On the heels of chaotic trading around the world, multi-billionaire Hugo Salinas Price just issued a terrifying warning.

A Trip Down A Terrifying Rabbit Hole
 (King World News) – Multi-billionaire Hugo Salinas Price: For the sake of brevity, and because this is not a scholarly article, but only an examination of a theme that must be treated in as few words as possible, it is necessary to make some sweeping generalizations.

From the dawn of History and up until relatively recent times, humanity was governed by kings whose will was law; kings were supported by priesthoods who affirmed that the royal power was divinely instituted. Thus, kings were regularly regarded by their subjects as semi-gods.

One of the exclusive rights which kings have enjoyed throughout history was the creation of money. Historians attribute to Croesus, king of Lydia (a region of what is now Turkey) the minting of the first gold coins, which he used as an incentive to get his soldiers to fight. This was sometime around 500 BC.

Gold, and not silver, was the first money used by humanity, because gold was found abundantly in almost pure form in some river beds, whereas silver had to be obtained by processing silver-bearing ores, an activity that came later. Today, small amounts of gold can still be found in river beds.

In antiquity, the production of gold and silver money was considered a sacred activity to be carried out by a priesthood. For instance, Julius Caesar (100 – 44 BC) obtained his first political post, as Pontifex Maximusi.e., “High Priest” in charge of the Roman mint.

The divine right of kings to rule was unquestioned up until the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. The kings of France for centuries had become kings by the ceremony of Anointment with a holy balm, applied to them in a solemn ceremony at the Cathedral of Reims.

The introduction of the invention of printing in Europe, by Gutenberg in 1452 initiated the massive reading of books, which had previously been the privilege of the priesthood and of the wealthy, who had been able to purchase small numbers of very expensive, hand-written books.

One of the consequences of this reading of books was that the authority of the Roman Catholic Church began to be questioned by some thinkers, notably by Martin Luther. Eventually, Luther declared himself quite the enemy of the Catholic Church, which led to the creation of Protestantism. The consequence for Europe was a series of bloody wars of religion.

Since it was the Catholic Church which anointed the kings of Europe and invested them with a Divine Right to rule, the schism in Christianity had the effect of weakening the respect of the populations of Europe, for their kings.

In all preceding ages, under “good” kings and “bad” kings, Their Highnesses never considered it their mission, to rule so that poverty and misery could be eliminated from human life. (An excellent Englishman, Sir Thomas More, disagreed with his monarch Henry VIII, and wrote a book, “Utopia”, in which he spoke of an invented country, Utopia, where gold was eliminated as money and was used to manufacture “chamber pots”; in “Utopia” universal joy and prosperity reigned supreme. Through this fashion of thinking, he became one of the first monetary cranks of our civilization.)

A notable example of the effect of Protestantism upon the rule of kings, was the Puritan Revolution in England: the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell, beheaded their king, Charles I, in1649; among other reasons, he was despised by the Puritans because he was too conservative regarding the “Royal Prerogative” and the Puritans wanted something new in their Sovereign: a “social conscience” and improved institutions for the advancement of a better society.

In due course of time, there came about the “Age of Reason” of the 18th Century. The leading thinkers of Europe – and of the American rebels in the royal colonies of North America – examined the institution of royalty, and came to the conclusion that Reason should be paramount in political affairs, and that kings had no Divine Right at all, from a rational point of view.

The consequence of this “Enlightenment” brought about by the Age of Reason, was the French Revolution of 1789, during which the King of France, Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette were neatly beheaded by means of the recently invented guillotine.

In spite of the French Revolution, parts of Europe continued to be nominally ruled by kings up until 1914. However, the new way of regarding them progressively diminished the importance and power of the remaining monarchs of Europe. No longer were they regarded with the unquestioned awe of the populations they governed. The thinking of the intellectuals of the French Revolution had changed things forever: kings were no longer semi-divine creatures.

It is important to understand the nature of the political transformation which had taken place, and which, perhaps, few thinkers have noted: the French Revolution changed the perception of the Origin of Authority.

In all of History and up to the French Revolution of 1789, Authority was acknowledged as “originating from Above“, that is to say, from the God-appointed Ruler, who ruled by Divine Right and whose word was Law, on down to the People below him. One of the functions of the Ruler, was to determine and to create the monetary system his people were to use. In no way was it in his power to create a state of affairs where poverty and misery were to be eliminated amongst his subjects, the People……More Here