The Banks' War Against Us

Historical insights & thoughts about the world we live in - and the social conditioning exerted upon us by past and current propaganda.
Apache
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Apache »

Barclays Bank

Wiki:
Barclays traces its origins back to 1690 when John Freame and Thomas Gould started trading as goldsmith bankers in Lombard Street, London. The name "Barclays" became associated with the business in 1736, when James Barclay, the son-in-law of John Freame, one of the founders, became a partner in the business. In 1728 the bank moved to 54 Lombard Street, identified by the 'Sign of the Black Spread Eagle', which in subsequent years would become a core part of the bank's visual identity.
John Freame was born in Cirencester the son of Robert Freame. In 1683 he was apprenticed to Job Bolton, a quaker goldsmith based in Lombard Street. Upon completion of his apprenticeship he went into partnership with Thomas Gould, a fellow quaker. Located in a part of the city where 25% of the population were quakers they were able to build up their reputation - and their business particularly amongst their co-religionists. The partners soon became more connected as John married Priscilla, Thomas' sister, while Thomas married Hannah, John's sister.
Ibid

themeister.co.uk/hindley/freame_john.htm
John Freame (1665-1745) was a Quaker, a banker, a lobbyist ... and the founding architect of Barclays Bank in Lombard Street, London in 1690 and the London Lead Company in Gadlys, Flintshire in 1704. John Freame was well practised in evolutionary economics long before Adam Smith in 1759 - 76 and David Ricardo in 1836 and Charles Darwin in 1859 publicised their insights. John Freame sold credit long before the industrial revolution.
Wiki:
At 21 he had completed his rigorous seven year apprenticeship and earned his spurs as a 'freeman' of the city of London. He had a trusted partner Thomas Gould, also a Quaker and freeman of the city. This famed partnership predated the 1694 launch of the Bank of England and lasted in various forms until 1896.
Wiki:
During the 18th century, Quakers entered the Quietist period in the history of their church, and they became more inward looking spiritually and less active in converting others. Marrying outside the Society was outlawed.
banking-history.co.uk/barclayseagle.html
In 1728, Freame moved to the present site in Lombard Street at the sign of the Black Spread Eagle. The business expanded over the years and other properties in Lombard Street were acquired. The banking partnership chose 54 Lombard Street as their official address, but the sign of that house - the bible - was thought to be inappropriate as a sign for a Quaker business, so they adopted the Spread Eagle sign over the extended premises.

In the 1930's Barclays Bank Limited sought and obtained a Grant of Arms. They naturally wanted to keep the Eagle they had used for so long, but because other ancient and royal houses carried it in various forms, the College of Arms ruled that it must be "differenced"; this was done appropriately by putting on three crowns (since numbers 43 and 55, both part of the head office site, bore the signs of the Three Crowns and the Three Kings) and the Grant of Arms was officially made in 1937. It originally dates from c. 3800 BC, and was the Sumerian symbol for the god of Lagash, Ninurta son of Enlil. In the astral-theological system Ninurta was associated with the planet Saturn, or perhaps as offspring or an aspect of Saturn.
hoi.polloi wrote:The Bank is kind of an Earthly Religion.
Apache
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Apache »

This post is about the link between the Barclay brothers, owners of the Daily Telegraph (no connection to Barclays bank) and The Crown Agents (mysterious bankers). I will refrain from using too many quotes and attempt to tell most of the story in my own words.

Sir David Rowat Barclay and Sir Frederick Hugh Barclay are British businessmen born within 10 minutes of each other on 27 October 1934 in Hammersmith, London. They have very substantial business interests primarily in media, retail and property (Daily Telegraph, Littlewoods and the Ritz Hotel). The Sunday Times Rich List of 2013 estimated their wealth at £2.35 billion. They avoid publicity and are reclusive.

In the media the Barclays' Scottish father is variously referred to as a travelling salesman or a candy store operator or a tobacconist. Frederick Sr died when the Barclays were 12 years old and their mother Beatrice, died in 1989. There were 8 other siblings in the family. Their childhood is described as "impoverished". There is no information on any of the Barclay siblings on Wiki. There is also no mention of what their father died of or how old he was. How did the widow, their mother, survive with all those children and no working husband?

The Barclays are alleged to have worked in the accounts department at General Electric before setting up as painters and decorators. This then morphs from briefly working at GE to turning their hand to restoring and selling dilapidated houses, eventually making enough money to move into the hotel trade. They bought the Howard Hotel in 1975 and sold it 25 years later, by which time they had acquired The Ritz. Now "painters and decorators" is a lot different to "restoring and selling houses", but this is not the only change that occurs in media pieces about them. Where did they get their money from to buy these houses?

By the way the Howard Hotel is located at 12 Temple Place, Covent Garden. Those temples do tend to crop up.

I found information on one of the Barclay siblings, Douglas who is described as working with Frederick at "Candy Corner", a tobacconists and confectioners on the edge of Kensington. I do wonder if this is the same "candy store" that their dear old daddy "operated"? In 1960 the Candy Corner business collapses due to Frederick and his brother Douglas breaching the terms of their lease and a notice of their bankruptcy appears in the London Gazette describing the Barclay Brothers as "builders and decorators". From GE to painters and decorators, to restoring and selling houses, to builders in 10 years. By the early 1960s it is claimed that David Barclay is working as a director of Hillgate Estate Agents with his wife, where Frederick joins him in a partnership. Estate agent is a lot different to "builders and decorators" isn't it? Oddly, brother Douglas disappears off the scene and is never heard of again.

Separating the mess out in the various stories I have found in the media the following occurs: David leaves GE and marries a model with whom he has 3 children. He and his wife set up an estate agents. Frederick and Douglas run a tobacconist/sweet shop. Then there is a time jump across ten years to Fred being aged 26 and bankrupt with David paying the debts, clearing his wife out of the way, and getting Fred to join him at the estate agents.

The next interesting bit of information I found was that they didn't simply buy up and restore old houses, they actually redeveloped old boarding houses across London and transformed them into hotels. The key bit is how they did this: from 1968 to 1974 they received large loans from the Crown Agents Bank.

In 1974 the Crown Agents were facing £212 million of losses and they called in their loans. £9.5m of those loans were to the Barclay Brothers.
‘The brothers were close to going broke, but they were cleverer than me,’ says Ramon Greene, a property developer who knew the twins and went bankrupt after the Crown Agents collapsed. ‘I don’t know how they managed it.’"
bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aITPndZplKNo

The Crown Agents is a company at the very heart of the British Empire. The Barclays were clearly allowed to default on the £9.5 million loan and they didn't go under, despite others being made bankrupt. Why? Could it be that the Barclays are Crown Agents themselves and such "employees" are never allowed to "go under"? The quote "I don't know how they managed it" is laughable.
"In 1983 the Barclays embarked on a highly ambitious deal that would become the cornerstone of their vast fortune in the years to come. It also displayed traits that became their trademarks in future deals: an almost obsessive insistence on secrecy, and an uncanny ability to gain the ‘inside track’ on their target business. Charles Sherwood, a partner at London-based Permira Advisers Ltd, manager of Europe’s biggest buyout fund who has since crossed swords with the brothers on major acquisitions, observes that privacy is a useful weapon for them. ‘They are very effective stealth buyers,’ he says. ‘They come out of nowhere and move quickly.’"
the Guardian dated 14 December 2008 (links have been scrubbed)

Now, where have I heard the name Permira before? Oh, that's right they own Ancestry.com ;)
In May 2003 an opportunity finally arose for the brothers to buy the Telegraph Group — comprising the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator magazine — 17 years since they had first approached Conrad Black. This time they would not be swayed. The situation was different; the brothers were billionaires, with a formidable reputation, and Black was in serious financial and legal difficulty.

David Barclay’s son Aidan was appointed as the chairman of Telegraph Media Group and Murdoch MacLennan, 62, formerly managing director of Associated Newspapers (owners of the Daily Mail), took the reins as chief executive with a remit to haul the newspaper into the 21st century.

In a text message sent to Mr Cameron on 24 May 2011, the scion of the Barclay business empire offers his musings on the government’s economic policy: Suggest, therefore, Bank of England announce extension to liquidity scheme. Allow banks, say, five years to implement Basel III, and if you can scrap talk at bank tax. Other countries won’t go along with it anyway. Best, Aidan.
Ibid

Let's look at the Barclay brothers' bosses: Crown Agents. Here I will use 2 extensive quotes as they succinctly describes just who the Crown Agents are.

eco-action.org/porkbolter/crownagents.html
We've all heard about desperate, impoverished masses grabbing whatever they can for themselves and their families under cover of the chaos and destruction caused by the illegal US/UK invasion. But you won't have heard so much about a very well established and well connected British organisation which is basically helping big greedy multinational companies to cash in on the riches of a country that has now been forcibly 'opened up' to western business interests. The firm is called Crown Agents and its London office is at 150 Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria. It also has a big office in Sutton and an International Management Training Centre in Worthing.

So what exactly does Crown Agents do? If you want a straight answer, ironically the one place not to look is the firm's own website, http://www.crownagents.com, which projects a predictably rose-tinted view of the organisation and its role in the world. It claims: "We help countries and public sector entities and businesses within those countries, to grow. We do this by working in partnership with our clients to confer the skills, ideas and material resources each needs at every stage of their development."

But you can begin to understand what all this 'help' and 'development' might really all be about by glancing at the history section on the Crown Agents site. This reveals that its beginnings were in oiling the cogs of the British empire in the 19th century: "Crown Agents originated in 1833, when the Joint Agents General for Crown Colonies were appointed by H.M. Government. The Agents' remit was to reduce costs and increase efficiency in the procurement of goods and services to the Crown Colonies."

Exactly 170 years later, Crown Agents is still busy facilitating imperialism, though these days the global greed machine prefers the Stars and Stripes to the Union Jack as its flag of convenience. Privatised in March 1997, Crown Agents lurks in that murky area between state and business that has become so central in the new age of corporate government. Its board boasts some notable links to the world of big business and banking - and these are just the ones actually declared on its own website! Chairman Peter Berry is "a director of listed investment trusts and Kier Group plc". Deputy chairman Francis Summer is "a non-executive director of the Bankers Investment Trust plc". Chief executive Jack Garvey has enjoyed a career with Unilever, Proctor and Gamble and Pepsico.

Its holding entity is The Crown Agents Foundation, whose membership includes token 'worthy' organisations such as Christian Aid and British Overseas NGOs for Development. But the vast majority of names of both permanent and elected members hail, once again, from the world of business. There is the International Chamber of Commerce, for instance, and the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, not to mention Barclays Bank, British Telecommunications plc, Securicor plc, the Securities Institute, Standard Chartered Bank, Tate and Lyle plc and Unilever plc, for whom Crown Agents chief exec Mr Garvey put in such good work over the years.
members.tripod.com/~AMERICAN_ALMANAC/agents.htm
According to its charter, Crown Agents is an ``Emination of the Crown.'' This gives Crown Agents a status close to the monarchy, yet outside the official government structures of the United Kingdom. Through much of its existence, it was overseen by the Colonial Secretary and, later, in the so-called post-colonial era, by the Minister of Overseas Development. Although not formally a department of the government, Crown Agents' entire debt was guaranteed by the Exchequer.

By now, it may have dawned on some readers that Crown Agents' range of ``services''--arms procurement, border controls, offshore banking--also nicely fit the ``administrative requirements'' of the world's organized crime cartels.

In fact, a careful review of some of the more sordid aspects of the recent history of Crown Agents, suggests that the firm has been at the center of the British Crown's highly sensitive patronage of global organized crime--what EIR long ago dubbed Dope, Inc.

Crown Agents' extensive links to international organized crime surfaced in the mid-1970s, when the firm's over-extended real estate portfolio, particularly its London real estate investments, blew sky high. At the time that the London commercial real estate market collapsed, Crown Agents was managing a portfolio of assets, loans, and other financial paper, totalling more than £4 billion. Despite the fact that Crown Agents held no banking charter, it owned a string of banks all over the world, including some unsavory outfits in some of the most notorious hot-money havens of the Commonwealth.

Much of the capital through which Crown Agents built up its real estate portfolio came from Third World governments, which made the unfortunate mistake of placing their trust in the Queen's favorite service agency. Crown Agents heavily leveraged its investment capital, building up debts far beyond its resources. When the 1973 oil shock hit, and the real estate market was one of the first of the bubbles to pierce, Crown Agents, along with many other institutions that were heavily leveraged in the secondary banking markets, went broke.

The Bank of England stepped in to bail out Crown Agents to the tune of several hundred million pounds--more than a decade before the U.S. government would carry out a similar bailout of the savings and loan institutions, ravaged by similar commercial real estate speculation. The collapse of Crown Agents' real estate portfolio led to three governmental and parliamentary investigations.

The surfacing of a wide criminal conspiracy was averted with the timely death of one of the key witnesses, the director of Crown Agents' money market operations, who purportedly blew his brains out shortly before he was to face trial on charges of corruption. According to news accounts at the time, this fellow, whose signature appeared on many of the most outrageous transactions, happened to be a heavy gambler. He had been a member of Crockfords, an elite gambling club, and two other casinos. He was a fixture at London casinos, often signing £1,000 checks. He had a home in Westminster, one of the most expensive sections of London, a country house, and three cars--all on a middle-level civil servant's salary of £5,OOO a year.
Printed in The Executive Intelligence Review, August 22, 1997.

Crown Agents Bank - the bank hardly anyone has ever heard of. Murky, dubious and directly linked via loans to the Barclay brothers that enabled them to acquire a property portfolio, which then led to their ability to buy one of the largest media groups in the UK.
Apache
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Apache »

As an addition to the empirical evidence of the credit creation theory from the University of Southampton:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Charter_Act_1844
Bank deposits are sums of money that a bank, backed by considerable collateral, may choose to deposit in the holder’s account as a loan which requires repayment with interest. The money comes into existence when the bank creates the deposit,[5] and when the loan is paid off, the money disappears from the bank’s balance sheet. While a loan is effectively a cash advance provided by the bank to the customer, in the long term the effect of unrestricted creation of bank deposits (money) can lead to inflation in the markets into which that money is channeled, such as the property market through banks' mortgage lending.
The phrase "backed by considerable collateral" is sleight of hand.

The pdf in reference 5 is from the Bank of England. It is dated 2014.
Commercial banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, by making new loans. When a bank makes a loan, for example to someone taking out a mortgage to buy a house, it does not typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new money is created. For this reason, some economists have referred to bank deposits as ‘fountain pen money’, created at the stroke of bankers’ pens when they approve loans.(1)
The bold part is their emphasis not mine and they spend a great deal of time pointing out how all the economics textbooks are wrong with their intermediary theory etc, reflecting the empirical evidence in the University of Southampton study.
The ultimate constraint on money creation is monetary policy. By influencing the level of interest rates in the economy, the Bank of England’s monetary policy affects how much households and companies want to borrow.
At no point in the pdf does the Bank of England explain where the money comes from to pay the interest on a loan and they avoid completely any mention of the word usury or why usury was prohibited for thousands of years in the Western Christian world. It disenfranchises the poor and concentrates wealth in the hands of those who are already rich.

Footnote 9 on page 8:
If the central bank were to lower interest rates significantly below zero, banks could swap their bank reserves into currency, which would pay a higher interest rate (of zero, or slightly less after taking into account the costs of storing currency). Or put another way, the demand for central bank reserves would disappear, so the central bank could no longer influence the economy by changing the price of those reserves.
antipodean
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by antipodean »

by Apache on November 27th, 2015, 8:59 pm

This post is about the link between the Barclay brothers, owners of the Daily Telegraph (no connection to Barclays bank) and The Crown Agents (mysterious bankers). I will refrain from using too many quotes and attempt to tell most of the story in my own words.

Sir David Rowat Barclay and Sir Frederick Hugh Barclay are British businessmen born within 10 minutes of each other on 27 October 1934 in Hammersmith, London. They have very substantial business interests primarily in media, retail and property (Daily Telegraph, Littlewoods and the Ritz Hotel). The Sunday Times Rich List of 2013 estimated their wealth at £2.35 billion. They avoid publicity and are reclusive.

In the media the Barclays' Scottish father is variously referred to as a travelling salesman or a candy store operator or a tobacconist. Frederick Sr died when the Barclays were 12 years old and their mother Beatrice, died in 1989. There were 8 other siblings in the family. Their childhood is described as "impoverished". There is no information on any of the Barclay siblings on Wiki. There is also no mention of what their father died of or how old he was. How did the widow, their mother, survive with all those children and no working husband?

The Barclays are alleged to have worked in the accounts department at General Electric before setting up as painters and decorators. This then morphs from briefly working at GE to turning their hand to restoring and selling dilapidated houses, eventually making enough money to move into the hotel trade. They bought the Howard Hotel in 1975 and sold it 25 years later, by which time they had acquired The Ritz. Now "painters and decorators" is a lot different to "restoring and selling houses", but this is not the only change that occurs in media pieces about them. Where did they get their money from to buy these houses?

By the way the Howard Hotel is located at 12 Temple Place, Covent Garden. Those temples do tend to crop up.

I found information on one of the Barclay siblings, Douglas who is described as working with Frederick at "Candy Corner", a tobacconists and confectioners on the edge of Kensington. I do wonder if this is the same "candy store" that their dear old daddy "operated"? In 1960 the Candy Corner business collapses due to Frederick and his brother Douglas breaching the terms of their lease and a notice of their bankruptcy appears in the London Gazette describing the Barclay Brothers as "builders and decorators". From GE to painters and decorators, to restoring and selling houses, to builders in 10 years. By the early 1960s it is claimed that David Barclay is working as a director of Hillgate Estate Agents with his wife, where Frederick joins him in a partnership. Estate agent is a lot different to "builders and decorators" isn't it? Oddly, brother Douglas disappears off the scene and is never heard of again.

Separating the mess out in the various stories I have found in the media the following occurs: David leaves GE and marries a model with whom he has 3 children. He and his wife set up an estate agents. Frederick and Douglas run a tobacconist/sweet shop. Then there is a time jump across ten years to Fred being aged 26 and bankrupt with David paying the debts, clearing his wife out of the way, and getting Fred to join him at the estate agents.

The next interesting bit of information I found was that they didn't simply buy up and restore old houses, they actually redeveloped old boarding houses across London and transformed them into hotels. The key bit is how they did this: from 1968 to 1974 they received large loans from the Crown Agents Bank.

In 1974 the Crown Agents were facing £212 million of losses and they called in their loans. £9.5m of those loans were to the Barclay Brothers.

‘The brothers were close to going broke, but they were cleverer than me,’ says Ramon Greene, a property developer who knew the twins and went bankrupt after the Crown Agents collapsed. ‘I don’t know how they managed it.’"
bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aITPndZplKNo

The Crown Agents is a company at the very heart of the British Empire. The Barclays were clearly allowed to default on the £9.5 million loan and they didn't go under, despite others being made bankrupt. Why? Could it be that the Barclays are Crown Agents themselves and such "employees" are never allowed to "go under"? The quote "I don't know how they managed it" is laughable
I can't quite work out why you've jumped to these Barclay Brother guys, I'll assume their UK profile is a lot higher than what I'm aware of.
Now "painters and decorators" is a lot different to "restoring and selling houses", Where did they get their money from to buy these houses?

This isn't that remarkable going from being self employed painters and decorators to buying houses doing them up, then selling them on or renting them out, (rental incomes could well exceed borrowing costs) especially if you have a close trusted business partner such as a twin brother.
The next interesting bit of information I found was that they didn't simply buy up and restore old houses, they actually redeveloped old boarding houses across London and transformed them into hotels. The key bit is how they did this: from 1968 to 1974 they received large loans from the Crown Agents Bank.
Once again this isn't that strange. As you've mentioned one of their wives ran a Real Estate Agency, where one of the brothers was a Director, this Dovetails nicely with being a property developer, getting first hand knowledge of any bargain properties (such as boarding houses)to snap up and develop, probably receiving Council/ Government grants towards some of the work.
They bought the Howard Hotel in 1975 and sold it 25 years later.
In 1974 the Crown Agents were facing £212 million of losses and they called in their loans. £9.5m of those loans were to the Barclay Brothers.
The Barclays were clearly allowed to default on the £9.5 million loan and they didn't go under, despite others being made bankrupt.
By the way the Howard Hotel is located at 12 Temple Place, Covent Garden
The Howard Hotel at 12 Temple place is (was) basically a Hotel at the back of the Temple Tube Station. It was the south facing wing of a building known as Arundel Great Court. The North facing wing fronted the Strand and was mostly made up of shops. The East and West facing wings were mainly offices. The 4 wings surrounding a large courtyard. The complex was finished in 1977.

I've read somewhere that the Barclay brothers built the Howard Hotel.
The 9.5mil. pounds they owed to The Crown Agents could well have been moneys they borrowed to build the Howard Hotel, they would also have to of been involved with the building of the other 3 wings. Maybe as part of a consortium or even funding it all by them selves.

The Crown Agents could well have been over exposed to a property market collapse, hence some of their borrowers going bankrupt.
The Barclay Brothers could well have just refinanced with another Bank, if it was thought that their asset was greater value than their debt.

Whats interesting is that one of Arundel Great Court's first Tenant's was Arthur Anderson, (http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?p=2388701#p2388701 ) who 2 decades later ended up occupying most of the office space in both of the East & West wings.

The Barclay Brothers would have then sold the Howard Hotel, at about the same time as Arthur Anderson were splitting from their consulting arm Anderson Consulting, which went on to be called Accenture.
Maybe the Barclay Brothers owned all of Arundel Great Court.
Knowing that their reliable long term blue chip tenant could soon exit decided to sell the whole building.
Apache
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Apache »

antipodean wrote:I can't quite work out why you've jumped to these Barclay Brother guys, I'll assume their UK profile is a lot higher than what I'm aware of.
Because they own the Daily Telegraph and were funded by The Crown Agents Bank at the beginning of their career. I've posted relevants links and quotes about exactly who The Crown Agents are and how dodgy and unaccountable they are. One of the Barclays sons directly influenced economic policy in the UK.

I was also pointing out how different media outlets describe their career in different ways and that it is highly unlikely that they were simply "painters and decorators". They worked briefly in the accounting department at General Electric and then left there to become self employed painters and decoraters? It is never explained why they left one of the largest companies on the planet to become "property owners". They bought up boarding houses and turned them into hotels, dispossessing the poor in London from having anywhere cheap to live. The Barclays are billionaires with their fingers in the media pie, along with owning a lot of property and I have every right to question these scumbags and their "humble" and whitewashed beginnings.

Owing money to a murky bank owned by the Crown Agents instead of a high street bank like Lloyds or Barclays is a bit odd. The first charge against the Barclay Brothers Temple Court company was in 1974 via Four Millbank&Nominees, a Crown Agents company, so they were involved with the Crown Agents as far back as 1974. No ordinary person can borrow money from the Crown Agents Bank. They do not exist on the high street. They also didn't re-finance their loan with another bank - they defaulted. I'm not sure how much more clear I could have made that point.
antipodean wrote:Whats interesting is that one of Arundel Great Court's first Tenant's was Arthur Anderson, (http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?p=2388701#p2388701 ) who 2 decades later ended up occupying most of the office space in both of the East & West wings.
I've not read the thread and until today I hadn't come across the name of Arthur Anderson. All I know is that the group the Barclays were involved in was eventually sold on to an Israeli consortium.
antipodean wrote:Knowing that their reliable long term blue chip tenant could soon exit decided to sell the whole building.
I don't care why they sold it or to whom. They are currently active, via one of their sons, in the media fakery that goes on, and couple that to their past (and probably present involvement) with the Crown Agents who facilitate crimes against humanity on a daily basis, I believe it is important for those who wish to fight back against such a crime family that I post about them. Some of my information may not be of the best quality, and is a musing about them rather than a fact, but that doesn't alter my opinion that they are scumbags. One glance on Google will show you that.
antipodean
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by antipodean »

http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?p=2399687#p2399687
Hoi has posted a very interesting link over on Chat, which probably belongs here.

It's about the FBI investigating the Nugan Hand Bank back in the 80s.
A bank used 'down under' by the Global Elites,Trilateral Commision etc for bribing and paying off Politicians for the benefit of Big Business, Round Table corporations.

A lot of this has been documented in a documentation known as the Opal File.
February, 1973:
Gerald Parsky, William Colby, Michael Hand, Frank Nugan and Bob Seldon move to further consolidate the Mafia banking operations. In NZ they acquire 20% Fletcher subsidiary Marac, using the Security Pacific National Bank helped by Marac Corporate secretary Alan Hawkins.

In Australia, the Nugan Hand Bank begins operations with 30% of the stock held by Australasian and Pacific Holdings (100% Chase Manhattan Bank), 25% by CIA’s Air America (known as ’Air Opium’), 25% by South Pacific Properties and 20% held by Seldon, Nugan and Hand
he Irving Trust Bank’s New York Branch establishes US links between the CIA and Nugan Hand, a worldwide network of 22 banks set up to:
a) ’launder’ money from Onassis heroin operations in the Golden Triangle and Iran
b) as a CIA funnel to pro-US political parties in Europe and Latin America, including Colby’s P2
c) a spying conduit for information from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand
d) finance arms smuggled to Libya, Indonesia, South America, Middle East and Rhodesia using the CIA’s Edward Wilson
26th February, 1974:
Michael Hand meets Bob Jones in Wellington to implement plans for the CIA’s new spying operation - countries targeted include France, Chile, West Germany and Israel.

Using the Brierly/Jones Investment funnel, Jones buys building in Willeston Street which will be rented to France and Chile, another at Plimmer Steps to house West Germany and Israel.

CIA will set up eavesdropping communications centre inside the Willeston Street building and another at 163 The Terrace which will link with equipment installed in the Plimmer Steps building. Four CIA technicians will run the whole operation.
6th October, 1974:
Ray Cline implements William Colby plan to oust Australian Prime Minister Whitlam. Nugan Hand Bank finances payoffs to Malcolm Fraser and other pro-US politicians. A joint bugging operation commences between CIA and ASIO.
December, 1974:
Australian Governor-General John Kerr joins Ray Cline’s payroll and received his first pay-off of $US200,000 credited to his account number 767748 at the Singapore branch of the Nugan Hand Bank.
3rd February, 1977:
Parksy and Colby close down the Brierley/Jones Investment funnel and open up separate channels for Brierley and Jones. Jones will be supplied with ’laundered’ funds via Sydney branch of the Nugan Hand Bank,
8th June, 1979:
Michael Hand, Frank Nugan, Brierley and James Fletcher meet in Hand’s Sydney penthouse to discuss the establishment of the New Zealand Mafia organization.
17th August, 1979:
New Zealand Mafia inaugural meeting in Sydney including Hand, Brierley, Fletcher, Goodman, R.Trotter, Alan Hawkins and L.Papps.

Key sectors of the economy would be taken over- food, using Goodman; forestry and farming, using Fletcher and Trotter; property, using Brierley and Jones. Brierley, Hand and Papps would be responsible for banking, insurance and finance, while Hand and Hawkins would be responsible for setting up new "laundry" channels into New Zealand.

The economy would be taken over using cheap loans of less than 5%, while consumers would pay 28%.
May, 1980:
Mafia’s Nugan Hand banking operation crashes after Frank Nugan killed. Death ruled as suicide even though no fingerprints found on the rifle. Maloney, Houghton, Yates and Hand shred important documents, but miss some. CIA helps Hand and Bank President Donald Beasley escape to the U.S. The CIA and Australian Security Intelligence Organization cover everything up. Beazley appointed President of Miami City National Bank, run by Alberto Dugue for ’laundering’ profits from the CIA Colombian cocaine operation.

There is a probability that Michael Hand killed Frank Nugan because of his involvement with Hand’s fiancée.

25th May, 1980:
Colby arrived in Australia to discuss replacement of the Nugan Hand Bank with Hand, Brierley, and Seldon. Immediate funding available from Sydney branch of the Deak Bank, a separate CIA operation, and IEL would be used to buy NZI Corp., to prepare for future laundering operations.

Maloney, Houghton, Yates, and Hand would shred all documents leading back to the New Zealand Great South Basin connection, and the CIA would help Hand and Bank President Donald Beazley escape to the USA. The CIA and ASIO would also cover everything up.

Hand and Beazley turn up in Miami - Beazley appointed President and Hand ’consultant’ to the Miami City National Bank, but also Hand turned up in El Salvador to help organize bankrolling of the Contras with other ex- members of Nugan-Hand.
23rd June, 1980:
New Zealand Mafia, including Brierley, Fletcher, Trotter, Jones, Hawkins, Goodman, and Papps meet in Wellington to discuss merger of Fletcher Challenge and Tasman.

In order to replace Nugan Hand Bank’s 22 world-wide branches, quick moves are made to buy control of NZI by New Zealand Mafia using Brierley, thereby capturing an established, world-wide organization through the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which is also linked to the CIA through its subsidiary, World Finance Corporation.
http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?id=17241

The link posted by hoi is interesting because it features files and memos from FBI archives investigating the Nugan Hand Bank, back in the 80s.
https://archive.org/stream/FBI-Nugan-Ha ... 0/mode/2up
ICfreely
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by ICfreely »

"The Silence" (Sokout) Iranian Movie 1998, Mohsen Makhmalbaf

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZVrBa8iGQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZVrBa8iGQ

28:33 – “During the war, 900 soum [toman] were worth 30 dollars. Now 900 soum are worth 1 dollar. The landlord wants to raise the rent…”
Prescient
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Prescient »

Very interesting article here.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-3 ... ing?page=1

Specifically:
We exist, beyond any shadow of any doubt, in an environment of absolute fakery where nothing is real… from the prices of assets to what’s occurring here with regard to the big Wall Street banks, the Federal Reserve, interest rates and everything in between.

…All of this is being played in a way to keep people believing, once again, that the system is working and will continue to work.
Sound familiar?

and:
Law enforcement and national security agencies, they play out multiple scenarios. They simulate multiple scenarios. I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating.

The collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses.
I’m not talking about a recession. I’m talking about a collapse, when people are desperate, when they can’t get food or clothing, when they have no way of going from place to place, when they can’t protect themselves.
I think money is our earliest psyop experience. From when we were a small child and we started to understand the concept, from that moment on we are controlled.
ICfreely
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by ICfreely »

Maybe the main problem with the Banks' war against Us is that bankers have managed to convince themselves they’re supremely moral heroes!
The Morality of Moneylending: A Short History
...
Ayn Rand identified the principle that the greatest productive, life-serving power on earth is not human muscle but the human mind. Consequently, she regarded profit-seeking—the use of the mind to identify, produce, and trade life-serving values—as the essence of being moral.

Ayn Rand’s Objectivist ethics is essential to the defense of moneylending. It provides the moral foundation without which economic arguments in defense of usury cannot prevail. It demonstrates why moneylending is supremely moral.

The Objectivist ethics frees moneylenders from the shackles of Dante’s inferno, enables them to brush off Shakespeare’s ridicule, and empowers them to take an irrefutable moral stand against persecution and regulation by the state. The day that this moral code becomes widely embraced will be the day that moneylenders—and every other producer of value—will be completely free to charge whatever rates their customers will pay and to reap the rewards righteously and proudly.

If this moral ideal were made a political reality, then, for the first time in history, moneylenders, bankers, and their institutions would be legally permitted and morally encouraged to work to their fullest [amoral] potential, making profits by providing the lifeblood of capital to our economy. Given what these heroes have achieved while scorned and shackled, it is hard to imagine what their productive achievements would be if they were revered and freed.[ :blink: ]

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/is ... eylending/
Farcevalue
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Farcevalue »

The conflation of money lending with banking, or better yet, the avoidance of any mention of the "too big to fail" no risk advantage that banks enjoy courtesy of the evil and restrictive state, so exhaustively man-splained in the Objective Standard article is, to quote one of Ayn Rand's favorite adjectives: astonishing.

Oh, the poor, long-suffering banks, hobbled and beaten into submission by the state. Usury, interest, tomay-to, tomah-to. Interest is merely a reflection of time preference. It would be interesting to see how the poor banks would fare in a world where they actually had to have something on hand to lend as opposed to conjuring credit out of the air with the confidence there would always be a digital central bank backstop keeping the currency flowing along with enforced taxation to keep hyperinflation in check and shunt excess into the stock market.

Si, Signor Blankfein you are truly doing Gods' work. Heaven awaits with St. Peter' Strumpet and a gold chalice full of Peruvian blue flakes.
Flabbergasted
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

Usury: the crime that was and now is not

I admit I am poorly versed in economics, but my intuition tells me David Hawkes is right on the money (if you will excuse the pun) when he says that...
Legalized usury commits the human race to the unceasing pursuit of economic growth. Usury imposes an unstoppable expansion of the process of wealth creation. Usury is inherently insatiable.
And, at a deeper level, I know perfectly well what Pope Innocent IV (1200-1254) meant when he wrote that...
Usury is generally prohibited because if it were allowed all manner of evils would ensue...It is clear that practically every evil follows from usury.
In this post I will share some of my notes to revisionist Michael A. Hoffman’s book “Usury in Christendom: the sin that was and now is not”. https://www.amazon.com/Usury-Christendo ... 021&sr=1-1

A lot on the history of usury can be found online (even the Wickedpedia is worth a read) and the summary below is of course dreadfully incomplete. Hopefully it’s enough to draw attention to the permanent grievous social and spiritual damage that flows from usury, and to boost interest in the study of the banks’ war against us.

Some Biblical perspectives

Exodus 22:25 prohibits usury of any kind, and a meager 1% interest rate is considered excessive in Nehemiah 5:1-13. In principle, a rate a hundred times lower would still be usury. However, advocates claim it only applies to the poor and/or only condemns exorbitant interest. Today dictionaries define usury as ‘excessive interest, over the legal rate’, but who gets to decide what is excessive and legal? Legal is anything man has legitimized. Lawful is what God allows and sanctions. According to the Old Testament, any amount of interest is unlawful. Period.

Deuteronomy 23:20 does in fact mention the poor, but does not limit the prohibition of usury to any specific group. Those who insist it only applies to the poor refuse to apply a similar reasoning to the mention of the poor in Deuteronomy 15:1-11 and optimistically announce that the canceling of debts is for the poor and the rich alike.

Interestingly, Deuteronomy 23:20 permits exacting usury from ‘foreigners’. Since the Old Testament also prohibits oppressing ‘strangers’, it has been argued that usury cannot be oppressive. However, ‘strangers’ (ger) were law-abiding immigrants integrated into Hebrew society, whereas the word ‘foreigners’ (nokri) referred to ‘wicked pagans’ against whom the Hebrews were expected to wage war. Indeed, usury is a weapon of mass destruction, and the Hebrews were perfectly aware of that. Charging interest on loans to fellow citizens or friendly neighbors turns the whole of society into a ‘nation of foreigners’ (nokri), destroying the social fabric and contradicting the bidding of charity.

God did not intend that His people would be indebted for 10 or 20 years, even if the loans were interest-free. Under the Biblical concept of the Jubilee (‘acceptable year’), no indebtedness would last longer than the sabbatical 7th year. In the year after the last of seven such sabbatical years (7 x 7 +1 = 50), a Jubilee was to be declared and all debts canceled. The key Jubilee passage from Leviticus 25:10 was engraved on the Liberty Bell by the founders of the US. These men believed the Jubilee to be relevant and binding, not an atavism from the Stone Age.

The parable of the talents is by some interpreted as an approval of usury. The slothful servant calls his master a hard man and insinuates he is a thief (because he wants to reap what he did not sow). If Christ were a hard man and a usurer, it would make sense to have deposited the talent at interest. The key is in the answer: “wicked servant, out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.” I think there are other and more important levels of interpretation, but that´s for another thread.

The New Testament tells us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Any man in need would prefer to borrow money without interest, if given the option. Therefore, nobody is morally justified in charging interest.

Additional passages...
Ezekiel 18:13 [if someone] hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.

Ezekiel 22:12-13 [...] thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God. Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in
the midst of thee.

Leviticus 25:35-37 And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

Psalm 15 Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? [...] He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent.

Proverbs 28:8 He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.

Jeremiah 15:10 Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.
Why usury is unnatural

Most Pre-Christian thinkers were strongly against usury. We have it from Aristotle that...
Usury makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. [...] Interest bred by money is like the principal which breeds it, and may be called ‘currency the son of currency’. Of all modes of acquisition, usury is the most unnatural.
St. Thomas of Aquinas very aptly pointed out that abstracted exchange value cannot have a vendible use value in addition to the exchange value it abstracts. Usury is selling a use that does not and cannot exist, a metaphysical impossibility. Therefore, usury should be prohibited even in productive loans where the borrower is not needy.

Profit can only come from nature’s goods. Usury sets up an artificial invulnerability to the contingencies of God’s provision (i.e., nature’s goods). In modern times, this invulnerability is further secured by transforming wealth that perishes into debt that lasts indefinitely in order to derive a permanent future income from it.

Usury defies the second law of thermodynamics because, though naturally barren, it multiplies indefinitely on itself and does not rot or come to a natural end. It constitutes an attempt to create something out of nothing (loans are said to ‘bear’ interest in the sense of giving birth to something that wasn’t there), usurping a power only God possesses. A fungible is never worth more than itself; thus, by contracting for more than the principal, the creditor subverts intrinsic value.

In a commodatum, the thing lent (a horse, a tool) must be returned, and, if necessary, rent may be lawfully charged. In a loan, however, the borrower returns the equivalent of the thing borrowed, because he has consumed or destroyed the thing received (money, food, raw material). Thus, in a loan, ownership and liability passes to the borrower. No rent or interest can be charged for what belongs to another.

In his Summa Confessorum, Thomas of Chobham (1160-1235 AD), an indefatigable campaigner against usury, explains that...
...if I have lent you money, immediately the money is yours; therefore, if I receive a fee for this, I profit from what is yours, not mine. The usurer sells the debtor nothing that is his, but only time, which is God’s. Since he sells a thing belonging to another, he ought not to derive any profit from it.
The battle against usury in the Middle Ages

The Council of Nicaea (325 AD) condemned usury, mentioning clerics, but also cited Psalm 15 which excludes all usurers (not just clerics) from the Tabernacle (Canon 17). In fact, every important assembly of the Church, from the Council of Elvira (306 AD) to the Council of Vienne (1311 AD) explicitly condemned usury.

Thus, the 3rd Lateran Council (1179 AD) declared that notorious usurers should not be admitted to Communion or receive a Christian burial (if unrepentant) (Canon 25). This was confirmed by the 4th Lateran Council (Lyon II). The Council of Paris (1212 AD) declared that the property of a deceased usurer had to be confiscated, returned to the victims and/or distributed to the poor. Usurers could not bequeath anything in a will because “the fruits of rapine may not be the object of a gift”.

The Council of Lyon declared that the will of a usurer is null and void. Even if the moribund usurer ordered restitution, he was to be denied a Christian burial until full satisfaction had been made by his heirs. In such cases, the drafting of the last will had to be supervised by a Church official to prevent cheating. Some canons prohibited priests (not bishops) from absolving usurers even when these promised to make restitution. Usurers were to be held as infamous and ineligible for the reception of dignities and honors, and their testimony was not accepted in ecclesiastical courts.

Some usurers accepted remaining many years under the sentence of excommunication, intending to make restitution in old age. To discourage this strategy, the Council of Mainz (1233 AD) declared that if a usurer remained one month under excommunication, his wife and children would be denied the sacraments (except baptism and the last unction).

Charlemagne fought vehemently against usury and imposed heavy fines for it. In 789, he wrote Admonitio Generalis, basing his argument on the Council of Nicaea, a letter by Pope Leo I (444 AD), the Canones Apostollorum, and Scripture. The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle subsequently promulgated Admonitio Generalis as Church doctrine. In England, usury was prohibited by Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Henry II, Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, Henry VII and Edward VI. Under William the Conqueror, usurers were whipped, exposed in the pillory and banished permanently.

Penalties for usury grew more and more severe as practitioners became more numerous and more creative in dodging the canons. Not only usurers were punished, but anyone associated with them, including...

- heirs and relatives
- those who hesitated to denounce them
- those who helped draft and execute usurious contracts, such as lawyers, notaries and judges
- those who made or enforced laws contrary to canons against usury
- those who rented houses for the purpose of money lending
- those who allowed usurers to live on their land
- those who affirmed usury is not sinful, or induced others to believe it
- clerics who failed to enforce canons against usury
- clerics who granted unrepentant usurers a Christian burial or accepted their offerings
- clerics who administered sacraments to usurers
- borrowers who did not denounce usurious lenders
- lawyers who defended usurers in court (unless they swore to retire if usury was proven)

Penalties were inflicted on the family and employees of usurers to effect conversion. The latter had to leave their jobs on pains of excommunication. Wives should refuse gifts from usurious husbands, taking only the bare minimum while attempting to convert them. If the husband was incorrigible, the wife should separate from him (quoad mensam et convivium, not quoad thorum).

Punishment for clerics was excommunication (lower ranks) or loss of office (patriarchs, archbishops and bishops). Collegia and universities were placed under interdict. If the usurers were not expelled within one month of these penalties, the whole territory fell under an interdict.

Those accused of usury were compelled to show their books. Those who didn’t keep books had to prove it (swearing was not enough). Because debtors (some of whom were princes) were reluctant to appear as accusers, the Council of Paris commanded all the faithful to report usurers under threat of ecclasistical censure. In the absence of accusers, sufficient proof against the usurer could be gathered ex officio, including books/accounts revealing the nature of their trade, documented sales on credit, and lending contracts disguised as sales contracts. Apparently, in the Middle Ages usurers were not condemned lightly and on flimsy evidence, and much effort was put into converting rather than punishing them.

Berman

I was curious about what famous legal historian Harold J. Berman had to say about the unanimous ban on usury prior to the Renaissance and the severe punishments inflicted on unrepentant usurers, so I consulted his seminal work “Law and Revolution” (657 pages in small print) which looks at all Western legal systems at least since the 9th century. The word “usury” is referenced only six times in the index (pp. 248, 261, 336, 338, 345, 530). The two most relevant passages are reproduced below:
Contrary to what is sometimes supposed, the church strongly favored the charging of interest on loans―indeed, the canonists first applied the word “interest” to distinguish lawful charges for the use of money from unlawful charges (“usury”). (p. 530-1)

The definition of usury was never entirely clear and it kept changing [...] In the 9th, 10th and early 11th centuries (before the great revival of commerce), when borrowing was almost always for consumption rather than for production or investment, the church had proclaimed many blanket prohibitions against the sin of usury. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries, however, the economic situation began to change drastically. Henceforth money was needed also for financing fairly large-scale economic enterprises of the church itself. At the same time, as John Noonan has pointed out, “many churches and monasteries were heavily endowed and under a constant pressure to find suitable investments for their funds. The monasteries were, indeed, the chief lenders to the nobles departing on the Crusades. The purchase of annuities by churches and pious institutions was on a very large scale [...] the papacy itself often had large idle sums on deposit in banks. (p. 248)
In my opinion, that’s a very poor legal analysis of radix omnia malorum, a crime considered equivalent to theft and murder for fifteen centuries and punished with excommunication. The staunch efforts of countless Church councils between 306 AD and 1311 AD, and of important temporal rulers (Justinian, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Alfred the Great), to eradicate the crime of usury is by Berman reduced to “blanket prohibitions” (move on, nothing to see here, folks!) and to the lazy statement that “the church strongly favored usury”! Nor does Berman breathe a word on Courson’s and Chobham’s massive campaigns against usury in the 13th century. Note the difference between “the church” and “churches” (Berman only uses the lower case). The former would coincide with the Magisterium, the second with specific individuals and factions within the clergy. Also, without absolute and relative figures, expressions like “chief lenders to the nobles”, “purchase of annuities on a very large scale” and “large idle sums” could be fair assessments or mere rhetorical devices, depending on where the writer’s sympathies lie.

The Monte

Prior to the Renaissance, economics was a branch of theology and ethics!

Beginning in 1345, however, the Florentine government imposed compulsory loans on its citizens at 5% to finance the war against the Pope and other city-states, thereby forcing them to engage in mortal sin. The scam was called Monte Commune and lasted for centuries under different forms. Lorenzo Ridolfi (1362-1443), a crafty canon lawyer and member of an affluent family, became the principal apologist of the racket.

In 1378, Florentine workers rebelled against these compulsory interest-bearing loans (prestanze) and actually held the seat of government for six weeks. After four years of tension and ineffective coalitions, the usurious regime was restored. By 1427, 86% of the Monte’s credits were in the hands of the 10% richest families.

Hoffman describes the Monte at length in his book. It’s an interesting case study of how traditional medieval practices were gradually replaced by financial rackets very much like those we see today, but time and space constraints forbid dwelling further on the topic.

The loopholes

The Biblical and Patristic ban on usury was abolished by changing it from a contractual matter (objective) to a crime of intent (subjective), and then institutionalizing the loophole.

Thus, many attempted to justify usury by invoking a noble purpose, such as assisting the poor or ransoming captives (there had actually been ‘charity banks’ in the 14th century which provided interest-free loans for the poor, but these were eventually hijacked). There are numerous examples of such ‘noble excuses’, from the 14th to the 19th century.

Another loophole was to insist on a cynical distinction between ‘manifest’ and ‘occult’ usury. When the Church referred to ‘manifest usurers’, it simply meant those who had been proven guilty by an examination of their books and the testimony of two or more victims. The Church never made a distinction between ‘visible’ usurers (e.g., pawn shops) and ‘invisible’ usurers (e.g., clerics and private bankers).

A popular subterfuge consisted of invoking an old Roman (not Christian) law on ‘reverse obligations’. Thus, gratitude for a loan might take the form of a gift. Bona fide gifts were acceptable, but usurers would arrange the ‘gift’ in advance, as a disguised form of interest.

Feigning compliance with the law, loans could be declared ‘gratuitous’, but a small amount had to be paid to cover expenses and indemnity. This way the loan became a conditio sine qua non, rather than the direct cause of the interest.

In the 16th century, the ‘triple contract’ was introduced. It was a combination of partnership, insurance and return on investment. By having each part signed by different parties, the usurious nature of the enterprise was disguised.

But perhaps the most common loophole was to change the definition of usury from “any increase on a loan” (tarbith) to “excessive/exorbitant/biting interest” (neshec). Loans could then be classified as lawful or sinful by answering three questions: who is lending to whom? for what purpose? at what rate?

The great change

Usury was legalized, or publicly endorsed, by the following Popes:
- Leo X (1515)
- Benedict XIV (1745)
- Pius VIII (1830)
- Benedict XV (1917)
- John Paul II (1983)

According to the Council of Vienne, by declaring that usury is not a sin, the above Popes became heretics. The other 48 Popes who have served since 1515 have failed to correct the error and restore the dogma on usury, and so, in theory, could be accused of heresy by omission. Even Pius X, who perspicaciously identified modernism as the synthesis of all heresies, did not call out the legalization of usury and the financialization of the economy as a precondition for the advent of modernism.

In 1515, Pope Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de Medici) declared that the interest-bearing Monte di Pietá banks were meritorious (because established for a good cause), not sinful, and that anyone, religious or secular, who preached against them would incur the penalty of excommunication.

In 1745, Benedict XIV issued Vix Pervenit. In a piece of lip service, he condemned usury according to a new version of it given by himself which excluded ‘moderate interest on money’.
We do not deny that, at times, together with the loan contract, certain other titles not intrinsic to the contract may run parallel with it. From these other titles, entirely just and legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due to the contract.
In 1830, Pius VIII ordered priests to absolve and “no longer disturb” lenders charging interest on loans provided it did not exceed the local legal rate.

In 1917, Pope Benedict XV wrote in Canon 1543 that only exorbitant interest was unlawful and that Christians could charge above the standard (legal) rate if they had a “just and proportionate title”, but he never defined ‘exorbitant’ and ‘just’, rendering the injunction meaningless.
If a fungible thing is given to another so that it becomes his, and later it must be restored in the same sort, no profit can be made by reason of the contract; but in the loan of a fungible thing, it is not in itself illicit to reap a legal profit unless it can be shown to be immoderate of itself, and even greater profit can be made if there is a just and proportionate title so supporting.
In 1983, in the Code of Canon Law promulgated by John Paul II, church administrators are actually commanded to invest for profit funds not needed to pay expenses.
Stocks, bonds, certificates of deposit or money involved in prudent loans may belong to a juridic person as part of its stable patrimony, if they belong to special funds or endowments [...] goods are to be invested cautiously and profitably.
The Protestants

At the dawn of Protestantism, it was the Catholic Church and the Pope, not the Reformers, who were associated with usury and mammonism. Hovewer, according to Hoffman, persistent propaganda efforts have assigned the theological justification of usury and the beatification of riches to the early Lutherans, Calvinists and Puritans.

Indeed, through his famous opus The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (first translated into English in 1930), Max Weber “trained” Western academics to associate wealth worshipping with Calvinism and Puritanism, essentially by omitting the existence of two radically different periods of Protestant teaching on usury: a ‘virtuous’ period (1520-1700) and a ‘decadent’ period (1700 onwards).

Overall, the early followers of Luther and Calvin were more hostile to usury than the Catholics were. There was in fact a certain utopian or “lay monastic” quality to many early communities that would positively impress today’s critics of corrupt government and society. This was certainly the case of New England under the Puritans from 1620 to 1700. Hoffman dedicates a considerable part of his book to shine a fresh light on this important period in history and destroy the stereotype of the humorless, scrooge-like, bigoted, pleasure-hating Puritan fundamentalist. By doing so, he renders a great service to Revisionism, but this is not the place to review it.

Calvin was divided on the subject of usury. In a letter from around 1545, possibly to Claude de Sachin, he wrote:
It would be desirable if usurers were chased from every country. [...] Usury almost always travels with two inseparable companions: tyrannical cruelty and the art of deception. [...] Our situation is different [from that of the Hebrews]; for that reason I’m unwilling to condemn it, so long as it is practiced with equity and charity. [...] We ought not to judge usury according to a few passages of Scripture, but in accordance with the principle of equity.
One wonders exactly how Calvin envisaged a matrimony between charity and usury’s inseparable companions ‘cruelty’ and ‘deception’, or if he was himself sincerely deceived. But let’s not forget Calvin was a trained lawyer. By preferring the Greek notion of “equity” to Scripture, he was leaning on a distinction which looks suspiciously like a Talmudic loophole (prozbul).

Calvin derived his proto-capitalist views from the Catholic scholar Charles du Moulin (1500-1556) (who, by the way, believed that not paying interest on productive capital is equivalent to stealing) and his popularizer, François Hottman. For those who wish to take a closer look at the connections between Catholic nominalism and Calvinist economics and the whitewashing of usury in Germany, it might be worthwhile to read up on the theologians Eck, Biel and Summenhart, the nominalist school of Tübingen, and the Fugger banking dynasty.

According to theologian and economist André Biéler, Calvin was not a driving force for capitalism; in fact, capitalism could develop in Protestant nations only thanks to the relaxation of Reformed doctrine and morals. In any case, Calvin’s views were hardly compatible with the modern entrepreneurial mentality. He wrote:
Each must be content with his vocation. Let him follow it, let him not desire to seek a different one.

Usury is not only evil and dishonest gain, but also unworthy of an honest Christian [...] It would be desirable that the names ‘usury’, ‘profit’ and ‘interest’ were completely banished from the memory of men.
The Jews

The Jews understood usury is a ‘weapon of war’ and were only happy to wield it against the gentiles. This obviously painted Jewish usury in the Middle Ages as particularly malevolent. However, Christian usurers were by many considered more immoral than Jewish usurers, because they would pauperize friends and foes alike (although loopholes for Jews were eventually created).

By the early 13th century, usury had become a major component in Jewish economic life, and the terms “usurer” and “Jew” were by many used interchangeably. Bernard of Clairvaux used the word judaizare to denote any form of money lending. The Council of Paris (1212 AD) even called financial institutions ‘synagogues for the wicked’. However, the claim that the condemnation of Jewish usury was an expression of “racism” is not sustained by any documentary evidence. Such a perception presupposes Christian usurers were left unmolested. Actually, the reverse was true: In many cases, usury was permitted to Judaic persons because they were unbaptized and therefore outside the Church’s jurisdiction. They were also protected by certain rulers who for political reasons sought usurious financing from outside the Christian community.

Hoffman believes that a hysterical fear of Jewish money oppression was whipped up to draw attention away from gentile usury and gain acceptance for a milder but institutionalized form of usury (Monte de Pietá).
[Bankers] stampeded Christendom from the frying pan of rabinic usury into the fire of gentile usury, and people were supposed to be elated that they were burned by their fellow Christians rather than “those awful Jews".
Centuries before the Rothschilds, the Medicis and Fuggers were paying unscrupulous theologians to whitewash usury and building plunderous banking empires, but the House of Fugger has been allowed to remain a mere footnote in the annals of financial chicanery. Over time, as they grew exceedingly large, these empires merged with their Jewish counterparts...
...to form the modern, hydra-headed system of finance that oppresses the entire world.
Closing remark

Many of us are deeply concerned about the utter destruction caused by the greed, injustice, deceit and brazen mockery which oil the machinery of the modern world. I think that, while self-worship may be the archetypal source of psychopathy and megalomania, usury is certainly the oxygen that keeps the Nutwork breathing.
Skinnylegsandall
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Skinnylegsandall »

This is a great post Flabbergasted.I loved reading it.Thank-you so much for writing and posting it.Someday these psychopathic assholes will fall by the wayside with the light of Truth filling the space presently occupied by this darkness.
bongostaple
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by bongostaple »

More thanks for a great read - makes for really interesting consideration. I have, on a few occasions, explained to friends exactly where the money comes from when you take out a mortgage with a bank to buy a house. For some reason, people still think that it comes from the money that other customers have deposited with the bank. They are always surprised to learn that the bank actually 'creates' the money out of thin air onto their balance sheet, with the property as their security - which of course appears as an asset on the balance sheet. I had to stop expecting financial matters to make sense anymore once I'd got my head around that one.
brianv
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by brianv »

bongostaple » January 13th, 2017, 2:23 pm wrote:More thanks for a great read - makes for really interesting consideration. I have, on a few occasions, explained to friends exactly where the money comes from when you take out a mortgage with a bank to buy a house. For some reason, people still think that it comes from the money that other customers have deposited with the bank. They are always surprised to learn that the bank actually 'creates' the money out of thin air onto their balance sheet, with the property as their security - which of course appears as an asset on the balance sheet. I had to stop expecting financial matters to make sense anymore once I'd got my head around that one.
What's even harder to get my head around is that the same "Church" and "Kings" who were denouncing "usury" - where did they get the money to build their own Empires? The financing of War after War as a quick scan of any history book will show. Where did the "Church" get it's money to build it's own Empire of "usury of the mind" and it's own Wars and Edifices? To build an Empire you need a financial backer! Simple.
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Re: The Banks' War Against Us

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

brianv wrote:Where did the "Church" get it's money to build it's own Empire of "usury of the mind" and it's own Wars and Edifices? To build an Empire you need a financial backer! Simple.
Good question. On page 44 of his book, Hoffman says that the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were built without debt or usury. Nowadays, an economy without usury is derided as backward or even impossible. But how impossible is it really?

Also, I am not sure I would classify Christendom between the 4th and the 13th century as an "empire", in need of massive loans. But I need to do some more reading on it before I attempt an answer.

By the way, Burckhardt wrote a fascinating book about the birth of the Gothic cathedral, based on the diary of Abbot Suger, who supervised the building of St. Denis. If Suger´s account is true, it shows a way of doing things very different from the present day.
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