Money as a Geopolitical Weapon

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.

James Madison

People who seek to rule over and control others learned long ago that controlling money and trade is the best way to do it. On a global level, there are open conspiracies among controlling interests that go about doing just that.

For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. 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.

Multi-generational international banker David Rockefeller, Memoirs (2002) pg 405

They are not content to work hard and increase their influence and reputation through discipline and cooperation. They use every means possible to get and maintain control. This begins with control of money and banking, but extends into direct and indirect control of governments, armies, industries, schools, news media, entertainment, churches, and more. These globalists are not loyal to regional political systems, but to their own ideologies and ambitions.

The organizations, goals, and methods of such conspirators is too broad to discuss here. This post will focus on how financial enemies both foreign and domestic use money as a means of conquest and control.

The Power of Money

People commonly believe that governments control money, but it is the other way around: money controls governments. Money is more powerful than governments and their armies. Governments and their armies are dependent on money, and they are also powerful tools for granting and maintaining complete dominance of entire financial and economic systems.

The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a letter to Colonel House dated November 21, 1933

National Financial Oppression Schemes

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company

The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.

The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.

The first step toward controlling the world is to control individual nations. Here are some of the ways that financial elites and their political puppets use money as a weapon on a national level. Some examples will refer to specifics from the United States, but the same strategies are employed in nations around the world.

National Scheme 1: Monopolized Banking and Money

Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the “founding father of international finance”

Like the old joke says: “What’s the best way to rob a bank? Own one.” If you monopolize banking and money creation through centralized banking and fiat currency/legal tender laws, you can rob an entire national banking system in perpetuity. Once you have control of the whole system, you just sever the link between scarce resources on deposit from creditors and the promises you make to return them (see my previous post on money to see how this is done). After all, promises can be made (and broken) in unlimited quantity. Once you circulate fiat currency into existence simply as an unbacked loan to be paid at interest to private central bankers, you have accepted national slavery.

Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.

Barry Goldwater

National Scheme 2: Taxation and Income Redistribution

Mass extortion through taxation (of various flavors) supports a strong central government that in turn supports centralized financial interests. Along the way, politically favored groups benefit through cronyism/mercantilism/protectionism and regulatory capture (for example, see the revolving door between the US Treasury and Goldman Sachs and the “bailouts” of [theft to benefit] financial institutions deemed “too big to fail”).

Incidentally, this scheme funds monopolized government schools, which are then used to propagandize entire generations to implicitly trust private central banks and government taxation/debt schemes.

National Scheme 3: Perpetual National Debt

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; [and] the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Thomas Jefferson

Once the people of a nation can be taxed, credit and debt can be created by promising repayment from future tax revenues. The “modern monetary theory (MMT)” of combining “deficit spending” with monetary inflation (see next section) is just generational wealth transfer through enslavement of future generations. Such debts are never meant to be repaid and are popular among politicians of every political stripe for their use in growing the welfare/warfare state that itself incentivizes wealth destruction and civilizational decline.

The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.

Thomas Jefferson

National Scheme 4: Monetary inflation

Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.

James Garfield, US President, assassinated in 1881 six months after taking office

Monetary inflation (printing money out of thin air) causes price inflation (higher prices for things), but not right away, not all at once, and not evenly across social groups. (Note: in the international section below, you will also see that some of the effects of inflation can be exported under some circumstances.) The people who get the money first can bid goods and services away from other market participants who don’t have the benefit of freshly available ex nihilo money. As a result, what they buy with the new money begins to become more expensive. It takes time for the new money to circulate through the market, depreciating and raising prices as it does. This process changes the wealth of different groups in different ways. Those who spend the new money first and those who sell to them at the new higher prices can use their money to buy other goods at yet unchanged prices. These groups benefit most (“the rich get richer”) while those who sell other goods and services must do so at prices that have not yet risen but must buy at new higher prices (“the poor get poorer”). As long as this process continues, wealth is transferred from some social groups (wage earners and net taxpayers) to others (politicians and connected financiers). Unsurprisingly, new money is often issued to large banks to prop up stock markets and steer mortgage markets in their favor.

Monetary inflation also changes the relationship between creditors and debtors, as debts incurred with “old” money can later be repaid with “new” (depreciated) money. As people begin to see that their money is increasingly worth less and less, they avoid saving it. Instead, they use and borrow as much as they can to invest, which drives prices even higher for things like stocks and real estate, which accelerates the price inflation even more (see the Weimar Republic in the 1920s for example). This can make a dangerous “bubble” (unsustainable high prices) look like an economy is booming, but it is just a setup for a disastrous crash, whether by hyperinflation and devaluation or deflationary correction and insolvency.

Central banks also manipulate interest rates, which is to say they can increase or decrease the costs of commercial banks borrowing from central banks, which they in turn lend out at higher interest rates to their customers. This is effectively a “credit version” of printing actual money, given that it directly affects how expensive it is to borrow money from any bank.

One sure sign that the system is failing is that central banks actually start to lend at negative interest rates. That means they actually pay people for borrowing money and charge people for saving it. These perverse incentives punish disciplined savers and those who rely on fixed incomes as well as drive even more malinvestment.

National Scheme 5: Tracking and Controlling All Trade

Even though most of the US Dollars in the financial system already exist as digital credit records rather than paper banknotes, central bankers and their government allies have been talking about the creation of what they call a “digital dollar” for some time now. CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) are expected to replace existing currencies around the globe. For this to happen, cash must be banned.

The result may seem to have advantages for convenience and hygiene (especially if the public were somehow bombarded by fearful depictions of illness transmitted by physical contact), but banning cash and replacing it with an enhanced surveillance economy would make controlling and manipulating populations even easier.

Even though technology makes controlling trade more efficient and effective, it’s interesting to note that the general idea is not new. There is an ancient biblical apocalyptic vision of monstrous global beasts who exercise power over “all kindreds, and tongues, and nations” in the book of Revelation chapter 13. These beasts will not allow people to “buy or sell” (verse 17) unless their actions (symbolized by the right hand) and thoughts (symbolized by the forehead) are in line with the agenda of the beasts and the systems they control (verse 16). What could go wrong?

International Financial Oppression Schemes

Individual nations can also be used in cooperation with or against each other to accomplish the goals of globalists. Powerful nations are used as bases for their financial and military operations.

International Scheme 1: Control of a World Reserve Currency

International banks keep some currency from various countries in reserve so that they can facilitate foreign exchanges. The most popular currency in the world at any given time is considered the world reserve currency because it is the one banks keep on hand the most to facilitate exchange and avoid the risk of other less stable currencies becoming worthless or unavailable.

History has seen popular coins come and go. Anciently, the Greek drachma and Roman denari were the most valuable coins for foreign trade. Then came the Byzantine solidus and the Arab dinar in the middle-ages. The Renaissance saw the rise of the Venetian ducato and the Florentine florin. In the 1600s, the Dutch gilder and the French franc became prominent. Unsurprisingly, the popularity of each is directly connected to political power and overall economic influence. Though these coins were minted and issued by different groups, they were just stamped measures of silver and gold. In other words, it was gold and silver that were money all along.

The modern concept of a world reserve currency came about in the mid 1800s when national central banks were introduced along with the national monopolization of money and banking (see National Scheme 1 above). The United Kingdom dominated the financial world at this time, and most international trade was invoiced in pounds sterling, or what we today refer to simply as the British pound (the oldest currency in continuous use, and currently the fourth most traded currency in the foreign exchange market). It was called the pound because it was equal to one pound of pure silver. The stylized ‘L’ symbol (£) for this pound of silver was from the Latin word “libra” meaning “balance or scale” (visualized as the balance scales in the ancient constellation Libra). In the 1800s, a gold standard replaced the silver one in Britain and a world trade agreement caused participating countries around the world to back up their currency with gold reserves. Paper notes from the Bank of England were fully backed by gold until 1931.

Near the end of World War II in 1944, 730 delegates from all 44 of the Allied nations gathered for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at a hotel resort in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The agreement signed on the last day of that conference established what we now call the Bretton Woods system. The agreement led to the establishment of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as recognizing that the system would rest on reserves of gold and the then-gold-backed US Dollar (given that the US controlled about two thirds of the world’s gold at the time). Notably, representatives from the USSR attended the conference but refused to ratify the agreement because they considered it just an extension of Wall Street institutions.

Under the Bretton Woods system, most countries in the world agreed to buy and sell US dollars to each other to keep world trade and exchange rates consistent. The dollar had become the world reserve currency and taken over the role that silver and gold played for centuries.

As I briefly discussed in my post What is Money?, President Nixon unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold in 1971, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system and severing any direct connection between the US dollar and precious metals. At that point, it became a free-floating fiat currency along with other major currencies around the world. As a result, the US dollar quickly lost 30% of its purchasing power. However, no other currency has replaced it as the most widely used for settlement of international trades and as a reserve for international banks, due to the political, economic, and military dominance of the United States since that time.

The ability to issue a world reserve currency out of thin air is an exorbitant privilege. It allows central banks to act as the “lender of last resort” to “bail out” favored failing governments and banks who have lied and embezzled their way into insolvency. Picking financial winners and losers is a recipe for widespread dissatisfaction among said losers. Increasing dissatisfaction with US dominance of world trade and the financial crises of 2008 and 2020 has led central banks and their political puppets in powerful countries to insist on what they are calling a “New Bretton Woods Moment” or “Bretton Woods II” or “Great Reset” to establish a new global financial system. Current US Treasury Secretary (and former Federal Reserve chair) Janet Yellen said a few weeks ago that this month’s IMF and World Bank meetings would be a “Bretton Woods moment” for the global economy.

What will the resulting system look like? Calls from various influential figures for a “multi-polar order” with a “basket of digital currencies” point to likely key features of the system being developed right now. There have also been calls for a “global minimum corporate tax rate” to keep companies from relocating to low-tax countries as the US prepares to increase the corporate tax rate. The details and terms of such a system could be agreed on through negotiation, but I believe that war with uncooperative or noncompliant countries will ultimately be required to fully decide and settle it all. (See International Scheme 3 below.)

International Scheme 2: Control of International Exchanges

When countries and their large financial institutions want to clear cross-border and cross-currency transactions, they do so through exchange and clearing house systems. The system most large banks around the world use to manage transactions is known as SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications). The SWIFT system has been “pressured” (used) by the US government to monitor and restrict trade between other countries. For example, European countries want to buy oil from Iran, but the US doesn’t want Iran allowed to participate in SWIFT unless they give in to political demands. As a result, the INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) was set up in Europe to facilitate non-US-Dollar and non-SWIFT transactions with Iran to avoid breaking US Sanctions involving the SWIFT system. Russia and China and others are seeking alternatives to SWIFT as well so that they don’t have to deal with the US when they deal with each other.

The SWIFT system has always been a weapon that even US “allies” are looking for “strategic autonomy” from. With such a system you can both directly and indirectly impose sanctions on uncooperative nations (allies or otherwise), like those that attempt to have a banking system that isn’t in line with world central banking (see the list of countries the US has sent bombs and troops to over the last few decades) or energy pipelines like Nord Stream 2 or nuclear power and therefore net energy export plans of countries like Iran (leaving aside the “WMD” scare-tactic topic of their inability to refine weapons-grade uranium – where have we heard that before?) and Venezuela (largest oil reserves in the world, and owes China a ton of money for which China wanted to buy oil without buying dollars first).

International Scheme 3: Currency Wars and Their Proxies

Controlling others with money is easier and more subtle (and therefore provokes less resistance, especially as it becomes accepted as the status quo over time) than physical conflict. Sometimes currency wars escalate into actual “kinetic military action” (see next section), but before they get that far, other proxy forms of conflict and control like tariffs, sanctions, and embargoes are often used.

Many people have wondered why demand for the US dollar abroad remains relatively high even though it is increasingly astronomically inflated. Wouldn’t price inflation follow close behind printing money out of thin air? Wouldn’t people become hesitant to buy US government debt when those debts skyrocket and become clearly unsustainable?

When Nixon finally killed off the gold standard in 1971, there were fears that demand for the US dollar would fall through the floor. The welfare/warfare programs of the US had run up massive debts with ruinous “Great Society” programs and Vietnam War boondoggles. So Nixon and Kissinger decided to make a deal. They got the rulers of Saudi Arabia to agree to sell their oil only in exchange for US dollars. In return, the Saudis would receive US military protection of their oil fields. (Why do you think the US considers Saudi Arabia such a close ally, despite their theocratic authoritarian violence at home and outright terrorism abroad? It would be a shame if something happened to these nice oil fields you have there…)

By 1975, every oil-producing nation in the OPEC cartel had agreed to price their oil exclusively in dollars and to invest surplus oil proceeds in US government debt. This arrangement has become known as protection of the “petrodollar”.

What might happen if an oil producing country were to sell oil for currencies other than US dollars? You could ask Iraq. They decided to accept euros instead in 2000, and Saddam Hussein even described the US dollar as “the currency of the enemy”. The US military attacked Iraq and forced it to denominate its oil sales in US dollars once again, even though the dollar was falling in value. You could also ask Libya. Muammar Gaddafi decided to introduce a gold-backed dinar in 2011 for use in its oil trade. Shortly thereafter, then-Secretary-of-State Hilary Clinton laughed with a reporter after her return from a visit to Libya and upon hearing the news that Gaddafi had been publicly lynched and sodomized with a bayonet claiming “We came, we saw, he died.”

Venezuela and Iran have also priced their oil in currencies other than dollars since 2018 and have incurred the wrath of US imperialists and their masters. They have both been subject to severe sanctions, insurrections and coup attempts, sabotage, and threats of outright invasion by the US military. US General Wesley Clark even admitted that the US has had plans to invade several countries in the middle east under the guise of fighting terrorism to protect its oil interests (and the related US dollar hegemony tied to them). Why those countries? What do they have in common? (Hint: lack of support for the petrodollar and the global central banking cartel.)

The United States relies on the petrodollar to export debt and inflation to other countries and maintain demand for the US dollar. Without it, the whole financial system would collapse, and the US would not be able to service its debt and bully the rest of the world. Sadly, the cost of perpetuating the petrodollar is permanent military occupation of the entire planet. Just look at the hundreds of US military bases around the world and naval blockades of shipping lane use by noncompliant countries and the desire for new pipelines and land-based trade routes for energy products from Russia, Iran, and China.

The financial imperialism and “dollar diplomacy” of the United States (and the financial interests that control it) has been alienating foreign powers around the world for over a hundred years. By granting or denying money to foreign powers, they have bribed and threatened their way into lucrative arrangements for access to oil and protection rackets. Unsurprisingly, several countries (most notably Russia and China and Iran) are in the process of “dedollarization”, which means that they are replacing their US dollar reserves with other national currencies and arranging for payment with other nations without using the US dollar or the SWIFT system at all.

Still, the dollar will not go down easily. In addition to the fact that other countries around the world have also inflated their currencies like mad, an enormous amount of debts between countries and organizations around the world is denominated in dollars. It is likely that a global economic crisis would actually cause a rise in the value of the dollar and an increased flow of capital to the US as foreigners are pressured to buy dollars to service their debts. (See Brent Johnson’s “dollar milkshake” theory for more details.)

Scheme 4: War as Banking and Business Opportunity

All wars are bankers’ wars. Money funds war and war is big business. After World War II, President Eisenhower famously warned of the power of the “military industrial complex” in his farewell address, which is really an extension of the central banking and financial complex. If warring nations borrow money from you to buy weapons from you, you are the real winner of every war. You profit from every angle and use winning forces to assimilate losing ones into centralized international schemes. A cynic might even say you are heavily incentivized to provoke and celebrate conflict in order to make money and grow influence.

I spent most of my [33 years in the Marine Corps] being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for [crony] capitalism. … Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier