“Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.” — Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812)
A few years ago, my furnace went out on Christmas Eve. Last week, my water heater went kaput on the eve of Thanksgiving. Unlike the furnace, which took a good four days to get resolved (blizzard and long holiday weekend), we were able to install a new water heater on the same day! I am thankful to have hosted a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with family, on just four hours of sleep. The next day, after a good ten hours of sleep, I started thinking about chance and probability. I watched an interview with Adam LeBor, author of Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World, and wondered…Is the financial system like my water heater? Will we get a new one on the same day?
In case you don’t have time to watch the interview, which I’ve included at the end of this post, I’ll share what I found important. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is the bank of central banks. It is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, on the Rhine River in the northwest, close to the French and German borders. Apparently, the city and the science are one in the same. Dr Franz Saladin, Director of the Basel Chamber of Commerce, put it like this…“Basel grew up with the chemical-pharmaceutical industry, and the chemical-pharmaceutical industry grew up with Basel” (see Science and the city on the Roche website).
The BIS was officially established by international treaties in 1930 to manage German reparation payments after World War I. These international treaties made it supernational. It is not subject to national laws, its assets (including 102 tonnes of physical gold, more than any nation on earth) cannot be seized, and it has no accountability other than to its shareholders who are member central banks. Take a look at the list and you’ll see Russia, China, United States, Germany, and all these guys have the same master.
During World War II, the BIS funded the Nazi Germany war machine and the Holocaust. It helped Hitler loot Jewish gold and spied on the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a wartime intelligence agency that gathered information, conducted sabotage, and aided resistance groups. Somehow the BIS avoided the Nuremberg Trials and ended up fulfilling the Nazi agenda to undemocratically create one single currency across Europe, according to a memo in the archives, only it wasn’t the Reichsmark but the Euro. It spent decades preparing by harmonizing exchange rates through a process known as “snake in the tunnel.”
It was responsible for the London Gold Pool (1961-1968), a shady effort by central banks to collectively manage and stabilize the price of gold in the London market. Essentially, they would buy or sell gold as needed to maintain a fixed price per ounce, primarily to uphold the Bretton Woods system which pegged the US dollar to gold at $35 per ounce. It ended in collapse when the devaluation of the British pound led to a surge in gold buying and exhausted the pool’s reserves. This forced central banks to draw from their own reserves to meet demand, which exposed their scheme and ultimately ended the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971.
The BIS also played a central role in developing The Basel Accords, a series of three sequential banking regulation agreements (Basel I, II, and III) that started in the 1980s, after the Latin American banking crises. They are currently in the process of implementing Basel III, which followed the 2008 banking crisis. In 2019, gold became a tier 1 asset (a bank’s core capital, or the safest and most liquid assets it holds) and on January 1, 2025, more of the Basel III framework will get implemented. Banks have to hold more tier 1 assets, which explains their buying gold. There’s an implementation dashboard that you can follow, if you’re curious. There’s also a document on the prudential treatment of crypto asset exposure (for member banks) also being implemented on January 1.
It is my understanding that crypto will be divided into two groups. Group 1 will include tokenised traditional assets and crypto assets with “effective stabilisation” mechanisms. Group 2 cryptoassets are those that are “unbacked”…it’s complicated and confusing. There are several documents and amendments, too. I am not a financial expert, and I don’t find it fun or interesting to read through banking jargon. So I’ve provided the links below, if it interests you. I took the time to find the links, so I just ask that you take the time to leave your impression in the comments, if you review them. I’m still utterly confused on what’s going on with the new administration and crypto, and I’m trying to figure it out.
Prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures (June 10, 2021)
Prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures (June 30, 2022)
Prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures (December 16, 2022)
Cryptoasset Standard Amendments (December 14, 2023)
Cryptoasset Standard Amendments (July 17, 2024)
Speech – Tokenisation for the Real World (February, 2024)
But the real question I have is why was a bank run by Americans doing business with the Nazis? And how did a Nazi bank become a supernational entity in charge of the world? I’ll continue my thinking and investigation next week, and hopefully the rabbit hole isn’t too deep. It almost looks like a supernational monarchy with absolute power and control. What’s nice, though, is the BIS website is full of reports and presentations for those who want to dive deep. Just go to the search box and type “site:www.bis.org .pdf ” and you’ll see what I mean. Type “site:www.bis.org .pdf crypto” if you want to focus. You can search any keyword or phrase.
Did you catch the quote at the top of this post? “Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild was more than a German-Jewish banker, more than the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, and more than “The Founding Father of International Finance.” He was a “court factor” to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Holy Roman Empire. A “court factor” is a historical term in early modern Europe for a Jewish banker or financier who managed the finances of a European monarch, a servant of royalty and nobility. In essence, Mayer Amschel Rothschild was a Jew who lent money and negotiated deals in exchange for social privileges and influence within Christian society.
What’s more? I found him listed in The Royal Kalendar and Court and City Register for England, Scottland, Ireland, and the Colonies for the year 1867… “Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild, brother of the member for London, uncle of the member for Aylesbury.” In a journal called The Everlasting Nation (1889), he is described as “a banker with considerable foreign business, and his connection with the firm Van Notten in London enabled him to invest the Landgrave’s fortune in the English funds.” Some things make you go hmmmmmmmm. But maybe this is where modern central banking started to flourish.
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews
One, BIG, FAT…Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm $$$$$$$$