I keep reading on many very smart sites that discuss the

[truedelphi]

economy that no one really knows the effect of our Federal Reserve stealthily handing out trillions of dollars to the Uber Elite.

Actually, I think that it is wrong to say that there are no historical precedents.

Those who have studied the French Revolution know that in the 1760 and 70's, those inside the court managed to stealthily hand over some hundreds of millions of Francs, to themselves. And then people suffered for a decade and a half, and then:

The French Revolution happened.

The next time that a nation's wealth was hijacked to such a large degree - the German people were forced by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles to pay reparations for the cost of the war. These debts were so tremendous that as Milton Mayer mentions in his book, "They Thought They Were Free," that the last and finalized payments would have been made in the 1980's, had The Third Reich not intervened. Most of us understand what went on in Germany during the twenties with such heavy duty inflation "breaking out" and in many ways, these reparation payments were responsible.

I remember from grade school the story of the person shopping in a German market. They brought a baby carriage with them, to carry the tremendous amount of paper money they needed just to do a day's shopping. And the carriage was stolen, but the thief left behind the German Marks. The carriage had value, the German Mark had none.

The Third Reich and World War II were the result of this onerous reparation payment.

We also know from the fine film based on Naomi Klein's "The Shook Doctrine" that there are only two models of what happens to nations forced to assume the "Free Market Capitalism" formulated by Milton Friedman.

Now that this economic formula is forced on us, we will either become like Russia - ruled by an internal Mafia, or else like Argentina and Chile, ruled by the military junta.

In either case, already we know here in the USA, over the last four years, that millions upon millions of Middle Class Americans have lost their homes, their savings, their health and everything that goes along with those items.

[bemildred]

1. Polarization leads to revolution.

And nothing polarizes better than great disparities in wealth.

[golfguru]

6. If you want to see "REAL" disparity of wealth, go to..

Mexico, India & Brazil.

[brooklyn297]

8. +1

[ixion]

7. spot on

and well said. :applause:

[Historic NY]

2. What you fail to understand those millions in the 1770's & 80's...........

went to make sure this country got its Liberté, France depleted is dwindling treasury to supply us with arms, cash, loans and a military to defeat the British. Somewhere around 1/3 of the debt France accumulated went to us (US). So you might want to say our Revolution caused theirs.

[truedelphi]

5. A mistake that I made was saying there was "a raid" on the French Treasury.

Since that statement is a bit flawed.

However, even accepting the figures that you propose, i.e., that the USA was responsible for one third of the French debt, that still leave two thirds of its debt on account of the nobilite and the King and Queen and their ravacious appetites for money.

And just as we now have a real problem here with our Uber Elite paying their fair share, so too did the French.

The nobilite and the Church paid almost no taxes, and when reforms (in the early 1780's) that would have brought about a needed land tax were proposed, these were met with the same type of intense resistance that we see our Uber Elite showing us "commoners" in our era.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Clarification:

The Germans under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles had to pay reparations to France and England because those countries were forced to immediately repay the American banks that lent them the money to buy munitions, supplies, etc. in order to prosecute the war. (France and England didn't have that kind of money laying around and decided to pass on the cost of war.) That's right. American banks forced Germany to go near bankruptcy and allowed Adolf Hitler to ascend to power in the vacuum that developed in leadership.

[truedelphi]

4. Thank you for the clarification.

Good point to know.