[Fatherof4]

I've just started reading this and wanted to post it as a resource.

If you haven't studied the banking system, then you ain't seen nothin' yet.

The Mystery of Banking - Murray Rothbard

[PenultimateManStanding]

I did some reading about banking some years ago and was befuddled. We were supposed to be facing some sort of collapse because of all the bad loans to Latin America. And now here we are. So what's it gonna be: DEFLATION? INFLATION?

[aldente]

A very interesting link. Haven't had time to read the whole thing (177 pages..)
I translated an article into German a few years ago that has similar content just much more simplistic : http://www.relfe.com/plus_5_.html

www.relfe.com should not be mixed up with www.rense.com, eventhough both are NewAge sites and lack credibility due to being simple reflections of individuals and their "dream state" point of views of live especially when it comes to UFO's which always causes my personal shut down.

It takes the understanding of an adult being able to talk to a eight year old to discuss UFO's in my opinion, just like chem trails or all the typical conspiracy theories. All ridiculus in my humble opinion but I try to be nice and understanding...

Back to the original article:

As much as it is true of course that there is always a ruling class I don't get that nervous about it. Sometimes people just get too worked up, don't they!! Just as they get too worked up about their own mortality (good example is the hype in the US media about this modern-medicine self inflicted case of artificially keeping someone alive or not. The reality is probably that there are no funds left to cover the medical costs of the experiment but the media (and rense.com) make it a case of "martydom".

As long as the media has the tools to "zoom in" into personal matters to distract from the larger picture (anyone a dose of PO ??) they will do so.

All this will come to a well deserved end, PO after all is very cleansing, sort of a natural "reset" button.

[GD]

My take on the mystery of money:

If you have understood me Senator, I have not made myself clear.~ Alan Greenspan.

Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t doesn’t matter what you think about your money, you still know that you can spend it. You believe that everyone else believes that the money is valuable. What we are talking about here is a belief about a belief.
Matters of belief and social convention can be powerful and practically indestructible. History abounds in examples of people who have chosen torture and death rather than change their beliefs. We also recognise that someone can choose to continue believing something, even when faced with ample evidence to the contrary. So belief has a formidable presence in the human psyche.
A belief about a belief, however, is a different animal altogether. It is a fragile and ephemeral thing. Perhaps nothing can shake my belief, but my belief about your belief can be eviscerated by a rumour, a mere hunch, a feeling. Moreover, a chain of a belief about a belief is only as strong as its weakest link. If I think that someone on the other side of the world has stopped believing in the Mexican peso, the Thai baht, or the Russian rouble, then I have to fear that his neighbours may stop believing. As a result the whole house of cards may fall down, as it did for Mexico in December 1994, for Thailand in late 1997, or for Russia in August 1998.
In brief, the game of money, exactly like the Ancient Greek oracles, is a confidence game. Whenever the emperor has no clothes (i.e. whenever a ‘crisis of confidence’ looms), those in the know hope that no guileless child will make an improper remark. Under such circumstances, a façade of regal confidence, mystery, decorum, and ritual serves to ensure that a long and fragile chain of beliefs will hold.

[bobaloo]

I was reading an article on the earliest origins of fiat currency and banking a while back, and even as cynical as I am it totally blew me away. At the risk of getting it all wrong, I'll try to summarize to at least give some ideas of where you might go to research further.

It seems that in Medieval times currency was predominantly gold and silver, with copper for small amounts. Rich people had precious metals and needed a secure place to store them. Goldsmiths had very secure storage facilities / vaults, and the wealthy would contract with them to store their money / gold. In return, they would get a receipt from the goldsmith showing the amount of gold they had "on deposit". After some time, it became common for people to simply swap these receipts around rather than going to the goldsmith and withdrawing the actual metal. In addition, many of the goldsmiths were members of extended families scattered across Europe and one could take the receipt from town to town and draw on the deposit by visiting another family member's business (the origin of "branch banking").

The next step was when the goldsmiths realized that now that folks were using the receipts for money they hardly ever actually came and visited their gold. At that point the figured out that they could lend out some of their depositor's money to other people and collect interest on it and no one would be the wiser so long as they always had enough on hand to cover any requests for the actual metal (fractional reserve banking).

Funny, when you put it in those terms it's pretty obviously criminal behavior, but when looked at in the complexity of the modern system it's just "business as usual".

[GD]

That, for sure, is how paper money came into being.
Wonder why "they" don't teach it in schools?
From a business as usual point of view, it's what kicked capitalism off, and has brought us many benefits to boot. (There's also the matter of the drawbacks, but as capitalists, we don't like to talk about that).
I wonder why most people probably have no idea that was the case?

Have you seen Heinberg's article on the endangered US dollar?
He explains why we have got to the point where a crisis of confidence is looming (and many nations are switching to the Euro instead).

[GD]

More on the shenanigans of bankers (and what to do about them):

Simultaneous Policy Blog (one actually worth reading).

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')The example of money: unjust bank subsidies continue through lack of political will

Labour and the Conservatives kick up a fuss over who will invest most in public services, frightening people with talk of tax hikes and spending cuts, while the LibDems boast of their leadership in proposing a higher taxband. None of them addresses the fundamental flaws in the UK banking system which sees 97% of new money created by commercial banks as profit-making loans appearing by magic in bank accounts without deposits to back them up.

This system effectively provides a £20 billion subsidy to the banks according to the analysis presented by the respected economist James Robertson at a Simultaneous Policy forum at the House of Commons in March. According to Robertson, if the Bank of England created all new money, not just coins and bank notes, the government would have an extra £45 billion per year interest free to spend into circulation instead of having to borrow and pay the interest using our taxes. Interest rates would likely be more stable and spending could rise while taxes are cut. But Monetary Reform is not up for discussion because without their subsidy it is suggested UK banks would be uncompetitive in the global market. This is a global scam on which no government dare call time.