tragedy and hope: top lives off the yield of the bottom...,

Excepts From "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time". Chapters 6,20,21,38

The Money Power Controlled by International Investment Bankers Dominates Business and Government

In the various actions which increase or decrease the supply of money, governments, bankers, and industrialists have not always seen eye to eye. On the whole, in the period up to 1931, bankers, especially the Money Power controlled by the international investment bankers, were able to dominate both business and government. They could dominate business, especially in activities and in areas where industry could not finance its own needs for capital, because investment bankers had the ability to supply or refuse to supply such capital. Thus, Rothschild interests came to dominate many of the railroads of Europe, while Morgan dominated at least 26,000 miles of American railroads. Such bankers went further than this. In return for flotations of securities of industry, they took seats on the boards of directors of industrial firms, as they had already done on commercial banks, savings banks, insurance firms, and finance companies. From these lesser institutions they funneled capital to enterprises which yielded control and away from those who resisted. These firms were controlled through interlocking directorships, holding companies, and lesser banks. They engineered amalgamations and generally reduced competition, until by the early twentieth century many activities were so monopolized that they could raise their noncompetitive prices above costs to obtain sufficient profits to become self-financing and were thus able to eliminate the control of bankers. But before that stage was reached a relatively small number of bankers were in positions of immense influence in European and American economic life. As early as 1909, Walter Rathenau, who was in a position to know (since he had inherited from his father control of the German General Electric Company and held scores of directorships himself), said, "Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves."

The Power of Investment Bankers Over Governments

The power of investment bankers over governments rests on a number of factors, of which the most significant, perhaps, is the need of governments to issue short-term treasury bills as well as long-term government bonds. Just as businessmen go to commercial banks for current capital advances to smooth over the discrepancies between their irregular and intermittent incomes and their periodic and persistent outgoes (such as monthly rents, annual mortgage payments, and weekly wages), so a government has to go to merchant bankers (or institutions controlled by them) to tide over the shallow places caused by irregular tax receipts. As experts in government bonds, the international bankers not only handled the necessary advances but provided advice to government officials and, on many occasions, placed their own members in official posts for varied periods to deal with special problems. This is so widely accepted even today that in 1961 a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic Administration in Washington without significant comment from any direction.

The Money Power Reigns Supreme and Unquestioned

Naturally, the influence of bankers over governments during the age of financial capitalism (roughly 1850-1931) was not something about which anyone talked freely, but it has been admitted frequently enough by those on the inside, especially in England. In 1852 Gladstone, chancellor of the Exchequer, declared, "The hinge of the whole situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantive power in matters of Finance, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned." On September 26, 1921, The Financial Times wrote, "Half a dozen men at the top of the Big Five Banks could upset the whole fabric of government finance by refraining from renewing Treasury Bills." In 1924 Sir Drummond Fraser, vice-president of the Institute of Bankers, stated, "The Governor of the Bank of England must be the autocrat who dictates the terms upon which alone the Government can obtain borrowed money."

Secrecy Is One of the Elements of the English Business and Financial Life

This element of secrecy is one of the outstanding features of English business and financial life. The weakest "right" an Englishman has is the "right to know," which is about as narrow as it is in American nuclear operations. Most duties, powers, and actions in business are controlled by customary procedures and conventions, not by explicit rules and regulations, and are often carried out by casual remarks between old friends. No record perpetuates such remarks, and they are generally regarded as private affairs which are no concern of others, even when they involve millions of pounds of the public's money. Although this situation is changing slowly, the inner circle of English financial life remains a matter of "whom one knows," rather than "what one knows." Jobs are still obtained by family, marriage, or school connections; character is considered far more important than knowledge or skill; and important positions, on this basis, are given to men who have no training, experience, or knowledge to qualify them.

The Core of English Financial Society Consists of 17 Private International Banking Firms

As part of this system and at the core of English financial life have been seventeen private firms of "merchant bankers" who find money for established and wealthy enterprises on either a long-term (investment) or a short-term ("acceptances") basis. These merchant bankers, with a total of less than a hundred active partners, include the firms of Baring Brothers, N. M. Rothschild, J. Henry Schroder, Morgan Grenfell, Hambros, and Lazard Brothers. These merchant bankers in the period of financial capitalism had a dominant position with the Bank of England and, strangely enough, still have retained some of this, despite the nationalization of the Bank by the Labour government in 1946. As late as 1961 a Baring (Lord Cromer) was named governor of the bank, and his board of directors, called the "Court" of the bank, included representatives of Lazard, of Hambros, and of Morgan Grenfell, as well as of an industrial firm (English Electric) controlled by these.

Money Power Exercises Its Influence through Interlocking Directorates and Direct Financial Controls

From this date onward, financial capitalism grew rapidly in Britain, without ever achieving the heights it did in the United States or Germany. Domestic concerns remained small, owner-managed, and relatively unprogressive (especially in the older lines like textiles, iron, coal, shipbuilding). One chief field of exploitation for British financial capitalism continued to be in foreign countries until the crash of 1931. Only after 1920 did it spread tentatively into newer fields like machinery, electrical goods, and chemicals, and in these it was superseded almost at once by monopoly capitalism.... In addition, its rule was relatively honest (in contrast to the United States but similar to Germany). It made little use of holding companies, exercising its influence by interlocking directorates and direct financial controls. It died relatively easily, yielding control of the economic system to the new organizations of monopoly capitalism constructed by men like William H. Lever, Viscount Leverhulme (1851-1925) or Alfred M. Mond, Lord Melchett (1868-1930). The former created a great international monopoly in vegetable oils centering upon Unilever, while the latter created the British chemical monopoly known as Imperial Chemical Industries.

Banking Control of Government throughout the World

Financial capitalism in Britain, as elsewhere, was marked not only by a growing financial control of industry but also by an increasing concentration of this control and by an increasing banking control of government. As we have seen, this influence of the Bank of England over the government was an almost unmitigated disaster for Britain. The power of the bank in business circles was never as complete as it was in government, because British businesses remained self-financing to a greater extent than those of other countries. This self-financing power of business in Britain depended on the advantage which it held because of the early arrival of industrialism in England. As other countries became industrialized, reducing Britain's advantage and her extraordinary profits, British business was forced to seek outside financial aid or reduce its creation of capital plant. Both methods were used, with the result that financial capitalism grew at the same time as considerable sections of Britain's capital plant became obsolete.

The Money Trust Became Increasingly Concentrated and Powerful in the Twentieth Century

The control of the Bank of England over business was exercised indirectly through the joint-stock banks. These banks became increasingly concentrated and increasingly powerful in the twentieth century. The number of such banks decreased through amalgamation from 109 in 1866 to 35 in 1919 and to 33 in 1933. This growth of a "money trust" in Britain led to an investigation by a Treasury Committee on Bank Amalgamations. In its report (Colwyn Report, 1919) this committee admitted the danger and called for government action. A bill was drawn up to prevent further concentration but was withdrawn when the bankers made a "gentlemen's agreement" to ask Treasury permission for future amalgamations. The net result was to protect the influence of the Bank of England, since this might have been reduced by complete monopolization of joint-stock banking, and the bank was always in a position to influence the Treasury's attitude on all questions. Of the 33 joint-stock banks existing in 1933, 9 were in Ireland and 8 in Scotland, leaving only 16 for England and Wales. The 33 together had over £2,500 million in deposits in April 1933, of which £1,773 million were in the so-called "Big Five" (Midland, Lloyds, Barclays, Westminster, and National Provincial). The Big Five controlled at least 7 of the other 28 (in one case by ownership of 98 percent of the stock).

Although competition among the Big Five was usually keen, all were subject to the powerful influence of the Bank of England, as exercised through the discount rate, interlocking directorships, and above all through the intangible influences of tradition, ambition, and prestige.

The Techniques of Finance Capitalism Reach Levels of Corruption into America Higher Than Any Country in the World

By the 1880's the techniques of financial capitalism were well developed in New York and northern New Jersey, and reached levels of corruption which were never approached in any European country. This corruption sought to cheat the ordinary investor by flotations and manipulations of securities for the benefit of "insiders." Success in this was its own justification, and the practitioners of these dishonesties were as socially acceptable as their wealth entitled them to be, without any animadversions on how that wealth had been obtained. Corrupt techniques, associated with the names of Daniel Drew or Jay Gould in the wildest days of railroad financial juggling, were also practiced by Morgan and others who became respectable from longer sustained success which allowed them to build up established firms.

Close Alliance of Wall Street with Two Major Parties

Any reform of Wall Street practices came from pressure from the hinterlands, especially from the farming West, and was long delayed by the close alliance of Wall Street with the two major political parties, which grew up in 1880-1900. In this alliance, by 1900, the influence of Morgan in the Republican Party was dominant, his chief rivalry coming from the influence of a monopoly capitalist, Rockefeller of Ohio. By 1900 Wall Street had largely abandoned the Democratic Party, a shift indicated by the passage of the Whitney family from the Democrats to the Republican inner circles, shortly after they established a family alliance with Morgan. In the same period, the Rockefeller family reversed the ordinary direction of development by shifting from the monopoly fields of petroleum to New York banking circles by way of the Chase National Bank. Soon family as well as financial alliances grew up among the Morgans, Whitneys, and Rockefellers, chiefly through Payne and Aldrich family connections.

Finance Capitalism in New York Resembles a Feudal Structure

For almost fifty years, from 1880 to 1930, financial capitalism approximated a feudal structure in which two great powers, centered in New York, dominated a number of lesser powers, both in New York and in provincial cities. No description of this structure as it existed in the 1920's can be given in a brief compass, since it infiltrated all aspects of American life and especially all branches of economic life. At the center were a group of less than a dozen investment banks, which were, at the height of their powers, still unincorporated private partnerships. These included J. P. Morgan; the Rockefeller family; Kuhn, Loeb and Company; Dillon, Read and Company; Brown Brothers and Harriman; and others. Each of these was linked in organizational or personal relationships with various banks, insurance companies, railroads, utilities, and industrial firms. The result was to form a number of webs of economic power of which the more important centered in New York, while other provincial groups allied with these were to be found in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston.

J. P. Morgan Dominates Corporate America (Now known as JP Morgan Chase - Morgan-Rockefeller alliance)

J. P. Morgan worked in close relationship to a group of banks and insurance companies, including the First National Bank of New York, the Guaranty Trust Company, the Bankers Trust, the New York Trust Company, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The whole nexus dominated a network of business firms which included at least one-sixth of the two hundred largest nonfinancial corporations in American business. Among these were twelve utility companies, five or more railroad systems, thirteen industrial firms, and at least five of the fifty largest banks in the country. The combined assets of these firms were more than $30 billion. They included American Telephone and Telegraph Company, International Telephone and Telegraph, Consolidated Gas of New York, the groups of electrical utilities known as Electric Bond and Share and as the United Corporation Group (which included Commonwealth and Southern, Public Service of New Jersey, and Columbia Gas and Electric), the New York Central railway system, the Van Sweringen railway system (Allegheny) of nine lines (including Chesapeake and Ohio; Erie; Missouri Pacific; the Nickel Plate; and Pere Marquette); the Santa Fe; the Northern system of five great lines (Great Northern; Northern Pacific; Burlington; and others); the Southern Railway; General Electric Company; United States Steel; Phelps Dodge; Montgomery Ward; National Biscuit; Kennecott Copper; American Radiator and Standard Sanitary; Continental Oil; Reading Coal and Iron; Baldwin Locomotive; and others.

The Economic Power of the Money Trust in America Is Almost Beyond Imagination

The economic power represented by these figures is almost beyond imagination to grasp, and was increased by the active role which these financial titans took in politics. Morgan and Rockefeller together frequently dominated the national Republican Party, while Morgan occasionally had extensive influence in the national Democratic Party (three of the Morgan partners were usually Democrats). These two were also powerful on the state level, especially Morgan in New York and Rockefeller in Ohio. Mellon was a power in Pennsylvania and du Pont was obviously a political power in Delaware.

The Morgan Hierarchy

In the 1920's this system of economic and political power formed a hierarchy headed by the Morgan interests and played a principal role both in political and business life. Morgan, operating on the international level in cooperation with his allies abroad, especially in England, influenced the events of history to a degree which cannot be specified in detail but which certainly was tremendous....

slaughterhouse rules...,

TheAtlantic | The Yale Agrarian Studies completist is always an easy person to buy for, but his smile may slip a notch when he unwraps Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight. As if the title weren’t off-putting enough, the cover photograph shows a faceless man in full-body rubber apron and rubber boots, the whole getup spattered with fresh blood. Is that an elastic band on the slick red floor, or a tapeworm? Mercifully, the book deals only in small part with the actual killing of animals, being a firsthand account of various kinds of slaughterhouse work. Liver hanger, cattle driver, quality-control worker: in five months undercover, Timothy Pachirat did it all.

The comprehensiveness of his experience makes Every Twelve Seconds especially valuable, considering the meat industry’s campaign to stamp out precisely this sort of research. Iowa and Utah have already passed laws making it a crime to gain employment at a slaughterhouse for the purpose of documenting abuses and code violations; similar “ag gag” bills have been proposed in other states. It is easy to imagine the uproar that would ensue if the restaurant industry, which is a model of hygiene in comparison, were to demand comparable protection from whistle-blowers. When it comes to the meat supply, however, America appears none too troubled by the prospect of its blindfolding; the nation would rather take its chances with E. coli than risk channel-surfing into a slaughterhouse. Though “foodie” writers occasionally show interest in the act of slaughter, they prefer to witness it outdoors, on some idyllic farm, the better to stylize it into a time-hallowed, mutually respectful communing of man and beast. Readers are left to infer that their local meat factory is merely maximizing the number of communings per minute; the media fuss over Temple Grandin, a purportedly cow-loving consultant to Big Beef, has an obvious role to play here. But all this wishful thinking fails at the slaughterhouse door. Barring recourse to the inducements the animals get, it would be hard to coax average Americans inside even for a minute. As George Bataille once wrote, in a remark that leads off Pachirat’s first chapter: “The slaughterhouse is cursed and quarantined like a boat carrying cholera.”

 

And it always has been. We are sometimes told that urbanization has made us all squeamish about something people used to regard with a manly, no-nonsense spirit. The opposite is closer to the truth. As the great psychoanalyst Otto Rank pointed out, cave paintings and ancient myths indicate that primitive man—with whom our so-called hunters love to claim kinship—felt worse about killing animals than killing his own kind. (We find a similar attitude among the rugged Cossacks in Sholokhov’s The Quiet Don: “You should not kill an animal unless it is necessary, but destroy man!”) If our ancestors had had—as we now do—full awareness of animals’ sentience, and the wherewithal to live without red meat, and the knowledge that red meat is harmful in even the smallest quantities, would they have gone on eating it? We will never know the answer. What is certain is that long traditions of stigmatizing the slaughtering class started fading only after the factory farm made slaughter invisible, inaudible, and unsmellable to everyone outside that class. Of course, everyone has a pretty good idea what goes on, so that parents whose child wanted to be a cow-killer when he grew up (as opposed to, say, a soldier) would probably get him psychological counseling, but the bulk of mankind now has the luxury of forgetting how meat is made.

The most interesting aspect of Pachirat’s book is its discovery that our slaughterhouse workers are themselves deeply uneasy about the cruelty they are forced to inflict. This runs counter to the PR line according to which everything runs wonderfully humanely except when some psychopath slips into the system. Evidently there is no uncruel way to kill a large and terrified animal every 12 seconds, the pace now set by industry greed. Just moving the cattle along the chutes leaves employees feeling shaken and ashamed.

why don't more people know about the GAO audit of the Federal Reserve?

democraticunderground | Here is the Fed Audit folks by the GAO It seems are tax dollars have gone to banks over seas.

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.

In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

To Sanders, the conclusion is simple. "No one who works for a firm receiving direct financial assistance from the Fed should be allowed to sit on the Fed's board of directors or be employed by the Fed," he said.

After 100 years ...we find that the FED is corrupt and out of control

we didn't authorize the Fed to bail out corporations and banks over seas with US tax dollars and they expect the American people to delay their Social Security and cut Medicaid and Medicare because of Feds policies

the spirit molecule?

Amor fati's Nontoxic Approach to Spice Extraction

envisioning a post-prohibition world...,

realitysandwich | Pot-smokers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your pipe dreams.

Marijuana legalization is a beginning, not an end.

When residents of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize the adult use of cannabis, it felt like a momentary rush of sobriety in a country dazed by decades of anti-marijuana hysteria. But what comes next? 

The drug war edifice is cracking and the end of prohibition may be nigh. Or may not be. The way things play out is not preordained. Major strategic differences among legalization proponents are surfacing about how to proceed. Some drug policy reform leaders, fearing an official backlash, are urging a cautious, go-slow, approach: make it as easy as possible for the Feds to back off and let the states do their thing. Other voices, claiming a pro-pot electoral mandate, are calling for bold, assertive moves to implement the will of the voters.

Some medical marijuana dispensary operators are celebrating the prospect of expanding into adult sales, while others worry about getting squeezed out as weaker players fold in an increasingly competitive, multibillion-dollar industry. Mom and pop growers in the Emerald Triangle of Northern California, America's cannabis bread basket, who've paid their dues over the years, cringe when they hear of post-election overtures to tobacco companies from single-issue obsessed, DC-based drug policy reform lobbyists who presume to speak for tens of millions of cannabis consumers.

The future of cannabis is up for grabs -- as much as anything can be in our ailing, corporate-dominated culture. So why not think big? Here are some ideas:

age-old jewish mysticism tikkun olam yadda, yadda....,

NYTimes | Marijuana is illegal in Israel, but farms like this one, at a secret location near the city of Safed, are at the cutting edge of the debate on the legality, benefits and risks of medicinal cannabis. Its staff members wear white lab coats, its growing facilities are fitted with state-of-the-art equipment for controlling light and humidity, and its grounds are protected by security cameras and guards.

But in addition to the high-tech atmosphere, there is a spiritual one. The plantation, Israel’s largest and most established medical marijuana farm — and now a thriving commercial enterprise — is imbued with a higher sense of purpose, reflected by the aura of Safed, an age-old center of Jewish mysticism, as well as by its name, Tikkun Olam, a reference to the Jewish concept of repairing or healing the world.

There is an on-site synagogue in a trailer, a sweet aroma of freshly harvested cannabis that infuses the atmosphere and, halfway up a wooded hillside overlooking the farm, a blue-domed tomb of a rabbinic sage and his wife.

In the United States, medical marijuana programs exist in 18 states but remain illegal under federal law. In Israel, the law defines marijuana as an illegal and dangerous drug, and there is still no legislation regulating its use for medicinal purposes.

Yet Israel’s Ministry of Health issues special licenses that allow thousands of patients to receive medical marijuana, and some government officials are now promoting the country’s advances in the field as an example of its pioneering and innovation.

“I hope we will overcome the legal obstacles for Tikkun Olam and other companies,” Yuli Edelstein, the minister of public diplomacy and diaspora affairs, told journalists during a recent government-sponsored tour of the farm, part of Israel’s effort to brand itself as something beyond a conflict zone. In addition to helping the sick, he said, the effort “could be helpful for explaining what we are about in this country.”

Israelis have been at the vanguard of research into the medicinal properties of cannabis for decades.

totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent...,

guardian | It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves. 

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).

As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a "terrorist threat":

"FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country."

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it "police-statism":

"This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a "Bank Fraud Working Group" met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its "domestic terrorism" unit. The Anchorage, Alaska "terrorism task force" was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan "joint terrorism task force" was issuing a "counterterrorism preparedness alert" about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the "Bank Security Group" – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to "National Bad Bank Sit-in Day" (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state's Occupy members' details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its "joint terrorism task force" aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages. Fist tap Arnach.

banksters and churches and shepherds - oh my!!!

Greenspan states that the Fed is above the law shortly after 7:30 in the interview

Churches, modern banks and associated political institutions are based largely on perception, and deception.  In order to work, they have to convince you that they are doing you a favor, bringing value to the transaction in exchange for getting you to relinquish real labor value to their custody.

In order to make the scam complete, they must make the bank/church, its employees, its building, its presentation - all look authoritative and legitimate. The bank building, like a church or government building, is large with pillars and official looking facades - conveying strength, stability and legitimacy.  

Usually there's some picture of an old guy or several guys with a big beard and royal/high class clothing to make you feel like someone important is here.  The altar/safe is placed in clear view of the public to add to the deception.  This is so when you enter the bank, church etc, you feel a sense of safety, reverence and awe.   

The entire presentation is a scam or a confidence game of the highest order.   The whole objective is to rob you of your earned value, and make you an obedient, pliable, reliable, submissive and easily managed peasant.

The big inside joke is that the only money the bank/church really has is the money you are depositing in it plus the money they collected as fractional reserves to get the banking/churching license in the first instance.  

In principle, as should be self-evident by now, money should be intrinsically worthless, and only used as a means of exchange for things of similar value. It should not be permitted for banks to create money, unless they are carefully regulated (nature, type of loans and interest rates) and/or the bank is in the public interest (usually with a public bank, a nationally chartered bank), and has a measurable multiplier effect on the economy.  

The multiplier effect should be in the expansion of goods and services which make society more productive.   Like schools which educate children (creating human capital), bridges, canals and roads which expand trade, new technologies to exploit natural resources, dams and power plants (which actually produce energy to electrify towns and cities at an affordable price).  

In this regard, Alexander Hamilton insisted that credit for such products are essential to a national economy (states included) and that debt for such purpose can be a national blessing because it can be basis for facilitating trade and national development.  The notes were usually for 20 years at 5 percent.  As such the price or interest rate should be minimal and long term, providing a stable bill of exchange which could be used for commercial transactions.

This later became known as dollar bills and dollar notes. This is where the whole concept of the dollar bill came from.  The notes were tied to productive legitimate investments so people were comfortable using these as a medium of exchange.   In fact, such bills of exchange were more desirable than gold and silver (or private bank notes)

So federalized (national) paper bills of exchange and other such instruments were favored by small and medium size businesses since they knew they these notes where for productive, useful activity for the commonwealth.  This is how the Erie and Ohio Canals were built.  This is the great innovation of Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and John Quincy Adams that freed the general populace from reliance on England, Spain, the Netherlands, and France for gold specie in order to promote business and the economy.

It was the power of the sovereign to create money in the public interest and use such dollar bills as currency directly tied to the productive capacity of the nation. Gold, and silver, if necessary, was used for payment of international trade, with countries who did not at that time accept dollars bills as mediums of exchange.

Gold and silver (or other precious metals) were preferred by kings and other sovereigns because the quantity was usually in the hands of the powerful and wealthy, and therefore could give them power over the general population.  Bonds or paper represented how much gold you had on reserve, not anything of real value or use to the general population.  It served the royalty, bankers and aristocrats, not the peasantry and small businessmen.

Under the  old European system (represented by feudal lords, kings, bankers, etc), in order to get credit you had to have gold, silver, and issue bond, paper notes promising to pay the same in gold, silver, etc).  This severely restricted trade and made it difficult for the common man.  His economic destiny depended on whether he could convince some banker, or agent of the king to part with his gold or lend against his gold for some purpose.   In this way, power over the peasantry was maintained.

Since peasants didn't have gold, they usually had to pledge their land, and anything they had, sometimes even their wives and children, as collateral.   Taxes became oppressive and cruel.  The church merely enforced the same system under penalty of eternal damnation, etc.  As a result, people began to leave Europe in search of religious, political and economic freedom.  Most royalty and bankers were happy to see some peasants go as long as they continued to pay their taxes.

When Americans didn't have any gold or precious metals (under the old system), in the early days before it was discovered in the Southwest, it forced the early settlers to innovate and create a new medium which served the public interest.   Benjamin Franklin was one of the first do this in Massachusetts and later in Pennsylvania.   Later Hamilton, after the revolution, out of necessity and invention, expanded this concept on national level for the American States.  This type of national economic independence (from Royalty and their bankers), coupled with political independence (from Royalty and their bankers), and religious freedom (from Royalty and their Church), created a potential for enormous power and influence.

You can easily see the threat the American System presented to the British crown.  Before that time, all taxes had to be paid in gold, silver and other coins, determined and controlled by the king, and credit was not easily available for the commonwealth.   All religion and worship was to the official church.   It was a syndicate.  That's why traditional gold has always been a bad medium of exchange for the general population and has always wound up increasing the concentration of private and/or aristocratic wealth.

In fact, there was no common-wealth concept.  There was the king and his subjects.  You were not citizens with rights under law than any aristocrat was bound to acknowledge.  You were peasants. The American Revolution was a radical departure from this notion.  It threatened every Monarchy and Empire on the globe, except those who allied with it and adopted some of its principles, as did Germany (protective tariffs, technological innovation, and a credit system) as a way to free itself from the same destructive economic policies.

The key features of the American Revolution, the real one, not the fake one, was political, religious, and economic independence.  That is why, despite all its problems and failures, it remains the number one threat to the psychopathocracy and must be destroyed.  It cannot be allowed to complete and further its original vision.

That is why the history of the American Revolution has been systematically redacted, and distorted, and replaced with a false narrative that distorts their forgotten original meaning. For example, Free Trade (means Austrian/London School financial capitalism with no barriers), Debt or Sound Money (Interest based or Gold based), Individual Liberty (Ayn Rand selfishness irrespective of morality and impact on others), Property Rights (Ayn Rand type (discrimination, human slavery, etc.)), Limited Government (no equal protection under the law, Confederacy/State's Rights and American Exceptionalism (Imperialism/Manifest Destiny, etc).

libraries and e-lending - publishers are the problem

npr | Have you ever borrowed an e-book from a library? If the answer is no, you're a member of a large majority. A survey out Thursday from the Pew Internet Project finds that only 5 percent of "recent library users" have tried to borrow an e-book this year.

About three-quarters of public libraries offer e-books, according to the American Library Association, but finding the book you want to read can be a challenge — when it's available at all.

Brian Kenney is the director of the White Plains Public Library in New York. He tells NPR's Audie Cornish about a library patron who wanted to check out a digital copy of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.

"It was a middle-aged guy, you know, had a high techno-comfort zone, he was carrying his iPad, and he approached the desk carrying the Isaacson bio and said, 'How do I download this,' " Kenney recalls. "And it was the classic case where I had to explain to them, 'Well, sir, actually, you can't download that from here.' And then ensues the discussion why, as though somehow or other the library was stupid or failing in its job."

In fact, Kenney says, it's not a failure on the part of the library — Simon and Schuster, which published the book, would not license it to the library for download.

You might think about all this as the Wild West of digital licensing — a frontier environment where every publisher has its own set of rules. Among the six biggest companies, Simon and Schuster currently licenses none of its e-books to libraries. The company says it simply hasn't found a model that works.

is the book an indispensable cognitive object or a cognitive bottleneck?

npr | What counts as a book these days, in a world of Kindles, Nooks and iPads — and eager talk about new platforms and distribution methods?

Traditional publishers are traveling a long and confusing road into the digital future. To begin with, here's the conventional wisdom about publishing: E-books are destroying the business model.

People expect them to be cheaper than physical books, and that drives down prices. But the story's not that simple. For one thing, digital publishers have the same problem that record labels do: piracy. And there's just not the same stigma attached to pirating an e-book as there is to holding up a Barnes & Noble.

It turns out, though, that some publishers are doing pretty well despite the piracy problem. "We've had an incredible year," says Sourcebooks President Dominique Raccah. "Last year was the best year in the company's history. This year we beat that, which I didn't think was even possible." Raccah adds that her company is doing well because of digital publishing, not in spite of it. "It's been an amazing ride," she says.

It turns out there are some huge advantages — at least for publishers. A big one: The price of an e-book isn't fixed the way it is with physical books. Ten years ago, a publisher would have sent out its books to the bookstore with the price stamped on the cover. After that, it was done — the publisher couldn't put it on sale to sell more books.

21 book publishing predictions for 2013

HuffPo | We are all on a journey. None of us know with absolute certainty what happens next. All we can do is position ourselves for the future we prophetically or delusionally imagine. History will judge us all. Those who position correctly will be rewarded. Those who aren't prepared will face the harsh realities of the future marketplace.

Every one of us holds the power to change the course of history by taking actions today that enable the future we desire. Our actions mirror our aspirations, which means the future of publishing will be determined by our collective and sometimes competing aspirations. Readers are our gatekeepers.

I challenge you, my dear writer, publisher or reader, to take charge of your future. Imagine a brighter and better future ahead, where the culture of books reigns supreme, where more people are discovering, reading, purchasing, publishing, selling, and profiting-from books. Imagine a future where more readers than ever before will enjoy a greater diversity of books than ever before. Imagine a future where the power center of the publishing business shifts from traditional publishers to ordinary writers where it belongs.

The utopian and often self-serving aspirations of industry participants don't always intersect. Sometimes, objectives are at odds with one another, and at other times objectives are aligned. Our experiences, biases and fears color our perceptions, and sometimes distort them.

Much is at stake. The world's 50 largest book publishers alone achieved $68 billion in sales in 2011, according to Publishers Weekly. Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) estimates the US consumer ebook market alone will surpass $10 billion by 2016. When so much money and power is up for grabs, industry players have a lot to fight over, and much to protect. Books are worth fighting for, so fight for the future you want. Otherwise, someone else may determine your future for you.

None of us can truly predict the future, but we can still prepare for it by remaining flexible. We must be willing to roll with the punches when fate tries to smack us upside the head, and adjust our course and our beliefs when we make mistakes, or when we discover new opportunities on the horizon.

The doubters like Donald Maass are becoming the exception, not the rule, and that worries me. When everyone starts swimming in the same direction and believing the same group think, that's when I start wondering about what comes next. It's the job of any entrepreneur - and we are all entrepreneurs of our own destiny - to prepare for the future while surviving today.

it doesn't matter what ebooks cost to make

gigaom | Book publishers are trying hard to defend the pricing of e-books — perhaps in part because they’ve been accused by the Justice Department of rigging prices to keep them artificially high — by arguing that it costs a lot more than most people think to produce the electronic version of a book. But as author Chuck Wendig notes, what e-books cost to manufacture or distribute is irrelevant to everyone but the publishers themselves. All that matters is what book consumers are willing to pay for an e-book — and the same principle applies for any form of digital content.

Hearing the complaints of book buyers must be frustrating for publishers, because they actually have a pretty good case for why e-books cost what they do. Although many see the price of old-fashioned things like paper and printing presses and trucks to ship them as a big cost for printed books, publishers like Penguin point out that the main costs involve advance payments to authors, marketing and other support expenses — things that also apply to e-books. As Wendig puts it:

[P]roducing e-books costs more than you think. You’re paying for editors and cover design and, of course, for the book itself, and the mechanics of putting those things into a container are not the bulk of a book’s cost. Hence, e-books are always going to be close to their physical counterparts in cost.

But as the author also notes, consumers don’t really care what a publisher’s costs are, nor are they likely to pay more simply because a publisher argues that their content is really valuable. In the same way, movie-goers don’t really care how many millions of dollars a movie studio spent on their latest blockbuster — that has no bearing on whether they want to see it or not. It is the perceived value of the e-book that matters, not the cost — and there are some good reasons why e-book consumers might want to pay less.

the future status of modernity's chief cognitive object

ala | As e-books and the emerging digital library occupy today’s headlines, there appears to be a tacit consensus emerging from the discourse among academics, journalists, and librarians about the future of the book. That vision of the future, as portrayed in the trade literature and popular press, consigns this centuries-old technology to obsolescence, as if it were merely another information format.

This report explores alternative scenarios, where the technology of the printed book does not disappear or become extinct, but occupies a different position in a technological ecology characterized by the proliferation of e-books and digital libraries. The printed book has for centuries been the chief cognitive object of the library. The future status of that object should be of interest to all librarians, especially as they plan for the future; therefore, this report intentionally favors the continued existence of the printed book as a viable technology.

The goal of this report is to draw attention to our assumptions about the future of the book, assumptions that are grounded in our current e-book zeitgeist. Strategic decisions are often based on underlying—and often unexamined—assumptions about the larger environment in which those decisions will be carried out. The future often turns out not as expected because we do not entertain alternative possibilities and base strategic thinking and actions on one specific belief about the future. Much of our current thinking about the future of libraries appears based on the assumption that printed books will give way to e-books and the digital transmission of textual objects.

This research report presents four scenarios so that academic and research librarians may expand their thinking about the future to include a richer set of environmental conditions:

1. Consensus: a scenario where e-books overwhelm and make obsolete the printed book 
2. Nostalgic: a scenario where printed books are still highly in demand and e-books haveproven to be a fad
3. Privatization of the book: a scenario where printed books are vestigial to an ecology dominated by e-books 
4.  Printed books thrive: a scenario where e-books and printed books exist in balance and have equal importance

Scenario thinking exercises can help to develop situational awareness. Mica R. Endsley defines situational awareness as “the perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future.”

 Futuring is an exercise in expanding situational awareness by developing greater comprehension of the elements that make up the larger environment of libraries—indeed, viewing the library as a complex dynamic system affected not only by operational elements such as collections and user services but also by political, economic, social, and technological elements of the environment within which the library is situated. Beyond comprehending these elements and understanding the complex ways in which they interact, academic and research librarians must also be able to envision the future status of that system. We assume that the complex system that is the library will itself undergo change, and librarians must be able to anticipate those changes. Thus, using the language of situational awareness, scenarios should be viewed as one effort to describe a future state of the system in which decisions will need to be carried out. As academic and research librarians undertake strategic planning for their organizations, awareness of the larger environment and understanding the potential for changes in that environment will prove critical to improved decision making.

After reviewing each of the scenarios, those involved in strategic decision making should then consider their own plans—and their budgets— with respect to these questions:

• Which state of the system do you believe best describes the environment in which your library’s strategic thinking and planning will unfold?
• Which of these models of the future currently guides your strategic thinking and actions regarding printed books?

pearson is for dayyum sure loath to give up that paper book profit and associated value chain

Publisher's Weekly | Click on the company name in the table below to read a profile of that company.

Rank (2011)	Rank (2010)	Publishing Company (Group or Division)	Country	Mother Corp. or Owner	Country Mother Corp.	2011 Revenue in $M	2010 Revenues in $M
1	1	Pearson	U.K.	Pearson	U.K.	$8,411	$8,097
2	2	Reed Elsevier	U.K./NL/U.S.	Reed Elsevier Corp.	U.K./NL/U.S.	$5,686	$7,149
3	3	Thomson Reuters	U.S.	The Woodbridge Company Ltd.	Canada	$5,435	$5,637
4	4	Wolters Kluwer	NL	Wolters Kluwer	NL	$4,360	$4,719
5	6	Hachette Livre	France	Lagardère	France	$2,649	$2,873
6	8	Grupo Planeta	Spain	Grupo Planeta	Spain	$2,304	$2,427
7	7	McGraw-Hill Education	U.S.	The McGraw-Hill Companies	U.S.	$2,292	$2,433
8	5	Random House	Germany	Bertelsmann AG	Germany	$2,274	$3,844
9	11	Holtzbrinck	Germany	Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck	Germany	$1,952	$1,512
10	10	Scholastic (corp.)	U.S.	Scholastic	U.S.	$1,906	$1,912
11	9	Cengage Learning	U.S.	Apax Partners et al.	U.S./Canada	$1,876	$2,007
12	13	Wiley	U.S.	Wiley	U.S.	$1,743	$1,699
13	12	De Agostini Editore	Italy	Gruppo De Agostini	Italy	$1,724	$1,843
14	15	Shueisha	Japan	Hitotsubashi Group	Japan	$1,714	$1,597
15	16	Kodansha	Japan	Kodansha	Japan	$1,551	$1,498
16	17	Shogakukan	Japan	Hitotsubashi Group	Japan	$1,444	$1,441
17	33	Readers' Digest	U.S.	RDA Holding Co.	U.S.	$1,438	$1,460
18	14	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt	U.S.	Education Media and Publishing Group Limited	U.S./Cayman Islands	$1,295	$1,673
19	19	Springer Science and Business Media	Germany	EQT and GIC Investors	Sweden, Singapore	$1,138	$1,149
20	18	HarperCollins	U.S.	News Corporation	U.S.	$1,100 (est.)	$1,269
21	20	Informa	U.K.	Informa plc	U.K.	$1,069	$1,039
22	21	Gakken	Japan	Gakken Co. Ltd.	Japan	$1,043	$956
23	22	Oxford University Press	U.K.	Oxford University	U.K.	$1,004	$941
24	24	Grupo Santillana	Spain	PRISA	Spain	$936	$852
25	23	Bonnier	Sweden	The Bonnier Group	Sweden	$909	$927
26	26	Kadokawa Publishing	Japan	Kadokawa Holdings Inc.	Japan	$904	$794
27	27	Simon & Schuster	U.S.	CBS	U.S.	$787	$791
28	28	Egmont Group	Denmark/ Norway	Egmont International Holding A/S	Denmark	$703	$792
29	29	Woongjin ThinkBig	Korea	Woongjin Holding	Korea	$685	$723
30	25	RCS Libri	Italy	RCS Media Group	Italy	$667	$805
31	31	Klett	Germany	Klett Gruppe	Germany	$594	$617
32	32	Cornelsen	Germany	Cornelsen	Germany	$558	$584
33	34	Mondadori	Italy	The Mondadori Group	Italy	$506	$549
34	35	GeMS - Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol	Italy	Messagerie Italiane	Italy	$494	$525
35	39	Lefebvre Sarrut	France	Frojal	France	$467	$430
36	36	Harlequin	Canada	Torstar Corp.	Canada	$450	$468
37	37	Sanoma	Finland	Sanoma WSOY	Finland	$446	$464
37	40	China Education and Media Group (form. Higher Education Press)	China (PR)	China Education and Media Group	China (PR)	$445	$393
39	38	Media Participations	France	Media Participations	Belgium	$442	$434
40	46	Abril Educação	Brazil	Abril Group	Brazil	$411	$308
41	47	Perseus	U.S.	Perseus	U.S.	$350	$300
42	43	Westermann Verlagsgruppe	Germany	Medien Union (Rheinland-Pfalz Gruppe)	Germany	$339	$342
43	41	La Martinière Groupe	France	La Martinière Groupe	France	$335	$377
44	44	Bungeishunju	Japan	n.a.	Japan	$331	$337
45	55	AST	Russia	Privately owned	Russia	$330	$215
46	45	Groupe Gallimard	France	Madrigall	France	$329	$320
47	42	Shinchosha	Japan	n.a. (privately owned)	Japan	$319	$364
48	49	Kyowon	Korea	Kyowon	Korea	$298	$273
49	48	Weka	Germany	Weka Firmengruppe	Germany	$282	$277
50	52	Saraiva	Brazil	Saraiva	Brazil	$267	$249
51	51	Haufe Gruppe	Germany	Privately owned	Germany	$269	$256
52	56	Editora FTD	Brazil	Editora FTD	Brazil	$226	$214
53	54	Groupe Albin Michel	France	Groupe Albin Michel	France	$216	$219
54	58	EKSMO	Russia	Privately owned	Russia	$195	$200

Note: Reader’s Digest figures are revenue for the entire company. Book sales in 2011 were $545 million and $590 million in 2010. Figures are based on sales generated in calendar 2011 or—for corporations with a fiscal year—from fiscal 2011. Data are from publicly available sources and include sales of books, journals, and digital products. Because publishing data were unavailable, Pannini, Weltbild, and Disney/Hyperion are excluded from the rankings. The listing was compiled by international publishing consultant Rudiger Wischenbart under the aegis of Livres Hebdo.

what impact will ebooks have on the global publishing industry?

atkearney | The e-book revolution has begun, capturing consumers' imaginations and pocketbooks. More people today are downloading e-books, a trend that will only accelerate in the next decade and undoubtedly change the publishing value chain. Core industry participants—printing companies, distributors and book retailers—will find it difficult to adapt. While some existing players and newcomers to the market—publishers, authors, telecommunications operators and device manufacturers—will find this an ideal time to capitalize on the opportunities.

In this paper, we analyze the evolution of the e-book market, the main factors around its growth, recent trends in the United States and Europe, and the changing structure of the publishing value chain. Our goal is to answer a larger question: What should the publishing industry expect and how should they prepare?

After years of false starts, e-books finally took off in the United States. While the overall publishing market has constricted slightly, e-book sales in the trade sector have grown five-fold in three years, to $165 million in 2009, or roughly 1.3 percent of the market, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum. It could reach 20 percent penetration within seven years (see sidebar: What Took So Long for E-Books?).

U.S. e-book penetration differs by segment and target sector. Within the non-trade sector, which includes educational, reference, technical and scientific books, e-book penetration is near 30 percent and rising, thanks to their easy access (from university workstations), search options (dictionaries and research papers) and storage capacity (educational books and technical manuals).

the impact of technology on the recording industry

jakobgoesblogging | Enablers are the development of advanced hardware and software products as well as the increased importance of internet and especially social networks. During my research, I found a number of interesting statistics about recent changes in the music industry. Based on this data I will try to analyze each step of the value chain to explore how new technologies and the change in customer behavior affect the companies’ business models as well as the music industry as a whole.

Approach: After a short description of the music industry as it was some years ago, I will have a look at the most recent trends. Based on that I will point out the changes in the business model of record labels and identify some important areas in which companies have to act in order to stay competitive. To make this analysis more practical, I want to include the income statement of Warner Music Group, a leading record label to show how it is affected by recent industry chances.

The typical value chain in the music industry shows five steps. It starts with creation of the content by the artist. Traditionally, the artist tried to raise awareness by sending demo tapes to the record companies and participate in band contests. The artist and repertoire (A&R) unit is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting, contracting and overseeing the artistic development. Once the contract is signed, the record company takes care of the financing and records the songs. The next step is the promotion and PR of the album done by the record company. The distribution traditionally was done through merchants and retail stores. Most of them were independent but there were also big retail chains, owned by the major record labels.

why did the recording industry really collapse?

abc.net.au | Source: There are many variations of the same graph. The point is that there was a huge spike in the 90s and I aim to explain that.

You don't have to be an analyst to identify something wrong with the record industry's graph. Predicting an unprecedented period of revenue generation off the back of a two year growth period when two of the preceding three years had seen revenue declines (one of them large) is more than optimistic. It could be explained by new strategy, marketing and innovation pushes by the music industry, but hindsight shows no evidence of that.

In a nutshell, the music industry is adamant that illegal downloading is the prime cause of its revenues dropping over the past decade. Opponents say that we're buying more music than ever, but that we're buying individual songs and not expensive albums on CDs and that's why revenue is down. But is the current quality of music really comparable to what was on offer in the 90s? Or is it more akin to the 80s?