creation of a unit of exchange, or divisible or multiple
thereof.
According to Livy, relative to the financing of the cavalry of Rome
of the Kings:
... "each century had a grant from the treasury of 10.000 aeses
for the purchase of horses, with a further grant levied on rich widows of
2000 a year for their feeding and maintenance." (15)
If then there was neither minted silver or copper at the time of Servius,
are we to understand that the rich widows came to the treasury with bags of
pieces of rough copper ? (16)
Where taxes withdraw units of exchange from circulation, there must be a
force which injects such units of exchange into the circulation. What
therefore was the source of such units of exchange or moneys as were
injected into the circulation in order that the people of Rome of the kings
might estimate their worth with some exactitude and according to a certain
standard...? Clearly there is no reason to doubt this record of Livy...
In the Panadects of Justinian, Tenth Book, occurs this remarkable passage
from Julius Paulus, jurisconsul of the third century of our era:
"The origin of buying and selling began with exchange. Anciently money was
unknown and there existed no terms by which merchandise could be precisely
valued but everyone according to the times and circumstances, exchanged
things useless to him against things which were useful; for it commonly
happens that one is in need of what another has in excess.
But as it seldom
coincided in time that what one possessed, the other one wanted, or
conversely, a device was chosen whose legal and permanent value remedied by
its homogeneity the difficulties of barter. This device being officially
promulgated, circulated, and maintained its purchasing power, not so much
from its substance as from its quantity. Since that time only one
consideration in an exchange was called merchandise, the other was called
price."
Whether those devices such as governed the exchanges of early Rome and
Etruria were clay or leather or wood does not really matter.
As such they
were true money being intrinsically valueless, and only of value because of
that law which ordered their acceptance in the exchanges and that they be of
value as according to their scarcity or otherwise relative to the goods and
services for sale...
What would above all matter would be the ease with
which they could be counterfeited, no doubt the source of their ultimate
failure, and whether they were loaned into circulation by private persons
against so-called collateral, or paid into circulation as against government
expenses, as were the Aes Grave at a later date.
This fragment from Paulus repeating the words of a commonwealth scholar of
whose work even then little remained, did no more than express the opinions
of all the philosophers-scholars of antiquity, at least, those of whom
record exists. Almost all of them wrote of numerical or fiduciary systems
of money as being the only natural systems. None of them, however entered
into discussion as to whether issuance should be as against state
indebtedness.
It was so obviously a necessity for good order and well-being
in life, that such discussion never seems to have occurred to them.
The
success of private monetary emission in this day and its boldness now that
its former criminal activities are recognized and accepted as inevitable,
such men could not even imagine, not even Aristotle, who it is certain by
reason of his family connections, must have known something of the
undercurrents of the financial world as it existed at that time.
Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, all seemed to have been clear on the
subject, and all lived at a time when fiduciary systems were still in
existence, both in the Greek states although there is little record, and
elsewhere. (17)
Plato was most clear on the subject and no doubt had studied
the numerical system that had obtained at Sparta not long before when he was
a young man.
Living between 429 B.C. and 347 B.C., he must have been at
Athens during the Peloponnesian War when such system certainly must still
have existed in Sparta, or have been a recent memory; even if, as seems
most likely, as a result of the war, it had been replaced by the Athenian
system of private money issue based on the fiction of precious metals or
valuables in reserve.
As Aeschines, also pupil of Plato was conversant with
that fiduciary system of Carthage, (18) it is more than likely that Plato
was so instructed. As no coinage in precious metal was struck at Carthage
itself until 340 B.C., (19) it may reasonably be supposed that at the time
of writing The Laws, either 348 B.C. or 349 B.C., there would have been
Carthaginian agents at Athens, well able to explain their monetary system to
enquirers.
On the subject Plato wrote:
"Further the Law (of the ideal Republic) enjoins that no private individual
shall possess or hoard gold and silver bullion, but have money only for
domestic use, such as is necessary for dealing with artisans and servants,
sojourners and slaves. Wherefore our citizens should have a money current
amongst themselves but not acceptable to the rest of mankind. For foreign
expeditions, journeys, embassies, the expense of heralds (abroad) and such
matters, the government must also possess a fund of coins in other states.
When an individual needs to go abroad, let him obtain the consent of the
Archon and go; but on his return if he has any such money remaining let him
deposit it in the treasury and receive an equivalent sum in local money. If
he is discovered to have concealed it, let it be confiscated, and let him
who knows and does not inform, be subject to anathema and dishonour equally
with him who brought the money, and also to a fine not less in amount than
that of the universal money which had been brought back." (20)
Gathering together further fragments of evidence we see that Aristotle less
than 400 years after Pheidon of Argos, made comment:
"Numisma (Money) by itself is a mere device which has value only by law
(Nomos) and not by nature; so that a change of convention between those who
use it, is sufficient to deprive it of value and its power to satisfy our
wants." (21)
In The Ethics, Aristotle states further:
"By virtue of voluntary convention, Nomisma has become the media of exchange. We call it Nomisma because its efficacy is due, not to nature but to Nomos
(Law) and because it is always in our power to control it." (22)
Thus despite at least four hundred years of control of trade by the masters
of precious metal bullion, the scholars still clearly understood the
actuality of money and that it was an evincement of the law.
They still
understood it was but so many numbers injected into a circulation amongst
the people relating value to value, and not in any way influenced by the
material on which these numbers as laws were recorded. The scholars must,
however, have been aware that in the case of these laws being recorded on
precious metal, if the convention in respect to the value of the unit of
exchange was changed, so far as financial houses with facilities for
smelting and export of bullion were concerned, there was no loss.
If the
change in convention was disadvantageous to such holder of precious metal
coin, such coin could be reduced to bullion and quietly exported to that
country offering the most advantage to holders of such bullion...
To say that money as such began with the striking of precious metal coinage
is therefore incorrect. The statement that an international control over
money came about as a result of a certain group of private persons, members
of which were located in all major states of the world, creating a monopoly
of those precious metals of which its symbols were coming to be made, or,
better put, on which they were imprinted, would be more to the point.
The evidence that the earliest coinages in Greece had essentially a local
circulation in no way alters the picture previously outlined of silver money
as being part of an international conspiracy. All Greek states apart from
Athens and Samos, Siphnos and Corcyra, and possibly one or two others, had
to obtain silver bullion for their coinage from abroad, which necessarily
obliged them to deal with those traders who specialized in dealing in
bullion.
Such trade in bullion had to be in the hands of a small and highly
secretive group, as much on account of the sources of supply being
relatively few and scattered as it were out to the ends of the earth, as on
account of the fact that it would be only such a group that could also
control those supplies of slave labour and their purchase from triumphant
peoples whose warlike activities, as likely as not, they had instigated
themselves; slave labour so necessary to the success of their mining
operations.
For example, the fact that the Carthaginian mines of Spain show no signs of
even the use of the ordinary propping and shoring associated with mining,
(23) cannot but indicate that the miners were most likely captives of war
from distant parts, purchased for a song from a victorious general, and
driven under threat of the lash.
At that period it would appear, such labour was so plentiful that the cost
of purchase of new slaves, would have been less than the cost of ordinary
safety precautions. The silver mines of Spain as worked by the Romans, show
interestingly enough an entirely different story. (24)
All safety methods,
including the use of concrete, were used; which also agrees with the fact
that Rome, even when silver money was in use, particularly in foreign trade,
so far as internal exchanges were concerned, had a relatively ample supply
of money for the details of day to day organization in the overvalued bronze
fiduciaries, the most grandiose aes and its parts or multiples. (25)
History has proven over and over again that a precious metal coinage will
move one way or another to where it might realize the most profit either as
coin or bullion. The so-called law of the economists known as Gresham's law
states just that:
"Bad money drives out the good..."
...which means that the
silver in circulating would be replaced by that less intrinsically valuable
money, if such also circulated, and which the economists described as "the
bad," (the question of course being bad for whom?); such silver being
hoarded and exported to whatever market offered the best price or advantage.
Cases of wider application of this so-called law are without number, and as
much as of application to a lesser degree.
A few outstanding ones are:
-
The disappearance of silver from Athens and its replacement by baked
clay facsimiles during the 5th Century B.C. and by yellowish copper (or orichalcum) at the end of the same century.
-
The drain of silver from Rome during the late commonwealth and the early
Empire, particularly to the Orient, (26) where the ratio varied around 6:1
to gold as compared to that established by Caesar of 12:1, and its
replacement by bronze or orichalcum fiduciaries.
-
The drain of English silver coinage to India after the act of 1666. (27)
Such silver being replaced by the "Bad" money of the goldsmith's receipts
and the Bank of England notes and ledger credit page entries.
-
The disappearance of the silver roubles in Russia
(28) during the 18th
Century almost as soon as they left the mint, their place being taken by the
"Bad" money of the copper roubles, and, later, after catherine, by the "Bad"
money of the paper roubles (assignats).
-
The almost complete disappearance from the circulation between the years
1967-1973 of silver coins of our own country of Canada: such silver being
replaced by coins fabricated from base metal alloys, relative to the silver
coins, without intrinsic value.
Returning to Ancient Greece, Professor Heichelheim states:
"Such hoards as found previous to 560 B.C. are found in the areas in which
they were minted and never in other countries..." (29)
Which fact indicates
that prior to 560 B.C. it is probable that laws governing the export of coin
were strictly enforced in Greece. Any silver that left a state would do so
covertly as bullion. The following Athenian Edict is evidence that such
laws existed:
"Let no Athenian or sojourner lend money to be exported unless (to pay) for
corn or some such commodity allowed by Law." (30)
By the time of Plato, something less than two hundred years later the real
weaknesses of precious metal systems of coinage were beginning to show,
hence the increasing discussion of the matter of money in the schools of
philosophy, although such discussion does not seem to have given rise to any
vigorous action by the Grecian States.
The establishment of the Aes Grave
system at Rome may have been a direct result of such discussion, and the
establishment of this numerical coinage of bronze certainly bears close
resemblance to that internal coinage as recommended by Plato for the ideal
Republic. (31)
By the date generally accepted as the commencement of the Aes
Grave system, that is 338 B.C., Roman scholars would have been fully aware
of the teachings of Plato. This city state, already stirred by
consciousness of its world destiny, would have neglected no instrument
towards the maintenance of morale and strength in the structure of its
internal life...
Such an instrument was the
Aes Grave system in which the
national money was paid into circulation by the state, and only of value
insomuch as the symbols on which its numbers were recorded, were scarce or
otherwise.
The weaknesses inherent in precious metal coinage systems as becoming
apparent in the time of Plato were as follows:
-
The coins wore out or were hoarded out of circulation.
-
Hard rock mining was never profitable without slave labour so far as the
Master Miner was concerned. (32)
-
The mine slaves died and sometimes, there being no wars, they could not
be replaced so easily.
-
The mines themselves became exhausted.
-
In a time of national calamity, when coinage was most of all needed, it
disappeared into hoards, largely held by foreigners, members of that secret
class of persons to whom wars were but opportunity to drive harder bargains
yet again, with mankind and his states and peoples.
-
Even in time of peace, captains and merchants, if permitted, were ever
seeking a cargo for their return trip. If such cargo was not available,
they would take away their balances in precious metals or slaves.
A country such as Greece, by no means rich agriculturally as was the
Egyptian Delta, yet having a relatively large population to feed, in its
declining days would usually have an unfavourable balance of trade; which
further, despite laws to the contrary, drained away its precious metal
coinage or bullion. At the time of Plato, this condition must have been
really showing and its significance.
The Laureion mines were petering out despite the agitation by Xenophon for
the Government of Athens to purchase ten thousand slaves to lease to mine
owners, (33) (presumably to be obtained from his financial sponsors), and
where in days gone by there had been considerable silver circulating at
Athens particularly, now it had become scarce and there was an
insufficiency.
The numerous clay facsimiles of Eastern Mediterranean coinages, still being
found at Athens, (34) show that the foreign bankers, in accordance with
Gresham's so-called law, were quietly filling the void now appearing with
issues of a fiduciary character such as our paper money, exemplified in
their case by the baked clay facsimiles mentioned by lenormant which the
bankers clearly were injecting into circulation to their own private
account, and, of course, that of their most useful Greek agents. this would
be effected by pointing out to a customer to whom the banker was prepared to
make a loan, how much safer the actual silver would be if left with the
banker's reserve in the Acropolis where it would be guarded by the gods
themselves, and how these clay facsimiles which all the customers were
accepting, could always be redeemed in silver if really necessary (!). (35)
Seltsman in Greek Coins (36) says that about this period, following the
complete collapse of the Athenian Empire, Athens resumed its previous
financial activities through the growth of powerful "Banks", such as that of
passion which operated in all major Greek cities, providing a money market
for all of the Greek world. however, seltsman makes no mention of abstract
expansions of the monetary unit, nor of the clay facsimiles which were the
tangible evincement of such expansion, and whose power to inspire confidence
was the main source of that renewed financial activity, and whose existence
and purpose was defined by françois lenormant, even if somewhat diffidently... (p. 27, present work.)
What Seltsman really points out to us in stressing that Athens resumed its
previous financial activities with powerful banks such as that of Pasion
operating in all major Greek cities, is the correctness of our previous
conjecture that the real underlying purposes of the "Great"
Peloponnesian
war was to establish private common money market across the Greek world
totally controlled by the trapezitae or bankers in modern terminology.
Banks, too, could not thrive and realize full potential except that
government was become their instrument, and that Government, the creator of
the laws of the land, was in their debt, as according to these same laws of
the land, as much as private citizens.
The foundation of this god-power, to
which, as a result of the utter exhaustion of Athens and Sparta, and the
death of their noblest, there were none to offer resistance, was government
borrowing of the banker's fictitious "Credit" money; and although there may
be little evidence of such in Athens at that time, it is clear that this
situation had been brought about. the frantic efforts of the Athenian
government after the war to devise methods to stimulate increase of
government spending, such as the donatives and the theorica, while at the
same time devising methods to withdraw money from the public circulation,
such as by sales tax, (37) reveal that Athenian Government was now more
firmly than ever in the hands of International Money Power, if Sparta was
but now rearrived there after absence of three hundred years or so. (38)
Both Athens and Sparta were in no better a position than they were before
the war. Neither one had won and neither one had lost. Both lay exhausted,
and over their prostrate bodies the servants of this same sardonic Money
Power drew the chains of their slavery.
Although Seltsman says the source of the renewal of the prosperity of Athens
was the new markets in Cyrene, Chalcidice, and South Russia, Rostovtsev
points out that the South Russian market, the most important of all, was
closing due to local manufactures, and in the fourth century, Attic and
Ionian imports disappear entirely in South Russia, (39) where, in the sixth
and fifth centuries they had been extensive. (40)
According to Rostovtsev,
at Athens during the fourth century B.C., both population and unemployment
increased, prices rose, and there was so-called "class struggle" and
discontent. (41)
Increase in prices is usually indicative of increase of the number of
monetary units in circulation, that is, of the money supply relative to
goods and services for sale. Unemployment would not cancel out such
increase in the money supply; for money had to be created for the Donatives
and theorica which belong to this time. Herein is further proof of some
artificial and invisible growth of the monetary unit.
So while the markets
for Greek agricultural and industrial products had shrunk considerably, and
were no more able to absorb the goods that were being offered to them by
Greece, (42) money was still being created, in Athens particularly, and
being put into circulation as against "Free Bread and Circuses", such as
indeed were the donatives and theorica; consequently causing inflation and
the rise of prices of record. considering the findings of professor rRostovtsev as being more likely than those of seltsman, it is clear that
what athens exported, and possible some other cities in Greece where such as
pasion had branches, was, after the "Great" Peloponnesian war, privately
created capital. (43)
Thus in what we know of as Antiquity, the full meaning
of the unit of exchange as a purely abstract conception, regardless of what
material it was recorded on for the purposes of day to day exchanges, was
clearly understood; and without a doubt this knowledge was inheritance from
ancient days, long before the advent of exchanges based on silver by weight.
Judging by Sparta, perhaps some of the Greek states mentioned by Boeckh,
(44) and later by Rome itself, it seems that in ancient times there was some
considerable understanding of the power inherent in precious metal money to
destroy, by lending itself to manipulation, the status quo of any race or
state.
The tremendous possibilities inherent in its use as the material on
which the visible units of money were recorded towards the manipulation of
prices and the consequent monopolization of wealth which always derived therefrom, through the process of loan against collateral security inflating
the money supply, and giving rise to the seeming prosperity of great
activity, followed by the "calling" of such loans, under one excuse or
another, when the resultant prosperity was at its height, was well
understood by the "Bankers".
Also was known how to create periods of "lack
of confidence", during which prices fell to less than the previous cost of
manufacture, and when consequently manufacturers became disheartened, and
were glad to sell out to anyone to whom the banker directed them for
whatever they could get. that is, if they were lucky. if they were not
quite so lucky, then their stock and factory would be seized as against the
supposed debt, and sold at auction... no doubt such auctions were rigged
in ancient times, just as much as they often are today.
Those states previously mentioned, understanding therefore the evils of
private emission of precious metal money, and that precious metal money must
always be private money emission, except the state owns the mines, and takes
absolutely total precaution to prevent the export of its metal except by its
own decision as against its own needs, clearly, when all other states and
princes were succumbing to the world drive of the international bankers,
rejected banking as such, and the bullion brokers its founders.
It was not
until the 4th Century B.C. that they finally gave in, to what was
undoubtedly an unremitting pressure, and this more likely as a result of the
conquests of, firstly, the Achaemenid Princes of Persia, and secondly, the
conquests of Alexander. After Alexander there do not seem many states left
in which precious metal money did not constitute the circulating medium, and
therefore could not be influenced by the activities of that secret and
international group of people who made the so-called Gresham's Law very much
of a reality to the undoing of rulers and their peoples.
The sequence of "Boom" and "Bust" just as in today, can be traced as
follows:
In the first place bankers and their agents no doubt worked together to
cause this money, which it may safely be said, originally cost them no more
than entry by slave scribe on the clay tablet, to be seemingly plentiful.
As a result, business flourished, wages increased and prices rose. This
rise in prices ultimately caused a situation in which foreign merchandise
sold competitively on the home market. In consequence some home
manufacturers, unable to compete, went into bankruptcy.
The panic thus
created amongst manufacturers beholden to the banks, prepared them for the
inevitability of the likelihood of demand by their bank for repayment of
loans outstanding. By now the bankers were telling everyone that Times were
bad... "There was a freeze in Credit." and "No Money about". so when such
loans were "Called", the manufacturers dutifully hunted up all the silver
they could find, and if they were able, paid off the banker. when this
collapse of industry, and consequently prices, reached a certain point, it
became no longer profitable for foreign merchandise to sell on their home
market, creating the opportunity for resumption of their own industries.
The bankers, satisfied that the "Depression" had yielded sufficient rewards,
and with a new crop of industrialists now directly under their thumbs, or in
control of their trusted agents, industry would be resumed. Loans again
were forthcoming from the banker's overflowing strong rooms, or simply the
same place as that from which originated the previous loans, his ledger;
being therein merely a creation of stylus and clay tablet... thus were the
foundations laid for a new steady rise in prices...
Herein, in this everlasting "Boom" and "Bust" of the so called "Empires" and
"Civilizations" of the last few thousand years is the root cause of the
desperate situation in which the indo-european peoples now find themselves,
and, in which, seemingly having everything, in reality they have nothing
except total exhaustion and the spectre of total anarchy and destruction
looming ever more clearly before them, for they no longer have the will to
be...
With planned miscegenation and what could very well prove to be planned race
self-extermination through the promotion of the use of conception aborting
"medicines", and of abortion itself by "operation" involving the tearing of
the living fetus from the womb, the so-called indo-european peoples, who
writhe in torment as a result of these incredible plans undoubtedly
originating in the first place from the muddled minds of the money masters
or their agents, fast dwindle to a fraction of the world's population;
soon, as may very well come to pass, to be entirely obliterated by those
other races of the world who watch with glee this self-destruction of those
who they had so recently believed to be one with the gods, such was their
seeming superiority...
International Money Power, whatever it really is,
or whoever they really are, could not care less!... Herein was its own
design...
But one thing such designers of all this forget... In the magnitude of
the total disaster that looms so threateningly in these last days over the
path of life, is also final disaster to the planners of this evil; whether
this they had expected or otherwise; their own complete obliteration for
sure along with the rest.
For if God's kingdom on earth is to arise, it is to arise in a world where
little of the sicknesses that trouble us today, will be left, and the
binding threads of incompetent thinking, and of evil itself, will be totally
unwound. it will arise where the humble and the meek, such as remain, bow
down in total acceptance of that natural order as was ordained: of god,
which is the self-conscious everlasting itself: of priest-king in whom is
the voice of god reigning in earthly glory understandable to men: of
priesthood trained to total understanding of all the forces which mould men,
and the devoted themselves, those who go about their affairs trusting in the
sincerity and ability of their rulers, and who seek no more in life than the
glory of their eternal master, and that they themselves always walk in the
ways of righteousness.
Thus, returning to Athens and its money in ancient days: the emission by
the bankers of Athens of the baked clay facsimiles of the silver coinage
they were reputed to have in storage in the vaults of the Acropolis, would
have exactly the same effect on prices as the emission of silver coin; it
would cause them to rise.
Conversely, contraction of that clay coinage by
calling of loans, would similarly cause prices to fall; and thus, as in
today, "when the depression is over," that is when prices are at rock bottom
without totally wrecking the state, the "Banker" merely enters a few figures
in his ledger to the credit of one of his agents, so it was in athens in
that day. did the so-called customer require ready money over and above the
money required for settlement of balances owing, such as could be met by
debit, and transfer, and recredit, i.e., by cheque, then the so-called
bankers at Athens or the Piraeus, merely set slaves to work to cast and bake
clay coins as fast as they could go!
Admittedly the baking of clay coins was a little
more expensive than the pen and ink required for ledger entry money, or than
the high speed printing press necessary for the paper facsimiles of today...
Hence the enormous potential for the accumulation of wealth by a banker in a
city state engaged in manufacture, and whose merchants and captains depended
on him alone for their finances, especially when their business was largely
with foreign parts.
According to Professor Ure, (45) the tyrants of the city states derived
their power from the new form of capital known as money. While in agreement
with the general idea of Professor Ure, it must be asked: Why new form of
capital? Metal money as capital, or what ?...
It may be assumed that
those references to baked clay, leather and wooden money in ancient Rome
previous to Numa Pompilius, the first by Suidas, the second by Seneca, and
the third by Cedrenus, also applied to ancient Greece; especially if the
conjecture in respect to the leather monopoly of the Hittite state is
correct. (46)
Suidas makes reference to leather money at Lacedaemon. There
is no reason why other Greek city states should not have availed themselves
of such readily obtainable material (47) (and cheap at that!) in those days
before the augmentation of bullion supplies internationally by the new
methods of mining, and the massive wars which gave rise to plentiful
supplies of expendable labour.
It seems to be reasonable that the money that enabled those industries that
grew up in early Greece to get off the ground, as it were, was of such
relatively intrinsically valueless material. Behind every industrialist was
a banker, and the banker had to be the secret heart of the city.
The early
use of precious metal coinage in Greece had to have been similar to its use
in Babylonia a thousand years before, or as gold in Britain 2000 years
later, a standard on which to base prices and establish confidence in the
"Great Banker" as being a wealthy man; a base on which a pyramid of ledger
credit page money might be erected, represented in the circulation by
leather notes, clay tokens, etc.
As Stanley Jevons remarked in our era in 1914:
"Gold already acts in
England only as small change for notes" (48)...
In a similar manner with
money based on a silver standard, yet relatively little silver in
circulation, such silver would have acted as small change in those ancient
times. For evidence of greater wealth, leather notes, or clay tokens, or
documents denoting cattle, which indeed may have been currency in large
scale transactions, seem more likely to have served, at least amongst the
Indo-Europeans.
Thus right from the start it is safe to say that silver functioned as a
balancing factor in oral and written agreements of merchandise exchange in
Greece, actually functioning as a circulating medium itself only after King
Pheidon of Argos.
Although some authorities (49) say that the silver
coinage was of state issuance, whether it was or was not, would make little
difference. In so-called democracies, money power cannot but be the force
behind the scenes. For that matter, anyone finding the paper notes of the
British Empire three thousand years from now, because of the myth of the
Queen's Head and the Coat of Arms, would assume it too was state issue.
They would of course be entirely wrong. Ever since the establishment of
that ever changing mirage of the precious metal money system, states and
rulers that became corrupted and undermined by the extraordinary deceptions
to which such system loaned itself, wittingly or unwittingly, have fronted
for those persons, often of criminal background, sometimes designated
bankers, who under their very noses, have operated the most unbelievable
swindles...
It is hard to believe that states and rulers
have been aware of the magnitude of the folly they commit in permitting
private persons to exercise that power which is theirs as being
representative of their peoples before God.
Assuming ruler and temple lend their sanction,
it is not long before the so-called banker, now able to finance an
opposition to any power it is in his interest to destroy, or indeed, to
withdraw financing from such power whose destruction he seeks, can literally
laugh at those people, foolish, corrupt, or naïve, who, in lack of
understanding of the meaning and source of that which was their strength and
power, raised him up in the first place...
Once the power of monetary emission is yielded by a ruler or state to
private or external interests, it is rare that it can be recovered except as
the result of all consuming cataclysm. Immense monopolies and vastly
unequal money fortunes are neither gained nor saved by lawful labour or
trade.
Of necessity they are the natural outcome of the exercise of the
power to discriminate, the power to reject or prefer that follows as
inevitable consequence, when, in any state, private persons are permitted to
create and issue the unit of exchange, whether tangible or abstract; and by
whatever device of law such as may be needed to create appearance of
legality.
So far as the future of mankind is concerned, out of the deceit it practices
on the simple, kind, and trusting, this instrument will be responsible for
the complete enslavement and ultimate destruction of most, if not all, of
this world. The hands that guide it are declared by themselves to be
malevolent, and wittingly function and exert themselves in defiance of the
natural order of life with their hearts full of pride and prejudice as for
themselves as being some special breed, when merely they are but unfaithful
stewards...
Contempt for those who front for them in their
secret conspiracy or are destroyed by it, shows equally in the arrogance of
their manner...
In the words of W. Cleon Skousen reviewing the great and compendious work of
Dr. Carroll Quigley Tragedy and Hope, according to Dr. Skousen the most
authentic and detailed account of the modern day conspiracy:
"As I see it, the great contribution which Dr. Carroll Quigley
unintentionally made by writing Tragedy and Hope was to help the ordinary
American realize the utter contempt which the network leaders have for
ordinary peoples. Human beings are treated en masse as helpless puppets on
an international chessboard where giants of economic and political power
subject them to wars, revolution, civil strife, confiscation, subversion,
indoctrination, manipulation and outright deception as it suits their fancy
and their concocted schemes for world domination." (50)
For the original
Rothschild (Amschel) who uttered that now famous line:
"Let me issue and control a Nation's money, and i care not who writes its
laws," (51) one cannot but have some grudging admiration, rogue though he
was and should have been dealt with as such; but for those place-seeking
persons, cynical or merely naïve, who nowadays prostrate themselves before
the doors of the international bankers, as members of the societies
dedicated to One World Government, such as
The Council on Foreign Relations,
The Canadian Institute of International Affairs, The Royal Institute of
International Affairs, etc. one can have little respect.
The first requisite for a man to be truly honored amongst the people is
that he bestow honor... Amongst these to whom the paths of meaningless
ambition come first before any concern for their own, for they are largely
drawn from that class of dead souls that is international in this, that
every race and people on this earth is afflicted by them in more or less
degree, the word honor too often will be meaningless...
According to another recent writer:
"James P. Warburg is one of the most ardent
propagandists and financiers of the World Government Movement in the U.S.A.
today... This same James Warburg had the audacity and arrogance to
proclaim before the U.S. Senate (2-17-50): 'We shall have world government
whether or not we like it. The only question is, whether world government
will be achieved by Conquest or Consent.' " (52)
World Government is total government world-wide
in which no independent race or people shall be except the rulers, who
necessarily will have to be an exclusive caste.
Total consent of all presumptuous, if not
imaginative, bankers will never be; but out of the weakness and confusion
created by them amongst us towards these their own vain purposes, the world
Government they mutter about, may come through conquest, though it is not
they who will be the conquerors, though indeed, they will be the principal
instrument.
There would be no way of bringing about that
total monopoly of money, industry and empire, which is world government,
save through the manipulation of the credulity of man-kind, and the pathetic
trust he still maintains that his rulers are the voice of God on earth for
him, as he blindly stumbles on, except it be by armed conquest.
Armed conquest in its turn in these latter days,
cannot be effected without the connivance of conspiratorial money power,
although such conspiratorial money power in its virtually insane search for
paths towards its own establishment towards World Rule forever and ever, has
now become an institution, which in the horror of the weapons of total
destruction and obliteration leading to final subjection that it has called
into being, and, in its blindness, has also given to our enemies, can only
be described as a juggernaut completely out of control, an all-engulfing
Terror, as much for its creators, as he, who, in its original conception,
such Terror was supposed to engulf...
References
1. See P. 17, present work. Also Note 2, P. 28.
2. Après avoir bien constaté l'existence avant Pheidon, de ces saumons ou
broches de fer qui était la monnaie courant de Peloponnes, il nous sera
facile de définir nettement le rôle de ce prince. Il ne fut pas l'inventeur
de la monnaie mais seulement, comme servius tullius, un réformateur. il
introduisit dans le péloponnèse un système fixé des poids et mesures, a la
place des systèmes multiples qui jetaient la confusion et la désordre dans
les relations commerciales; il adapta le poids des nouvelles monnaie au
systèmes pondéral nouveau; il demoneta et aboli officiellement la vieille
et encombrante monnaie de fer dont il consacra quelques échantillons dans le
temple d'Argos". Les Origines de la Monnaie, P. 211, Ernest Babelon, Paris,
1897.
3. François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l'antiquité, pp. 215-216, Book II,
Tome I.
4. Kingston-Higgins & Paul Einzig: A Survey of Primitive Money and
Primitive Money, respectively.
5. Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, P. 478, Vol. I.
6. Robert Payne: The Gold of Troy, P. 199.
7. Christopher Dawson: The Age of the Gods, P. 255.
8. The kings of the dynasty ruling in Lydia until 689 B.C., or Phrygia as it
may then have been, of which Myrsilus (or Candaules) was the last, mostly
bore Hittite names. According to Del Mar in his History of Monetary
Systems, P. 41, the Phrygian (or Lydian) chronicles extend back to 1300 B.C.
(when Bog-Haz Koi and Troy still existed).
According to Professor W.F. Albright, (The Amarna Letters from Palestine,
Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. II; P. 43.) " the hittites had established
several vassal states in northern syria"... "at least two of them, carchemish and aleppo, were ruled by princes of the imperial hittite dynasty. in a third state, khattina, the reigning princes still bore names derived
from imperial hittite history as late as the ninth century b.c...."
9. Although the fall of Bog-Haz Koi undoubtedly ended forever the system of
empire over which the kings of the Kheta presided, fragments established
local autonomy thereafter. Such fragments were the state of Khattina above
mentioned and the cities of Marqasi, and Carchemish.
10. Livy; Book I.
11. Christopher Dawson: Age of the Gods, P. 304; London; 1928.
12. E.J. Haeberlin: Aes Grave; Frankfurt; 1910.
13. Accepting the opinion of Mommsen however, the Aes Grave dates from 454
B.C.-430 B.C. Manuel Des Antiquités Romaines. Tome X. Paris; 1888.
14. François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l'Antiquité, P. 66, Book II, Tome
I.
15. Livy: Book I; (Aubrey de Selincourt: An Early History of Rome, P. 66; London; 1960).
16. The Aes Rude.
17. Augustus Boeckh: The Public Economy of Athens, Vol. I; P. 43; London; 1828.
18. According to Aeschines: " the carthaginians make use of the following
kind of money; in a small piece of leather a substance is wrapped of the
size of a piece of 4 drachmae (3s); but what this substance is no one knows
except the maker. after this is sealed and issued for circulation; and he
who possesses the most of this is regarded as having the most money, and as
being the wealthiest man. but if any one amongst us had ever as much, he
would be no richer than if he possessed a quantity of pebbles." (A.J. Church: Carthage, pp. 122-123; New York; 1914.)
19. R.A.G. Carson: Coins, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, P. 75; London;
1962.
20. Plato: The Laws, Book V.
21. Aristotle: The Politics, I, 9.
22. Aristotle: The Ethics, V, 5.
23. A. del Mar: A History of Money in Ancient Countries, P. 323; London;
1885.
24. A. del Mar: A History of Money in Ancient Countries, P. 323; London;
1885.
25. According to Harold Mattingly, (Roman Coins, P. 53): " the bronze
coinage of rome was the original coinage of the land; it always served the
home market and played little part in rome's expansion abroad: it is
perhaps not surprising then that it resisted change more persistently than
the world currency of the denarius." (Italics by present author.)
26. Both Cicero (Pro Flaccus; Orationes; Book XXVIII), and Pliny
(Naturalis Historia, xii, c.18), make mention of this flow of silver
Eastward. Cicero says that gold moved Eastward to the temple at Jerusalem.
This may also have been so.
27. A. del Mar: Barbara Williers or a History of Monetary Crimes; pp.
8-44.
28. A. del Mar: Money and Civilization, p. 303; London; 1886.
29. Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, P. 251; Vol. I.
30. Potter: Antiquities of Greece.
31. Plato: The Laws, Book V.
32. W. Jacob: An Historical Enquiry into the Production and Consumption
Metals. Del Mar, quoting from this book, gives a most reasonable analysis
of the apparent loss associated with the working of the silver mines of New
Carthage in Spain, by the Carthaginians. (A. del Mar: History of the
Precious Metals, P. 68.)
33. Xenophon: A Discourse upon improving the Revenues of the State of
Athens, (Pages 317-322, The Political and Commercial Works of Charles
Davenant LLD; 1771)
34. François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l'Antiquité, pp. 215-216, Book II,
Tome I. Several Athenian and Corinthian residents have these clay coins in
their possession (N. Boucara of Corinth).
35. In London 2000 years later, when the goldsmiths operated exactly the
same "racket", the confidence of the public was gained through the
connivance, witting or unwitting, of the Royal House, and the storage of the
goldsmiths reserves in the Tower of London. The fact of their being in the
Tower offered the same sanctity to the goldsmith's practice of issuing
receipts as against non-existing reserves, i.e., fraudulent receipts, as had
been offered to similar practice in ancient times by the undoubted storage
of the reserves of the trapezitae in the Acropolis... In either case to
encourage the circulation of his receipts, he could plead the difficulties
and the dangers of the formalities attached to withdrawal of the metal
itself for the purpose of settlement of an account.
36. Charles Seltsman, M.A.: Greek Coins, P. 179; London; 1933.
37. Royal Ontario Museum Display.
38. From the time of the Institution of the Financial Reforms of Lycurgus.
39. Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the
Hellenistic World, P. 108; Vol I, Oxford; 1941.
40. Ibid. P. 106.
41. Ibid. P. 108.
42. Ibid. P. 104.
43. Perhaps an internationally functioning unit like the Euro-Dollar,
originating from that form of ledger entry money known as the "swap"
deposit.
While doing the world's business, relative to the work it does, it bears
little relationship to the workings of the originating financial system.
Such "swap" deposit money, although it will buy a loaf of bread or, at the
other end of the scale, a ship, and therefore is money as much as any other
kind of money, originates free of control of governments or central banks.
Such Euro-currencies "can expand by the process of money creation without
infusions from oil nations or payments deficits." Clearly they largely exist
more as a special convenience to a certain group of people whose "business"
is manipulating world currencies, and therefore prices, for their own needs
and profit without reference to the good or authority of the state that
permits the generating of such externally circulating monetary units, or to
the good of its peoples. For a detailed explanation of the Euro-Dollar see
Report of the Royal Commission on Banking and Finance. pp. 138-140; Ottawa;
1964.
44. Augustus Boeckh: The Public Economy of Athens, Vol. I; P. 43; London; 1828.
45. P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny, P. 2; New York; 1922.
46. P. 155. Present Work.
47. "the smithsonian report for 1876, p. 399, mentions clay stamps for
printing cotton cloths (in ancient times). these could scarcely have failed
to suggest baked clay coins such as were used in china, chaldea, und egypt."
History of Money in America, P. 44. A. del Mar (in reference to Mexican
money).
48. He might have added, pursuing the matter further, that the paper note of
today merely act as small change for that abstract money created by the mass
of cheques in transit, and behind which exists no more than the
misappropriated will of the gods themselves.
49. C.M Kraay & Max Hirmer: Greek Coins, Preface. London; 1968.
50. W. Cleon Skousen: The Naked Capitalist, P. 112.
51. John R. Elsom: Lightning over the Treasury Building, P. 78.
52. W.B. Vennard: Conquest or Consent, P. 12.
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