A Wee Bit WEF: Taxes, Capitalism, and the Presentation of a New Starby Not Sure21 Jan 2024
In the first section of Carroll Quigley’s
Tragedy and Hope, he wrote about the long history of #capitalism, and its various stages. In a subsection entitled “Financial Capitalism, 1850-1931” he wrote:
“This third stage of capitalism is of such overwhelming significance in the history of the twentieth century, and its ramifications and influences have been so subterranean and even occult, that we may be excused if we devote considerate attention to its organization and methods.”
He then proceeds to give that considerate attention which includes a history of the oligarchy intimately connected to money, e.g. the Rothschild dynasty, foundations and interlocking directorships, the creation of a type of a banker we now refer to as the “international banker,” money as debt, sound money, the gold standard, and so on. Later in this section, Quigley writes:
“Another paradox of banking practice arose from the fact that bankers, who loved deflation, often acted in an inflationary fashion from their eagerness to lend money at interest. Since they make money out of loans, they are eager to increase the amounts of bank credit on loan. But this is inflationary. The conflict between the deflationary ideas and inflationary practices of bankers had profound repercussions on business. The bankers made loans to business so that the volume of money increased faster than the increase in goods. The result was inflation. When this became clearly noticeable, the bankers would flee to notes or specie by curtailing credit and raising discount rates. This was beneficial to bankers in the short run (since it allowed them to foreclose on collateral held for loans), but it could be disastrous to them in the long run (by forcing the value of the collateral below the amount of the loans it secured). But such bankers’ deflation was destructive to business and industry in the short run as well as the long run.” *
Free market and free trade are two very different concepts, though they are often intentionally conflated. We are living in a free trade world that set its wheels in motion after World War II and has now been accomplished in the form of trading blocs. To suggest that nations or individuals could return to the quaint idea of Gilded Age
laissez-faire capitalism or a Randian idea of the unfettered individual who engages in capitalistic pursuits and the good, but unintended consequence is a social system most beneficial to the poor, is naïve in the face of the beast which is Free Trade organized by an oligarchy.
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