6139008-History-of-Money

say "when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping"), but a lot of it has been the inevitable result of the AverageAmerican Joe struggling to make ends meet.The richest nation on earth is living way beyond its means, and yet the Bush administration blithely continues to spend. Ittakes no steps to rein in the deficit - sometimes, indeed, it seems that the deeper the deficit, the more reckless theadministration becomes. No other nation on earth can behave this way - in every other case, governments know that iftheir deficits run out of control, they will be "punished" by the market: investors will lose confidence, interest rates willhave to be raised to attract capital, financing the deficit will become more expensive, and a vicious spiral will be in place.Why, then, can the US run a deficit of more than 5 per cent of its gross domestic product and still manage to attract $4bna day at interest rates of only 1.75 per cent? The US has been running a bubble economy for decades; the recent dotcomboom and bust was a minor episode in a history of deficit-financing since the 1960s. Then, as now, the US borrowed withimpunity; whereas other countries have always had to choose between guns and butter - foreign policy expansionism ordomestic prosperity - the United States has spent profligately on both; George W Bush has emptied the coffers on taxcuts for the wealthy and Afghanistan and Iraq. There has never been a shortage of people willing to lend to the US; afterall, as the richest nation on earth, it has to be good for the money, doesn't it? Even when investors have become nervousabout its profligacy, there has been plenty of credit because the US economy is a crucial market for the World'sproducers. In living memory, the United States has been the sole engine powering the World economy: there has been noalternative to continually injecting it with fuel. But the US has a stick to add to the carrot: since the end of the SecondWorld War, it has had the unique privilege of "owning" the World's reserve currency - the notes and coins used for tradeand investment more than any other currency for 60 years. This confers unimaginable advantages. America is able toignore the discipline of having to balance its books because, if it runs out of money and can't find anyone to bail it out, itcan simply print dollars, inflating away the value of its debt and destroying the value of the assets held by its creditors. Inother words, it can threaten financial blackmail.In the 1970s, European and Asian governments started complaining about lending America the money to finance theVietnam war; the US simply responded by engineering a catastrophic fall in the dollar, which erased its deficit over timebut also crucified the economies of its trading partners in the process. Now, with the deficit soaring again to financeforeign wars, the US is repeating the trick. It has encouraged the dollar to fall; exporters to the US such as China andJapan have had no choice but to try to arrest that decline to protect their trade. How? By buying dollars, which they investin US treasury bonds, thus financing the deficit. How very neat. But the United States cannot count in perpetuity onwinning this game of financial chicken, based on the pre-eminence of the dollar. Its angriest political enemies haveworked out the game and have been mulling over their counter-moves. A plan being pushed in particular by MahathirMohamed, former prime minister of Malaysia, for a new gold-backed Islamic currency - the dinar - is a rallying point.Rejection of the dollar is increasingly being used as an act of political aggression, and nowhere more acutely than in oilproducingcountries. The trailblazer was none other than Saddam Hussein who, in 2000, announced that Iraq wouldhenceforth make all its oil trades in euros, a decision that conspiracy theorists - and not a few eminent Middle Easternexperts - say triggered the US invasion. The United States derives substantial benefits from the dollar being theestablished currency of the oil industry. Because most countries import oil, they must maintain reserves in dollars to payfor it - two-thirds of the World's currency reserves are kept in dollars. This is a major factor upholding the dollar's positionas the World's reserve currency; a switch out of dollars in the oil industry would be a major assault on the currency's preeminence(the price of oil went from $15 to $75 quintupling the $ purchase requirements, i.e. from over $600 million dailyto over $3 billion daily).In April 2003, Indonesia's state oil company, PERTAMINA, said it was considering using the Euro for its oil and gas trades.Even more significantly, in October last year President Vladimir Putin hinted that Russia, the World's second-largest oilexporter, might switch to euros. A Russian move would be enough to tip the balance for other major oil producers. AsArab disapproval of the US war in Iraq has mounted, so a consensus for switching out of dollars has been building; Opechas openly discussed the option and even Saudi Arabia, once America's staunchest Middle Eastern ally, is reported to beconsidering rejecting the dollar. For now, the Euro is the most viable alternative; in future, it could be the Islamic dinar or,far more likely, a new Asian currency. Western storytellers would relate the tale of the emperor, his new clothes and thelittle boy who saw his nakedness; perhaps Arab fablers might talk about desert mirages. America's economic dominancewas once real; it is now a receding reality, a confidence trick. Washington might ponder that before scattering its dollarsand daisy-cutter bombs next time around. Janet Bush is writing a book about the unraveling of the dollar hegemony. Thisarticle first appeared in the New Statesman www.newstatesman.com .Usury in the Babylonian & Roman EmpiresSadly, perhaps in the depth of the forest within earshot of people naturally involved in fair trade, a leech of an idea wasbeing hatched which would prey on every individual needing trade to survive. This idea and the enslaving process which itspawned was called usury (this is a precursor to the power of issuing currency without any asset to back it!); and despitebeing condemned Worldwide by great thinkers, major religious institutions, and many social reformers on moral, ethical,spiritual and legal grounds, the process continues World wide, today better known as the charging of interest on bothtangible real and spontaneously created “fiat” money from nothing. It often helps us to understand something if weexamine origins. Throughout recorded history the practice of usury, along with the practice of giving false measure, hasbeen condemned. Aristotle and Plato in ancient Greece denounced it as well as prophets in the Old Testament and earlyChristians. Yeshua-Joshua, it should be remembered, drove usurers out of the Temple in Jerusalem and this played a partin bringing about his apparent crucifixion by the Roman Pharisee King Pailatoos (Pilates). Buddhists have condemned itand the Quran does so as well (and probably other religious and non-religious books). While the old usurers at least lentThe Hidden History Of Money & New World Order Usury Secrets Revealed at last! Page 192