De Dollar Hegemonie 26

'Falling Empires and their Currencies.
Part I: From the Fall of Rome to the Fall of the British Empire

by Rolf Nef

Global Research

When empires fall, their currencies fall first. Even clearer is the rising debt of empires in decline, because in most cases their physical expansion is financed with debt. In each case presented we have some useful statistical data to show the drama. Every case is different, but the common thing is that the currencies of each and every one of these falling empires lost dramatically in value. Let me go through every case starting with the Romans.
Rome
The first graph shows the silver content of Roman coins from 50 A.D. to 268 A.D. But the Roman Empire existed from 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.. Its history is the history of physical expansion, like the history of almost all empires. Its expansion was driven by a citizen soldier army, paid in silver coins, land and slaves from occupied territories. If there was not enough silver in the treasury to conduct a war, base metals were added to coin more money. That is to say, the authorities debased their currency which presaged the fall of the Empire. There was a limit to the expansion. The empire became over-stretched, running out of silver money, and eventually went under, overrun by barbarian hordes.

France.
The second case is France during the time of the Bourbon monarchs who ruled France from 1589 to their fall in the French Revolution in 1792. Graph 2 shows the value of the French currency versus the British from 1600 till 1800, when it became completely worthless. The kings of France were constantly fighting overseas wars in Africa and America, and, of course, financed those wars with credit. The so-called Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) proved to be very expensive for France. The outcome of that war, in a bitter fight with Britain over their American colonies, was that France lost almost all significant foothold in the Americas and its navy fleet as well. Britain emerged as the dominant power in the world. The land of the colonies, and its potential tax revenues to the French state, were gone, but the debt and the cost of interest remained. In 1781, the cost of interest as a percentage of tax income was 24 %. By 1790 it had risen to a staggering 95 % of total tax revenue! Tax was paid only by the so-called Third Estate--peasants, working people and the bourgeoisie, i.e. the mass of the population-- but not by the Church or the nobility. Not surprisingly, the French Revolution started. The nobility was hanged on the lantern posts of Paris, the church lost all its property, and the king got beheaded at the guillotine. '

Lees verder: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NEF20070115&articleId=4464