Since the financial crisis began in 2008 – talk of recovery notwithstanding, we are still in the midst of this crisis; the debt situation, which spawned the crisis, is worse today than it was at the time of the original collapse – there has been no shortage articles and websites devoted to the current problems. What this author finds interesting is that despite the intense scrutiny given by many observers to organizations such as the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, almost no one in either the mainstream or alternate media seems to be interested in the activities of the what is probably the largest, the wealthiest, and certainly the most secretive organization in international finance today. I’m speaking on none other than the Roman Catholic Church- State (RCCS).
In a remarkable piece posted on the Berean Beacon website, The Financial Crisis and the Papal Economic Offensive, authors Richard Bennett and Ronald Cooper break the silence. They make the case that not only is the Western financial crisis ongoing, but that the policies of the Vatican, far from making things better, actually make the situation worse. The authors center their attack on the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Universal Destination of Goods (UDG). Although many people don’t seem to realize it, Rome has a very different view of private property than the Bible. In Scripture, private property is just that, it is private, the state has no part in regulating its use and certainly has no business in taking it to give to another. In Romanist economics, your property is yours until, well, someone else needs it. At that point, the needy individual has the right to take what is yours and use it for himself, or get the government to do the taking for him. In other words, Roman Catholic economics is socialist to the core.
Since the financial crisis commenced in 2008, the existing organs of international finance, including the Federal Reserve, have attempted to hold things together with what is essentially chewing-gum-and-bailing-wire monetary policy. Unless you are follow the financial markets on a regular basis, it is easy to miss the sheer scale of the financial interventions that the Fed has attempted in recent years. In 2008 before the crisis began, the Fed owned about $800 billion in assets. These assets, Treasury bonds for example, were purchased by the Fed using money that it created itself. It is through the purchase of these assets that the Fed controls the amount of money and credit in the financial system, or in the parlance of the news media, it is how the Fed “injects” capital into the economy. The more assets the Fed purchases with newly created money, the larger the monetary base. This increase in the number of dollars in the financial system is, in fact, inflation. Or to be more specific, it is monetary inflation. And the result of this monetary inflation tends to be price inflation, the general rise in the cost of final good and services, which is what most people mean when they use the term “inflation.” This activity is fraudulent and properly considered theft. And what is worse, all this is done with scarcely any oversight by Congress. The American people know almost nothing about and have no control over the activities of an organization whose actions affect the lives of every single person in this country. In short, the Fed is an agent of tyranny.
Since Quantitative Easing (QE) was introduced in 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet has grown from about $800 billion to over $3.6 trillion. Think about it for a moment, the Fed took 95 years, from its creation in 1913 until 2008, to own $800 billion in assets. During the past 5 years, it has more than quadrupled this amount, and no end is clearly in sight. This expansion in the monetary base can been seen here at the website of the St. Louis Fed. Please note that nearly $1 trillion of this increase has come in just the past year alone as a result of the Fed’s third attempt to stimulate the economy by printing money known as QE3. This expansion of the monetary base clearly implies significant price inflation is ahead for the US economy.
It also clearly indicates that the problems in the financial system are much worse than the mainstream media and politicians indicate. If I may use a football analogy, QE is the monetary policy equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. But this really understates the case. Hail Marys occasionally work in football. On the other hand, the probability that QE will restore financial health to the US government and economy is zero. It is doomed to failure.
But then again, maybe not. It would depend on how you define failure. If you mean that QE will not restore US and world finance to health, then, yes, QE is a failure. But what if this is not the aim of QE? What if Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and all the other bright people at the Fed know that QE will never do what they publically claim it will, get the US economy back on a sound footing? But what if this is not their intent. What if the purpose of QE is to buy time to set up a replacement for the current international dollar-based financial system?
Jim Rickards, one of the most insightful and influential financial writers in the business, seems to think that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may soon take over from the Federal Reserve as the dominant monetary force in the world, and has spelled out in some detail how this new IMF currency system would worFk. Writing in his book Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, Rickards comments,
In a paper entitled “Enhancing International Monetary Stability – A Role for the SDR [Special Drawing Rights, the name for the currency the IMF’s may use to replace the dollar]” the IMF presented a blueprint for the creation of a liquid SDR bond market, the antecedent to replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency with SDRs…
One group of multinational economists and central bankers, guided by Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz, has suggested that SDRs could be issued to IMF member countries and then deposited back with the IMF to fund its lending programs. This would accelerate the IMF’s ascension to the role of global central bank even more quickly than the IMF itself has proposed. (Currency Wars, pp.232, 33)
Instead of the existing dollar-based world financial system, we would have a system in which a currency issued by the IMF would take the dollar’s place in settling international payments. Were this to happen, there would likely be a sudden decrease in the value of the dollar, meaning radically higher prices for Americans, and a much lower standard of living would result.
Now here’s where it gets interesting. Bennett and Cooper mentioned in their paper that the Papacy has been on the offensive in the sphere of economics. As they document in their article, the Vatican has taken a keen interest in the IMF and its workings. They write,
“There is alarming evidence of a dangerous association of the Papacy with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). On the Vatican Website one will find eleven posted comments on the IMF. For example, the Vatican taught its own policies to IMF leaders in an organized seminar arranged for them in the year 2000 [see here for the link].”
If the IMF becomes the world’s central bank, and the Papacy is heavily involved in the IMF, what does this say about the future of world commerce? In Revelation, the apostle John speaks about the “mark of the beast.” And this mark is clearly related to economic activity. John writes,
“He [the best from the earth] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or t he name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666” (Revelation 13:16-18).
This same chapter of Revelation describes the beast, whose mark the people receive, as having recovered from a deadly wound (v.12). This beast, as was understood by nearly all Protestants prior to 1900, is the Roman Catholic Church, recovering from the effects of the Protestant Reformation. Like some horror movie cliché, the beast is back, bigger, richer, and more heretical than ever. Should the IMF become the world’s central bank, as Rickards believes it will, and if Rome is already heavily involved with the IMF, it seems a genuine possibility that the entire world financial system could come under the thumb of the Vatican Antichrist. This is how Rome controlled Europe for a millennium, using centralized, unelected and unaccountable governments. The IMF answers to this description quite nicely And that being the case, is it such a stretch to suppose that Rome could use the IMF, or some other similar agency, as the means affix the mark of the beast to people on a world-wide scale? Rome has the history and the ambition to do just that. Right now, it lacks only the means. But that could change.
The current world financial system is living on borrowed time. Current policies, both fiscal and monetary, in the US and throughout the West are out of control and unsustainable. The US alone is printing $1 trillion a year just to keep the Treasury bond market from collapsing. And any talk of a reduction in the printing rate is met by convulsions in the financial markets. Yet there is no political will in the US or elsewhere to make the changes needed – this includes radically reduced government spending, elimination of the entitlement mentality, the return of the rule of law and sound money – to stop the QE and put Western democracies on the road to genuine financial recovery. To quote George W. Bush, “this sucker’s going down.” But what will replace it? Some writers of the Libertarian bent think that the collapse of current governmental structures will usher in an age of utopian anarchy in which all live and prosper in a perfect state of voluntary cooperation. Given the problem of original sin, which seems to be absent from the writings of the Libertarian-anarchists, this seems highly unlikely. The Christian model for government is not anarchy, rather, it is constitutional republicanism. Unfortunately, Christian ideas are have all but vanished in the West. And in the absence of Christian ideas, there is no good reason to believe the current system will produce a better one in the event of a collapse. History, and more importantly the Bible, suggest something rather less attractive is in store. Keep your eyes on the Vatican.
[…] away from people calling for someone, anyone to rescue them. What is more, the Vatican is already involved with the IMF. It just may be that God is ripening the world for the global economic and political […]
[…] development. Although Griffin does not make this point in his book, as this reviewer has discussed elsewhere, the Roman Catholic Church has significant connections to the IMF. If the IMF does take over as the […]
My friend, most of your theories here neglect the fact that RCC was the only force outlawing global Usury, until the “Reform” allied with Talmudic financiers to unleash the Usury Genie all over again. See Dr. E Michael Jones’ book ‘Barren Metal’.
Your review praising G. Edward Griffin’s ‘Creature from Jekyll Island’ is also way off, as he promotes a return to the gold standard, which only empowers those who own/produce the Gold.
You claim the RCC is the “wealthiest” on Earth may or may not be true, if land-holdings among members are taken into account. After all we have far more members than all of Protestantism’s 42,000+ sects combined. But other than that, where is your proof? Where’s your financial records about the Vatican specifically, as if it owns the world’s banks? Even the Vatican Bank is well known to have capital only in the 100s of Millions, not Trillions like your other banks.
The fact remains, England since Henry VIII looted most of RCC lands / wealth, not only in Ireland, Scotland, and UK Itself for 5 centuries, but also globally. And thus they owe Restitution under Christ’s own teachings. Yet you conveniently overlook that, as well as the Genocides it caused (such as Henry VIII’s mass murders, Cromwell’s massacre of 1-2 million Irish Catholics, James I’s ethnic cleansing of N Ireland in his Ulster Plantation, the Irish Potato Famine, and Communist revolution as a reaction to that).
Dr. E. Michael Jones – Barren Metal
I guess we’re just going to have to disagree.