How long did it take to build the Federal Reserve System? Nineteen years. The various interests created and debated banking reform between the years 1894 and 1913. This is documented by Elmus Wicker in his little book The Great Debate on Banking Reform: Nelson Aldrich and the Origins of the Fed.
How long did it take to get Medicare passed? Twenty-eight years. Medicare proposals emanated from the bureaucracy, from the Public Health Service, and from the Social Security Administration as early as 1937—1950 before being picked up by the Truman Administration.
What’s the next Federal Reserve? What’s the next Medicare? It’s an international central bank: the IMF reborn. The IMF is the International Monetary Fund.
This article, reprinted from the Washington Post, provides the details. For further details, see also here.
The creation process for this new Colossus has been going on now for eighteen years. The Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress has been considering studies and proposals since at least 1998. The catalyst was the 1997 Asian Crisis.
The interest groups and powers that create these institutions often pull and haul for years on end before the process culminates. They debate in plain view. Once key persons sign on and negotiate a specific form and proposal, the process comes to a conclusion. A new power structure is born.
The development of an institution with a central banking capacity to lend to sovereign states is at least as important as creating the Fed and Medicare were. It is a key building block in world government, and world government is extremely dangerous to freedom.
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The IMF is a bank funded by States and patronized by States.
It gets its funds from contributing States.
It makes subprime sovereign loans to the world’s States. It "rescues" States in trouble. It makes bailouts.
The IMF’s initial charge, dating from 1945, was to stabilize fixed-exchange rates. When exchange rates mostly started to float in 1971 and after, the IMF changed course. It started to make loans to governments for other purposes.
The U.S. is the prime mover and controller of the IMF’s bailouts, loans, and rescues.
The world’s States cooperate, compete, and sometimes make war against each other.
In the modern age, their cooperation through such institutions as the United Nations and the IMF is a form of political cartelization. It enhances each State’s control over its own people. It removes the peoples of the world from the loop of power and control over their governments.
The IMF bails out profligate governments that are spending more than their taxes permit and that are running inflationary monetary policies. Just as bailouts and deposit guarantees of U.S. banks permit the banks to overextend loans, so does the IMF create moral hazard at the country level.
The "deep troubles" and "currency crises" and "banking crises" that the IMF patches up are wounds that countries inflict upon themselves by State control of economies. The IMF reinforces State economic control.
These crises are products of State control over economies and fiat currencies. They are products of central banks in conjunction with fractional-reserve banking systems.
The IMF supplies bandages. It tapes up the wounds so as to keep the overall State-controlled economies and fiat money system going.
When economic difficulties surface due to the State-controlled economies, they often show up in currency, banking, and balance of payments difficulties. Frequently, there is a flight of capital and asset prices decline. The IMF is an international reflation (inflation) institution. It can become the focal institution for arranging swap lines emanating from central banks or financial commitments emanating from State treasuries in order to shore up a country in trouble.
The IMF is an institution of the States, by the States, and for the States. As such, it is basically anti-people and anti-liberty.
At the latest G20 summit, the members moved forward to build up the IMF:
"The world’s top economic powers and the International Monetary Fund are studying creation of a global financial safety net that would give countries quick access to large amounts of cash as a way to stave off crises and discourage emerging-market nations from hoarding foreign reserves.
"In what would be a significant reordering of IMF operations, the proposals would change the agency from a solely reactive one — waiting for countries in trouble to ask for help — to a more activist organization that tries to anticipate where a crisis will spread and move in with enough money to calm markets and prevent broader problems.
"The idea may require a substantial increase in the amount of money that countries pledge to the IMF and a significant liberalization of its lending rules, potentially controversial changes."
The fiat-money financial and banking system of the world, combined with the extensive control over economies of the world’s States, have run aground on a massive reef. The rescue efforts to move the ship off the reef have been going on for several years. Now government sovereign debt problems are coming to the fore.
The G20 is seeking a patch to keep the system running. It has been patching it up for years with Basle requirements and other measures. Enhancements to the IMF have been in the works for years. Now they are much closer to realization.
If the IMF and the States had their way, they would completely control exchange rates and interest rates. They would control capital markets. They would prevent investors from enforcing any kind of discipline on sovereign borrowing and government spending.
Add this alarm bell to a long list of others. Add this grievance to a long list of others. What do they add up to? They add up to the necessity for very great political change.
Large political change demands large changes in political ideas. What most people accept as a normal relation between the individual and government has to change if a dire totalitarian outcome is not to eventuate. Most people defer to government and accept government as their master. This has to change if civilization is to survive. There is simply no alternative but to go to minimalist government and/or self-government. Heart and soul, people have to repudiate the corporative fascist and socialist structures that now dominate their lives.
The established government structures grind on inexorably in directions that have been immune to deflection. There is no option to resisting these developments in toto if one is to avoid degrading slavery. They cannot be fought on a case-by-case basis. The system has to be shattered.
