In the US, the rhetoric damning the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington D.C. is well known to anyone who listens to Jim Rogers, Peter Schiff and the rest of the ‘hard money’ crowd that are enlisted by Bloomberg TV to point out the blindingly obvious to the deaf and dumb masses.
But where is the outcry against the Bank of England? Started in 1694 as a clawback of power by England’s aristocracy after having lost the Divine Right of Kings clause when Charles the 1st was beheaded, the BoE, the ‘Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ is the mother of all central banks. From her loins springs the sum and in-substance of fiat fantasies fanning the flames of a monetary foolhardiness guaranteed to keep the poor poor and the rich rich.
Social mobility in Britain is restricted due to the 300 yrs of corrupt and insidious machinations of the Old Lady. We are seeing this play out today as millions of home owners sink back into poverty after having been victimized by ponzi scheme wielding bankers in the City and by the largesse of easy student loans that are now the blight of millions of students in the UK. This next generation will graduate with onerous debts that got piled high on top of the innocent sounding ‘top up fees’ introduced not too long ago when ‘growth’ was eternal and students weren’t forced to take relatively high paying jobs in defense or surveillance as the only way to stay ahead of banking reapers.
Protesters in the US can complain about Ben Bernanke and the Fed all they want, but until we see some solidarity with London, the primary source of the globe’s financial derangement, the Bank of England, will continue to pump class war, cronyism and fiat money into the British and world economy with the shameless glee of an invisible arsonist.
Tags: bank of england · blog · federal reserve · max keiser · old lady of threadneedle street · ponzi scheme17 Comments
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here here!!
Sadly, Max, I think you’ll be waiting a long time before the British revolt.
I’ve been impressed at the way even ordinary Americans have voiced their disgust at the nefarious doings of Bernanke and co.
Over here, the British response to being screwed over by the bankers and their lackeys in government seems to be to grumble a bit and carry on regardless. Indeed, from what I’ve read on internet forums, the majority of Brits think the G20 protesters deserved to be knocked about by the police for being such a nuisance and preventing hard-working people from getting to their desks on time.
You mention the Ponzi scheme that is the British property market. I’m afraid that most people in Britain still have an unassailable belief that overpriced slave-boxes are a good thing for society – and not the socially divisive consequence of allowing bankers to set the price of a roof over your head by controlling the flow of credit.
Then there’s the government’s idea that at least 50% of the population, regardless of academic inclination, needs a degree (often of dubious quality and now paid for by the individual not the state, of course) just to do soul-destroying drone-work. A generation of badly educated, hugely indebted students (sorry “learners” – see my recent blog post) is never going to do anything but prostrate themselves before the masters of the universe. It’s almost as if it were planned that way . . .
Perhaps things will get so bad that the people will wake up and we’ll finally get the revolution this country’s never had. Unfortunately, I can’t see it myself.
Never underestimate the power of Phil and Kirstie.
http://bit.ly/OwiJx
The only class war here is the one that’s internal to the middleclass: who’s in who’s out. They can all go down together, but so long as they can still think of themselves as middleclass, absolutes like debt and poverty just won’t register.
Its the same here in Ireland Clare. Its shameful and pathetic. Lately, people arguing about the educational cutbacks and how ‘teachers get too much pay’ and ‘they’ve been freeloading for ages’. its all in-fighting crap.
People just don’t see monetary policy as the key to everything. its too big to comprehend for many- just can’t figure it it. The memory of our own revolution in 1916 is fading fast where as that freedom spirit is still alive in America.
Maybe if the banksters push us a little more there will be a ‘push back’.
Quick, someone write a song about the BoE and get it to Susan Boyle for her next performance! She’ll wake the people up!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
PS: Max, were you in a poetic mood when you wrote this?
“From her loins springs the sum and in-substance of fiat fantasies fanning the flames of a monetary foolhardiness “
Max, I get it, I have done for ages and I’m thoroughly depressed that people still don’t get it. I’m living amongst zombies whose brains have been programmed by the corporatacracy. I feel like screaming: “Enland, wake the f**k up!” People here even defer to a monarch whose ancestors raped, pillaged and killed their ancestors – what is wrong with these people? BTW have you heard of the Venus Project? It’s a new system whereby money is abolished, technology is used to improve quality of life and free people from servitude and nature is respected (geothermal technology instead of fossil fuels). It also dispels the myth of scarcity (currently expounded to ensure profitability). Sounds like an almost perfect system to me, realistic too.
Anyway, just so you know there are some people here in England who get that the fractional reserve banking system is the biggest scam of the last few centuries but it seems everyone else is still asleep. I throw my hands up in despair and continue to wait for something to beam me up because I can’t beleive I belong on this planet – it’s just too bizarre!
Bravo Max! Unfortunately, they are slippery devils. They claim nationalisation in 1946 and to be accountable to parliament and yet achieved independence in 1997. I want to know how much of the income tax goes as interest on their national debt scam? Hopefully the clever fellows at tpuc.org will turn their attention to the issue in due course.
In all honesty, I think middle class children don’t mind being ripped off. As long as they can look hip whilst it happens. Cheap fashion is the new opium of the masses!!!
@ adam Similar feelings to Location x3
http://opensource.typepad.com/opensourcelondon/2008/11/location-location-disaster-.html
Where’s the outcry on the BoE? You can start here: http://www.ukcolumn.org/2009/04/14/bank-of-england/
<blockquote>
Many people believe that the Bank of England is a privately owned corporation. Many people believe that it’s owned by the Rothchilds. Neither of these beliefs is true. The truth is much worse.
The story of the Bank of England is the story of the British Empire. The British Empire was never a political empire. It was always a monetary financial empire, as much a parasite on the people of Great Britain as the rest of the world. The idea of the Victorian’s British Empire bringing civilisation to the darkest parts of the world is one that needs real reconsideration by many Britons.
The Bank of England was originally set up as a core part of the British Empire – making huge profits from loans to the British East India Company and other tendrils of the Great British parasite. The mainstays of the trading activities of these companies were drugs, warfare and the looting of raw materials from poverty stricken nations…</blockquote>
Hmm, “The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and is the model on which most modern, large central banks have been based” (Wikipedia). Now if the bank of England is the rotten apple (that’s the feeling I get from Max) and other central banks bases their own activities from them, wouldn’t that mean were all eventually going to get fucked?
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”
[...] Max Keiser Blog – The Old Lady keeping the poor poor, the rich rich. [...]
In response to Willy who states:
“Many people believe that the Bank of England is a privately owned corporation. Many people believe that it’s owned by the Rothchilds. Neither of these beliefs is true. The truth is much worse.”
Can you explain then who benefits from the BofE if not Rothschild et al? You say it isn’t true that the BofE is a privately owned corporation, then what is it? You say the truth is much worse, what is the truth then? I’m not having a go at your position on this, I’m just curious to know the facts. Can you enlighten me?
Over here in Western Canada it’s even worse, we haven’t developed the profound apathy of the British people yet. We still think we are ‘rich’ and that we deserve our good fortune. ‘Bad economic news’, ‘Oh no, not really gonna hurt us’, ‘We’ve got oil, uranium, water, potash, diamonds, gold, etc…, etc…’. Party on, party on, but the day will come when we’re going to learn the exact width, breadth, and depth of the Old Lady’s shaft. It’d be nice to have some kind of open source manual full of instructions on how to wake people up, maybe a ‘wake the hell up website’.
And weren’t the Manics prophetic with their song ”We Are All Bourgeois Now” , released in 2002? No wonder it was the hidden track on their album…
Sharon,
I was quoting the article to which I posted a link. I put HTML tags for quotes, but evidently this system doesn’t like them. Anyway, read the article as it will answer your questions.
Max. I much enjoy your site with its anarchic approach to life. However, I don’t entirely agree with you about debt. Rich people generally have more resources than they require, poor people less. Lending is a mechanism that allows people without capital to have access to it via borrowing. You could say that borrowing allows poor people access to rich people’s surplus resources.
The trouble is, rich people, even though they almost invariably have more resources than they require, still want more, and demand payment for access to their surplus capital in the form of interest. This generally puts the skids under poor people borrowing too much.
Over the last ten years however, we have seen historically low rates of interest which has meant that there has been an explosion in lending and borrowing – the result of which has been that people who in the past would have had no chance of having access to capital via borrowing, suddenly found that they could borrow virtually unlimited amounts.
Inevitably, as the borrowing binge spread further and further down the food chain, it ultimately hit the buffers and the least creditworthy began to default. The rest, as they say, is history.
If we could have frozen time at the point where the credit crisis started to unfold, what picture would we have seen? We would have seen millions of people across the planet with jobs and a standard of living that their forbears could have only dreamed of. The classic example would have to be China, but all over the world ordinary people were able to eat well, sleep well, take holidays, enjoy good health etc etc.
This rosy picture existed momentarily, but then it all fell apart, when the rich people and their agents the bankers suddenly started to fret that they would not get their money back. The fact that they did not necessarily need it back – it was doing more good spread across the globe in the form of loans was irrelevant to them. The thought that they might not get their money back and that they could therefore become less rich people than they thought they were previously, caused worldwide panic in the bourses and chancelleries of the world.
Once the rich people discovered that they most definitely would not be getting their money back from the people to whom they had leant it, they set to work to ensure they were repaid by the remainder of humanity – hence the great bail outs.
So now we are all vicariously borrowed up to the hilt courtesy of our governments. The resources have been returned to the rich people as you would expect, and the little Shangri La of near universal prosperity that existed momentarily across the planet is gone.