Some interesting reading. In relation to gold I was showing...

Some interesting reading. In relation to gold I was showing someone the article relating to Roschield and the battle of Waterloo and came across this on the net:

BANKS - MOVERS AND SHAKERS:

Banks are the movers and shakers of the economic, financial and political worlds. It is a long story of cheating, fraud, double-dealing and deceit.
In the late 1600s the money-changers of England were in conflict with the Stuart king, James II. They combined with the Netherlands money-changers who had a central bank to finance the invasion of William of Orange to replace James II in the revolution of 1688.
When England in the late 1600s was in financial ruin after 50 years of on and off wars with France, the politicians pleaded with the money-changers for necessary loans. They demanded a government-sanctioned privately-owned central bank that could issue money as loans. It was chartered in 1694 as the Bank of England with one and a quarter [million] pounds in gold coins, but only 750,000 pounds was received.
However, it lent several times the money it supposedly held in reserves, all at interest. The Bank of England lent the politicians as much as they wanted, with the debt secured by direct taxation of the British people. In just four years, 1694 to 1698, the Government debt grew from 1.25 million to 16 million pounds.
FRACTIONAL RESERVE LENDING
Money-changers in England, generally goldsmiths, started keeping other people's gold in their safe rooms. They gave receipts for the gold that were used to pay others and so became paper money. To simplify the process the receipts were made out to bearer. The goldsmiths found that only a small fraction demanded gold at
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any one time, so they started cheating by lending out some of the gold and keeping the interest earned by the lending. They found they could print more receipts as money than they had gold and collect interest on it.
This was the birth of "fractional reserve lending," lending out more money than the reserves held. It was fraud, often specifically outlawed once understood. This practice evolved into modern banking and is known as "fractional reserve banking."
It gives the power of money-making to private banks. This practice is their strength, the source of the rapidly-growing profits of banks, but also their inherent weakness, for banks live in fear of bad debts and bank runs when they hold only a small part of their obligations.
When the Bank of North America was set up in 1781 there was no clause prohibiting fractional reserve banking. Nowadays, banks in the USA are allowed to lend up to ten times more money than they actually have. Questions in the House of Commons are not allowed regarding the conduct and objects of the Bank of England!
THE MONEY WAR
By the middle 1700s Britain had waged four wars in Europe and was burdened with a national debt of 140 million pounds, much to the Bank of England. Britain set out to tax the American colonies who were issuing their own paper money not backed by gold or silver. It was issued in proportion to the demands of trade and industry, so that products passed easily from producer to consumer. It paid no interest.

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The British Currency Act 1764 prohibited the colonial officials issuing their own money and all taxes had to be paid in gold or silver coins. Benjamin Franklin wrote that this caused depression in the colonies with the streets filled with unemployed, and claimed it was the basic cause of the revolution.
In 1775 the Congress of the colonies issued $2 million in paper money. At the start of the war there was $12 million colonial money; by the end of the war $500 million because the British had counter-attacked with massive counterfeiting and caused overwhelming inflation. A pair of shoes sold at $5,000.
INTERNATIONAL ADVANTAGE
Banks that are international have great advantage over banks that are only national. They are the driving force of globalisation and the push for one world government. The first to realise this and practice it was Amschel Bauer of Frankfurt. He took over from his father's goldsmith counting house and about 1770 set up as a banker under the sign of the Roman Eagle, or Red Shield and took on the name of Rothschield.
He found that lending money to governments and kings was more profitable than to private individuals. They were bigger loans and were secured by taxes. He sent his five sons to European capitals to carry on the family banking businesses.
Nathan Rothschield went to London in 1798 with 20,000 pounds, but in seventeen years claimed to have 50 million pounds. He realised the political and financial importance of the battle

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of Waterloo. He organised a speedy courier from the battlefield and had the news of Wellington's victory 24 hours before the official news. He came to the British stock market looking depressed and started selling shares. The British stock market traders, reading this as a victory for Napoleon, sold their shares in a panic. Using agents, Nathan bought the shares for a song, gained economic control and dominated the New Bank of England. The Prussian Treasury director wrote: "He regulates the rate of exchange in the City. His power of a banker is enormous."
ROTHSCHILD INTERNATIONAL
By the mid 1800s Rothschield dominated all European banking, lending to both sides in any wars. Rothschields provided huge loans to monopolies, such as Cecil Rhodes so that he gained monopoly over the gold fields of South Africa and De Beers diamonds. British Rothschield money is behind Rio Tinto Zinc.
Rothschield moved to USA where it financed both sides of the civil war. In the following industrial reconstruction the National City Bank of Cleveland, one of the three Rothschield banks in USA, backed John Rockefeller to begin the oil monopoly in Standard Oil. Jacob Schiff, Rothschield agent, backed J.P.Morgan and Kuhn Leob to hold 95% of US railroad mileage.
But banking monopolies did not have full control; the US Reserve Bank was government controlled, and issued the US dollar. In 1913 the agents of the major banks were able to railroad the Federal Reserve Act through Congress transferring control of money supply to a private banking elite.


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The Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1997 had 19 million shares, with Chase Manhattan Bank holding 32% and CitiBank NA 20.5%. It operates outside the control of Congress, issues the US dollar and manipulates the credit of USA.
Information extracted from The Money Makers, by Patrick Carmack, in Nexus Dec-Jan 1999, Feb-Mar 1999.
HUGE WAR DEBTS
With huge US spending on armaments (80% of the budget 1942-45), the Korean and Vietnam wars, by 1971 the US Government national debt was $455 billion. In 15 years, 1980 to 1995 (including Star Wars spending of Reagan), the national debt went from $1 trillion to $5 trillion and to $26 trillion by 1999. The major banks hold the debts and reap the interest.
Chase Manhattan, Morgan group, CitiBank, the Californian Bank of America and others control the US armaments industry and the transnationals. These banks control three-quarters of the stock of the main networks, the major newspapers, motion picture companies, almost total control of the mass media. There is total blackout in media or investigative reporting on bank control of governments and policies and they influence public opinion to their purposes.
They call the tune in the Pentagon and the White House and set out to maintain the militarised economy most profitable to them.

I.M.F. THE GLOBAL WEAPON
The International Monetary Fund, set up at Bretton Woods in 1944, is a global weapon of finance. It is funded by major countries.
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Major decisions require 85%, but USA with 17.8% has power of veto and controls decisions. Countries with great financial problems and nowhere else to go, must accept conditions of cuts in social welfare and education, and open their markets to world trade. Michael Camdessus, then head of IMF, demanded that Australia adopt the GST [Goods and Services Tax] which is now almost world wide in capitalist countries. It imposes tax on the poor and relieves the tax on the rich and the transnationals.
INHERENT INSTABILITY
But the US dollar and the banks are not all-powerful. The inherent instability of the banks comes from fractional reserve banking, where a series of bad debts or a run on the banks in a panic can bring bankruptcy.
Raisa Pages in Granma International Jan 2001 exposed the instability of the finance market. In 1975 foreign exchange related to 80% of real goods, but now it is just 2%. Finance markets manage seventy times more money than the real economy, and 98% of the $1.5 trillion on stock markets today is speculation on currency rates exchange. Internal monetary reserves, the defence mechanism of individual countries, are more and more insecure.
With finance a titanic battleground of the dollar against the euro, this instability multiplies. When the dollar fell 30% in five years against the mark and the yen, in 1978 the European countries formed the European Monetary System against the dollar. They launched the euro in 1999, and in Jan 2002 it is planned to be the de-facto currency of the several hundred million people of European, Balkan and central Asian countries. US, through its finance control is fighting back, determined to control "money creation," the central feature of US expansion.

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AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY AND BANKING
Australian economy and its banking has to try and live in this world banking circus of globalisation.
Australia in the 1890s had a decentralised financial system of trading banks organised as joint stock companies. When the international price of the economic staple, wool, slumped, in the depression of 1892-93 some 15 of the 25 banks suspended operations.
The Australian constitution of 1901 gave the Commonwealth the right to regulate banking. It took its first step with formation of the Commonwealth Bank in 1911, but did not assume central banking functions till 1929. With the depression, and the concern of the people, the Commonwealth Bank was granted the full range of national central powers.
(This was the time when Montagu Norman of the Bank of England came to Australia and demanded 10% cut in wages.)
A 1937 Royal Commission recommended that banks be licensed, that governments have direct control of interest rates and the volume of credit. But it was not till 1945, after the financial problems of the war, that the Commonwealth Bank Act and Banking Act gave the Commonwealth Bank these powers, power over gold and foreign exchange, power to ensure banks deposited surplus funds with the Commonwealth, and power over lending and investment powers.
These powers mobilised money power for big projects and protected people from the rapacity of private banks. It became the banker of the government and the banking system. It had supervision over life companies and influence over the level of bank deposits and credit. 8

SPECULATIVE CAPITAL
In the early 1980s the massive wave of speculative capital inflow wrecked attempts to manage the exchange rate and money supply. In 1983 the government decided to float the dollar and abolish exchange and deregulate the financial market. After the 1989 world-wide recession and the crash of government banks in Victoria and South Australia public banks were sold there and in NSW, WA, and Tasmania. The Commonwealth Bank was privatised in 1991, 1993 and finally in 1996.
Deregulation damaged the economy by misallocation of capital, more company bankruptcy and huge and growing debt. Finance followed the market signals to areas of highest return. World finance affected the exchange rate and had considerable influence on government policy.
MAJOR BANKS IN AUSTRALIA
The four major banks in Australia hold 65% of total financial assets, with 80% of home finance and 90% of credit cards. The banks no longer wanted to be financial warehouses of small depositors with low interest and cost of servicing a burden. Many branches of banks particularly in the countryside were closed because they were not profitable enough, and from 1990 to 1994 employment in retail banking fell 30%. They have introduced automatic teller machines and a high rate of fees.
Information on Australia from Occasional Papers; Banks for People by Michaela Maine.

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OVERSEAS TAKEOVERS
Australian banks are being taken over by overseas capital. BankWest is 56% owned by Bank of Scotland, worth $77 billion and proposing to join Halifax group to become the fifth largest bank in England. Chase Manhattan Bank is the single biggest holder of Commonwealth Bank with CitiBank moving in. (CitiBank, or CitiCorp assets $700 billion is being targeted as "world's most destructive bank" by Rainforest Action Network for financing large and environmentally damaging projects, such as Freeport Mine in Irian Jaya.)
Despite bad debts of $246 million to HIH and others, BankWest net profit increased 13% to a half year profit of $924 million. ANZ had doubtful loans to Harris Scarfe and to Sydney Olympic Stadium and Indonesian Panin Bank, but had a 10% profit increase to $895m for six months and a cost-to-income ratio below 50%. Commonwealth Bank may lose on loans to NSW Grain Board but have profits over $1 billion.
Profits made in Australia jumped 40% for National Australia Bank to $1.1 billion for the year, with earnings from UK and US over $600 million at lower increase rate. They recently bought MLC for $4.6 billion and are looking for a merger in England. Expense to income ratio fell below 50%.
In most cases banks make sure they are secured creditors with first dip in the kitty.
WHO PAYS?
Bank fees cost consumers $430 million a year. Over the counter fees went from 50 cents in 1993 to $2.58 in 2000. Bouncing cheques and overdrawn accounts are charged $60. Credit cards can carry 17.75% interest, but savings accounts 1% or less. No wonder the Bank Ombudsman had a 22% increase in complaints!
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BankWest could not have made its $1,356 million profit in a year without its 3000 employees -- that works out at $452,000 per worker. Year Book 2000 gave average wages banking and insurance $910 a week, or $47,320 a year -- a tenth!
PEOPLE TAKE ON BANKING GIANTS
Banks have been losing to non-bank institutions.
Credit unions come into Australia in the 1950s. In 1980 there were 600, but under pressure from the modern financial world they had to merge with other credit unions. In 1996 there were 285 with assets of $18 billion and 3.5 million members.
Originally only allowed to lend 10% of assets, that limit has been lifted and they have authority to issue cheques. Credit unions were the first with free bill payments services, free payroll deductions facilities for savings and loans repayments, and high interest earning from cheque accounts. Credit unions are mainly in the towns and cities, but have begun to move into some country towns which major banks have abandoned.

COMMUNITY BANKS
With Community Banks, the people have taken on the banking giants. From 1993 to 1999 the major Australian banks closed 1700 branches and left many country towns without banking facilities. In response groups of people and organisations have built their own community banks.
Bendigo Bank, that started as a building society in 1858, linked with other building societies and trustee companies and became a bank in 1995. It has total assets in excess of $6500 million. It has 166 branches in Victoria and other

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states in partnership with local communities.
The Bank provides the banking infrastructure and coverage with its banking licence. Local investors raise the startup capital and become shareholders. The community and the Bank share revenue. The Bendigo Bank protects the depositors and also makes all credit decisions and ensures client privacy.
There are already four community branches in the WA countryside and Vincent City Council has opened one in North Perth. Profits can be reinvested into local enterprises or community projects. Community banks in their way can assist in the struggle against the economic and political stranglehold of the giant banks.
The most important aspect is the grass-roots democracy and growing confidence that can take up urgent issues and co-operate with other forces in a wide range of activities.