Monday, July 6, 2015

Historian Carroll Quigley on Financial Globalization

"The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank... sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
    
— Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) | Professor of History at Georgetown University, member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), mentor to Bill Clinton, inTragedy and Hope

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
(Link to archives.org which makes downloads in several formats available)
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966

The above quote is found on page 324. BTW, Quigley is describing the interwar period between 1922 and 1930 in this chapter. It's been a longterm project.

The Wikipedia article on Quigley is worth a read. So is a site dedicated to him, on which many of his writing as be downloaded, including Tragedy and Hope.

Here's another one.

Remember Reichsbank head Hjalmar Schacht?
When the economic crisis began in 1929, Germany had a democratic government of the Center and Social Democratic parties. The crisis suited in a decrease in tax receipts and a parallel increase in demands government welfare services. This brought to a head the latent dispute over orthodox and unorthodox financing of a depression. Big business big finance were determined to place the burden of the depression the working classes bv forcing the government to adopt a policy of deflation—that is, by wage reductions and curtailment of government welfare expenditures. The Social Democrats wavered in their attitude, but in general were opposed to this policy. Schacht, as president of the Reichsbank, was able to force the Socialist Rudolf Hilferding out of the position of minister of finance by refusing bank credit to the government until this was done. In March 1930, the Center broke the coalition on the issue of reduction of unemployment benefits, the Socialists were thrown out of the government, and Heinrich Briining, leader of the Center Party, came in as chancellor. Because he did not have a majority in the Reichstag, he had to put the deflationary policy into effect by the use of presidential decree under Article 48.....

Ibid. p. 430

This was almost a century ago. Sound familiar today?

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