Over the centuries there have been
many stories, some based on loose
facts, others based on hearsay,
conjecture, speculation and outright
lies, about groups of people who
“control the world.” Some of these are
partially accurate, others are wildly
hyperbolic, but when it comes to the
historic record, nothing comes closer to
the stereotypical, secretive group
determining the fate of over 7 billion
people, than the Bank of International
Settlements, which hides in such plain
sight, that few have ever paid much
attention.
Tyler Durden

The following is an excerpt from
TOWER OF BASEL: The Shadowy
History of the Secret Bank that Runs
the World
by Adam LeBor.

The world’s most exclusive club has
eighteen members. They gather every
other month on a Sunday evening at 7
p.m. in conference room E in a circular
tower block whose tinted windows
overlook the central Basel railway
station .


The meal,which continues until 11 p.m. or
midnight, is where the real work is
done. The protocol and hospitality,
honed for more than eight decades, are
faultless. Anything said at the dining
table, it is understood, is not to be
repeated elsewhere.

Few, if any, of those enjoying their
haute cuisine and grand cru wines—
some of the best Switzerland can offer
—would be recognized by passers-by,
but they include a good number of the
most powerful people in the world .
These men—they are almost all men—
are central bankers. They have come to
Basel to attend the Economic
Consultative Committee (ECC) of the
Bank for International Settlements
(BIS), which is the bank for central
banks . Its current members [ ZH: as of
2013] include Ben Bernanke, the
chairman of the US Federal Reserve;
Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the
Bank of England; Mario Draghi, of the
European Central Bank; Zhou Xiaochuan
of the Bank of China; and the central
bank governors of Germany, France,
Italy, Sweden, Canada, India, and
Brazil. Jaime Caruana, a former
governor of the Bank of Spain, the
BIS’s general manager, joins them.


The ECC, which used to be known as the G-10 governors’ meeting, is the most
influential of the BIS’s numerous
gatherings, open only to a small, select
group of central bankers from
advanced economies .

At BIS dinners people actually talk to each other and the discussions are always stimulating and interactive focused on the serious issues facing the global economy.”


All the governors present at the two-
day gathering are assured of total
confidentiality, discretion, and the
highest levels of security .

Central bankers, whose independence is constitutionally protected, control monetary policy in the developed world. They manage the supply of money to national economies.
They set interest rates, thus deciding
the value of our savings and
investments. They decide whether to
focus on austerity or growth. Their
decisions shape our lives.

From its first day of existence, the BIS has dedicated itself to furthering the interests of centralbanks and building the new architecture of transnational finance. In doing so, it has spawned a new class of close-knit global technocrats whose members glide
between highly-paid positions at the
BIS, the IMF, and central and commercial banks.

The
BIS’s founding members were the
central banks of Britain, France,
Germany, Italy, Belgium, and a
consortium of Japanese banks. Shares
were also offered to the Federal
Reserve, but the United States,
suspicious of anything that might
infringe on its national sovereignty,
refused its allocation. Instead a
consortium of commercial banks took up
the shares: J. P. Morgan, the First
National Bank of New York, and the
First National Bank of Chicago.

The BIS is a unique institution: an
international organization, an extremely
profitable bank and a research
institute founded, and protected, by
international treaties. The BIS is
accountable to its customers and
shareholders —the central banks—but
also guides their operations .
courtesy, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bank-of-international-settlements-meet-the-secretive-group-that-runs-the-world/5442583