-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- http://www.southern-style.com/conspiracy_of_the_left.htm Key Players Control World Money Supply By John M. Berry Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 28, 1998; Page H01 BASEL, Switzerland -- Ten times a year, the financial barons who control the world's supply of money gather here on the bank of the Rhine River for drinks and dinner -- and secret conversations that can shape the course of the global economy. The 13 members of this economic cabal meet on the glass-walled 18th floor of the round headquarters tower of an obscure institution known as the Bank for International Settlements. From their seats at the conference table, they can look across the city and the river to Germany's Black Forest or farther west to French Alps on the horizon. As they arrive and greet one another by their first names, waiters hover with drinks -- they know each one's favorite. For privacy and candor, no staff members are present, only the principals and occasionally a guest, such as Michel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund. The members of this secretive group are the governors of the central banks of the Group of 10 industrial nations, plus Switzerland. The most powerful voice in the room is the U.S. representative -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan or, if he can't attend, Vice Chairman Alice M. Rivlin. As befits its power, the United States alone has a second seat at the table, occupied by William J. McDonough, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The 13th participant is the BIS's general manager, Andrew Crockett, a former Bank of England official. This is how global finance does its most sensitive business, in these quiet Sunday-night meetings. The central bankers talk informally -- with no agenda other than what is on their minds. The financial intelligence that emerges from these meetings -- and perhaps more important, the personal trust -- helps keep the international banking system steady in turbulent times, such as the financial crisis that has swept Asia over the past year. Roots in a War But what, exactly, is the strangely named organization that hosts this secret conclave? The BIS was established in 1930 to assist in the payments of reparations owed by Germany and other losers in World War I to the victors. Over the years it has become a central bank for central banks. It has also emerged as a clearinghouse for regulators -- helping them supervise commercial banks, oversee foreign exchange markets and protect the world financial system. Topic A on recent Sunday nights, of course, has been the financial crisis in Japan and other Asian nations. The 13 participants have discussed how to ease the Asian crisis and limit its impact on the rest of the world. The group has focused, in particular, on ensuring that the crisis doesn't threaten the world's intricate system of settling international transactions. A collapse of that payments system, as it's known, is a central banker's ultimate nightmare. Partly in response to the Asian crisis and partly to broaden its role beyond its European base, the BIS will open a satellite office in Hong Kong on July 10. The following day, the central bank governors will hold a regular monthly dinner outside Basel for the first time -- in Tokyo. If the meeting room in Basel could speak, it would tell a history of global monetary policy. It was at one of the dinners in 1982 that then-Fed chairman Paul A. Volcker twisted arms -- one source said "browbeat" -the other governors to come up with money and other actions to help limit the economic damage from that year's default by Mexico and later by other Latin America nations on their governments' debt owed to foreign banks. Mexico was the topic once again in late 1994 when the United States led a $50 billion bailout that involved money from the IMF, the United States and other countries and, as a backup, $10 billion from the BIS. That was an unusually contentious meeting because European central bank governors, including the powerful head of Germany's Bundesbank, Hans Tietmeyer, opposed the bailout on the grounds that it was unnecessary and a bad precedent. At one critical dinner, recalls former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder, "we took a lot of heat about Mexico. We were lucky that Camdessus was there. He was a lightning rod. The others were mad at the United States, but more so at the IMF." In the end, the United States got its way. "By central bank standards, the talk is amazingly frank because there is no audience," said Blinder, now an economics professor at Princeton University. "There is this old cliché about 'full and frank' discussions among diplomats. That means they were stiff and didn't say anything. In this case, it really is frank. There is no gallery to play to... You know, central bankers cooperate across national borders better than governments do, and I think this is one of the reasons." Another glimpse of the secretive group comes from E. Gerald Corrigan, a managing director at Goldman Sachs & Co. As president at the New York Fed from 1984 to 1993, Corrigan attended 115 consecutive monthly meetings at the BIS. With everyone at one table and "no staff, no agenda, no records and no communiqué ... marvelous personal relationships developed," Corrigan recalls. "The consequence of that was that when something went wrong, working with these people was just so easy because of the trust developed by the frequency and the intimacy of the dinners. To me, that's the genius of the organization." During Corrigan's time, plenty did go wrong -- particularly with the world's banks. The Japanese bubble was expanding toward the bursting point, which eventually sent Japanese banks into a downward spiral from which they still haven't recovered. The U.S. stock market crashed in October 1987, sending shock waves around the world. Foreign exchange crises were so frequent they are now barely remembered. Adding to the disarray was the view of the leading U.S. banker, Citicorp Chairman Walter Wriston, that large banks with diversified portfolios didn't need much capital. During those raucous years, financial institutions around the world were disregarding what Corrigan calls "prudential standards." The banks were lending like crazy, often in other countries where the bankers didn't understand the risks, and national bank regulators were not cracking down. With Volcker taking the lead, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a BIS group, began trying to draft a new set of international standards for bank capital -- that is, the amount of reserves institutions must have relative to the amount of loans they have on the books. Corrigan recalls that the Basel Committee wasn't getting anywhere until the Fed and the Bank of England found that they had separately come up with similar approaches. When the details were announced in January 1986, "instead of everybody getting mad at us, it became a rallying point," Corrigan said. "The next big obstacle was getting the Japanese on board. The big issue there was to what extent the standards would allow the Japanese banks to count their unrealized capital gains on stocks as part of the capital." An allowance was duly made for the Japanese, and Corrigan said, "I thought at the time it would come back to haunt them." As indeed it has. What analysts describe as the current "death spiral" of Japanese banks stems partly from the fact that every time the Japanese stock market falls, it reduces the amount of bank capital. That, in turn, makes it harder for Japanese banks to make new loans, which in turn limits economic growth -- plunging the country deeper into economic crisis. Central bank staffers, too, use the BIS for bonding. As a result of their regular meetings here, senior members of the governors' staffs have developed a network of their own that can be activated in a crisis. Edwin M. "Ted" Truman, director of the Fed's international finance division, used that network last December, when there was a high risk that major South Korean banks would default on repayment of short-term debt owed to banks in Europe, Japan, Australia and the United States. Truman set up daily conference calls with his counterparts in all the home countries of the lending banks. In the daily calls, Truman and the other central bank staffers shared information about their lending banks' situations. The exposure of the banks varied greatly, and it was proving difficult to get an agreement that the banks would roll over the loans and extend their maturity. The conversations helped move the negotiations forward, and the rollovers took place in January. "This is a small illustration of the process," Truman said. "It's a sort of club, I guess ... dealing with people we know." The BIS also has some formal committees handling arcane banking matters. Its Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems has been promoting better risk management by banks, better ways to settle transactions involving multiple currencies and better domestic payment systems. The Euro-Currency Standing Committee is studying how to reduce the vulnerability of the world financial system in the wake of the Asian crisis. And the Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee oversees world currency markets and is the only source of data on the size and transactions in that huge market. Of course, the G-10 governors don't have to come to the BIS to have dinner together. In fact, most years when the IMF and World Bank annual meetings are in Washington in September, there is no monthly meeting here, and Greenspan plays host at the Fed. A Bigger Board Historically, the BIS has been essentially a European institution with U.S. participation. In July 1994, however, the governors of the central banks of Canada and Japan were added to its board. More recently, nine additional nations outside Europe -- Brazil, Mexico, Russia, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, India and Saudi Arabia -- became members, bringing the total to 41. Almost 100 nations had representatives at the BIS annual meeting earlier this month, including central bankers from member nations and from those that do business with the bank. Similarly, at the monthly meetings, there is a well-attended session Monday afternoon on central banking topics, which is open to any central banker. Rivlin, the Fed vice chairman, says those wider afternoon sessions are valuable. "They are interesting," she said, "and I learn a lot." During the annual meeting this month, Julian Francis, the governor of the central bank of the Bahamas, said his institution -- like many others from smaller nations -- relies on the BIS for technical assistance in banking supervision, payments and settlements, and banking technology. The BIS has also helped in training some of his bank's employees. "We find it very useful," Francis said. As a bank, the BIS has deposits of about $112 billion, some of which is in gold. The funds are invested with commercial banks and in securities, but central bank depositors can withdraw them at any time. Smaller central banks use the BIS both as a convenient way to invest their reserves and to keep secret the way in which they are managing the money. Even the Fed has some reserves on deposit here. Last year the BIS made roughly $500 million on its banking activities. In some cases, BIS officials take great pains to make sure that orders to pay money out of the accounts of central banks in countries run by corrupt governments are related to the central bank's activities, rather than just the needs of some powerful official moving cash into his own secret account. All but 16 percent of the BIS shares are owned by its member central banks. The remainder are in private hands, as the result of the United States's failure in 1930 to pay for its shares; they were instead acquired by a group of American banks, which later sold them, mostly to individuals in Europe. Some of the French and Belgian shares went the same way. Even though the United States was included in the BIS from the beginning, the Fed's two seats on the board weren't filled until four years ago. Initially the United States objected to the BIS mission of facilitating payment of German reparations. At the peace conference that followed World War I, the United States had opposed such payments. At various points between 1930 and 1994, U.S. officials considered taking the board seats but a number of problems arose -- such as the BIS membership of some communist nations in Eastern Europe -- though not Russia, which has never been a member -- and South Africa. With the end of the Cold War and of apartheid in South Africa, those barriers were gone. "The BIS ... is now too valuable to the Federal Reserve in carrying out its statutory responsibilities for the [Fed] not to be a full participant in BIS institutional deliberations," Greenspan told Congress in explaining why the United States was finally joining the BIS board. Two Big Issues For the BIS staff, two big technical issues lie ahead: The first is how to deal with the advent of the European Central Bank, which will open its doors this week as part of the creation of the Euro to replace the currencies of 11 European countries. The ECB will take over virtually all of the monetary policy responsibilities of the Bank of France, the Bundesbank and their counterparts, though not those of the Bank of England, which is not adopting the Euro immediately. Obviously, the head of the ECB, Willem F. Duisenberg, former head of the Dutch central bank, will be added to the Sunday dinner list. But what of the others, whose power will have been greatly diminished? The second issue is whether to keep expanding BIS membership by including such nations as Malaysia, Argentina, Indonesia and Thailand -- and in the process expand the bank's role in developing nations. Meanwhile, BIS chief Crockett hopes to make this city on the Rhine the center of information, advice and cooperation on international financial supervision. The secretariat of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is here, as is the headquarters of the International Association of Insurance Supervisors. Crockett is hoping to persuade the organization of investment bank supervisors, which is located in Montreal, to move as well. The BIS set up shop in Basel originally in 1930 because it was about a day's train ride for the European central bankers. Now the institution has to decide just how far it will travel from its Swiss home to fulfill it: role as guardian of global finance. President Abraham Lincoln warned us of these dangerous International bankers when he said "The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace & conspires against it in times of war. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who even question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me & the financial institutions at the rear, the latter is my greatest foe." President James A. Madison warned "History shows that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain control over governments by controlling the money and the issuance of it." President Thomas Jefferson once said "I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid posterity under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale" and "The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution. I am an enemy to all banks, discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. If the American people allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson was prophetic when he spoke these words. America is now mortgaged to the hilt and when it all collapses, the International Bankers will end up owning everything. They gave us paper "money" and we gave them everything, our labor, our inventions, our land and our possessions. If we do not stop this crime from continuing we will end up very much like serfs from the middle ages who had to rent land from the Land-Lords. Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company . <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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