The BIS in Basel & Nazi Germany

Credit Risk Assessment

The contribution of bank assets (loans or securities) to the risk weighted asset base for credit risk can be calculated using one of these methods:

1. Standardized Approach to Credit Risk: Each bank asset is assigned one of the following weights to enter into the Risk Weighted Asset Base;

   0%, 20%, 50%, 100% or 150%

   The factor will be selected based on the claim counter-party type (sovereign, bank, corporate) and their rating from an independent body such as Standard and Poors, or the Export Credit Agencies. For claims such as retail mortgages a blanket 50% is used and for unrated entities a blanket 100% is used. Interestingly a risk weighting of 100% for commercial real estate is being proposed because this area has been so much of the cause of recent financial crises.

   Though a passing statement is made about higher risk weights for higher risk loans, no explicit mention is made of certain types of loans that caused great shocks to the financial system in the late 1990s. Specifically I am talking about the loans underlying the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis whereby major US banks lent heavily to this high-risk, highly leveraged hedge fund whose losses almost collapsed the global financial system. Given the growth in these hedge funds and similar vehicles, their tendency to get debt capital from banks on favorable terms, and the fact that they are NOT REGULATED because they involve "sophisticated investors" the BCA should address this explicitly. The unnamed high risk activities with discretion for setting capital requirements is an area wide open for abuse.

   BCA also sets out the capital relief that will be given for various credit mitigation techniques, such as collateral against loans, guarantees, and credit derivatives. This is based on the amount of the asset covered by such risk mitigation techniques.
    

2. The Internal Ratings Based (IRB) Approach

• • First bank assets are categorized into one of the six categories of corporates, banks, sovereigns, retail, project finance, and equity.

    Under the IRB approach banks will use their own internal measures and techniques for setting the Probability of Default associated with each borrower grade. Either the regulators (under the Foundation Approach) or the banks themselves (under the Advanced Approach) will set the other variables for assigning a risk weighting - these include Loss Given Default, Exposure at Default and treatment of guarantees and credits.

    The risk weights for each asset are derived using a continuous formula specified by the BCA which assumes a normal default distribution, and is function of both the probability of default, the loss given default and the maturity of the loan under the advanced approach. Another adjustment is made to the group of assets for concentrated risk exposure to single borrowers. No adjustment appears to be made for single groups of related borrowers, which might be a problem, and has certainly been a problem in recent financial crises.

    Under these approaches capital relief is also given for credit risk mitigation such as collateral, guarantees, and credit derivatives based on the amount of the asset covered.

There are very detailed sets of rules for the circumstances under which banks may be able to set capital requirements under the Standardized, IRB - Foundation and IRB - Advanced techniques.

Without going into this detail here I think it suffices to use the terminology that the BCA uses - that sophisticated banks with sophisticated risk management techniques will be the ones that get to set their own capital requirements, which are then to be reviewed by the Bank Regulators under Pillar 2. This means that, generally, the self-setting of capital requirements will be done by the largest international banks who also suffer most from the "too-big-to-fail" moral hazard risk.

These are the same banks that tend to exercise power over their regulators rather than the other way around. Furthermore the complexity of both the methodology for the subjective approaches and the complexity of the underlying financial instruments will make it very difficult for the regulators to adequately monitor capital requirements. For example, instruments like credit derivatives are very new, and will often be used for purely speculative, as opposed to risk-mitigation, purposes. Self-setting of capital requirements for such new, complex and speculative investments is wide open for abuse. It is very interesting that the insurance industry regulators do not yet allow such capital relief on credit derivatives.

Market Risk, Interest Rate Risk and Operational Risk

• Market Risk is now referred to as "trading book" risk and covers those positions in financial instruments and commodities held with trading intent or to hedge other risks in the trading book. Trading intent includes benefiting from short term price movements and locking in arbitrage profits. Evidence of trading intent must be available.

• The BCA specifies asset valuation techniques for trading book risks and specific risk capital charges as a percentage of these asset values and capital relief for various hedging strategies. Without having assessed the impact or implications of these separate requirements I will just note that these types of distinctions between trading book and non-trading book assets can create regulatory arbitrage opportunities from the decision of where to place assets based on where they have the least capital requirement.

• Interest Rate Risk arises from duration mismatch between assets and liabilities which is a major profit source for all financial operations. It is interesting to note that capital requirements for this are being dealt with under Pillar 2, to be assessed on a case-by-case basis in the supervisory review, rather than having any minimal capital requirements or basic tests specified under Pillar 1.

• It is also interesting to note that the insurance industry, for many years, has had specified minimum capital requirements for mismatch risk based on the nature of liabilities as well as mandated asset adequacy tests whereby interest rate shocks are applied to asset/liability portfolios to test the adequacy of assets. The subjectivity of the banking industry's approach could leave this need for capital open for abuse.

• Operational Risk arises from all other major sources of risk - such as systems failure, mistiming of trades, fraud and so forth. It is extremely difficult to assess and, like with other risk measures, a range of options are available from specified % income to highly subjective requirements for the "sophisticated" banks.

1. Pillar 2: Supervisory Review Process

This section of the BCA describes the role of bank supervisors in making sure that banks are managing their risks appropriately. This involves review of banks' risk monitoring techniques and ensuring that banks comply with minimum capital requirements. Obviously this role of the supervisor will become many times more complicated than it has been for those classified as sophisticated banks. This is because of the level of subjectivity and complexity involved in these banks being able to set their own capital requirements.

In my view an adequate supervisory effort in the context of increasingly complex and subjective capital setting methodologies, in conjunction with the convergence of financial services, the increasing cross-border acquisitions, and the growing complexity of financial instruments is becoming almost impossible for the largest financial players. As noted earlier this is also where the "too-big-to-fail" moral hazard and associated risk is also greatest.

Interestingly the current BCA draft states, in its section on Pillar 2 that "Bank management clearly bears primary responsibility for ensuring that the bank has adequate capital to support its risks". This sounds very nice. If only it were true! Then we might have avoided so many nasty financial crises whose costs were ultimately borne by the public and generally by those who could least afford it. In this statement I would have to say that the BCBS is wrong, and that this view they have is leading bank supervisors down a very dangerous path. Because banks sit at the heart of credit (money) creation - at the heart of the international monetary system that we all depend on - it is the PUBLIC in general, not bank management, who bear ultimate responsibility for whether or not the banks have adequate capital and risk management techniques. The BCBS, and bank supervisors in general, clearly need to be reminded of this as they seem to have forgotten that they have any responsibility to the public at all.

Pillar 3: Market Discipline or Public Disclosure

This includes disclosure of risk exposures and calculations of risk-based capital, risk mitigation techniques, and comparison of minimum capital to actual capital. Without seeing an example or explicit list of reporting requirements it is difficult to know how detailed this will be. Nevertheless it sounds like it has potential for the general public to understand just what kind of risks the banking industry is getting us into.

What already has become clear is that the major banks are complaining about the amount of detail of disclosure required under this Pillar. However, given the statements above about who ultimately bears responsibility for bank risks, the public should prefer very detailed disclosure, and maybe even add some additional requirements - such as details of loans rescued by the IMF.

4. Problems with the new BCA from Public Interest Perspective

Bank supervision and the setting of risk-based capital requirements are very complex issues. Mandating risk-sensitive capital requirements for banking book assets is very complex because of the diverse range of complex assets and loan structures banks can invest in (or really, create money for). The mandating of quantitative capital requirements tends to lump together assets with different risk profiles into the same minimum capital requirement class. This then leads to problems with banks investing predominantly in the most risky of this class where the returns are higher, but capital requirements the same, as for a lower risk asset.

This reality played a major role in laying the foundations for the Asian financial crisis whereby so many loans made by large creditors were related to overpriced real-estate that didn't carry a capital charge over safer loans. There is no question this was also a primary cause of the Latin American Debt crisis, the aftermath of which helped create the first round of Basel Accords. There is also little doubt that this facilitated the Long Term Capital Management Crisis, heavily funded by large US banks.

It is highly likely that this problem of mandated % capital requirements for broad asset groups and the extensive "regulatory arbitrage" it generates is a large part of the rational behind the BCA recommendations of Internal Ratings Approaches. Here banks largely set their own capital requirements based on their internal assessments of risk for the specific assets they hold. It is then thought that the supervisory role of regulators and various disclosure requirements will ensure that banks' capital levels and risk management techniques are adequate.

In a world where bank regulators truly represented the interests of the public, and the public had extensive oversight and input into banking system operations and risk management, this would sound like a pretty good idea. It would also require that bank regulators actually have the resources and ability to properly monitor bank risk exposures and capital levels, as well as the necessary authority to make banks improve their practices where needed. Unfortunately none of these conditions hold today and this is discussed in more detail in the following points.

• Trends in Bank Supervision

As noted earlier bank supervision has undergone radical shifts in recent decades in part due to the worldwide convergence of financial services - banking, brokerage and insurance - operations. This has created large conglomerates involved in all aspects of financial services and resulted in new regulatory structures in the form of "umbrella supervision" of the new conglomerates. This has complicated financial supervision and also may create a shift towards more uniform supervision across financial operations (though we are not there yet, or even close).

The last major industrialized nation to merge financial services was the United States in 1999. Under such changes the Federal Reserve became the US Umbrella Supervisor of Financial Services Conglomerates, in addition to retaining its previous powers as bank holding company and state-chartered bank supervisor. While the US Government body known as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency still retains some powers as supervisor of national banks, today the Federal Reserve is the "king of regulators". It seems that the Federal Reserve will have the ultimate responsibility for the supervision of all big financial operators based in the United States. It is the Federal Reserve in the United States who will ultimately oversee the standards set by BCA, because BCA applies to the international players that will be supervised by the Fed.

This reality is potentially fraught with peril for a number of reasons. First, although the Federal Reserve has some government oversight its operations are disproportionately controlled by the private banking sector itself, the very same group supervised by the Fed. This domination by the banking sector comes partly from the role of the Federal Advisory Council, who are the primary Federal Reserve Board advisors and are 100% bankers. It also comes from the fact that most (67%) of the directors of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks are appointed by the banks, and that the Federal Reserve Board is generally dominated by Wall Street choices.

Second is the fact that the Federal Reserve is first and foremost responsible for the monetary policy of the world's linchpin currency, the US Dollar. The role of supervisor - concerned with safety and soundness in the banking system - can and does often directly conflict with the goals of monetary policy. This creates the potential for very harmful conflicts of interest with worldwide consequences. A classic example of this arose before the Latin Debt Crisis when the Federal Reserve, from a monetary policy point of view, wanted to raise interest rates to squash inflation. At the same time, based on earlier years' desire for credit expansion (a monetary goal), the Federal Reserve (as bank holding company supervisor) had allowed banks to expand loans well beyond what their capital levels could support. So by the end of the 1970's past credit expansion had led banks into a situation where defaults on Latin loans could not be swallowed by their low capital levels, and the Fed's desired increase in interest rates would surely trigger such defaults. The end result that solved this conflict - hike up US interest rates, trigger the Latin Debt Crisis and have the IMF and World Bank come in as lenders of last resort to bail out the US banks! And who paid for this crisis for which the conflict of interest in supervisory structure/monetary policy was largely responsible? The people of Latin America, of course!

The recognized dangers of having the umbrella financial regulator be the same entity as that responsible for monetary policy are illustrated by the fact that no other major industrialized nation has put these two, often conflicting, functions under the same body. The fact that this has been done only in the country that is responsible for credit creation in the linchpin currency could have serious global ramifications as the example of the Latin debt crisis indicates.

The situation in the United States before Gramm-Leach-Bliley was that the Federal Reserve as bank holding company supervisor would basically assign staff either from Washington and/or the local regional Fed bank to work permanently on the supervision of the larger banks. These staff work mostly on site at the big banks, sort of like permanent fixtures there, or actually like staff of the banking group itself. These close relations are likely to get even closer under the "self-regulation" approach proposed by BCA for the larger banks, and don't bode well for independent supervision of the larger banking entities.

The incredible complexities of monitoring the capital adequacy of financial conglomerates in a world of increasingly complex instruments and loan structures under the "self-regulatory" methods of the Internal Ratings Based (IRB) approach (specified by BCA) will likely made adequate bank supervision a Herculean task! Given that a potentially talented bank supervisor would makes pots more money working for the banks themselves, the job is close to impossible and therefore wide open to abuse by those banks most likely to adopt IRB. That is, the big banks, and the ones for which bailouts are most necessary.

These new rules have the potential to increase both the frequency and severity of IMF bailouts by allowing more risks to be taken and by allowing those most in need of bailout mechanisms the most leeway for "bending the rules" during their "self-regulation".

• Global Financial Consolidation and "Too-Big-to-Fail" Risks

International treaties like GATT, administered by the WTO, and under which new financial services agreements have been added, are accelerating the pace of cross-border acquisitions by large Western institutions. Another contributor to this activity was the Asian financial crises, in the aftermath of which various countries and investors were forced to sell off their bankrupt financial institutions at fire-sale prices to the Western institutions who benefited from the IMF bailouts.

Domestically, within the borders of the G-10 countries, mergers and acquisitions between financial institutions have also been accelerating. This is creating huge "financial empires" that are increasingly too-big-to-fail and, as noted earlier, will also be able to set their own internally determined capital requirements. The incentives for abuse of minimal capital requirements created by the "too-big-to-fail" moral hazard are tremendous. This may also give the larger players extra competitive advantages via lower capital charges and thereby facilitate more acquisitions.

Furthermore these financial empires seem to be acquiring greater powers over their own supervisors, meaning that supervisors may not be able to control them anyway, even if they wanted to. Further compounding the problem is that these same regulators are allowing mergers and acquisitions to proceed unheeded. The best example of that recently was the Federal Reserve's speedy approval of Citigroup's acquisition of the Mexican banking giant Banamex. The Federal Reserve completely ignored all public opposition to this deal, and gave no justification for its approval or for overlooking public complaints. One can conclude from this that the Federal Reserve, now the financial regulation king, does not consider itself at all subject to the discipline of democratic accountability.

• Addressing Causes of Financial Crises

We saw earlier that some of the requirements in the new BCA are aimed at addressing some of the causes and excessive risk taking that ended in various crises such as the Latin American Debt Crisis, the Asian Financial Crises and the US Savings and Loans Debacle.

Yet other areas of concern are notably absent. The past few years have seen a rise in what are known as hedge funds which are generally high risk, highly leveraged investment funds for the extremely wealthy. They are also completely unregulated on the premise that they involve "sophisticated investors". As we saw in the case of the Long Term Capital Management fund, banks have been making significant loans to these hedge funds without any corresponding capital charge commensurate with the risks involved. Fortunately the banking industry was able to bail itself out of this crises and the public did not have to bear the costs of the associated recklessness. However the new BCA does not appear to address this increasing risk of exposure to hedge funds explicitly at all. With no extra capital charge on hedge fund financing, banks are probably taking excessive risks in this area. This also exacerbates the risks that hedge funds introduce into the markets by providing them with an easy source of financing.

The new BCA also does little to address the issue of bank speculative activity, outside more traditional loans, and what risk this introduces into the financial system in general. For example some disincentive on speculative activity like currency attacks would go a long way towards reducing major risks in the financial system.

• Credit Creation for the Poor and Predatory Lending

The fact that under both the old and new BCA there are no additional capital charges for sub-prime loans seems to have created a situation whereby banks are originating a significant amount of sub-prime loans to prime risks. This tends to happen with mortgages in the lower income markets and, in fact, in 2000 the Chairman of Fannie Mae reported that about one third of sub-prime home loans in the US actually could have received a prime loan if credit assessment had been done properly.

It seems that the lack of capital charge differential has incented a number of banks to offer higher yielding sub-prime loans which reflect a higher risk in the return but not in the capital charge. This has had tragic consequences for these borrowers with many people losing their homes in recent years. I am pretty sure that the folks who meet in Basel don't have lower income customers much on their minds, therefore it is very important for NGOs to make this point.

In general the whole area of predatory lending and credit creation powers over the poor must be addressed in bank supervision standards and is currently nowhere to be found in BCA. In the US for example, the banking industry has a long history of discrimination in providing credit to various groups and a poor record of providing credit on reasonable terms in low and middle income neighborhoods.

Part of the tremendous growth in both overseas lending and sub-prime lending by US banks has surely been driven by the fact that domestic non-bank corporations have sought financing from non-bank sources such that only 20% of their financing actually comes from banks. This has lead to banks increasingly accessing the retail and overseas markets for credit creation. In both of these markets the banks have not behaved well, and have abused their power over financially weaker debtors. Only stronger bank supervision representing the interests of these debtors can help remedy such problems.

Supervision of US financial holding companies by the Federal Reserve does not bode well for any representation of the interests of poorer and foreign creditors in bank supervision. The Federal Reserve has a long track record of ignoring the interests of these groups and indeed has been lax in enforcing standards such as the US Community Reinvestment Act. A sneak preview of how the Federal Reserve may respond to interests of these groups in the future was provided by the Fed's speedy approval of Citigroup's recent acquisition of the Mexican banking group Banamex. In this approval the Federal Reserve completely ignored all complaints from NGOs representing low income groups who have been harmed by Citigroup's widespread predatory lending abuses. The total non-response by the Fed to all complaints about the merger has lead many observers to wonder whether Citigroup actually supervises the Federal Reserve now.

• Non-Bank Financial Institutions

BCA does not cover non-bank financial institutions. However we are seeing various countries' umbrella supervisors feeling the pressure to streamline regulation in the wake of financial services convergence.

One the surface it might not make too much sense for a non-bank lender to have different capital requirements than a lender with a banking license. However it does make more sense if one considers that banks are backed up by various bailout mechanisms including the IMF and FDIC, due to their special status of being creators of money for the (M3) money supply. Because of this central role in money creation it is more important for confidence to be maintained in banks than in non-bank institutions. This is what maintains the overall confidence in the international monetary system. Therefore the likelihood of bailout is much higher for banks, particularly the large ones, and bank capital requirements are of much greater interest to the public than those of non-bank financial institutions.

That said, there could also be a very important role for risk-based capital requirements on non-bank financial institutions to curtail the type of speculative activity often responsible for causing crises in the first place. People opposing the Bretton Woods institutions and advocates of the Tobin Tax might want to keep this in mind as risk-based capital standards develop across other financial players.

5. Need for Public Input

The previous sections have been prepared to present a case for public input into the Basel Capital Accord for the majority of the public who are not aligned with the interests of big financial players, but are certainly affected by such international banking agreements. Supervision of banks and their risk management practices are important public issues for reasons outlined above.

However the unfortunate reality is that, of the 200+ public comments received by the BCBS, only 1 or 2 are public concerns from outside the finance sector. These comments can be viewed at the BIS web site at www.bis.org. The majority of comments coming from the larger banks (e.g. comments from Citigroup and the American Bankers Association) are generally asking for more leeway in setting their own capital requirements, and basically requesting lower capital standards. Furthermore there have been many complaints from the big banks about the proposed disclosure requirements.

Originally the last comment period was supposed to be the one ended May 31st, 2001 but due to the number of comments about the current draft the BCBS has stated on its web site that it will issue another draft for comments in early 2002. Hopefully this will provide opportunity for various NGOs to compile and submit a list of concerns. This document is intended as a discussion document to begin the process of collecting comments and concerns from various NGOs working on monetary system issues.

from http://www.wizardsofmoney.org

http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_01.htm

By Antony C. Sutton

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PrefaceIntroduction

Unexplored Facets of Naziism

PART ONE: Wall Street Builds Nazi Industry

Chapter One Wall Street Paves the Way for Hitler

1924: The Dawes Plan 1928: The Young Plan B.I.S. — The Apex of Control

Building the German Cartels

This interplay of ideas and cooperation between Hjalmar Sehacht in Germany and, through Owen Young, the J.P. Morgan interests in New York, was only one facet of a vast and ambitious system of cooperation and international alliance for world control. As described by Carroll Quigley, this system was "... nothing less than to create a world system of financial control, in private hands, able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.12

This feudal system worked in the 1920s, as it works today, through the medium of the private central bankers in each country who control the national money supply of individual economies. In the 1920s and 1930s, the New York Federal Reserve System, the Bank of England, the Reichs-bank in Germany, and the Banque de France also more or less influenced the political apparatus of their respective countries indirectly through control of the money supply and creation of the monetary environment. More direct influence was realized by supplying political funds to, or withdrawing support from, politicians and political parties. In the United States, for example, President Herbert Hoover blamed his 1932 defeat on withdrawal of support by Wall Street and the switch of Wall Street finance and influence to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Politicians amenable to the objectives of financial capitalism, and academies prolific with ideas for world control useful to the international bankers, are kept in line with a system of rewards and penalties. In the early 1930s the guiding vehicle for this international system of financial and political control, called by Quigley the "apex of the system," was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland. The B.I.S. apex continued its work during World War II as the medium through which the bankers — who apparently were not at war with each other — continued a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas, information, and planning for the post-war world. As one writer has observed, war made no difference to the international bankers:

The fact that the Bank possessed a truly international staff did, of course, present a highly anomalous situation in time of war. An American President was transacting the daily business of the Bank through a French General Manager, who had a German Assistant General Manager, while the Secretary-General was an Italian subject. Other nationals occupied other posts. These men were, of course, in daily personal contact with each other. Except for Mr. McKittrick [see infra] theft were of course situated permanently in Switzerland during this period and were not supposed to be subject to orders of their government at any time. However, the directors of the Bank remained, of course, in their respective countries and had no direct contact with the personnel of the Bank. It is alleged, however, that H. Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, kept a personal representative in Basle during most of this time.13

It was such secret meetings, "... meetings more secret than any ever held by Royal Ark Masons or by any Rosicrucian Order..."14 between the central bankers at the "apex" of control that so intrigued contemporary journalists, although they only rarely and briefly penetrated behind the mask of secrecy.

http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_01.htm

BIS Official Website http://www.bis.org/

https://justpaste.it/TOWERofBASEL

#

Monday, December 1, 1997 Published at 14:11 GMT


World

Swiss confirmed as main Nazi bankers

Nazi gold

A report by the Historical Commission studying Switzerland's conduct during World War II paints a blacker picture of Switzerland's links with the Nazi's than previously thought.

The interim report by the Bergier commission says 76% of Nazi gold transactions went through Switzerland and the volume of trade between Swiss private banks and war-time Germany was at least three times higher than earlier estimates indicated.

The report says Swiss commercial banks bought $61.2m worth of gold during the Nazi era, the current value would be more than $700m. The commission says the Swiss National Bank, SNB, acquired $389.2m, worth more than $4bn at today's prices. The SNB had previously admitted to buying 1.2bn Swiss francs worth of gold.

The Bergier commission also accuses the Nazis of stealing $146m in gold from holocaust victims, including at least $2.5m seized by the SS from inmates of Auschwitz and other death camps in eastern Europe. The full report is due to be published in 1998.

The report comes after more allegations about Swiss misconduct over Nazi gold emerged in a newspaper. The Sunday Telegraph claimed that Nazi Germany secretly shipped a ton of gold coins to its diplomatic mission in Switzerland in the final days of World War II. It is not known what happened to the money, which would be worth $10m (£6m) at today's prices.

Conference on Nazi Gold

These revelations and the publication of the report come ahead of a major conference that opens in London on Tuesday, focusing on the origins and disposal of Nazi gold.

The head of the Swiss delegation to the conference, Thomas Borer, has denied different allegations that Switzerland misappropriated funds meant for Allied prisoners-of-war held by Japan.

Many believe that much of the wealth the Nazis looted from their victims in World War II is being held in Swiss bank accounts. Earlier this year a concerted international campaign to shame Switzerland over the issue led to the country's famously secretive banking system opening some of its records to scrutiny.

Swiss officials say they have proved that they are willing to face up to their past. The Swiss government set up the historical commission, the country's banks provided information on dormant bank accounts and both proposed to set up a multi-billion-dollar humanitarian fund.

Despite these actions, international criticism of Switzerland is still very fierce and some states in the US, such as California, are boycotting Swiss banks until there is more progress on the issue of dormant accounts held by Holocaust victims.

The aims of the conference

Representatives from over 40 nations will meet on Tuesday to investigate what happened to the gold the Nazis plundered.

The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, said: "The Government shares the concern of the international community about the origins and disposal of Nazi gold.

"I hope that the London conference will pool international knowledge and reach conclusions on this important issue."

The conference aims:

• To pool available knowledge on the historical facts relating to gold looted by the Nazis.
• To examine the steps taken so far to reimburse countries and to compensate individual victims.
• To examine the case for further compensation.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/35938.stm

At the apex 

is the Bank for International Settlements.  It is the central bank of central banks, and

Most people have never even heard of the Bank for International Settlements, but it is an extremely important organization. this “central bank of the world” is literally immune to the laws of all national governments:

An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe.  It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks.  It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City.  It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws.  Even Wikipedia admits that “it is not accountable to any single national government.”  The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system.  Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does.  Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another “Global Economy Meeting”.  During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on.  The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

And that is exactly what we have today.

We have a system of “neo-feudalism” in which all of us and our national governments are enslaved to debt. This system is governed by the central banks and by the Bank for International Settlements, and it systematically transfers the wealth of the world out of our hands