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Global Debt Enslavement - From Gold Reserves to Petrodollars; Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt:" Part III
By Stephen Lendman (about the author) Page 2 of 5 page(s)
As for oil producers, Wall Street and London bankers profited from windfall petrodollar deposits - recyclable as developing nation loans to buy oil but at the same time to be entrapped in permanent debt bondage. Pre-1973, Third World debt "was manageable and contained....financed mainly through public agencies (for projects) promising solid economic success." That changed when commercial banks took over. Their business isn't development. It's "loan brokering (or) loan sharking," preferably with dictator/strongmen able to cut deals on their own.
Later the IMF got involved. At the behest of giant bankers, as "debt policemen" instituting rigorous structural adjustments, including slashed wages and social benefits as well as state asset sales on favorable terms to private investors.
At the same time, America got deeply indebted. It's now the world's largest by far and needs hundreds of billions annually to keep the dollar recycling game going - in the last 12 months alone, far more than that after the national debt doubled. Today, the nation is "hopelessly mired in debt to support the banking system of a private international cartel." Ordinary people pay the price.
Germany Finances a War without Money
The 1919 Versailles Treaty imposed onerous post-WW I terms on Germany. In May 1921, it got a six-day ultimatum to accept them or have the industrial Ruhr Valley militarily occupied. Even worse, it lost its colonies, all their resources, and the population had to pay the cost of war, amounting to three times the value of all property in the country. At the same time, German mark speculation caused it to plummet causing hyperinflation that by 1923 was catastrophic.
In January, the mark dropped to 18,000 to the dollar. By July, it was 353,000, by August 4,620,000, and by November an astonishing 4,200,000,000,000 - effectively worthless from the greatest ever hyperinflation, ravaging the nation's savings and making later calamitous events inevitable.
Loss of German assets compounded the problem. Britain took its colonies along with Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia with its rich mineral and agricultural resources. Lost was 75% of the country's iron ore, 68% of zinc ore, 26% of coal as well as Alsatian textile industries and potash mines. In addition, Germany's entire merchant fleets were taken, a portion of its transport and fishing fleet plus locomotives, railroad cars and trucks - all justified as legitimate war debts that were fixed at an impossible to pay 132 billion gold marks at 6% interest.
The 1923 Dawes Plan (named for US banker Charles Dawes) imposed fiscal control to continue the looting and assure reparations were paid. A huge debt pyramid resulted that collapsed after the 1929 crash along with radical political elements gaining prominence.
How to cope was the key question. Like the earlier American Greenbackers, Germany issued its own money after Hitler came to power. He had two choices, and like Lincoln, did it right. He freed the country from debt bondage and at the same time implemented vast infrastructure development - what Roosevelt as well did, but in his case by indebtedness to bankers.
Hitler issued $1 billion interest-free, "non-inflationary bills of exchange, called Labor Treasury Certificates." He put millions back to work, paid them with the Certificates that were used for goods and services to create more jobs and revive prosperity. Within two years, Germany was "back on its feet....with a solid, stable currency, no debt, and no inflation, at a time" America and Western economies were still struggling.
Hitler, however, diverged from the Greenbackers by equating bankers with Jews and launching a reign of terror against them. Greenbackers knew the real enemy - private bankers imposing debt bondage with onerous terms.
Beyond that and his imperial aims, Hitler reinvigorated the Third Reich in a few years, became hugely popular, and achieved it even before undertaking large-scale military spending. It impressed Pastor Sheldon Emry to write:
"Germany issued debt-free and interest-free money from 1935 and on, accounting for its startling rise from the depression to a world power in 5 years. Germany financed its entire government and war operation from 1935 to 1945 without gold and without debt, and it took the whole Capitalist and Communist world" to bring him down and restore the power of bankers.
Had Germany created debt and interest-free money post-Versailles, it could have escaped its disastrous inflation, later ravages, and rise of a tyrant like Hitler. In the 1920s, the privately-owned Reichsbank, not the government, caused havoc by flooding the economy with money compounded by foreign investor speculators shorting the mark and betting on its decline - because the Reichsbank printed massive currency amounts to be loaned "at a profitable interest to the bank. When (it couldn't keep up with demand), other private banks were allowed to create marks out of nothing and lend them at interest as well."
According to Hitler's Reichsbank president, Hjalmar Schacht, the government regulated the Bank, ended speculation by eliminating "easy access to loans of bank-created money," and solved the previous decade's hyperinflation problem as a result.
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