Who Controls the money
Introduction Money shapes every economy. Few people ask who controls it. Two books give sharp answers. The Tower of Basel looks at the Bank for International Settlements. Princes of the Yen looks at the Bank of Japan and its credit policy. Together they teach one lesson. Central banks matter more than most voters think. II. The Tower of Basel The Bank for International Settlements was set up in 1930. It sits in Basel in Switzerland. Its first task was to handle German war reparations. Later it became a bank for central banks. LeBor shows how little the public knows about it. The bank enjoys special legal protection. Its meetings are private. Its staff are rarely in the news. The book also covers the Second World War. The bank kept working while Europe burned. It handled gold moved by Nazi Germany. Czech gold was transferred to Germany in 1939. A US citizen named Thomas McKittrick served as its president then. The Allies later asked for the bank to be closed. It survived anyway. The ban...