Since we live in a post-barter economy, a money economy, those who control the money supply effectively control the planet. Governments gave up all attempt to coin or control money in the 19th century, mostly because they did not trust one another. That is, no nation had faith that the coinage or currency of another nation was really worth what it claimed to be worth. The great international banks stepped into this vacuum, and by demonstrating more physical rectitude than governments had in the past, became the creators of money in the modern world. After the banks had control, they no longer needed to be quite so prim in their physical rectitude. Nobody could challenge them. This means that governments cannot do anything, good or ill, wise or foolish, unless the banks first lend them the money for the project. The power is in the banks. The governments survive on the permission of the banks. If the banks cut off their credit, governments die. Any government that resists has its credit cut off and dies. As Buckminster Fuller stressed in all his writings, this means that in the modern world, banks act and governments only react to the situations the bankers have ordained. Even earlier, historian Brooks Adam wrote of the British financier Samuel Lloyd in The Law of Civilization and Decay. He comprehended that, with expanding trade, an inelastic currency must rise in value. He saw that, with sufficient resources at command, his class might be able to establish such a rise, almost at pleasure, certainly that they could manipulate it when it came by taking advantage of foreign exchange. In other words, as soon as the great multinational banks had control of the money supply, they saw that they could manipulate cash and credit to maximize profits. They would have been rather dense if they had not seen this. Nonetheless, while these financiers quite sanely and legally maximize profit, the rest of us are at their mercy. But we never elected them to this position of power, and by and large, we do not even know who they are. In the present decade, it costs $50 million to run a campaign for the presidency of the United States, $10 million to run a campaign for the Senate, and $5 million for the House of Representatives. This means that the U.S., the strongest country in the West, is not only owned in trillion dollar debt to the banks, but also governed by persons who are either millionaires or heavily in debt to millionaires. In the words of ex-Senator Pettigrew, we now have a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. As Edward Lutwak documents in his cheerfully Machiavellian little text, The Coup d'Etat, more governments have been changed since World War II by the Coup d'Etat than any other method. More governments have been changed by coup than all the democrats have been changed by