When Mexico Had the Blues: A Transatlantic Tale of Bonds, Bankers, and Nationalists, 1862–1910
By Steven C. Topick
As Joseph Schumpeter lyrically described the broader phenomenon of public finances: “The public finances are one of the best starting points for an investigation of society . . . The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare—all this and more is written in its fiscal history . . . He who knows how to listen to the message here discerns the thunder of world history more clearly than anywhere else.”
Continue reading When Mexico Had the Blues : A Transatlantic Tale of Bonds, Bankers, and Nationalists, 1862–1910
Concerning bonds here’s some interesting history…
Thomas Edison, the famous inventor born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, was bitterly opposed to the policy of issuing bonds. He said,
“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond.”
When the government in his day wanted to borrow $30 million to develop the Muscle Shoals Project, Edison said,
“It is stupid to borrow $30 million, and have to pay moneylenders $66 million for the use of the money.”
Edison was convinced that global socialism would be brought about by the creation of debt and interest perpetrated on the nations by international moneylenders.” Cantelon pgs. 30-31
The Seven Loose Pieces of the Global Jigsaw Puzzle
(Neoliberalism as a puzzle: the useless global unity which fragments and destroys nations)
[Translator’s note: In June of 1997 the following document appeared in a European publication. It is an analysis of neoliberalism by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Cecilia Rodriguez of the NCDM]
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3849/marcos_7pieces.html