-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/corporate.html Just a few items from this site. Massive amounts of info and some interesting pics also. As always . . . Om K ----- Next Chapter: Corporate Transnationalism Previous Chapter: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission The Banking Scam Concordia, Integritas, Industria, my ass! The Scam The following system was installed in 1913 with the ratification of the income tax amendment (the sixteenth amendment) and the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. Both of these were spearheaded by Senator Nelson Aldrich, the maternal grandfather of David Rockefeller, under the guidance of the House of Rothschild. The Federal Reserve Act was drafted by Paul Warburg, a Rothschild intimate. In a Thanksgiving 1910 secret meeting on Jekyll Island, Georgia, the establishment's leaders met and agreed to the plan. The system was not fully enabled until the passage of the Banking Act of 1933, the precipitous passage of which was overseen by FDR's treasury secretary William Woodin and an armada of private bankers (more on this shortly). Money is created by monetary loans from the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) to the United States, and by the fractional reserve banking system. The fractional reserve system works as follows: banks promise delivery of balances to depositors and borrowers many times the amount of money on simultaneous deposit, so that checks and other instruments of bank-account-level monetary transfer in circulation drawn on these accounts, denominated in the same monetary units as the common currency, increase the total amount of money. A bank's minimum ratio of deposits on hand and deliverable (as Federal Reserve Notes, coins, or in some systems, precious metals) to total bank debts embodied in positive account balances, is set by the Federal Reserve, and is called the reserve ratio. Fractional banking is the principal mechanism by which money has been created in the US in the 20th century, and it is a form of institutionalized fraud that puts private bankers in a position to command the economy. The other mechanism by which money is created is that practiced by the Federal Reserve itself. The US assigns to the Fed bonds (representing the amount borrowed, and earning interest at a rate set by the Fed), the Fed assigns the US a corresponding balance, in what amounts to a bank account from which the government can make withdrawls or draw checks. This is an exchange, and often the bonds are actually purchased from private banks that previously bought them directly or indirectly from the government (loaning money to the government), creating a balance in a Fed account payable to that private bank. Some of this balance is turned into actual paper money when an entity with a Fed account balance (a private bank or the government) requests that some portion of that balance be converted to paper money. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (part of the government) then cranks the presses, creating Federal Reserve Notes, and the paper money is physically delivered. The money is no more or less real in electronic form than in printed form. Most money is ephemeral, moved around using Electronic Funds Transfer and the like, and EFT money can be turned into paper Federal Reserve Notes at any ATM. EFT and paper money are totally fungible (interchangeable). The Fed has no significant assets other than its portfolio of US government securities - insofar as they can be considered assets at all; their productivity is all "on paper" hocus pocus. This begs the question. The balance in that bank account is just made up, as directed by the Federal Open Market Committee. The designation of the FOMC's twelve voting members (the seven Presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed members of the Board of Governors, the president of the New York regional bank, and the presidents of a rotating subset of four other regional banks: currently, the presidents of the Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Minneapolis Federal Reserve regional banks) is controlled by the President (in modern times, perpetually an instrument of the private bankers, and directly by private (``member'') banks located in the regions covered by each Federal Reserve regional bank, with the influence of each on the election of its region's president proportional to its size. Moreover, the FOMC's operations are not subject to external audit. All of this - excepting, of course, the control of the the Presidency by private bankers - is by statute. When the FOMC orders money into existence, the value of the money that existed before that order is reduced, as a consequence of the law of supply and demand. The value of a quantum (a unit) falls when M1 (the on-demand liquid money supply) grows (is "inflated"). When this happens, wealth in private hands denominated in the units of the inflated money, whether on paper, in minted coins, or in some electronic form, is quietly redistributed to the people who control the money ordered into existence. The controllers are the private banks and the federal government - evidently, a monolith; there is no clear boundary between them. Even though other forces - im provements in industrial efficiency and productivity, for example - can increase the buying power of a monetary unit, the redistribution of wealth is not thereby made less certain or real, nor less grave in its import. Since the Fed trades non-interest-earning money for interest-earning bonds, the system tends to inflate the money supply essentially eternally, in a quiet, endless campaign of wealth confiscation from the public, in order that the government can honor the bonds held by the Fed. That the Fed's profits are assigned to the Treasury does not change this, and since the two are just components of a single monolith, it's really just a change of pocket, not a change of pants. That portion of the mature debt that is not honored through inflation is honored by taxation, mostly by income taxation, which of course is widely recognized as confiscatory prima facie. Income taxation is usually set as high as is politically feasible. When debts are retired by income taxation, the money supply contracts, increasing the value of a quantum. This is because the Fed throws away money it is paid - which, of course, is no less unreasonable than making up money to pay out. With income taxation, wealth is redistributed from those who pay taxes to those who do not (notably, ``philanthropic'' foundations), without any explicit pay-out. Importantly, the architecture of the system necessarily inflates the money supply whenever debts are retired by means other than taxation, and inflation is no less clearly confiscatory than is explicit income taxation itself. That is, one way or the other, intrinsic to the architecture, wealth is confiscated from the public. Even the presumption of a benevolent FOMC cannot avoid this - only retirement of the entire national debt (over $6 trillion, or about $20000 per human living in the United States), proscription of deficit spending, deprecation of income (and sales and proparty) taxation, and cessation of so-called Federal Open Market activities, can end the cycle of theft. The total engine pumps vast wealth from the productive public to the unproductive government/banking monolith, placing that monolith in a position of absolutely dominant power in the economy, and hence in the society. The monolith systematically redistributes wealth from those it disfavors to those it favors, and it favors those people and processes that maintain and consolidate the existing power structure. The actual taxation and spending patterns are defined by that lumbering committee known as Congress, and consist principally of capital purchases, salaries, commercial contracts for delivery of products and performance of services, and entitlements. Two key quotes underscore the scam: ``By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens...'' -John Maynard Keynes ``In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.'' -Alan Greenspan, 1967 Keynes is the father of the activist monetary policy that is in practice today in the industrialized world. Greenspan, of course, is the current chairman of the Federal Reserve and of the FOMC. Here is an essay by William Blase which is an overview of the conspiracy, addressing the whole question of the Federal Reserve in some depth. Good reading. read Gold and the Founding Fathers by Robert S. Getman, as of 1976 an attorney practicing with the firm of Kelley Drye & Warren in NYC. The article is an adaptation of the first part of "The Right to Use Gold Clauses in Contracts," Brooklyn Law Review (Winter, 1976). In 1899, M. W. Walbert published a book he titled "The Coming Battle." WorldNetDaily summarizes the book as follows: First published in 1899, republished for the first time in 100 years! The Coming Battle documents from Congressional records, newspaper reports and writings by the founding fathers and others a chronology of events long forgotten that shaped our fledgling nation from 1776 to 1899. Read about the manipulation of our money and its supply, the intentional creation of recessions, depressions and panics. The manipulation of the stock markets. The demonitization of silver. A breathtaking history told in the words of a contemporary witness to these events. You must have this book! Great gift for anyone interested in history, government, economics or the fate of our nation. You can have it here for free. Here is the opening passage from the first chapter of Power And Accountability by Robert A.G. Monks and Nell Minow: I was driving through Maine one late summer day when I stopped to admire a river running through a pretty wooded area. I noticed big, slick bubbles of industrial discharge corroding the vegetation along the riverbank, and I wondered: Who wants this to happen? Not the owners of the company, the shareholders. Not the managers or employees, who want to live in a healthy environment. Not the board of directors, not the community, not the government. I could not think of anyone connected with the company emitting the effluent who wanted the result I saw. This was an unintended consequence of the corporate structure. The very aspects of the company's design that made it so robust, so able to survive changes in leadership, in the economy, in technology, were the aspects that led to this result - pollution that no one wanted, and everyone would pay for. I realized I was part of the problem some time later, while in my office at the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, where I was Chairman of the Board. I was looking over the proxies that it was our responsibility, as trustee for $7 billion in assets, to vote, and I was preparing to do what we had always done - vote with management on all of them. I picked up the proxy for the company that produced the industrial sludge I had seen, and I realized that if I voted for management, I was endorsing this activity. Those of us who managed money on behalf of others had the opportunity, and the responsibility, to tell management that this activity was unacceptable. But none of us was doing it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ No Innocent Stockholders There is no such thing to my mind . . . as an innocent stockholder. He may be innocent in fact, but socially he cannot be held innocent. He accepts the benefits of the system. It is his business and his obligation to see that those who represent him carry out a policy which is consistent with the public welfare. Louis Brandeis ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [...] "The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class." -Rothschild Brothers of London (1863) Now to prove the Rothschilds wrong! Note that the latin rubric at the top of the page is the motto of the House of Rothschild - or rather, their principal advertising slogan. This from the people who finance wars, fomented by their agents, and fought by other people while they sit around and drink tea. The motto translates as "Harmony, Honesty, Hard Work." ROTFL! ``The best time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.'' -Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild Who are the Rothschilds? Evelyn de Rothschild Edmund de Rothschild Philip de Rothschild Lionel Nathan Rothschild Currently this brief passage is just scrapbook quality. Read here the tale of the Rothschild patriarchal dynasty and the story of its collaboration with the House of Rockefeller. ``Rothschild'' means Red Shield. Mayer Amschel Bauer, the patriarch, invented and assumed the name. The Players * Sir Evelyn de Rothschild - pictured above (Chairman, N M Rothschild & Sons - nmrothschild.co.uk, chairman of The Princess Royal Trust for Carers (PRTC - a medical charity)) * Sir Jacob de Rothschild - "current head of the British arm of the Rothschild dynasty." Founded the J Rothschild Group * Benjamin de Rothschild (Président, Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild) * Edmond de Rothschild - pictured above (recently deceased; Banque Privée SA Lugano - b-de-rothschild.lu (Luxembourg domain), Rothschild Bank AG Zurich, Switzerland) * Nicholas de Rothschild, son of Edmund * Anthony de Rothschild, "Britain's most eligible bachelor": record producer, father is Sir Evelyn de Rothschild * Baron Elie de Rothschild and Eric de Rothschild (Vins Châteu Lafite) * Baron Phillipe de Rothschild (Château Mouton Rothschild) - pictured above * Lionel de Rothschild (son of recently deceased Edmund de Rothschild) * Lionel de Rothschild - pictured above; (major figure 3 generations earlier, ancestor of Edmund and present Lionel) The Banks http://www.e-de-rothschild.lu "The fastest growing third-party custodians are Chase Manhattan - now the largest US bank in Luxembourg - and Banque de Gestion Edmond de Rothschild." (April 18 1997) http://www.e-de-rothschild.lu/rothschild/en/press/pooling.htm "With over 200 funds under administration we specialize in intra-fund pooling Co-management, Multi-manager, Mirror and Feeder Funds." Belgian Rothschild: Drexel - Burnham Lambert ("Banque Lambert") - Michael Milken German Rothschild Mayer Amschel Rothschild (Amschel Bauer), the patriarch, is from Germany The House of Rothschild has banks in France, England, and Switzerland, as evidenced above. It also has banks in Italy (Rothschild Italia S.p.A. of Milan), Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, Belgium - original five are Vienna, Paris, Naples, Frankfurt, and London www.trufax.org./chrono/cri.html "General Chronology of Events" Leading Edge Research Group 1976 US House Banking and Currency Commitee Report, May 1976, entitled "International Banking", identifies the Rothschild Five Arrows Group and its five branches: N.M.Rothschild & Sons, Ltd in London, Banque Rothschild in France, Banque Lambert in Belgium, New Court Securities in New York, and Pierson, Holdring & Company in Amsterdam, all of which were combined into Rothschild Intercontinental Bank, Ltd, who in turn has three American subsidiaries: National City Bank of Cleveland, First City National Bank (First City Bancorp) in Houston, and First National Bank in Seattle. First City Bancorp in Houston would co-chair the Reagan Bush campaign of 1980. The House Report also noted "the Rothschild banks are affiliated with Manufacturers Hanover of London and Manufacturers Hanover in New York, which buys CIT Financial Corporation in 1983 for $1.6 billion. The Rothschilds have a web site, at http://www.nmrothschild.co.uk (served by the expensive and prestigious UUNet, now a unit of MCI/WorldCom), but have not as of yet figured out what to say. The web site reads, in its essential entirety, "The domain name you have entered into your web browser has been registered by UUNET, the world's leading Internet service provider, on behalf of one of its customers. However, the customer is not currently using the domain name to address a web site. They've apparently been paying rent on this web site for over a year and a half now, without doing anything with it: whois -h whois.nic.uk nmrothschild.co.uk. Domain Name: NMROTHSCHILD.CO.UK Registered For: N M Rothschild & Sons Limited Domain Registered By: UUNETPIPEX Registered on 02-Jun-1997. Record last updated on 26-Feb-1999 by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Domain servers listed in order: NS0.PIPEX.NET 158.43.128.8 NS1.PIPEX.NET 158.43.192.7 See this article that guestimates The present-day fortune of the House of Rothschild, and this scrap book of articles and observations regarding the LBMA. The Stories from http://www.squall.co.uk/thom2.html (includes substantial asides): [...] The comedy gods' smiles grew wider when the crew attempted to gain access to some of the 18,000 works of art on the Conditionally Exempt Works of Art List. This list, open to people who inherit works of art, means no inheritance tax has to be paid on the specific items on the list providing members of the public can view them. Seeing as half a billion to a billion pounds of tax has not been paid on artworks on the register Mark and his team set out to discover just how easy it is for ordinary people to gain access to the items and their owners. Their biggest coup involved a large number of people turning up at Rothschild's Bank dressed as all sorts of strange fluffy things asking to see a Gainsborough painting Sir Evelyn de Rothschild had registered on the list. They were refused entry and all wrote letters on the spot requesting to see the painting. After two months they had not heard from Sir Evelyn so they contacted the Inland Revenue. They were informed that Sir Evelyn had removed a number of his works of art from the register. Mark estimates that as a result he had to pay somewhere between £400,000 and £1m in tax: "Basically we were just obstinate letter writers and yet we've made the 43rd richest man in Britain cough up this amount of money. If we can do that just through a bunch of letters then the possibilities before us are completely endless." Such antics within the jealously protective worlds of big business, politics, and the stinking rich are not without their risks. During the making of the exempt works of art stunt Mark received a phonecall to his home from MP and then Armed Forces Minister, Nicholas Soames, and Channel 4 was threatened with a a government D Notice gagging order forbidding broadcasters and journalists from mentioning a specific piece of information (in this case the Soames' home address). Though the notice was not actually served, Channel 4's lawyers advised the programme not to encourage viewers to contact Soames to request access to works he had on the list. As such it was, says Mark, "a direct act of censorship initiated by the state". [...] from http://www.fnord.demon.co.uk/cewa.html: Sir Evelyn de Rothschild paid up to £1m in tax rather than let us see his artworks. All he would have had to do would have been to open his house for us out of season, but after transporting his Gainsborough painting all the way to London rather than let us in, he took all his items off the Register (and therefore must have paid the tax). [...] Another interesting owner is Baron Jacob de Rothschild. He has been the head of the Heritage Lottery Fund since it was formed. He is also the head of the National Heritage Memorial Fund. He is a man who clearly has the nation's heritage close to his heart. Incidentally, he also owns 758 items of conditionally exempt art, most of which are held at Waddeston Manor, his stately home in Buckinghamshire. You can see Sir Jacob's artworks, as well as works owned by Kit Martin's landlord (remember Stoneleigh Abbey?) or administered by the Duke of Somerset's solicitor (remember 'Dispatches'?). [...] SIR JACOB DE ROTHSCHILD Sir Jacob de Rothschild is the current head of the British arm of the Rothschild dynasty. After Eton and Christchurch College, Oxford, Sir Jacob joined the family's merchant bank, N M Rothschild & Sons Ltd in 1963, subsequently running the corporate finance department and chairing the executive committee. After an acrimonious split [this could effectively be disinformation originally promulgated by the Rothschilds -Ed.] with his cousin, Sir Evelyn (see above), he left the company in 1980 to develop the J Rothschild Group. In 1992 Sir Jacob was brought in to chair the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which in 1995 was appointed as the lottery distributor for heritage as the Heritage Lottery Fund. Sir Jacob steps down at the end of this month, to be succeeded by Tony Blair's former housemaster at Fettes School, Dr Eric Anderson. However, it is clear from the Register of Conditionally Exempt Works of Art that Sir Jacob is still fighting to preserve the nation's heritage. He owns almost 800 items, mainly held at his National Trust administered pile, Waddeston Manor, although other items are held at Five Arrows House, his company HQ. Sir Jacob has proved himself to be far more hospitable than his brother, for he has volunteered to show us a pair of crystal chandeliers and a Louis XV Savonnerie carpet at Waddeston in a couple of week's time. We are sure that he would love you, the taxpayer, to see his works also and so we have included a selection of some of his finer items below... [...] from http://www.exbury.co.uk/history.htm: Exbury Gardens were the inspiration of Lionel Nathan de Rothschild. It was his vision, his dedication and his resources which have created one of the finest woodland gardens in the country. [...] In 1919 he bought the Exbury Estate. At this time Exbury was an isolated hamlet. William Mitford, whose family had owned the Estate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, described it as an 'earthly paradise'. [...] The onset of war in 1939 brought the development to a standstill. In 1942 Lionel died; later that year, with the family given only 48 hours to clear it, Exbury House was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and commissioned as HMS Mastodon. [...] Edmund returned home after the war. He then began the enormous task of restoring the gardens to their former glory. He continued his father's work by cultivating new parts of the garden and raising new Exbury hybrids. Edmund's sons Nicholas and Lionel also share in the family passion for gardening on a grand scale. the Rothschild smoke machine in full swing, from http://www.iwsc.co.uk/officers.htm: About The International Wine and Spirit Competition President Elect The President Elect for the 2000 competition is Baronne Philippine de Rothschild of Baron Phillipe de Rothschild, France. from http://www.discoverwine.com/awards.htm: U.K. WINE (February, 1991) "SOUTH AMERICAN REDS: GOOD VALUE FOR NOW? by Robert Joseph and a panel of professional tasters: "...Until recently, the only South American estate with an international reputation was Cousiño Macul; now, with the investment in Los Vascos by Eric de Rothschild of Château Lafite and with the success of the MONTES winery, "more South American estates are becoming internationally known." Four wines only were rated with the top "THREE STARS" (Excellent Value), two Chilean, one Argentinean and one Mexican wine. The two top Chilean wines were MONTES: Rothschild poetry? from http://www.royoung.com/catalog/790.html: 98.DALI, SALVADOR. Dali: The Wines of Gala. NY: Abrams, 1978. 1st American edition. 296 pages. Small folio, more than 140 illustrations, 124 in color. Vineyard of The World. Vineyards of France. Essay by Louis Orizet. Poem by Baron Phillipe de Rothschild. Texts by Max Gerard and Louis Orizet. Dali created several paintings and drawings expressly for this book. Orig. illustrated white cloth. Fine in fine dust wrapper. $195.00 Big Banking Intro from TPDL 2000-Oct-10, from the Wall Street Journal, by Yaroslav Trofimov, Staff Reporter: Conspiracy Theory Gains Currency, Thanks to Town's Professor Auriti GUARDIAGRELE, Italy -- From her perch below a poster that depicts a miracle of Christian faith, Sandra Iannamico is performing a little wonder of her own. She is doubling people's money. One by one, each of the half-dozen clients lined up at her table in the courtyard of a 15th-century palazzo steps up and surrenders a handful of Italian lire. In return, Ms. Iannamico gives them a multicolored sheaf of a new currency called the simec, at an exchange rate of 1-to-1. In most places, the simec wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on. But in the bustling shoe store next door, and at about 40 other merchants in this mountaintop town of 12,000 overlooking Italy's Adriatic coast, one simec can buy two lire's worth of goods. The simec, whose name is the Italian acronym for "econometric symbol of inducted value," is the brainchild of Giacinto Auriti, a wealthy local academic. This past summer, the 76-year-old retired law professor spent much of his fortune to finance the simec in an effort to prove his eccentric theory about money and a vast banking conspiracy. So far, his experiment has produced a frenzy of consumption in Guardiagrele, a rupture in the local business community, a rebuke from the Bank of Italy and a legal victory for Prof. Auriti, who hopes to convince the world that central bankers are the biggest con artists in modern history. His main thesis: For centuries, central banks have been robbing the common man by the way they put new money in circulation. Rather than divide the new cash among the people, they lend it through the banking system, at interest. This practice, he argues, makes the central banks the money's owners and makes everyone else their debtors. He goes on to conclude that this debt-based money has roughly half the purchasing power it would have if it were issued directly to the populace, free. Initially, Prof. Auriti tried to challenge his own nation's monetary policy through the courts. But Italian judges have thwarted his efforts to sue both Bank of Italy Gov. Antonio Fazio and former Gov. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi for alleged fraud and a slew of other offenses, including incitement to suicide. So, Prof. Auriti conceived another way to make his case. First, he hired a printer to produce several boxes full of simecs, each emblazoned with a hologram and the image of an eagle. Each bill -- violet, green or mocha, depending on the denomination -- carries a statement that identifies it as the property of the bearer. Then, Prof. Auriti, who often sports a bulging money belt, made the rounds of Guardiagrele's 400 shop owners. Most refused to accept his simec. But he persuaded about 40 to participate in his experiment, assuring them he would redeem each simec for two lire. On a sunny July morning, Prof. Auriti, the scion of one of Guardiagrele's oldest and richest families, and a few volunteers, like Ms. Iannamico, threw open the heavy gates of the professor's palazzo and put the first simecs into circulation. Soon, Guardiagrelians were lined up across the street at a Banco di Napoli cash machine to withdraw lire and trade them in for simecs. By 11 a.m. the first day, about $1,000 worth of lire had changed hands. The daily volume eventually reached $40,000 or more, volunteers say. Armed with their simecs, the townsfolk -- and later their neighbors elsewhere in central Italy's Abruzzo region -- stormed participating stores to snap up smoked prosciutto, designer shoes and other goods at just half the lire price. "At first, people thought this can't be true, there must be a rip-off hidden somewhere," says Antonella Di Cocco, a guide at a local museum. "But once people realized that the shopkeepers were the only ones taking the risk, they just ran to buy all these extravagant things they never really needed." Often, they raided their savings accounts in the process. The participating shopkeepers, some of whom barely eked out a living before the simec bonanza, couldn't have been happier. "Every day was Christmas," Pietro Ricci recalls from behind the counter of his cavernous haberdashery. Neither Mr. Ricci nor his fellow merchants were stuck with their simecs for long. Once a week, they turned them in to Prof. Auriti, recouping the full price of their goods. "We doubled the money in people's pockets, injecting blood into a lifeless body," says Prof. Auriti. "People were so happy, they thought they were dreaming." Nonparticipating stores, meanwhile, remained empty week after week. "I have to pay my suppliers once every 10 days -- and, I'm afraid, they don't take the professor's paper," explains Febo Di Crescenzo, as reggae music blares from his clothing store. The competing interests split the town's merchants' association in two, prompting its pro-simec chairman to resign. As tensions peaked in early August, the nonparticipating merchants and the town's mayor, Franco Caramanico, asked local magistrates to intervene with a ruling on whether Prof. Auriti's currency issue was legal. Meanwhile, the professor was beginning to have financial troubles of his own as he redeemed mounting numbers of simecs for twice the sum in lire at which he had sold them, though Prof. Auriti won't disclose exactly how much money he lost. The pro-simec store owners, too, were feeling a pinch. Instead of accepting 1,000 simecs for an item that cost 2,000 lire (90 cents), participating merchants began charging 1,000 lire plus 500 simecs, to keep enough lire on hand to pay their creditors. That cut shoppers' simec discount to 25% from 50%. Merchants who weren't participating were still upset, and some loudly demanded damages from the professor. By mid-August, says the professor, a total of about 2.5 billion simecs had circulated. That's when local magistrates called in Italy's Finance Guard, a militarized police force that deals with such crimes as smuggling and tax fraud. More than a hundred guardsmen invaded the town, carting off boxloads of simecs and prompting protests from an angered citizenry. For a time, the saga appeared to be over. But after a brief investigation, a local court in Chieti found that Prof. Auriti had done nothing illegal and ordered the simecs returned. Although local prosecutors are preparing to appeal the decision to a higher court, Prof. Auriti and his supporters rushed to relaunch the simec last weekend. This time around, however, the currency will be managed by a committee made up mostly of local merchants. Although the professor heads the committee, he is no longer putting his own money into the venture. "Now, we'll only use the lire already in the simec till to redeem the simecs we receive from customers," says Giovanni Di Canio, a jeweler. He is sure there will be enough lire, if only because numismatists from all over Italy have descended on Guardiagrele to buy simecs for their collections. Mr. Di Canio says one collector just bought two thousand 1,000-simec bills, none of which are likely to be spent. Maria Teresa Sciubba, a dishwasher in a local restaurant, bought her simecs for more prosaic reasons. The "simec makes me feel rich," she says as she shops in an upscale boutique on Guardiagrele's main street. "Before this, I could only afford low-quality clothes -- nothing like the designer stuff I'm buying now." But the Bank of Italy isn't amused. In a stern statement released last month, the central bank reminded Italians that the "collection of funds among the public, emission and management of means of payment are, in the best interests of the public, reserved to subjects authorized by law" -- and those don't include Prof. Auriti. Even so, his simec crusade has attracted vocal support from some unexpected quarters. In coming months, a Franciscan Catholic college in Abruzzo's capital city, L'Aquila, plans to open the School of Monetary Values, an institution dedicated to Prof. Auriti's theory. And the Northern League, a sometimes-xenophobic political party that wants to wrest power from Rome, has invited Prof. Auriti to address its mayors on how to spread "local money" nationwide. Prof. Auriti is looking ahead to February 2002, when many European countries are scheduled to replace their national currencies with new euro bills. "A storm is coming," says Prof. Auriti, who thinks global central bankers, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, will use the occasion to provoke an artificial cash crunch, turning Europeans into monetary slaves. "The simec," he says, "will help European peoples to survive." by Howard S. Katz, March 1978, from http://www.fame.org/research/library/hsk-003i.htm: Roosevelt's Corporate Ally William Woodin was the man who wrote the Banking Act of 1933, which took the United States off the gold standard. Woodin was Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury and on March 4, 1933, was put in charge of writing emergency banking legislation. Robert Goldston writes: Under the tireless supervision of Secretary Woodin, a strange combination of individuals worked around the clock at the Treasury. They included Hoover's former Secretary of the Treasury, Ogden Milles, and his staff; New Dealers such as Raymond Moley (now an Assistant Secretary of State); economists from universities, and scores of worried desperate bankers. (The Great Depression, p. 112, emphasis added) This was the bill which was passed by the House in forty minutes of debate with no copies available for the members to read and no committee hearings. Woodin was from an extremely wealthy family and is best known as President of American Machine and Foundry. His obituary listed presidencies -- and directorships -- of more giant corporations than most people work for in a lifetime including a position as director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Woodin was a Republican all his life (although he supported Smith in 1928 and FDR in 1932). In the Senate, where copies of the bill were finally available, objections were raised by "certain Progressives who found the bill too conservative." But, Goldston admits, "It was a bill which met with the approval of bankers and even of the most conservative members of Hoover's old administration." (In addition to setting up our present paper money system, the Banking Act of 1933 wiped out a large number of the nation's smaller banks, thus reducing the competition for the big bankers who assisted Woodin.) Using the provisions of this bill the Federal Reserve began to issue "lawful money," stimulating "the economy" (i.e., the banks and the big corporations), bulling the stock market and depreciating the currency -- a process which has continued for the past forty-five years. Nevertheless, the myth was propagated that the abandonment of the gold standard was a leftist measure, harmful to the bankers, the conservatives and the big business interests, and beneficial to the poor. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
