“The sovereign right to issue money had previously been in the hands of a monarch who was at least nominally accountable to his subjects. And that changed with the institution of the Bank of England. All of a sudden, the sovereign right to issue money was permanently transferred to private hands that were accountable to no one. That is mercantilism in its essence.”

…them a private license to create money. And that was the key. So these merchants wanted to have that right, that power given to them, that privilege given to them to create money out of thin air, use that money to be loaned to the government and then get 8% interest permanently on that state debt.

…of the law. And the system, I would argue that the mercantilist system shut it down because he was one of these few people, you know, coming at it from an honest perspective to maybe to help the common folk. And they shut his bank down to continue this arrangement, as you, I think, described.

You know, I wanted to ask you, well, one thing to add on that, and then I want to ask you about also the religious spiritual dimension. I know you mentioned your other book, Progressivism, but in this book as well, you also, there are a number of sections where you talk about the religious element…

Yes. Yeah, the alchemical system never really worked and it was really a religion in its own right. We wanted to, or alchemists wanted to create gold out of base metal. They thought they could come up with the so-called philosopher's stone, which was a chemical substance which would be used to…

You know what? I've never heard anyone, as you just explain it, visualize it so well. So now that you understand the mechanism, they create it out of nothing. And it's like a ghost. It will, as you say, over a certain number of years, that $100,000 in your bank will literally go back to being…