Wall Street bankers extend a 500,000,000 Dollar loan to the United Kingdom and France, at five-percent interst to finance their war effort against the Central Powers.

       NOTE: While the editors believe that the bankers had a legitimate right to make this loan, fear of its default may have been a primary reason for the Untied states entering the Great War (World War I) on the side of the Allied Powers.

       [added 6/10/2022]

       At that time we and the Brits, and probably the French were still on the gold standard. In 1915 I don’t think very many intelligent people thought the world war would grind on for 3 more years and murder so many millions.  If the allies’ eggs could be saved with an early intervention, then all might be saved, including the banker’s cash.

       Anybody should be free to lend his own resources to anybody else, and have reliance on the law of contract for recovery.  Lending money to known belligerents is an order of risk that has to be insured more as pawn shop does business, with actual collateral, rather than just signatures on an IOU.

       Lending money to belligerents is the prime cause for paper money central banks in the first place.  They can print and lend into circulation any amount of currency, and its value is recovered with the “full faith and credit” of the captive enemy-citizen-subject-taxpayers, who are on the wheel of perpetual debt and are as ignorant as hamsters on their cage wheels.

       Lincoln & Chase devised their paper money schemes as the proper banks said they would lend gold and silver, at a wartime premium of 20% to 40%.  The choice was peace, or government sponsored inflation.  The same story lies behind the origins of the Bank of England, et al.

       There is something phony about the 5% rate.  No sane person loans Money of silver and gold Coin to active belligerents in such huge amounts—unless there exists some other repayment insurance, such as a pacific government’s loan guarantee, or the previous exchange of real collateral in the form of real estate or commodities of substantial value; I suspect a sub rosa agreement, or an early form of “Lend Lease.” —— JL