From the Financial Times
By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Published: September 25 2007 17:44 | Last updated: September 25 2007 17:44
The Battle of Waterloo. The deaths of six US presidents. The rise of Adolf Hitler. The deflation of the Japanese bubble economy, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and even environmental destruction in the developing world.
In a new Chinese best-seller, Currency Wars , these disparate events spanning two centuries have a single root cause: the control of money issuance through history by the Rothschild banking dynasty.
Even today, claims author Song Hongbing, the US Federal Reserve remains a puppet of private banks, which also ultimately owe their allegiance to the ubiquitous Rothschilds.
Such an over-arching conspiracy theory might matter as little as the many fetid tracts that can still be found in the west about the “gnomes of Zurich†and Wall Street’s manipulation of global finance.
But in China, which is in the midst of a lengthy debate about opening its financial system under US pressure, the book has become a surprise hit and is being read at senior levels of government and business.
“Some senior heads of companies have been asking me if this is all true,†says Ha Jiming, the chief economist of China International Capital Corp, the largest local investment bank.
The book also gives ammunition, however hay-wire, to many in China who argue that Beijing should resist pressure from the US and other countries to allow its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate.
The book’s publisher, a unit of the state-owned CITIC group, said Currency Wars had sold nearly 200,000 copies, with an estimated 400,000 extra pirated copies in circulation as well.
Mr Song, an information technology consultant and amateur historian who has lived in the US since 1994 and is now based in Washington, says his interest was sparked by trying to uncover what lay behind the Asian crisis in 1997.
After he began blogging some of his findings, his friends suggested he find a publisher for a longer work. He professes himself surprised by the book’s success.
“I never imagined it could be so hot and that top leaders would be reading it,†he says during a book tour in Shanghai. “People in China are nervous about what’s going on in financial markets but they don’t know how to handle the real dangers. This book gives them some ideas.â€Â
The thing that most shocked him, he says, was his “discovery†that the Fed is a privately owned and run bank. “I just never imagined a central bank could be a private body,†he says.
The Fed does describe itself “as an unusual mixture of public and private elementsâ€Â. While its seven governors are all appointed by the US president, private banks do hold shares in its 12 regional reserve banks.
But Mr Song ignores the government’s role and argues that the Fed’s key functions are ultimately controlled by five private banks, such as Citibank, all of which have maintained a “close relationship†with the Rothschilds.
continue reading…
