None Dare Call It Conspiracy

Government either gets money by taxing or borrowing. The super-rich got that way by leveraging the latter. But does anyone really understand how that government borrowing works?

From Gary Allen's famed 1971 classic None Dare Call It Conspiracy:

The public is led to believe that our government borrows from "the people" through savings bonds. Actually, however, only a small percentage of the national debt is held by individuals in this form. Most government bonds, except those held by the government itself through its trust funds, are held by vast banking firms known as international banks. For centuries there has been big money to be made by international bankers in the financing of governments and kings. The process through which one collects a debt from a government or a monarch is not a subject taught in the business schools of our universities, and most of us - having never been in the business of lending money to kings - have not given the problem much thought. But there is a king-financing business, and to those who can ensure collection it is lucrative indeed. Whenever a business firm borrows big money its creditor obtains a voice in management to protect his investment. Like a business, no government can borrow big money unless willing to surrender to the creditor some measure of sovereignty as collateral. Certainly, international bankers who have loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to governments around the world command considerable influence in the policies of such governments. Since the keystone of the international banking empires has been government bonds, it has been in the interest of these international bankers to encourage government debt. The higher The debt the more the interest. Nothing drives government deeply into debt like a war; and it has not been an uncommon practice among international bankers to finance both sides of the bloodiest military conflicts. But while wars and revolutions have been useful to international bankers in gaining or increasing control over governments, the key to such control has always been control of money. You can control a government if you have it in your debt; a creditor is in a position to demand the privileges of monopoly from the sovereign. Money-seeking governments have granted monopolies in state banking, natural resources, oil concessions and transportation. However, the monopoly which the international financiers most covet is control over a nation's money. Eventually these international bankers actually owned as private corporations the central banks of the various European nations. The Bank of England, Bank of France and Bank of Germany were not owned by their respective governments, as almost everyone imagines, but were privately owned monopolies granted by the heads of state, usually in return for loans. Under this system, observed Reginald McKenna, President of the Midlands Bank of England, in 1939: "Those that create and issue the money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in their hands the destiny of the people." Once the government is in debt to the bankers it is at their mercy.