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 In Basel, Switzerland—within one block of the town’s train station, in fact, stands a modern 18-story building, one of several such buildings in Basel’s downtown area. The building houses one of the most significant institutions in the modern world of elite-dominated high finance: the Bank for International Settlements.
Joan Veon, who turned from successful businesswoman to globetrotting international reporter and author of two important books, The United Nations: Global Straitjacket and Prince Charles: The Sustainable Prince, has been charting the influence of the Bank for International Settlements for a number of years now, often relying on first-hand interviews with the power brokers themselves.
The Bank for International Settlements was set up in 1930 by Charles Dawes (Calvin Coolidge’s Vice President), Owen D. Young (who presided over the Allied Reparation Committee), and Hjalmar Schacht (President of Germany’s Reichsbank). Of all the banking institutions in the world, it has been described as the most exclusive and the most secretive. It is amazing that so-called conspiracy theorists have not paid it more attention.
In Tragedy & Hope, Carroll Quigley wrote openly about the Bank for International Settlements. Quigley stated: “The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”
Joan Veon has picked up where Quigley left off. During the era characterized by the term “globalization,” the Bank for International Settlements has consolidated its power—and extended its influence through an international octopus of literally dozens of organizations and agencies, most of them unknown to those outside of financial circles. Some argue, understandably, that globalization is a process that has been occurring for centuries. Yes, but during the past 70 or so years—since the establishment of entities such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in 1944 and with the emergence of global agreements such as the original GATT that same decade—the process was hijacked. It has come to enrich the few at the expense of the peoples of the world.
During the 1990s, especially with the establishment of the World Trade Organization through GATT II, this process of concentrating financial power in the hands of the central bankers, has accelerated. Joan Veon notes the role of otherwise obscure entities such as the Financial Stability Forum (created in 1999) and the International Association of Deposit Insurers (set up in 2002). The latter is a globalist FDIC.
When the bottom fell out last year, globalist bankers saw opportunity and not mere crisis. They have actually had little meaningful opposition. Mainstream Republicans stifled the Ron Paul movement in order to nominate globalist John McCain, who was easily defeated by globalist Barack Obama, who appointed globalist Timothy Geithner (former chair of the New York Federal Reserve) to run the U.S. Treasury Department, replacing globalist Henry Paulson. Since the start of 2009 the Federal Reserve, in the hands of globalist Ben Bernanke, has been granted increasing powers, ostensibly to deal with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Globalist-controlled G20 nations met in April; their leader, British Prime Minister and former Fabian Society president Gordon Brown, essentially declared the institution of the New World Order as necessary to bring about eventual economic recovery. The Federal Reserve itself, meanwhile, has leant over $2 trillion it refuses to account for.
Joan Veon’s claim is that this process is in its terminal phase. The integrated globalist network of financial controls has grown too complex to oppose by any one group or nation state. Any nation state that pulled out would be plunged into immediate devastating poverty. In other words, in these terms, the battle against the New World Order was lost long ago—probably before Quigley was writing. Its opponents may still have an ace in the hole, however: economic reality, which will eventually pass its verdict on the attempt to maintain a centralized civilization on fiat money backed by absolutely nothing. For some time now the Bank for International Settlements has been moving towards establishing a global currency, possibly to replace the collapsing dollar, to stand alongside the larger goal of world government intended to supplant increasingly interdependent nation-state governments. The global currency would also be a fiat currency, however, and subject to the same long-term devaluation as the dollar. The globe’s elites can hope to manage it in such a way as to continue enriching themselves under the kind of feudalism Quigley originally envisioned at least in the short-term—for as Keynes cynically observed, “in the long run we are all dead.”
Steven Yates earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1987. He is the author of one book, Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1994) and numerous articles both in academic journals and elsewhere. He has taught philosophy at Clemson University, Auburn University, Wofford College, the University of South Carolina, Southern Wesleyan University--Columbia, and Midlands Technical College, and has held fellowships with or worked on projects with the Institute for Humane Studies, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, and the Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty.
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