I've read a number of comments on this thread concerning trying to find out who is behind the world's monetary systems, and how the banking systems work. I've actually done quite a lot of probing in this area and I would like to share what I've found with the group for discussion. I'll only present the basics here. I've seen that there is a thread on the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) somewhere; later, I'll post the rest of what I've found there as it isn't really pertinent to this thread.
But I believe in order to understand what is going on in the world today re: the world's monetary systems, the first thing to study is the history of the world's reserve currencies.
Here's a chart illustrating the Reserve Currency scam, going back to the year 1400:
And here's the first in four-part series of articles that shows it's really a very small number of families that run this scheme (only eight since the late 1700's) - and I believe that they are also behind both China and Russia's current rise:
The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco)
www.globalresearch.ca
I won't say much more on these families since Laurent Guyénot covers them very well in the book: "From Yahweh to Zion", other than in able to truly follow the family trees of these families one has to follow the *maternal* family line, NOT the paternal. I wonder if they have been able to hide how few they really are with the convention of having the females of the family take on their husband's name, and if this is one of the reasons why this tradition started? I also wonder if there are genes or mutations that code for psychopathy that are sex-linked, related to the X chromosome...
But the executors of history for at least the last 600 years have been those countries that have controlled the world's reserve currency - which is the internationally agreed-upon currency that is used to settle international debts and trades. And according to the chart above, those who control the reserve currency have a very short time in the sun: they only rule the roost for about 70-100 years before there is international strife, resulting in the host country losing its status and a new country taking on the role of monetary leadership.
I believe that this is by design.
How the scam works: those who control the money systems will find a country that they want to subdue, and they will offer to fund some charismatic psychopath in a leading role and build him up militarily, as well as epsouse his "virtues" to the public via the media they also control while simultaneously vilifying and destroying any challengers to their chosen leader by subverting all internal government systems to their own ends.
Once that is done they will begin to antagonize yet another country that they want to own, berating them as heathens and dehumanizing them in the eyes of the public in their chosen host country, eventually starting a series of false-flag events that ultimately get the public behind going to war with the chosen victim.
Once victorious, they will then drain all the capital out of the victim country, being sure to spread a little wealth amongst the public of their host country so as to begin to bribe them to accept their now chosen role of the "center of commerce" and "enforcer of the rule", while continuing to spread their tentacles amongst other countries that they wish to lead.
This way of being now instituted, the following generations grow up ensconsed within this system, and they continue to rule the world roost while consolidating material wealth for the controllers of the money system. But along the way, the violent ways of their host country create a lot of enmity and animosity amongst the victim countries; and also, those growing up amongst all the decadence and material gain begin to get arrogant and soft as they become further ponerized.
Eventually the controllers will drain every last drop of usefulness out of their host country, making sure that their countrymen have shared in the evil wretchedness so that they can foist off much of the karma of their actions upon those they forced to serve them. At that point, they will then look for another country that they wish to own or build up amongst those that they have antagonized to hate their chosen host, find a proper powerful psychopath in that country, and fund *him* to destroy their now soon-to-be ex-host country.
Rinse and repeat. But only every 70-100 years, because you want to make sure that all those that went through the hell of the last changeover are dead and gone, and that you and your families have had plenty of time to re-write history in the meantime to hide what really happened...
And at this time, it looks like the current host countries of the west are scheduled to "lose" to those of the east: China, and Russia. All of this was baked in the cake re: China at least since Nixon agreed to send all American manufacturing there, then axed the gold standard to create the petrodollar. The dollar has lost nearly all of its purchasing power since then...as designed.
Where does Russia stand in all of this? I'll go into more detail on the BIS thread when I get a chance. But in the meantime I recommend a book that I believe Laura once read, a book that she wrote was one of those that woke her up: None Dare Call it Conspiracy, by Gary Allen and Larry Abraham. There was an even better follow-up to that book, written by Abraham in 1985, called "Call it Conspiracy". Those books detail very well what happened the international banker's shenanigans during WWI and WWII, and then the lead-in to what is going on now. I think free PDF's of them can be found on-line, but I've lost the links. But one other man who wrote much of these bankers was professor Antony Sutton, and many of his seminal books are free to download from his Wikipedia page.