Rouble Nationalization – the Way to Russia’s Freedom. Nikolay Starikov

only be one answer – if these billions do not belong to you. And projects require money, development requires funds. Even fighting terrorists requires money as well as secret services. Money is required for everything and all the time. But when was the first time the 'printing machine' become non-governmental? When did this madness begin?

      It all dates back to history.

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      On the Bank of England and the Sun King's frail relatives

      I am often asked what we are fighting for. I can reply that you will find out once we have stopped.

Winston Churchill

      There are historical facts that are known practically to everyone. There are historical figures familiar to every pupil. Yet it is enough to probe just a bit deeper about one of these well-known events or personalities and it turns out that we are completely ignorant of that. Here is an incontrovertible fact – the French monarchs inherited crown from one another. For a very long time all of them were called Louis. The name remained the same – only the ordinal number of the king changed. The most famous Louis (and the most famous French king generally) was Louis XIV. It was he who bore the title of the Sun King and who built the famous series of palaces and gardens, Versailles. It was him, who Dumas described in his novels as having put an iron mask on his twin brother. It was him, who as a boy d'Artagnan and the three musketeers defended from the intrigues of the cardinal. And some years earlier these four protected his mother – Anne of Austria – from another cardinal – Richelieu.

      He was the most 'branded' French monarch, to use the modern show-business parlance. He is featured in literature and cinema, his mistresses are talked about in TV programmes. Yet the real life of the Sun King was so exciting and unbelievable, that Dumas's stories are by comparison just a collection of dull, bleak stories, and it is about this most exciting part of the monarch's life that historians and novelists are tight as a clam.

      Museum guides on the other hand say a lot about the Sun King to their tourists, to everyone who visits the beautiful Versailles and wonderful Paris. So, what do they say?

      The King lived in the lap of luxury and pursued invasive wars. Well, that does not say anything special about him, for in those times everyone fought wars and everyone tried to surround themselves with at least some luxury. Those who are better educated will make an obligatory remark, that Louis the XIV ruled for a very long time – for over 70 years. Even the reign of 'comrade Stalin in comparison with Louis was nothing but a one-reeler. So, generations changed, children became parents, grandchildren were born, and the King remained on the throne, as an eternal and irremovable symbol of power. Here we should recall his famous maxim: L'État, c'est moi' ('I am the state').

      And now I am going to ask you a question, dear reader. What is the relation of Louis XIV to his immediate successor on the throne – Louis XV? I have presented this question to many people. So far, nobody has given me the correct answer. It would seem that no question could be easier. We all know this king, we know Versailles, and we have a general idea of the French history. The most common answer is that he was his son. Those who realise that there must be a catch in the question try to grope for the right track and reply 'grandson'. Wrong. Then one normally replies: 'Nephew'. Still wrong. Then, finally, they make a desperate guess – 'he is not related to Louis XIV'. And that is wrong, too.

      The throne of Louis XIV, the politician, who established the most powerful state, the statesmen, who was in control of the country for seventy two years, was inherited by his great-grandson. And mind you, the Sun King was not childless, and neither were his children. Yet it was only one of his great grandsons who inherited the throne. What happened to all the in-between heirs? Why did nobody reflect about the reasons of such strange events?

      I am very often surprised by the fact, that historians for some reason persistently refuse to understand the real springs of action that shape the discipline they study. They will not compare the dates of various events, to coordinate them, as criminologists do as they try to solve a case. I speak of motives, coincidences, indirect evidences. These are the three pillars that all criminal investigations are based on. And we are going to conduct such an investigation right now. Let us study the history of that period and try to comprehend what happened to the family of the 'Sun King'. It is important, because the decline of his family coincided with the first, even if tentative blossom of the 'money printing device', which is now dominating nearly all over the world. And at those times this invention was just talking its first steps towards establishing worldwide hegemony. The monster had just hatched. And the family of Louis XIV was one of its first victims…

      Money is power. Whatever your attitude towards money may be, you cannot deny the fact. And who could be more aware of the fact than those by nature of their occupation submerged in the world of jewellery and gold? In different times bankers existed under different names: in the ancient world they were called money changers, then jewellers and merchants. Let us call them bankers. Just like any other human beings bankers had a dream. They dreamed of obtaining a boundless source of power and wealth. Similar dreams captivated the alchemists and warlocks who desired to discover the secret of turning cheap metals into gold. In the end, they failed: the science of alchemy was abandoned as it brought no results giving way to modern chemistry. The warlocks were burnt at the stake while bankers happened to be luckier. They managed to get a true recipe of making gold out of nothing. As one cannot get around the laws of nature, the task was not to create gold itself but to endow some other things with the qualities of gold. Not only to use gold and silver as currency, but to elevate money to some extra value which is not the same as that of some metal. And – as a result – to substitute gold with paper money, that would be conceived by bankers themselves.

      The idea was in the air. In the middle ages bankers stored gold of some, and lent this gold to others. Besides, they overtook – for a small reimbursement – another bank function: the payoff one. Gold does not necessarily need to be carried from one place to another. All one needs is just a bank-bill, i.e. the document reading that the presenter has the guarantee to get a certain amount of gold from the banker who issued the bank-bill. A piece of paper is more comfortable to travel around with than a sack of gold, is it not? All the more so as the world was rather volatile in those days. Having presented this document, one could get gold from the banker in the other town without risking precious metals. All you have to do is the following: you give your gold to the banker against a warrant, then you present this warrant to the banker in the other town as a paying means for the goods you need. It is practical and secure.

      And what the banker gained was a unique possibility to issue more 'gold warrants, than he could back by real gold in his storages.

      Who could check how much he had altogether? Who could know how many depositors stored their gold with the banker, and how much gold he owned himself? Who could check how many borrowers had borrowed gold? How much was left? Miraculous opportunities revealed. Only one situation was to be avoided, and it is also catastrophic for any bank today. It is the situation when all the depositors at once come to take their money back. The bankruptcy is in this case inevitable because it would be clear at once that the banker had issued more warrants than he had real gold. That he simply cheated.

      The more paper warrants that were given by the banker to his clients, the higher was the risk, the risk of being disclosed. Apart from this danger there was another one – the idea seemed to be far too simple and elegant. Someone else could be exactly as clever. And this mastermind could have begun 'cheating' himself, or, if his authority were sanctified, he could have beheaded the sly bankers and put up their shutters once and forever.

      This genial gamble required some solid protection which was invented by an unknown banker. A force was needed that would defend and would stand up for bankers. As a matter of fact bankers, having invented such a simple method to create money out of nothing, entrenched upon the millennial foundations of economics, where the values had always been real. He tempted the soul of humankind. He began to lend credence. Credence in that some gold is reserved under a warrant, credence in that a banker can always meet a bill with the yellow metal. In reality this credence proved to be enough, it turned out that it is not necessary to have that much gold – it is enough to have faith that this gold is really there. Today's economics are based on this very principle. Have you not heard