6139008-History-of-Money

the Revolution, Pennsylvania was the richest place on earth. Franklin liked to boast that part of the credit was due to thegovernment money he printed. As he pointed out, the government could spend the money into circulation for a newbridge or school, then tax the cost back over the useful life of the project. It could also lend the money to businessmen at5 percent interest instead of the 10 percent the British banks charged. Or it could transfer the money into circulation totake care of widows, orphans and other unfortunates. Pennsylvania made so much money out of creating money-andselling off lands stolen from the Indians-that it hardly had to levy any taxes. When word of this reached Great Britain, theBank of England decided to destroy the competition of the colonial money. It got Parliament to forbid the colonies toproduce any more of the stuff and the fat was on the fire. The Continental Congress met and defied Parliament and theKing by issuing its own currency-the Continental. As Franklin saw it, the attempt of Britain to restrict the colonies fromissuing paper money was one of the main causes of the Revolution. The Continentals paid for most of the cost of therevolution. Since they had to be overissued, prices rose greatly. Much of the inflation, however, was caused by massiveBritish counterfeiting of the Continentals. "You revolting Yankees like paper money? Here! Have lots of it!" So Americansstill have a saying. "Not worth a Continental." After the war banking came to America.Some historians have much criticized this method of financing the American Revolution and held up British practice as amodel of "sound finance." However, as William Hixson shows in his book, Triumph of the Bankers, those historians have itbackwards. According to Hixson, the total cost of the war to the Americans was about $250 million and much of this wasfinanced by the "Continentals" and other paper monies. An additional war debt of $56.7 million accumulated some $70million in interest before it was all paid off in 1836. The direct war costs to the British government came to about $500million. However, the British financed their side of the war almost entirely with borrowed money. Since they have neversince reduced their national debt below $500 million, they still owe this money! Assuming a modest average interest rateof 4 percent, the British taxpayer has by this time paid the British bondholder over $4 billion in interest on the initial $500million loan-and is still paying! Sound finance? What a pity that King William did not have a Benjamin Franklin to advisehim! What a pity that the wisdom of Franklin was lost and Alexander Hamilton was able subsequently to charter the Bankof The United States modeled directly on the Bank of England! What a pity that many historians, like many non-historians,so badly misunderstand money and banking! Perhaps the fact that in 1694 the Bank of England at its formation attackedthe Tally Stick System gives us a clue as to why most of us have never heard of them. They realised it was money outsidethe power of the money changers, (the very thing King Henry had intended). What better way to eliminate the vital faithpeople had in this rival currency than to pretend it simply never existed and to not discuss it? That seems to be whathappened when the first shareholder's in the Bank of England bought their original shares with notched pieces of woodand retired the system. You heard correctly, they bought shares. The Bank of England is a privately owned bankwhich was actually set up by investors buying shares.These investors, whose names were kept secret, were meant to invest one and a quarter million pounds, but only threequarters of a million was received when it was chartered in 1694. It then began to lend out many times more than it hadin reserve, collecting interest on the lot. King Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, ascended the English throne in AD1100. At that time, long before the invention of the printing press, taxes were generally paid in kind, i.e., in goods, basedon the productive capacity of the land under the care of the taxpaying serf or lesser noble (Since ancient times, the eliteshave developed and evolved systems for controlling and ripping-off the masses whom they view as slaves, serfs, knaves,peasants, etc. in order to live like gods on Mount Olympus! Remember, its only recently that the European, Russian,American serfs were freed from bondage and that slavery was outlawed!!). To record production, medieval Europeanscribes used a crude accounting device: notches on sticks, or 'tallies' (from the Latin talea, meaning 'twig' or 'stake').Tally sticks worked better than faulty memory or notches on barn doors, as were sometimes used. To prevent alterationor counterfeiting, the sticks were cut in half lengthwise, leaving one half of the notches on each piece-one of which wasgiven to the taxpayer, and could be compared for accuracy by reuniting the pieces. Henry adopted this method of taxrecord-keepingin England. Over time, the role of tally sticks evolved and expanded. By the time of Henry II, taxes werepaid twice a year. Giving the taxpayer a tally stick notched to indicate partial payment received, with the same lengthwisesplit to record, for both parties, the payment made evidenced the first payment, made at Easter. These were presented atMichaelmas with the balance of taxes then due. It takes only a little imagination to arrive at the next step: for tallies to beissued by the government in advance of taxes being paid, in order to raise funds in emergencies or financial straits. Therecipients would accept such tallies for goods sold at a profit or for coin at a discount, and then would use them later, atEaster or Michaelmas, for payment of the taxes. Thus, tallies took on some of the same functions as coin: they served asmoney for the payment of taxes. . .After 1694, the government issued 'paper tallies' as paper evidence of debt (Ie.government borrowing) in anticipation of the collection of future taxes. Paper could be made easily negotiable, whichmade paper tallies the full equivalent of the paper banknote money issued by the Bank of England beginning in 1694. By1697, tallies, banknotes and bank bills all began to circulate freely as interchangeable forms of money. Wooden-sticktallies continued to be used until 1826. Doubtless, ways were found to make them circulate at discounts, too, like thepaper tallies.One particular tally stick was quite valuable. It represented £25,000. One of the original stockholders in the Bank ofEngland purchased his original shares with such a stick. In other words, he bought shares in the World's richest and mostpowerful corporation, with a stick of wood. It's ironic that after its formation in 1694, the Bank of England attacked thetally stick system because it was money issued outside the control of the Money Changers. Why would people acceptsticks of wood for money? That's a great question. Throughout history, people have traded anything they thought hadvalue and used that for money. You see, the secret is that money is only what people agree on to use as money. What'sour paper money today? Its really just paper. But hem's the wick. King Henry VIII ordered that tally sticks he used toevidence tax payments received by the government. This built in the demand for tallies and eventually made themcirculate and be accepted as money. And they worked well. In fact, no other money worked for so long as in the BritishThe Hidden History Of Money & New World Order Usury Secrets Revealed at last! Page 228