BIG BROTHER IN BASEL: BIS FINANCIAL STABILITY BOARD UNDERMINES NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

Take “fiscal policy transparency” as an example. The “Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency” was adopted by the IMF Interim Committee in 1998. The “synoptic description” says:

“The code contains transparency requirements to provide assurances to the public and to capital markets that a sufficiently complete picture of the structure and finances of government is available so as to allow the soundness of fiscal policy to be reliably assessed.”

We learn that members are required to provide a “picture of the structure and finances of government” that is complete enough for an assessment of its “soundness” -- but an assessment by whom, and what if a government fails the test? Is an unelected private committee based in the BIS allowed to evaluate the “structure and function” of particular national governments and, if they are determined to have fiscal policies that are not “sound,” to impose “conditionalities” and “austerity measures” of the sort that the IMF is notorious for imposing on Third World countries? The wary might wonder if that is how the mighty United States is to be brought under the heel of Big Brother at last.

For three centuries, private international banking interests have brought governments in line by blocking them from issuing their own currencies and requiring them to borrow banker-issued “banknotes” instead. “Allow me to issue and control a nation’s currency,” Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild famously said in 1791, “and I care not who makes its laws.” The real rebellion of the American colonists in 1776, according to Benjamin Franklin, was against a foreign master who forbade the colonists from issuing their own money and required that taxes be paid in gold. The colonists, not having gold, had to borrow gold-backed banknotes from the British bankers. The catch was that the notes were created on the “fractional reserve” system, allowing the bankers to issue up to ten times as many notes as they actually had gold, essentially creating them out of thin air just as the colonists were doing. The result was not only to lock the colonists into debt to foreign bankers but to propel the nation into a crippling depression. The colonists finally rebelled and reverted to issuing their own currency. Funding a revolution against a major world power with money they printed themselves, they succeeded in defeating their oppressors and winning their independence.

Political colonialism is now a thing of the past, but under the new FSB guidelines, nations can still be held in feudalistic subservience to foreign masters. Consider this scenario: XYZ country, which has been getting along very well financially, discloses that its national currency is being printed by the government directly. The FSB determines that this practice represents an impermissible “merging of the public and private sectors” and is an unsound banking practice forbidden under the “12 Key International Standards and Codes.” Banker-created national currency is declared to be the standard “good practice” all governments must follow. XYZ is compelled to abandon the “anachronistic” notion that creating its own national currency is a proper “function of government.” It must now borrow from the international bankers, trapping it in the bankers’ compound-interest debt web.

Consider another scenario: Like in the American colonies, the new FSB rules precipitate a global depression the likes of which have never before been seen. XYZ country wakes up to the fact that all of this is unnecessary – that it could be creating its own money, freeing itself from the debt trap, rather than borrowing from bankers who create money on computer screens and charge interest for the privilege of borrowing it. But this realization comes too late: the boot descends and XYZ is crushed into line. National sovereignty has been abdicated to a private committee, with no say by the voters.

Suspicious observers might say that this is how you pull off a private global dictatorship: (1) create a global crisis; (2) appoint an “advisory body” to retain and maintain “stability”; and then (3) “formalize” the advisory body as global regulator. By the time the people wake up to what has happened, it’s too late. Marilyn Barnewall, who was dubbed by Forbes Magazine the “dean of American private banking,” writes in an April 2009 article titled “What Happened to American Sovereignty at G-20?”:

“It seems the world’s bankers have executed a bloodless coup and now represent all of the people in the world. . . . President Obama agreed at the G20 meeting in London to create an international board with authority to intervene in U.S. corporations by dictating executive compensation and approving or disapproving business management decisions. Under the new Financial Stability Board, the United States has only one vote. In other words, the group will be largely controlled by European central bankers. My guess is, they will represent themselves, not you and not me and certainly not America.”

A bloodless coup . . . Again one is reminded of the admissions of David Rockefeller, who wrote in his Memoirs (Random House 2002):

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Adoption of the FSB was never voted on by the public, either individually or through their legislators. The G20 Summit has been called “a New Bretton Woods,” referring to agreements entered into in 1944 establishing new rules for international trade. But Bretton Woods was put in place by Congressional Executive Agreement, requiring a majority vote of the legislature; and it more properly should have been done by treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate, since it was an international agreement binding on the nation. The same should be mandated before imposing the will of the BIS-based Financial Stability Board on the U.S., its banks and its businesses. Here is a quick review of the law:

Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution grants power to the President to make treaties only with the “advice and consent” of two-thirds of the Senate. The Constitution does not expressly provide for any alternative to the Article II treaty procedure. However, historically the President has also made international “agreements” through congressional-executive agreements that are ratified with only a majority from both houses of Congress, or sole-executive agreements made by the President alone. A congressional-executive agreement can cover only those matters which the Constitution explicitly places within the powers of Congress and the President; while a sole-executive agreement can cover only those matters within the President’s authority or matters in which Congress has delegated authority to the President. A sole-executive agreement can be negotiated and entered into only through the President’s authority (1) in foreign policy, (2) as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, (3) from a prior act of Congress, or (4) from a prior treaty. Agreements beyond these competencies must have the approval of Congress (for congressional-executive agreements) or the Senate (for treaties). If an international commercial accord contains binding “treaty” commitments, then a two-thirds vote of the Senate may be required.

Even with a two-thirds Senate vote, before Congress gives its approval it should draft legislation ensuring that the checks and balances imposed by our Constitution are built into the agreement. This could be done by implementing a legislative counterpart to the FSB with full oversight and corrective powers. The legislatures of the member nations could be required to elect a representative body to provide oversight and take corrective measures as needed, with that body’s representatives answerable to their national electorates.

Orwell’s 1984 made the news again in April 2009, when Queen Elizabeth chose the book as her ceremonial gift for visiting President Felipe Calderon of Mexico. Calderon, who crushed riots with boot-like severity after he was accused of vote-rigging to steal the election from his populist opponent, was said to be an admirer of Orwell’s work. The event provoked suspicions that 1984 had been covertly chosen by a modern-day financial oligarchy as the inspirational model for implementing Big Brother globally. The book ends with the protagonist Winston tortured and brainwashed into accepting the party line. We need to act quickly and decisively to ensure that its historical counterpart has a happier ending.

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