Reply #51: If "Money as Debt" tweaked your interest,

[JohnyCanuck]

check out "The Money Masters" videos on Google video for a more in depth look at the history of banking and the bankers' efforts down through history to manipulate kings, prime ministers and presidents in their efforts to ensure they could retain control of the money creation process in Europe and the USA.

Money Masters Part 1 (2 hrs)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1583154561904832383

Money Masters Part 2 (1hr 46min)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7336845760512239683

They're a bit on the long side but well worth it for the history lesson.

'Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.'

-- Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds' central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups."

Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (Macmillan Company, 1966) by Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University, (Highly regarded by his former student, former US President, Bill Clinton, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley )