Page 16 - Reflexions of African Bishops and Priests

The All-Powerful Dictatorship

By Those who Control Money

by Louis Even “Immense power and despotic economic dom-
The word dictatorship makes one think of pol- ination are concentrated into the hands of a few...
itical dictatorships with police forces, prisons, This power is especially irresistible among those
concentration camps, forced labor and execution who, by their control of money, are also able to
squads for anyone daring to defy the decrees of the regulate and govern credit, dispensing it as they
dictator. see fit. In this way, they distribute, as it were, the
lifeblood of the economic body whose life they
But there are other forms of dictatorship that hold between their hands with the result that with-
force the surrender of the population’s will to dicta- out their permission no one dares even breathe.”
tors.
A dictator who controls a basic necessity, such Above Governments
as food, for instance, would not need police or pris- This financial dictatorship dominates even the
ons to impose his will on others. Everyone would most powerful governments. Statesmen have ad-
submit to his demands or die of starvation. mitted they have succumbed to the power of the
In today’s world, the many things we need for money-makers.
survival come from the marketplace. Few individ- One of the most illustri-
uals are self-sufficient, and so people need the ous of these statesmen was
Means of Payment, that is, money, for survival. William Ewart Gladstone,
Whoever controls the creation of the Means of four times prime minister of
Payment, and the amount of money in circulation, England (1868-74, 1880-85,
rules. Today, this power resides in the private bank- in 1886 and from 1892 to
ing system, that is, in chartered banks and central 1894). Before leading the LIb-
banks, alike. eral party he was Chancellor
of the Exchequer. Gladstone
“In the Hollow of their Hands” had been critical of the finan- William E. Gladstone

In 1924, Reginald Mc- cial policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli,
Kenna was president of the but when he came to occupy the same position as
Midland Bank, one of the five Prime Minister, he quickly realized who held the
great commercial banks in true reins of power in England. He stated:
England. In previous years, he “From the time I took office as Chancellor I
had been Chancellor of the Ex- began to learn that the State held, in the face of
chequer, a role that is equiva- the Bank [of England] and “The City” (London’s
lent to a Minister of Finance. “Wall Street”) an essentially false position as to fi-
This was a man well versed nance... The hinge of the whole situation was this:
in banking matters. McKenna the government itself was not to be a substantive
Reginald McKenna made the following statement power in matters of finance, but was to leave the
to a meeting of the shareholders, in January, 1924: money power supreme and unquestioned.”
“I fear that the ordinary citizen would not like Woodrow Wilson, United States President from
to hear that the banks can create money and that 1913 to 1921, made the following remarks concern-
they do so. The amount of money in existence var- ing monetary power and the men who wielded it:
ies only with the action of the banks in increasing “A great industrial na-
or diminishing deposits. We know how this is ef- tion is controlled by its sys-
fected. Every bank loan and every bank purchase tem of credit. Our system of
of securities creates a deposit and every repay- credit is privately concen-
ment of a loan and every bank sale destroys one. trated. The growth of the
And they who control the credit of a nation direct nation, therefore, and all our
the politics of governments and hold in the hollow activities are in the hands of
of their hands the destiny of the people.” a few men... We have come
What McKenna said was echoed seven years to be one of the worst ruled,
later by Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical, Quadrages- one of the most completely
imo Anno: controlled and dominated Woodrow Wilson

16 www.michaeljournal.org