Like all of you, I struggle daily to try to make sense of it all. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, and I believe that efforts towards unified field theories are futile. Still, I try to make my way. I believe that the interconnection between banking, business and governments is the root of what ails liberty-loving people.
An Unholy Trinity: Big Banks + Big Business + Big Bureaucracy
When not locked together in an iron triangle, none of the Killer B's is inherently evil, and each is beneficial to mankind and society. However, when joined together, they form an axis of evil.
An Axis of Evil
I’m not much for shadowy conspiracy theories. I believe that people are motivated by rational self interest, and if you understand that you can figure most things out.
“Follow the money” is a more popular way to say it, but that doesn’t always work because money is not always the motivation. Why does billionaire Michael Bloomberg so enjoy the high stress, low paying job of mayor of New York City? Power. He enjoys wielding power and making things happen. There are myriad other motivations. People of an engineering bent just want to see things work right, be it a radio or a roadway. People in dangerous professions obviously receive gratification that fear cannot overcome.
The Killer B's
Bankers make money investing your money and loaning it out. No problem—it’s a millennia old institution. But marry it up with a government that can conjure money out of thin air, and a congeries of monetary horrors are spawned: Fractional banking in which banks loan money they don't have, worthless pieces of paper known as fiat currencies, banks trafficking in valueless money, spinning ponzi schemes and creating bubbles and crashes.
Big Business makes money catering to the consumer’s every whim, until government gets involved. Then the game turns sinister. Instead of competing for the consumers’ money, they turn to romancing lawmakers to seek special favors for themselves. The free market is a jungle, better to trade a little liberty for some safety, and the consumer can go to blazes.
Big Bureaucracy also serves a useful purpose. We need public administrators to run our governments, but the problem comes in when they end up running our lives as well. Big Bureaucracy wants to regulate Big Banks and Big Business, but it doesn't know squat about them, so it must invite in Big Bankers and Big Businessmen to create regulatory snarls and police these operations. The fox in the hen house.
Another group not to be forgotten is The People. The Bureaucrats, Bankers and Businessmen use us as propaganda tools while simultaneously propagandizing us.
To Restore Liberty, We Must Shatter the Iron Triangle
I know, fat chance...
If you want to understand banking and money and how badly governments have screwed them up, I highly recommend Murray Rothbard's "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" He is a brilliant professor with a PhD in economics, but he has a gift of breaking it down for the layman.
You can download the audiobook files for free in mp3 format from The Ludwig von Mises Institute's Media Page. You can then listen to them at your leisure or while traveling to work. You won't regret the time spent.
Rothbard – What Has Government Done to Our Money?
