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Will We Have to Wait for a 21st Century Peasants’ Revolt Before Seeing Any Real Change?
While everyone from Tony Blair to Nouriel Roubini is debating whether or not bankers should be hung, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg provide some fascinating historical context.
The journal's Jason Zweig reports:
Financial criminals throughout history have been beaten, tortured and even put to death, with little evidence that severe punishments have consistently deterred people from misconduct that could make them rich.
The history of drastic punishment for financial crimes may be nearly as old as wealth itself.
The Code of Hammurabi, more than 3,700 years ago, stipulated that any Mesopotamian who violated the terms of a financial contract – including the futures contracts that were commonly used in commodities trading in Babylon – “shall be put to death as a thief.” The severe penalty doesn’t seem to have eradicated such cheating, however.
In medieval Catalonia, a banker who went bust wasn’t merely humiliated by town criers who declaimed his failure in public squares throughout the land; he had to live on nothing but bread and water until he paid off his depositors in full. If, after a year, he was unable to repay, he would be executed – as in the case of banker Francesch Castello, who was beheaded in 1360. Bankers who lied about their books could also be subject to the death penalty.
In Florence during the Renaissance, the Arte del Cambio – the guild of mercantile money-changers who facilitated the city’s international trade – made the cheating of clients punishable by torture. Rule 70 of the guild’s statutes stipulated that any member caught in unethical conduct could be disciplined on the rack “or other corrective instruments” at the headquarters of the guild.
But financial crimes weren’t merely punished; they were stigmatized. Dante’s Inferno is populated largely with financial sinners, each category with its own distinctive punishment: misers who roll giant weights pointlessly back and forth with their chests, thieves festooned with snakes and lizards, usurers draped with purses they can’t reach, even forecasters whose heads are wrenched around backward to symbolize their inability to see what is in front of them.
Counterfeiting and forgery, as the historian Marvin Becker noted in 1976, “were much less prevalent in Florence during the second half of the fourteenth century than in Tuscany during the twentieth century” and “the bankruptcy rate stood at approximately one-half [the modern rate].”
In England, counterfeiting was punishable by death starting in the 14th century, and altering the coinage was declared a form of high treason by 1562.
In the 17th century, the British state cracked down ferociously on counterfeiters and “coin-clippers” (who snipped shards of metal off coins, yielding scraps they could later melt down or resell). The offenders were thrown into London’s notorious Newgate prison. The lucky ones, after being dragged on planks through sewage-filled streets, were hanged. Others were smeared with tar from head to toe, tied or shackled to a stake, and then burned to death.
The British government was so determined to stamp out these financial crimes that it put Sir Isaac Newton on the case. Appointed as warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, Newton promptly began uncovering those who violated the financial laws of the nation with the same passion he brought to discovering the physical laws of the universe.
The great scientist was tireless and merciless. Newton went undercover, donning disguises to prowl through prisons, taverns and other dens of iniquity in search of financial fraud. He had suspects brought to the Mint, often by force, and interrogated them himself. In a year and a half, says historian Carl Wennerlind, Newton grilled 200 suspects, “employing means that sometimes bordered on torture.”
When one counterfeiter begged Newton to save him from the gallows – “O dear Sr no body can save me but you O God my God I shall be murderd unless you save me O I hope God will move your heart with mercy and pitty to do this thing for me” – Newton coldly refused.
The counterfeiter was hanged two weeks later.
Until at least the early 19th century, it remained commonplace for counterfeiters and forgers to be put to death; between 1792 and 1829, for example, notes Wennerlind, 618 people were convicted of counterfeiting British paper currency, and most of them were hanged. Many were women.
Bloomberg provides details of one "peasant revolt" stemming from a Libor-like currency manipulation scheme:
During the “Good Parliament” of 1376, public discontent over [manipulation of currency exchange rates similar to the current Libor scandal] came to a head. The Commons, represented by the speaker, Peter de la Mare, accused leading members of the royal court of abusing their position to profit from public funds.
A particular target was the London financier Richard Lyons ....
Initially the government bowed to public pressure. Lyons was imprisoned in the Tower of London and his properties and wealth were confiscated. Other leading courtiers implicated in these abuses, such as Latimer and the king’s mistress, Alice Perrers, were banished from court.
Once parliament had dissolved and the public outcry had died down, however, the king’s eldest son, John of Gaunt, acted to reverse the verdicts of the Good Parliament. Latimer and Perrers soon reappeared at the king’s side and Lyons was released from the Tower and recovered his wealth, while the “whistleblower” de la Mare was thrown in jail. The government also sought to appease the wealthy knights and merchants that dominated parliament by imposing a new, regressive form of taxation, a poll tax paid by everyone rather than a tax levied on goods. This effectively passed the burden of royal finance down to the peasantry.
It seemed as though everything had returned to business as normal and Lyons appeared to have gotten away with it. In 1381, however, simmering discontent over continuing suspicions of government corruption and the poll tax contributed to a massive popular uprising, the Peasants’ Revolt, during which leading government ministers, including Simon of Sudbury (the chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury) and Robert Hales (the treasurer) were executed by the rebels. This time, Lyons did not escape; he was singled out, dragged from his house and beheaded in the street.
If the King had followed the rule of law - and kept Lyons and the boys in jail - everything would have calmed down. The monarchy - just like the present-day government - chose to ignore the rule of law, and protect the thieves and punish the whistleblowers.
We have argued for years that the best way to avoid violence is to reinstate the rule of law.
The Bloomberg article - written by a professor of the history of finance and a professor of finance at the ICMA Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading - ends on a similar note:
The question now is whether public outrage at the Libor scandal and other financial misdeeds will lead to fundamental reforms of the financial sector -- such as the separation of retail and investment banking or legislation to regulate the “bonus culture” -- or just more cosmetic changes that fail to address the structural issues.
Will we have to wait for a 21st century peasants’ revolt before seeing any real change?
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Sorry GW, no revolt in America's future, not with the sheeple population we have now.
And yes there will be change. To a modern day version of feudalism, after the middle class is wiped out.
The rising Asian nuclear alliance is our only hope now. They're the only ones who have a chance to stop what America's leaders are doing.
We shouldn't look down our noses at them. They're the only hope to prevent America from becoming a fascist feudalistic society of super rich and grinding poor.
You will never have to use the Second Amendment until they try to take it, just sayin'.
Not sure how you meant that, but this is important:
The people who do nothing now, will do NOTHING when "the time comes." They'll just redefine it to be further down the road.
"When they ____, I'll ___" merely services their self-esteem while they remain neutered.
If they won't act now, they'll wimp out then too.
Yes, it's a start. No, it won't help immediately and will even make things worse in the short run, and no, the peasants voters won't revolt as long as there's enough energy in the system (i.e. oil, natural gas/ coal) to keep the supply of cheap food, broadcast entertainment and mood-altering drugs flowing.
Next question please.
it is more likely that the pheasants will revolt than that the american people would do it. they are not hungry enough
Pheasant tastes delicious.
indeed. it tastes very good. but a revolting pheasant?
<--- revolting pheasant tastes delicious
<--- revolting pheasant tastes revolting
your vote counts (for nothing important)!
Cuts the criminal population in half.
Like mob hits in Chicago ( 1920-1979) 2,000 +/- hits.....not one arrest. Zero.
Nice.
mob hits in Chicago ( 1920-1979) 2,000 +/- hits.....not one arrest. Zero.
That's utterly false. There were lots of arrests.
Thanks for sharing, George.
The Revolution will not be televised. You will not see reform so long as criminals run free in the streets. Corzine is simply today's iteration of the Enron scandal. The rich get richer, and so long as you can break the law and keep your money and Carribean Villa, you will NOT see anything change in this country (world for that matter). If you execute the head of Perigrine Financial mob-style, you'll get a Federal Marshall investigation for hate-crime, not flag-waving in the street.... And the masses will nod, drink their High-Fructose-Corn-Syrup carbonated beverage of choice, and do what the talking-heads on the Tele tell them to do (when they're not watching 'Idol'). The goobermint will punish such revolutionary idea's to the fullest of their abilities (*cough* Utah Datacenter *cough*), not reward them as reminitions of our forefathers. The Stasi (State) is corroborating w/ the criminals, not prosecuting them.
You're forgetting to list all possibilities: 1. If the gains went to the top 1%. the collapses are only going to affect the top 1%. 2. The former middle class may never pay off credit card debt. So the "asset" on the banks balance sheet may turn into a nonperforming asset over time. No one on Main Street is going to be harmed by any of the crap Phil Gramm concocted with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, so no one cares. We've already seen four hedge funds blow up this summer:
How many other hedge fund manages are thinking they're going to be next, in fall, winter, next spring, next summer?
How many former middle class have reverted to farming and gardening. They're deeply involved in prosperity. How many are earning cash on the barrel head, that is not getting reported to the IRS? How many are never going to vote Republican, everr again?
What's Move On dot org up to? I had a hiring plan for Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS and for the Koch Brothers. I'll reveal it after Novemember 2012.
In the past the peasants were mollified by "bread and circuses". In today's world the methods of keeping people "entertained" and unenlightened are much more sophisticated and effective. I doubt people in the U.S. will be revolting anytime soon.
The peasants in my 'hood are too drunk, drugged up, attached to the gubmint tit, and generally confused to revolt.
Doesn't probability of revolt increase greatly when percentage of income spent on food goes over 40ish percent?
There are a lot more libertarian types than 5 or 10 years ago, but the sheeples still rule (and obey their masters) in my neck of the woods.
There are a lot more libertarian types than 5 or 10 years ago
That is for sure... and one change in our favor.
The LIBOR scandal is nothing compared to what governments are doing. They are manipulating the stock market and the bond market. Also the price of gold, silver and oil.
The current, past and future administration are an insult to T.Paine, Geronimo, Cochise, Chief Sitting Bull. T. Jeffereson, Benny Franklin and General Emiliano Zapata.
There is a critical threshold where things go pearshaped. We are terribly close to that epic moment. The people will countenance only so much abuse, so much oppression. Then there is resistance. That resistance is met with brutal force, and then - well history proves that the reaction is violent and tumultuous. Note the socalled Arab Spring.
There will be a reckoning and a balancing.
In a world where there are no laws / there are no laws for anyone predatorclass biiiiaaatches!!!
Buckleup!
a 21st Century Chinese Boxer Revolt
Only this time Morgans aren't loaning to corrupt Chinese royal government to bribe and buy America railroad equipment and goods, we have corrupt Repubocrats borrowing from the Chinese and dumping the debts on the American peasants.
Chinese debt colecting gunboats up!
This article made me just think of this.
I hope to god you guys have your servers offshore from the USA, and that you guys have a non-.com domain that you can switch over to if necessary, as there are some scary-as-all-hell legal precedents that have been set in the past 18 months, where if you have a .com domain (US-based), even if your physical servers and everything else is off-shore, it can be considered within the jurisdiction of the USA and subject to the millions-odd pages of US legalese.
I'm just saying. Biggest police state running, you know...
You must have missed the shennanigans two years ago when appearently Marla changed the DNS mapping to a new server to hi-jack the site!!
Unavailable for maybe 8 hours. Some how Sacralidge got it back. Marla banished to the dust bin of history.
The event Marvi Mamara event when she jumped the shark. See how the Cabal that doesn't exist? tries to steer the event.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/09/shocking-account-mavi-marmar...
I'm happy ZH survived.
Sorry, but "predators DBA federal government" do whatever they want. Given their huge military and untold thousands of nuclear weapons, they are utterly and completely unconstrained. If they want you, for any reason whatsoever, you are toast... unless you are extremely adept at hiding.
George's revisionist history, as always, makes careful work of setting up chosen 'bad guys' the powerz have authorized for underthebus duty, whilst laboriously avoiding any mention of the konsistently konspicious kabbalist klan, whose modus operandi throughout his chosen timeline has remained monotonously konsistent
steal the peeple's loot, load up chosen minions and henchmen(like his boys Newton and Cromwell)with a modicum of the moolah, foment phoney fights between nation states and bully, bride n blackmail everybody who be anybody into kompliance with the koup...
while a few scurrilous scribes write up fake stories about what was supposed to have happened. Yup, get the bankerz, hang the politicians, blab blab blah, baa baa baa, false hope narrative Chapter 10....
the konsistently konspicious kabbalist klan, whose modus operandi throughout his chosen timeline has remained monotonously konsistent
Amazing how this virus just keeps coming back.
For a while it looked like maybe the Mexicans were going to be the designated scapegoats this time around, but evidently not.
Ah well.... jpfo.org
I think the point more being is the history of revolution, even today the Chinese still use chop sticks to eat. They were barbarious with the fork and knife, and so the leadership took them away, and made them use chop sticks. You see, the first revolution was created by the spoon, it was the first thing you ate from as a child, the first sophiscated eating tool to be made, and so already had a history of revolution. Will there be another one created by this tool, or will it simply go by the wayside? Is the question.
They may not be deterred, but they can be punished!
I was just going to say in response to this from George:
that maybe the reason there doesn't seem to have been much deterrence is that it is usually a scapegoat who gets the punishment while the real perps behind the scenes skip merrily on their way. I see that happening still today in the modern world.
Corrupt banksters, regulators and politicians should ask themselves, would the public be horrified or cheer their public execution.
Peasants?
Agreed. Peonage might be a better word than peasantry.
There won't be any protests because there aren't any Peasants, at least not in urban America, the thing which distinguished a Peasant from his `Master` was, the Peasant lived off the land his entire life, as had all his kind before him, the `Master` lived off the Peasant, no Peasants in the fields meant no food for the `Master`, Peasants were poor in material wealth but rich in essential skills, those we designate as Peasants to-day have no skills essential to society!
So The French Revolution, carried out by the urban poor, the Parisian Mob, did not happen?
The revolution happened. But against a King (kings, who by the way hanged more bankers than the article implied)
In 'Americanism', the king class is the middle class. Do not expect 'Americans' to riot against themselves.
The seasonal labourers (misrepresented in the article as "peasants") are destroyed anything they wish to revolt in US citizenism.
Nothing usually will happen. The US citizen middle class will keep asking more wars to enable their US citizen schemes etc
"The revolution happened. But against a King (kings, who by the way hanged more bankers than the article implied)
In 'Americanism', the king class is the middle class. Do not expect 'Americans' to riot against themselves."
I think everyone should read what you said again and then read the quote from Orwell below. I think, AnAnonymous, you have hit the nail on the head profoundly.
The middle class, who so desperately want to be upper class and not fall back to the underclass from which they came or their parents or grandparents came, will not riot for that very reason. They still cling to the American Dream, force fed to us by the elites in government, business, media and religion. The Dream which says if you work hard and play by the rules you too can overcome "The Curse".....the curse of poverty.....the curse of material lack.....the curse of having no voice and no rights.....the curse of the Bible that you will have to toil the land in hardship all your life.
And even though I'm sure that some of the Middle Class who know something more than American Idol and NASCAR are somewhat taken aback by the exposed schemes of the elite, they will only shrink back into the dark cozy spots of their over mortgaged homes as anything they do to upset the status quo would endanger their reputation and their expected and deserved chance to grab the gold ring held out to them as a tease by the very elites who do not want them to be anything more than a cog in the money making machine.
Thus the Middle Class will forever be the hamster running in the wheel of its cages hoping to finally be fast enough to grab the carrot just out of reach and doing nothing but producing riches for the elite and amusement as well.
sure fine.
until the elites f**k up and leave the middle class diminished and hungry. and not until, but eventually guaranteed. rule of law based on natural law is the only way out.
ananonymous STFU. america's founders knew this.
“Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibnum, however far it is pushed one way or the other.
The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim — for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives — is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.”
- Geroge Orwell (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four.
That is a story of 'Americanism' even though the middle did not always exist.
But one has to keep in mind that 'Americanism' is class warfare.
The middle class is the king class in 'Americanism' and the king seldom riots against himself.
Your logic is amazing now STFU
Amazing? Nope, very basic.
That is the current problem for 'Americanism'
Seeing through the 'American' smoke and mirror game is very direct.
Man, we need someone like Newton to head the SEC. Excellent piece George Washington.
It would probably be inappropriate to bring up water boarding a known enemy...so I won't ;-)
As would soliciting a military coup, so I won't either.
But that would sure solve a few problems relative to being out-gunned and door-to-door gun confiscation.
I know AnAnonymous is annoying as fuck but that would be going too far.
Or would it...hmmm?
Man, we really REALLY need to get an official armed ZeroHedge citizens militia going. Pennsylvania here.
Here's a checklist of some the things you should be buying right now:
* kevlar helmet
* kevlar vest
* combat boots
* military camo fatigues
* goatskin combat gloves
* gas mask
* tactical goggles and/or shades
* something that is either 5.56x45mm or 7.62, like an AR-15 or AK-47 or similar
* at least a crate of 1,000 rounds minimum for said rifle
* combat knife
* side arm; 9mm at least with hallow point rounds
* arm and leg guards
* bug out bag with 3 days worth of food and water with first aid kit, shovel, etc.
You can get all of these except the guns and ammo on ebay for pretty cheap.
With all that gear, I'd definately look like an "enemy combatant".
Cammies don't hide your thermal image.
Blaze orange, bitchez.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvnD7O_9ehM&feature=related
&
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X1yE9Sp0gk
And, what will you do with all this shit? You have never been in combat. When eight guys from Seal Team Six pull up in front of your house in an APC and spill out in every direction you have about three minutes to live. While you're figuring your next move three snipers will have you in their sights and with a nod from the Team Leader -- BANG -- you're as dead as Kelsey's nuts!
You'll look good in your new Kevlar vest and camos, though.
If the SEALs are looking for you and you're still home, you're TDTL anyway.
You're dreaming, jmk. In a SHTF situation there aren't enough troops to cover the entire USA let alone FUCKING NAVY SEALS. I'd have a better shot at winning the lottery several times over than coming into the same vacinity as a SEAL. Most likely the people that will show up in your neighborhood will be armed cops and national guard. And guess where most of the military would be concentrated? In the big cities.