In November 1940, Harold Nicolson at Britain's Ministry of Information sent Walther Funk's European economic plan to John Maynard Keynes and asked him to discredit it publicly
It would be more of a case of convergent interests of ruling factions/convergent evolution of the control systems. Still plenty of spoils to fight over amongst the new nobility, even if they all run their empires similarly.
For the rest of us, being a serf is still being a serf.
Perhaps superfluous for those following ESC's work, but — as an intermediate shortcut and to put things in a broader perspective, this:
"A multilateral clearing system that settles payments between nations through bookkeeping rather than gold shipment solves the problem that had crippled international trade since 1931 — the chronic shortage of settlement currency that forced countries into bilateral barter. The gold standard had collapsed, bilateral clearing created bottlenecks, and multilateral clearing through a central institution was the answer."
is a driving force behind multilaterism (today) —> (technocratic) globalism in an ethical guise.
Because, as ESC rightly notes: "it was never about the ethic(s) — it was about the clearing function."
Naturally, you are not presented with these 'bridges' during your economics studies at university. Not even during (exclusive) 'Globalization' lectures by a former PM and later UN Secretary.
Instead "you'll study the choices made by individuals, businesses, and governments and how those choices impact the world."
I get that this framework has been used to the advantage of a small group, but a clearing function that makes trade between nations easier isn't inherently a problem. Permanence across election cycles is a real obstacle to change — but hand a single politician the power to rewrite the financial system on a four-year cycle, and isn't that worse?
Some insulation from election-cycle whiplash seems necessary for a system this large to function at all. So maybe permanence itself isn't the actual problem — it's permanence with no transparency, no public comment period, no way to contest or revise a standard once it's set, and no clearly identifiable authorship anyone could be held accountable to. Is there a version of insulated-but-accountable you think could work, or is the structure you're documenting fundamentally incompatible with that kind of accountability?
Without something to compare it to, it's hard for me to judge whether what we have is worse than the alternatives — especially when nobody currently in power is offering a better design.
the problem is invisibility, severe lack of accountability, the fabrication of a science-driven 'ethic' that can't be challenged, and the removal of any democratic override.
all of this has been pushed through in the dark. the institutional history has been selectively constructed, ensuring you never latched onto the central clearing mechanism shared by nazi, soviet, and liberal order governance. that omission wasn't by accident.
so if the clearing mechanism is useful is actually somewhat besides the point, because you cannot trust people who pushed this through completely in the dark.
beyond my substack, i do not see a single instance of this being commonly discussed and placed in its rightful place in terms of world history - and google, facebook and twitter go to great lengths to throttle my impression counts.
the fact that i had to manually reconstruct the history of julius wolf, and go through pretty obscure yet pivotal documents posted in 1932 and 1942 alone frankly says it all...
Thank you for your powerful reply. You packed a lot into a few lines there. It's hard to keep all of this history in biological RAM but you're absolutely right: nothing happens until it's dark outside. I appreciate your painstaking efforts to get this info out into the world.
I hope you can take your treatment by google, facebook and twitter as testaments to the quality of your work and the importance of what you're covering.
As I've frequently noted, the US and British rulers of "the West" before & after WWII had liked nearly everything about fascism EXCEPT that someone ELSE than them was trying to run that corporatist's wet dream of an algorithm. The USA had almost fixed that bug post 1990, then some difficult nations in Asia insisted on taking a meaningful part of the control structure rather than merely coughing up cheap natural resources & being a subservient mass labor subcontractor... And here we are today.
They were never on different sides in the first place.
cf Anthony Sutton on Wall Street funding both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis.
So, not v surprising if they all converged in 1957 or whenever.
That was always the plan, the Kalergi plan.
the kalergi plan was one input of five. julius wolf is closer to the root. moses hess... even closer.
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/three-witnesses
It would be more of a case of convergent interests of ruling factions/convergent evolution of the control systems. Still plenty of spoils to fight over amongst the new nobility, even if they all run their empires similarly.
For the rest of us, being a serf is still being a serf.
You nailed it. "They were never on different sides in the first place."
Perhaps superfluous for those following ESC's work, but — as an intermediate shortcut and to put things in a broader perspective, this:
"A multilateral clearing system that settles payments between nations through bookkeeping rather than gold shipment solves the problem that had crippled international trade since 1931 — the chronic shortage of settlement currency that forced countries into bilateral barter. The gold standard had collapsed, bilateral clearing created bottlenecks, and multilateral clearing through a central institution was the answer."
is a driving force behind multilaterism (today) —> (technocratic) globalism in an ethical guise.
https://www.iberdrola.com/social-commitment/what-is-multilateralism
Because, as ESC rightly notes: "it was never about the ethic(s) — it was about the clearing function."
Naturally, you are not presented with these 'bridges' during your economics studies at university. Not even during (exclusive) 'Globalization' lectures by a former PM and later UN Secretary.
Instead "you'll study the choices made by individuals, businesses, and governments and how those choices impact the world."
I get that this framework has been used to the advantage of a small group, but a clearing function that makes trade between nations easier isn't inherently a problem. Permanence across election cycles is a real obstacle to change — but hand a single politician the power to rewrite the financial system on a four-year cycle, and isn't that worse?
Some insulation from election-cycle whiplash seems necessary for a system this large to function at all. So maybe permanence itself isn't the actual problem — it's permanence with no transparency, no public comment period, no way to contest or revise a standard once it's set, and no clearly identifiable authorship anyone could be held accountable to. Is there a version of insulated-but-accountable you think could work, or is the structure you're documenting fundamentally incompatible with that kind of accountability?
Without something to compare it to, it's hard for me to judge whether what we have is worse than the alternatives — especially when nobody currently in power is offering a better design.
the problem is invisibility, severe lack of accountability, the fabrication of a science-driven 'ethic' that can't be challenged, and the removal of any democratic override.
all of this has been pushed through in the dark. the institutional history has been selectively constructed, ensuring you never latched onto the central clearing mechanism shared by nazi, soviet, and liberal order governance. that omission wasn't by accident.
so if the clearing mechanism is useful is actually somewhat besides the point, because you cannot trust people who pushed this through completely in the dark.
beyond my substack, i do not see a single instance of this being commonly discussed and placed in its rightful place in terms of world history - and google, facebook and twitter go to great lengths to throttle my impression counts.
the fact that i had to manually reconstruct the history of julius wolf, and go through pretty obscure yet pivotal documents posted in 1932 and 1942 alone frankly says it all...
Thank you for your powerful reply. You packed a lot into a few lines there. It's hard to keep all of this history in biological RAM but you're absolutely right: nothing happens until it's dark outside. I appreciate your painstaking efforts to get this info out into the world.
I hope you can take your treatment by google, facebook and twitter as testaments to the quality of your work and the importance of what you're covering.
As I've frequently noted, the US and British rulers of "the West" before & after WWII had liked nearly everything about fascism EXCEPT that someone ELSE than them was trying to run that corporatist's wet dream of an algorithm. The USA had almost fixed that bug post 1990, then some difficult nations in Asia insisted on taking a meaningful part of the control structure rather than merely coughing up cheap natural resources & being a subservient mass labor subcontractor... And here we are today.