1. 11-01-2010 13:48

Should the draft contain a banking clause? 
It is clearly beyond the ability of our politicians to contain the banking sector. The bankrupt banks still run the country and if you doubt this just look at recent events and ponder how all meaningful reform has been sidetracked and it’s all back to business as usual. Banks defy commercial gravity and confound all our notions of economic logic; they create the National credit and trade it between themselves to generate ‘financial assets’ from which they generate obscene profits. This is where the equally obscene bonuses come from which are paid for by inflation and instability. Manipulating the money system enables banks to prosper even in the depths of depression. This is a Constitutional matter, nor a political problem and it always has been.  
When Independence is eventually won for Scotland it will have meaning only if our banks are independent of the banking oligarchs. 
Constitutions tend to be fairly traditional and all embracing. Ever since banks were granted their special chartered status they have demonstrated their ingenuity & ability by undermining constitutional principles once considered inviolate. Any monetary economist or student of Central Banking can recite a catalogue of bitter historic political battles waged over whether private banks were better than ‘governments’ at managing national money systems. Perhaps the earliest and best documented is the Jefferson/Hamilton conflict of 1791 – probably the first serious challenge to the new US Constitution. He who pays the piper calls the tune and to cut a very long story short we all know that banking is privately owned and independent of Government. 
Let us look at this in the wider context. There is no doubt that the difference between the mainstream political parties at Westminster has narrowed over the past half century. In Britain, the Eurozone and America, even in Russia - there is virtual unanimity – or certainly acquiescence, over all the serious issues of our time – illegal wars, gridlocked climate change debate, a purely cosmetic United Nations, banking reform by bankers for bankers and perhaps most obvious of all – the suppression of accountability of our democratic representatives to those who elected them. The political class is skilled in shrouding such contentious issues with a cloak of trivia, and the handful of dedicated democrats prepared to speak out are effectively muzzled by the Party Machine. 
Apathy is the word commonly used to explain the poor turnout at elections. It is not apathy it is despair – for it does not matter which mainstream party emerges the winner, the outcome will be the same –a vote for the lesser of two evils. Every issue is driven by its financial outcome and financial outcomes are dictated by the banks. Our money has ceased to be a Constitutional Issue and has become a monopoly of the privately owned banking system. Real money has been replaced with ‘promises of money’ – bank credit - no longer National but notional. 
The theory of constitutional democracy has always been fairly simple – an administration representing the majority, , an opposition representing the minorities and both charged with the responsibility of maintaining a neutral, accountable and professional civil service. In the event we have none of these things – Party lists ensure the elimination of all individual minds from posts of influence and the lobby system is now so sophisticated that all major policies ‘happen’ first and are debated retrospectively, well after the event – from Vietnam to Afghanistan & the Middle East, from Kyoto to Copenhagen and from financial deregulation to the banking bailouts. The truth, if it emerges at all, is a footnote of history.  
Anyone raising these issues is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, unpatriotic, anti-semitic, an anarchist or simply eccentric. Now who awards these labels? It is the ‘Establishment’ – the Press Barons, the governing party hacks and Ministers, the Big Business lobbies and the career civil servants - masters of the comfortable quiet life with a handsome pension and a knighthood rewarded (by themselves) for a lifetime of security and self-interest. Sitting behind every one of these factions is the Power Behind the Throne - the bankers who run the the National Treasuries and central banks. He who pays the piper ….. 
Now there’s nothing strange about this – those with the most push & influence always get to the top and it’s human nature to protect and enhance your personal influence and status. But this is also where democracy has all gone pear-shaped because the politicians we elect are supposed to protect the rest of us from exploitation by these ‘successful’ people – our MPs are elected to frame reasonable rules of behavior – to which end we grant them virtually unlimited powers of enforcement. But they have failed us – they have slowly but inexorably become corrupted. In the US the Supreme Court was designbed to administer and defend the Constitution. That too has failed – another victim of human frailty. In the UK there is no written Constitution – merely a long succession of Precedents – not very satisfactory. The Swiss model is good but it still delegates the National Credit to private banks. Throughout the world States have Constitutions providing for the rights of their citizens. These rights are seldom challenged and nowadays often enhanced (viz Human Rights Legislation) – not so where money is concerned, where a Constitution has managed some protection from bankers and moneylenders it has, without exception, been repealed or emasculated.  
Now here in Scotland there is a strong movement towards Independence. We have a Constitutional Commission, a draft new Constitution and a National Conversation in progress as to what it should contain. I would suggest that a clause to ‘contain’ private banking and return it to democratic accountability would be a popular proposal – so popular that if thoughtfully drafted it would be opposed only by the handful of super-bankers who run the present Establishment and, of course, their cronies. That conversation would identify those who see see Independence as a New Scottish Enlightenment – or just another opportunity to make more money for themselves. 
To our friends at Holyrood I would commend the words of Sir Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia 1949-66 – “There can be no independence without financial independence.” In the face of hostility from the banking fraternity at home and abroad his Central Bank policy financed the dramatic expansion of the Australian economy following WW2 – without debt.  
A sound constituion will protect our personal freedom but we need it to protect our economic freedom as well. We need to become angry about economic suppression and decline, but to do something about it we all need to know more. At present the only place you can join this debate is in cyberspace. That it’s not on the agenda elsewhere should be food for thought. 
Endnote. 
If this blog produces support for what I call ‘financial enlightenment’ I will happily propose some appropriate clauses and background references to get the conversation going. The matter embraces our National currency and its management – the euro and relationships with the pound sterling. The detail could be immense – but a constitutional clause must be about fundamentals and concise.

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