In some of the old Terence McKenna lectures floating around on YouTube, he traces the mystery religions through Knossos on Crete all the way back to Çatalhöyük, on the Turkish mainland. Of course, these lectures predate the amazing discoveries at Göbekli Tepe.
But in Brian Muresku's excellent 2020 book The Immortality Key, he finally makes the connection between evidence of beer production at Göbekli Tepe and the graves found there, suggesting the very same continuity you did.
I find the stories about the insignia, rituals, and secrets relatively uninteresting, because they are equally strange in all spiritual groups. Ultimately, they serve to distinguish who is a loyal member and who isn't. Even in "normal" churches, one must make abstruse "professions of faith" that contradict all common sense.
This "protective belt" of invented secrets only serves to conceal the important things that are crucial to one's economic position. For the Templars, it was the circumvention of the canonical prohibition of interest, and it is probably not much different for others.
There is a strange cartel of silence when it comes to monetary matters anyway. For example, I wrote to two central banks to make sure that my conception of money creation was correct. In response, I received the same smokescreens that can also be read in any official announcement. In this sense, the secrecy has persisted, although with a bit of logic and accounting, one can, of course, come up with the right answer.
That's why for me it would have been much more interesting to investigate the background of these "lodges'" wealth, but perhaps that will come later.
To be honest, Renée, I haven't settled on an approach to this "strange cartel of silence".
On the one hand, I'd hate to mistakenly repeat any one of the antisemitic tropes mixed up with the history of banking. As mentioned in the piece, writing about the histories of secret societies is tough because those histories are actively covered up. To an uncomfortable degree, we're left to rely on hearsay and speculation.
But on the other hand, it does feel like antisemitism is used as a cover to prevent any popular understanding of that history. The same trick is used to stifle criticism of the Israeli government. Your bizarre experience trying to engage with these central banks matches other stories I've heard.
It's a tricky question! But your own Substack is on the right track, carefully explaining how money REALLY works. With respect to banking, I think it's only a matter of time before people cotton on to the fact that something's rotten in Denmark..
Yes, good old Shakespeare. But I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with the design of the financial system, but rather with the way it's handled. The best machine breaks down if it's not operated properly.
And you've addressed one of the central points: how does a society deal with excessive indebtedness! You've already mentioned the institution of debt-forgiveness in several places, which was reinterpreted by the Romans, because the promise of debt relief was reinterpreted as the forgiveness of moral sins. And hardly anyone in the US would think that the inscription on the Liberty Bell could be a call for debt relief. I recently watched the Tucker-Kirk interview and was very surprised that the term "jubilee" was mentioned - very briefly - which is no surprise, since a large part of the conversation revolved around the lack of prospects for young US citizens to escape debt dependency.
In Germany, the option of personal bankruptcy was introduced some 15 years ago, whereby one becomes debt-free after a three-year period (it was initially seven years) of "financial good conduct." This is clearly a cultural advance, even if one hardly owns anything afterward except for the remnants of one's own assets and has to start over – but then one can do it again.
And the tricky question isn't so tricky at all once one understands that a debt relationship (deposit) is not a means of payment. But people only understand this when a bank run occurs, even though central banks are supposed to prevent precisely that. And when even the FASB declares deposits as "cash," it's clear that even they don't fully understand what is actually quite clear in accounting: cash is an asset of private individuals, banks, and even the central bank (except for the balance sheet) – and not a liability like deposits.
Consistent with common usage, cash includes not only currency on hand but demand deposits with banks or other financial institutions. Cash also includes other kinds of accounts that have the general characteristics of demand deposits in that the customer may deposit additional funds at any time and also effectively may withdraw funds at any time without prior notice or penalty. All charges and credits to those accounts are cash receipts or payments to both the entity owning the account and the bank holding it. For example, a bank’s granting of a loan by crediting the proceeds to a customer’s demand deposit account is a cash payment by the bank and a cash receipt of the customer when the entry is made."
The link is only available at archive.org 26. Jan. 2016
The phrase "Only gold is money, everything else is credit" is commonly attributed to J.P. Morgan, the famous American financier and banker. He emphasized the unique and enduring value of gold as true money, contrasting it with other forms of currency or financial instruments, which he considered credit or promises rather than real money.
In a fiat monetary system, however, the following applies: Only cash bills (legal tender notes) are money, everything else is credit! If you look at the publications on this topic, it is almost unanimously stated that banks can create money. You don't have to think about it for long to realize that this theory frequently generates contradictions – and ultimately dooms almost every discussion about money to failure. And all because monetary theory revolves only around the object of experience and not the object of knowledge. A recipe for disaster...
What a remarkable find on the FASB website! Or, more accurately, on the Wayback Machine. You've helpfully pointed out that banks create DEPOSITS, not money, and that's a distinction well worth making.
But it seems to me that banks charging the rest of us interest (for deposits they conjure up out of thin air) amounts to a systematic transfer of wealth, on a staggering scale, to the banking sector. I'm thinking specifically of the volume of residential mortgage debt in the US, and all the interest collected on that mountain of debt.
It seems to me that this "machine" systematically creates excess indebtedness. I suspect that banks actively wish to prevent the public from understanding that they charge us dearly for deposits they whip up on a computer. I'm not surprised that the FASB website hides their definition of "cash".
But I WAS surprised that you characterized this system as improperly-operated machine, as opposed to a fundamental driver of wealth inequality. Is your contention here simply that credit could/should be created as a public utility instead of a for-profit business?
Once the bank has fulfilled its payment obligation, the deposits disappear, meaning the bank has used its reserves to fulfill its obligation. It can no longer charge interest on them, regardless of the fact that interest on deposits usually represents an increase in the deposit holder's assets.
No, the interest is calculated on the bank's claim, based on the amount of the outstanding claim. This claim is, in a way, just as "made up out of thin air," because just like the deposits (liabilities), the receivables (assets) are a component of the loan agreement – mutual promises to pay. What is often overlooked is that a bank fulfills its performance obligation immediately or very soon after the contract is concluded, whereas installments take years or decades. Nevertheless, the bank has actually paid.
I don't know if the FASB website still has this entry, but I fear that no learning process has taken place in the meantime, and cash (assets) and deposits (liabilities) are still being lumped together. Such institutions are notorious for clinging to mistakes and viewing proposed changes as an attack on their sovereignty – even though they're talking complete nonsense.
Ultimately, since the abolition of the gold standard, credit has been a public utility because it relies on the use of a means of payment that banks can't create themselves. This means that all claims that banks can create money are bullshit – but you hear this claim from all sides. Here's another example of obfuscating the simple fact that means of payment come from the central bank and nowhere else. One could interpret this as a campaign to undermine central banks, which will ultimately lead to their abolition. This is why cryptocurrencies are so dangerous, because they suggest that a payment system can function without means of payment – therefore, a central bank is no longer needed.
Some claim Eleusinian Mysteries go back to Gobekli Tepe.
In some of the old Terence McKenna lectures floating around on YouTube, he traces the mystery religions through Knossos on Crete all the way back to Çatalhöyük, on the Turkish mainland. Of course, these lectures predate the amazing discoveries at Göbekli Tepe.
But in Brian Muresku's excellent 2020 book The Immortality Key, he finally makes the connection between evidence of beer production at Göbekli Tepe and the graves found there, suggesting the very same continuity you did.
Thanks for a great comment, Cristhian!
I find the stories about the insignia, rituals, and secrets relatively uninteresting, because they are equally strange in all spiritual groups. Ultimately, they serve to distinguish who is a loyal member and who isn't. Even in "normal" churches, one must make abstruse "professions of faith" that contradict all common sense.
This "protective belt" of invented secrets only serves to conceal the important things that are crucial to one's economic position. For the Templars, it was the circumvention of the canonical prohibition of interest, and it is probably not much different for others.
There is a strange cartel of silence when it comes to monetary matters anyway. For example, I wrote to two central banks to make sure that my conception of money creation was correct. In response, I received the same smokescreens that can also be read in any official announcement. In this sense, the secrecy has persisted, although with a bit of logic and accounting, one can, of course, come up with the right answer.
That's why for me it would have been much more interesting to investigate the background of these "lodges'" wealth, but perhaps that will come later.
To be honest, Renée, I haven't settled on an approach to this "strange cartel of silence".
On the one hand, I'd hate to mistakenly repeat any one of the antisemitic tropes mixed up with the history of banking. As mentioned in the piece, writing about the histories of secret societies is tough because those histories are actively covered up. To an uncomfortable degree, we're left to rely on hearsay and speculation.
But on the other hand, it does feel like antisemitism is used as a cover to prevent any popular understanding of that history. The same trick is used to stifle criticism of the Israeli government. Your bizarre experience trying to engage with these central banks matches other stories I've heard.
It's a tricky question! But your own Substack is on the right track, carefully explaining how money REALLY works. With respect to banking, I think it's only a matter of time before people cotton on to the fact that something's rotten in Denmark..
Yes, good old Shakespeare. But I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with the design of the financial system, but rather with the way it's handled. The best machine breaks down if it's not operated properly.
And you've addressed one of the central points: how does a society deal with excessive indebtedness! You've already mentioned the institution of debt-forgiveness in several places, which was reinterpreted by the Romans, because the promise of debt relief was reinterpreted as the forgiveness of moral sins. And hardly anyone in the US would think that the inscription on the Liberty Bell could be a call for debt relief. I recently watched the Tucker-Kirk interview and was very surprised that the term "jubilee" was mentioned - very briefly - which is no surprise, since a large part of the conversation revolved around the lack of prospects for young US citizens to escape debt dependency.
In Germany, the option of personal bankruptcy was introduced some 15 years ago, whereby one becomes debt-free after a three-year period (it was initially seven years) of "financial good conduct." This is clearly a cultural advance, even if one hardly owns anything afterward except for the remnants of one's own assets and has to start over – but then one can do it again.
And the tricky question isn't so tricky at all once one understands that a debt relationship (deposit) is not a means of payment. But people only understand this when a bank run occurs, even though central banks are supposed to prevent precisely that. And when even the FASB declares deposits as "cash," it's clear that even they don't fully understand what is actually quite clear in accounting: cash is an asset of private individuals, banks, and even the central bank (except for the balance sheet) – and not a liability like deposits.
https://law.resource.org/pub/us/code/bean/fasb.html/fasb.305.2011.html
"Cash
Consistent with common usage, cash includes not only currency on hand but demand deposits with banks or other financial institutions. Cash also includes other kinds of accounts that have the general characteristics of demand deposits in that the customer may deposit additional funds at any time and also effectively may withdraw funds at any time without prior notice or penalty. All charges and credits to those accounts are cash receipts or payments to both the entity owning the account and the bank holding it. For example, a bank’s granting of a loan by crediting the proceeds to a customer’s demand deposit account is a cash payment by the bank and a cash receipt of the customer when the entry is made."
The link is only available at archive.org 26. Jan. 2016
The phrase "Only gold is money, everything else is credit" is commonly attributed to J.P. Morgan, the famous American financier and banker. He emphasized the unique and enduring value of gold as true money, contrasting it with other forms of currency or financial instruments, which he considered credit or promises rather than real money.
In a fiat monetary system, however, the following applies: Only cash bills (legal tender notes) are money, everything else is credit! If you look at the publications on this topic, it is almost unanimously stated that banks can create money. You don't have to think about it for long to realize that this theory frequently generates contradictions – and ultimately dooms almost every discussion about money to failure. And all because monetary theory revolves only around the object of experience and not the object of knowledge. A recipe for disaster...
What a remarkable find on the FASB website! Or, more accurately, on the Wayback Machine. You've helpfully pointed out that banks create DEPOSITS, not money, and that's a distinction well worth making.
But it seems to me that banks charging the rest of us interest (for deposits they conjure up out of thin air) amounts to a systematic transfer of wealth, on a staggering scale, to the banking sector. I'm thinking specifically of the volume of residential mortgage debt in the US, and all the interest collected on that mountain of debt.
It seems to me that this "machine" systematically creates excess indebtedness. I suspect that banks actively wish to prevent the public from understanding that they charge us dearly for deposits they whip up on a computer. I'm not surprised that the FASB website hides their definition of "cash".
But I WAS surprised that you characterized this system as improperly-operated machine, as opposed to a fundamental driver of wealth inequality. Is your contention here simply that credit could/should be created as a public utility instead of a for-profit business?
Once the bank has fulfilled its payment obligation, the deposits disappear, meaning the bank has used its reserves to fulfill its obligation. It can no longer charge interest on them, regardless of the fact that interest on deposits usually represents an increase in the deposit holder's assets.
No, the interest is calculated on the bank's claim, based on the amount of the outstanding claim. This claim is, in a way, just as "made up out of thin air," because just like the deposits (liabilities), the receivables (assets) are a component of the loan agreement – mutual promises to pay. What is often overlooked is that a bank fulfills its performance obligation immediately or very soon after the contract is concluded, whereas installments take years or decades. Nevertheless, the bank has actually paid.
I don't know if the FASB website still has this entry, but I fear that no learning process has taken place in the meantime, and cash (assets) and deposits (liabilities) are still being lumped together. Such institutions are notorious for clinging to mistakes and viewing proposed changes as an attack on their sovereignty – even though they're talking complete nonsense.
Ultimately, since the abolition of the gold standard, credit has been a public utility because it relies on the use of a means of payment that banks can't create themselves. This means that all claims that banks can create money are bullshit – but you hear this claim from all sides. Here's another example of obfuscating the simple fact that means of payment come from the central bank and nowhere else. One could interpret this as a campaign to undermine central banks, which will ultimately lead to their abolition. This is why cryptocurrencies are so dangerous, because they suggest that a payment system can function without means of payment – therefore, a central bank is no longer needed.
"the interest is calculated on the bank's claim"
This is why I love your comments, Renée! That's obviously true and I overlooked it.
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