I'm out and about a lot and, as a conversation piece, I often ask: "How would you control a nation?" The answer I get is invariably: "Become Prime Minister." Wrong. The Prime Minister will be shortly voted out of office. His picture will be hung up on a few walls. He will get a place in the nation's history books. Consider again what you would need to control a nation. The list would possibly contain the following:

Control of the media would give you the ability to control 'Public Opinion'. You would encourage a devotion to two political parties. Every day you say something good about Party A and something good about Party B. All other political parties would be portrayed as rubbish. You would undermine any politician who didn't go along with your intentions and you would promote any politician, from either of your two favoured parties, that went along with your line. Essentially, the ability to control public opinion has become the greatest weapon in the world. Your two favoured parties arguing with each other is fine provided:

The means to control the politicians is comparatively simple. You will become the major donor to both political parties through your network of subservient lobby groups and corporations. You will allow the parties to create their own policies provided they do not contravene the five points listed above. Politicians that toe the line will be given generous campaign funding and will receive generous consultancy jobs for life on exit from political life. You will maintain a dossier of 'dirt' on each politician which will contain sexual deviances. Some of this you may be able to manufacture with some paid hirelings to create some sexually compromising situations.

To control the money system, you will need the government to go along with your wishes. The government will create the Cash Currency of the nation. This Cash Currency will be in the form of paper and coin, with a commonly accepted name such as a dollar. Although this dollar appears to be the national unit of currency, it will only have a small circulation. The banks in your system will create an alternate form of money, Bank Credit, with no visible form. You will simply write down numbers in ledgers. You will link this money to the Cash Currency of the nation and make it equal in value. One unit of Bank Credit is equal in value to one dollar of Cash Currency. You will make your Bank Credit fully exchangeable with government issued Cash Currency and you will record the amount of Cash Currency that you owe the customer in a bank statement. This Bank Credit is simply a credit for the equivalent amount of Cash Currency. When people have bills to pay, you will discourage them from asking that virtual Bank Credit be converted to real Cash Currency. You will simply adjust the credit amounts in the buyer and seller's accounts. You will set up reciprocal arrangements between the banks in your system so that credits and debits can be made between customer accounts in any bank. Flows between any two banks are likely to be very close to cancelling out on a daily basis. Minor adjustments at the end of the day can be made between each other's bank accounts. You will create a Central Bank that will also facilitate the movement of Bank Credit between the different banks and give an air of government respectability to your debt creating system. Your individual Banks will operate to the highest accounting standards as demanded by Double Entry Accounting. Without Double Entry Accounting, the bank would not be able to increase the amount of money in any account without decreasing the amount in another account. So your banks are constrained in the making of money, except when they make a credit in one account and a debit in another account. This is a very convenient way of creating money out of thin air. You create a million dollars of Bank Credit and a million dollars of debt at the same time by the stroke of a pen. This is commonly called 'Fountain Pen Money'. If a customer wishes to buy a house, you will write $1 million in the sellers account with a plus sign and write $1 million with a minus sign in the buyer's account. By this interesting maneuver, your bank has created $1 million of Bank Credit and $1 million of debt. This transaction is denominated in the national unit of currency but no transaction occurred at the treasury, nor at the central bank. The creation of the million dollars of Bank Credit did not involve any movement of government created Cash Currency. There is now a $1 million increase in the Money Supply of the nation without the government creating new Cash Currency.

The next stage is to get the government to use your bank's Bank Credit rather than the Cash Currency that it creates itself. You will convince the government that the Bank Credit is equivalent to real Cash Currency. The illusion is easy, as the units are the same and one can be directly exchanged for the other. The government is not capable of creating Bank Credit unless it creates its own bank. This leads to the situation where the government needs to give you something to obtain Bank Credit. This will be a bond on the future taxation of the citizens of the nation. The government is giving the future tax of the people to the banks to obtain money that it could have created itself. The government will lose complete control of the money supply. The government will not be able to inject extra money into circulation as is needed to cover:

The government will be forced into the situation where extra funds will have to be borrowed from you. The bank will have created a clever phenomenon called the National Debt. No one will notice the ridiculousness of the National Debt. Why would a government be in debt for money that it has the authority to create itself? You will severely harass anyone that points this out. You will censor newspapers and your publishing houses will not print books that point this out. You will censor the Internet, not to get rid of porn, but prevent information and discussion on this money creation arrangement and about your wars and your control over Public Opinion.

You will effectively create a network of people willing to assist your system to gain the favours you bring to them. You will need to use the cooperation of religious groups, class groups and corporations. These groups will be dependent on you for funding and favours on which they rely.

Your banking system will charge interest on loans. In reality, the only way of creating your Bank Credit is to create a debt at the same time. Small quantities of your Bank Credit will be created when your citizens give you Cash Currency. However, the government has no way of distributing cash into the society as it only operates its finances through your bank accounts using your Bank Credit. You now have a monopoly on the issue of the money of the nation. Even government bills and taxes are paid, using your Bank Credit. Any Cash Currency, held by citizens was obtained from your bank system and your banks obtained it from the national government by crediting a government bank account with Bank Credit, which you created at no cost. You are now in complete control of the money system of the nation. You can now control who gets money and who does not get money and what it gets spent on. If you increase loans for new real estate there will be many new houses built. A you restrict loans to small and medium business then the corporations, which you basically own and control through share ownership, will begin to dominate.

The political system will appear to have all the characteristics of a democracy but it will actually be a duopoly controlled by you. The country will get 'Party A' for a few years, controlled by yourself. When the people are fed up with 'Party A', the people will vote for 'Party B', which you also control.