|
July-August 2012 from NewDawnMagazine Website
Mammon...
Together with Wall
Street, The City forms the hub of the plutocratic system that
controls most of the world, and is presently engulfing the few
remaining states that it does not control, through the time-proven
tactics of plutocracy: revolution ostensibly in the name of 'the
people'. 1
Hence, there has been a great deal stated, even by the well-informed, in regard to the British Empire and even the British Crown, being intrinsically a part of this international oligarchy.
This is to misunderstand the nature of international capital, which owes no steadfast loyalty to any system of government, head of state, religion, ethos, nation, ethnicity or culture.
Any such allegiance is conditional...
It is a unique
concentration of international expertise and capital, with a
supportive legal and regulatory system, an advanced communications
and information technology infrastructure and an unrivalled
concentration of professional services… 3
Again, this is due to the error in thinking that British imperial interests were synonymous with international plutocracy, and because Britain is no longer a world power, 'London' is subordinated to New York.
However, The City of London Corporation is neither synonymous with Britain nor British interests, other than when these happen to coincide with the interests of international finance.
That is why, even though the British Empire has been defunct for over half a century, The City remains, in the words of its promoters,
Hence while Britain and the Commonwealth has a symbolic Head-of-State in the Monarch, the analogous Head-of-State for The City has precedence over the British Sovereign.
The Lord Mayor of the City of London Corporation is "not the Mayor of (Greater) London"; nor is he a 'mayor' in the limited sense of the word. He assumes the position as 'Head-of-State', not of merely a borough or a county.
This Lord Mayor is elected for one year, and acts as a global ambassador for the international financial institutions situated in The City, and is,
He lives in the palatial 250-year-old 'Mansion House'.
On state visits the
British Monarch waits at the Gate of The City to seek permission to
enter and is presented with the sword of The City by the Lord Mayor.
5
Jewish bankers might be loyal to Judaism or to Israel, and the French Huguenots who went to London had a religious identity.
But
international finance is not bound to the states of its residence...
Ezra Pound, the famous poet who was also an avid opponent of usury-banking and an advocate of Social Credit banking reform, traced the premises of the 'modern' usurious financial system back to,
As indicated above, international finance can shift focus over the world as the requirements of commerce dictate.
As for the shift of the Money Power to England, this can be traced to the English Civil War, and even to the Reformation, where a Cromwell was significant in both.
Thomas Cromwell, Secretary of State, who "represented the mercantile community," 8 as distinct from the traditional landed interests, urged Henry VIII to suppress the religious Orders in 1533.
Brooks Adams states of this in his historical masterpiece, The Law of Civilization and Decay, that:
Adams details how the era of Henry VIII and the Reformation was the beginning of the speculative, capitalistic system. 10
Additionally,
The expansion of commerce in the wake of the Age of Exploration, and the formation of the British East India Company in 1600, five years after the East India Company in Holland, were symptoms of this historical trend that had already been set in motion by the Reformation.
The merchant interests felt constrained by the Monarchy and another Cromwell, Oliver, came forward, like his great-great-grand-uncle Thomas, to radically change England in the interests of money.
The British Empire was expanding towards Asia and buccaneering was establishing fortunes.
However,
From the middle of the 16th century capital accumulated, and,
Adams states of the era,
London became the centre of this global
expansionist acquisition, a new Rome, where the wealth of the world
was deposited:
What the value of the
treasure was, no man can estimate, but it must have been many
millions of pounds - a vast sum in proportion to the stock of the
precious metals then owned by Europeans. 15
The wealth they accumulated, states Adams, became the primary source of power, and it was in the hands of a new breed of merchant:
The value of money as distinct from the mercantile concern at the value of wares was the concern of the bankers.
At the close of the 18th
century "the great hoards of London" passed into the hands of the
bankers, the "most conspicuous example" being
the Rothschilds. 17
It is here where the two are often
mistaken as forming a common power elite.
Here we discern immediately a dichotomy operating within British power-politics:
It was this creativity and inventiveness, coupled with the bravery of the British military and the dedication of the British administrator, that was pressed into the service of parasitic finance, behind the cover of the British flag and Crown.
These two factors at work:
Quigley continues:
Quigley explained, far more succinctly than economists, that the basis of the debt finance system is "fractional reserves."
This method had its origin in the realization by goldsmiths that they did not need to hold the equivalent of gold reserves in their vaults to the amount of paper certificates issued representing the value of gold.
As there was unlikely to
be a run on the vault by its depositors all demanding at once the
return of their gold deposits, the goldsmith could issue paper
certificates far in excess of the value of the amount of gold in his
vaults. 21
Not only must
the principal be paid back in real wealth - productive labor or
creativity - but added interest.
According to Quigley, William Paterson, having obtained the Royal charter for the Bank of England in 1694 remarked,
The centre of gravity for the merchant bankers had long been Amsterdam.
The "Republic of the United Provinces," which included Holland, had from the start accorded Jews, as the catalysts of incipient international free trade, equal protection. 23
According to
Dr. Stanley Chapman, Professor of Economic History at
Nottingham University, the Sephardic Jewish community in Amsterdam
had become adroit as lenders to foreign governments. 24
Yet neither can it be said in justice this was a 'Jewish conspiracy'. The establishment of the Bank of England was a Protestant affair with anti-Catholic underpinnings.
From France came the Huguenots who, like the Dutch Sephardim, had established international connections through family networks across Europe and had also formed a community in The City, by the mid 18th century. 25
The English Revolution of 1642-1648, which established the republican Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell in 1649, enduring under his son Richard until 1659, had opened the way for a shift of international banking from Amsterdam to London.
The impetus for British imperial expansion had started under Cromwell. The merchant coterie of Amsterdam, which had backed Cromwell, was permitted entry into England.
Menasseh ben Israel had appealed to Cromwell on the grounds of mercantile profitability to any nation that gave the Jewish merchant bankers freedom, as Amsterdam had done.
Menasseh assured Cromwell that profit was the best reason why the merchant bankers should be permitted into England:
Menasseh proceeded with explanations as to why this is so, due to the lack of opportunity from the time of the Exile, to possess a state of their own and to till the land, leading Jews to,
Their dispersion
throughout the world enabled them to form networks across borders,
to engage in commerce, with a common language that transcended the
linguistic barriers of others. 27
From then on a National Debt was owed to the usurers. From the time of King Henry I tally sticks had served as the King's currency. These tally sticks were carved sticks broken lengthwise.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer kept one half, and the King spent the other half into circulation, 28 like President John F Kennedy did in 1963, when he issued $4 billion 'United States Notes' directly into circulation via the US Treasury, circumventing the Federal Reserve Bank. 29
Eventually, the two halves would be matched to prevent counterfeiting.
The tally sticks could be
used as exchange for commerce and in payment of taxes. They
circulated in England for 726 years until eliminated on the demand
of the Bank of England in 1826. 30
The anti-Catholic sentiment that had started under Henry VIII was a catalyst in assuring William support in driving James II from the Throne.
Under William the authority of the Monarchy was reduced, and that of Parliament enhanced. The epochal act of William was to grant the Charter to William Paterson to establish the Bank of England.
This acquiescence might be explained by William having,
The link between the
bankers of Amsterdam and of London was maintained even into the 19th
century, and by the mid 18th century there was a
considerable colony formed in the City by the scions of the
Amsterdam banking families. 32
The move to establish such a bank in England gained momentum,
The political economist Sir William Petty wrote that the power of England would be magnified if there were a bank to lend the Throne credit. 34
He did not explain why it could not be a state bank issuing its own credit, and had to be a private bank accruing interest on credit that it makes out of nothing, as its founder, William Paterson, explained.
According to Petty such a bank would,
The Bank of England explains that after the rejection by Parliament of several proposals the bank and a,
In 1734 the Bank of England moved into a 'vast' purpose-built building, nicknamed 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street', in The City. 37
It was from the founding of the Bank of England that,
The present-day description of credit by the Bank of England is quite illuminating.
The Bank's historical account states that at the time credit was called "imaginary money." Until then 'the man in the street' had simply thought of money as coins, but this 'shibboleth' was now overturned.
Money could take other forms "that had no intrinsic value."
In 1946 the Bank was 'nationalized', but as in the nationalization of other such banks, such as New Zealand's Reserve Bank in 1936, this means little, as the real authority comes from the creation of credit by the international merchant bankers.
However, as the Bank's account states, in 1997 the Government formally handed its financial authorities over to the Bank and it,
The purpose of these 'central banks', which the general public believes are controlled by governments, was to bring into their,
Rothschilds - Lords of
International Finance
Further still, these suddenly 'British' Rothschilds become 'British' imperialists in the manner a chameleon changes his color according to survival needs.
It is the insinuation of the Rothschilds into the British power-structure that has generated much discussion of a 'British' imperial conspiracy centered around Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner, and the so-called 'Round Table Group' that they founded to extend British influence throughout the world.
It is
further frequently claimed this emerged as an 'Anglo-American'
conspiratorial 'network' that continues to the present in attempting
to establish 'Anglo-American' global hegemony.
For reasons not known to this writer, Dr. Quigley, informative on so much in the course of his magnum opus, Tragedy & Hope, erred in thinking that an oligarchic 'Anglo-American network' was formed in the aftermath of World War I and continues to the present.
We shall briefly examine this error in due course.
However, for the moment
Quigley had some pertinent things to say about both the Rothschilds
and the "international system of control" that was developing.
This
allowed the power structure to take on a cosmopolitan flavor. (We
might note this vulgarization of the English ruling-class seems to
have begun during the time of Henry VIII).
Quigley pointed out these bankers were "cosmopolitan and
international rather than nationalistic," 44 and this, by the very
nature of their business, is what they remain.
Mayer Amschel had established his fortune by handling the financial affairs of William IX of Hesse-Kassel, who had been paid well by the British Government for supplying troops against the American revolt.
At the time Amsterdam had been the capital of international banking, but the Napoleonic invasion of Holland had led to the closing of the Amsterdam Bourse,
Mayer Amschel and several others were situated to provide William IX with funds. 46 Additionally, in 1800 Mayer Amschel had become Imperial Crown Agent for the Emperor of Austria.
He was what Derek Wilson described as,
Wilson states that for centuries the Jews had played a prominent part in "long distance commerce" due to their communal loyalty with which they were able to create a "commercial sub-culture."
However, they were reliant on the
patronage of rulers. Now, the revolutionary tumult in Europe had
swept away traditional rulers and placed money on a footing of
power.
The Rothschilds were backing the coalition against Napoleon, who was upsetting the Continental system of finance. In 1808 Nathan took over the financial affairs of the Landgrave William IX in England.
That year he moved his business to 12 Great Helen's Street, The City, under the name of N.M. Rothschild and Brothers. 48 With agents throughout Europe, the Rothschilds were valuable allies in organizing smugglers and couriers in the war against Napoleon.
By now, on the initiative of Nathan Rothschild,
Wilson reiterates that through Nathan's family and his,
Wilson is altogether too charitable in ascribing 'patriotic' - British - motives to Nathan, in contrast to what he frankly says about the lack of national 'patriotism' among the other Rothschild brothers toward anything other than,
Rather, Nathan and the rest of the dynasty were assisting in the
fight against Napoleon because the upstart was undermining the
financial system.
Hence, the war against Napoleon was in part a war between two systems of economics involving the reorganization of Europe.
It is also erroneous to assume that because the
merchant bankers found it opportune to lend credit to governments
that ruled over empires, these bankers, who are cosmopolitan, have
an enduring commitment to some type of nationally based imperialism,
whether it be 'British', 'American', 'German', 'Dutch', etc.
The basis of these theories centers on Lord Rothschild being the banker to Cecil Rhodes. The theory states that Lord Natty Rothschild was part of Rhodes' secret society, the Round Table Groups, that aimed to spread the benevolence of British imperialism over the world. 55
These imperial ideals were said to be motivated by the teachings of the Oxford art historian John Ruskin, who exhorted his students to take British culture to the ends of the Earth.
While Lord Rothschild saw the Empire as the means by which commerce could be spread and maintained by force of arms, the support was pragmatic, and owes nothing to a commitment to any British ideals as envisaged by Rhodes et al.
Derek Wilson writes of this in relation to Lord Rothschild's opposition to Gladstone's 'flabby' foreign policy:
When diamonds were discovered in South Africa, the Rothschilds bought into the Anglo-African Diamond Mining Company Ltd., which was amalgamated with DeBeers.
In 1887 Rhodes returned from South Africa to Britain to ask Lord Rothschild for financial backing. Lord Rothschild saw this as the means of establishing commercial stability in South Africa against their main rival, the Barnato Diamond Mining Company, which also ended up merging with DeBeers. 57
For Rhodes, making money was a means of spreading British imperial ideals.
Not so for Rothschild, although Rhodes persuaded himself Natty was of like mind.
In 1888 Rhodes made a will nominating Natty to administer most of his estate for funding The Round Table Groups.
Wilson writes:
The Rothschilds were interested in commercial stability, not British imperial expansion.
By the time of the abortive Jameson Raid organized by Rhodes against the Boer Transvaal Republic in 1895,
Hence, when a few decades
later imperialism became a hindrance to unbridled international free
trade, the international bankers used the newly emergent power of
the USA to scuttle the old European Empires over the course of half
a century, and the oligarchs moved into the power-vacuum of the new
decolonized states. 60
Again, this assumed alliance is erroneous: the proffered alliance between the two bodies never eventuated. Far from there being accord between supposed 'Anglophiles' on both sides of the Atlantic, there was a breach.
Peter Grose, the CFR's
historian, mentions that both sides soon rejected the suggested
alliance before it eventuated. 62
It was inevitable that 'free trade' and the old European imperialism were going to conflict.
The role assumed by the USA in subverting and destroying the old empires can be discerned by 'The Fourteen Points' decreed,
...both of which focus on
international free trade as the basis for the world economy and
specifically repudiate the old empires. 66
Where hitherto the Rothschilds had mainly been
concerned with negotiating loans with states, they were now involved
in the rapid post-war expansion of Western commerce and industry,
67
freed up by the destruction of the old empires, and the inauguration
of a new era of international financial agreements, formalized by
the
Bretton Woods Agreement.
However, The City remains a focus...
The Rothschilds led the way in forging links between Tokyo
and London. Edmund co-led a delegation from The City to Tokyo in
1962 and received The Order of the Sacred Treasure from Emperor
Hirohito.
N.M. Rothschild "continues to be the most important bullion dealer" in Britain. 69
Of the "four hundred and eighty banks in the city," Rothschild remains supreme. 70
Linnett defines "greenhouse emissions" as the new form of "social market." He states that while it must be free trade that operates in defining the value of the carbon emission exchange, what is required is an "international institution."
He writes that,
Linnett frankly states that this involves
a "new world order":
Implicit in the various measures, including funding new technology and changing the consumption habits of individuals is,
The system being proposed by Linnett, in the cause of "saving the planet," is the consolidation of the international banking system under a central authority.
Linnett states that the European nations have already ceded their sovereignty to the European Union.
The next step being,
The world authority that Linnett proposes he calls the World Environment Authority (WEA). This would be based in what he calls a "world city." 79
Linnett suggests that this "world city" should be London, The City, due to it being
Whatever might be said about Wall Street, or the shift of global political power to Washington and New York, clearly The City still holds sway in the thinking of some of the primary oligarchs of international finance.
|
