Chapter 1: The Ruling Elite by Deanna Spingola: THE BANKING AND INDUSTRIAL ELITE Banking Conceived in Iniquity

 

Chapter 1: The Ruling Elite by Deanna Spingola: THE BANKING AND INDUSTRIAL ELITE Banking Conceived in Iniquity

 

THE BANKING AND INDUSTRIAL ELITE

Banking Conceived in Iniquity

Josiah Charles Stamp, a director of the Bank of England said, “Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.”

In the seventeenth century, Sephardic Jews fleeing from Spain first went to Portugal and then ultimately to Amsterdam following the closure of Antwerp’s harbor in 1585, which became the commercial and financial center of Europe. In Amsterdam, they became part of the community’s economic class but, by choice, remained a separate ethnic minority. The Portuguese and the Jewish merchants, developed trade routes where they utilized dependable, trusted contacts, often members of the family, at both ends of the route. These routes included sea routes to Brazil, Curaçao and New Amsterdam.[1]

Menasseh Ben Israel, a Portuguese rabbi, cabbalist, scholar, and publisher, owned the first Hebrew printing press in Amsterdam in 1626. He and his parents left Portugal and moved to the Netherlands in 1610. In 1657, Menasseh Ben Israel and Fernandez Moses Carvajal, a Portuguese Marrano, purportedly financed Oliver Cromwell and his activities. Cromwell, one of the commanders of the New Model Army during the English Civil War, defeated the royalists, overthrew the monarchy, and executed King Charles I. Cromwell temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth where he became the Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland (1653-1658).[2]

Cromwell recognized the influence of the Jewish community in Holland’s economic

success, which was, at the time, England’s principle commercial competitor. He had no particular loyalties to evangelical Puritanism so on March 24, 1655/56, he issued a petition to allow the Jews to return to England, over 350 years after Edward I had banished them in 1290.[3] Cromwell hoped that they would assist in the financial recovery of the country after the Civil Wars (1642–1651) between the Parliamentarians and Royalists. Some people claim that the Jews never really left; they just went underground. Manasseh Ben Israel arrived in London in 1655. Cromwell was indebted to them and felt that England would benefit by having merchant bankers as part of their economic environment.[4]

In 1666, the British East India Company, a corporation owned by the goldsmiths and moneylenders, convinced Charles II to convey the privilege of coining money to them, which deprived the Crown of one of its revenue sources. Moneylenders then began altering and manipulating the financial systems of the world, creating economic catastrophes, a phenomenon then unknown. The King changed the law, and the mint then only received “large deposits of bullion and coin,” which it then dispatched to the Orient or India in exchange for gold. The moneylenders, through this unusual swap, possibly made as much as 30% profit.[5]

Moses Mocatta, a Marrano Jew, established his London banking house in Camomile Street in 1671. Mocatta initially sent gold to India in 1676 through the East India Company.[6]

Moneylenders in Amsterdam, with $2 million guilders, financed the coup of Prince William of Orange and his wife Mary, the daughter of James II. Prince William hired an army in order to depose James and seize control of the government. When they arrived in December 1688, with their hired guns, the English commander joined them and by January 1689, James escaped to France and Prince William and Mary ascended the throne. Moneylenders conceived the Revolution of 1688 to replace an “insolvent ruler” with

appreciative leaders who would be beholden to them for their title.[7] The “court Jews” that funded the coup against King James II included Isaac de Pinto, a Portuguese Jewish banker and Francisco Lopes Suasso, a Portuguese Jew, who both gave large amounts of money so William III could move to England.[8] Solomon de Medina, a wealthy Jew, traveled with William III to England as an army contractor. He established a communication system better than the one the government had. His agents received important news before it reached the ministers of the crown. The King knighted him in 1700 for his vital services. In 1694, William (1650-1702) chartered the Bank of England, through William Paterson, a front man for the Dutch bankers, which institutionalized the national debt and secured massive profits for the Jewish moneylenders through taxing the citizens of England.[9]

The Bank of England, a private corporation, had a twelve-year charter. The bankers encouraged the King, their puppet, to borrow massive amounts of money from them, which inaugurated a national debt, national because it was now the people’s responsibility to repay it. The Bank exchanged their money for bonded debt. England’s national debt prior to the moneylender’s seizure of the nation’s financial system in 1694 was £1.5 million. A century later, the national debt was £848 million. Thus, we can understand how the moneylenders actually control the world – through the dictatorial and coldblooded control of a nation’s finances.[10] By 1697, the government gave the Bank exclusive rights to engage in banking, including issuing notes (fiat currency) in England.

In 1702, there was a gold rush in Brazil, which prompted the opening of a mint in Rio de Janeiro where they made moedas de ouro, most of which, over a period of sixty years, they shipped to London where they minted the coins into guineas. In 1731, the British government appointed Moses Mocatta as the official broker in gold and silver for the Bank of England. In 1732, the bank opened its own bullion warehouse, later named The Bullion Office, which functioned as a clearinghouse of precious metals for more than a century. By 1740, the Bank of England had a gold reserve. Much of the gold from Brazil came to London via Lisbon. From 1774 to 1777, Mocatta purchased 550,000 troy ounces for the Bank’s account, which amounted to three-quarters of the world’s output. In 1783, the firm became Mocatta & Goldsmid for Asher Goldsmid had joined the firm in 1779.[11]

When Britain and France began their warfare in the 1790s, the British government’s military expenses quickly exceeded their expectations. Therefore, the government issued paper notes with the anticipation that the Bank of England would convert the notes into gold on demand. Britain’s gold reserve fell to less than £2,000,000 and by February 21, 1797, Bank of England’s gold reserve was down to 235,000 troy ounces (£1 million) but they had cash liabilities of £15.5 million.[12] Banks discontinued payments in gold. Merchants and bankers panicked and King George III, the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, the members of the Privy Council, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Charles Somerset, Honorable Andrew Cochrane, John Murray, Honorable John Trevor, and Sir Charles Grey and other influential advisors held meetings with the Bank of England and enacted legislation to print fiat money. Gold ceased to circulate which alleviated the panic. Parliament suspended cash payments in gold and made it illegal to export gold.[13]

These bankers made fortunes during a ten-year period when Britain’s gold reserves fell (1797-1807).

In 1805, Nathan Mayer Rothschild had already established his banking house in London where he engaged in secret shipments of gold and silver to the Duke of Wellington’s army in Europe against Napoleon. Mocatta & Goldsmid rounded up the gold, often bidding over the market price, which altered the value. In 1809, David Ricardo (born 1772), an economist and author of The High Price of Bullion, wrote letters to the Morning Chronicle regarding Britain’s decreasing gold reserves in relation to the foreign markets. Ricardo, whose father was a Jewish merchant banker and stockbroker, was close friends and “intellectual opponents” with Thomas Malthus, known for his theories about population and its increase or decrease in response to economic and other factors.

Francis Horner, after lengthy parliamentary debate, encouraged the establishment of an official committee to evaluate the economic issue in detail, to question experts, and to draft a report with suggestions for the House of Commons. Eighteen days later, the House named the twenty-two knowledgeable members of The Select Committee, many from the financial world, and others who were civil servants, to investigate the Cause of the High Price of Gold Bullion. The hearings lasted for thirty-one days, between February 22 and May 25, 1810. The Committee interviewed twenty-nine witnesses, all fully identified except for one person, from business, finance, academia, and government. They referred to the unidentified person as a “very eminent Continental Merchant” who was “intimately acquainted with the trade between this Country and the Continent.” People assumed, rightly so, that the unidentified expert was N. M. Rothschild.[14]

Twenty-five year old Aaron Asher Goldsmid, son of Asher Goldsmid, was a partner with Mocatta & Goldsmid.[15] The young Goldsmid testified before the Parliamentary Select committee on the High Price of Gold Bullion beginning February 22, 1810 and about the enormous profits possible through purchasing specie in England and selling it on the continent.[16] Nathan Rothschild surpassed them through his family network and their ability to transfer gold quickly. When the English government needed quick gold manipulations, they approached Rothschild despite their long-term relationship with Mocatta & Goldsmid.

In 1810, the House of Commons Select Committee on the High Price of Bullion, met to discuss the price of bullion, which had risen from the normal £3.89 for gold to £4.50. As they reviewed the situation, individuals presented evidence and provided insights into the London market. Those who testified, Aaron Asher Goldsmid, Nathan M. Rothschild (incognito) and gold refiner William Merle explained the trade. The Committee concluded that the Bank of England had been printing too many notes and therefore, they were no longer redeemable in gold.

In 1810, a member of the House of Lords, Peter King, in a speech, informed his tenants that he would no longer accept the devalued Bank notes for their rent according to their various leases signed long before the decisions of the committee. He felt that he should not suffer the consequences of the inflation imposed by their recent decisions. He gave his renters two options – they could pay their rent in sufficient gold equal to the value of the Bank notes when they signed their lease. Alternatively, they could pay their rent with enough Bank notes to buy that quantity of gold at its current price. He also stated that he intended to pay his creditors in the same way. He published a pamphlet of his speech with a correspondent table of values. Parliament members were so outraged at his idea that they enacted legislation stating that the monetary figures in contracts were immune and individuals could not arbitrarily revise them.[17]

When the war ended in 1814, outstanding bank notes totaled £28.4 million while gold reserves amounted to only £2.2 million. The British currency depreciated by about 30% creating such stress on the economy that the government imposed a gold standard to stabilize the currency. This also alleviated the Bank of England from the responsibility of converting banknotes into gold. After the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, the British government attempted to stabilize their currency through the Great Recoinage of 1816. The Coinage Act helped to establish gold as the standard by replacing the guinea with the sovereign.[18]

In 1821, after further catastrophes, more debates, hearings, inflation and the deflation that follows “major wars,” Parliament reinstated the policy whereby one could exchange Bank notes for gold at the price level in 1797. The government issued the sovereign and the Mint coined thirty-five million sovereigns in 1821 to accommodate the legislation. The government officially imposed the gold standard, which became a precedent for other countries for almost 100 years. This monetary system positioned “metal above man in managing the nation’s money supply.” Subsequently, central bankers may manipulate currency, alter the free market, and disseminate ambiguous rhetoric about checks and balances, sign and

promote trade agreements while keeping a nation mired in interest-laden debt.[19]

The moneylenders have always used warfare to garner massive profits. Before William and Mary commandeered the British throne, moneylenders lent money based on the Crown’s assurance and credit. However, with the advent of this conniving couple, insolvent kings simply shifted their debts to the people. The unwary population, without their consent, was now accountable for the debts of the improvident, irresponsible government. The British East India Company had carefully conceived this transfer of responsibility to the people – the government could then squander the product of the people’s labor.[20]

In the early 1800s, the Bank of England created fiat currency to accommodate their commercial customers. The prospectors contributed to the supply of currency in the United States, Australia, and South Africa. Yet, it is merely one of the earth’s resources that the elite have assigned a value. While the members of the Bullion Committee considered that people might discover new quantities of gold, they probably never anticipated the furor over the immense gold strikes in various places in the world between 1848 and 1900, in California, Colorado, Alaska, Australia and South Africa. Gold, as well as oil, assigned a value by the elites who control its production and distribution, plays a glorified role in our civilization. Meanwhile, the materialistic elites have devalued humanity to the level of profit-producing consumers or expendable dross.[21]

Mayer, the Merchant of Judengasse