CC,
I suprised, I thought you knew this already.
In 1913 (i believe), a group of bankers met in Jekyl Island Ga and wrote the Federal Reserve Act. Then the bankers went about slowly buying all gold bullion, then they extorted congress to pass some resolution outlawing any private party from holding any.
The people still resisted going off the gold standard. In fact the movie 'Wizard of OZ' is about that very thing. Some newspaper guy wrote a story where dorothy was americans, the tin man was the industrialists, the scarecrow was the agriculturalists, etc.... The yellow brick road was the gold standard.
Anyway, when the banks had everything in place, they called in all their margin loans, started a whisper campaign and sent the economy into depression on purpose. After the depression all the banking, assets and holdings were concentrated where they wanted them, in the few hands of the Fed founders.
It is no accident that the same families involved in that are not harmed by this economic melt-down. It is a good thing when you control the interest rates, the production of money and can lend money to the us at interest.
So we pay interest on the money the US uses, and borrows from the Fed, which has more interest to pay the debt on the last interest we owed.
Eventually they have to bring down the whole house to clean it up. That's when the bankers come in and acquire companies, holdings and assets at basement prices.
That was all internal to america. Now, they want to do it to the entire world.