The Rothschild Bank of England is letting the cat out of the bag. They are just making money out of thin air. Of course, we knew that already. But why are they confirming that now?
They can afford to do that only if they have access to hard currencies. Ahh, the Ben Fulford win-win solution comes to mind…
The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it
The Bank of England’s dose of honesty throws the theoretical basis for austerity out the window
David Graeber, Tuesday 18 March 2014 10.47 GMT
‘The central bank can print as much money as it wishes.’ Photograph: Alamy
Back in the 1930s, Henry Ford is supposed to have remarked that it was a good thing that most Americans didn’t know how banking really works, because if they did, “there’d be a revolution before tomorrow morning”.
Last week, something remarkable happened. The Bank of England let the cat out of the bag. In a paper called “Money Creation in the Modern Economy“, co-authored by three economists from the Bank’s Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong, and that the kind of populist, heterodox positions more ordinarily associated with groups such as Occupy Wall Street are correct. In doing so, they have effectively thrown the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.
To get a sense of how radical the Bank’s new position is, consider the conventional view, which continues to be the basis of all respectable debate on public policy. People put their money in banks. Banks then lend that money out at interest – either to consumers, or to entrepreneurs willing to invest it in some profitable enterprise. True, the fractional reserve system does allow banks to lend out considerably more than they hold in reserve, and true, if savings don’t suffice, private banks can seek to borrow more from the central bank.
The central bank can print as much money as it wishes. But it is also careful not to print too much. In fact, we are often told this is why independent central banks exist in the first place. If governments could print money themselves, they would surely put out too much of it, and the resulting inflation would throw the economy into chaos. Institutions such as the Bank of England or US Federal Reserve were created to carefully regulate the money supply to prevent inflation. This is why they are forbidden to directly fund the government, say, by buying treasury bonds, but instead fund private economic activity that the government merely taxes.
It’s this understanding that allows us to continue to talk about money as if it were a limited resource like bauxite or petroleum, to say “there’s just not enough money” to fund social programmes, to speak of the immorality of government debt or of public spending “crowding out” the private sector. What the Bank of England admitted this week is that none of this is really true. To quote from its own initial summary: “Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits” … “In normal times, the central bank does not fix the amount of money in circulation, nor is central bank money ‘multiplied up’ into more loans and deposits.”
In other words, everything we know is not just wrong – it’s backwards. When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really just an IOU. The role of the central bank is to preside over a legal order that effectively grants banks the exclusive right to create IOUs of a certain kind, ones that the government will recognise as legal tender by its willingness to accept them in payment of taxes. There’s really no limit on how much banks could create, provided they can find someone willing to borrow it. They will never get caught short, for the simple reason that borrowers do not, generally speaking, take the cash and put it under their mattresses; ultimately, any money a bank loans out will just end up back in some bank again. So for the banking system as a whole, every loan just becomes another deposit. What’s more, insofar as banks do need to acquire funds from the central bank, they can borrow as much as they like; all the latter really does is set the rate of interest, the cost of money, not its quantity. Since the beginning of the recession, the US and British central banks have reduced that cost to almost nothing. In fact, with “quantitative easing” they’ve been effectively pumping as much money as they can into the banks, without producing any inflationary effects.
What this means is that the real limit on the amount of money in circulation is not how much the central bank is willing to lend, but how much government, firms, and ordinary citizens, are willing to borrow. Government spending is the main driver in all this (and the paper does admit, if you read it carefully, that the central bank does fund the government after all). So there’s no question of public spending “crowding out” private investment. It’s exactly the opposite.
Why did the Bank of England suddenly admit all this? Well, one reason is because it’s obviously true. The Bank’s job is to actually run the system, and of late, the system has not been running especially well. It’s possible that it decided that maintaining the fantasy-land version of economics that has proved so convenient to the rich is simply a luxury it can no longer afford.
But politically, this is taking an enormous risk. Just consider what might happen if mortgage holders realised the money the bank lent them is not, really, the life savings of some thrifty pensioner, but something the bank just whisked into existence through its possession of a magic wand which we, the public, handed over to it.
Historically, the Bank of England has tended to be a bellwether, staking out seeming radical positions that ultimately become new orthodoxies. If that’s what’s happening here, we might soon be in a position to learn if Henry Ford was right.
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Who owns the Bank of England?
By Dark Politricks
First a few historical comments by people who helped create two of the worlds most famous central banks, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve.
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence
The Bank of England was created in 1694 by a Scotsman William Paterson who famously said:
The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing. – William Paterson
The history of the Bank of England and how it was taken over by one powerful family hundreds of years ago.
Up until 1946 when it was nationalised the Bank of England was a private run bank that lent money it created out of nothing to the English government and was paid back with interest.
A very famous story relates to the Bank of England and the infamous Rothschilds, that all powerful banking family. This story was re-told recently in a BBC documentary about the creation of money and the Bank of England.
It revolves around the Battle of Waterloo in which Nathan Rothschild used his inside knowledge of the outcome and his faster horses and couriers to play the market by getting the result of the battle before anyone else knew the outcome.
He quickly sold his English bonds and gave all the traders who looked to him for guidance the impression that the French had won at Waterloo.
The other traders all rushed to sell their bonds before the market crashed thinking that they were now worthless and a massive fire-sale occurred as brokers clamered to get rid of their stock. This massive sell off quickly drove the price of the bonds down to 5% of their original worth.
Once the bottom had dropped out the market Nathan Rothschild then re-bought as many bonds back as he could at hugely discounted prices and in doing so he multiplied his wealth twenty times in 3 days of trading.
At the same time as becoming immensely wealthy he also became the single largest debtor to the English government which ultimately gave him control over the bank of England.
English bonds were a debt guaranteed by future tax revenue of the English government, therefore the taxes the citizens paid were going to pay the 8% interest that the English government had to pay to borrow the money.
As Nathan Rothschild now controlled the majority of the English bonds he could determine the price and therefore the supply of the English currency which gave him great power over the countries finances. As he famously said afterwards.
“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire. The man who controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire and I control the British money supply.” – Nathan Rothschild
Privatisation of the bank continued for years until the bank of England was nationalised after the war in 1946.
However because the government was broke after the second world war they didn’t have enough money to buy out all the shareholders so instead they were issued with government stocks.
Although the government now earned money from any bank profits they also had to pay interest on any new stock they issued to pay for the shares they couldn’t buy back in the first place.
In 1977, the Bank set up a wholly owned subsidiary called BANK OF ENGLAND NOMINEES LIMITED, a private limited company with 2 of its 100 £1 shares issued. The objectives of the company are:
“To act as Nominee or agent or attorney either solely or jointly with others, for any person or persons, partnership, company, corporation, government, state, organisation, sovereign, province, authority, or public body, or any group or association of them….”
The two shares belong to the bank itself and John Footman who only holds it on behalf of the bank. The directors of this private limited company which is a subsidiary of the bank are John Footman and Andrew Bailey who are both employees of the bank itself.
This company is very special as its protected by the official secrets act, its Royal Charter status and is exempt from the normal disclosure requirements that other companies have to comply with to meet section 27 of the Companies Act 1976.
The reason being is that the major players in the world of finance including the Queen of England and other Royal families use this company to purchase shares and remain anonymous.
However the Bank of England Nominees company accounts are not exempt from any laws regarding companies and they must print their accounts as every company must do which can then be accessed through the Company House website. It is interesting to note however that the latest Bank of England Nominees LTD accounts say that:
“There has been no income or expenditure on the part of the Company since its incorporation and accordingly no profit and loss account is submitted.”
It still also has total net assets of £2 (the £2 shares).
However even though the Bank of England is now state owned its important to note that up to 97% of the UK’s money supply is privately controlled being in the form of interest bearing loans created by the big commercial banks.
The bank holds very little government stock and the Bank’s profits primarily come from the issuing of coins and notes for use by high street banks. Therefore it seems the Bank of England has reduced in size and importance over the years and is now mainly a regulatory body that oversees the existing banking system and since the 1997 Labour government it’s main role is to control inflation and the base interest rate used by the country.
Referred to as “the lender of last resort” one of it’s other main functions as “the bankers bank” is to support banks that get into difficulty such as during the financial melt down of 2008.
On the surface at least it seems that the Bank of England has returned to state control however in America the Federal Reserve is still a privately controlled bank. This comes as a surprise to many people who don’t know the history of the preceding US central banks that went before it but were closed down due to worries that the bankers had too much power.
The history of the US banking system has been one in which control of the money supply has alternated between Congress and privately owned banks.
The founding fathers and early presidents of the USA were very much aware of the dangers concerning central banks and they realised that whoever controlled the nations money supply wielded enormous amounts of power.
The founding fathers of the USA wrote about the dangers of central banking extensively.
“[The] Bank of the United States… is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution… An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?” –Thomas Jefferson
“We began planning the Revolutionary War in order to issue our own money again” – Benjamin Franklin
“I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Banking was conceived in iniquity, and born in sin. Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. Take this great power away from them, and all great fortunes like mine will disappear. And, they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. But if you want to continue to be the slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money, and control credit.” – ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” – James Garfield
The following video takes a look at how after a contrived banking crisis the Federal Reserve came to being during the dead of night in 1913.
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