The Veil Press: Desk

From the 1895 Gold Rescue to Jekyll Island: How the Federal Reserve Came to Be

Sun, 08 Nov 2026 13:00:00 GMT

How the Federal Reserve came to be: Cleveland's 1895 gold deal, the Panic of 1907, Jekyll Island in 1910, and the 1913 Act. Plus the Fed's 2% target today.

In February 1895 the US Treasury was running out of gold, and President Cleveland bought about $65 million in gold from a syndicate led by J.P. Morgan and August Belmont, acting with N.M. Rothschild & Sons of London. Twelve years later a private rescue was needed again. That led to Jekyll Island in 1910 and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

The thread running through all three events is simple. The United States had no central bank, so when the money system broke, private bankers fixed it on their own terms.

What happened in the 1895 gold crisis?

The United States was on a gold standard, and the Treasury kept a gold reserve to back its notes. In his message to Congress of February 8, 1895, published by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, Cleveland said "the business situation is so critical and the legislative situation is so unpromising" that he had to act without new laws from Congress.

He used section 3700 of the Revised Statutes, which let the Treasury buy coin with government bonds. Under the deal, the government would issue "a little less than $62,400,000" in 4 percent bonds payable in coin in thirty years, in exchange for gold coin "slightly in excess of $65,000,000." Cleveland said this would bring the gold reserve to "something more than $100,000,000," and that "at least one-half of the gold to be obtained is to be supplied from abroad."

Who was in the Morgan-Belmont syndicate?

The contract itself, dated February 8, 1895, was printed by Congress and is in the US Serial Set on govinfo.gov. It names the parties: the Secretary of the Treasury on one side, and on the other "August Belmont and Company, of New York, on behalf of Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Sons, of London, England, and themselves, and Messrs. J. P. Morgan and Company, of New York, on behalf of Messrs. J. S. Morgan and Company, of London, and themselves." They agreed to sell the United States 3.5 million ounces of gold coin for 4 percent thirty-year bonds.

So two New York houses acted for themselves and for two London houses. That is what the record shows. It does not show London taking control of the US Treasury. Cleveland made the call, under an existing statute, and reported it to Congress the same day.

The Veil of the Square Mile argues that the syndicate "saved the gold standard" but did so mainly because "a gold-standard America that could repay its European creditors in gold was worth more to London capital markets than an America that could not." The book's conclusion is balanced: "The interest alignment between the syndicate and the U.S. government was real. So was the difference in their objectives." The full chapter is in The Veil of the Square Mile.

How did the Panic of 1907 lead to Jekyll Island?

In October 1907 runs hit New York's trust companies. Federal Reserve History describes how the Knickerbocker Trust failed and how runs spread to the Trust Company of America. J.P. Morgan organized the private response. The Kansas City Fed's history of the Federal Reserve Act puts it plainly: the United States was "the only one of the world's major financial powers without a central bank," so "the nation was forced to turn to Wall Street." The same essay notes that Morgan "had bailed the government out of a financial crisis in 1895."

Congress responded with the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of May 30, 1908. It allowed emergency currency and created the National Monetary Commission, chaired by Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, to study banking reform.

In November 1910, Aldrich brought a small group to the Jekyll Island Club off the coast of Georgia. Federal Reserve History names six men: Aldrich; his secretary Arthur Shelton; Henry Davison, a J.P. Morgan partner; A. Piatt Andrew, an assistant Treasury secretary; Frank Vanderlip, president of National City Bank; and Paul Warburg, a partner at Kuhn, Loeb and Co. They traveled as a duck-hunting party, used first names only, and the participants did not admit the meeting happened until the 1930s.

The Fed's own history confirms the Morgan tie (Davison) and the Kuhn Loeb tie (Warburg) directly, and identifies Vanderlip as president of National City Bank and a former Treasury official. The book goes further and describes the attendees as representatives of "Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn Loeb". The Rockefeller label is the book's position; the Fed history does not use it.

The Jekyll Island plan became the Aldrich plan for a National Reserve Association. Democrats opposed it because it gave bankers too much control.

What did the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 create?

After Woodrow Wilson won in 1912, Representative Carter Glass and Senator Robert Owen wrote new bills. Federal Reserve History says Wilson insisted on a central oversight body. The result was the Federal Reserve Board, made up entirely of presidential appointees, sitting over regional Reserve Banks (the law allowed eight to twelve). A Federal Advisory Council of bankers gave the banks a voice. Governors got staggered ten-year terms so that no two-term president could appoint them all.

Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913. Federal Reserve History also notes that "the technical details of the final bill closely resembled those of the Aldrich Plan," while the political structure changed.

The book argues the Fed was designed to act as a lender of last resort the way the Bank of England had in 1890, and that it served both the public, by preventing panics, and the banks, by protecting them. "Both descriptions were accurate," the book says.

Does the Bank of England own the Federal Reserve?

No. The Federal Reserve was created by an act of Congress and signed by an American president. Its Board was made up of presidential appointees from the start. Neither the 1895 syndicate nor the Jekyll Island meeting gave the Bank of England, the City of London or the Rothschilds ownership or control of the Fed, and no source we have read says otherwise. Our Federal Reserve page covers how the system is structured.

What the record does show is narrower and more useful. For about seventy-five years after Jackson's Bank War, the United States had no central bank. In 1895 and 1907 it relied on private bankers, some acting for London houses, to steady the money system. The Fed was built by men who had lived through those rescues.

Where the series leaves us

This series started with 1776, a year that settled who governs the United States. Over seven articles we have followed a second question that 1776 did not settle: who finances it. In 1803 America borrowed through London and Amsterdam to buy Louisiana. In 1812 it went to war without a national bank. Clay and Jackson fought over the Second Bank. Lincoln's Treasury printed its own notes. In 1895 and 1907 private bankers stepped in, and in 1913 Congress built the Federal Reserve.

Our explainer on the City of London Corporation covers the London side of that history.

The founders answered the political question in 1776. The money question has been answered several different ways since then. If Americans took up that second question with the same seriousness, what would a renewed 1776 in finance look like?

FAQ

What was the 1895 gold rescue? A February 8, 1895 deal in which the Treasury traded about $62.4 million in 4 percent thirty-year bonds for just over $65 million in gold from a syndicate led by J.P. Morgan and August Belmont.

Were the Rothschilds involved? Yes. The contract says August Belmont and Company acted on behalf of N.M. Rothschild and Sons of London, and J.P. Morgan and Company acted for J.S. Morgan and Company of London.

Who met at Jekyll Island in 1910? Nelson Aldrich, Arthur Shelton, Henry Davison, A. Piatt Andrew, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg, according to Federal Reserve History.

When was the Federal Reserve created? President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913.

Does Britain own or control the Federal Reserve? No. It was created by Congress, and its Board was appointed by the president.

That question is where the series ends, and where the conversation can begin. To get new pieces as they come out, sign up for the brief.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/how-the-federal-reserve-came-to-be/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, From the 1895 Gold Rescue to Jekyll Island: How the Federal Reserve Came to Be, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/how-the-federal-reserve-came-to-be/

From The Veil Press: The Veil of the Square Mile (The Veil, Vol. I). The history behind the headlines: how the City of London Corporation built durable financial power. Volume I, from the publisher of these stories. Read the first chapter free.

Lincoln's Greenbacks: Why the Union Printed Its Own Money in 1862

Thu, 05 Nov 2026 13:00:00 GMT

What were greenbacks? The United States Notes the Union issued under the Legal Tender Act of 1862 to pay for the Civil War, and what they were backed by.

Greenbacks were paper notes issued directly by the US Treasury during the Civil War. The Legal Tender Act of February 25, 1862 authorized $150 million of them, made them legal tender for most debts, and did not back them with gold. Congress passed it because the war was costing more than taxes and borrowing could cover.

They were not the Federal Reserve's money. The Fed did not exist until 1913. Greenbacks were the government's own notes, and that is exactly why people still argue about them.

What were greenbacks?

The official name was United States Notes. The Library of Congress says the ink on the new bills was green and people quickly started calling them greenbacks; the term was in wide use by 1863.

Federal Reserve History, the Federal Reserve System's history site, says greenbacks were "not convertible into gold or silver," but could be used to pay taxes and to buy the government bonds authorized under the same act. For that reason it calls them the "first real paper money ever issued by the United States government."

That is a striking line coming from the Federal Reserve's own history site. Before 1862, most paper money Americans handled was issued by private, state-chartered banks.

Why did Lincoln issue greenbacks during the Civil War?

Money. The Library of Congress research guide says the government needed money for soldiers' pay, weapons and munitions, and that by 1862 costs had "spiraled" to the point that it was looking for better ways to pay for the war. Federal Reserve History adds that Congress authorized $250 million in government bonds in 1861 and another $500 million in 1862. Borrowing alone was not enough.

The Veil of the Square Mile takes a stronger position on why Lincoln and Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase went this way. The book argues that they "chose Hamilton," asserting a sovereign right to issue currency directly instead of borrowing it at interest from private institutions. It also argues that much of the London financial press was hostile to the Union and to the greenback. Those are the book's arguments, and you can read them in full in The Veil of the Square Mile.

We are leaving out one figure the book mentions: it says that "some accounts" put the loan rates offered to Lincoln at 24 to 36 percent. We could not find a primary source for those numbers, so we are not repeating them as fact.

What did the Legal Tender Act of 1862 do?

The act, 12 Stat. 345, was passed on February 25, 1862, and the Library of Congress says Lincoln signed it the next day. The text, which the St. Louis Fed's FRASER library publishes, did three main things:

It authorized $150 million in United States notes issued on the credit of the United States, not bearing interest. Fifty million of that replaced earlier demand notes from 1861.
It made the notes legal tender for public and private debts, with two exceptions: duties on imports and interest on the public debt. Those still had to be paid in coin.
It authorized up to $500 million in bonds to fund the Treasury's floating debt, which could be bought with the new notes.

The exceptions matter. The government still collected customs duties in gold and paid bondholders their interest in gold. So the greenback was a full national currency for most purposes, but the federal government's creditors were still paid in coin.

The Library of Congress notes that a second Legal Tender Act (12 Stat. 532) followed on July 11, 1862. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing says that act authorized another $150 million, and an act of March 3, 1863 authorized $150 million more. A Kansas City Fed history of US currency says the most United States notes ever outstanding was "nearly $450 million" in 1864, which matches the book's figure of roughly $450 million.

Were greenbacks constitutional?

The Supreme Court went back and forth. In Hepburn v. Griswold (December Term 1869, decided in 1870), the Court ruled that the legal tender acts could not be applied to debts made before the act of February 25, 1862. A year later, in the Legal Tender Cases, including Knox v. Lee (1871), the Court upheld the acts. Cornell's Legal Information Institute publishes both opinions.

So the federal power to issue paper legal tender was settled in the government's favor within ten years of the first greenback.

Are greenbacks connected to the Federal Reserve?

No. The Federal Reserve Act was signed on December 23, 1913, fifty-one years after the first Legal Tender Act. Greenbacks were issued by the Treasury. The Federal Reserve is a separate system created by Congress much later. Our American System page traces the line the book draws from Hamilton to Clay to Lincoln.

The book argues that the greenback and the Fed answer the same question in different ways: should the nation borrow its money supply from private bankers, or issue some of it directly? That is a fair question to ask. We are not saying the answer is simple, or that greenbacks were free of problems. They lost value against gold during the war: the same Kansas City Fed history says a gold dollar cost $1.03 in US currency in New York in January 1862 and $1.79 in March 1865. The Supreme Court fight shows how contested they were.

The next year, Congress also turned to national banks. The National Currency Act of February 25, 1863 created the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to Federal Reserve History. The Union used both tools: its own notes, and a new system of federally chartered banks.

Why does this matter to Americans now?

Most Americans carry Federal Reserve notes and never think about who issues them. The greenback is a reminder that the United States has issued paper money in more than one way, and that Congress, not a bank, decides which way. The City of London Corporation explainer covers the financial center the book sees on the other side of this argument.

FAQ

What is a greenback? A United States Note: paper money issued directly by the US Treasury, first under the Legal Tender Act of February 25, 1862.

Were greenbacks backed by gold? No. They were not convertible into gold or silver, though they could pay taxes and buy government bonds.

What could greenbacks not pay? Import duties and interest on the public debt, which the 1862 act kept payable in coin.

Did the Supreme Court uphold greenbacks? Yes, in the Legal Tender Cases of 1871, after limiting them in Hepburn v. Griswold in 1870.

Are greenbacks the same as Federal Reserve notes? No. Greenbacks were Treasury notes issued from 1862. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

Next in the series: After the war, the question became gold. In 1895 the Treasury nearly ran out of it, and the rescue led, step by step, to the Federal Reserve. Next: from the 1895 gold rescue to Jekyll Island.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/lincolns-greenbacks-1862/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Lincoln's Greenbacks: Why the Union Printed Its Own Money in 1862, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/lincolns-greenbacks-1862/

Henry Clay's American System and Andrew Jackson's Bank War, Explained

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Henry Clay's American System, explained: tariffs, a national bank, roads and canals, and why Andrew Jackson vetoed the Second Bank's recharter in 1832.

Henry Clay's American System was a plan to build up the American economy with three tools: protective tariffs, a national bank, and federal spending on roads and canals. Andrew Jackson's Bank War was his fight against the second of those tools. In 1832 he vetoed the Second Bank's recharter, and by 1836 its federal charter had run out.

Both men claimed to be defending American independence. They disagreed about what threatened it.

What was Henry Clay's American System?

Henry Clay of Kentucky laid out his case most fully in a Senate speech delivered over three days, February 2, 3 and 6, 1832. The Senate Historical Office publishes the text. Clay called his program "the genuine American System." He argued that the free-trade policy his opponents wanted "ought really to be considered as the British colonial system." The printed edition of the speech carried the title "in defence of the American system, against the British colonial system."

The Veil of the Square Mile describes the program as resting on three pillars: high protective tariffs so American manufacturers could compete with British imports, a strong national bank for stable currency and credit, and federal investment in roads, canals and later railroads. The book argues that Clay was giving Alexander Hamilton's ideas "a party name and a programmatic form," and that his core point was that a republic dependent on British manufactures and British credit was not fully free of British power. You can read that chapter in The Veil of the Square Mile, and our American System page gives a short summary.

The program had a famous admirer. In the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, at Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, Abraham Lincoln called Clay "my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my humble life." The National Park Service publishes the debate transcript.

What was the Second Bank of the United States?

Congress chartered the Second Bank in 1816 after the War of 1812 left federal finances in poor shape. Federal Reserve History says the bank opened in Philadelphia in January 1817, held the government's deposits, made its payments, issued its own notes and kept state bank notes in check. It had $35 million in capital and twenty-five directors, five of them named by the president.

From 1823 the bank was run by Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia. Federal Reserve History calls Biddle "an excellent administrator who understood banking," and also notes that he let the bank lend to friends while denying loans to others, which drew public criticism.

Why did Andrew Jackson veto its recharter in 1832?

The bank's charter ran to 1836. Its supporters asked Congress to renew it in January 1832, four years early, during an election year. Federal Reserve History says the bill passed both houses but could not get enough votes to override Jackson's veto.

Jackson's veto message of July 10, 1832 is worth reading in full. The Avalon Project at Yale Law School publishes it. A few of his arguments stand out for American readers today.

Foreign ownership. Jackson wrote that on January 1, 1832, "$8,405,500 were held by foreigners, mostly of Great Britain" out of $28 million in private stock. He warned that if the United States went to war with the country whose citizens held the stock, a bank "almost wholly owned by the subjects of a foreign power" would be "more formidable and dangerous than the naval and military power of the enemy."

An American bank. He wrote: "If we must have a bank with private stockholders, every consideration of sound policy and every impulse of American feeling admonishes that it should be purely American."

Privilege. He objected that the recharter handed millions to existing stockholders and asked that government "confine itself to equal protection" and not "make the rich richer and the potent more powerful."

The Constitution. He argued that the Supreme Court's ruling in McCulloch v. Maryland did not settle every feature of the bank, and that even if it had, it "ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government." The president had to judge constitutionality for himself.

Federal Reserve History adds personal reasons. Jackson distrusted paper money after notes he had accepted in a land sale became worthless, and he believed the bank put too much power in too few private hands.

Notice something here. Clay and Jackson were bitter enemies, yet both made their case in terms of keeping America free of British influence. Clay said free trade was the British colonial system. Jackson said a bank with British shareholders was a danger in wartime. The argument was about which American tool was the right one.

Who won the Bank War, and what did it cost?

Jackson won the 1832 election and treated it as a mandate. Federal Reserve History says he ordered federal deposits moved from the Second Bank into state banks, and that most of the government's money was out by late 1833.

Biddle answered by cutting credit and calling in loans, hoping the pain would turn the public against Jackson. It did not. Federal Reserve History says the move "backfired" and supported Jackson's claim that the bank served the wealthy. In April 1834 the House voted against rechartering the bank. Its federal charter ended in 1836. The book adds that it carried on for a few more years under a Pennsylvania charter before it failed.

The cost is still argued over. The book argues that the decades that followed brought "alternating cycles of land speculation, credit expansion, and panics" that left the country exposed to outside financial pressure. Federal Reserve History notes that the country went more than seventy-five years before trying a central bank again, and that "the U.S. economy experienced several banking crises" in that period.

Clay himself never won the presidency. The National Archives notes that he ran in 1824, 1832 and 1844, and the Senate Historical Office calls the 1844 race "his third and final attempt." The book argues that he kept shaping tariff and bank law through Congress anyway.

Why does this matter now?

Tariffs, a national bank, and federal spending on transportation are not museum pieces. Americans are arguing about tariffs, reshoring and federal investment again. Clay's 1832 speech and Jackson's 1832 veto are two of the clearest statements on record of how Americans first argued about those choices, and both are short enough to read in an evening. The country's next central bank, the Federal Reserve, did not arrive until 1913, and our page on the City of London Corporation explains the London financial center whose investors Jackson was worried about.

FAQ

What were the three parts of the American System? Protective tariffs, a national bank, and federal spending on internal improvements such as roads and canals.

When did Jackson veto the Second Bank? July 10, 1832.

Why did Jackson oppose the Second Bank? In his veto message he cited foreign stock ownership, special privileges for wealthy stockholders and constitutional problems. Federal Reserve History adds his personal distrust of paper money and banks.

Did Lincoln support Clay's American System? Lincoln called Clay "my beau ideal of a statesman" in the Ottawa debate of August 21, 1858. The book argues Lincoln carried the American System into the Republican Party.

What happened to the Second Bank? Jackson removed federal deposits in 1833, the House voted against recharter in 1834, and the federal charter expired in 1836.

Next in the series: Thirty years after the Bank War, the country was at war with itself, had no national bank, and needed money fast. Next: Lincoln's greenbacks and the Legal Tender Act of 1862.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/henry-clays-american-system-and-jacksons-bank-war/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Henry Clay's American System and Andrew Jackson's Bank War, Explained, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/henry-clays-american-system-and-jacksons-bank-war/

From 1776 to 1971: What Nixon Ended When the Dollar Left Gold

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

On Aug 15, 1971, Nixon ended the dollar's gold convertibility. What changed for American money, and what viral gold-vs-income charts get right and wrong.

On the evening of August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon told the country that the "gold window" was closed. Foreign governments could no longer turn in their dollars for gold at $35 an ounce. Federal Reserve History says that "in effect, the international monetary system turned into a fiat one."

For Americans, the practical result is easy to measure. Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, a dollar in August 1971 bought what about $8.26 buys in September 2026. Put the other way, a 1971 dollar is now worth about 12 cents. That is the money question that runs from 1776 through 1971 to this week's Fed meeting: who decides how many dollars there are, and who answers for what they are worth.

Why did Nixon end the gold standard?

Federal Reserve History gives two reasons: a "looming gold run" abroad and rising inflation at home.

The system Nixon ended was set up at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. Forty-four countries agreed to fix their currencies to the dollar, and the dollar was fixed to gold at $35 an ounce. The United States held about three-quarters of the world's official gold reserves, so at first the system looked secure.

By the 1960s it was not. European and Japanese exports grew more competitive, U.S. military spending and foreign aid sent dollars abroad, and the gold supply barely grew. Eventually, the essay says, "there were more foreign-held dollars than the United States had gold." If enough foreign governments asked for gold at once, the U.S. could not pay.

The patches did not hold. The Treasury and the New York Fed intervened in currency markets from 1961. The Fed set up currency swap lines with nine central banks, including England's. Eight central banks formed the London Gold Pool in 1961 to hold the London gold price at $35. The pool collapsed in March 1968 after the British pound was devalued and France withdrew.

From August 13 to 15, 1971, Nixon met at Camp David with fifteen advisers, including Fed Chairman Arthur Burns, Treasury Secretary John Connally and Treasury Undersecretary Paul Volcker.

What happened in 1971 to the US economy?

The August 15 plan had three parts, according to Federal Reserve History:

The gold window closed.
A 90-day freeze on wages and prices. It was the first time the government used wage and price controls outside of wartime.
A 10 percent surcharge on imports, so American products would not be at a disadvantage because of exchange rates.

Employment and production grew soon after. Inflation "was practically halted" during the freeze, the essay says, but came back. A few months later the Smithsonian agreement tried to keep fixed exchange rates, and the Bretton Woods system ended soon after.

What is the dollar's value since 1971 compared to today?

Here is the math, so you can check it. The BLS consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U, not seasonally adjusted, 1982-84 = 100) was 40.8 in August 1971. The BLS reported it at 336.940 for September 2026. 336.940 divided by 40.8 is about 8.26.

The BLS also reported that prices rose 3.7 percent in the 12 months ending in September 2026. The Fed's stated goal is 2 percent.

Is the viral 1971 gold-vs-income chart right?

A chart going around this month says a median American household earned about 220 ounces of gold a year in 1971 and about 25 ounces now, and that the minimum wage fell from 81.5 ounces to 4.4. We have not printed those numbers as fact because we could not rebuild them from primary data for this piece.

There is also a real problem with any 1971 gold figure. In 1971 gold had two prices. Under the two-tier system set up in 1968, central banks dealt with each other at the official $35 an ounce and stayed out of the private market, where the price was free to move. Federal Reserve History notes the London market price had already reached $40 back in October 1960. A chart that divides 1971 income by $35 gets one answer, and a chart that uses the private-market price gets a smaller one. Any honest version of this chart has to say which price it used.

The CPI number above does not have that problem, and it makes the same basic point about what a 1971 dollar was worth.

What is Bretton Woods?

It is the 1944 agreement that tied other currencies to the dollar and the dollar to gold. It ran in full from 1958 and ended in the early 1970s. Our Bretton Woods entity page keeps the sourced facts.

Where 1776 comes in

The money argument is older than 1971. Hamilton's First Bank of the United States opened in 1791, and Federal Reserve History says he used the Bank of England's charter as the basis for his plan. See Why Did Hamilton Want a National Bank? and Who Owns the Federal Reserve? The Fed's FAQ says Congress set up the current system in 1913 and that the Board of Governors answers to Congress. After 1971, there was no gold link left to limit how many dollars there were. That made the Fed's decisions, and who holds the Fed to account, matter more.

Where things stand

The FOMC met October 27-28, 2026, and held the target range at 3-3/4 to 4 percent. The vote was 10 to 2: Lisa D. Cook and Beth M. Hammack wanted a 1/4-point hike. (Fed statement, October 28)
On September 16 the FOMC raised the target range to 3-3/4 to 4 percent.
September CPI was up 3.7 percent over the year (BLS, October 14).

Confirmed, alleged, disputed


Confirmed	Nixon closed the gold window on Aug 15, 1971, and announced a 90-day wage-price freeze and a 10 percent import surcharge. The dollar had been fixed at $35 an ounce. A 1971 dollar buys about what $8.26 buys now (BLS CPI).
Alleged	The viral "220 ounces to 25 ounces" household-income chart. Not checked against primary data; not used here.
Disputed	Whether ending gold convertibility caused later inflation, or whether the Fed's policy choices did. Federal Reserve History notes the "monetary momentum" toward inflation had already begun before the freeze.

FAQ

When did the US go off the gold standard? The dollar's convertibility into gold for foreign governments ended on August 15, 1971.

Why did Nixon end the gold standard? To stop a run on U.S. gold and to deal with inflation, according to Federal Reserve History.

What was the price of gold in 1971? The official price was $35 an ounce. Private markets traded at a different price under the two-tier system in place since 1968.

How much is a 1971 dollar worth today? About 12 cents, using the BLS CPI-U for August 1971 and September 2026.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/1971-gold-standard-explained/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, From 1776 to 1971: What Nixon Ended When the Dollar Left Gold, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/1971-gold-standard-explained/

The War of 1812 and the Second Bank of the United States: Why Congress Brought the Bank Back in 1816

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Why was the Second Bank of the United States created in 1816? How the War of 1812 and the First Bank's lapse in 1811 brought Congress back to a bank.

Congress let the First Bank of the United States expire in 1811. A year later the country went to war with Britain without a national bank. The war cut trade and federal revenue, state banks stopped paying out in gold and silver, and by 1816 President Madison, who had opposed Hamilton's bank, signed a law creating a second one.

That turnaround is one of the more useful stories in early American history, because the people who changed their minds were the same people who had fought the first bank.

What happened when the First Bank's charter expired in 1811?

Alexander Hamilton's First Bank of the United States was chartered in 1791 for twenty years. Federal Reserve History, the Federal Reserve System's own history site, says the bank's shareholders asked Congress to extend the charter in 1808, and Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin recommended renewal in 1809. Congress let the request sit. In January 1811 the House voted against renewal by one vote. In February the Senate deadlocked, Vice President George Clinton broke the tie against the bank, and the charter ran out that year.

The Veil of the Square Mile gives three reasons for the lapse: Jeffersonian suspicion of the bank, the politics after Hamilton's death in 1804, and lobbying by state banks that did not want a federal competitor. The book argues that the timing could hardly have been worse.

How did the War of 1812 strain American finances?

The State Department's Office of the Historian describes how the United States was pulled into the conflict between Napoleonic France and Britain. Britain stopped American merchant ships, impressed American sailors into the Royal Navy and enforced a blockade of neutral trade. Madison asked Congress for a declaration of war on June 1, 1812.

The war went badly for American trade. Federal Reserve History notes that the US government got most of its revenue from tariffs on trade, and that the British blockade stopped American farmers and manufacturers from exporting and curtailed that revenue. By 1815, it says, the United States "found itself heavily in debt, much like it had been at the end of the Revolutionary War thirty years earlier."

The Office of the Historian records that the British attacked Washington and burned the White House and other government buildings. The Senate Historical Office dates it: on August 24, 1814, British troops "burned the Capitol, the president's house, and other government buildings." The war ended with the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814, which restored the old borders.

The book makes a direct argument about this. It says that when the United States went to war in 1812, it did so "without a central bank capable of financing the effort at the required scale," that state bank notes lost value at different rates in different regions, and that the government could not borrow on sensible terms. It calls the War of 1812 "the empirical test of Hamilton's argument." The full chapter is in The Veil of the Square Mile.

The book also says the Treasury briefly defaulted on interest payments during the war. The Congressional Research Service agrees. Its report "Has the U.S. Government Ever 'Defaulted'?" says that interest on federal debt due to Boston investors on October 1, 1814 could not be paid, and that those investors refused Treasury notes in place of gold or silver, "thus providing a clear example of default." The same report quotes Alexander Dallas, who became Treasury Secretary that October, complaining that "the dividend on the funded debt has not been punctually paid."

Why did Madison sign the Second Bank into law in 1816?

James Madison had opposed the First Bank in 1791. Federal Reserve History says that in April 1814 he "reluctantly admitted to the need for another national bank" to finance the war, then withdrew his support later that year as peace talks progressed.

After the peace, Congress at first rejected new efforts to create a bank. But the government's finances kept getting worse, and many state-chartered banks had stopped redeeming their own notes in gold or silver. That convinced Madison and his advisers that the country needed a more uniform, stable paper currency. Treasury Secretary Alexander Dallas called for a national bank again. Madison signed the act creating the Second Bank of the United States in April 1816.

Federal Reserve History names six men who were central to the new bank: the financiers John Jacob Astor, David Parish, Stephen Girard and Jacob Barker, Treasury Secretary Dallas, and Representative John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. As lenders, the four financiers wanted a stable currency to protect their business interests.

So the men who had doubted Hamilton ended up rebuilding his bank. The war had answered the argument for them.

How was the Second Bank set up?

The Second Bank opened in Philadelphia in January 1817. According to Federal Reserve History, it:

acted as the federal government's fiscal agent, holding its deposits, making its payments and helping it sell debt;
issued its own notes and kept state banks' note issues in check;
had a twenty-year charter, like the first bank;
had $35 million in capital, compared with $10 million for the first bank;
had twenty-five directors, five of them appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate;
eventually ran twenty-five branches, against eight for the first bank.

Federal Reserve History is careful to say the Second Bank was not a modern central bank. It did not set monetary policy as we know it today and did not act as a lender of last resort. But by presenting state bank notes for payment in gold or silver, or holding on to them, it could speed up or slow down the growth of money and credit.

Was the Second Bank a copy of the Bank of England?

No. The Second Bank was chartered by Congress, partly appointed by the president, and had no legal or ownership tie to the Bank of England. You could call it the Bank of England's cousin in spirit, since both were large chartered banks that handled a government's money. That is a comparison, not a connection. (For the London institution that sits behind much of this history, see our explainer on the City of London Corporation.)

The book's own comparison runs the other way. It argues that Hamilton designed the first American bank as a contrast to the Bank of England, with the federal government holding a 20 percent stake and the books open to Treasury inspection. The Second Bank kept that public role. How long the country would keep it was the question the next twenty years would answer, and the American System page explains why Henry Clay made the bank one of his three pillars.

FAQ

Why did the First Bank of the United States close? Its twenty-year charter expired in 1811 after the House voted against renewal by one vote and a tied Senate vote was broken against it by Vice President George Clinton.

Did the War of 1812 lead to the Second Bank? Yes. The war cut trade and tariff revenue and left the government heavily in debt. After state banks stopped redeeming their notes, Madison signed the Second Bank into law in April 1816.

Where was the Second Bank based? Philadelphia. It opened in January 1817 and eventually had twenty-five branches.

Was the Second Bank owned by the Bank of England? No. It was chartered by Congress, and five of its twenty-five directors were presidential appointees. There was no ownership link to the Bank of England.

Where can I read the book's account? In the chapter on Hamilton and the First Bank in The Veil of the Square Mile.

Next in the series: The Second Bank had a twenty-year charter. In 1832, four years before it was due to expire, its supporters asked Congress to renew it, and the question landed on Andrew Jackson's desk. Next: Henry Clay's American System and Jackson's Bank War.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/why-congress-created-the-second-bank-in-1816/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, The War of 1812 and the Second Bank of the United States: Why Congress Brought the Bank Back in 1816, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/why-congress-created-the-second-bank-in-1816/

Who Owns the Federal Reserve? A Plain Answer for FOMC Week

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Who owns the Federal Reserve? The Fed's answer: a federal Board plus 12 regional Banks whose member-bank stock can't be sold. Before the Oct 27-28 FOMC.

Nobody owns the Federal Reserve in the ordinary sense. That is the Fed's own answer. The Board of Governors in Washington is a federal agency that reports to Congress. The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are separately incorporated, and commercial banks that join the system must hold stock in their district's Reserve Bank. The Fed says that stock is "quite different from owning stock in a private company."

That matters to Americans this week. The Federal Open Market Committee meets Tuesday and Wednesday, October 27 and 28, and decides the interest rate that feeds into car loans, credit cards, mortgages and what the Treasury pays on the national debt.

Is the Federal Reserve private or public?

It is a mix, and the Fed says so. In its official FAQ, the Fed describes three features of the system: a central governing board, a decentralized structure of 12 Reserve Banks, and "a blend of public and private characteristics."

The public side:

Congress created the system in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act, and the Fed's authority comes from Congress.
The members of the Board of Governors are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
The Board reports to Congress, testifies before it, and sends it a Monetary Policy Report twice a year.

The private-looking side:

Each of the 12 Reserve Banks is separately incorporated and has its own board of directors.
Member commercial banks hold stock in their district's Reserve Bank.

The Fed adds two points that matter for anyone asking who profits. The Reserve Banks "are not operated for profit," and holding the stock is "by law, a condition of membership in the System." After expenses, legally required dividends and a limited surplus fund, the Reserve Banks are required by law to send their net earnings to the U.S. Treasury.

One more point is worth knowing. The Board is not funded by congressional appropriations, and the Fed says its decisions on how to reach the goals Congress sets "do not require approval by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government." That independence is the real subject of most arguments about the Fed. It is a question about accountability, not about a secret owner.

Who owns the Federal Reserve Bank of New York?

The same rules apply. The New York Fed is one of the 12 Reserve Banks. Its member banks hold its stock as a condition of membership, the same as in every other district. That stock is not a share in a company run for profit, and the Fed's FAQ applies to all 12 Banks alike.

Does the Bank of England own the Fed?

No. Nothing in the Fed's own description of its structure gives any foreign institution ownership. The Board is a U.S. federal agency, and the Reserve Bank stock is held by member banks inside each U.S. district. Our Bank of England entity page covers what that bank is and where its history touches ours. The Federal Reserve entity page keeps the Fed's sourced facts in one place.

What does the FOMC decide on October 27-28?

The FOMC sets the target range for the federal funds rate, the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans. The Fed's 2026 calendar lists this meeting as October 27-28. The September statement came out at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on the meeting's second day.

Where things stand going in:

On September 16, 2026, the FOMC voted 12-0 to raise the target range by 1/4 percentage point to 3-3/4 to 4 percent. The statement said "Inflation remains elevated."
On October 14, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices rose 3.7 percent in the 12 months ending in September, up from 3.4 percent in August. Gasoline was up 34.2 percent over the year. Prices excluding food and energy were up 2.6 percent.
The Fed's stated goal is 2 percent inflation.

We are not printing a market forecast for this meeting. We will report the decision from the Fed's own statement on Wednesday.

How did America get a central bank?

The country argued about this from the start. Alexander Hamilton's First Bank of the United States was chartered in 1791 and modeled on the Bank of England's charter. Congress let its charter expire in 1811 and created a Second Bank five years later. The Federal Reserve came in 1913. We cover the first two rounds in Why Did Hamilton Want a National Bank? and Why Did Britain Tax the Colonies After 1763?. Next in the series: what changed for American money in 1971.

Confirmed, alleged, disputed


Confirmed	The Board of Governors is a federal agency accountable to Congress. Member banks must hold Reserve Bank stock by law. Net earnings go to the Treasury. FOMC meets Oct 27-28. Rate range is 3-3/4 to 4 percent after a Sep 16 hike. September CPI was up 3.7 percent over the year.
Alleged	That private bankers or a foreign bank "own" the Fed. The Fed's published structure does not support this.
Disputed	How independent the Fed should be from elected officials. That is a fair policy argument, and people on both sides make it in good faith.

FAQ

Who owns the Federal Reserve? No one, in the ordinary sense. The Board is a federal agency. Member banks hold stock in their regional Reserve Bank because the law requires it as a condition of membership.

Is the Fed a private company? No. The Reserve Banks are organized like corporations, but the Fed says they are not operated for profit and must send net earnings to the Treasury.

Who appoints the Fed's leaders? The President appoints the Board of Governors, and the Senate confirms them.

When is the October 2026 Fed meeting? October 27-28, 2026, according to the Fed's calendar.

What is inflation right now? The BLS reported 3.7 percent for the 12 months ending in September 2026.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/who-owns-the-federal-reserve/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Who Owns the Federal Reserve? A Plain Answer for FOMC Week, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/who-owns-the-federal-reserve/

Britain Urged Ukraine to Keep Fighting in 2022. Congress Has Approved $174 Billion

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 21:00:00 GMT

What Ukraine's negotiator, Israel's mediator and Downing Street said about spring 2022, what U.S. taxpayers have paid, and what the viral martial-law post gets right and wrong.

In April 2022, Ukraine and Russia were negotiating a deal to end the war. Then Britain's prime minister, Boris Johnson, arrived in Kyiv. Ukraine's chief negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia, later said Johnson told Kyiv "we will not sign anything with them at all – and let's just fight" [15a]. Israel's former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who was mediating at the time, said the West "blocked" the process and that "Boris Johnson adopted the aggressive line" [18]. Johnson's own office said he "urged against any negotiations with Russia" on terms that "gave credence to the Kremlin's false narrative" [17].

The war went on, and Americans have paid a large share of the bill. Congress has approved $174.2 billion through five Ukraine supplemental spending acts [1]. On Oct. 26, 2026, Ukraine's parliament extended martial law and mobilization again, this time to Jan. 29, 2027 [4].

What Americans have paid

Congress appropriated $174.2 billion through the five Ukraine supplemental appropriation acts enacted from FY2022 to FY2024. Counting money from annual agency budgets, other supplemental acts and $4.8 billion contributed by NATO allies and partners, the oversight site puts total appropriations for Operation Atlantic Resolve (the U.S. military mission in Europe) and the Ukraine response at $196.4 billion. Of that total, $180.9 billion had been obligated and $121.2 billion disbursed by June 30, 2026, according to the inspectors general's oversight site [1]. Not all of it went to Kyiv. The Kiel Institute counts only government-to-government aid. By Kiel's count, as reported by the Barcelona daily Ara, the US has sent Ukraine €115.38 billion, of which €64.62 billion is military, and those figures have not changed since January 2025 [2][3]. Separately, the US provided Ukraine a $20 billion "Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration" loan, which the oversight site says is only partly reflected in the appropriation totals [1].

Americans paid for this war at that scale. That makes it fair to ask why it did not end in the spring of 2022, and who pushed for it to continue.

Spring 2022: London's push to keep fighting

Ukrainian and Russian delegations met in Belarus and then in Istanbul in March 2022.

What Ukraine's lead negotiator said. Davyd Arakhamia led Ukraine's delegation and heads Zelensky's party in parliament. On Nov. 24, 2023, journalist Natalia Moseichuk interviewed him on her program "Moseichuk+." He said the Russians "were ready to end the war if we took – as Finland once did – neutrality and made commitments that we would not join NATO" [15][15a]. Then he described the British visit: "When we came back from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we will not sign anything with them at all – and let's just fight" [15a]. (Our translation from the original Ukrainian.) In the same interview, he said Western partners "advised us not to go for ephemeral security guarantees" [15b].

What Ukrainska Pravda reported. On May 5, 2022, Ukrainska Pravda cited sources close to Zelensky. It reported that Johnson "appeared in the capital almost without warning" and brought two messages. The first was that Putin "should be pressured, not negotiated with." The second was that "even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, [the West is] not" [16]. Three days after Johnson left, Putin said the talks had reached "a dead end" [16].

What Downing Street's own readout said. After a call with Emmanuel Macron on May 6, 2022, Johnson's office said he "urged against any negotiations with Russia on terms that gave credence to the Kremlin's false narrative for the invasion but stressed that this was a decision for the Ukrainian government" [17].

What Naftali Bennett said. Bennett, then Israel's prime minister, mediated between the two sides. In a February 2023 interview, he was asked whether the West had blocked the process. He answered: "I think there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin… I mean the more aggressive approach. Basically, yes. They blocked it" [18][19]. He said: "Boris Johnson adopted the aggressive line; Scholz and Macron were more pragmatic, and Biden was both" [18]. Jacobin's account of the interview reports that he put the odds of a deal holding at 50-50 and quotes him saying "they blocked it, and I thought [they were] wrong" [19].

What the record shows. Four sources say the same thing: Ukraine's chief negotiator, the Israeli mediator, a mainstream Ukrainian outlet and Downing Street's own readout. Britain's prime minister urged Kyiv not to settle on the terms then on the table. Bennett named Johnson as the Western leader who took "the aggressive line." That is as far as the sources go. They do not show that London alone ended the talks.

Before 2022: British training, and Tony Blair

British training. The UK Ministry of Defence says that "since 2015" Britain "has trained over 22,000 personnel as part of Operation Orbital and the UK-led Maritime Training Initiative." The training covered infantry tactics, planning, leadership, medical skills and countering improvised explosive devices. The MoD says support "was stepped-up in 2021" with a bilateral treaty that released £1.7 billion in financing for Ukraine's naval program [21].
Tony Blair. We could not find a documented personal role for Blair in the 2022 talks or in setting up the war, so this piece makes no such claim. Here is what is documented. In June 2015, President Poroshenko, not Zelensky, offered Blair a role on Ukraine's International Advisory Council for Reforms. The Guardian reported at the time that it was "unclear whether Blair has accepted." It also reported that the foundation of the Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk had paid Blair's Faith Foundation $500,000 in 2011–2012, $230,000 in 2013 and $330,000 in 2014 [22]. The Tony Blair Institute's own 2022 annual report says that after the invasion it set out "clear recommendations for how the West should meet Ukraine's equipment and military materiel needs" and provided "ongoing high-level briefing" on the war. It says its thesis was that Russia acted in part out of "a perception of Western weakness" [23]. That is advocacy for arming Ukraine. It is not a documented role in the talks.

The reasons Moscow gave

In his Feb. 24, 2022 address, Putin said the operation was meant to protect people subjected to "humiliation and genocide" by the Kyiv government, and to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine [24]. He also said Ukraine and its backers were preparing to attack: "They will undoubtedly try to bring war to Crimea just as they have done in Donbass." He added that "the showdown between Russia and these forces cannot be avoided. It is only a matter of time. They are getting ready and waiting for the right moment" [24]. The address did not offer evidence of a planned offensive, and we have found no independent confirmation of one. It is reported here as Moscow's claim.

What the international monitors recorded:

OSCE monitors. On Feb. 18, 2022, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission said it had observed "a dramatic increase in kinetic activity along the contact line in eastern Ukraine," equal to the level of ceasefire violations recorded before the July 2020 ceasefire measures [25]. The statement does not say which side fired.
UN human rights office. The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) recorded 3,107 conflict-related civilian deaths from April 14, 2014 to Jan. 31, 2022. It does not assign them to one side. Counting the 298 people on MH17, the total is at least 3,405 [29]. In the six months before the invasion, from Aug. 1, 2021 to Jan. 31, 2022, OHCHR recorded 49 civilian casualties: 11 killed and 38 injured [29]. Those deaths are real. The UN figures do not support a claim of "genocide of the millions of people who live there" [24][29].

Checking the viral post: what the Rada voted for

A post now circulating says Ukraine's parliament extended the ban on elections and forced conscription to Jan. 29, 2027. Part of that is accurate.

The vote happened. On Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, the Verkhovna Rada approved two presidential decrees. Bill No. 16182 extends martial law and passed with 293 votes. Bill No. 16183 extends general mobilization and passed with 281 votes [4][5]. President Zelensky signed both the same day as Laws No. 5029-IX and 5030-IX, together with Decrees No. 1060/2026 and 1061/2026 [6].
The date is right. Both laws take effect at 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2026, for another 90 days, which runs to Jan. 29, 2027 [4][6]. This is the latest in a series of 90-day extensions. Martial law and mobilization have been in force since Feb. 24, 2022 [4].
What the post gets wrong. The Rada did not vote on a "ban on elections." It extended martial law. Elections are barred as a legal consequence of martial law. Part 1 of Article 19 of Ukraine's martial-law law (No. 389-VIII) prohibits presidential elections while martial law is in force [14]. "Forced conscription" means general mobilization, which is the measure that was extended [5].

Zelensky has said martial law will be lifted only once Ukraine has security guarantees. In December 2025 he said: "Martial law will be lifted at the moment when Ukraine has security guarantees" [4].

Checking the viral post: draft evasion

The current official number is 2 million. In January 2026, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told parliament that "two million Ukrainians" were wanted for evading mobilization and 200,000 servicemen were absent without leave [11]. Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office reported nearly 290,000 criminal cases for leaving units without authorization between January 2022 and September 2025 [11].

The viral post's "800,000" is an outdated estimate. In August 2024, MP Dmytro Natalukha, who chairs the Rada's economic committee, told the Financial Times that about 800,000 men had gone into hiding, changing addresses and working off the books to avoid the draft [9]. He gave the number while arguing for a bill that would let businesses exempt workers from the draft. It was his estimate, not an official count. The FT article is paywalled, so we cite it through NV's report [9][10]. The post's number is two years old, and it is less than half of the government's own current figure.

Checking the viral post: Zelensky's term

Zelensky's five-year term ended in May 2024 [8]. No election has been held, and whether he still holds office lawfully is disputed.

Kyiv's position. On Feb. 25, 2025, the Rada passed Resolution No. 13041 with 268 votes. It said martial law "does not allow for holding elections in accordance with the Constitution." It said Zelensky "must exercise his powers in accordance with Part 1 of Article 108 of the Constitution of Ukraine until the newly elected President of Ukraine takes the post." And it said elections will be called once "a comprehensive, just and lasting peace" is ensured [12]. On Feb. 5, 2026, the Supreme Court's Grand Chamber (case No. 990/210/24) rejected an appeal claiming the Rada had acted unlawfully by not calling a presidential election for March 31, 2024. It held that the Rada acted "in the manner defined by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine" [14]. The court also rejected the argument that Article 19's election ban is unconstitutional [14].
The opposing view. Moscow argues that Zelensky's mandate has lapsed. Inside Ukraine, former Rada speaker Dmytro Razumkov said the authorities "should have gone to the Constitutional Court back in 2023" for a ruling "so that there would be no discrepancies." He noted that some people believe the president's powers should pass to the Rada speaker [8].

So the claim is accurate about the original term: the five-year term did expire. "He is illegitimate" is a disputed legal conclusion. Ukraine's parliament and its Supreme Court have rejected it, and the Constitutional Court has not been asked to rule.

The denials and the other causes

Johnson's denial. In January 2024, Johnson told The Times that the claim he sabotaged a peace deal was "total nonsense" and "Russian propaganda." He said he had only "expressed concerns" about the terms [20].

Arakhamia's own caveat. In the same 2023 interview, Moseichuk asked whether Johnson's visit had been "a fire truck" sent in to stop a deal. Arakhamia described the claim made by Ukraine's political opposition: that Kyiv could have signed a neutrality deal, but Johnson arrived "like a fire truck" and said no agreements. He answered: "It wasn't like that." He said only people who want "to twist any event for political purposes" say so. He said neither he nor any member of the delegation had "even the legal right to sign anything." A deal could only have come from a Zelensky–Putin meeting, and then it would have needed ratification by parliament [15a][15b].

Other reasons the talks failed. Arakhamia said accepting neutrality would have meant amending Ukraine's constitution, which commits the country to NATO membership. He also said "there is no, and there was no, trust in the Russians that they would do it" [15]. Ukrainska Pravda's 2022 report named a separate obstacle that came before Johnson's visit: the discovery of atrocities by Russian forces in areas they had occupied, such as Bucha [16].

Bennett's caveat. "I claim there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire. But I'm not claiming it was the right thing" [18].

Confirmed / Alleged / Disputed

	Claim	Status
Confirmed	The Rada extended martial law (293 votes) and mobilization (281 votes) to Jan. 29, 2027, and Zelensky signed both on Oct. 26	Rada, Ukrinform, Interfax-Ukraine [4][5][6]
Confirmed	Congress approved $174.2B in five Ukraine supplemental acts; total appropriations for OAR and the Ukraine response, including $4.8B from NATO allies, are $196.4B; Kiel counts €115.38B in direct aid	Oversight IGs [1]; Kiel via Ara [2][3]
Confirmed	Johnson's office said he "urged against any negotiations" on terms that "gave credence" to the Kremlin's case	No. 10 readout [17]
Confirmed	Ukraine's lead negotiator said Russia offered to end the war in exchange for neutrality, and said Johnson told Kyiv "let's just fight"	Arakhamia interview, original video [15a]
Alleged	Johnson told Zelensky the West would not back a deal	Ukrainska Pravda sources [16]; Arakhamia [15]
Alleged	A Ukrainian offensive was coming ("They are getting ready and waiting for the right moment")	Putin, Feb. 24, 2022 [24]; no evidence offered
Disputed	That Johnson single-handedly stopped a signed deal	Johnson: "total nonsense" [20]; Bennett: the West "blocked it" [18][19]; Arakhamia: "It wasn't like that" [15a]
Disputed	That Zelensky is illegitimate	Term ended May 2024 [8]; Rada Res. 13041 and the Supreme Court back continuity [12][14]
Disputed	"Genocide" in Donbas	Putin's claim [24]; OHCHR: 3,107 civilian deaths in 2014–Jan. 2022, all sides [29]
Confirmed	2 million wanted for draft evasion (official, Jan 2026)	Fedorov [11]
Outdated	"800,000 hiding" (viral post)	Natalukha's 2024 estimate [9]

Where things stand

Martial law and mobilization are now extended to Jan. 29, 2027, and no election can be held while martial law lasts. The US has stopped approving large new aid packages, and only $5.13 billion in FY2025 and $7.62 billion in FY2026 in new Ukraine-related funding has been made available since [1]. But $59.8 billion in obligations remained undisbursed as of June 30, 2026 [1]. The spring-2022 talks were the closest the two sides came to a settlement, and the people who took part disagree about why they ended. Ukraine's negotiator and Israel's mediator both point to London.

Next in this series

This piece covers 2022. Britain's rivalry with Russia goes back much further. Next we look at Britain and the 1917 revolution: what British diplomats and intelligence officers did in Petrograd that year. After that, we trace the times Russia sided with or against the European powers, including 1863. In 1863, during the US Civil War, Russian fleets anchored in New York and San Francisco, at a time when Britain and France were weighing whether to recognize the Confederacy.

The Veil Press team

Sources

[1] U.S. Ukraine Oversight (Offices of Inspector General), Status of Funds, data through June 30, 2026: https://www.ukraineoversight.gov/Funding/
[2] Kiel Institute, Ukraine Support Tracker: https://www.kielinstitut.de/research/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
[3] Ara, Oct 18, 2026 (citing Kiel): https://en.ara.cat/international/how-has-the-aid-that-ukraine-receives-changed-since-trump-is-in-power_1_5882571.html
[4] Ukrainska Pravda, Oct 26, 2026: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/10/26/8059735/
[5] Ukrinform, Oct 26, 2026; LB.ua, Oct 26, 2026: https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/4178236-rada-extends-martial-law-for-another-90-days.html
[6] Interfax-Ukraine: https://interfax.com.ua/news/general/1226306.html
[8] Interfax-Ukraine, Razumkov: https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/987266.html
[9] NV, Aug 5, 2024 (citing the Financial Times): https://english.nv.ua/nation/mobilization-in-ukraine-800-000-ukrainians-went-underground-financial-times-50440183.html
[10] Financial Times, Aug 2024 (paywalled; cited via NV)
[11] Kyiv Post, Jan 14, 2026: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/68067
[12] Interfax-Ukraine, Feb 25, 2025: https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/1050890.html
[14] Supreme Court of Ukraine, Grand Chamber, case 990/210/24, Feb 5, 2026: https://pravopro.com.ua/sudova-praktika/decision/134647900
[15] Kyiv Post, Jan 11, 2024: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/26582
[15a] "Moseichuk+" interview with Davyd Arakhamia, Nov 24, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lt4E0DiJts
[15b] Ukrainska Pravda, Nov 24, 2023: https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2023/11/24/7430282/
[16] Ukrainska Pravda, May 5, 2022: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/05/7344206/
[17] GOV.UK, PM call with President Macron, May 6, 2022: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-call-with-president-macron-6-may-2022
[18] Firstpost, Feb 6, 2023: https://www.firstpost.com/world/ex-israel-prime-minister-naftali-bennett-blames-west-for-thwarting-possibility-of-peace-between-russia-ukraine-12112962.html
[19] Jacobin, Feb 8, 2023: https://jacobin.com/2023/02/ukraine-russia-war-naftali-bennett-negotiations-peace
[20] Kyiv Post, Jan 11, 2024 (Johnson to The Times): https://www.kyivpost.com/post/26582
[21] GOV.UK Ministry of Defence, Apr 7, 2022: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-defence-ministers-host-ukrainian-government-to-plan-future-military-aid
[22] The Guardian, Jun 18, 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/18/ukraine-president-asks-tony-blair-advisory-role-poroshenko
[23] Tony Blair Institute, Report and Financial Statements 2022: https://assets.ctfassets.net/75ila1cntaeh/QzaB7z27UR5i6rmsRQwUD/8f7257dd820422427a9b310cb4812dcc/TBI_Report_and_Financial_Statements_2022.pdf
[24] Kremlin, Address by the President, Feb 24, 2022: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843
[25] OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, Feb 18, 2022: https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine/512596
[29] OHCHR, 33rd periodic report on Ukraine: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/33rdReportUkraine-en.pdf
LB.ua, Oct 26, 2026: https://en.lb.ua/news/2026/10/26/46724_parliament_extends_martial_law.html

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/ukraine-martial-law-london/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Britain Urged Ukraine to Keep Fighting in 2022. Congress Has Approved $174 Billion, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/ukraine-martial-law-london/

How Did America Pay for the Louisiana Purchase? Barings, Hope & Co. and the 1803 Bonds

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

How did America pay for the Louisiana Purchase? $11.25 million in 6% US bonds, sold in Europe by Barings of London and Hope & Co. of Amsterdam.

The United States bought Louisiana from France in 1803 for $15 million. About $3.75 million covered French debts owed to American citizens. The other $11.25 million was paid in six percent US government bonds, which two private banks, Barings of London and Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, bought from France and sold to investors in Europe.

That is the short answer. The longer one tells you a lot about where the young republic stood in 1803. It had a flag, a Constitution and a Treasury. What it did not have was a domestic capital market big enough to raise $11 million on its own. For that, it went to London and Amsterdam.

How much did the Louisiana Purchase cost, and how was it paid?

The Office of the Historian at the State Department describes the purchase as about 828,000 square miles, bought from France for $15 million. Jefferson had sent James Monroe to join Robert Livingston in Paris with instructions to buy New Orleans and West Florida for up to $10 million. Napoleon instead offered the whole territory, and the two Americans accepted, going well past their instructions.

The Baring Archive in London, which holds the bank's own records, gives the financial terms. The agreed price was 80 million francs, the equivalent of $15 million. Of that, $3.75 million (20 million francs) was covered by the United States taking on certain French government debts owed to American citizens. The remaining $11.25 million (60 million francs) was paid to France in US government bonds.

Those bonds paid six percent interest, with payments available in Amsterdam, London or Paris, and were redeemable between 1819 and 1822. Congress consented to the bond issue in November 1803. The first tranche was handed to Alexander Baring in Washington on January 16, 1804.

France did not want American bonds. It wanted cash. So the bankers bought the bonds from the French government at a discount and then sold them to investors. The archive says the bankers agreed to pay France 52 million francs for the bonds, and later took a further discount of 1.65 million francs when Napoleon asked for the money faster.

Who were Barings and Hope & Co.?

Baring Brothers of London and Hope & Co. of Amsterdam were private merchant banks owned by family partnerships. According to the Baring Archive, Europe's capital markets were then dominated by Amsterdam and, to a lesser extent, London, and Hope and Barings were the leading houses in those two markets.

Both houses already had deep American ties. Barings had placed a resident agent in Philadelphia in 1796. In 1803 it became the US government's financial agent in Europe. Alexander Baring and his brother Henry had married daughters of Senator William Bingham of Pennsylvania, whom the archive describes as reputedly the wealthiest man in the United States.

The bankers were not only lenders. The archive says that Alexander Baring and Pierre Labouchère of Hope & Co. sat in on the Paris negotiations alongside Livingston, Monroe and Napoleon's minister François de Barbé-Marbois. It credits them with helping persuade France to lower its asking price from 100 million francs to 80 million.

Why did a London bank finance a deal that paid Napoleon?

This is the part of the story most American readers have never heard. Britain and France had been at war since 1793. The Louisiana talks began during a short peace after the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. War resumed in May 1803. From that point on, a London bank helping move money to France was helping an enemy of Britain.

The Baring Archive records that the head of Barings went to the British prime minister, Henry Addington, for advice in June 1803. Addington at first approved. By December the war had turned more dangerous, and on December 16, 1803 Addington wrote to Baring asking him to decline any remittances to France on account of the Louisiana debt. The archive says what happened next is unclear. In its account, no remittances would have been made from Britain, but the letter did not stop the sale of the bonds, and Barings circulated the prospectus for the Louisiana bonds in London in April 1804.

The Veil of the Square Mile treats this episode as an early example of a pattern. The book argues that Barings "arranged the financing through British and Dutch capital markets, effectively helping one rival of Britain solve a fiscal problem at the expense of another," and that the City of London put capital flows ahead of national allegiance. You can read that argument in full in The Veil of the Square Mile.

To be clear about what the record shows and what it does not: the bankers made money, the British government objected only once the war heated up, and the United States got its land. Nobody in London controlled the American side of the deal. Jefferson's government chose to finance the purchase this way because it had no better option at home.

What did the bankers earn?

The Baring Archive says the exact outcome for the banks is not known, but that they "seem to have fared well." The bonds were bought from France at about 86.5 percent of face value and, it appears, sold at or above par. The archive estimates that much of the 8 million franc discount, about $1.5 million, stayed with Barings and Hope.

The risk was real, though. The archive notes that as of November 1803, $5 million of bonds had been placed in the Netherlands and $1.5 million in Britain, leaving $4.75 million unsold and presumably on the bankers' books. At the time, Barings' whole balance sheet was about £1.9 million.

What did the deal mean for American credit?

For the United States, the archive calls the transaction a success. The Louisiana bonds were serviced on time and repaid on schedule, largely from customs revenue collected at the port of New York. American credit in European markets was established.

There was a constitutional side too. The Office of the Historian notes that Jefferson, a strict reader of the Constitution, found no clause that let him buy territory. He went ahead without an amendment, and the State Department history says this decision contributed to the principle of implied powers. That is the same kind of reasoning Hamilton had used to defend the First Bank of the United States in 1791, which Jefferson had opposed.

Here is the American point. In 1803 the United States could fight for its independence and buy half a continent, but it still had to borrow through London and Amsterdam to pay for it. The question of whether America would raise its own capital at home, or keep going to European bankers, did not go away. Our earlier article on the City of London Corporation explains the institution those bankers worked around, and the American System page covers the later effort to build that capital at home.

FAQ

How much did the United States pay for Louisiana? $15 million, or 80 million francs. About $3.75 million covered French debts to American citizens, and $11.25 million was paid in US government bonds.

Did Britain pay for the Louisiana Purchase? No. The United States paid. Barings of London and Hope & Co. of Amsterdam bought the US bonds from France at a discount and sold them to European investors.

Did the British government approve? At first, yes. In December 1803, with war against France under way again, Prime Minister Addington asked Barings not to take part in sending money to France for the Louisiana debt. The bond sales were not stopped: Barings circulated the prospectus in London in April 1804.

Were the Louisiana bonds repaid? Yes. According to the Baring Archive, they were paid on time and repaid on schedule, mostly from customs revenue.

Where can I read more? The book's chapter on the City's merchant banks covers Barings in detail: The Veil of the Square Mile.

Next in the series: Eight years after the Louisiana bonds were sold in 1804, Britain and the United States were at war, and this time America had let its national bank lapse. Next: the War of 1812 and the Second Bank.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/how-america-paid-for-the-louisiana-purchase/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, How Did America Pay for the Louisiana Purchase? Barings, Hope & Co. and the 1803 Bonds, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/how-america-paid-for-the-louisiana-purchase/

Why Did Britain Tax the Colonies After 1763? The Debt Behind the Revolution

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Why did Britain tax the colonies after 1763? A war debt, the Sugar, Stamp and Currency Acts, and how the fight over who pays led to a new country.

Britain taxed the American colonies after 1763 because the French and Indian War left it deeply in debt. The national debt rose from about £75 million in 1756 to about £133 million in 1763, and interest alone took more than half the budget. Parliament decided Americans should help pay, and passed the Sugar, Currency and Stamp Acts.

That is the plain answer. The longer answer matters to Americans because the fight that started over who pays a war debt ended with a new country, and that country then had to answer the same money questions for itself.

Why did Britain tax the colonies after the French and Indian War?

The French and Indian War (the North American part of what Europeans call the Seven Years' War) ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Britain won a huge stretch of new territory in North America. It also kept about ten thousand troops on the continent after the war to hold the frontier.

The State Department's Office of the Historian puts it directly: in 1763 the British government came out of the war "burdened by heavy debts." Prime Minister George Grenville's answer was to collect more from the colonies. His government lowered the duty on molasses but enforced it much more strictly, which raised more money than the higher, mostly ignored duty had.

The thinking in London was that the colonists had gained the most from the war, so they should carry part of the cost of defending North America. The Stamp Act of 1765 says this in its own title. It grants duties "towards further defraying the expences of defending, protecting, and securing" the British colonies in America.

Many colonists did not object to paying for defense in principle. They objected to Parliament, where they had no members, laying taxes on them directly. That disagreement over who has the right to tax is what turned a budget problem into a constitutional fight.

How big was Britain's war debt, and who held it?

The war nearly doubled Britain's national debt. One widely used college textbook gives the figures as £75 million in 1756 and £133 million in 1763, with interest payments taking more than half of the national budget. Who held that debt is the question most American readers never hear asked. Britain had been funding its wars by borrowing since the 1690s. The Bank of England was founded in 1694 as a private bank to act as banker to the government, and in its own words it was "primarily founded to fund the war effort against France." The Bank's own history describes its position in the early 1700s as "the Government's banker and owner of national debt," a role the South Sea Company tried to take over part of in 1720.

The Veil of the Square Mile, our book, starts its account of this system in 1694, with the deal that created the Bank of England. You can read more in the book's chapter on the Bank of England and on our Bank of England entity page.

What was the Currency Act of 1764?

The Currency Act, passed April 19, 1764, stopped the American colonies from issuing new paper money as legal tender. From September 1, 1764, the act said, no colonial assembly could create paper bills "declaring such paper bills, or bills of credit, to be legal tender in payment of any bargains, contracts, debts, dues, or demands whatsoever." A governor who signed such a law faced a £1,000 fine and dismissal.

The act's own preamble gives London's reason: colonial paper had "greatly depreciated," so debts were being paid "with a much less value than was contracted for." The Office of the Historian explains the practical side: after the war, British merchants wanted colonists to pay their debts in pounds sterling, not in colonial paper of "more questionable value." The result, it says, "made it even more difficult for colonists to pay their debts and taxes."

This matters more than most school lessons let on. The colonies had little gold or silver. Colonial paper money was how farmers, shopkeepers and merchants paid each other. The textbook account notes that with gold and silver "in short supply," colonists "found their finances tight."

Put simply, in the same year Parliament was looking for new revenue from America, it also limited the money Americans could use to pay. A colonist could owe more in taxes and have fewer ways to pay them.

How did colonists react to the Sugar, Stamp and Currency Acts?

The Sugar Act of 1764 cut the duty on foreign molasses from six pence a gallon to three. It also moved smuggling cases into vice-admiralty courts, which had no juries. Many colonists saw the loss of a jury trial as a loss of a basic right of Englishmen.

The Stamp Act, passed March 22, 1765, went further. From November 1, 1765, it put a tax on court papers, deeds, licenses, newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, playing cards and dice. It was a direct tax on daily American life, paid in "sterling money of Great Britain."

The reaction was fast. The Virginia House of Burgesses passed resolutions denying Parliament's authority to tax the colonies. In Boston, crowds destroyed the house of the stamp distributor. In October 1765, delegates from nine colonies met and sent petitions to the British government denying Parliament's authority to tax them. Americans also boycotted British goods. British merchants, hurt by the boycott and a recession, lobbied for repeal. Parliament passed the repeal on March 18, 1766, effective May 1. The repeal act itself gave a commercial reason: keeping the Stamp Act "may be productive of consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of these kingdoms."

Benjamin Franklin, then in London as a colonial agent, was questioned before the House of Commons in February 1766. Asked whether Americans would pay the stamp duty if it were lowered, he answered: "No, never, unless compelled by force of arms." Asked whether the colonies could pay it at all, he said there was "not gold and silver enough in the colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year." That second answer ties the Stamp Act back to the Currency Act: Parliament wanted sterling from colonies it had just barred from issuing their own legal-tender money.

The pattern held for the next ten years: the Townshend duties in 1767, the Tea Act in 1773, the Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts in 1774 and the fighting at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.

Where did the Bank of England and the City of London fit in?

Here it helps to be careful. The record shows that Britain's government borrowed heavily to fight its wars, that the Bank of England was created to lend to that government, and that the war debt is the reason Parliament gave for taxing America. Those are facts.

What the record does not show is that the Bank of England or the City of London ordered the colonial taxes. Parliament and Grenville's ministry made those decisions. The book argues that the deeper issue was the British model itself: a government that borrows from private lenders and then needs steady revenue to pay them, and colonies that are expected to send raw materials out and buy finished goods back. The Veil of the Square Mile argues that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, and the Declaration of Independence answer the same question: who sets the terms of trade between a colony and the empire.

That is the American angle. The colonists did not only reject a tax. They rejected an arrangement in which their money, their trade and their courts were run from somewhere else. You can read the full argument in The Veil of the Square Mile, and see how the City of London's own government works on our page on what the City of London Corporation is.

FAQ

Why did Britain tax the American colonies? To help pay the debt from the French and Indian War and the cost of keeping troops in North America. Britain's national debt nearly doubled between 1756 and 1763.

What was the Currency Act of 1764? A law of Parliament, passed April 19, 1764, that stopped the colonies from issuing new paper money as legal tender, so debts to British merchants would be paid in sterling. It made it harder for colonists to pay debts and taxes.

What did the Stamp Act tax? Starting November 1, 1765, it taxed printed and legal papers in the colonies, including court documents, deeds, licenses, newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, playing cards and dice.

Was the Stamp Act repealed? Yes. After colonial protests, a boycott of British goods and lobbying by British merchants, Parliament repealed it on March 18, 1766, effective May 1.

Did the Bank of England order the colonial taxes? No. Parliament and the ministry of George Grenville passed them. The Bank of England was the government's main lender, and the war debt was the reason given for the taxes.

Next in the series: America won its independence, but it did not win any credit. By 1790 its war debts were trading for pennies on the dollar, which is why Alexander Hamilton wanted a national bank. Next: how a London bank helped America pay for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/why-britain-taxed-the-colonies/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Why Did Britain Tax the Colonies After 1763? The Debt Behind the Revolution, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/why-britain-taxed-the-colonies/

Alberta Votes Today. Americans Should Hope It Picks Option 2.

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Opinion and analysis. Alberta pumps most of the oil America imports, pays far more to Ottawa than it gets back, and still answers to a King in London. Today it can start the process of choosing its own road.

Opinion and analysis.

Albertans are voting today. Polls close at 8 p.m. Mountain time, and the ballot carries ten questions. The one that matters most to Americans is Question 10: should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta "commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?"

Our view is simple. Option 2 is the right answer, and Americans have more riding on it than almost anyone outside Alberta.

What Option 2 actually does

Be clear about what is on the ballot. Option 2 does not take Alberta out of Canada tonight. The province's own referendum page says the question "does not directly trigger Alberta separating from Canada." If Option 2 wins a majority, the government would begin the legal steps needed to hold a binding separation vote "at a later date."

That later vote faces hurdles. The same page says a court ruled that a binding separation referendum cannot be held without first consulting First Nations on what it would mean for treaty rights. The province is appealing, but until then the ruling stands. Nor is joining the United States on the ballot. That idea is our argument, not anyone's ballot option.

Albertans got this far on their own. About 700,000 of them signed citizen-initiative petitions on the question, and the province's page says including it "respects the voices of these hundreds of thousands of Albertans." That is a big number in a province of Alberta's size, and it did not come from Washington.

The odds are long. Léger's Oct. 14–16 poll had 74 percent for remaining and 21 percent for Option 2. Ipsos had 70 to 23. Premier Danielle Smith's government is advocating for Option 1. But Ipsos also found that 73 percent of Option 2 supporters rate their certainty of voting at 9 or 10 out of 10, compared with 67 percent on the remain side. Every vote for Option 2 tonight tells Ottawa the old deal is not working.

Why Americans should care: the oil

Start with the gas pump. In 2025 the United States imported 6.17 million barrels of crude oil a day. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 3.91 million of those barrels came from Canada. That is 63.4 percent, a figure Canada's own regulator confirms. Saudi Arabia sent 269,000 barrels a day, Iraq 179,000.

And Canadian oil mostly means Alberta oil. The Canada Energy Regulator says Alberta produced 83.8 percent of Canada's crude oil and equivalents in 2025. Its Alberta profile puts the province's remaining oil resource, including the oil sands, at 308 billion barrels. The traffic runs one way. The regulator says 90.1 percent of Canada's crude exports went to the United States last year.

So the biggest single source of America's imported oil is a province that has spent years fighting Ottawa over the pipelines that carry it. Alberta's government says it has spent a decade fighting "destructive anti-Alberta policies" from the federal government and is only now getting them repealed or amended so it can build pipelines, according to its own referendum page. Americans who drive, heat their homes or worry about the Strait of Hormuz should want that supply answering to the people who produce it, not to whoever wins the next federal election in Ontario and Quebec.

The money flows east

Albertans have another grievance, and the federal government's own numbers back it up.

Equalization is Ottawa's program for moving money to provinces with less "fiscal capacity." The Department of Finance table for Alberta shows no equalization payment in any year from 2017-18 through 2026-27. The program is paid from federal taxes, which Albertans pay like everyone else. The purpose of equalization is written into section 36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982.

The Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, applied Statistics Canada data to estimate the gap. In 2024 Ottawa collected an estimated $77.0 billion in Alberta and spent $52.5 billion there, a net contribution of $24.5 billion (Canadian). Fraser projects $18.3 billion for 2026-27 and $321.9 billion from 2007-08 through 2026-27. It says seven of the ten provinces are net recipients.

In our view, that is the arrangement Option 2 puts on notice.

And above Ottawa, the Crown

There is one more layer. Canada is a constitutional monarchy. Its own government says King Charles III is King of Canada, and the Governor General represents him there.

Canada did not even control its own constitution until 1982. Library and Archives Canada notes that until then, "only the British Parliament had the power to amend Canada's Constitution." The United Kingdom proclaimed the Canada Act 1982 on March 29, and on April 17, 1982, Queen Elizabeth II signed the proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982 in Ottawa. Patriation ended Westminster's role. The monarch stayed.

Americans settled that question in 1776. The Veil of the Square Mile traces how London's money and the Crown kept their reach long after the flags came down. Alberta's vote is a reminder that for many in the Commonwealth, that era never fully ended. You can read the book's argument in The Veil of the Square Mile.

The American case

Washington has been careful. U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra said the referendum "is a decision for the people of Alberta" and that he had "clear direction from Washington" not to influence it. That is the right posture for a government.

But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already said what many Americans think. In January he called Alberta "a natural partner for the U.S." He said: "Alberta has a wealth of natural resources, but they won't let them build a pipeline to the Pacific. I think we should let them come down into the U.S." And: "People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got."

President Trump opened his second term by declaring that "the golden age of America begins right now." That golden age runs on energy. Our argument is that a self-governing Alberta, free of Ottawa's pipeline politics and out from under a London Crown, would be a natural partner in it. It could be an independent ally with open pipelines south. Or, if Albertans ever choose it, something closer. That is our opinion, and it is for Albertans to decide.

Today's ballot is only the first step. It does not decide independence and it does not decide any American partnership. It decides whether Alberta's government starts the legal process. Elections Alberta says unofficial counts start tonight and official results come Oct. 29 at 10 a.m.

If Albertans vote for Option 2, they will not be leaving anyone. They will be asking for the same thing Americans asked for in 1776: to be governed by their own consent.

FAQ

Does Option 2 make Alberta independent? No. It directs the Alberta government to begin the legal process toward a later binding referendum on separation.

How much of America's imported oil comes from Canada? 63.4 percent of U.S. crude imports in 2025, per the EIA. Alberta produced 83.8 percent of Canada's crude and equivalents.

Does Alberta receive equalization? No. Federal Finance data show no equalization payment to Alberta from 2017-18 through 2026-27.

Who is Canada's head of state? King Charles III, as King of Canada, represented by the Governor General.

When are results official? Elections Alberta releases official results on Oct. 29 at 10 a.m.

Cover photo: Alberta Legislature Building, Edmonton, June 7, 2024, by D. Benjamin Miller, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/alberta-referendum-option-2/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Alberta Votes Today. Americans Should Hope It Picks Option 2., https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/alberta-referendum-option-2/

Why Did Hamilton Want a National Bank? The 1790 Answer to London

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Why did Hamilton want a national bank? His 1790 plan answered war debt and a weak currency, and he used the Bank of England's charter as its basis.

Alexander Hamilton wanted a national bank because the new United States was deep in war debt, had weak credit and no common currency. His December 1790 plan gave the government a bank to hold its money, collect taxes, lend in emergencies and issue notes accepted nationwide. Congress chartered it in February 1791 for twenty years.

The Revolution settled who governed America. It did not settle how America would pay its bills. That job fell to Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury, and the bank was the center of his answer.

Why did Alexander Hamilton want a national bank?

The Federal Reserve's own history site describes the 1780s as years of "widespread economic disruption." The country had to restart trade, repay war debt, restore the value of its currency and bring down inflation. The National Park Service puts it more bluntly: after the Revolution the United States "faced overwhelming debt and an uncertain commercial future."

Hamilton took on the debt first. Old war securities had been trading far below their face value. Economists George Hall and Thomas Sargent write that "[t]hroughout the 1780s, repayment of the Revolutionary debt remained in doubt, as indicated by its being traded at about 20 percent of its face value." Hamilton's own report, dated January 9, 1790, describes critics who thought it unfair "to pay twenty shillings in the pound, to one who had not given more for it than three or four," and he rejected that idea. The report proposed that the federal government take over the states' war debts and fund them as one national debt. The Veil of the Square Mile explains the goal this way: the book argues that a single national debt would tie merchants, lawyers and landowners to the survival of the federal government, because their money would now rise and fall with the Union's credit. The book also recounts the June 1790 dinner, arranged by Jefferson, at which Madison agreed to find the votes for assumption and Hamilton agreed to back a capital on the Potomac.

The bank came next. In December 1790 Hamilton sent Congress his proposal. According to Federal Reserve History, he argued that a national bank could issue paper money, keep public funds safe, give merchants banking services and act as the government's fiscal agent, collecting its taxes and paying its debts.

Hamilton made the same practical case when he defended the bank to President Washington in February 1791. A government at war needs money faster than taxes come in, he wrote: "If there be a bank the supply can at once be had." He pointed to a frontier expedition that had to be paid for before a new tax would even begin to be collected.

In his January 1790 report on public credit, Hamilton had already said he planned to buy back debt with borrowed money "through the medium of a national bank; for which, with the permission of the House, he will submit a plan in the course of the session." The bank was part of the debt plan from the start. You can follow how the book connects these steps in The Veil of the Square Mile's chapter on Hamilton.

How did he model it on (and differ from) the Bank of England?

Hamilton did not hide where the idea came from. Federal Reserve History says he "used the charter of the Bank of England as the basis for his plan." The Park Service says he was "inspired by the British example of a central bank."

The Bank of England had been founded in 1694 as a private bank to lend to the government, mainly to pay for war with France. The Veil of the Square Mile argues that Hamilton studied that system closely because he wanted the United States to have its own credit, so that it would not become a financial dependency of the empire it had just beaten. You can read that argument in The Veil of the Square Mile. The Bank of England sits in the City of London, which has its own local government; our page on what the City of London Corporation is explains how it works.

The American version had real differences, and they are on the record:

The government owned a stake. The bank started with $10 million in capital. The federal government owned $2 million of it, or 20 percent, and private investors owned the other $8 million.
The Treasury could look inside. The Treasury secretary could inspect the books, demand a statement of the bank's condition as often as once a week, and pull the government's deposits at any time for any reason.
It could not buy federal bonds. To avoid inflation and the appearance of a conflict of interest, the bank was barred from buying U.S. government bonds.
Foreign shareholders could not vote. Many early investors were foreign, which bothered many Americans, but those shareholders had no vote.
It had a time limit. The charter ran twenty years, not forever.

The bank was not a modern central bank. It did not set monetary policy, regulate other banks or act as a lender of last resort. But because it was so large, it could slow or speed up lending by state banks by deciding when to cash in their notes for gold and silver. Its notes were the only bank notes accepted for federal taxes, which made them the closest thing the country had to a national currency.

For how this program grew into what Henry Clay later called the American System, see our American System entity page.

Why did Jefferson and Madison oppose it?

Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson argued that the bank was unconstitutional. In his written opinion to Washington in 1791, he wrote that incorporating a bank was not among the powers the Constitution gave Congress, and that the "necessary and proper" clause did not cover it. "A bank therefore is not necessary," he wrote, "and consequently not authorized by this phrase." He warned that reading the Constitution more loosely would "take possession of a boundless field of power."

Jefferson also had economic objections. Federal Reserve History says he feared the bank would become a financial monopoly, hurt state banks and favor financiers and merchants, who tended to be creditors, over planters and family farmers, who tended to be debtors. It clashed with his picture of the country as mainly agricultural.

James Madison, then a congressman from Virginia, made the case against the bank on the House floor on February 2, 1791. The record of his speech says he denied that Congress had authority to pass it, an opinion "he had entertained ... from the date of the Constitution," and that "he well recollected that a power to grant charters of incorporation had been proposed in the General Convention and rejected."

Hamilton answered with a long rebuttal. The Park Service says Washington gave him a week and that Hamilton's 15,000-word reply persuaded the president. Its core argument was that "necessary" in the Constitution means "needful, requisite, incidental, useful, or conducive to," not "absolutely" necessary. Washington signed the bill in February 1791. The bank opened in Philadelphia on December 12, 1791.

That argument over implied powers did not end with the bank. Americans still have it.

What happened to the First Bank of the United States in 1811?

The charter ran out in 1811 and Congress did not renew it. The vote was as close as a vote can get. In January 1811 the House voted against renewal by one vote. In the Senate the vote was a tie, and Vice President George Clinton of New York broke it against the bank.

Federal Reserve History gives the reasons. Many of the bank's original opponents still opposed it. Hamilton was dead. He was shot by Aaron Burr in a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, on July 11, 1804, and died the next day. His Federalist Party was out of power. And the number of state banks had grown, and they feared competition from a national bank.

The book argues that the United States entered the War of 1812 without a bank able to finance the war, and that the Treasury struggled to borrow and briefly missed interest payments. Five years after the charter ran out, after the War of 1812, President James Madison, who had opposed the first bank, signed a bill creating the Second Bank of the United States. The Park Service notes that the First Bank's building on South Third Street in Philadelphia, finished in 1797, still stands and reopened to the public on July 1, 2026.

FAQ

Why did Hamilton want a national bank? To manage the war debt, hold and move the government's money, collect taxes, lend to the government in emergencies, and give the country bank notes accepted everywhere.

Was the First Bank of the United States modeled on the Bank of England? Yes. Federal Reserve History says Hamilton used the Bank of England's charter as the basis for his plan. The American bank differed: the government owned 20 percent, the Treasury could inspect its books, and its charter lasted twenty years.

Why did Jefferson think the bank was unconstitutional? He argued the Constitution did not give Congress the power to create corporations, and that a bank was convenient but not "necessary."

When did the First Bank close? Its twenty-year charter expired in 1811 after renewal failed by one vote in the House and on a tie broken by the vice president in the Senate.

Where was the First Bank? Philadelphia. Its building on South Third Street, finished in 1797, is part of Independence National Historical Park.

Next in the series: Hamilton was answering a money fight that started a generation earlier, when Britain came out of the French and Indian War deep in debt and decided the colonies should help pay. Next: why Britain taxed the colonies after 1763. Was that fight the real start of 1776, and could there ever be a new 1776 over money?

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/why-hamilton-wanted-a-national-bank/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Why Did Hamilton Want a National Bank? The 1790 Answer to London, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/why-hamilton-wanted-a-national-bank/

Mark Carney Wants to Rewrite the World Order. Americans Should Read His Résumé First.

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:05:00 GMT

The Economist asks how to survive a predatory world order. Canada's prime minister says the predator is America. His career says whose order it is.

The Economist today published "How to survive a predatory world order". The man most associated with that argument is Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney. In Carney's version of events, the predatory power is the United States.

On January 20, 2026, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Carney gave the speech that made him a global statesman. He said, "We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition." He said great powers now use "tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion." He said, "Hegemons cannot continually monetise their relationships." He told the middle powers to work together "because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu."

My view is this. Carney is not a neutral observer of the world order. He spent his career inside the institutions that ran it, several of them in the City of London, and now he is asking Americans to accept that world's verdict on an American president. His record is public.

The record

Carney spent thirteen years at Goldman Sachs, working in its London, Tokyo, New York and Toronto offices. When he left in 2003, he was a Toronto-based managing director in Goldman's investment banking division.

He became Governor of the Bank of Canada on February 1, 2008, and served until June 1, 2013. In November 2011, while still governor, he also became chairman of the Financial Stability Board, the G20 body that coordinates global rules for banks.

On July 1, 2013, he became Governor of the Bank of England and served until March 15, 2020. The Bank sits on Threadneedle Street, in the City of London.

On December 1, 2019, while still governor, he was named United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. The Bank of England said his job was "shifting the financial system" toward net zero.

In April 2021, as UN envoy, he launched the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, known as GFANZ, together with Britain's COP26 presidency.

In August 2020, Brookfield Asset Management hired him as Vice Chair and Head of ESG and Impact Fund Investing. Carney called the move to net zero "one of the greatest commercial opportunities of our time." He later became chair of Brookfield Asset Management. He resigned from the company on January 16, 2025, the day he announced his run for the Liberal Party leadership.

On March 14, 2025, he was sworn in as Canada's 24th prime minister.

I am not claiming anyone controls him. I am saying his career taught him to see the world the way the global finance establishment sees it, and he has never answered to an American voter.

What Americans did

Between December 2024 and January 2025, all six of the largest American banks left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, one of the sector alliances under GFANZ: Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. In October 2023, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had opened a review of banks in the alliance under a state law that bars Texas from contracting with companies that boycott oil and gas. After the banks left, he closed those reviews.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an order withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement and revoking the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan. The order says these agreements "steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance." The same day, he signed the America First Trade Policy memorandum. It ordered reviews of the trade deficit, currency manipulation and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and it says trade policy must "above all" benefit "American workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, and businesses."

Carney calls that a rupture. I call it Americans setting their own policy through the government they elected.

Who sets the rules

At Davos, Carney also said "American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security." Americans paid for that system. When an American president asks for fair terms in return, Carney calls it coercion.

So here is my question for any American reading The Economist this week. When the world order is defined by a former Goldman Sachs banker who ran the Bank of England, chaired the global bank regulator and launched a UN-backed alliance of financial firms, whose order is it? American voters did not choose it. I think Trump's America First policy is the right answer, because it puts the decisions back with the people who pay for the system and live under its rules.

I wrote about how the City of London governs itself in The Veil of the Square Mile. Carney's career is worth reading in that light.

Jack Schumacher is the author of The Veil of the Square Mile (The Veil Press).

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/carney-predatory-world-order/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Mark Carney Wants to Rewrite the World Order. Americans Should Read His Résumé First., https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/carney-predatory-world-order/

Lloyds Is Now Running Some of Its AI on Gemini

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Google says one of Britain's largest banks is putting Gemini to work. The real deal is smaller, and American banks got there first.

I'm not saying we've defeated London, but its oldest banks are now running on Gemini.

To be fair, that overstates it. It's one bank, the part running on Gemini is an internal platform for building AI agents, and I'll spend the rest of this piece walking the line back. On October 8, Google Cloud posted this on X:

"Lloyds, one of Britain's largest banks, is putting Gemini to work for customers and colleagues in a highly regulated industry."

Before we get to Lloyds, look at our own side of the Atlantic, because American banks got there first.

The American banks went first

Morgan Stanley announced OpenAI as its wealth management partner in March 2023 and rolled out its GPT-4-based AI @ Morgan Stanley Assistant to financial advisors that September. According to OpenAI, more than 98 percent of advisor teams now use it, and the firm later added Debrief, a meeting-notes tool built on Whisper and GPT-4.

Wells Fargo announced an expanded relationship with Google Cloud on August 5, 2025, to put AI agents in the hands of its employees through Google Agentspace. American Banker reported the rollout was meant to reach all 215,000 employees over time, from branch bankers to investment bankers, using Gemini Deep Research, NotebookLM and agents the bank builds itself.

Bank of America built its own tools in-house. Erica, its customer assistant, launched in 2018, and the bank says clients have used it more than 2.5 billion times. More than 90 percent of its employees use the internal version, Erica for Employees.

So the largest American banks are buying their AI from Google and OpenAI, or building it themselves. None of that is a scandal. It is a purchasing decision, and it means a few California companies now sit inside the daily work of a large part of the American banking system.

Then Lloyds

The Lloyds story is less dramatic than the post makes it sound. On May 1, 2026, Lloyds Banking Group announced Envoy, an internal platform for building and running AI agents, "Built with Google Cloud." Its chief operating officer, Ron van Kemenade, said Envoy "helps our employees become more productive, improve customer journeys, and launch potentially disruptive business models."

On October 8, Google Cloud's CEO Thomas Kurian listed Lloyds among customers at Google's Gemini at Work event. Google described Envoy as "a secure, Gemini-powered pipeline" that "has already onboarded nearly a thousand engineers," with uses running "from fraud detection to commercial client onboarding."

Trade reporting fills in the rest. QA Financial reported on October 6 that Lloyds has also put an AI financial assistant in its mobile app for millions of customers, that the bank has around 22 million mobile banking users, and that its AI Academy is meant to support 67,000 employees. QA Financial did not say which company's model runs that customer assistant, so I won't either.

That's the deal: about a thousand engineers building AI agents on Google's platform inside one British bank, with human checks before anything goes live. It does not mean Google runs Lloyds.

Is Lloyds a City bank?

Partly. Lloyds Bank started in Birmingham in June 1765 as Taylors & Lloyds, the town's first bank. Lloyds Banking Group as a company dates only from 2009, when Lloyds TSB took over HBOS during the financial crisis. The group's corporate address is 25 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7HN, which is in the City of London. Its registered office is in Edinburgh, at The Mound, because the parent company is registered in Scotland. So it is fair to say the group's corporate address is in the City. Calling it a City of London bank, full stop, goes too far.

The City itself is small. My book, The Veil of the Square Mile, starts from the fact that it covers about one square mile, roughly 1.12 if you want to be exact. A lot of banking business is run out of that one square mile. Some of it now runs on software from Google.

The power and water bill

All of this runs in data centers. Google's 2025 Environmental Report says its data centers and offices consumed about 8.1 billion gallons of water in 2024. Google compares that to the water needed to irrigate 54 golf courses a year in the American Southwest. Every "Gemini-powered" banking tool depends on buildings like these, along with the power lines and water permits that serve them.

Where that leaves us

For a long time, a lot of the money business ran through London. Now London's banks are buying their AI tools from American companies, on American cloud platforms, much as Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley already do. Nobody defeated anyone. Both countries' banks made the same purchasing decision, and they made it from the same few American vendors.

That shift is worth paying attention to.

Jack Schumacher is the author of The Veil of the Square Mile (The Veil Press).

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/lloyds-gemini-desk/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Lloyds Is Now Running Some of Its AI on Gemini, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/lloyds-gemini-desk/

The IRGC Wrote Washington Into 1953. It Left Britain Out.

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:45:00 GMT

On 29 September 2026 the Revolutionary Guards told Americans their war with Iran began in a CIA coup against an Americanophile prime minister. The oil company he nationalized was British. The coup proposal was British. The letter does not say so.

On 29 September 2026 the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps published a 26-page open letter to the American people. Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi presented it in Tehran. The addressees were scholars, students, and the press. The timing was five weeks before the American midterms, seven months into a war the letter dates to 28 February.

The letter has a villain. The villain has an address. The address is the White House.

Read it for what it names, and then read it for the name it will not say.

What the letter puts on the table

It opens on a verse and a distinction. "Death to America," it says, is not hatred of the American people. It is "a prayer for the eradication of the diabolical ruling elite whose seat of power is the White House." The men enthroned there, it says, oppress Iranians and Americans both. Americans empower that government with their votes. The ask at the end is an electoral ask: remove the politicians, stop the wars, end aid to Israel, and a peaceful coexistence is on offer.

The history chapter is where the frame locks.

The letter tells Americans that the present war is the latest chapter in 73 years of hostility, and that the chapter begins in 1953, "the year in which the CIA aided and abetted the Shah's regime to stage a coup and topple the legitimate and popular government of Iran, headed by the Americanophile prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh." A second sentence finishes the move. "The 1953 coup marked the beginning of America's involvement in Iran, and over the decades the U.S. government exploited Iran's natural resources and utilized its strategic geopolitical location to exert greater control over the entire region."

Americanophile. CIA. The beginning of America's involvement. Natural resources, exploited by Washington.

Tehran's own summary, published in the Tehran Times on 5 October, repeats the frame and does not widen it. Seventy-three years of hostility, it says, since the 1953 CIA-backed coup against Mohammad Mossadegh. Britain is not in the summary. London is not in the summary. Oil is not in the summary.

That is not an editor being short. Twenty-six pages is enough room for a name if the writer wants the name in the room.

The word that does the work

Americanophile is not a description of Mossadegh's politics. It is a label that moves the injury.

Mohammad Mossadegh became prime minister on 28 April 1951. He took the office on the condition that the oil nationalization law be ratified. The Majles had already passed the short law on 20 March 1951. The nine-point text that followed charged the government to remove the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company from control of the oil industry of the country. The company was British. It held the concession. It became British Petroleum.

He was not Washington's man, and he was not London's. He was the man who took the concession back. The letter calls him an Americanophile anyway, and then dates America's involvement in Iran from the coup that removed him. A reader who has only the letter would think the injury began when the CIA arrived, and that the prime minister they removed had been leaning toward the country that removed him.

The record runs the other way.

Who proposed the coup

In August 2017 the National Security Archive posted two State Department memoranda that had been Top Secret. They record the British approach.

On 26 November 1952, Assistant Secretary of State Henry Byroade wrote to Deputy Under Secretary H. Freeman Matthews. The memo is titled "Proposal to Organize a Coup d'etat in Iran." Britain's minister in Washington, Sir Christopher Steel, had asked for a meeting to discuss a coup. Byroade reminded Matthews that the British Embassy had first raised the idea on paper on 8 October 1952. A second memo, 3 December 1952, records the meeting. The Truman administration did not take the offer. The Eisenhower administration did.

The CIA's own later history, released in fuller form in 2013, says the coup "was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government." The same document set describes the British part. The operation was TPAJAX in the American file and Operation Boot in the British file. Monty Woodhouse, MI6's station chief in Tehran, carried the proposal. Anthony Eden, then foreign secretary, treated Mossadegh as a threat to British strategic and economic interests after the nationalization. The Guardian, reporting the 2013 release, noted that the documents also show the British government trying to block public release of the record of its own role.

Junior partner is a fair description of the CIA in the origin of the plot. It is not a fair description of the CIA in the execution. Washington ran the coup it had been asked to run. Both facts fit in one paragraph. The letter has room for one of them.

What the oil settlement paid

The nationalization was the cause. The settlement was the receipt.

After Mossadegh was removed in August 1953, the consortium negotiations opened. A British cabinet minute of 22 February 1954 records Anthony Eden objecting to an American suggestion that Anglo-Iranian take 35 percent. He wanted 44. He was willing, if pressed, to accept 40 percent for Anglo-Iranian, with the American share held down. The chancellor did not want the American share above 40 percent, because of the balance of payments. The cabinet approved Eden's line.

The company that had lost the concession in 1951 was back at the table in 1954, arguing percentages. The letter's phrase for this history is that the U.S. government exploited Iran's natural resources. The percentage fight in the cabinet minute is a British fight.

The name that is missing

Count the proper nouns the letter is willing to spend.

It will say CIA. It will say White House. It will say Israel, and it will tell Americans to stop aid to Israel. It will say Shah. It will say Mossadegh, and it will hang Americanophile on him so that the man who nationalized a British company reads as a client of the country the letter wants blamed. It will say the coup was the beginning of America's involvement.

It will not say Britain. It will not say London. It will not say Anglo-Iranian. It will not say MI6. It will not say Eden. It will not say that the Foreign Office put a coup proposal on paper in October 1952, while Truman was still president and the CIA had not yet agreed to the work.

An omission that size, in a document of this length, aimed at the one audience that has been taught to hear 1953 as an American original sin, is the argument. The letter does not need a forged paragraph. It needs a silence. The silence hands the American reader a war that starts in Washington, a prime minister who loved Washington, and a resource story with no British company in it. Anyone arguing with that reader is arguing inside a frame London does not have to defend, because London is not in the dock.

That is the read between the lines. Not a cipher. A missing defendant.

The Guards are not shy about enemies. A force that will call the American elite diabolical, and will ask American voters to remove their government, can say "Britain" if Britain is on the list. They had the page. They used it on Washington.

What this does not prove

It does not prove that the Guards take instructions from the City. A silence is not a cable. The letter is an Iranian instrument, written for an American election, and it spends its fire on the government that is bombing Iran and arming Israel. That spending is rational on its own terms. A wartime letter blames the army at the gate.

The point is narrower, and it is on the page. When the letter reaches back to the origin story, it edits the origin. The edit removes the country whose company was nationalized, whose foreign office proposed the coup, whose intelligence service named the operation Boot, and whose foreign secretary later fought for the percentage. The edit then calls the removed prime minister an Americanophile, so the edit does not even look like an edit.

Washington's role in 1953 is real. The CIA has admitted it. The letter is not wrong to put the CIA in the sentence. It is wrong by the name it leaves out of the sentence, and by the adjective it puts in the prime minister's place.

The acre in that story was oil. The company on the acre was British. The letter starts the clock when the Americans arrived to help take it back.

Read the book: The Veil of the Square Mile is out now.

Sources: IRGC open letter, English text as released 29 September 2026 and circulated by IRNA; Carl Osgood, "IRGC Letter to the American People Omits British Role in 1953 Coup," EIR, 1 October 2026, quoting the letter's Americanophile sentence; Tehran Times, 5 October 2026; National Security Archive, "1953 Iran Coup: New U.S. Documents Confirm British Approached U.S. in Late 1952 About Ousting Mosaddeq," 8 August 2017; Guardian, "CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup," 19 August 2013; text of the Iranian oil nationalization law, 20 March 1951; British cabinet minute, 22 February 1954, Eden on the Anglo-Iranian share.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/irgc-letter-the-name-left-out/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, The IRGC Wrote Washington Into 1953. It Left Britain Out., https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/irgc-letter-the-name-left-out/

Britain Lost an Empire. The City of London Kept the Accounts.

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:35:00 GMT

Three of the world's top corporate tax havens are British territories. Here's how an empire turned into an accounting system, on the public record.

Three of the world's top corporate tax havens are British territories. Here's how an empire turned into an accounting system.

In 1945 Britain still ruled a vast empire. Within a generation most of it was gone. India in 1947. Ghana in 1957. Kenya in 1963. Flags came down, governors went home, and new countries took their seats at the United Nations.

That is the story most of us learned. It's true. It leaves something out.

The territory went. Some of the financial plumbing stayed, and in places it grew. A handful of small places that remained under the Crown became some of the biggest financial centers on earth. And by the account of the people who rank tax havens for a living, the network they form runs back to one square mile: the City of London.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a matter of public record. Here is what the record says.

The islands that stayed British

Britain still has two kinds of small territory with their own tax systems.

Crown Dependencies: Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. They are not part of the United Kingdom. The Crown is responsible for them.

British Overseas Territories: among them the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda.

The Tax Justice Network, a campaign group that publishes the Corporate Tax Haven Index, puts the relationship plainly. In these Overseas Territories, it says, "the UK government has full powers to impose or veto lawmaking," and "power to appoint key government officials rests with the British Crown."

Keep that sentence in mind.

What the rankings say

The Corporate Tax Haven Index ranks jurisdictions by how much they help multinational companies shift profit away from the places where they actually do business.

In the 2021 edition, the top three were:

The British Virgin Islands
The Cayman Islands
Bermuda

All three are British Overseas Territories. Jersey, a Crown Dependency, came eighth.

The index's October 2024 update changed nothing at the top. The same three British territories held the top three places, in the same order. Jersey held eighth. The network says the three leaders earned the worst possible score, 100 out of 100, on all 18 of its indicators. In its December 2025 update, the British Virgin Islands still ranks first.

The network also put a size on it. In 2024 it said the UK and its network of territories accounted for a third (33%) of the corporate tax abuse risks the index measures, up from 31% in 2021. It calls that network the "UK spider's web" and describes it as a web of tax havens "centred around the City of London."

The fair caveats

Two things belong right next to those numbers.

First, the network's own warning: a high rank "does not necessarily mean a jurisdiction's corporate tax laws are more aggressive." The score combines how permissive the rules are with how much multinational money actually flows through. Big rank, big volume.

Second, this is an advocacy group's index, not a government finding. The territories dispute it. In 2024 the UK Foreign Office answered the ranking by saying it is working with the territories "to increase transparency, including through publicly accessible registers of company beneficial ownership."

"The burden of proof rests on evidence. Where evidence runs out, the argument stops." — The Veil of the Square Mile

What is not in dispute: a few small British territories host a huge share of the world's corporate financial activity for their size, and London sits at the center of the web that links them.

Money learned to live offshore first

The territories were not the first offshore move. One of the first was the Eurodollar.

A Eurodollar is a US dollar deposited in a bank outside the United States. The name has nothing to do with the euro, which came decades later. Those deposits sat outside the US government's direct control and under different rules, including, for years, America's caps on the interest banks could pay.

There are several origin stories. One of them runs straight through London. In the Cold War, after the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the Soviet Union feared the United States might freeze its dollars. So it moved some of them to the Moscow Narodny Bank, a London-registered bank it owned. On 28 February 1957, the story goes, $800,000 moved, making the Soviet Union one of the early depositors in what became the Eurodollar market.

City of London banks, Midland Bank among them, played a major role in holding the deposits. By the end of the 1960s the Eurodollar market was put at $70 billion. By the mid-1980s, by one account, there were more Eurodollars than dollars.

A Cold War rival, keeping American dollars in a British bank, because London's rules suited it. Remember that when someone tells you finance follows flags.

Why an empire would choose this

The Veil of the Square Mile argues that this was not an accident of decline. Flags and governors are expensive and easy to see. A registered office and a set of books are neither. The book puts it in one line:

"Empire without colonies, extraction without the bill for occupation."

You don't have to accept every step of that argument to see the pattern. The places that kept their ties to the Crown are, by the index's measure, among the most important corporate tax havens on earth. And the City of London sits in the middle of the web that connects them.

What this isn't

It isn't a story about a secret cabal. Nothing here is hidden. The rankings are public. The constitutional arrangements are public. The Eurodollar history is in standard reference works.

That is the point the book keeps coming back to. The system doesn't survive because nobody can see it. It survives because it looks ordinary: a few islands, some banks, a lot of paperwork.

The full story, from the City's medieval charters to the offshore era, is in The Veil of the Square Mile. It is one reading of the record. Check it against the sources.

"This is one reconstruction. Test it."

Read the book: The Veil of the Square Mile is out now in softcover, hardcover and ebook, and as an audiobook on ElevenReader.

Sources: Tax Justice Network, Corporate Tax Haven Index update press release, 1 October 2024; Tax Justice Network, Corporate Tax Haven Index 2021 press release, 9 March 2021; Corporate Tax Haven Index country profile, British Virgin Islands (December 2025 update); Wikipedia, "Eurodollar" (citing Goodman, Paper Money, 1982, and Schenk, "The Origins of the Eurodollar Market in London," 1998). Full links below.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/british-tax-havens-city-of-london/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Britain Lost an Empire. The City of London Kept the Accounts., https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/british-tax-havens-city-of-london/

What Is the City of London Corporation? A Plain-English Guide

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:30:00 GMT

The City of London Corporation runs London's financial district, has its own Lord Mayor and police, and is the only council in Britain where businesses vote.

Short answer: The City of London Corporation is the local government of the City of London, the one-square-mile financial district at the historic heart of the capital. It has its own Lord Mayor and its own police force. It is the only council in Britain where businesses, not just residents, put voters on the roll. And it carries a duty no ordinary council has: supporting and representing the financial services industry.

That is the summary. Here is how it works.

The City is not London

When people say "London," they usually mean Greater London: the whole capital, run by the Mayor of London and 32 borough councils.

The City of London is a district inside it. Roughly one square mile. The Bank of England is there. So is St Paul's. So are most of the towers in any photo of the financial district.

The City does the everyday jobs a borough does. Bins, planning, licensing. But it is not a borough. It is a corporation, with its own structure, its own officers and its own rules for who votes. (For more on the split, see The Square Mile Is Not London.)

About 9,000 people live there now. In 1801 it was about 130,000. After the Second World War it fell below 5,000. The residents left. The offices stayed.

How old is it?

Older than almost anything else in British government.

No founding charter survives. The law treats the City as incorporated "by prescription": it has been treated as a legal body for so long that the law presumes it is one. Magna Carta already says the City of London "shall have all the old liberties and customs which it hath been used to have." That clause is still on the statute book.

The first royal charter on record dates from around 1067, when William the Conqueror confirmed the rights Londoners had held under Edward the Confessor. The City had its own mayor by around 1189. The Court of Common Council has gone by that name since at least 1376.

The legal name is still the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London. The everyday name, "City of London Corporation," only dates from 2006, when it was changed to stop people confusing it with the Greater London Authority.

Who runs it?

Four parts.

The Lord Mayor. Not the Mayor of London. The Lord Mayor of the City of London holds an office that goes back to about 1189, serves one year at a time, and is mostly ceremonial: chairing the City's two courts, receiving foreign dignitaries, and representing the City at home and abroad.
The Court of Aldermen. Twenty-five aldermen, one per ward, elected for up to six years. The only qualification is being a Freeman of the City. They don't have to live there.
The Court of Common Council. One hundred common councilmen. This is the main decision-making body. It meets nine times a year and does most of its work through committees. Elections come every four years, most recently in March 2025. The real political lead is the chair of the Policy and Resources Committee, often described as the City's "de facto political leader."
The Freemen and the livery companies. There are more than a hundred livery companies, which began as medieval guilds. Their senior members, the liverymen, form Common Hall. Common Hall, not the residents, chooses the Lord Mayor and the two Sheriffs each year.

The business vote

This is the part that surprises people.

Everywhere else in Britain, local elections are for people who live there. The non-residential vote, the business vote, was abolished in the rest of the country in 1969. The City kept it.

Then Parliament widened it. The City of London (Ward Elections) Act 2002 lets firms with premises in the City appoint voters by headcount:

fewer than 10 workers: one voter
10 to 50 workers: one voter for every five
more than 50 workers: ten voters, plus one more for every 50 beyond the first 50

The result is an electorate where businesses outnumber residents. In 2009 the business vote was about 24,000, far above the residential roll.

No secret handshake. It is the election rule, printed in an Act of Parliament.

What does it control?

More than a square mile suggests.

Its own police. The City of London Police is separate from the Metropolitan Police, which covers the rest of Greater London. The Common Council is its police authority.
Green space far outside the City. About 10,000 acres of it, including Hampstead Heath, Epping Forest, Burnham Beeches and Highgate Wood.
Its own constitution. The Corporation can alter its own constitution by an Act of Common Council. It was also left out of the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which reformed almost every other borough in England.
A voice in Parliament. Since 1571 the City has had an officer called the Remembrancer. The Remembrancer's department follows legislation, briefs MPs and handles the City's dealings with Parliament and the Crown.
A private endowment. Beside its public budget, the Corporation controls an endowment called City's Cash, built up over about 800 years from property and investments. After criticism over transparency, it disclosed in December 2012 that the fund held more than £1.3 billion. By March 2016 it reported net assets of £2.3 billion.

Myths that don't survive a fact check

The City collects folklore. Some of it is wrong, and wrong claims make the real record easier to wave away.

"Precision matters, because bad arguments about power attract bad company." — The Veil of the Square Mile

"The monarch has to ask permission to enter the City." No. At the Pearl Sword ceremony, the Lord Mayor presents the hilt of the City's sword to the monarch, who touches it and hands it back. City historians, including the Guildhall Historical Association and the writer Paul Jagger, describe it as the Lord Mayor acknowledging the monarch's authority, not the monarch asking leave. Jagger calls the permission story one of the most persistent myths about the Square Mile.

"The Remembrancer sits behind the Speaker." No. As a parliamentary agent, the Remembrancer may watch from the under-gallery near the entrance, at the opposite end of the chamber from the Speaker's chair. That seat comes by the Speaker's permission, not by right, and it carries no ability to take part in proceedings.

"Parliament has no power over the City." No. The 2002 Act that widened the business vote was an Act of Parliament. The City's special position exists because Parliament keeps choosing to leave it in place. That is a more interesting fact than any loophole.

Why it matters

None of this is hidden. The ceremonies are public. The election rules are law. The endowment's size has been disclosed.

What makes the City unusual is how ordinary it all looks: an ancient corporation with a business electorate and a formal role representing finance, sitting in the middle of one of the world's biggest financial markets, presented as local government.

That ordinariness is the subject of The Veil of the Square Mile. The book builds its case from the record and says where the record stops.

"This is one reconstruction. Test it."

FAQ

What is the City of London Corporation? It is the local authority for the City of London, the one-square-mile financial district inside Greater London. It also has a formal role supporting and representing the financial services industry.

Is the City of London the same as London? No. The City of London is a district of about one square mile inside Greater London, with its own Lord Mayor and its own local government. Greater London is run by the Mayor of London and 32 borough councils.

Do businesses really vote in the City of London? Yes. The business vote was abolished elsewhere in Britain in 1969 but kept in the City, and the City of London (Ward Elections) Act 2002 widened it. Firms appoint voters based on how many people they employ.

What is the difference between the Lord Mayor and the Mayor of London? The Lord Mayor of the City of London is a mostly ceremonial office dating to about 1189, chosen each year by the City's liverymen. The Mayor of London is a political office created in 2000 and elected by voters across Greater London.

Is the City of London Corporation a local authority? Yes. It does the jobs a London borough does, and it also represents the financial services industry, which no other council does.

Is the City of London Corporation privately owned? No. It is a public local authority. Alongside its public budget, though, it controls a private endowment called City's Cash, which held more than £1.3 billion when disclosed in 2012 and reported net assets of £2.3 billion in March 2016.

Read the book: The Veil of the Square Mile is out now in softcover, hardcover and ebook, and as an audiobook on ElevenReader.

Sources

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/what-is-the-city-of-london-corporation/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, What Is the City of London Corporation? A Plain-English Guide, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/what-is-the-city-of-london-corporation/

Three Rooms, One Week

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 01:00:00 GMT

Strait of Hormuz, Caracas, and a Bishkek summit are three bids to decide who writes the next settlement layer of the world. They are not morally the same.

Three rooms, one week

This week the war is being fought in three rooms at once.

In the Strait of Hormuz, the United States hit Iranian launchers on Larak Island after Tehran tried to put more mines in the lane. Iran fired back at American positions in Jordan and the UAE. First exchange in a month.

In Caracas and Washington, Trump announced a deal that would give the United States majority control of about 65 billion barrels across seventeen Venezuelan fields. He said it would refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and bring the pump down. The reserve is already at its lowest since 1982. The paper is thin. The meaning is not.

In Bishkek, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Narendra Modi sat down at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit with Iran's president in the room. Security, trade, energy, and "financial cooperation architecture" while the strait is still a wound.

Those are not three stories. They are three bids to decide who writes the next settlement layer of the world. And they are not morally the same.

The clerk is not a neutral machine

The City of London system is not a flag and it is not an ethnicity. It is a habit of power that treats nations as counterparties and human beings as residual.

For a century a great deal of the world's oil has been priced, hedged, and insured in a market that grew up around that square mile — Brent on the ICE book, marine war risk at Lloyd's, trading floors that book far more barrels than the companies lift. BP and Shell still run global trading out of London. When a strait closes, the first number that jumps is often the insurance slip. Lloyd's is still writing Hormuz cover. War-risk rates have multiplied. That is rent on the hour between the well and the tank.

Call that what it is. Not competence. A moral structure. The City system does not need your country to prosper. It needs your cargo to remain a contract that must ask a clerk for a price and a policy. Wars can be weather. Famines can be weather. A closed strait can be a banner year for the desk. European majors' trading arms were already on course for a fat year off the Iran war before this week's new shooting. Production is one business. Harvesting chaos is another.

That is why the British system is corrupt at the root. Not because Englishmen are uniquely wicked. Because the operating principle is extraction without duty — profit detached from the soil, the plant, and the family that has to live with the bill. A republic can be brutal. This system is something colder. It does not even have to occupy you. It just has to own the stamp on your barrel.

The American system is not that animal

The American system, in the older sense, is not angelic. It bombs. It cuts deals with ugly partners. It is late and loud. It is still a different creature.

It wants the barrel as feedstock and the sea lane as a navy problem. Plants. Freight. A reserve you can actually draw. This week's version is crude and visible. CENTCOM says American forces have moved hundreds of millions of barrels through the strait under protection while Iran's own exports sit at zero under blockade. Bessent is promising weekly hits on banks that still touch Tehran — "financial violence." The Venezuela paper is the hemisphere half of the same idea: if Hormuz is a fight, lock heavy-sour crude next to the Gulf Coast cokers built to run it.

That can go wrong. A hundred-year concession hat is an old imperial costume, and energy historians have already reached for BP in Iran and Iraq as the ancestor. Fair warning. The distinction still holds. One system asks whether an American plant runs and an American family can buy diesel. The other asks whether the book still clears in the same rooms no matter who dies on the water. Those are not the same moral question.

NPR is right that the Venezuela deal will not drop gasoline this month. Proven rock is not a cargo. The signal is still industrial: the United States is trying to pull a feedstock out of a clerk's market and put it back into iron. That is not beastly. That is a country remembering it used to make things.

BRICS without the barrels

The third room wants an exit from the clerk and does not have the parts.

CIPS has grown. mBridge has processed tens of billions, overwhelmingly in digital yuan after the Bank for International Settlements walked away. BRICS Pay is slated for the New Delhi summit in September — a stitch of Russia's SPFS, China's CIPS, India's UPI, Brazil's Pix. Local-currency talk is real. A single reserve currency is not. IMF data still shows the dollar in the vault. Indonesia and the UAE keep both tracks open.

Here is the material problem they will not put in the family photo. Without Iran's Gulf position and without Venezuela's heavy crude, the bloc is a corridor with a hole in it.

Iran is the choke on the old lane. Venezuela is the largest proven stockpile on the map and the grade that matches a certain kind of refinery. This week the United States is blockading one and signing paper on the other. That is not a sideshow. That is BRICS getting neutered at the wellhead while the summit discusses payment architecture. You cannot replace the clerk with software if you do not have the molecule or the navy that moves it.

Russia can sell discounted oil to India. China can clear yuan. India can run UPI. None of that opens Hormuz if CENTCOM says no, and none of it lifts Orinoco if Washington holds the gate. Settlement without a wet barrel is a spreadsheet.

The alliance that cannot pray together

There is a second problem, and it is not polite.

BRICS is not a civilization. It is a coalition of leftovers from the clerk's world who do not trust each other enough to become a people.

Russia is the only major Christian state in that room — Orthodox, wounded, still talking in the language of nation and church even when the state is ugly. China is a communist party that will use churches and mosques as inventory. Iran is a revolutionary Islamic republic that just told Gulf rulers to name their "real enemy." India is a Hindu-majority democracy with its own memory of Islamic conquest and Chinese pressure. Brazil and South Africa add still other gods and other grievances.

That mix can sign a communiqué. It cannot decide what a good life is. When the shooting starts, men do not die for CIPS. They die for a cross, a flag, a book, or a party. An uneasy pile of Christian, communist, Muslim, and Hindu interests will hold as long as the clerk is the common enemy. The minute the clerk is weak enough to loot, they will loot each other. Modi sitting with Pezeshkian to talk stranded Indian sailors is not communion. It is a shopping list. India still needs a working strait and a working dollar window. It is in the photograph. It is not all-in on a yuan church.

The City system exploits that. It always has. Managed conflict is easier when the other table cannot agree what "we" means.

The American system has its own fractures. It also has a usable core: a Christian-formed republic, a continental plant base, and a navy that still exists. That core is damaged. It is not imaginary. That is why Washington can move a fleet and a sanction list in the same week while Bishkek issues language about connectivity.

Who wins a three-faction war

If you want a scoreboard, skip the 65-billion-barrel number and skip the summit portrait.

Watch whether Gulf Coast units actually run Venezuelan heavy. Watch whether Lloyd's and the London desks keep collecting rent on every cargo that still has to move. Watch whether BRICS Pay in September clears real trade at scale, or remains a settlement layer leaning on the dollar for the reserve and on London for the wet barrel.

The City system ends the day it stops being the default clerk. It deserves to end. Not because a summit said "multipolar." Because a world that prices human work as a chip in someone else's book is rotten.

BRICS is trying to build the exit in software and in a coalition that cannot name a common God. The American system is trying to build it with a fleet, a bank war, and a well in its own hemisphere. That is ugly work. It is still closer to a country than to a casino.

This week the fleet is moving. The well is on paper. The summit is talking. The clerk is not dead. He is just no longer the only man in the room — and the room that can still act like a nation is outplaying the room that can only act like a meeting.

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/three-rooms-one-week/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, Three Rooms, One Week, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/three-rooms-one-week/

The Black Robe Regiment: When the Pulpit Refused to Bow

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:34:00 GMT

Revolutions begin with an argument long before the first shot. In the American colonies, ministers supplied the moral vocabulary that made resistance imaginable — and the lesson is not a costume, but the courage to read the record.

Revolutions do not begin when the first shot is fired. They begin when ordinary people decide that the world around them is no longer morally acceptable — and before a people can resist power, they have to learn to see it.

That is where the pastors came in. Long before independence was declared, ministers throughout the American colonies were asking questions that were not supposed to be asked: What is the proper limit of government? When does obedience become submission to injustice? Does God require a Christian to obey every authority, no matter what it does? What happens when the ruler himself becomes the violator of the law?

These were not abstract questions. They were the questions of an empire. And from pulpits across the colonies, ministers began giving answers.

The British called them troublemakers. History remembers something like a regiment.

The legend is not the point. The record is.

The phrase "Black Robe Regiment" has become part of American political mythology. It conjures an image of ministers in black clerical robes preaching liberty before marching their congregations into revolution. The reality is more complicated.

There was no single military regiment of pastors, no unified organization with a headquarters and a list of members. The clergy themselves were divided: some supported independence, some remained loyal to the Crown, some tried to avoid the conflict entirely. Even the famous story of Peter Muhlenberg finishing a sermon, throwing off his clerical robe, and revealing a military uniform beneath it has been treated by historians with caution.

But a simplified legend does not make the underlying story less important — it makes the real story more important. Religion played a substantial role in the American Revolution. Ministers preached, wrote, organized, served as chaplains, participated in legislatures and conventions, and helped give ordinary colonists a moral vocabulary through which to understand resistance to British rule. The Library of Congress describes religion as providing moral sanction for opposition to Britain and notes that ministers served the revolutionary cause in numerous capacities, including military service.

So the important question is not whether there were exactly three hundred ministers in some mythical regiment. The important question is why Christian leaders were willing to treat political power as a moral question. A significant number refused to accept the idea that God cared about private morality but had nothing to say about public power. The distinction matters. It may matter now more than ever.

Before the revolution came the sermon

For generations, English and colonial Christians wrestled with a question that would eventually become explosive: When is resistance to authority justified?

The Bible commands Christians to respect governing authorities. Romans 13 has been quoted for centuries by kings, emperors, and ordinary governments alike. But the Bible also contains prophets confronting kings — Nathan confronting David, Elijah confronting Ahab, John the Baptist confronting Herod — and the apostles declared there were circumstances in which obedience to God took precedence over obedience to men.

So the question was never simply whether Christians should obey authority. It was: What happens when authority itself becomes lawless?

One influential voice was the Boston minister Jonathan Mayhew. In a sermon delivered on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, Mayhew rejected the idea that Christians were morally required to submit without resistance to tyranny, arguing that resistance to an oppressive ruler could itself be a Christian duty.

This was dangerous thinking — not because it encouraged chaos, but because it forced people to distinguish between authority and the abuse of authority. A king could be lawful. A government could be legitimate. But neither title was a blank check. Power could become corrupt. Power could violate the very law it claimed to enforce. And when ordinary Christians could recognize that fact, the government was no longer God, the king was no longer beyond judgment, and the empire was no longer permanent.

The pulpit was a communications network

The eighteenth century had no internet. But it had networks — and one of the most important in colonial America was the church.

The minister stood before a community every week. He interpreted the Scriptures, but he also interpreted the world: suffering, war, justice, and what events beyond the village meant to the people in the pews. The pulpit was not merely a place where people escaped reality for an hour; it was one of the places where reality was given meaning. The British understood this. So did the revolutionaries.

The Library of Congress describes ministers as helping transform colonial resistance into a morally justified cause, while clergy participated in the movement as chaplains, writers, legislators, and — in some cases — soldiers. That did not mean every sermon was political. It meant something more important: when political power became a moral question, the church did not pretend that morality ended at the church door.

They did not begin by worshipping America

This is where the story is often corrupted. The lesson of the revolutionary clergy is not that pastors should turn their churches into campaign offices. The church is not an extension of a political party, and the pulpit is not a branch office for any faction. Christ did not come to build a voting bloc.

The point is deeper. The revolutionary pastors understood something many modern pastors seem to have forgotten: Every government makes moral claims. Every political system has an idea of what man is. Every law assumes something about justice. Every institution distributes power. Every empire eventually develops a story about why its power is necessary.

Whenever Christians are told they must not concern themselves with these things, they are not being asked to remain neutral. They are being asked to let someone else do the interpreting. That is not neutrality. That is surrender.

The old empire did not disappear

The American Revolution broke political ties with Britain. But it did not erase the institutions that had helped build the British world — and that is one of the questions at the center of The Veil of the Square Mile.

The City of London is not simply another name for London. It is not merely a metaphor for bankers. It is a distinct municipal corporation with its own long institutional history, ancient rights and privileges, courts and governing structures, and a political identity that developed long before the modern British state existed in its current form. The City of London Corporation traces elements of its constitutional history through charters and liberties reaching back centuries, preserving documents that reach to the eleventh century.

That does not mean the City quietly controls the world. That is not the argument. The truth is more interesting than a cartoon.

Institutions survive. They adapt. They change their language, their personnel, their public image. But structures can outlive the generations that created them. A charter written for a medieval world can still matter centuries later. A corporation can survive kings. A legal privilege can outlast an empire. A financial network can change flags without disappearing. And eventually people stop seeing the structure — it becomes part of the scenery.

That is what The Veil is about: not secret meetings or imaginary cabals, but the record — the charters, the corporations, the laws, the institutions, the mechanisms through which power survives long enough to become invisible. The documents are not necessarily hidden. The problem is that almost nobody reads them.

This is where the pastors come in

There is a strange modern doctrine quietly taking hold in many churches, usually expressed as: "The church should stay out of politics."

At first, that sounds wise. Sometimes it is. The church should not become a tribal headquarters, and pastors should not reduce the Gospel to a campaign slogan. But the phrase becomes dangerous when "politics" expands to mean everything involving public morality — justice, law, war, education, money, family, power, the dignity of human beings, the limits of the state, the corruption of institutions, the rights of parents, the moral consequences of economic systems, the question of who is allowed to rule and by what authority.

If all of that is declared "political," and the pastor is forbidden from discussing any of it, what exactly is left? A Christianity with no opinion about power. A Christianity that can speak about heaven but never about the institutions shaping life on earth. A Christianity that condemns personal sin while refusing to ask whether powerful institutions have become engines of corruption — telling the congregation "you are responsible for your private morality" while telling institutions above them "we have no comment."

That is not the historic posture of the prophets. It was not the posture of John the Baptist. And it was not the posture of the ministers who helped Americans think through the moral crisis of the eighteenth century.

The problem with silence

Tyranny does not always arrive wearing a crown. Sometimes it arrives as a regulation, a financial mechanism, a court decision, an emergency, a new definition of what people are allowed to believe. Sometimes it comes with a smile and a slogan about safety. Sometimes it comes through an institution so old that nobody remembers who gave it its power.

And sometimes tyranny does not need the church to support it — it only needs the church to remain silent.

This is why the Black Robe Regiment matters. Not because we need pastors putting on costumes, and not because every pastor should run for office. The lesson is that there was a time when Christian leaders understood that silence about power is itself a decision about power. When the state crossed moral boundaries, some pastors did not say "that is political; we only discuss spiritual matters here." They understood that justice was spiritual, liberty was spiritual, tyranny was spiritual, truth was spiritual. There was no clean line where the responsibility of the Christian ended and the machinery of the world began.

The descendants of the revolution are being told not to ask questions

There is an irony here. Americans celebrate a revolution against an empire while increasingly being taught not to question the systems that govern them — to learn history but not investigate institutions, to celebrate liberty but not ask who exercises power, to honor the Founders but not examine the world from which the Founding emerged, to quote the Declaration but not study the imperial and financial structures that shaped the Atlantic world around it.

And pastors are often encouraged to reinforce this silence. Stay out of it. Do not upset anyone. Do not talk about government, or power, or institutions. Preach the Gospel — as though the Gospel has nothing to say about truth, as though Christ's command to love one's neighbor has nothing to say about systems capable of harming millions, as though the prophets never addressed kings, as though John the Baptist never named Herod, as though the apostles never had to decide whether Caesar's authority had limits.

The demand for silence is often presented as humility. Sometimes it is simply fear — fear of losing members, offending donors, being called political, being misunderstood, discovering that people in the pews disagree. But leadership has never been the art of avoiding discomfort. The pastors of the revolutionary era were not remembered because they were universally popular. They were remembered because some of them understood the moment they were living in.

The veil must be lifted again

The task before Christians is not to recreate 1776. History does not work that way. The task is not to manufacture a new "Black Robe Regiment." We do not need a costume — we need the courage that existed beneath it.

The courage to investigate. The courage to speak carefully. The courage to admit when the evidence is insufficient. The courage to say, "I was wrong." The courage to resist propaganda from our enemies — and, much harder, from our allies. The courage to follow the record wherever it leads.

Tyranny depends on force, money, and people willing to enforce its rules. But it also depends on something quieter: people not looking too closely, citizens accepting the story they are given, pastors believing that power is not their concern, Christians separating their moral convictions from the world in which those convictions must actually be lived.

The revolutionaries did not defeat the British Empire because every colonist was a soldier. Most were not. But ideas moved through communities. Arguments became convictions. Convictions became action. And ministers — along with writers, merchants, farmers, soldiers, legislators, and ordinary citizens — helped shape the moral world in which resistance became imaginable.

Before people can act, they have to understand what they are looking at. Before they can resist tyranny, they have to recognize it. Before they can recognize it, someone has to be willing to pull back the veil.

Pastors: this is your moment

Not to become politicians. To become shepherds again.

A shepherd does not merely tell the sheep that wolves exist. He watches the field. He learns the terrain. He knows where danger comes from. And when something enters the field, he does not dismiss it because discussing wolves might be controversial — he tells the truth.

Pastors, your people are living inside systems they do not understand. Their children are being formed by institutions they cannot name. Their labor moves through financial structures they have never been taught to examine. Their beliefs are shaped by media organizations, governments, corporations, universities, algorithms, and bureaucracies that often understand the mechanics of influence far better than the average Christian understands the institutions surrounding his own life.

Too often, when Christians ask "What is happening?", the church answers "That is politics." No. Sometimes it is politics — and politics is simply one of the places where human beings exercise power over one another. Power is a moral subject. It always has been.

The question is not whether pastors should become politicians. The question is whether pastors should continue surrendering the moral interpretation of public life to people who do not share their responsibility to truth.

The men sometimes remembered as the Black Robe Regiment did not all agree. They were not a secret order. They were not a single army. They were flawed men living in a complicated moment. But many understood something we cannot afford to forget:

A free people must be capable of seeing the powers that govern them.

And a church that refuses to help people see eventually leaves them to be guided by whoever is willing to tell them where to look.

That is why history matters. That is why institutions matter. That is why the old charters matter. That is why the City of London matters. That is why The Veil of the Square Mile begins with a place most people have heard of but almost nobody has been taught to understand.

How does power survive?

The Square Mile is not the whole story. It is a doorway into a larger question: How does power survive? How does it move? How does it adapt? How does it become normal? And at what point do ordinary people stop seeing it?

Those are not conspiracy questions. They are historical questions. And history is full of warnings for people willing to read it.

The pastors who helped shape the moral world of the American Revolution did not possess some magical ability Christians have lost. They read. They argued. They studied. They preached. They looked at the powers of their day and refused to believe those powers were beyond moral judgment.

That is what must return. Not the costumes. Not the mythology. Not the partisan theater. The courage. The discipline. The willingness to stand before a congregation and say: Look. Look at the record. Look at the institution. Look at the law. Look at the history. Look at who benefits. Look at what has survived. Look at what has changed — and what has not. And then decide what truth requires of you.

That is how the veil begins to lift. And perhaps that is where the next movement begins too.

The Barrel and the Book

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 01:00:00 GMT

The U.S.–Venezuela oil arrangement is the biggest number in the hemisphere. The question underneath it is who prices the barrel — and whether the molecule still has to ask London for a price on the way to Texas.

Two fights in the same sentence

The announcement arrived the way these things always arrive now: a round number, a flag, and a sentence written to survive a rally.

Sixty-five billion barrels. Seventeen fields. The United States, Trump said, had just closed the biggest oil deal in world history with Venezuela. Interim President Delcy Rodríguez called it historic. Marco Rubio called it America First. Al Jazeera called it a seizure. All of them are talking about the same press conference. They are not talking about the same machine.

The factual spine

Start with what is on the record. The arrangement, as reported, gives Washington majority control of a slice of Venezuela's claimed reserves — about a fifth of a country that still sits on the largest proven stockpile on the map. A private partner is supposed to lift it. One account says the right runs a hundred years. Rodríguez's government floated $209 billion in taxes and $100 billion in investment. Trump floated cheaper gasoline and a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that has been running thin. The path to the podium was not a normal offtake talk. Nicolás Maduro was taken in January. Rodríguez was installed. Exports were already under U.S. control "indefinitely." That is the factual spine. The rest is argument.

Oil-market researcher Rory Johnston called the 65-billion figure a red herring — a classic big number, not a cargo schedule. He is right about the distinction. Proven rock is not a barrel at the rack. An upgrader in the Orinoco, a coker on the Gulf Coast, a tanker that can get insured: those are barrels. A podium is a claim.

The precedent and the instrument

Al Jazeera asks what is behind the deal and answers with the oldest Latin American file in the cabinet: intervention, the Monroe Doctrine, "to the victor belong the spoils." Energy historian Gregory Brew went further and named the ancestor. The closest precedent, he wrote, was BP when it was still the British state's oil company, sitting on Iraqi and Iranian reserves before the Second World War. That comparison is not a slur. It is a description of an instrument. A great power writes a long claim on someone else's ground and calls it development. Empires have used that paper for a century.

There is another instrument underneath it, and that is the one the explainer barely touches.

Venezuelan crude was never only Venezuela's. After the wells were nationalized the molecule still had to clear. It needed a ship, a policy, a hedge, a price marker, a desk that could turn a heavy sour stream into a contract someone would honor. A great deal of that stack still prices and insures in markets that grew up around London — Brent, the ICE book, the trading houses that sit between a wellhead and a pump. That is not a conspiracy chart. It is how a commodity becomes money. The clerk does not have to own the field to own the hour between the field and the tank.

The American industrial fact

The American industrial fact is simpler and less romantic. Gulf Coast plants were built for heavy sour. Orinoco crude is not a cousin of tight oil. It is the feedstock those cokers were welded to take. When the Strait of Hormuz is closed — Al Jazeera's own timeline puts Friday's announcement on the six-month mark of that war — the hemisphere tap is not a slogan. It is the nearby barrel that matches the iron. August pump prices above four dollars are not a mood. They are a midterm.

Two fights happening at once

So two fights are happening in the same sentence.

One is the fight Al Jazeera wants: a republic putting on the old concession hat. A hundred-year right, a captured capital, a president talking like a victor counting plate. If that is all this is, Brew's BP analogy holds. Same paper. New flag.

The other is the fight the American system keeps failing to name out loud. Who prices the barrel in a blocked world? If the molecule remains a paper instrument marked in another city's book, then taking the field is theater. You have changed the name on the gate and left the clerk in place. If the offtake runs to a U.S. plant, on a U.S. boat, under a U.S. policy, you have done something different. You have pulled a feedstock out of a market that treated it as a chip and put it back into a refinery that treats it as heat.

Those are not the same victory.

Three tells

The tell will not be the 65 billion. Headline barrels are cheap. Watch three things that do not fit on a rally sign.

Who is named as operator. If it is a refiner with a coker on the Gulf, you are rebuilding a circuit. If it is a trading house that books the cargo the old way, you handed the tap to the same desk in a new hat.

Where the cargo is insured and hedged. Insurance is not a footnote. It is the permission slip that lets a tanker move. The book lives there.

Whether Gulf Coast runs of Venezuelan heavy actually rise. Expectations can move a future before a ship ties up. They cannot keep moving it if the units never run.

Rodríguez needs investment and a country that has already lost eight million people. Washington needs a story that the pump can fall before November and a barrel that does not have to thread Hormuz. Both can sign the same paper for different reasons. That does not make the paper holy. It makes it a contract. Read it like one.

A republic is allowed to want the Western Hemisphere's oil tied to its own plants. That is not mysticism. It is metallurgy and freight. A republic is also allowed to notice when it has picked up the concession quill it used to denounce. The test is not the adjective on the press release. The test is whether the barrel still has to ask London for a price on the way to Texas.

If it does, this was a costume change. If it does not, this was the first time in a long while the United States treated oil as an industrial input instead of a talking point. The field is the easy half. The book is the half that decides.

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/the-barrel-and-the-book/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, The Barrel and the Book, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/the-barrel-and-the-book/

The Square Mile Is Not London

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 15:10:00 GMT

Greater London and the City of London are different jurisdictions. The Square Mile's corporation, its own police force, and its business vote survived inside a modern state — and the record is worth mapping.

Two different places

Most people use "the City" and "London" as if they mean the same thing. They don't.

Greater London is a region of nearly nine million people, run by a mayor and an assembly under the laws of the United Kingdom. The City of London — the Square Mile — is something else: a roughly one-square-mile jurisdiction in the heart of the capital with its own corporation, its own electoral system, its own police force, and institutional continuity that predates the modern British state.

That is not a conspiracy theory. It is municipal fact.

A governing body, not a nickname

The City of London Corporation is not a nickname for bankers. It is a governing body. It elects a Lord Mayor. It maintains the Court of Common Council and the Court of Aldermen. It operates the City of London Police — a force distinct from the Metropolitan Police that covers the rest of the capital. Its franchise has long included a business vote alongside residential suffrage, a structure almost no other democratic locality still defends in the same way.

None of this is hidden in the sense of a locked vault. It is written into charters, statutes, standing orders, and the Corporation's own published materials. What is rare is sustained public attention. The Square Mile is treated as scenery — a skyline, a synonym for "finance" — rather than as a political unit with its own rules of membership and authority.

Why the gap matters

When a jurisdiction sits at the center of global capital flows and retains medieval-to-early-modern corporate forms inside a modern nation-state, the interesting question is not whether something "secret" is going on. The interesting question is how parallel authority was preserved, adapted, and normalized until most citizens stopped seeing it as authority at all.

Empire, banking, insurance, commercial law, and the geography of power in the North Atlantic did not float free of institutions. They ran through them. The Square Mile was one of those institutions — small on a map, large in the architecture of money and rule.

If you only ever read "the City" as a metaphor, you will miss the corporation. If you only ever read the corporation as a cartoon of villains, you will miss the record. The record is where the story actually is.

For a full plain-English guide to how the Corporation works, see What Is the City of London Corporation?

The Veil of the Square Mile

The Veil of the Square Mile maps that record across empire, finance, and the long survival of a jurisdiction that never fully dissolved into the state around it.

First chapter free: theveilpress.com/read

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/the-square-mile-is-not-london/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, The Square Mile Is Not London, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/the-square-mile-is-not-london/

The Middle Ring: Where Money Becomes Influence

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:30:00 GMT

Foundations, nonprofits, think tanks, and media sit between money and power. Treasury is now looking at that layer — and the questions it raises outlive any single administration.

Where money becomes influence

For years, Americans have been encouraged to imagine political power as a contest between two obvious forces: government on one side and voters on the other. But modern power rarely moves that directly.

Between the person who provides the money and the person who ultimately encounters the idea sits an enormous institutional layer — foundations, nonprofits, advocacy organizations, think tanks, universities, media organizations, financial institutions, and other intermediaries. Call it the middle ring. It is neither government nor the individual citizen. And increasingly, it is where enormous amounts of money and influence travel.

That makes the Treasury Department's current scrutiny of tax-exempt organizations worth watching — not simply because the administration is targeting organizations associated with the political left, but because it raises a much larger question:

How transparent should the institutions between money and political influence be?

Follow the money — but don't stop there

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in July that Treasury was expanding efforts to identify organizations that abuse charitable structures for illicit finance, foreign influence, or activity connected to violence.

His formulation is important. He did not say every nonprofit is corrupt. In fact, he explicitly acknowledged that charities and nonprofits represent an important part of civil society. His argument was that the very trust placed in those institutions can make them attractive vehicles for abuse.

That distinction matters. Because:

A nonprofit receiving money from a wealthy donor is not evidence of wrongdoing.
A foundation funding advocacy is not automatically evidence of a conspiracy.
Foreign money entering an American nonprofit is not automatically illegal.

The question is what happens after the money enters the institution.

Who receives it? Who controls it? Where does it go next? What activities does it support? What relationships exist between organizations? And what, if anything, is being hidden from the public?

Those are answerable questions. And they are far more interesting than simply asking whether George Soros is involved.

The middle ring is not inherently sinister

This is where the discussion often goes wrong. The middle ring can perform an incredibly valuable function.

A foundation can fund cancer research. A nonprofit can provide disaster relief. A think tank can conduct legitimate research. A university can educate. An advocacy organization can represent citizens who otherwise wouldn't have political influence. A fiscal sponsor can allow a new organization to operate before it establishes its own legal infrastructure. These institutions are part of a healthy civil society.

But the same infrastructure that makes civil society powerful also makes it capable of concentrating influence. That's the part worth studying.

Treasury's April transparency initiative specifically focused on government grants, government contracts, and fiscal-sponsorship arrangements in Form 990 reporting, arguing that clearer information would help detect misconduct and misuse of taxpayer resources. That is not a conspiracy theory. That's an accounting question.

The network matters more than the name

This is perhaps the most important lesson. Consider the chain:

Donor → Foundation → Nonprofit → Fiscal Sponsor → Advocacy Organization → Media → Public

No individual organization necessarily has to control the entire process. The influence can emerge from the network itself. Money moves. Personnel move. Research moves. Ideas move. Organizations fund other organizations. One institution provides legitimacy to another. Another provides the platform. Another provides the policy research. Another communicates the conclusion to millions of people.

And eventually the original source of the money can become almost invisible to the person receiving the final message. That doesn't prove wrongdoing. But it does demonstrate why institutional mapping matters.

This is where the story becomes bigger than Trump

The temptation is to make this partisan — "Trump is finally going after the left," or "Trump is weaponizing the government against his political enemies." Both narratives are politically convenient. Neither is sufficient.

The deeper question is: what happens when the state begins examining the middle ring itself? Because once government begins looking seriously at nonprofit networks, the precedent doesn't belong exclusively to one political party. A Republican administration can investigate organizations associated with Democrats. A Democratic administration could someday investigate organizations associated with Republicans.

The machinery doesn't care who occupies the White House. Institutions persist longer than administrations. That is why the architecture matters.

The precedent cuts both ways

There is another reason to pay attention. Federal tax law already places significant restrictions on 501(c)(3) organizations. Charities are prohibited from participating in political campaigns on behalf of or against candidates, and lobbying cannot constitute more than an insubstantial part of their activities.

So the legitimate question isn't: "Should nonprofits be allowed to have political opinions?" Of course they should. The question is: "At what point does an organization receiving a significant tax preference cease operating within the boundaries that justify that preference?"

That's a legal and institutional question. And it should be answered with evidence — not political loyalty.

The real lesson

This is precisely why the study of institutions matters. Power rarely announces itself as power. It often appears as a grant. A tax exemption. A foundation. A research fellowship. A consulting contract. A fiscal sponsorship. A regulatory exemption. A charitable deduction. A board appointment. A relationship between two organizations that appear unrelated until someone bothers to map them.

None of these things is inherently corrupt. But each is a connection. And connections are how institutional power becomes visible. That is the lesson of the middle ring.

The Archivist's question

The Archivist doesn't begin by saying: "These people are criminals." He begins somewhere much more dangerous:

"Show me the records."

Show me the Form 990. Show me the donor. Show me the grant. Show me the intermediary. Show me the board. Show me the recipient. Show me the money. Show me the relationship. And then let the evidence determine what the relationship means.

Because if wrongdoing exists, the records should expose it. And if wrongdoing doesn't exist, the records should expose that too. That is the difference between investigation and conspiracy.

The connection to The Veil of the Square Mile

The book's broader argument isn't that every institution hiding behind layers of law and finance is secretly corrupt. It's that you cannot understand power by looking only at its most visible face. You have to map the institutions surrounding it.

The City of London is interesting for precisely this reason: its historical significance isn't dependent on an imaginary secret council. Its actual institutional structure, legal privileges, financial relationships, and continuity are interesting enough to investigate on their own. The same principle applies here.

Don't invent the network. Map the network. And when the map reveals something uncomfortable, follow it.

That is the middle ring. And perhaps the most important question isn't whether the Trump administration is right about every organization it is investigating. It's whether America is finally beginning to look seriously at the institutions between money and power — and whether we're prepared to apply the same scrutiny regardless of which political tribe benefits from the answer.

Because the middle ring doesn't belong to the left or the right. It belongs to whoever learns how to use it.

Originally published by The Veil Press at https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/the-middle-ring-where-money-becomes-influence/. Free to republish with credit and a link back (CC BY-ND 4.0; reuse terms). Cite as: The Veil Press, The Middle Ring: Where Money Becomes Influence, https://www.theveilpress.com/desk/the-middle-ring-where-money-becomes-influence/