The stock market crisis has been described by many as the worst financial disaster since the great depression of the 1930s. It is freezing cashflows worldwide, putting the livelihoods of millions at risk, and stopping economic growth in its tracks. Even the US$700 billion bailout plan, with US taxpayers picking up the tab, seems not to be calming investor fears as it was hoped. People have “a sense that there’s a lot more bad news to come”.
I think they are right.
Last week we shared a presentation by Chris Martenson – worth checking out if you didn’t catch it. Today I want to share another presentation – this one from circa 1996, and titled ‘The Money Masters’. It’s an in depth examination of how modern financial institutions came into being, and how they may be manipulating national governments and economies for for their own benefit. Whilst I’m not wholly sold on the multi-century conspiracy side of the presentation, I think the basic concepts and information presented have great implications for us, and is particularly relevant in our current economic climate. You will learn some rather shocking facts, which you can fact-check on sites like Wikipedia, etc. The producers of the documentary are calling for the abolishment of the organisation responsible for maintaining the U.S. central banking system – the Federal Reserve, effectively a quasi-government corporation with the power to create money and manipulate markets. This call is echoed by a growing number of economists (including Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman) and politicians worldwide (here and here are a couple of examples, and a petition can be found here).
The documentary is particularly relevant today as it discusses fractional reserve banking – where banks are able to loan out much more money than they actually possess. This is how stock market bubbles inflate, and subsequently burst – with key players cashing in in each direction….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5153195602/
Duration: 3 hours, 35 mins
Further Reading:
Boy, this was a long movie… For those of you who don’t have a time to watch it all, there are interesting solutions for a new monetary reform presented at the end of the movie – jump to 3h 11m.
They could be implemented to deal with the current financial crisis in the US.