The Forgotten American ( The Reign Of Henry VIII, a study of squandering an inheritance and government's time-honored tradition of debasing currency)

( The Reign Of Henry VIII, a Study of Squandering an Inheritance and Government’s Time Honored Tradition of Debasing Currency)

Tell me what you want from me. Tell me what you want from me. Tell me what you want from me. Tell me what you want from me. Tell me what you want from me. Tell me what you want from me.

by Good Old War

Many attempts have been made to replace money as a medium of exchange over 5,000 years of civilization, but humankind always seems to revert to money as a means of consideration. With the exchange of money comes indebtedness. The Egyptian priestly class would simply bless worthless pieces of clay tablets, and  superstitious quarry workers would accept useless pieces of clay while generations of lives were sacrificed for what turned out not to  be a "god" living on this Earth but a man who was just like them, the Pharaoh. Quarry workers would never obtain enough clay pieces to pay their rent or the grain and beer they purchased from what amounted to a company store. So, a cycle of debt was the only way to stave off starvation. In later kingdoms, ancient kings would call for a" jubilee" every seven years, and all debts would be forgiven. No questions asked. Jubilees stabilized the economies of the ancient world from Babylon to the Greek city-states.  It wasn't until the Roman Empire's civil code was implemented in what is now Europe that " debt was a debt," and this was yet another "brick in the wall" cementing Western man into a master/slave relationship with a pharaoh, Caesar, or a king of England.

Henry VIII inherited his father's throne on June 24, 1509. Henry VII left his son a viable and stable empire. Henry VII avoided wars as it was bad for business. He never spent his treasure unless the spending could justify an improvement in the British economy, such as shipbuilding to develop more trade abroad. Henry VII's policies were sensible and boring but efficient. The slow and steady building of the economy led to a strong nation-state for England.   Henry VIII was not interested in the slow, steady accumulation of wealth that made England strong but rather in squandering the Crown on power, glory, and his majesty's idolatry. Eventually, money runs out, and those who are addicted to certain expectations of living run to the credit card companies to keep up appearances at 18 percent compounded daily, but governments have other time-honored traditions in which inflation is passed on to the working man or woman. The debasement of the currency is a hidden tax passed on  to the users of the coinage. Of course, as in all Ponzi schemes, the first user, the government, pockets the difference in the value at the expense of the last user, the working citizen. Most of the time, a central bank is at the center of currency debasement, but Henry VIII didn't have such a bank. As much of my readership may recall, almost 300 years earlier, British subjects won limited individual rights and representative government upon King John's signing of the Magna Carta. Still, Henry VIII had another option to exercise, merely reducing the silver content of the coinage bit by bit. Over a period of 25 years, reducing the silver content and creating more money didn't seem so financially painful --until the end users came to the realization that their silver coins held 1/7 of the value they did 25 years before. The British commoner never really felt the pain, as 25 years and an entire Biblical generation passed before the cost of goods and services rose noticeably. Of course, the easy credit of today makes the pain go away for now(?) as well.