- CEOnewsletter
- Posts
- You Won't Want to Miss THIS.
You Won't Want to Miss THIS.
A History of Central Banking
Sofia Alonso Bauer
September 09, 2024
09/9/2024 Diary to Sof
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Everything is repeated, in cycles. History is a master because it repeats over and over and over again.
Sof… if history repeats itself, how incapable must man be of learning from experience. Don’t be an idiot… start learning history.
{notes over the book thus far - I do apologize this newsletter is not as interesting as the previous ones… but my mind is currently invested in the fall of the Roman Empire.}
A History of Central banking
“Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed - and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.”
Introduction Notes
History is the most crucial subject of any education system.
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of history.”
Central banks are in league with private banks.
“this undermines our sovereignty, and deprives us of the means of having publicly issued debt free money which belongs to the people as its sovereign debt, and interest free means of exchange. Instead we use private money produced out of debt by the private banking system.”
“If we wish to obtain our liberation and sovereignty from the enslavement imposed by the private bankers, we must dismantle their fractional reserve system of banking and supporting central banks, or we ourselves shall be destroyed and consigned to oblivion.”
Central Questions to understand the ‘Monetary System’
How is money created?
Who does money belong to?
Whose interest does money serve?
Chapter 1 Notes
Rome’s first monetary system: Bartering {Barter System}. (people used cattle as a medium of exchange.)
Eventually they transitioned to: Aes Rude {irregular lumps of copper/bronze}.
Fixed System of Units: the Aes Rude metal money had the full backing of the state (because they would stamp it with an image of a cow, eagle, or elephant.)
This is the first example of the use of fiat money.
The key distinction here is that fiat money needs to be issued by the government and not private bankers. [this is a much better monetary system then non-fiat money]
How the Traditional Money System Was Destroyed
When the wealthy obtained privilege to mint silver coinage
With a monetary system in place brought thievery, mobsters, and an increase in gap between the wealthy and poor (social unrest)
The Jewish Role in the Collapse of the Roman Empire
Early Roman Jews were craftsmen, peddlers, and shopkeepers.
Had their own money lending system {Userers: a person who lends money, usually at an excessive rate, with the expectation of receiving a much larger amount of money in return.}
Julius Caesar
Military commander who conquered Gaul (France) and became the leader of the Roman Republic.
When he returned to Italy he found the streets and cities crowded with homeless people who had been forced off the land by usurers and land monopolists.
300,000 people had to be fed daily at the public granary
Usury was flourishing with disastrous consequences
The Jewish Userers were charging interests rates as high as 48% per annum.
Government Structure
Optimates: nobility, the Senate, privileged
Populares: represented the citizens
Caesar assumed leadership of the Populares
“He recognized the profound truth that money is a national agent, created by the law for a national purpose, and that no classes of men should withhold it from circulation so as to cause panics, in order that speculators could advance the rates of interest, or could buy up property at ruinous prices after such panic.”
What happened as a result of his reforms?
The aristocrats and plutocrats were enraged and they conspired to murder Caesar (the hero of the people.)
Caesar was surrounded by 60 conspirators in the Senate building and stabbed to death (received 23 wounds)
The Gold Standard
After Caesars death, the Romans adopted the gold standard
The scarcity of gold frequently induced periods of deflation as a result of the lack of circulating means of exchange
Death for anyone who tried to counterfeit or falsify the gold coins
Role of the Church in the Decline and Fall
Christianity became the official religion by Emperor Theodosius
Monetary power resided in the religious authority of the pontifex maximus. {The pope is called the pontifex maximus because this term was affiliated with the chief religious official of Rome, dating back to the regal period.}
This era heavily taxed the middle class and taxed businessmen which caused them to become more like slaves to the wealthy.
The abolition of the jury system was symptomatic of the declining respect and importance for the common man in Roman society
The tax that Emperor Constantine decreed: that 1/10th of all income had to be tithed to the Christian church, hastened the destruction of the empire.
Eventually the Church held ⅓ to ½ of all lands and accumulated wealth.
Instead of recycling the tithed money by means of investment in the community or charitable works such as construction of hospitals, schools and libraries, vast hoards of gold were concentrated inside the Vatican.
The Fall of the Roman Empire
Huge periods of inflationary/deflationary periods
No industrial production
Almost all food had to be imported
Usury was practiced on an unprecedented scale
The wealth was held by the Church and 2,000 wealthy families
Population lived in utter poverty
“The vast importation of non-white slaves with the resultant degradation of the genetic value of the nation. … as a result of the continuing decline in Roman female fertility, slaves outnumbered citizens 5-to-1
“The most important economic reason was an inadequate supply of an inexpensive circulating medium of money and the false notion that money should be a commodity.
Thus from an economic perspective, the lessons from the fall of Rome are that a dishonest economic system will inevitably lead to the forces of dissolution.
No society can survive a false economic system.
For any society to function and prosper it is absolutely fundamental that the means of exchange be issued free of debt and interest by the legal authority of the state as representatives of the people in perpetuity.”