How Central Banks bought democracy
The story of conjured money and its corruption of people-centered governance
As we imagine the birth of democracy, we think of men in white robes debating under marbled arches, ideating a more just way to govern.
First imagined in the Greek city-state of Athens roughly 2500 years ago, this novel idea of people-centered governance has worked its way into the very foundation of Western identity and inspired millions of freedom fighters all over the world.
To be born in the West is to be born believing in the principles of democracy. For many, it is also to be born with a trust that those principles are honored by our governments and institutions and that regular cycles of free and fair elections preserve the integrity and sanctity of the system.
Then the Covid-era arrived, and something shifted.
“For your protection”
As the pandemic ramped up, fear was drummed up by media, who mastered the art of mixing truths, half-truths and lies in a cocktail that drove emotions through the roof.
Health authorities across the world flip-flopped to the point that well-intentioned citizens needed to block out time in their calendar simply to keep up with what was this week’s flavor of breaking the rules.
In order to “ensure our safety”, governments curtailed freedom of movement and expression, while significant parts of the world endured unconstitutional vaccine mandates1, putting thousands out of their jobs and millions more at risk.
Digital vaccine passports were developed to loud protests that they may be leveraged by autocratic governments, while the dreaded unvaccinated were deemed selfish grandma-killers worthy of persecution.
In the time since, a new normal has been established in which legislation curtailing our democratic rights are routinely passed in the dead of night, while those attentive enough to notice are fact-checked and condemned as conspiracy theorists.
In a world where the strength of democracy is on the decline2, why this sudden move towards authoritarianism?
As we’ll soon find, this development was anything but overnight; the dominoes enabling the suspension of democratic rights have been falling for decades, and precedence has been a century in the making.
Central Banking & birth of the FED
When the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913, America had just recovered from the 1907 panic, a liquidity crisis in the National Banking System which led to panic in the streets and an old-fashioned bank run.
The financial crisis put the decentralized structure of the NBS into question and in 1910, leading financiers, headed by legendary banker J P Morgan, gathered on Jekyll Island, Georgia, to design a new centralized system that would facilitate greater stability in the financial markets.
It was something of a foregone conclusion that their solution would be a central bank, and in 1913, Democratic president Woodrow Wilson passed the Federal reserve act, establishing a centralized banking system with the task of balancing interest rates, stabilizing inflation and safe-guarding employment.
The first central bank – Sveriges Riksbank – was founded in Sweden in the 17th century, and the system had since proliferated throughout the Western world, spawning such banks as Bank of England and Banque de France.
While their charter was to support their respective governments in stabilizing the economy, central banks remained (largely) private for-profit business entities with a privilege afforded no other: That of printing money.
Right at the heart of private central banking’s business model is thus an activity that for every other is considered criminal, with the freedom to pursue it independently and at their own discretion.
Money conjuring had finally arrived on American soil.
The 1933 Gold Heist
The 1929–1939 Great Depression proved the Federal Reserve unable to fulfil its mandate, with deflation grinding the American economy to a halt.
The Roosevelt administration (D) wanted more liquidity in the markets to restore the desired 2.0% inflationary levels3, yet could not fulfill that desire due to the gold standard, which required that each dollar in circulation be backed by $40c of gold.
In order to circumvent this problem, Roosevelt took a radical step and signed executive order #6102, effectively banning the private ownership of gold (1933).
A decree went out to all American citizens that they must hand over their gold to the Federal Reserve, with dissidents being fined up to $10.000 (more than $200.000 in today’s money) and risking up to ten years in prison.
For their gold, American citizens were paid $20.67 per ounce, which was a pegged valuation that had stayed virtually unchanged for decades.
A quarter of American citizens complied4, yielding 2665 tons of gold, worth just short of $2 billion at the pegged valuation (roughly $40 billion in today's dollars).
Hungry for more stimulus to the struggling markets, the Roosevelt administration & FED changed the gold peg to $35, effectively robbing all citizens who had complied with the executive order of more than 40% of their money, and increasing their ability to print dollars by the same quotient.
History does not remember the 1933 gold heist for how it pulled the economy out of depression, however, as the measures didn’t succeed.
But the unprecedented move of confiscating the people’s gold to manipulate the economy out of depression was a prototype of measures which would be taken decades later, when quantitative easing was presented as the solution to failing markets.
For that level of money conjuring to be possible, however, the gold standard was an obstacle that would have to be removed.
The US Dollar’s rise to ascendancy
The Great Depression showed that the Federal Reserve’s powers to stabilize markets had their limitations.
Yet World War II paradoxically gave the United States respite from their financial woes, as the economy transitioned into a more dynamic wartime economy and united the people against a common enemy.
As the war moved towards allied victory, the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference summoned representatives of 44 allied countries to New Hampshire, USA to discuss the post-war path to recovery and the economic system which would facilitate it.
Several countries present had already taken steps to abolish their gold standard in order to pay debts incurred in World War I, and the United States now held two thirds of the world’s gold reserves.
As the USA had become the main economic power in the world, the Bretton Woods Conference concluded with the United States Dollar’s rise to ascendancy as world reserve currency, and nations around the world agreed to hold US dollars instead of gold, with American gold backing each dollar at $35/oz.
The gold standard, while formally still in place, had morphed, with the USD being its main gatekeeper.
Doors open to Money Magic
In 1971, the game was up. The United States economy ran out of dollars to fund its rising spending, while Bretton Woods countries simultaneously sought to exchange dollars for gold.
These two concurrent trends meant the economic paradigm the US – and thus the world – were operating under was no longer viable.
In essence, the system went bust, but bankers, financiers and policy makers were increasingly hungry for liquidity to finance their self-serving, speculative games, and they were not about to reimagine the system more conservatively.
Instead, the Richard Nixon administration (R) abolished the gold standard, and opened the gate for full on money conjuring.
With money now fully departed from any and all connection to the material world, the doors had opened for unprecedented levels of speculative money games, leading to opportunities in the economy that kept the ball rolling.
Yet under the surface – and outside most people’s awareness – the world was moving into dangerous bubble territory, from which it would never escape.
A crisis too good to waste
Three decades later, as the chaos following the burst of the dot com bubble settled, banks and speculative investors were yet again hungry for big returns. Traditional government bonds did not yield sufficient gains, and investors went looking for alternatives.
They found that in the American housing market’s mortgage backed securities, a financial product which gave investors the opportunity to buy a share of a big collection of mortgages, without the hassle of dealing directly with house owners.
Investors loved these products, and as returns exceeded those found in other securities, they wanted more.
In order to satisfy the growing demand for mortgages to be incorporated in the mortgage backed securities, money lenders relaxed their lending requirements and pursued increasingly manipulative practices to seduce people into buying homes well beyond their means.
They did this by offering adjustable rate mortgages, financial products featuring negligible costs initially, before ballooning to levels borrowers could not afford.
With the banks convinced that house prices would keep climbing, they justified their grossly unethical behavior by assuming that the worst case scenario was a house owner’s profitable exit by selling their home.
This is not what happened.
As the higher rates of the adjustable rate mortgages kicked in, bank customers started defaulting on their loans, and the market was flooded with houses for sale.
Prices plummeted, the mortgage-backed securities turned toxic, and the Great Recession of 2007–2009 ensued.
Thanks to the unending greed of investors and bankers, $14 trillion disappeared from American markets, huge financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns – heavily involved in the scam – collapsed, and central banks, seeking to “save the world from depression”, had free reins to ramp up their money magic.
The time for central banks to take over the world had arrived.
Central Banks seize power
As commercial banks collapsed across the world5, the Bush & Obama administrations were staunchly committed to keeping the system alive. It was time for the FED to fulfil its charter of stabilizing the economy.
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, decided to take a page out of Bank of Japan’s playbook, where quantitative easing6 had been pioneered a few years prior, and prepared to flood the markets with new liquidity by buying government & corporate bonds with money conjured out of thin air.
With no gold standard to hold him back, and financial markets running hot with greed and fear, Bernanke had total freedom to do what he deemed necessary.
“I'd throw dollars out of helicopters if I had to, to stimulate the economy.”
– Ben Bernanke
Showing no interest in accepting responsibility for supporting the mortgage backed securities that crashed the markets, Bernanke passed the blame to emerging economies and played the role of savior as he repeatedly hammered the money conjuring button, producing more than $1.5 trillion in the process.
Over the next years, the FED would lead the way in a coordinated push by the G3 central banks to enforce neoliberal market policies and create $21 trillion dollars of cheap money through ongoing quantitative easing.
Speculators loaded to the brim with conjured money went on the hunt for good deals and pursued high interest rates in emerging economies, and engaged in predatory investment practices so reckless they left the markets reeling.
Any central banker in the emerging economies who had the gall to question the easy money policies of the G3 central banks were effectively targeted with punitive measures, brute forcing them into neoliberal monetary policies whether it served their domestic economy or not.
Banks across the Western world refused to share their conjured money with main street, deciding instead to hoard them or buy up their own stocks to inflate company valuation, leading to record highs on the stock exchange.
As the conjured money failed to reach main street, the markets soared while the underlying economy remained the same. Wall street was getting richer, main street was getting poorer.
With banks, corporations and financial institutions keeping the new liquidity to themselves, the general economy – and thus inflation rates – remained largely unaffected, leading to an insane monetary policy where central bankers like Mario Draghi (European Central Bank) printed more money to increase inflation to 2.0%, without requiring that the liquidity be spent in ways which would achieve that goal.
In this way, central bankers created an ever-shifting target, speaking to the problem with confidence and authority, yet doing nothing to address the problem the conjured money was supposed to fix.
Trillions of dollars flew out of the digital money presses of central banks, and almost nothing ended up on main street.
As central bankers told journalists how they were saving the economy, behind closed doors they and their allies were buying up the world.
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that is that it is an opportunity to do things you could not do before.”
– Rahm Emanuel
The political theatre of “democracy”
Democracies around the world are built on the premise that a transparent exchange of ideas around governance is to be carried out between a diverse array of political players with independent political agendas.
Based on this exchange, constituents are able to select the parties and politicians that best represent their needs and wishes, and then the the game of power is settled through democratic elections with robust election oversight.
This system presents a compelling model of people-centered governance which gives constituents the important feeling of citizen participation.
We may ask, however, how well does this system work?
As the American system features only two viable political parties, let us use its relative simplicity as an opportunity to explore.
The experience of watching house in session on C-SPAN is that of Republican and Democrat representatives engaged in lively debate on topics such as free speech, abortion, gun laws, taxes.
However, when it comes to major fiscal and monetary policy decisions, cameras are turned off, bickering ends, and both parties generally vote as one:
In 2008, the Bush administration (R) passed the TARP stimulus package to limit the damage of the 2007–2009 Great Recession.
In 2009, the Obama administration (D) followed suit, passing a $787 billion stimulus package.
In 2020, the Trump administration (R) passed stimulus packages of a combined value of $3.8 trillion, to limit the damage of the Covid pandemic.
In 2021, the Biden administration (D) passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package.
(And on it goes…)
Historically, then, monetary policy has remained the same across party lines, and despite all the excitement and irrational hope associated with presidential elections, the big trends in politics remain the same.
Fortunately for the FED, constituents strong in the faith that stimulus packages are designed to help them remain blissfully unaware that every dollar printed will eventually lead to a drop in their buying power.
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
– Henry Ford
Central bankers have been celebrated as heroes for saving us from problems they themselves create, while few seem to question how it is “normal” that the USD devalues by more than 95% over a 100 year period, and why every financial crisis & war has lead to further liberalization of fiscal and monetary policies.
While Democrats and Republicans argue over culture war issues, and voters chase the good feels of “being on the right side of history”, the fiat currency system trundles towards its inevitable doom, ravaging the working & middle class while rewarding bankers with more power and riches for every crisis they cause.
Rise of the technocratic globalists
The interlocking webs of power at the upper echelons of society are complicated and opaque. We can only speculate as to who answers to who, and if central bankers are truly at the very top of the power hierarchy.
What is clear, however, is that technocratic governments are on the rise. Central bankers like Mario Draghi (president of the European Central Bank 2011–2019) are recycled as prime ministers.
Supra-national entities like WEF, WHO, EU, UN and EC are headed by unelected technocrats, recycling the same talent utilized by governments, corporations, banks, media and academia for key positions.
Marching in lockstep towards a New World Order (their words, not mine7), the politicians we thought were there to serve us now routinely violate our constitutions and undermine the interests of their constituents, often with zero accountability.
Simultaneously, under the glitzy surface of important social, political, economic and environmental causes championed by the ones who purport to serve us, we find abuses of power so heinous that it is beyond most people’s ability to comprehend.
"The whole idea that humans have a soul and spirit and free will, that’s over."
– Yuval Noah Harari, author & agenda contributor for World Economic Forum
Where did this dark alliance of the rich and powerful get the money to push an agenda of control seemingly spanning the whole globe?
Was it through decades of trading in fair and open markets, with fingers crossed that they would win, giving them an opportunity to one day rule over us?
Or did conjured money, celebrated as boons to the economy, trickle down to bank accounts of policy makers and agenda setters, leaving them with full coffers and the will to reimagine the world?
CBDCs and the financial reset
The inflationary, debt-based fiat currency system is dying. No level of artificial life support can save this aberration from imploding in on itself within the next few years.
The world’s nations now hold three times as much debt as GDP, and the recent attempts of US congress at raising the $31 trillion debt ceiling8 is a clear statement that it isn’t serviceable.
While reality TV shows have us giggle or rage at people who live on credit beyond their means, US administrations can run trillion dollar deficits, serviced with conjured FED money, without people batting an eye.
The world economy is a runaway train headed for total collapse or, more likely, a financial reset.
With a growing number of voices calling for a debt jubilee, we might hope that central banks will simply erase our debt and start over, but history offers little precedence for such imaginings.
Instead, may we imagine a moment in the not too distant future where central bankers corporate leaders and politicians gather to spread the good news.
“With our financial markets beset by crippling levels of volatility and debt, and the world going through unprecedented changes, a rethinking of trade and monetary policies is now pressing. We must dare to imagine a fair and equitable world in which the poor can afford their basic means of survival. Thus, in order to meet the challenges of our times, we declare today a reset of our financial system and a debt jubilee. Yes, friends, we will erase your debt!”
My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.
– Joe Biden’s Executive Order #14067
The uninformed will likely respond with excitement, and gladly pay the price of accepting a new form of money called Central Bank Digital Currencies, where every transaction is interpreted by AI against pre-established rules and quotas.
In the CBDC world, you may swipe your card and have the register read “you do not have sufficient social credits to purchase this product,” referencing a dissident post you made on social media. It may read “you do not have sufficient carbon credits to purchase this product”, denying you your steak because you drove a car too far or heated your home above 19°C (66°F).
This is a world where money may expire a few months after issuance, making savings impossible, and consumerism mandatory.
This is a world where whole countries can be punished by a simple update to the algorithm, and where hot warfare will never again be needed, as the global populace will have been successfully enslaved, the threat of exile always near.
It is the end of freedom as we know it.
The closer the collapse of the empire, the crazier its laws.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
Where do we go from here?
After a century of neoliberal monetary policy wars, Central banks and their allies now run the world.
Governments have lost their sovereignty and are now beholden to monetary policies and agendas set by unelected leaders from the banking and corporate worlds as well as globalist think tanks sporting beautiful slogans about a better world.
In this upside down world, any nation, president or prime minister who has the gall to stand up against prevailing monetary doctrine may find themselves under attack by an army of well-paid ideologues, artists, celebrities, academics, “philanthropists”, oligarchs, and activists persecuting them day and night, supported by a deployment of weapons of financial terror and journalists painting them out to be demons.
All the while, large parts of the population remain fully invested in a simulated reality, in which humanity is now rallying to save the planet and “export democracy” (i.e. install puppet regimes loyal to neoliberal monetary policy).
The individual comes face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.
– J Edgar Hoover, former FBI director
It is a bleak outlook, and we can only imagine the sadness those white-robed Athenian pioneers would have felt when witnessing what remains of their legacy, yet still hope prevails.
The eyes of the people are opening, and the foundations of the matrix of deception is quivering, leading to a world that makes so little sense to the average Joe and Jane that they are starting to wonder.
As we awaken to the true nature of the systems that power our world, we find ourselves in a battle for sovereignty that has the power to create the best generation that ever lived.
The future presents us with a fork in the road. One leads to a technocratic AI-powered dystopia where freedom has been annihilated, another to a rebirth of human civilization along principles of love, truth, freedom and God.
In these coming years, it will be our shared responsibility to choose which world we wish to live in.
Acknowledgement: I would not have been able to write this article had it not been for Nomi Prins’s excellent book Collusion: How central bankers rigged the world. If you want to understand how corrupt the world of international finance is, this is an excellent introduction to a secret world that has built its success on the basis of consistent betrayals of humanity.
The accompanying video commentary
In this video, I go through the same material in video form. Enjoy.
About my Substack
This article is my first full-length entry into this new Substack. I hope you have enjoyed it, that it has opened your eyes, and that you will spread it to people who may be interested in these coming days and weeks.
The ultimate purpose of my writing remains to inspire your awakening and transition into true sovereignty, and I will do so in myriad ways as we move forwards.
I remain grateful for your support, dependent on your feedback and harbor hope that you will come along for the journey.
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The 2% inflation level is generally considered optimal by bankers and economists. We live inside a debt-based system, and that debt is created through fractional reserve banking practices (a money conjuring system available to commercial banks). As that liquidity enters the markets, there is more money circulating in the economy, leading to a devaluation of the currency, i.e. inflation. In a fractional reserve banking system, deflation occurs in the absence of activity in the economy, leading sellers to look for buyers, which in turn leads to price drops. Bankers and investors thus cannot stand it.
This Youtube video offers a rare overview of the numbers involved in the 1933 Gold Heist. Video: How much gold was confiscated in 1933?
In addition to Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns, dozens of other banks collapsed around the world, leading to their assimilation into other more stable banks. List of banks that went bankrupt or were acquired.
Quantitative easing is a central bank monetary policy tactic of conjuring money digitally that is then used to buy government bonds (and in same cases bonds of stable corporations). In this way, liquidity in stagnant & deflationary markets can be increased, with the aim of increasing trade and raising inflation to the ideal level of 2%. More on quantitative easing.
Kim Iversen covers the New World Order (The Hill).
What happens now the US has hit the debt ceiling? (Yahoo news)
Hej Eivind
That's a great article/summary.
The dark night of civilisation is near and the solutions are #simple :-)
FYI, that image of Global Public Private Partnerships comes from Iain Davis at https://iaindavis.com/