Money - pt1

Even though we are actively encouraged not to think about them in such terms, many of the ideas labelled as ‘conspiracy theories’ are essentially theoretical models put together to explain how the world works.

Virtually everything we believe about science and human affairs is underpinned and challenged by a mass of theoretical models. Models that are, rightly, subject to a continuous process of scrutiny, debate and refinement.

And then there are ‘conspiracy theories’ which are subject to no more than derision.

Very often the differences between an idea that gets into a textbook and one that can only find a home in some dark corner of the Internet are slight. Most ‘conspiracy theories’, discounting the ones that genuinely are plain bonkers, become labelled as such because they fail two key tests -

• They attribute events to some controlling intelligence which, post-Enlightenment, is a definite 'no no'. All truly clever, truly educated people know that everything that happens in the world is either random or deterministic

• Conspiracy theories are sometimes rejected not because they are conspiracy theories but because they are the wrong kind of conspiracy theory and clash with an established paradigm. Hence, suggesting that elements of the US Government might have been involved in 9/11 is insane but believing 9/11 was carried out by a shadowy international crime network controlled from an underground base in remote Central Asia is supremely rational.
  

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I mention all this because I’m beginning to detect to re-emergence on the Internet of an all-time classic Unified Conspiracy Theory, or should I say theoretical model, that fans of 1920s and 1930s history will know and love.

It is, of course…

BANKERS CONTROL THE WORLD!!!

The basic version Bankers Control the WORLD!!! conspiracy theory goes something like this...

• Using fractional reserve banking techniques, Central Bankers flood a target economy with insane amounts of money that they whisk out of thin air. The result is a BOOM of massive inflation, excessive consumption, trade deficits and indebtedness...

Then, when the time is right…

• The Bankers move their own money into commodities or alternate currencies that retain inherent value.
  

Then…

• The Bankers BUST the bubble they created by sharply restricting the money supply, causing a major recession/ depression...

Then...

• The Bankers start foreclosing on everyone like a bastard, whilst bringing their own money back into the economy and picking up the resulting bargains on offer.
  
  Those people who took out loans when prices were high and money was cheap and freely available who manage to avoid foreclosure will still be bollocksed by the effort of servicing those loans with money that is now neither cheap nor freely available.
  
  It’s a Grapes of Wrath thing...
  
  

• Repeat for centuries

Obviously, any parallels drawn between current times and the late 1920s can only go so far. For example, the prospects of people having to buy single loaves of bread with wheelbarrows filled with devalued, hyper-inflated money are slim. Everyone uses credit cards now. Much more convenient and easier on the arms. Besides, good-quality wheelbarrows would be expensive and could be bartered for bread.


The deluxe version of the Bankers CONTROL the World!!! model includes such optional extras as…

• Buying-off or in some other way controlling all major political parties and stifling political expression
  

• The establishment of restrictive security measures and databasing in advance of the bubble bursting and the social unrest that will go with it

• Invading oil-rich countries to stop rag heads popping the bubble early by selling their oil in a currency of their choosing

• Preparing the groundwork for excuses to distract people from what really is fucking their lives up. Stuff like, ooh I don’t know, an ill-defined, unwinnable global war, or targeting and demonising a particular social class or racial group, or maybe invoking the spectre of impending ecological catastrophe, something like that

How crap would living in a world like that be, eh?

The 1920s and 1930s - a good time for lamp design, not such a good time for economic or political moderation
/ big art deco fan
/ not so keen on depressions or fascism
/ except the uniforms

Of course, as with all models, the real fun comes when you test your new model out by applying it to the real world to see if it offers any new insights into that world and, the acid test of any serious model or theory, gauging the quality of its predictive power...

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