I started reading Tim Challie’s “The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment” last night. It starts out with a story about how the Nazi’s used Jewish printers to make perfect counterfeits of the British pound. Their plan was to print millions of counterfeit pounds and then introduce the new money supply into the system and they called it Operation Bernhard. They decided the most effective method would be to drop it from airplanes over Britain.
What’s the point of that you might ask? Why wouldn’t they just use it to buy stuff? The goal was not to fund their war (as a new film might lead you to believe http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/thecounterfeiters/trailer/). The goal was to destroy the British economy, and the U.S. was next. How would counterfeit money destroy the British economy? Inflation. The Nazis wanted to introduce so much counterfeit money into the money supply that the British pound would be worthless. It was a fairly brilliant strategy, but they ran out of time to drop the printed counterfeits over Britain.
The reason I bring this up is because the Nazis are condemned for such an idea, but here in the homeland, the same strategy is praised as genius. The vast majority of Americans believe that the President and his minions have the power, and the duty, to manage the economy for the benefit of the people. The Federal Reserve is called upon to help in this scheme. They control the amount of money in circulation by altering the rate at which they print money and issue central bank notes.
The problem is that for some reason, people don’t see what the Nazi’s apparently did. If you just print more paper currency, you will destroy its value. Apparently its bad when Nazis do it because Nazis are evil, but its a saving grace when Bernanke does it, because the United States Government is good.
Coming Soon: Indiana Jones V: Return of the Counterfeiters
co-starring Ron Paul
http://blog.mises.org/archives/007327.asp
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/20/60II/main250931.shtml?
A Nazi Counterfeit in the National Bank
Contrast 