Federal Reserve System

Federal Reserve System

It was a conspiracy theorists’ dream come upwards true: a grouping of wealthy bankers, supported past times academics as well as politicians, skulking off to a secluded isle to concoct a consummate transformation of the U.S. banking system. The coming together inwards Nov 1910 on Jekyll Island, Georgia, which established the pattern for the Federal Reserve System, played to long-held Populist fears of “Eastern Money Interests,” Jews, as well as large banks. When the programme was presented to Congress, it effectively increased the potency of the federal government—at least, indirectly—over the nation’s banking system.

Ever since concerns nigh “foreign interests” inwards the First as well as Second Banks of the United States, about Americans had viewed banks suspiciously. Writers such every bit William Gouge as well as politicians such every bit Thomas Hart “Old Bullion” Benton advocated a metallic element criterion of aureate as well as silvery money only. These “hard money” proponents supported Andrew Jackson’s “war” on the Bank of the US as well as distrusted all forms of newspaper money.

Although “hard money” advocates were inwards the minority inwards most states, they appealed to farmers as well as laborers who distrusted moneyed elites. After the Civil War, ironically, this same distrust evidenced itself inwards a demand for newspaper money (“Greenbackism”) and/or for coinage of silver, a seat best associated with William Jennings Bryan.


By the tardily 1800s, however, although most Americans were satisfied with the nature of the banking system, they realized that of import weaknesses existed. The banking organization was non sufficiently “elastic,” pregnant that it could non expand or contract the money provide when economical weather condition changed.

Another occupation concern for those familiar with the financial sector was that inwards several panics—1873, 1893, as well as 1907—a unmarried banker, J. P. Morgan, had stepped inwards with a consortium of bankers to rescue the system. After the 1907 panic, fifty-fifty Morgan admitted that whatever hereafter banking concern runs mightiness live beyond his powerfulness to contain.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 serial of commissions as well as studies past times the American Bankers Association as well as the federal authorities produced a number of recommendations, most notably the demand for a fundamental banking concern as well as nationwide interstate branch banking. (Many states did non permit intrastate branch banking, as well as interstate branch banking was viewed every bit illegal, although no limited challenges to interstate banking had occurred.)

Virtually all of these studies concluded that whatever reforms inwards the banking organization would require a powerful national banking concern capable of acting every bit a “lender of final resort” as well as tasked with providing liquidity to the banking organization every bit a whole to permit for greater “elasticity.”

An unstated, but widely held, destination of many of the reformers was also to bound or bring down the powerfulness of the New York banks, such every bit National City Bank, J. P. Morgan, as well as Kuhn, Loeb, as well as Company. Despite the fact that Morgan himself as well as most of the officers of National City were Protestants, a widely held suspicion existed inwards the rural US that the New York banks were dominated past times Jews. (The presence of Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb with the Jekyll Island grouping of “conspirators” reinforced the fright of “powerful New York Jews.”)

Federal reserve building

Whether many Americans indeed feared a Jewish chemical factor inwards the “money power” or not, a pop innovation was that banks inwards New York wielded inordinate power. Thus, the reformers’ plans also involved dissimilar strategies for minimizing the influence of the New York banks.

By 1913, the US had what is termed a “dual banking” organization consisting of state-chartered banks (which could non number money), as well as national banks, chartered past times the federal government, which could number banknotes. The comptroller of the currency had potency over all national banks, piece nation authorities (bank examiners as well as such) supervised the nation banks. There was no fundamental banking concern or “lender of final resort,” or whatever national origin of credit expansion.

Following J. P. Morgan’s formation of a consortium of banks to bail out the banking organization during the panic of 1907, concerns arose over the “consolidation” of banking power, particularly inwards New York. Congressman Arsene Pujo’s House Banking as well as Currency Committee, which convened inwards 1911, investigated Morgan as well as First National’s George F. Baker, as well as concluded that New York banks controlled far to a greater extent than financial assets than they truly owned through diverse investments, interlocking directorates, as well as trust companies. New York, Pujo claimed, controlled 43 per centum of the money inwards the United States.

When the Jekyll Island coming together took place, all of these concerns played upon the reforms to which the participants agreed. The fundamental individuals who drafted the reason of the Federal Reserve Bank organization were Senator Nelson Aldrich (head of the National Monetary Commission); Henry P. Davison of J. P. Morgan; Charles D. Norton of First National Bank; Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb; as well as Colonel Edward House (one of President Woodrow Wilson’s closest advisors).

Not solely was this a little group, but conspiracy-minded people could betoken to the fact that Warburg was Jewish, or that House had connections to London banks as well as that he had written a futuristic novel Philip Dru, Administrator, a story inwards which Marxist socialism triumphed. Worse, the coming together took house inwards secret. Aldrich, especially, was concerned that if a programme was non drafted inwards secret, “special interest” lobbyists would nitpick it to death.

Aldrich’s presence convinced about that John D. Rockefeller was manipulating the meeting. Morgan, according to i conspiracy view, was a “Rockefeller stooge”—an astonishing claim nigh i of the richest men inwards the world. Morgan controlled the Fed nib through Aldrich, his “floor broker inwards the Senate”.

Rockefeller as well as so used the Fed, according to this view, to “bankroll” the Bolshevik Revolution inwards Russia, manipulate stock prices through inflation, as well as force the agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as well as Trilateral Commission inwards afterwards years.

There is no query with historians that the Jekyll Island coming together resulted inwards the essence of the Federal Reserve Act, introduced past times Congressman Carter Glass of Virginia, chairman of the House Committee on Banking. Far from beingness drafted inwards secrecy, the Federal Reserve Act was debated extensively as well as was subjected to much compromise earlier beingness passed overwhelmingly past times the House (298 to 60) as well as the Senate (43 to 25).

Under the act, twelve Federal Reserve District Banks were established inwards dissimilar regions across the United States. Each of these banks was a corporation owned past times the fellow member banks inwards its district, as well as piece all national banks had to live members, nation banks were non required to bring together the Federal Reserve System.

Member banks had to house six per centum of their uppercase as well as surplus inwards the district bank. One of the important factors of the human activeness was the location of the district banks: New York, of course, had one, every bit did Philadelphia as well as Boston.

But Minneapolis, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, as well as Richmond all had district banks, as well as the nation of Missouri—the pump of the Midwest—had ii (St. Louis as well as Kansas City). Clearly, Congress had gone out of its agency to dilute the “money power” of New York.

Any district banking concern could human activeness to halt runs past times providing emergency cash from its vaults, as well as inwards theory, if i entire district was inwards trouble, other districts would come upwards to its aid. The “elasticity” work was addressed through the Fed’s manipulation of discount rates to lend money to fellow member banks to either expand, or contract, credit.

In reality, though, New York retained its powerfulness through its overall influence, its dominant leadership, as well as its connections to corporate America. Congress intended that a Federal Reserve Board of Governors should live instituted, made upwards of v members appointed past times the president as well as confirmed past times the Senate, every bit good every bit the comptroller as well as the secretarial assistant of the Treasury.

The Banking Act of 1935 changed this past times moving key decisions to the Federal Open Market Committee, composed of 7 members of the Board of Governors as well as v of the twelve district banking concern presidents, including the New York president.

The Federal Reserve Act was established on the supposition that the nation’s money provide would rest tied to gold, as well as so its open-market activities were e'er balanced with an oculus toward the aureate stockpiles. When the stock marketplace crashed inwards 1929, many contended that the Federal Reserve had encouraged the stock marketplace “boom” past times providing “easy credit.”

Subsequent inquiry has shown that if anything the Fed failed to expand the money provide inwards proportion to the rapid growth inwards the industrial sector, as well as that a irksome but destructive deflation had occurred. After 1930, the Federal Reserve engaged inwards a deliberate massive credit contraction that helped plunge the nation into the Great Depression, silent nether the supposition that the Great Bull Market had resulted from “loose money.”

The contraction also ensued, however, because every bit other nations left the aureate standard, as well as every bit the aureate backing of U.S. banks eroded, depositors withdrew funds at an alarming rate. President Franklin Roosevelt took the US off the aureate standard, stabilizing the banks. But his prohibition of private aureate ownership inwards 1934 was viewed every bit percentage of the conspiracy to house all financial powerfulness inwards the hands of the Federal Reserve System.

The entire aureate criterion disceptation pits a number of conspiracy theories against i another. For example, if the Bank of England sought command over the U.S. economy, it mightiness receive got attempted to weaken the economic scheme past times leaving the aureate standard. With the US left every bit the solely nation inwards the the world whose currency was silent tied to gold, U.S. aureate reserves would receive got flooded out, as well as U.S. banks would receive got collapsed—as nearly happened.

On the other hand, the solution, as well as the path taken past times Franklin Roosevelt, was to secure the banking system’s aureate asset base of operations past times prohibiting private aureate ownership, except for jewelers as well as dentists. Yet this is viewed past times other conspiracy theorists every bit bear witness of Roosevelt’s programme to centralize the economic scheme as well as brand citizens dependent on worthless newspaper money.

In fact, solely a perfectly coordinated international conspiracy, assisted past times the deliberate actions of totalitarian states that hated each other—Germany as well as the Soviet Union—could receive got mayhap manipulated such events. Not solely would the Bank of England as well as the Federal Reserve System receive got needed to operate inwards unison, but so would the Bank of France, the Reichsbank, as well as virtually every other fundamental banking concern inwards the world, all coordinating vastly dissimilar command-and-control structures, governance systems, as well as national goals.

Over these conspiracies, i tin give the sack stretch yet about other layer, namely that of “international Jewry,” which was manipulating economical developments to its ain ends, about inwards concert with, as well as about antithetical to scenarios involving the British or a Roosevelt dictatorship.

Since World War II, about receive got been convinced that the Federal Reserve’s open-market activities were designed to ensure that those presidents favored past times the Fed maintained their office, as well as those who displeased the Fed lost theirs. Despite the Fed’s supposed independent status, many struggle that it has conveniently lowered rates to back upwards the economic scheme of leaders to whom it was favorably disposed.

Yet i of the most despised presidents of modern times, Bill Clinton (whom conspiracists receive got defendant of beingness a “Trilateralist as well as Bilderberger”), witnessed multiple interest-rate hikes past times the Fed during his two-term presidency. Thus, either he had no command over the Fed, or the Fed was working inwards direct opposition to the ends of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as the Bilderberger group.

In the post–World War II era, the Bretton Woods understanding pegged unusual currencies to the dollar, as well as although the dollar was legally required to live convertible into gold, it was nevertheless pegged to aureate inwards price. That organization collapsed inwards 1968 after consistent federal budget deficits made it impossible for the dollar to grip its value. After that, the world’s currencies entered a to a greater extent than competitive era inwards which they “floated,” or competed, against each other.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 to a greater extent than consistent criticism of the Federal Reserve is that it has virtually eliminated aureate as well as silvery coinage, supposedly inwards violation of the Constitution. With all newspaper money inwards the command of the federal government, the economic scheme would live at the mercy of either the White House or the Fed, as well as individuals would move slaves to “fiat money.” For to a greater extent than than ii decades after the Great Depression, the prohibition against asset aureate remained inwards place, but inwards the early on 1970s, the authorities in i lawsuit once again allowed individuals to purchase as well as sell aureate coins.

Although the value of Canadian Maple Leafs as well as other pop aureate coins fluctuated wildly with the cost hikes inwards stone oil emanating from OPEC, inwards the 1980s the Fed’s anti-inflation policies nearly eliminated whatever premium on gold. For the side past times side xx years, aureate hovered steadily at historically depression prices, causing consternation with those who pointed to aureate every bit a key indicator of government-generated inflation.

If anything, the Fed has consistently lost command of the banking organization as well as seen its influence over the economic scheme weakened. The appearance of electronic funds transfers as well as high-speed satellite transmissions made data on financial markets available anywhere inwards the world, instantaneously.

No authorities could shroud weaknesses inwards its monetary or financial policy for to a greater extent than than a few hours. Meanwhile, the speed of banking transactions brought the United States— as well as the world—increasingly closer to competitive money, if non inwards actual newspaper form, at to the lowest degree inwards electronic cast as well as inwards credit/debit bill of fare substitutes.

Ukraine

Ukraine

Since 1991, Ukraine has been an independent state, the sovereignty of which is now recognized by all the countries of the world. Ukraine is one of the biggest European states (603,700 square kilometers). Ukraine has common borders with seven countries (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Russia, and Byelorussia), and the Black and Azov Seas are on its southern border.

Ukraine consists of 24 regions (oblast) and the Crimea Autonomous Republic. The capital of Ukraine is Kiev. A Pan-Ukrainian population census in 2001 found the total number of inhabitants at 48,416,000. The majority are city inhabitants, and 32 percent live in the countryside.

Over 100 ethnicities and nationalities are represented in contemporary Ukraine. Among them are Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, Moldavians, Crimean Tatars, and Bulgarians. Most of the population of Ukraine belongs to the Orthodox Christian Church.


Striving for national and state independence was a key issue in Ukraine in the 20th century. This aspiration, partly realized during the hard days of 1917–20, remained potent political motivation for Ukrainians living all over the world. The democracy brought by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika inspired ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union to activate national liberation movements.

Revision of the Ukrainian nation historical past, promoted by representatives of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group of human rights activists; a rise in national identity supported and developed by artists, poets, writers, and scientists; and the people’s movement known as "meeting democracy" had created the necessary background for historical action. On July 16, 1990, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine, first among the republics of the former Soviet Union, adopted a declaration of state sovereignty of Ukraine.

Ukraine map

The next step was a coup that took place in the Soviet Union on August 19–21, 1994, and that resulted in the pronouncement of the Act of State Independence of Ukraine by Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Soon afterward the first elections were held for president of independent Ukraine (Leonid Kravchuk won and was president from 1991 to 1994), combined with an all Ukrainian referendum for endorsement of the independence of Ukraine.

Since that time a series of measures aimed at the organization of bodies and institutions necessary for an independent Ukraine have been undertaken. Some acts were compromises with the Russian Federation; because of the deep economic integration of both countries, it was hard to become separated at once.

Issues included the state border between Ukraine and Russia in the Azov Sea; the presence of the Russian navy in Sevastopol in Crimea and the status of that city; and the persoalan of the frontier with Romania around Zmeinyi Island. Some others still remain only partially solved.

On December 7–8, 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia signed a document denouncing the union treaty of 1922, according to which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had been organized. A treaty establishing a Commonwealth of Independent States was signed instead. Since that time, Ukraine has been free to conduct its internal policy.

During 1991–94 a series of democratic reforms were instituted in Ukraine, among which the most important were beginning a constitutional process, the improvement of the multiparty system, the formulation of basic principles of foreign policy and international cooperation, the formulation of a military doctrine, introduction of economic reforms, the elaboration of an ethnic policy, and the creation of relationships with the different churches represented in Ukraine.

The presidential and parliamentary elections of 1994 opened a new phase in the political development of Ukraine. The keystone of the political history of Ukraine at that time was the adoption of a new constitution (June 28, 1996), a long and hard process that repeatedly caused political and parliamentary criss.

It was the beginning of parliamentary and presidential opposition, which led to growing tension during Kuchma’s presidency in relation to the composition of parliament factions and their representation.

The presidential elections of 2004 and the following Orange Revolution opened a new masa in the political history of Ukraine, characterized by general democratization and liberalization of the political process.

Ukrainians dissatisfied with officially announced results of the runoff election between presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich and leader of the opposition Viktor Yuschenko demonstrated in the principal square of Kiev—the Maidan (Square) of Independence—and for several weeks people from various cities, towns, and villages in Ukraine marched for democracy, for their political rights, and for the possibility to make their political choices freely.

Orange Revolution

Orange Revolution

Representatives of different political parties and movements united their efforts in this process, and the Orange Revolution ended in a victory for democracy in Ukraine. A coalition government, with the participation of all "orange" parties and movements, was formed, with Julia Timoshenko as the first woman prime minister in the history of Ukraine.

In local administrations, thousands of former functionaries of different levels have been replaced by "orange" democrats. New priorities in foreign policy, a tendency toward integration with the European Union (EU) and cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and reorientation of trade relationships have been elaborated.

Nevertheless, as early as the beginning of September 2005, Julia Timoshenko’s government was dismissed, and it became clear that there were serious discrepancies among Orange Revolution leaders and representatives of different orange parties.

Political reform that implies the transition of Ukraine from presidential to parliamentary republic was adopted by the parliament and became a point of serious discussion among "orange" revolutionaries, social democrats, representatives of the Party of Regions, and communists. The ideals of democracy and freedom still remain the essence of the Viktor Yuschenko presidency, as was shown by the first free parliamentary election in March 2006.

Viktor Yuschenko

Shortly after its independence, Ukraine faced problems during the transitional period of economic development from planned socialism to free-market forms. The destruction of traditional Soviet resources, marketing, and energetic and macroeconomic networks, along with the extreme difficulty of creating new ones in the European community, and the urgent need for modernization of basic equipment and production techniques, negatively influenced the general state and the prospects of further development of the economy of Ukraine. A so-called shadow economy sprang up and grew rapidly with substantial support from the highest administration of Ukraine, which appeared to be corrupt.

Inflation, accompanied by a decrease in purchasing power, indicated that the standard of living of Ukrainians decreased to a crucial level, creating a need for the state administration to finance a series of social programs. Pension reform, changes in support for families with low income, support for veterans of World War II, and many other social actions were undertaken.

Broad-scale raising of salaries, stipends, and pensions began in 2004 under the government headed by Viktor Yanukovich on the eve of presidential elections. The new president of Ukraine, Viktor Yuschenko, and his ministries consequently instituted a series of social programs aimed at improving the standard of living.

A series of economic reforms, including the introduction of new currency, privatization in agriculture and industry, promotion of national producers and national product exportation, searches for new investments and new sources of power supply abroad, and cooperation with the World Bank, gradually contributed to a general slow growth of the Ukrainian economy after 2000.

The creation of a new macroeconomic network, tending toward integration with the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), is the principal strategic goal proclaimed by President Yuschenko.

The organization of an independent state of Ukraine led to a new animo in the development of the ideology and culture of the country, connected with the formation of the ideas of national unity and ethnic and national self-identification.

The process of national memory revival, studies of the cultural and historical past of the Ukrainian nation, rediscovering cultural heritage, the revival of the folk culture of national minorities, and the establishment of fruitful connections with the Ukrainian diaspora are key aspects of the cultural development of Ukraine in the new millenium.

One of the sharpest debates in the context of cultural development is the discussion of an official language of Ukraine. It was demonstrated in the presidential election of 2004 and the parliamentary election of 2006 that a strong Russian-speaking opposition still exists in Ukraine.

The activation of religious life in independent Ukraine after the dismantling of a totalitarian ideology brought a series of conflicts, first of all among representatives of different branches of Orthodox Christianity. As stated by the constitution of Ukraine, the nonobligatory character of any religion creates the background necessary for religious pluralism and freedom of people’s consciousness.

Russian Federation

In the years after 1991 Russia experienced a revolution in the name of reform. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had been a one-party dictatorship that strove to control all aspects of life. Its collapse unleashed a host of social forces and triggered an array of experiments as people sought simultaneously to create a democratic government, a market economy, and a civil society.

Other countries, including other remnants of the Soviet Union, were attempting similar experiments on different scales at the same time. No one, however, had ever attempted this before, and there was no blueprint to follow.

During this period, the administration of Boris Yeltsin would be identified with the destruction of the old structures, a struggle among alternative visions, and chaotic and sometimes contradictory efforts to build something new. The administration of Vladimir Putin would represent a longing to reestablish order, stability, and security.


The Soviet collapse in 1991 came with remarkable rapidity. Unlike the collapse of czarist Russia in 1917, which was also sudden, this one was neither preceded by a world war nor followed by a civil war. There were relatively few violent conflicts, and those tended to be clashes between rival nationalisms.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had underestimated the attraction of nationalism to his country’s various constituent peoples and had overestimated people’s loyalty to the communist system.

In forcing people, officials and citizens alike, to conceal their personal beliefs as well as inconvenient political and economic facts, the Soviet system had denied its own leaders the ability to gauge the true situation and had denied people in general the possibility of fully developing their own ideas.

Gorbachev’s efforts to reform the system, in part by releasing the energies of the citizenry in the hope of using them against a sclerotic bureaucracy, resulted in the system’s demise.

Free multicandidate elections to a new national legislature in 1989 and elections to republic-level legislatures in 1990 unleashed a mass of rebellious and conflicting demands. In the course of the year, most of the republics declared "sovereignty" within the Soviet Union, that is, they asserted that republic law would henceforth be above federal law.

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, as the Russian portion of the Soviet Union was officially known, did so on June 12, 1990. At about the same time, the media began to free itself of government control.

On the anniversary of the sovereignty declaration, June 12, 1991, while the republic was still part of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin, a former Communist Party official who had fallen out with the leadership, became Russia’s first elected president.

A failed reactionary coup launched by party, military, and police officials in August 1991 was the simpulan blow in the centrifugal process that was tearing the Soviet Union apart. In the aftermath, the Communist Party was dissolved and no comparable integrative institution was created to replace it.

Yeltsin began appearing alongside Gorbachev, the Soviet president, as a coequal. Key republics, especially Ukraine, began to believe they would be better off without the "burden" of the other republics and moved toward independence. At the very least, they ceased forwarding tax receipts to the capital, compelling Russia to take over responsibility for financing central state functions.

On December 8, 1991, confronted with Ukraine’s precipitous unilateral independence, Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus declared their republics a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), even though Russia had never formally withdrawn from the Soviet Union.

Leaders of other republics, petrified at the prospect of their sudden isolation, immediately demanded membership in the CIS as well. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned from the presidency in frustration. No one attempted to replace him, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics legally ceased to exist. In many ways it had already evaporated, although just when this occurred is difficult to determine.

After a brief attempt to maintain unified CIS armed forces, the republics took control of the military assets of their respective territories and created their own armies. Republics with nuclear arms stationed on their territories agreed to send them to Russia.

Each republic also acquired its portion of the assets of the Committee for State Security, which continued to exist in some form. In Russia the KGB underwent a series of renamings and reorganizations that ultimately left it as five separate entities: one each for internal security, foreign intelligence, border defense, communications security, and the personal protection of state leaders.

Redefinition

With the Soviet Union gone, the next question was what would replace it. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic eventually renamed itself the Russian Federation.

The re-creation of a Russian national identity was somewhat complicated, not only by the presence of more than 120 ethnic minorities within the federation’s borders and by the fact that some 25 million ethnic Russians were now living as minorities in the 14 other successor states of the Soviet Union, but also by the fact that the pre-Soviet Russian state had included the entire Soviet territory. In the other former Soviet republics, as in Eastern Europe, the communist system could be viewed as something imposed by the Russians.

There, nationalists, anticommunists, democrats, and economic reformers could form coalitions, at least in the beginning. In the Russian Federation, although some Russian nationalists had seen the other republics as a burden, others had identified with the Soviet Union as a great power and saw its collapse as a tragedy.

Some adherents of the Soviet system and some Russian nationalists nostalgic for the old empire saw in the CIS a potential replacement that would ultimately amount to a rebirth of the Soviet Union. This never came about.

The leaders of the various republics focused on their own entities, and the CIS itself failed to develop into an alternative power center. Rather, the CIS functioned as a loose association that oversaw the peaceful severing of the numerous ties that linked the republics to one another.

Russia, not the CIS, inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, United Nations seat, overseas embassies, and foreign debt. This, however, did not prevent Russia from pressuring the more reluctant successor states into joining the CIS during the 1990s. Only the three Baltic States remained outside.

In the early days, Russians were concerned that the unraveling might not stop with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Within the Russian Federation were former "autonomous soviet socialist republics", now simply termed "republics", regions with a substantial non-Russian ethnic population. Several of these declared sovereignty over their natural resources and asserted the primacy of their laws over federation law. Some appeared to be contemplating independence.

In March 1992 all but Tatarstan and Chechnya signed the new Federation Treaty; Yeltsin was compelled to renegotiate center-periphery relations on an ad hoc basis with several individual republics and even ethnic Russian regions. Tatarstan signed such an agreement in February 1994. In the end only Chechnya carried out the secessionist threat, triggering two wars with the Russian army.

Politically, two tendencies were prominent in the early years of Russian independence. For members of the first group, the highest-priority goals were the establishment of democratic norms and the rule of law, the creation of a viable market economy, and integration into the Western world.

For the second group, the highest priorities were building a state strong enough to defend itself, both internally and externally; assuring that national industries survived; and preserving Russian uniqueness.

Constitutionally, the form that the Russian government was to take was also under dispute. The muchamended constitution of 1978 remained in force while negotiations continued over a new Russian constitution. In this, as in economic policy, Yeltsin and the legislature took strongly opposed positions.

The legislature at the time continued the cumbersome form innovated in the Gorbachev era: a Congress of People’s Deputies, with 1,068 members, that was supposed to meet twice a year, vote on the most important issues, and elect from among its own members a smaller legislature— the Supreme Soviet—to meet between its own sessions. The constitution’s provision that the legislature was the supreme state body was not modified after the creation of the elected Russian presidency in 1991.

Crisis and Confrontation

The period from the end of 1991 to late 1993 was marked by economic crisis and political confrontation that ended in bloodshed. The two poles of confrontation centered on the reformist presidency and the holdover parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, which fought a protracted battle over who held ultimate authority.

For the post of prime minister, Yeltsin named Yegor Gaidar, a young academic who had taught himself market economics during the late Soviet period, but the legislature refused to confirm him. Gaidar, nonetheless, continued in office as acting prime minister for one year.

The economy was in dire shape, quite apart from the normal inefficiencies of the centrally planned Soviet system. In the name of economic reform the Gorbachev government had ceased issuing orders to state-owned economic enterprises, but he had failed to establish the institutions of a market economy, resulting in a state-run system that did not work properly. The breakup of the Soviet state exacerbated the situation by disrupting economic ties between regions.

Gaidar’s response was a rapid shift, often termed "shock therapy", to free prices, balanced budgets, and monetary restraint. This went into effect on January 1, 1992, and resulted in an enormous leap in prices in addition to the already existing shortages of supply.

Normally, the shortages and rising prices should have worked as an incentive for enterprises to increase production. State enterprises, however, had not been privatized, and adequate market-based incentives had not been established.

Wholesale trade, at the time, was still widely regarded as a form of illegal "speculation". The implicit assumption that an economy dominated by gigantic plants producing military equipment could instantaneously convert to the production of consumer goods was probably naive in any event.

Managers commonly viewed the inflation as an opportunity to increase revenues while working less. When monetary restraint restricted cash flows, enterprise managers informally extended credit to each other and expended their political influence trying to get subsidies reinstated.

The Congress of People’s Deputies was the main focus of their attention. Elected in March 1990, the Congress was permeated with state-enterprise managers and former communists, most of whom now called them-selves "independents".

It repeatedly doled out payments to bankrupt enterprises, undermining the intended impact of Gaidar’s policies; issued resolutions that contradicted government policies; and threatened the president with impeachment. For his part, Yeltsin responded with the threat to establish a "presidential republic". Each side ignored the acts of the other, contributing to a growing general disregard for the law.

The personification of resistance to the president was the speaker of the Congress, Ruslan Khasbulatov; he and vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi moved steadily closer to the opposition. Both had been Yeltsin allies at the beginning of the transition.

In late 1992 Gaidar left the office of prime minister. His replacement, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was initially more acceptable to the Congress. Chernomyrdin was a hybrid bureaucrat-entrepreneur.

As minister of the gas industry, he had participated in a "spontaneous privatization" that converted the ministry into one of Russia’s largest and most profitable companies, Gazprom. Nonetheless Chernomyrdin and his finance minister, Boris Fedorov, maintained the austerity policies and even closed some inefficient state enterprises.

A referendum on economic reform and the division of power between the executive and legislative branches in April 1993 gave Yeltsin enough support to press ahead with his programs. Yeltsin and the legislature each began drawing up a new draft constitution.

The crisis came to a head in September 1993. To break the impasse, Yeltsin dissolved the Congress of People’s Deputies and called for a referendum on a new constitution and elections for a new legislature in December. Meeting in emergency session, the Congress impeached Yeltsin and declared Rutskoi president.

On Yeltsin’s order, army units surrounded the legislative headquarters on September 27, but 180 members refused to leave. After a standoff of several days, Rutskoi called for a popular uprising, which led to some street disorders but not the outpouring of support that he had anticipated.

Armed men seized the mayor’s office on October 3 and attempted to take the Ostankino television facility, where a firefight with Interior Ministry troops lasted for several hours. At this point, the army dropped the neutral position it had sought to maintain.

On October 4 tanks opened fire, and by that afternoon the rebel leaders—including Khasbulatov and Rutskoi—had emerged and surrendered. After the "October events", no parliament would defy the president so openly again. Disputes, however, were far from over.

Constitution and Elections

Yeltsin’s draft constitution was approved by referendum in December 1993, in the shadow of the October events. It created a bicameral legislature, called the Federal Assembly (Federal’noe Sobranie).

The upper house, the Federation Council (Soviet Federatsii), had two members representing each of the country’s constituent regions, territories, and republics. The lower house, the State Duma (Gosudarstvennaia Duma), had 450 members, half of them elected from single-member districts and half from party lists.

The legislature was real, not a rubber stamp, but the constitution clearly gave the preponderance of power to the president. The president named the prime minister and cabinet, who were responsible to him.

The cabinet, therefore, did not have to reflect the distribution of parties in the State Duma, so there was no incentive to form coalitions to build a parliamentary majority. Initially, committee chairmanships were doled out among parties and factions in proportion to the number of seats they held.

Technically, the State Duma had the right to approve or disapprove the president’s choice for prime minister, but if it rejected three candidates it was the legislature, not the government, that was subject to dissolution. Moreover, the president had the power to issue decrees on his own.

The first post-Soviet parliamentary elections were held simultaneously with the referendum approving the constitution, two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A number of political organizations had essentially evaporated in the interim. The parties that did exist were often small, fractious, personalistic, and only loosely connected to the electorate.

Parties arose, combined, split, recombined, and vanished with great ease. The most substantial and organized party was the newly constituted Communist Party of the Russian Federation, although it lacked anything resembling the status and power of the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The results of the elections were far from what Yeltsin and the reformers would have hoped for. The largest percentage of votes in the party-list portion of the ballot went to the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, a misnamed authoritarian, ultranationalistic grouping with a leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was once described as a "dangerous buffoon".

The communists came in second. The reformists had split the vote by dividing into four separate parties that constantly squabbled among themselves, the two most important being Gaidar’s neoliberal Russia’s Choice and the more social-democratic Yabloko.

Despite the evident potential for renewed polarization, Russian politics did not return to the chaos of the pre-October days but settled down into a relatively normal pattern. Politicians of various stripes gradually became accustomed to open politics and even adept at it.

Despite their extremist rhetoric, the ultranationalists proved relatively supportive of the government, and the communists could be counted on for a backroom deal when the need arose. The fractious reform parties, never satisfied with compromise, often created the greatest difficulty for the reform process.

Gaidar’s original reform plan came to be implemented more consistently, without Gaidar. Prime Minister Chernomyrdin became increasingly prominent, while Yeltsin occasionally receded into the background amid rumors of drinking and the state of his health.

Economic policy was no longer undermined by subsidies granted to bankrupt factories by the legislature. Also, the privatization kegiatan made progress, although this required a presidential decree. The economic situation began to stabilize, but it did not fully recover and grow.

With new legislative elections planned in December 1995, Yeltsin eliminated elections for the upper house and determined that each jurisdiction would be represented by its governor and its legislative speaker.

He also attempted to create two new parties as the basis for a two-party system: One, a center-right organization intended to become the government party, was led by Prime Minister Chernomyrdin; the other, envisioned as a center-left loyal opposition, was led by Ivan Rybkin.

Chernomyrdin’s party, called Our Home Is Russia, managed to draw about 10 percent of the vote as long as he was prime minister. The second party, which was actually listed on the ballot as "Ivan Rybkin’s bloc", never got off the ground. The relatively poor showing, if nothing else, indicated the limits on Yeltsin’s ability to manipulate the electorate.

Forty-three parties participated in the 1995 elections, but only four of them surpassed the 5 percent threshold necessary to obtain seats under the proportional-representation system.

The four that did succeed were the Communists, the ultranationalist Liberal Democrats, Our Home Is Russia, and the social-democratic Yabloko. The Communists received the largest share this time, setting the stage for Russia’s first post-Soviet presidential election, to be held in two rounds in June and July 1996.

The Communists’ hard core of support constituted about 20–30 percent of the electorate at this time. Support was especially strong among pensioners and others who had suffered extreme hardships during the inflation and chaos of the early reform period. They had trouble, however, breaking beyond that core.

Yeltsin, who had been doing very poorly in opinion polls, ran an anti-Communist campaign and eked out a plurality of 35 percent in the first round. Communist candidate Gennadii Zyuganov finished just behind him with 32 percent. Eight other candidates were eliminated from the second round.

After hiring the third-place candidate as his national security adviser, Yeltsin then managed to consolidate the anti-Communist vote and was reelected in the second round, 54 percent to 40 percent. Significantly, all sides accepted the results of the election without protests or claims of fraud.

Portugal

Portugal flag

Portugal has been a land of paradoxes. For much of the 20th century, it was simultaneously a weak, agrarian, poverty-stricken, isolated state on the periphery of Europe and the seat of a vast colonial empire. It had used an alliance with Britain to sustain this paradox for a long time.

Portugal relied on Britain to keep Spain at bay and to secure its claim to its colonial holdings. In return, the Royal Navy enjoyed access to a far-flung network of colonial ports to be used as coaling stations.

Modern nationalism in Portugal dates from the popular reaction to the British ultimatum of 1890, which foiled a Portuguese scheme to connect Angola and Mozambique by seizing the intervening territory.


For half of the 20th century, the country was governed by Western Europe’s most enduring authoritarian regime. Then, in 1974–76, it became the only North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country to experience a full-fledged social revolution. After approaching the precipice of civil war, Portuguese society backed down and built a working democracy.

Portugal overthrew its monarchy in 1910. The country established a new constitution the following year and became Europe’s third republic, after Switzerland and France. There were several coups over a 16-year period. In reaction to labor unrest in the early 1920s, extra-parliamentary right-wing organizations arose. These groups lent their support to a bloodless military coup in 1926.

Two years later, in the wake of financial crisis, the military regime brought an economics professor out of the obscurity of the University of Coimbra and named him minister of finance.

António de Oliveira Salazar

António de Oliveira Salazar had a limited set of priorities in that office: to generate a budget surplus and to stockpile gold. He proved to be quite effective at what he set out to do. He quickly overshadowed a succession of military prime ministers and won supporters among officers, clergy, businessmen, bankers, and landowners.

The New State

The military regime was a little more stable than its predecessor. Salazar, whose star was already rising within the regime, founded a new party in 1930, the National Union (União Nacional), to unify the regime’s supporters. In 1932, as the Great Depression advanced, he was appointed prime minister, a position he would hold for the next 36 years.

Salazar promulgated a new constitution in 1933, establishing the New State (Estado Novo). The National Assembly, consisting of the Chamber of Deputies and the Corporatist Chamber, had severely limited powers. Salazar selected nearly all candidates personally.

Rights and liberties proclaimed by the constitution were nullified by government regulation. Various sectors of society were organized from above in corporatist fashion. The political police maintained surveillance over potential opponents, many of whom fled into exile. Censors erased any hint of dissent.

From 1936 to 1944 Salazar was also minister of war. In that position he found he could shrink the size of the army and control officers’ salaries, transfers, retirements, and even marriages.

Officers were encouraged to marry wealthy women so that their salaries could be kept low. A politicized government-run militia, the Portuguese Legion (Legião Portuguesa), partially offset the army’s influence.

Thus it was Salazar, not the military, who consolidated the authoritarian regime. His was a conservative, corporatist police state, but it was not a true fascist state. It did not seek to overthrow traditional elites or mobilize society around its goals.

Rather, Salazar sought to demobilize—or even freeze—society and to reject modernity. Rather than exalting war, Salazar strove for a kind of neutrality. In any event, his austere policies left the armed forces with a very low level of effectiveness.

Spain and World War II

Salazar viewed Spain’s leftist Popular Front government as a threat. When General Francisco Franco rebelled against it in 1936, launching the Spanish civil war, Portugal officially followed the lead of Britain and France by promising nonintervention, but surreptitiously funneled aid to Franco.

Franco’s agents were allowed to operate on Portuguese territory. Thousands of volunteers went to Spain to fight against the Republican cause. At the end of the war, in March 1939, Salazar and Franco signed a treaty of friendship and nonaggression, known informally as the Iberian Pact.

Salazar declared Portugal’s neutrality in World War II on September 1, 1939, the very day Poland was invaded. He also sought to keep the war as far away as possible by bolstering Spain’s neutrality. In the wake of its civil war, Spain was in no condition to take an active role in World War II, but Portugal’s position highlighted the potential costs of even a passive role, as in allowing the Germans to pass through to take the British stronghold of Gibraltar.

The strategic situation changed for the Iberian Peninsula as the Germans became tied down in the Soviet Union and the Allies moved into North Africa and Italy. It was now highly unlikely that Spain would intervene on Germany’s side. Salazar allowed himself to be persuaded to join the Allied cause, albeit passively. From the Allied perspective, the Azores were the key objective.

Situated in the mid-Atlantic, these Portuguese islands would be useful bases both for antisubmarine warfare and for refueling transatlantic flights in the buildup prior to the great invasion of France. First Britain, and then the United States, acquired access to facilities there, and Portugal ceased selling tungsten to Germany while still claiming to be neutral.

Postwar Portugal

Portugal’s shift put it on the winning side, improving its bargaining position in postwar Europe and increasing its chances of getting back East Timor and Macao, which had been occupied by the Japanese.

Still, the semifascist state was in an ambiguous position after the war. It began to describe itself as an "organic democracy" rather than a "civilian police dictatorship", an expression that had been used in the 1930s.

Portugal was not invited to the San Francisco conference, which established the United Nations, and was denied UN membership until 1955. Portugal was, however, a founding member of NATO chiefly because the United States still wanted access to bases in the Azores.

Portugal’s relations with the United States and NATO replaced its traditional alliance with Britain. Unlike Britain’s earlier guarantee of Portugal’s overseas territories, however, NATO’s area of responsibility was expressly restricted to Europe to avoid its being drawn into colonial wars.

A certain "softening" marked the Salazar regime in the postwar era. There was no real institutional change, but some of the more fascistlike institutions were allowed to erode. On the other hand, after a dissident general managed to win 25 percent of the vote in presidential elections in 1958, the direct election of the president was discontinued.

A degree of economic liberalization led to the growth of the service sector and a larger middle class in the 1960s. Industry, previously limited to textile production, added electrical, metallurgical, chemical, and petroleum sectors.

A stroke immobilized the dictator in 1968, although he lingered for two more years. His successor was Marcello José das Neves Caetano, who, not coincidentally, had also succeeded him in his chair at the University of Coimbra.

Caetano brought technocrats into the regime, retired some of Salazar’s old-school hangers-on, and favored economic development over cultivated stagnation, but again the basic system remained.

Africa

War was spreading in the African colonies of Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau), Angola, and Mozambique. The policy of the New State had been to instill pride among the Portuguese in their empire, a legacy of Portugal’s glory in the age of discovery. The state also reasserted national control over the colonies, where foreign corporations had conducted much of the economic activity.

African farmers were compelled to shift from subsistence crops to cotton for the Portuguese market in the 1930s, and more so as World War II disrupted other trade sources. Portuguese investment in Africa began to take off in the years after the war. Portuguese emigration tripled the white population of Mozambique and quadrupled that of Angola between 1940 and 1960.

Initially, even the outbreak of the wars of national liberation spurred economic growth, as the state responded by boosting civil and military investments. All of these changes disrupted the lives of the Africans, and many of them also undermined the few existing bases of support for Portuguese rule.

In 1961 a revolt against forced cotton cultivation broke out in Angola. Fighting escalated with retributions and counter-retributions; it spread to Guinea in 1963 and Mozambique in 1964. The government quickly repealed forced cultivation and forced labor. It also mobilized troops and dispatched them to Africa.

Large numbers of Africans were concentrated in strategic villages (aldeamentos) where their actions could be controlled. In 1961 the United States called on Portugal to decolonize. The insurgents sought and received military aid from the Soviet bloc and China.

In order to fight the leftist insurgency most effectively, the military high command assigned anabawang officers to read the political tracts of African revolutionary leaders, such as Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau.

To their ultimate surprise, a sizable number of anabawang officers were convinced that the insurgents were right. Some of them also concluded that Portugal itself was an underdeveloped Third World country in need of "national liberation".

Revolution of The Carnation

A diverse group of disgruntled anabawang officers in 1973 formed a clandestine political organization, the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas, MFA). On April 25, 1974, the MFA deposed Caetano. The New State collapsed without resistance. Holding red carnations, demonstrators had persuaded other military units not to resist.

The MFA then stepped back, but this proved only temporary. The young officers would soon be in the midst of a political free-for-all to determine the direction of the revolution. They too coalesced into a number of factions built around competing political orientations and personalities.

Captain Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho became the focal point of one radical faction, once styling himself as the Fidel Castro of Europe. Colonel Vasco Gonçalves began as a moderate, but moved to a position close to the Portuguese Communist Party. A moderate faction, later dubbed the Group of Nine, formed around Lieutenant Colonel Melo Antunes.

Finally, further behind the scenes until the last stages of the revolution were the "operationals", a group of officers largely concerned with professional military matters and associated with Lieutenant Colonel António Ramalho Eanes.

The Junta of National Salvation (Junta de Salvação Nacional) was formed from moderate senior officers. General António de Spínola, a former military governor of Guinea-Bissau, was invited to lead the junta as provisional president of the republic.

Palma Carlos, a liberal law professor, was named provisional prime minister. Political parties of all stripes were legalized, and political prisoners were released. Political exiles streamed back into the country.

Cease-fires were arranged in Africa. In one of the most fateful decisions of the new regime, the leaders promised elections for a constituent assembly within a year, the first real elections in over half a century, and with universal suffrage and proportional representation.

The revolution had released popular tensions that had been building up for decades. Turmoil spread quickly in the newfound freedom, and rival power centers competed to control the situation. Spurred on by the newly legalized Portuguese Communist Party, Maoists and other leftist groups and workers staged strikes and seized factories, shops, and offices.

Students took over schools and denounced teachers for "fascist sympathies". Services broke down, and shortages became common. Right-wing groups, especially in the conservative rural north, began to mobilize and arm themselves.

In July the Palma Carlos government collapsed amid the turmoil, and prominent members of the MFA moved into key positions. Carvalho was promoted to brigadier general and put in charge of the army’s new Continental Operational Command (Comando Operacional do Continente, COPCON), which became the principal arbiter of order as the police disintegrated.

Colonel Vasco Gonçalves was appointed to the position of prime minister. The MFA radicals regularly overruled Spínola’s decisions and also forced him to accept the independence of the colonies.

In September a major demonstration planned by Spínola to bolster his position forced a confrontation with COPCON, which resulted in Spínola’s resignation. General Francisco da Costa Gomes, who was more sympathetic to the left, assumed the presidency.

The most radical phase of the revolution began in March 1975. Spínola launched an unsuccessful coup attempt on March 11. In response, the radical wing of the MFA abolished the Junta of National Salvation and formed the Revolutionary Council (Conselho da Revolução), some 20 officers responsible only to the MFA Delegates’ Assembly.

The council nationalized the banking system, press, utilities, and insurance companies. With elections for the Constituent Assembly scheduled for April 25, the anniversary of the revolution, the MFA pressed a "constitutional pact" on the six largest parties, which recognized the permanent supervisory role of the MFA in a "guided" democracy.

Turnout was high for the elections, in which 12 parties competed, but the outcome shocked the radicals. The moderate Socialist Party came in first with 37.9 percent, followed by the right-of-center Social Democrats (originally called the Popular Democrats) with 26.4 percent. The Communists, the electoral ally of the MFA radicals, garnered only 12.5 percent.

Talk of Civil War

The MFA responded during the "hot summer" (verão quente) of 1975 by styling itself as a national-liberation movement. In the south, landless agricultural laborers seized large estates and declared them collective farms. Moderate Socialists and Social Democrats resigned from the government. Small freehold farmers formed armed groups, held counterrevolutionary demonstrations, and bombed the offices of leftist parties.

Plans were drawn up for a possible alternative government in the north. COPCON was beginning to disintegrate, and individual army units were under pressure to declare their political orientation. Both society and the MFA itself were becoming increasingly polarized, and there was talk of civil war.

As a consequence of the growing tension, Gonçalves and his government were pressed to resign at the end of August, and they did so. A new, more moderate provisional government was installed.

Dissatisfied with this outcome and determined not to "lose" the revolution, radical paratroopers attempted to organize a coup in November 1975. Like Spínola’s coup attempt, however, this backfired. Lieutenant Colonel António Ramalho Eanes, of the MFA’s professional military faction, led a purge of the MFA radicals. COPCON was disbanded and Otelo, its commander, placed under house arrest.

Eanes was named army chief of staff and made a member of the Revolutionary Council. The "constitutional pact" was renegotiated in February 1976. Elections were held for the new Assembly of the Republic in April, and Eanes was elected president in June with 61.5 percent of the vote in the first round.

The Constituent Assembly sought to avoid both the weak, unstable governments of the 1911 constitution and also the authoritarianism of the 1933 constitution. Based on the French model, the new system called for both an elected president with real powers and an executive prime minister chosen by a majority party or coalition in a freely elected parliament.

The renegotiated constitutional pact still called for socialism as the goal of government and society and institutionalized the legacy of the revolution. Moreover, it retained the Revolutionary Council, still a self-appointed and purely military institution, and gave it the power to safeguard the legacy of the revolution and judge the constitutionality of legislation passed by the civilian government.

The first elected government was led by Mário Soares of the moderately leftist Socialist Party. In 1979 however, a center-right government of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats was elected. The inherent tension between the elected government and the essentially undemocratic council became evident as the cabinet sought to privatize portions of the economy.

After a standoff that lasted roughly from 1979 to 1982, a process of normalization set in and the undemocratic vestiges of the revolution were gradually excised. In particular, a constitutional reform in 1982 abolished the Revolutionary Council and sent the army back to the barracks.

In the elections of 1986 Soares became Portugal’s first civilian president in 60 years, replacing Eanes. Another constitutional reform, in 1989, eliminated the requirement to keep the nationalized sector of the economy.

The moderate Socialist and Social Democratic parties had increasingly come to dominate the political system, reducing the need for multiparty coalitions and increasing the stability of government. Portugal had become a far less hierarchical and far more pluralistic, democratic, and dynamic society than it had been before 1974.

In 1986 the European Economic Community (now the European Union) accepted Portugal and Spain simultaneously as members. The opening to trade, the inflow of European investments for infrastructure and other purposes, and the constitutional changes of 1989 spurred growth and helped transform the economy.

Economic growth surpassed the European average in the 1990s and until 2002. While, like any country, Portugal was not without its scandals, controversies, and disagreements, by the end of the century it had become integrated as a solidly democratic, stable, and respected member of the European community.

Gold Standard

Gold Standard

Control of the money render has been a key constituent of every regime inward history, too when looking for a conspiracy, most theorists “follow the money”—in this case, the government’s human relationship to gold. Roman emperors were notorious for shaving golden coins so that they would await normal but really incorporate slightly less gold, thereby allowing the rulers to inflate fifty-fifty a gold-based currency.

Generally, however, yesteryear the Middle Ages most monarchs were constrained yesteryear the ease of weighing too mensuration gold, too hence found it hard to meddle with the state’s money supply. Instead, they borrowed against both golden reserves too taxes.

Throughout this period, silvery was desired for coinage, but its value was almost ever measured against gold. Since silvery was mined at an estimate stable ratio to golden (somewhere inward the gain of 13–17 ounces of silvery taken out of the basis for every ounce of gold), the relative value of silvery to golden remained fairly constant over the centuries.


Perhaps surprisingly, the large discoveries of golden too silvery inward the New World—mostly inward Spanish-held territory—did non significantly alter the European economy. Prices did laid out a gradual creep upward inward most 1200, too increased sharply at times, correlating roughly with the “commercial revolution,” too then in i lawsuit again with the nativity of capitalism inward the belatedly 1700s.

Of course, other events unrelated to golden or silvery production also caused prices to skyrocket, equally with the grain shortages inward French Republic inward the 1780s. The of import point, though, is that golden remained the polestar yesteryear which virtually all other values inward the European basis were fixed, too thus it obtained a sure as shooting mythic character.

Gold proved the world’s most useful too reliable money inward the premodern basis because it possessed several of import characteristics of money:

1. it was easily divisible, 
2. it was (somewhat) portable, 
3. it had inherent jewelry value, 
4. it was scarce, and 
5. it was durable.

Gold’s scarcity, however, became increasingly unattractive equally a feature of money inward the developing European economic scheme too inward the United States, where capitalism demanded constant exchange, financing, and, higher upwards all, a steadily growing circulating medium.

By 1800, mining too minting of golden money inward no agency could hold stair with the demands of the capitalist system. Nor could silvery adequately fill upwards in: what capitalism demanded was an order-of-magnitude increment inward the money supply, non the pocket-sized incremental surge provided yesteryear minting silver.

The Bank of England, the world’s starting fourth dimension “central bank,” was the starting fourth dimension to interruption from the “mercantilist” notion that exclusively golden too silvery constituted wealth. The Bank operated on a golden reserve upon which it issued banknotes that were redeemable inward gold.

What annotation holders too depositors did non know (and were non told) was that if all those belongings notes of a abrupt too simultaneously appeared at the banking enterprise to redeem their newspaper money inward golden (and later, silvery coin), in that place would non hold out nearly plenty metallic element inward all of England to redeem every annotation at 100 per centum (“par”) value.

H5N1 banking term, “fractional reserve banking,” was used to depict the concept, which relied on a statistical probability (or, at the fourth dimension inward the 1700s, a likelihood based on mutual sense) that exclusively a fraction of the annotation holders would ever appear at whatever given fourth dimension to redeem their newspaper money inward golden or silvery “specie” (coin).

US golden certificate

To a conspiracy theorist, this had all the indications of a plot. It appeared that the Bank of England, with the back upwards (or at the direction) of the king, was deliberately cheating Earth yesteryear issuing notes that it could non redeem inward an emergency.

In fact, “fractional reserve banking” involved a trade-off inward which Earth agreed to convey newspaper money for its convenience inward commutation for a little amount of risk. What went unstated was the grade of risk, or nether what weather the money would non hold out redeemable.

Scottish “free” banks approached the affair differently. They did non endeavor to mandate whatever specific reserve ratio, but rather allowed contest to sort out the expert from the bad banks. However, if a banking enterprise failed, its president too directors were dependent area to double liability for the loss.


Lawrence White has argued convincingly that the Scottish organisation proved extremely stable too resilient, particularly inward contrast to the Bank of England. Competitive money, rather than golden convertibility of a national currency, White maintained, was the key to a stable monetary system.

In the United States, province legislatures attempted to span the gap betwixt the ii systems. States adopted a organisation of chartered banks whose charters authorized them to number newspaper notes, backed yesteryear specie. The banks had to maintain convertibility at all times.

This did non show hard inward normal economical circumstances, but during panics, almost every banking enterprise inward the state—or fifty-fifty the nation—could “suspend” specie payments too only pass upwards to convert newspaper money for golden or silver.

According to the banking enterprise charters, the legislature was to terminate the bank’s authorisation to produce business, but inward fact, since suspension was nearly universal, too termination would effectively close downwardly all banks, legislatures rarely invoked these clauses. Instead, banks resumed business—and payment of specie—as before long equally economical weather warranted.

Still, a salubrious contest alongside banknotes allow people know which institution’s notes were reliable, too which were not. H5N1 “Dun too Bradstreet” catalogue of banknotes, called Dillistin’s Bank Note Reporter, was published too widely circulated alongside bankers too merchants.

It accurately too inward a timely fashion alerted storekeepers to money that had lost its value on the opened upwards market. Still, to run equally a bank, until the 1830s too the appearance of “free banking” laws, an establishment required a charter from the province legislature inward companionship to number notes.

It was annotation number that differentiated chartered banks from “private” banks—deposit too lending operations. But the burden of chartering numerous novel banks inward the booming 1840s proved keen plenty that many states adopted “free banking” laws, farther severing the human relationship betwixt the newspaper money too gold.

Under the “free banking” laws, all a banking enterprise had to produce to number notes was to house an appropriate amount of designated bonds on deposit with the secretarial assistant of state. After pocket-sized problems with the wording of the laws were ironed out inward Michigan too other states, gratuitous banking proved effective too reliable.

Indeed, inward the U.S. antebellum period, competitive annotation issue, backed yesteryear a golden reserve, to a greater extent than than adequately served the economy’s needs. When contest was enhanced yesteryear a branch banking organisation (which many states allowed), the organisation became fifty-fifty stronger too to a greater extent than reliable.

Wedged into this mix were the First too Second Banks of the U.S.A. (BUS, 1791–1811, too 1816–1836, respectively). These were national banks that were four-fifths privately owned, too could number notes that had a universal character inward that the Banks were the exclusively institutions permitted to receive got interstate branches.

Because of their ubiquity too national character, they were viewed yesteryear critics equally inordinately powerful too “controlled” yesteryear unusual interests. However, they were soundless both tied to the golden standard.

Of equal concern to the conspiracy-minded was a suspicious modify of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, which states, “The Congress shall receive got Power ... To money Money, regulate the Value thereof, too of unusual Coin ...”

According to the “gold bugs,” or early on “hard money” advocates, this department stipulated that the phrase “coin Money” meant exclusively metallic element money could constitute the circulating medium of the United States. The Jacksonian Democrats, especially, interpreted the phrase this agency too demanded an halt to all noteissue yesteryear private banks.

Led yesteryear Thomas Hart “Old Bullion” Benton, the “hard money” fly of the Democratic Party wanted to halt all banks from printing newspaper money, threatening to cease chartering whatever banks at all if they could non ensure it inward other ways.

The United States, similar England, had never “gone off” the golden standard, inward that all international transactions were delineated inward golden too currencies of all types were soundless redeemable inward gold. Moreover, from fourth dimension to time, such equally Andrew Jackson’s “Specie Circular,” payments on authorities reason were required to hold out made inward gold. When the value of silvery or golden changed, the U.S. Congress or Parliament passed a constabulary reestablishing the value of silvery to gold, non vice versa.

The Civil War brought novel pressures on the golden standard. Abraham Lincoln’s Union authorities needed additional revenue to finance the war, too temporarily suspended all golden redemption, too then authorized the printing of $450 1000000 inward “greenbacks.” These notes differed from previous money inward that they were non at in i lawsuit redeemable inward gold, but rather had a hope to pay inward golden at a futurity date.

In add-on to the greenbacks, the Union chartered a moving ridge of national banks, which had the authorisation to impress money, and, inward companionship to take contest from the national banks, the authorities passed a 10 per centum revenue enhancement on all nonnational banknotes, effectively eliminating all contest with authorities money. Thus, inward a menstruation of iii years, the link to golden was temporarily severed too contest inward annotation number ended.

Following the Civil War, the U.S.A. felt the effects of an international deflation. Due to the idiosyncrasies of the national banking system, this deflation hitting the South too the West harder than other sections of the country, too in that place was an astute shortage of money inward the West, especially. At the same time, novel silvery discoveries (the Comstock Lode, for example) had boosted the amount of silvery coming out of the basis relative to gold.

Instead of a ratio of sixteen ounces of silvery to i ounce of gold, yesteryear the 1870s the ratio reached 17:1. Politicians too agrarian activists saw an chance to role the mightiness of authorities to rearrange the rules inward their favor. They lobbied for the “free too unlimited coinage of silvery at 16:1,” hoping to forcefulness the taxpayers to pay the additional costs for turning the cheaper silvery into coins.

Two half-measures were adopted nether silverite pressure: the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 too the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Both bills attempted to forcefulness the authorities to buy large quantities of silvery at artificially inflated prices, but each failed to attain its objective. Neither could buy nearly plenty silvery to impact the market, too neither artificially fixed prices at a significantly higher level.

The Sherman Act proved disastrous. It required the authorities to buy silvery at the cost of 33:2, thus opening a window for speculators without increasing the quantity of silvery inward circulation. Domestic too unusual speculators pounced on the cost differential to pour silvery into U.S. vaults, spell golden flowed out. The authorities came to a greater extent than or less bankruptcy earlier banker J. P. Morgan bailed out the U.S.A. Treasury with a massive loan.

This exclusively farther inflamed the anger of those convinced that industrialists too bankers such equally Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, too John D. Rockefeller controlled the money supply. Somehow, the critics argued, Morgan, Rockefeller, too the “money trust” manipulated the economic scheme yesteryear its “control” of the golden standard.

This view, of course, flipped the former Jacksonian too English linguistic communication “goldsmith” views on their heads: they had argued that exclusively through a golden measure could the “common man” hold out protected against the machinations of “big business” too the “money interests.”

Within a fifty-year period, however, conspiracy theorists—many of them the same voices who had called for a gold-only standard—now lobbied for a bimetallic standard. Businessmen too bankers favored a golden standard, non because they controlled it, but because it was predictable too stable.

The “free silver” motility reached its apex with the nomination of William Jennings Bryan equally the Democratic candidate for president inward 1896. Echoing the conspiracy-theorists’ fears of a “money trust,” Bryan delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” nomination credence vocalization communication inward which he warned that shadowy forces were attempting to “crucify mankind” on a “cross of gold.” The Republican, William McKinley, ran on a gold-only measure (as good equally a “full dinner pail”), too won handily, ending all tidings of bimetallism.

In 1913, the Federal Reserve System was created equally the novel “central” banking enterprise of the United States, too it farther centralized monetary authorisation inward the hands of the federal government. As i historian of U.S. key banking, Richard Timberlake, has pointed out, in that place was never whatever query that the Federal Reserve would run nether the existing golden standard. However, the deflationary shocks of the 1920s caused most countries, culminating with England, to larn off the golden measure for international exchanges.

That left the U.S.A. equally the exclusively major nation soundless on the golden standard, pregnant that people could buy newspaper dollars with newspaper pounds sterling or francs, too then convert dollars to gold. U.S. golden flowed out of the Federal Reserve’s vaults to Europe, weakening the banking system, until Franklin Roosevelt took the U.S.A. off golden during the New Deal.

Conspiracy theorists too then came total circle again: Roosevelt was attempting to command the money render of the U.S.A. yesteryear eliminating the golden reserve requirement—precisely what the previous generation of conspiracy theorists had advocated.

By that time, conspiracy theories had separate into ii streams when it came to golden too money. One current argued that the Rockefellers, through the Bank of England (and with the back upwards of the Rothschilds), manipulated the international cost of gold.

The other current claimed that, inward trace with the objective of a “one-world government,” the Federal Reserve served equally a tool for the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, too the UN to weaken the U.S. economic scheme too provide convenient inflation for politicians favored yesteryear these groups. Critics such equally J. Orlin Grabbe too Sherman Skolnick receive got argued that the Federal Reserve has, at political direction, inflated too deflated the monetary base of operations at critical times.

As the Internet has made electronic money transfers easier, the significance of gold-backing of whatever monetary organisation has faded. Gold prices, except for a duo of spikes related to crude oil cost increases inward the 1970s, receive got hovered at post–World War II lows. Despite claims yesteryear Grabbe too Skolnick, no Federal Reserve inflationary “mischief” has resulted inward whatever substantial golden cost increases.

Quite the contrary, during the fourth dimension that individuals or unusual interests were supposedly masterminding a massive inflation, golden prices continued to languish at depression levels. Indeed, to simultaneously manipulate both Federal Reserve policies for inflation too golden prices is self-contradictory. If golden is the “ultimate guarantor” of monetary value, too then economical logic suggests that golden prices would receive got risen inward the instance of inflation.

More likely, the Internet has opened upwards a novel era of really competitive money, although non privately issued money. Instead, national currencies—the yen, the ruble, the dollar, the peso, too the euro—all compete against each other with productivity too national wealth providing the existent guarantor of monetary values.