The Menace of The Money-Power

The Menace of the Money-Power: An Analysis of World Government by Finance by A. K. Chesterton presents an attack on the power of international finance and its influence over national sovereignty, monetary policy, war, and government. Chesterton argues that control over currency and credit enables a small financial elite to exercise power over entire nations, tracing this process through central banking, the U.S. Federal Reserve System, the gold standard, financial crises, and the two World Wars. Writing in the aftermath of World War II, he focuses particularly on Bretton Woods, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Anglo-American Loan Agreement, which he interprets as attempts to extend centralized financial control from the national to the international level. Chesterton contends that international capitalism and revolutionary socialism have repeatedly served complementary purposes in weakening independent national states, and warns that Britain risks becoming financially subordinate to Wall Street. His central argument is that monetary sovereignty is inseparable from political sovereignty and that international financial institutions are laying the foundations of what he calls a “World Bankers’ State.”