Chronology

600 BC King Alyattes of Lydia (in modern-day Turkey) mints the first official currency.

474 BC In 2018, Italian authorities find Roman-era gold coins in Como dated from this time.

210 BC The first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang (260–210 BC) abolishes all other forms of local currency and introduces a uniform copper coin.

44 BC (March 15) Julius Caesar is assassinated after he outlaws usury and undertakes other economic reforms, including transferring control of the Roman mint from wealthy patricians to the government.

7th-12th centuries The Islamic world circulates currency, including the dinar.

757-796 The pound was a unit of account in Anglo-Saxon England, equal to 240 silver pennies and equivalent to one pound weight of silver. It evolved into the modern British currency, the pound sterling. The accounting system of 20 shillings = 1 pound was adopted from that introduced by Charlemagne, who created a single currency for his realm in 794. The origins of sterling lie in the reign of King Offa of Mercia, who introduced the silver penny, copying the denarius of the new currency system of Charlemagne.

787 King Offa of the Kingdom of Mercia (UK) outlaws usury.

8th & 9th centuries To prevent tax evasion, Danes in Ireland establish a rule that if you cannot pay the Danish poll tax, then your nose will be slit, inspiring the saying "to pay through the nose."

9th century Paper money invented in China, but the base unit of currency remains the copper coin, used as the chief denomination of currency until the introduction of the yuan in the late 19th century.

865-899 King Alfred (UK) directs that property of usurers be forfeited.

1050 Edward the Confessor (UK) decrees that usurers be declared outlaws and banished for life.

13th century Use of paper spreads from China through the Middle East to medieval Europe. The travels of Marco Polo to China introduce the idea of paper money to Europeans.

1215 (June 15) English nobles revolt and force King John to sign the Magna Carta, which cancels bonds of money lenders and abolishes usury.

1250 The florin, a gold coin minted in Florence, is widely accepted across Europe, encouraging international commerce.

1311 The general council of Vienne opens just south of Lyon. During the two-year council, Pope Clement V makes the belief in the right to usury heresy and abolishes all secular legislation that allows it.

1440 Goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press, starting a printing revolution.

1510 The Catholic Church's ban on usury is rewritten under Pope Leo X.

1600 The East India Company receives a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth. At its height, the company accounts for half the world's trade.

1602 The Dutch East India Company is chartered to carry on trade in the East Indies.

1661 Sweden introduces paper money.

1668 Sweden founds Sveriges Riksbank as the first central bank.

1694 The Bank of England is founded by royal charter of William III of Britain and Netherlands to finance the war with France. It is followed by the Bank of Scotland a year later. Both begin to issue paper money.

1690s The unsuccessful Darien scheme attempts to establish a Scottish colony in Panama to create an overland route connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The scheme results in substantial financial ruin in Scotland and is an important factor in weakening Scottish resistance to the Act of Union (completed in 1707).

17th & 18th centuries Silver Spanish dollars or eight-real coins (also known as "pieces of eight") extended from the Spanish territories in the Americas westward to Asia and eastward to Europe. Spain's political position, the importance of Spanish commercial routes across the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the coin's quality and purity of silver help it become internationally accepted for several centuries.

17th century Dutch guilder is accepted internationally, continuing in use until replaced by the euro, and preceding the pound sterling as the global reserve currency.

1720 South Sea bubble bursts as does the Mississippi bubble.

1764 The Bank of England introduces a currency bill that severely restricts the colonies' right to issue their own money and forbids it legal tender status for the payment of public and private debts.

1770 Prussia issues the first covered bonds.

1786 The U.S. Congress adopts the silver dollar and decimal system of money.

1789 The U.S. Congress creates the Treasury Department, headed by Alexander Hamilton, housed in Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl St., New York.

1792 Coinage Act makes U.S. dollar the official currency of the United States and its territories and establishes the U.S. Mint.

1816 The modern guilder becomes the monetary unit for the Netherlands in 1816 with the fall of the Napoleonic empire.

1816 England establishes gold as its standard of value.

1832 President Andrew Jackson vetoes legislation to recharter the Second Bank of the United States.

1836 When the 20-year charter of the Second Bank of the United States comes up for renewal, President Andrew Jackson collapses the bank by withdrawing all government deposits and repaying the entire national debt. The central bank is replaced by an independent treasury system based on redeemable paper and specie.

1839 The First Opium War begins between China and Great Britain. The second ends in 1860. The Nanking Treaty in 1842 cedes ownership of Hong Kong island and surrounding lands to Great Britain.

1839 (January 30) Assassination attempt on President Jackson fails.

1850 Switzerland founds a currency union to replace currencies of cantons.

1850s Oil industry begins when oil is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

1860 Creation of State Bank of Russia, owned by the Russian state.

1860 Western Union introduces e-money, sending money by telegram.

1861 Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom, which is followed by a blossoming of prosperity.

1862 U.S. government creates the Internal Revenue Service as part of the U.S. Treasury Department to finance the civil war.

1871 Germany adopts the gold standard.

1886 Discovery of largest goldfields in the world at Witwatersrand in South Africa.

1899 British start war with Boers, taking control of South Africa and its gold and other mineral resources by 1902.

1900 The U.S. passes the Gold Standard Act.

1910 (November) Conspirators behind the creation of the Federal Reserve bank meet in Jekyll Island, Georgia.

1912 (July 15) Commonwealth Bank of Australia is founded.

1913 The U.S. passes the Federal Reserve Act.

1913 The U.S. government introduces an income tax and Form 1040.

1914 The Federal Reserve Bank of New York opens for business on November 16, 1914, serving as depository for the U.S. government, open market operations, and the buying and selling of outstanding U.S. Treasury securities. Manages the FOMC Directive to sell or buy bonds. Manages Fedwire, the Federal Reserve's system for transferring balances between banks and in securities, the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), and exchange rate policy at the discretion of the U.S. Treasury Department. Currently reputed to be the largest gold repository in the world (though this cannot be confirmed as Swiss banks do not report their gold stocks) and, as of October 2011, held approximately 7,000 tonnes (7,700 short tons) of gold bullion ($415 billion)—more than Fort Knox. Central banks of foreign nations own nearly 98% of the gold at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

1914 World War I begins. From World War I to World War II, sterling and the U.S. dollar share roles as the global reserve currency, with the dollar emerging dominant with Bretton Woods in 1944.

1917 (November 17) Rothschild and Rockefeller financial interests finance the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

1918 U.S. government begins permitting the full deduction of interest as part of a package to help companies struggling with World War I.

1919 The 48 U.S. states have the opportunity to create a state bank, but only one state—North Dakota—creates one.

1920 (May 18) The American Bankers Association's Orderly Deflation Committee holds a secret meeting. Subsequently, the Federal Reserve raises the discount rate from 2%-9%, causing problems and irreversible damage for agricultural commodity banks.

1922 Five-week Genoa Conference convenes 34 nations to try to address Europe's economic and political issues. Comes up with proposal for resuming the gold standard.

1923 Germany suffers extreme inflation.

1924 (August 26) Idaho Leader publishes comment from Montagu Norman, Governor of Bank of England, addressing the United States Bankers Association in New York: "Capital must protect itself in every possible way, both by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through process of law, the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of the government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers. These truths are well known among our principal men, who are now engaged in forming an imperialism to govern the world. By dividing the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance. It is thus, by discrete actions, we can ensure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished."

1925 Britain returns to gold standard.

1929 (March 9) Paul Warburg advises member banks and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon to get out of the stock market or sell it short.

1929 (October 24) Black Thursday, the first day of the stock market crash that begins the Great Depression. The market crashes when the Fed raises the rediscount rate to 6%.

1930 The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is established by an intergovernmental agreement between Germany, Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, the United States, and Switzerland.

1931 Britain goes off gold standard.

1932 Passage in U.S. of legislation known as the first Glass-Steagall Act. The Act expands bank credit by widening the range of assets against which Federal Reserve member banks can borrow.

1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Banking Act of 1933 (later referred to as the Glass-Steagall Act) within months of taking office. The Act’s main provisions separate commercial banking from investment banking. The Act also creates the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 6102 "forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States." The order is made under the authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the Emergency Banking Act the previous month. The limitation on gold ownership in the U.S. is repealed in 1974 after President Gerald Ford signs a bill legalizing private ownership of gold coins, bars, and certificates by an act of Congress, which goes into effect on December 31, 1974.

1934 (January 31) The Gold Reserve Act creates the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). "The fund began operations as of April 27, 1934, financed by $2 billion of the $2.8 billion paper profit that the government realized from devaluation, that is, from raising the price of gold to $35 an ounce from $20.67. This sum was deposited to its account with the Treasurer of the United States (Treasury AR 1935, Exhibit 40, p. 265). The fund was authorized to deal in gold and foreign exchange in order to stabilize the exchange value of the dollar, to invest any portion of the fund not currently required for stabilization purposes in direct obligations of the United States" (Schwartz, 1997). The ESF is excluded from the Congressional appropriations process and Treasury is not required to justify its expenditures or investments to Congress.

1934 U.S. National Housing Act becomes law, creating the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to finance long maturity mortgages with federal credit.

1938 The U.S. government creates the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae).

1941 The War Powers Act authorizes the U.S. Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund to serve as a holding pool for captured Nazi valuables—currency, gold, precious metals, and even stocks and bonds—seized as the Germans or other Axis governments attempt to smuggle them out of Europe.

1941 (April 25) The United States and China formally sign a $50 million stabilization agreement to support the Chinese currency.

1942 The Bank of Japan is reorganized under an Act modeled after Germany's Reichsbank Act of 1939. Both are state banks.

1944 Creation of the Bretton Woods system at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire prior to the end of World War II.

1945 Created by the Bretton Woods conference, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) comes into existence with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international payment system.

1945 (December 26) Creation of the CFA franc along with the CFP franc, the currencies used in the French colonies in Africa and the Pacific.

1945 Germany forges British sterling bills; forged bills are 12% of circulation.

1946 John Biggins invents the "Charg-It" card, the first credit card.

1947 (April) Founding of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

1947 The U.S. National Security Act of 1947 approves the "black budget." This legislation also creates the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Council (NSC).

1947 (November 29) The UN General Assembly adopts the Partition Plan for Palestine, Resolution 181(II).

1948 (May 14) Israel declares independence.

1948 The People's Bank of China (China's Central Bank) is established.

1949 (March 31) James Forrestal resigns as Secretary of Defense, removing from office the most effective opposition in the Truman Administration to a secret black budget and the creation of Israel.

1949 (May 11) Israel is admitted to the United Nations.

1949 (May 22) James Forrestal is assassinated in Bethesda, Maryland.

1949 (May 27) The CIA Act passes into law, permitting the Central Intelligence Agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures and exempting it from many of the usual limitations on the use of federal funds. The Act (Section 6) also exempts the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries or numbers of personnel employed." It also creates a program called PL-110 to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" outside normal immigration procedures, as well as give those persons cover stories and economic support.

1950 (March 1) The USSR issues golden rubles.

1950 (May 13) Diner's Club issues credit cards.

1951 (March 4) The U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve announce an accord restoring "independence" to the Fed.

1952 The U.S. Congress strips the Federal Reserve of authority to use credit controls.

1954 (March 22) The London gold market reopens, after having been closed since 1939.

1954 (May) The annual Bilderberg meeting is established to foster dialogue between Europe and North America.

1955 (March 1) Creation of Chase Manhattan through a merger of Chase National and Bank of the Manhattan Company Manhattan.

1955 (April 22) Congress orders coins to have the motto "In God We Trust."

1957 (October 1) "In God We Trust" added to U.S. paper currency.

1958 (October 1) American Express launches credit card.

1962 (February 13) The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) authorizes open market transactions in foreign currencies for the account of the Federal Reserve System. Before this, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York served as the agent only of the ESF in executing its limited foreign currency transactions. Since this date in 1962, it has served both the ESF and the Federal Reserve System.

1963 (November 22) President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.

1966 The Asian Development Bank is founded with Japan and America as the largest shareholders.

1967 (June 27) Barclays branch ATM launched in London area.

1968 (March 15) U.S. mint halts trading in gold.

1968 (March 18) President Johnson signs Public Law 90-269 removing gold backing from U.S. paper money.

1968 (May 24) The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) promulgates Rule 240.0-6 shielding classified information and documents from disclosure requirements under federal securities laws and providing for the disclosure of such information privately to the SEC: "Any requirement to the contrary notwithstanding, no registration statement, report, proxy statement or other document filed with the Commission or any securities exchange shall contain any document or information which, pursuant to Executive order, has been classified by an appropriate department or agency of the United States for protection in the interests of national defense or foreign policy."

1968 (June 6) Robert Kennedy is assassinated in California, immediately after winning the California primary.

1969 (October 29) Researchers at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute establish the first ARPANET link, hosting and establishing the technical core for the interconnected networking system that later becomes the Internet. By 1981, the number of hosts grows to 213.

1969 (December 23) U.S. Congress restores the Fed's use of credit controls with the Credit Control Act.

1969 The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), established in 1933, raises its limit to $20,000.

1969 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) creates the Special Drawing Right (SDR) as an alternative to gold or the dollar as reserve currency to finance global trade.

1970 An amendment to the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 allows the Secretary of the Treasury, with the President's authorization, to use ESF funds to "deal in gold, foreign exchange, and other instruments of credit and securities."

1970 (February) The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launches The Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) to back portfolios of mortgage loans.

1970 The U.S. creates The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) as another buyer and securitizer of mortgages.

1971 (February) The Nasdaq begins operations as the first electronic stock market, a network of some 500-plus dealers. The Nasdaq assumes most of the major trades previously executed by the Over-the-Counter (OTC) trading system.

1971 (August) President Nixon delinks the dollar from gold, called the "Nixon shock."

1971 (August 13) Britain requests to exchange U.S. dollars for gold.

1972 The Chicago futures market begins trading financial derivatives and currency futures.

1973 SWIFT is founded in Brussels, supported by 239 banks in 15 countries. The first message is sent in 1977, and SWIFT's first U.S. operating center opens in Virginia in 1979. The SWIFT secure messaging network is run from three data centers—one in the U.S., one in the Netherlands, and one in Switzerland. SWIFT uses submarine communications cables to transmit its data.

1974 Jack Bogle founds Vanguard Group, starting its first index fund the following year.

1975 The Group of Seven (G7) is formed.

1975 The Nixon administration and House of Saud enter into an agreement that results in the marriage of oil and the dollar—the "petrodollar."

1976 (April) Apple is founded.

1977 Launch of Metretek, Inc., a Florida-based company that develops and produces the first smart meters.

1977 (October 28) The U.S. passes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) authorizing the President to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to a threat that has its source, in whole or substantial part, outside the U.S.

1977 (December 19) U.S. amends the SEC Act of 1934 with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, allowing the Department of Justice (DOJ) and SEC to prosecute non-American enterprises and individuals with registered securities under the SEC Act for bribes, kickbacks, money laundering, and unlawful acts while operating abroad. The World Bank estimates that over $1 trillion is paid in bribes each year (approximately 5% of GDP). [Source: Luft and Korin, 2019.]

1978 (November 6) U.S. Bankruptcy Reform Act revises bankruptcy rules to allow companies to reorganize under Chapter 11, rather than liquidate under Chapter 7.

1978 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that national banks can charge customers any interest rate allowed by the institution's home state, thus making usury legal nationally.

1978 U.S. states begin to permit interstate banking.

1978 First prototype spacecraft launched for the NAVSTAR GPS satellite system. The U.S. Department of Defense started the GPS project in 1973, with the full constellation of 24 satellites operational by 1993. Originally limited to use by the U.S. military, civilian use was allowed from the 1980s.

1979 CompuServe becomes the first company to offer dial-in electronic mail (e-mail) services to personal computer users.

1979 (April 26) The U.S. Treasury fails to redeem $122 million of Treasury bills on time. The Treasury is also late in redeeming T-bills that become due on May 3 and May 10, 1979.

1979 (October 6) Paul Volcker, new chairman of the Federal Reserve, raises interest rates sharply, sending interest rates soaring.

1980 Voyager I completes its flyby of Saturn, sending pictures to earth of "the things in the ring." Shortly thereafter, the 1980s mortgage bubble begins with skyrocketing mortgage and financial fraud in the U.S. depository, S&L, and mortgage systems.

1980 (March 31) President Carter deregulates the banking industry.

1980 CNN launches as the first all-news, round-the-clock newscast.

1980 The U.S. Monetary Control Act deregulates interest rates.

1980 FDIC raises limit to $100,000.

1981 OTC derivatives begin with first currency "swap."

1981 (December 4) President Reagan issues Executive Order 12333 to allow the outsourcing of classified projects to private contractors. The order states: "Agencies within the Intelligence Community are authorized to enter into contracts or arrangements for the provision of goods or services with private companies or institutions in the United States and need not reveal the sponsorship of such contracts or arrangements for authorized intelligence purposes. Contracts or arrangements with academic institutions may be undertaken only with the consent of appropriate officials of the institution." (Section 2.7)

1982 (March 2) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) entered into between the Attorney General and the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) under Executive Order 12333 governing reporting of potential crimes. The MOU continues to require the CIA to report to DOJ possible violations of "any" federal laws—thereby including narcotics laws—by CIA employees. However, a change in the definition of "employee," moves agents, assets, and independent contractors to the "non-employee" category, thereby making the latter subject to the list of reportable offenses that does not include narcotics violations.

1982 (April 2) Issuance of Executive Order 12356, "National Security Information," containing U.S. classification policy. Information is considered classified if it concerns:

(1) Military plans, weapons, or operations;
(2) The vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects, or plans relating to the national security;
(3) Foreign government information;
(4) Intelligence activities (including special activities) or intelligence sources or methods;
(5) Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States;
(6) Scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to the national security;
(7) United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities;
(8) Cryptology;
(9) A confidential source; or
(10) Other categories of information that are related to the national security and that require protection against unauthorized disclosure as determined by the President or by agency heads or other officials who have been delegated original classification authority by the President. Any determination made under this subsection shall be reported promptly to the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office.

1983 (October) Hong Kong pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar.

1984 U.S. Federal Appeals Court legalizes national ATM machines.

1985 U.S. savings and loan (S&L) crisis begins.

1985 Gold Bullion Coin Act authorizes U.S. government to mint gold coins.

1985 (September 22) G5 (America, Japan, West Germany, France, and Britain) adopt the Plaza Accord to weaken the dollar and reduce trade deficits. U.S. dollar drops 25-plus percent.

1986 (January 3) British Banker's Association launches LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate).

1986 (April 3) U.S. national debt tops $2 trillion.

1986 (July 7) Supreme Court strikes down Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law.

1986 (September) China's first stock market opens in Shanghai.

1986 (September) The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) begins, lasting until 1993 and laying the groundwork for the World Trade Organization (WTO).

1986 (October 28) The Government Securities Act of 1986 authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to regulate brokers and dealers of government securities in conjunction with the SEC.

1986 (November 14) President Reagan signs into law the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA), essentially giving vaccine manufacturers and health providers blanket immunity from liability for injuries resulting from childhood vaccines. The Act also creates the taxpayer-funded National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP). Since the NVICP's creation, the program has compensated only a third of petitions filed, amounting to over $4.3 billion by mid-2020. According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the NCVIA "left the industry with little economic incentive to make vaccines safe" and also "removed lawyers, judges and courts from their traditional roles as guardians of vaccine safety."

1986 Inslaw—maker of Promis, an early case management software system—sues the Department of Justice. Inslaw accuses the Department of Justice of conspiring to steal its software, using the stolen software for covert intelligence operations against foreign governments, and involvement in a murder. The lawsuit results in several Justice Department internal reviews, two Congressional investigations, the appointment of a special counsel by Attorney General William P. Barr, and a lengthy review of the special counsel's report under Attorney General Janet Reno. Inslaw's claims are finally referred by Congress to the Court of Federal Claims in 1995, and the dispute ends with the Court's ruling against Inslaw in 1998.

1986 City of London implements financial "Big Bang" liberalization.

1987 (February 22) G6 agrees to lower dollar value (Louvre Accord).

1987 (June 2) President Reagan nominates Alan Greenspan to succeed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

1987 (October 19) Black Monday—the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) drops 22.6% in one trading day.

1987 The U.S. government give banks permission to sell bonds.

1989 (November) Launch of the world's first commercial Internet service provider (ISP), providing a direct connection to the Internet. By 1990, many ISPs are offering network access to commercial customers.

1989 (November 9) After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announces that all GDR citizens can visit West Germany and West Berlin. Demolition of the Berlin Wall begins in 1990. The collapse of communism spreads in Eastern Europe. The Deutsche Mark is introduced as the official currency of East Germany in July 1990, replacing the East German mark (Mark der DDR), in preparation for unification on October 3, 1990.

1989 U.S. passes Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, creating the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to manage the bailout and cleanup of the S&L industry and related black budget fraud.

1990-1992 Eight hundred-plus bank failures follow the creation of the RTC. FDIC fund turns insolvent in 1991.

1991 Founding of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to help free markets take root in the ex-communist countries of central and eastern Europe.

1991 (December 8) Soviet Union dissolves.

1992 Maastricht Treaty is signed, with goal of creating a single European currency by 1999.

1993 (December 8) President Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) into law. Following significant opposition, Congress approves NAFTA only after the addition of two side agreements on labor and the environment.

1994 (January 1) NAFTA goes into effect, making the Canada-Mexico-United States trading bloc one of the largest (by GDP) in the world.

1994 (June) Credit default swaps (CDSs) are developed.

1994 (July) Amazon is founded.

1994 (August 16) The first smartphone—the IBM Simon Personal Communicator—goes on sale for $1,100, distributed by BellSouth. It remains on the market for only six months, selling 50,000 units. The term "smartphone" is not coined until 1995.

1994 (September) Charlie Rose interviews Sir James Goldsmith. Goldsmith lobbies Congress not to pass the latest round of GATT or create the World Trade Organization.

1994 Mexican peso drops 50% in "tequila crisis."

1994 The U.S. Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act authorizes banks to branch across state borders.

1994 The U.S. passes the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, setting the stage for private prisons and domestic slave labor camps, draining excess manual labor no longer needed with globalization.

1994 China establishes an official exchange rate and pegs the yuan or renminbi at about 8.28 to the U.S. dollar.

1995 Barings Bank fails.

1995 (January 1) The World Trade Organization (WTO) commences, replacing GATT (although GATT still exists as a treaty within the WTO).

1995 Former Lehman Partner Michael M. Thomas publishes Black Money, a financial thriller describing the compromising of the global financial system by a version of Promis software.

1995 (March 28) Mitsubishi Bank and the Bank of Tokyo merge to create the world's largest bank.

1995 (April 19) Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. U.S. Congress passes the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which "tightens" the standards for habeas corpus.

1995 (August 3) 1982 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Attorney General and the DCI under Executive Order 12333 governing reporting of potential crimes ends.

1995 (November) U.S. Congress fails to achieve budget agreement, resulting in government shutdown.

1995 (December) FDA approves OxyContin.

1996 President Clinton signs the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major overhaul of the Communications Act of 1934. Despite the stated goal of promoting competition, the telecommunications industry becomes increasingly monopolistic after the Act's passage.

1996 (March 25) Redesigned $100 bill goes into circulation.

1996 (August) San Jose Mercury News publishes a three-part series entitled "Dark Alliance" by Gary Webb.

1996 (September) Multiple attacks (by HUD, DOJ, and media) target Hamilton Securities. Attacks designed to destroy financial controls at FHA/HUD, drive out or scare the honest people, and seize and control Hamilton's suite of software tools, including Community Wizard. With Hamilton and internal financial controls out of the way, Treasury, the Fed, DOJ, and HUD proceed to engineer the housing bubble and $750,000,000,000 disappears from HUD through 2015.

1997 Asian financial crisis grips much of East Asia and Southeast Asia beginning in July, raising fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion.

1997 A Swiss federal law makes money-laundering a criminal offense.

1997 Founding of Netflix.

1997 (October 1) Large amounts of money start to go missing from U.S. agencies (DOD and HUD), totaling $21 trillion by 2015.

1997 (4th Quarter) The investment world is shocked by the ability of Carlyle Group to raise mysterious billions for their private equity funds, including for China investent.

1997 (December 17) CIA Inspector General (IG) issues classified first volume of report on CIA drug dealing during Iran-Contra, titled "The California Story."

1998 (January 29) CIA IG issues unclassified first volume of report on CIA drug dealing during Iran-Contra.

1998 (April 27) CIA IG issues classified second volume of report on CIA drug dealing during Iran-Contra ("The Contra Story").

1998 (July 31) The Canadian dollar hits a historical low of 66.10 cents to $1US.

1998 (August 17) The Fed approves the megamerger of NationsBank and BankAmerica.

1998 (August 17) Russian government defaults, triggering capital flight from the emerging markets.

1998 (September) Google is founded.

1998 (October 8) Impeachment of Bill Clinton begins.

1998 (October 8) One hour after impeachment (and over five months after publishing classified version on April 27), CIA IG publishes unclassified second volume of report on CIA drug dealing during Iran-Contra.

1999 (January 1) The euro is introduced to world financial markets as an accounting currency. Physical euro coins and banknotes enter into circulation on January 1, 2002, replacing former currencies within two months.

1999 (April 4) Alibaba Group is founded in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

1999 European banks begin offering mobile banking with primitive smartphones.

1999 (November 12) President Clinton signs Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, repealing Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

2000 (April 16) Protests disrupt the annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF in Washington.

2000 (May 6) The Chiang Mai Initiative is set up to help cash-strapped East Asian countries defend their currencies. The initiative—formulated in Chiang Mai, Thailand at an annual meeting involving the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, Japan, and South Korea—comes in response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The initiative launches a series of bilateral currency swap arrangements to manage regional short-term liquidity problems and avoid reliance on the IMF.

2000 (November) Saddam Hussein decrees that all future payments for Iraqi oil will be made in euros.

2000 The Swiss franc sheds its partial gold standard.

2001 Doha Round of GATT is begun—and has not yet completed as of February 2020.

2001 (January 1) Greece becomes 12th country to join the euro.

2001 (September 11) False flag operations destroy three World Trade Center buildings in New York and destroy offices at Pentagon said to be investigating the money missing from DOD and HUD.

2001 (October) U.S. Treasury stops selling 30-year bonds.

2001 (October 7) U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins.

2001 (October 26) President Bush signs the USA PATRIOT Act into law. Among many other changes, the law enhances IEEPA asset-blocking provision to permit blocking of assets during the "pendency of an investigation." This statutory change gives the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control power to block assets without the need to provide evidence of the blocking subject's wrongdoing nor to permit the blocking subject a chance to effectively respond to the allegations in court.

2001 (November 6) The Federal Reserve lowers interest rates for the tenth time since January.

2002 The average CEO in the U.S. earns 282 times the salary of an average worker. In 1982, the ratio was 42 to 1.

2003 PayPal, an online payments company acquired by eBay, sets up offices in Ireland with 25 people.

2003 (March 19) U.S. invades Iraq.

2004 (February 4) Facebook is founded.

2004 (February 18) U.S. federal debt passes the $7 trillion mark.

2004 (July 17) Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launches wallet phone.

2004 (October 2) IMF and World Bank officials in Washington, DC fail to resolve differences over debt relief for the world's poorest countries and Iraq.

2005 (January 26) The World Economic Forum, Chinese economist say China has lost faith in the stability of the U.S. dollar.

2005 (April 20) President Bush signs new bankruptcy reform to make individual bankruptcy more difficult.

2005 (May 19) JPMorgan Chase launches a no-swipe plastic credit card with embedded chip and RFID technology.

2005 (June 30) The U.S. Federal Reserve raises interest rates by a quarter point, marking the ninth increase since tightening began in 2004.

2005 (September) A 2005 UN agreement on Int. Health Regulations “in order to strengthen coordination mechanisms” by 2020 … “The U.N. conducts at least two systemwide training and simulation exercises, including one covering the deliberate release of a lethal respiratory pathogen.”https://twitter.com

2005 (December) Congress approves the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) "to issue a PREP Act Declaration . . . that provides immunity from liability for any loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats, and conditions determined in the Declaration to constitute a present or credible risk of a future public health emergency."

2006 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants fast-tracked approval to Merck's Gardasil vaccine, which goes on to become a global blockbuster. The FDA's willingness to approve Gardasil and overlook the vaccine's highly flawed clinical trials comes just two years after Merck is forced to withdraw its drug Vioxx—linked to tens of thousands of deaths—from the market.

2006 (January 31) Alan Greenspan retires and Ben Bernanke becomes new Fed chairman.

2006 (August) Goldman Sachs engineers the "Big Short," starting the implosion in the U.S. mortgage markets.

2006 (November) Foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, and China meet during General Debate of UN Assembly to create a BRICS group, with the first meeting in Russia in June 2009. After this meeting, they announce the need for a new global currency, triggering a fall in the U.S. dollar.

2007 Financial crisis begins, following implosion of U.S. subprime housing market in 2006.

2007 Iran requires that payments be made in euros.

2007 (January 11) The U.S. government claims to have found Canadian coins with tiny radiofrequency transmitters hidden inside planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006.

2007 (February) The U.S. National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners passes a resolution to eliminate regulatory barriers to the widespread implementation of smart meters.

2007 (June 29) Apple releases first iPhone.

2007-2008 Under the Omnibus Autism Proceeding (OAP), Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers dismiss roughly 5,400 families who had filed claims with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program alleging vaccine-induced autism. In 2018, one of the OAP parents alleges DOJ fraud and obstruction of justice during the OAP and asks the DOJ Inspector General and Congress to investigate.

2008 Fed negotiates foreign swap lines with foreign central banks.

2008 (January 1) EU newcomers Cyprus and Malta adopt the euro.

2008 (January 1) Venezuela launches a new currency.

2008 (February 17) Inauguration of the Iranian Oil Bourse, intended as an oil bourse in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. First shipments through this market are made in July, 2011.

2008 (March 16) JPMorgan announces purchase of Bear Stearns for $2 per share.

2008 (August 18) Registration of "bitcoin.org." On October 31, 2008, a paper authored by "Satoshi Nakamoto" titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" is posted to a cryptography mailing list. Bitcoin software as open-source code is released in January 2009, introducing blockchain technology.

2008 (September 16) Fed agrees to a two-year $85 billion loan to insurance giant American International Group (AIG) in exchange for a 79.9% equity stake.

2008 (September 19) U.S. temporarily bans short-selling financial stocks.

2008 (September 23) The Bush administration presses Congress to move quickly on a $700 billion bank bailout.

2008 (September 29) The U.S. House of Representatives rejects the Bush administration's $700 billion emergency rescue plan. Democrats vote 140 to 90 in favor, while Republicans vote 133-65 against the plan.

2008 (October 3) The U.S. House of Representatives votes 263-171 for the $700 billion economic rescue plan.

2008 (October 7) Fed announces plan to buy massive amounts of short-term debt, lending unsecured to companies for the first time in its history.

2008 (October 8) Six central banks cut interest rates together in an attempt to shore up confidence.

2008 (October 9) Iceland suspends trading on its stock exchange and takes control of country's largest bank.

2008 (October 13) Fed says it will provide unlimited dollars to the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Swiss National Bank.

2008 (October 13) Europe puts $2.3 trillion on the line to protect the continent's banks,

2008 (October 14) President Bush announces $250 billion plan by the government to directly buy shares in nine of the nation's leading banks.

2008 (October 16) Authorities in Malaysia and Singapore say they will guarantee all foreign currency and local currency bank deposits.

2008 (October 16) Switzerland recapitalizes UBS AG, investing $5.3 billion in return for 9% equity.

2008 (October 20) The French government allocates €10.5 billion among six of its banks.

2008 IMF bails out Pakistan.

2008 (October 24) Iceland borrows $2 billion from IMF.

2008 (October 25) Asian and European leaders pledge $4 trillion to protect global economy.

2008 (November 12) U.S. prosecutes Swiss UBS AG executive for helping rich clients evade U.S. taxes.

2008 (November 14-15) Agreement at G20 Washington Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy on how to cooperate in key areas so as to strengthen economic growth, deal with 2008 financial crisis, and lay foundation for reform to avoid similar crises in the future.

2008 (November 25) The U.S. Federal Reserve announces purchase of up to $600 billion in mortgage-backed assets.

2008 (December 10) Bernie Madoff's sons turn their father in to authorities, reporting that his firm's asset management unit is a massive Ponzi scheme. JPMorgan is the asset management unit's only banker, fully knowledgable that Madoff has never purchased securities with account funds.

2008 China experiences a 30% drop in exports and 20 million workers lose their jobs within months of Wall Street's collapse, worsening economic damage caused by the deadly May 2008 Sichuan earthquake. China responds by acquiring over half of the U.S. Treasuries (worth $600 billion) the U.S. is offering to central banks globally. It also implements an unprecedented stimulus package. For example, China uses more concrete in two years than was used by the U.S. during the whole 20th century (Luft and Korin, 2019 Kindle edition, 969-980).

2009 The euro becomes immersed in sovereign-debt crisis, leading to the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility.

2009 The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) provides the Department of Energy with $4.5 billion for the smart grid. The Recovery Act also funds a variety of other smart grid programs.

2009 (March 9) At the Second South America-Arab League Summit in Qatar, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez proposes the creation of a petro-currency to be backed by the huge oil reserves of the oil-producing countries.

2009 (March 16) Kremlin calls for supranational reserve currency to be issued by international financial institutions as part of global financial reform at April 2009 G20 Summit.

2009 (March 24) Zhou Xiachuan, former head of the People's Bank of China, calls for "creative reform of the existing international monetary system towards an international reserve currency" that is independent of the U.S. dollar as well as the currency of any individual nation.

2009 (April 27) The Wall Street Journal runs an article titled, "Smart meter, dumb idea?"

2009 (June 7) Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia sign an agreement for a monetary union and plans for a unified regional currency.

2009 (June 17) The Obama administration proposes an overhaul of the financial system, including new powers for the Federal Reserve to supervise systemically important institutions.

2009 (July 10) Russian president at G8 Summit expresses Russia's desire for a new supranational reserve currency by showing off a coin minted with the words "unity in diversity." The coin, an example of a future world currency, emphasizes his call for creating a mix of regional currencies as a way to address the global financial crisis.

2010 Julie Gerberding becomes head of Merck's vaccine division, after having served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2002 to 2009. During Gerberding's tenure as CDC director, she oversees the addition of Merck's Gardasil vaccine to the CDC list of recommended vaccines and silences whistleblowers speaking up about destruction of data showing autism risks linked to Merck's MMR vaccine, Merck fraud pertaining to the MMR's mumps component, and the contribution of Merck's chickenpox vaccine to a shingles epidemic.

2010 A report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) calls for abandoning the U.S. dollar as the single major reserve currency. The report states that the new reserve system should not be based on a single currency or even multiple national currencies but instead should permit the emission of international liquidity to create a more stable global financial system.

2010 Gaddafi announces the creation of a gold dinar, a replacement for the settlement of foreign transactions in African region. At the time, Libya has 144 tons of gold.

2010 (January) Apple launches the iPad.

2010 (March 1) The Wall Street Journal reports that Donna-Bea Tillman, the director of the Office of Device Evaluation at the FDA, will join the Washington office of Microsoft Corp., where she will "beef up the development of medical information-technology systems and expand the profile of its health group in Washington."

2010 (March 18) Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is passed, requiring all non-U.S financial institutions to report the assets and identities of U.S.-related persons to U.S. Treasury. FATCA also requires such persons to report their non-U.S. financial assets annually to the IRS in addition to the FBAR form to FinCen. FATCA is a logistical nightmare for foreign financial institutions, with numerous institutions asking U.S. customers to leave.

2010 (March 23) The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—or colloquially as Obamacare—is enacted, providing for the digitization and tech takeover of U.S. health care and health records. Health care stocks then lead the U.S. equity rally for several years.

2010 (March 24) The bilateral Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) swap agreements established in 2000 transition to a multilateral currency swap arrangement drawing from a foreign exchange reserves pool worth US$120 billion in March 2010. The pool expands to $240 billion in 2012.

2010 (March 31) The Gates Foundation announces the hiring of Richard Henriques, former senior vice president of finance and corporate controller of Merck, where he focused on operations, governance, strategic planning, performance measurement, and cost management within the pharmaceutical and pharmacy benefit management industries.

2010 (July 21) President Obama signs financial overhaul legislation.

2010 (August 17) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signs a new law that excludes private brokerages from trading local currency or public sector dollar-denominated debt.

2010 (September 3) The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision agrees on Basel III, with new requirements for bank liquidity and capital.

2010 (November 3) The U.S. Federal Reserve announces second round of quantitative easing (QE2) by buying $600 billion more in Treasury bonds.

2010 (December 5) Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) becomes the first regulated market to trade the renminbi outside China.

2011 (January 1) Japan makes an agreement with China to trade in national currencies.

2011 (January) An IMF report calls for a stronger role for SDRs in order to stabilize the global financial system. For most countries (except for those using the U.S. dollar as their currency) there would be several advantages in switching the pricing of certain assets, such as oil and gold, from dollars to SDRs. For some commentators that amounts to a call for a "new world currency that would challenge the dominance of the dollar."

2011 (February 22) The U.S. Supreme Court rules, in Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, that the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act "preempts all design-defect claims against vaccine manufacturers brought by plaintiffs who seek compensation for injury or death caused by vaccine side effects." In the decision, the majority concedes that vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe." Dissenting Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg predict that the ruling will create a "regulatory vacuum."

2011 (March) The California Public Utilities Commission announces that Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers can opt out of smart meters.

2011 (March 17) The U.S. and France invade Libya and engineer regime change, with NATO and UK support. Libya's gold disappears.

2011 (May 18) Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigns as Managing Director of the IMF after being arrested by New York police on May 15 over allegations of sexual assault. While Strauss-Kahn is on a plane about to take off, airport police ask that the plane be stopped and escort him off the plane to be interviewed by police. The case is later settled for an undisclosed amount.

2011 (May 23) Square unveils a new digital payment system that undercuts credit card processing fees charged to small businesses.

2011 (June 28) Christine Lagarde is appointed Managing Director of the IMF.

2011 (June 29) The U.S. Federal Reserve slashes the fees that banks charge for debit card transactions.

2011 (July 5) Moody's says China's local government debt burden may be 3.5 trillion yuan ($540 billion), larger than auditors had estimated.

2011 (August 6) S&P downgrades U.S. credit rating to AA+, four days after Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling by means of the Budget Control Act. Later, the U.S. government commences an investigation into S&P’s role in the rating of several mortgage-backed securities that played a role in the 2008 Financial Crisis. To mend its relationship with the U.S. government, S&P asks its then-CEO (Deven Sharma) to step down, 18 days after the rating downgrade.

2011 (October 21) European finance ministers agree to pay Greece $11 billion in its next batch of bailout loans, avoiding default.

2011 (December 31) Basel 2.5 takes effect in most European and major world financial jurisdictions to address concerns over banks' capital requirements.

2012 Magnitsky Act expands U.S. powers to seize and sanction globally.

2012 (February 17) Swiss authorities confiscate $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. bonds.

2012 (February 21) Greece reaches an agreement on $172 billion in loans through 2014 from the EU governments and the IMF.

2012 (April 9) Bruno Iksil (aka the "London Whale"), a London-based JPMorgan derivatives trader, is reported to have amassed positions so large that he drives price moves in the $10-trillion market, losing the bank approximately $6 billion. In 2013, JPMorgan Chase is fined around $1 billion by various authorities for failures related to trades by Iksil.

2012 (June 1) Japan and China begin direct currency trading between the Japanese yen and Chinese renminbi. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation acts as the first major Japanese bank to accept deposits in renminbi.

2012 (June 20) The U.S. Federal Reserve announces Operation Twist, purchasing $267 billion of long-term bonds paid for from sales of short-term bonds in its portfolio.

2012 (December 11) People's Bank of China authorizes Bank of China (Taipei) to serve as RMB clearing bank in Taiwan.

2020 (December 2020) In connection with announcing a fine of HSBC, the US Department of Justice confirms their policy of not enforcing criminal laws relative to large financial institutions due to the possibility of “collateral consequences” to the financial recovery.

2013 Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden makes public that the National Security Agency (NSA) is monitoring SWIFT traffic.

2013 Xi Jinping introduces the Belt and Road Initiative, in part as a means of channeling the significant "excess capacities" created by the massive stimulus introduced after the 2008 financial crisis (Luft and Korin, 2019 Kindle edition, 980-990).

2013 Singapore becomes the world's third largest foreign exchange (FX) hub, behind the UK and U.S. In October, plans for the Singapore dollar to trade directly against the renminbi are finalized.

2013 (July) Transparency International reports that one in four people paid a bribe in the past year, based on a survey of 114,000 respondents in 107 countries. The World Bank estimates that the equivalent of $1 trillion is offered in bribes every year.

2012-2014 As China becomes Australia's largest trading partner, Australia make a series of agreements with China to trade in national currencies, increase cross-border liquidity, and establish clearing agreements.

2013 Brazil makes an agreement with China at BRICS summit to trade in Brazilian real and Chinese yuan.

2013 (March 16) In Cyprus, depositors drain cash from ATMs after European officials rule that part of a 10-billion-euro bailout must be paid for directly from the bank accounts of ordinary savers. An emergency deal in Brussels sets a levy of 9.9% on Cypriot bank deposits of more than 100,000 euros and 6.75% on less. The possibility that G7 nations may shave or abrogate deposit insurance and guarantees sends shockwaves around the globe.

2013 (March 18) The CIA awards $600 million cloud computing contract to Amazon. The Amazon cloud services all 17 agencies that make up the intelligence community.

2013 (April 8) Australia and China agree to trade their currencies directly.

2013 (May 15) Google announces app for emailing money through Google Wallet.

2013 (November 30) Five east African countries sign a protocol to establish a monetary union, modeled after the eurozone.

2013 Juan Zarate publishes his book on U.S. financial sanctions, Treasury's War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.

2014 China opens link between Hong Kong and Shanghai stock market.

2014 Stephen Roach, retired Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, publishes Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.

2014 (February-March) The Russian Federation annexes the Crimean Peninsula. The annexation from Ukraine follows a Russian military intervention in Crimea that takes place in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and is part of wider unrest across southern and eastern Ukraine.

2014 (February 28) Japan-based Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange in Tokyo files for bankruptcy protection. Some $378 million in bitcoin will end up missing.

2014 (March) The G8 temporarily suspends Russia after the annexation of Crimea, and G8 becomes G7 again as it was before 1997 when Russia was invited to join. In January 2017, Russia announces it has no intention of rejoining.

2014 (April 10-12) On April 12, a Russian Su-24 tactical bomber flies over the USS Donald Cook (which entered Black Sea waters on April 10). The U.S. vessel—a 4th-generation guided missile destroyer—is outfitted with over 150 long-range Tomahawk missiles (in "standard" and "attack" mode); more than 50 anti-aircraft missiles for protection; four large radars; and an integrated naval weapons system that can link the systems of "all vessels embedded within the same network, so as to ensure the detection, tracking, and destruction of hundreds of targets at the same time." The Russian Su-24 carries an electronic warfare device but no bombs or missiles. This device electronically disables everything on board, leaving the USS Donald Cook "literally deaf and blind." The Russian Su-24 then simulates a missile attack and repeats the simulated maneuver 12 times before departing. [Source: "What spooked the USS Donald Cook so much in the Black Sea?" at voltairenet.org.]

2014 (June 18) People's Bank of China appoints China Construction Bank (London) to serve as the RMB clearing bank in London. The UK leads Europe with 123.6% growth in RMB payment between July 2013 and July 2014.

2014 (June 19) Based on a MOU with Bundesbank, the People's Bank of China authorizes Frankfurt Branch of PBoC to serve as the RMB clearing bank in Frankfurt. China is the EU's number-one supplier of goods, and Germany is China's largest EU trading partner.

2014 (July 4) People's Bank of China appoints Bank of Communication (Seoul) as the RMB clearing bank in South Korea.

2014 (July 24) People's Bank of China and the Swiss National Bank sign a bilateral currency swap agreement.

2014 (July) The BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) sign an agreement establishing the multilateral New Development Bank, formerly referred to as the BRICS Development Bank.

2014 (August 27) CDC whistleblower William Thompson issues public statement describing the omission of "statistically significant information" in a 2004 paper published by CDC in Pediatrics. Thompson states, "The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism."

2014 (September) President Obama hosts the first meeting of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) at the White House, seven months after countries, international and nongovernmental organizations, and private-sector companies form the G7-endorsed GHSA to "elevate global health security as a national and global priority." One of the GHSA's 11 Action Packages focuses on vaccination. As of March 2020, 67 countries have signed on.

2014 (November 8) Canada becomes the first country in the Americas to sign a reciprocal currency deal with China, enabling direct business between the Canadian dollar and the Chinese yuan.

2015 (January 19) Oxfam International reports that the richest 1% of the global population owns more than half the world's wealth.

2015 (September 30) The US federal fiscal 2016 with $6.5 trillion of undocumentable adjustments at DOD and approximate $300 billion at HUD. Following the end of the fiscal year, before the financials are published, Lockheed Martin spins out its government ID division to Leidos.

2015 (October 5) The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) announces that it has granted a charter under the New York Banking Law to bitcoin exchange Gemini Trust Company, LLC.

2015 The European immigrant crisis begins; with Brexit, it diminishes the growing importance of the euro.

2015 China allows foreign central banks to trade on China on-shore foreign exchange market and negotiates foreign exchange swaps with numerous central banks—29 at last count (11 in Asia, 10 in Europe, and 8 in other regions). The largest foreign exchange swap agreement is with the European Central Bank (ECB); the euro is China's largest export market after the U.S. and UK. China also continues working with foreign regulators to designate Chinese financial institutions as official clearing banks for foreign financial centers. (Note: Designating an official clearing bank enables financial institutions in a foreign financial center to trade Chinese currency for local currency directly without having to go through the dollar.) Before October 2013, only Hong Kong had an official renminbi clearing bank. Since then, more than a dozen official clearing banks have been designated for financial centers—from Seoul to Qatar to London and New York—and China has set up multilateral swap arrangements with a variety of regional partners.

2015 French bank BNP Paribas enters into $8.97 billion settlement with U.S. for violating sanctions against Iran, Sudan, and Cuba.

2015 (October 8) China takes the Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) live as an alternative protocol to SWIFT, sending payment orders that must be settled by correspondent banks.

2016 (February) German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble states at the Shanghai G20 meeting, "The debt-financed growth model has reached its limits…. If you want the real economy to grow, there are no shortcuts which avoid reforms."

2016 (February 18) Apple, Inc. launches smartphone-based payment system in China.

2016 (March 25) CIPS signs MOU with SWIFT.

2016 (June 23) United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union.

2016 (July 20) The U.S. government moves to seize more than $1 billion in assets purchased with money that it believes was stolen from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

2016 (July 22) A Florida judge says that bitcoin is not real money. The ruling means that no specific license is needed to buy and sell the cryptocurrency.

2016 (October 1) The IMF adds the renminbi to its SDR basket with a weighting of 10.92 (U.S. dollar 41.73%, euro 30.93%, renminbi 10.92%, yen 8.33%, British pound 8.09%).

2016 (November 8) Indian Prime Minister Modi announces cancellation of 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes from the financial system at midnight, converting India to digital currencies and payment systems by the shock method. The discontinued notes represent 86% of circulating currency. Modi adds that new 500- and 2,000-rupee denomination notes will be issued later.

2016 (November 9) Donald Trump is elected President of the United States.

2016 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust (two of the biggest funders of vaccine development and vaccine programs) launch the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in partnership with vaccine manufacturers and the governments of Germany, Japan, and Norway. CEPI's stated purpose is to "give the world an insurance policy against epidemics."

2017 U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin threatens to ban China from SWIFT.

2017 (January 23) President Trump withdraws U.S. from Trans-Pacific Partnership.

2017 (January 23) Italian researchers (and spouses) Gatti and Montanari publish article in the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination that reveals the nearly universal contamination of vaccines with heavy metal particulates ("micro, sub-micro- and nanosized"), unintended protein aggregates, and "debris." The two researchers, experts in nanopathology and nanotoxicology, receive violent threats on social media, and the journal is pressured to unpublish the study. In February 2018, Italian police raid their offices and home and seize their computers and data.

2017 (May 6) The Economist declares, "The world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.'

2017 (June 1) President Trump announces that the U.S. will cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation.

2017 (June) MSCI announces its intention to include China A-shares in the MSCI Emerging Market Index.

2017 (August 1) Wisconsin tech company 32M becomes first U.S. company to offer employees microchip implants, partnering with Swedish company Biohax International to inject the implants with pre-loaded syringes.

2017 (September 19) Chinese banking regulators in Beijing and Shanghai order local cryptocurrency exchanges to shut down.

2017 (September 28) Dr. Mark Skidmore publishes Summary Report on “Unsupported Journal Voucher Adjustments” in the Financial Statements of the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development documenting $21 Trillion of undocumentable adjustments at DOD and HUD since fiscal 1998.

2017 (October 13) South Korea and China agree to extend their currency swap arrangement.

2017 (December 21) Switzerland's financial market regulator says the Swiss division of JPMorgan "seriously breached" anti-money laundering rules relating to the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

2017 (December) South Korea bans anonymous trading of virtual currencies.

2017 (December 30) Chinese announce tightening of rules on how much cash cardholders can withdraw overseas.

2018 In 2004, it was expected that payments in 2018 would begin to exceed revenues in the U.S. Social Security retirement system.

2018 Russia announces a comprehensive de-dollarization plan that includes selling almost all Treasury holdings—roughly $110 billion—and replacing the dollars with gold. (Russia's gold holdings now amount to more than $100 billion.) The plan also involves shifting import-export transactions from dollars to national currencies (primarily ruble, euro, and yuan) and providing incentives to businesses that settle in rubles.
[Source: Luft and Korin, 2019.]

2018 French bank Société Generale agrees to pay $1.34 billion to settle investigations into its handling of dollar transactions in violation of U.S. sanctions.

2018 U.S. electric utilities reach 86.8 million installations of advanced metering infrastructure (smart meters), about 88% of which is in the residential sector.

2018 (January 2) Ant Financial, part of Alibaba, cancels $1.2 billion deal to buy U.S. money transfer service MoneyGram when it becomes clear the U.S. government is unlikely to approve the merger.

2018 (March 21) Forty-four African nations sign on to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade agreement since the creation of the WTO in 1995.

2018 (March 26) The first trades in crude oil futures denominated in yuan, commonly referred to as petro-yuan, appear on the screens of the Shanghai International Energy Exchange.

2018 (May 5) The U.S. announces its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—also known as the "Iran nuclear deal" or the "Iran deal"—and the reimposition of sanctions. The JCPOA agreement on Iran's nuclear program was reached in July 2015 by Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany), also called E3/EU+3.

2018 (August) Venezuela declares it will price its oil in euros, yuan, and other currencies.

2018 (September) AI pioneer and venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee publishes AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.

2018 (September 20) European Commission President Juncker says, in his State of the Union, "It is absurd that Europe pays for 80 percent of its energy import bill—worth 300 billion euros a year—in U.S. dollars when only roughly 2 percent of our energy imports come from the United States."

2018 (September 30) Deadline that DOD gave itself for producing auditable financial statements.

2018 (October 4) Several months after beginning the promised FY 2018 DOD audit, the government accepts the recommendations of the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) and publishes final FASAB Statement 56, with little if any change from the exposure draft. (For a summary, see page 3: https://fas.org/sgp/news/2018/07/fasab-review.pdf.) Statement 56 allows government officials to misstate and move funds around to hide expenditures if it is deemed necessary for national security purposes. The rule applies to all agencies, not just the black budget. The report states: "This Statement permits modifications that do not affect net results of operations or net position. In addition, this Statement allows a component reporting entity to be excluded from one reporting entity and consolidated into another reporting entity, and the effect of the modification may change the net results of operations and/or net position." From this statement, it seems that only a few people with high-level security clearances have the authority to determine what is a national security issue, and Statement 56 allows these same people to restate budgets to hide activity. No one but those few people would ever know that expenditures on a given activity are hidden in a completely different area of government.

2018 (October-November) India signs an agreement with Iran to pay for oil in rupees to sidestep U.S. sanctions. India also signs a deal with Russia to purchase S-400 missile systems, transacting in rubles and rupees. After initially threatening to sanction India, the U.S. proposes a sanctions waiver on the condition that India buy American F-16s.

2018 (November 28) President Putin says that Russia will further cut its dependency on dollars after becoming the target of increasingly severe U.S. sanctions.

2018 (November 30) The Vatican joins the European Payments Council and the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

2018 (December) Brussels calls for a stronger international role for the euro, including energy agreements denominated in euros and an EU payment system.

2018 (December 6) U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, Ambassador Kurt Volker, threatens to ban Russia from SWIFT.

2018 (December 9) Gerald Cotten, the CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, dies. He is reportedly the only person with keys and passwords to access $250 million in client accounts.

2019 Since Federal Reserve went operational in 1914, the U.S. dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power. Since 1910, the U.S. national debt has grown from $2.6 billion to $22 trillion with unfunded liabilities for social security and health care benefits estimated at $240 trillion.

2019 (January) Germany, France, and the UK introduce INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges). The intent of the special-purpose vehicle is to facilitate transactions between Iran and Europe that bypass the U.S. dollar and SWIFT so as to protect EU banks against legal exposure for breaking sanctions against Iran. Five additional countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden) announce on November 29, 2019, that they will join the INSTEX mechanism.

2019 (March) Italy endorses China's Belt and Road Initiative and signs related commercial deals. Italy also borrows money (in yuans) in China's $12 trillion bond market.

2019 (May) The annual Bilderberg Meeting is held in Switzerland. Their number-one topic is "a stable world order."

2019 (May 24) SpaceX launches its first 60 operational Starlink satellites.

2019 (June) Russian economist and Putin adviser Sergey Glazyev states, "The U.S. is the most powerful economy in the world. If we want to avoid dollar hegemony, the first thing we need to do is to avoid using dollars, because the foundation of the U.S. economy is based on the dollar reserves owned by other countries and this has given it the ability and confidence to press other countries to play by its rules. U.S. influence would eventually be weakened if we do so."

2019 (June 6) Xi Jinping and Putin reach currency agreement. The draft decree states, "Settlements and payments for goods, service and direct investments between economic entities of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China are made in accordance with the international practice and the legislation of the sides' states with the use of foreign currency, the Russian currency (rubles) and the Chinese currency (yuan)."

2019 (July) JPMorgan strategist Craig Cohen writes in note to investors, "We believe the dollar could lose its status as the world's dominant currency (which could see it depreciate over the medium term) due to structural reasons as well as cyclical impediments."

2019 (July) Elon Musk gives presentation about Neuralink brain-machine interfaces, a technology that he views as allowing a "merging with AI." Musk states that he expects to have Neuralink in a human patient by the end of 2020. Harvard professor Charles Lieber, an expert in nanotechnology and "ultraflexible mesh electronics," is one of the top scientists in dialogue with Musk and Neuralink.

2019 (July 20) The G7 finance ministers agree to a Crypto Action Plan.

2019 (late July) Bohemian Grove meets.

2019 (August) President Erdogan says that Turkey's trade with China, Russia, and Ukraine will use national currencies. This statement follows similar agreements reached in 2018 with Iran and Russia to trade in national currencies. In 2018, Erdogan also calls on Turks to convert their dollars and euros into Turkish lira.

2019 (August) G7 central bankers meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming to review "Going Direct" plan by former central bankers of Switzerland, Canada, the U.S., and Israel now working at BlackRock, an investment manager of $7 trillion in stock and bond funds soon retained by the Fed to manage some of its "Going Direct" portfolios. Mark Carney of the Bank of England gives an interview stating that the world's reliance on the U.S. dollar "won't hold" and needs to be replaced by a new international monetary and financial system based on many more global currencies.

2019 (September) French President Macron gives speech to French ambassadors after the French host G7 meeting. Macron declares the failure of the unipolar model due to American failures and mistakes over several administrations and proposes a radical rethinking of strategy going forward to adapt to the emerging multipolar world and the rise of China.

2019 (September 17) U.S. Federal Reserve begins a repo loan bailout program, making hundreds of billions of dollars a week in loans by "going direct" to the trading houses on Wall Street.

2019 (September 19) U.S. Navy confirms that three F-18 gun camera videos first released by The New York Times and a UFO research organization show "unidentified aerial phenomena" or UAPs—a more formal term for UFOs. The implication is that the U.S. military does not control U.S. air space.

2019 (September 19) The ID2020 Alliance—led by Microsoft, Accenture, IDEO, GAVI, and the Rockefeller Foundation and incorporated into the UN Sustainable Development Goals—hosts its annual summit in New York City. Among other goals, ID2020 aims to offer "a persistent digital identity from birth" using "cutting-edge infant biometric technologies" and microchip implants.

2019 (October) The BIS publishes the G7 Working Group on Stablecoins report, "Investigating the impact of global stablecoins."

2019 (October 18) The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and World Economic Forum hold Event 201, a "pandemic tabletop exercise" simulating the outbreak of a novel coronavirus that becomes a pandemic.

2019 (October 25) Pentagon awards $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract to Microsoft.

2019 (November) Vaxxed II: The People's Truth (a sequel to the 2016 documentary Vaxxed) is released, providing overwhelming documentation that vaccines are neither safe nor effective—and are directly connected to an epidemic of autism and chronic disease slowly destroying the American people and their family wealth.

2019 (November) Following BRICS meeting, President Putin says, "The dollar enjoyed great trust around the world but for some reason it is being used as a political weapon, imposing restrictions. Many countries are now turning away from the dollar as a reserve currency. The U.S. dollar will collapse soon."

2019 (November) Denmark-based tech company BiChip cancels launch of microchip implant readable from a distance and connected to the Internet in the face of protests by Christian activists. BiChip has contracts to produce the microchip implants for the Danish government and U.S. Navy. A 2018 update to the implants allows wearers to store Ripple cryptocurrencies using Ripple's payment system.

2019 (November 14) Amazon, which manages the CIA and intelligence clouds, notifies U.S. Court of Federal Claims of its intent to protest award of JEDI contract to Microsoft.

2019 (December) U.S. creates the United States Space Force to be the space operations service branch of the United States Armed Forces.

2019 (December 12) Basel Committee invites comments on the design of a prudential treatment for crypto-assets by March 13, 2020.

2019 (December) Verizon 5G rollout in several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, goes into effect. The 5G rollout has begun and accelerates to support the "Going Direct" global reset, marked by competition between the U.S. and China over who controls the telecommunications hardware and AI access to data.

2019 (December) MIT researchers publish study—funded by the Gates Foundation and directly requested by Bill Gates—that establishes a proof of concept for "intradermal on-person vaccination recordkeeping." The study uses dissolvable microneedles to codeliver vaccines and "near-infrared quantum dots" into the skin that encode information about vaccination status readable by modified smartphones. The senior author says the invisible "tattoos" could create "new possibilities for data storage, biosensing and vaccine applications."

2019 (December 2-3) Video footage from the Global Vaccine Safety Summit—organized by the World Health Organization and held at the WHO's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland—captures reports of growing global resistance to vaccinations based on the absence of any scientific studies showing that individual or collective vaccinations and vaccination schedules are safe and effective. It appears that the global vaccine push is about to stall for lack of scientific support.

2019 (December 31) China's WHO office is informed of "unknown pneumonia" cases in Wuhan.

2020 (January 9) WHO announces "coronavirus-related" pneumonia in China.

2020 (January 24) The World Economic Forum meets in Davos and launches its Global Reset website to market the Going Direct plan to young people and non-financial sectors.

2020 (January 28) U.S. attorney for Massachusetts indicts Harvard chemistry professor Charles Lieber for allegedly lying about foreign financial conflicts of interest with Chinese universities. Lieber's research spans the areas of nanomaterials, nano-bioelectronics, and brain science. The brain science program focuses on "a conceptually novel approach for integrating electronics within the brain and other areas of the nervous system, which involves the development of neural network-like mesh electronics and a noninvasive delivery method into targeted distinct brain regions via syringe-injection." The brain science work also seeks to "enhance human performance via brain-machine interface."

2020 (January 31) United Kingdom withdraws from the European Union (thus protecting its global offshore haven system from EU regulators and disclosure requirements).

2020 (January 31) WHO declares a Global Health Emergency. The UK reports its first coronavirus case. The U.S. restricts entry of passengers from China.

2020 (January-February) A rising number of CEO resignations permits corporate leaders to sell their stocks at or near the market high. Reports of selling by members of Congress who receive early briefings on Covid-19 circulate. Jeff Bezos of Amazon is reported to sell $4 billion of Amazon stock.

2020 (February) The U.S. Navy awards a $7 billion cloud contract to Leidos. Lockheed Martin spun out its government IT division to Leidos after the 2015 fiscal year in which the Army reported $6.5 trillion in undocumentable adjustments. Leidos has large contracts in Antarctica.

2020 (February 2) Global air travel is restricted. There are 20,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in 24 countries and over 300 deaths, mostly in China.

2020 (February 7) The CIA begins multibillion-dollar procurement process to update its cloud technology as part of the Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) process.

2020 (February 25) The CDC says Covid-19 is heading toward pandemic status. Italy, Iran, and Brazil report major outbreaks.

2020 (March) The FCC authorizes SpaceX to begin rolling out up to one million ground antennas to connect Starlink satellites to end users.

2020 (March) SpaceX expresses intent to compete for $16 billion in government subsidies for satellite Internet in rural areas.

2020 (March 9) Arthur Firstenberg republishes The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life (originally published in 2017) documenting the significant increases in disease and death resulting from the progressive adoption of electricity and increases in EMF radiation. The book raises profound questions regarding the potential impact of 5G technology on the human race. Firstenberg and other experts predict that it will cause disease and death on an unprecedented scale.

2020 (March 11) The WHO declares Covid-19 a pandemic. This means that the waiver of liability under the U.S. PREP Act of 2005 applies.

2020 (March) Oil prices crash more than 20%, dramatically cutting revenues to Russia, Brazil, and other countries in the "de-dollarization" group. Major meltdown in $20 trillion US Treasury market begins.

2020 (March 12) Pentagon seeks court permission to "reconsider certain aspects" of the decision to award the JEDI cloud computing contract to Microsoft.

2020 (March 13) The U.S. issues a travel ban on passengers from 26 European countries, excluding the UK and Ireland. Four days later, the European Union restricts travelers from outside the Union.

2020 (March 15) Federal Reserve cuts reserve requirement for U.S. banks to 0%.

2020 (March 18) SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites, bringing its total to over 350 since the company began sending up batches of 60 in 2019. The FCC has approved close to 12,000 SpaceX satellites, and SpaceX has filed applications for another 30,000.

2020 (March 18) Bill Gates holds an "Ask Me Anything" Q&A on Reddit, one week after stepping down from the boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway. Gates calls for a national coronavirus tracking system, including "digital certificates" that show who has (and has not) been vaccinated.

2020 (March 18) Denmark passes emergency law allowing forced coronavirus vaccination. Copenhagen University law professor Jens Elo Rytter describes the law as "certainly the most extreme since the Second World War. Legislation coincides with Denmark central bank receiving a swap line from the Federal Reserve."

2020 (March 19) California becomes the first U.S. state to issue a stay-at-home order. China reports zero local infections.

2020 (March 23) The UK goes on lockdown.

2020 (March 26) The U.S. Senate passes the CARES Act.

2020 (April) Operation Warp Speed is announced as a U.S. public-private effort to accelerate the funding and launch of Covid-19 injections under U.S. military leadership and operations.

2020 (April 15) The IMF warns against "contraction of the global economy."

2020 (April 21) The executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) says the world is facing multiple famines of "biblical proportions" as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. There are already one million people on the verge of starvation, and the pandemic  could  push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation.

2020 (April 24) The Congressional Budget Office revises its earlier January estimate of a $1 trillion federal deficit in fiscal 2020 to $3.7 trillion. A later report by Kiplinger states that U.S. state government deficits will reach $500 billion by the end of fiscal 2021. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that global government deficits could be a worldwide $10 trillion deficit in 2020 and a cumulative shortfall of up to $30 trillion by 2023.

2020 (May) During May 2020, year-over-year growth in the dollar money supply is at 29.8%, up from April's rate of 21.3%, and up from May 2019's rate of 2.15%.

2020 (May) Moncef Slaoui is named Operation Warp Speed chief adviser. Slaoui—a vaccine researcher and, formerly, Chairman of Global Research and Development and Chairman of Global Vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline—is described by the Financial Times in 2012 as an expert on brain-machine interface and bioelectronics. General Gustave F. Perna—Commanding General, Army Materiel Command—is named Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer. The project has a budget of $10 billion, with additional funds allocated through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

2020 (May 13) The WHO announces that the virus "may never go away."

2020 (May 20) Dr. Mark Skidmore provides a major update to his 2017 Missing Money Report. This update includes a review of redemptions in the U.S. Treasury market, indicating a much higher volume of redemptions than should be necessary to manage officially outstanding debt and raising questions regarding total outstanding debt.

2020 (May 29) Trump announces that the U.S. will leave the WHO. He later announces a major partnership with GAVI.

2020 (May 31) Protests and looting take place in 75 U.S. cities. The Fed has 37 board, bank, or branch locations in the U.S.—33 have violent protests and looting. Following riots and arson in Minneapolis, maps of the city's Opportunity Zones raise serious questions about the redevelopment patterns in Fed cities and plans for "smart cities." Is the Fed financing "smart cities" through its newly authorized municipal and corporate bond buying?

2020 (June 2) Bank of America pledges $1 billion to address racial and economic inequality (now that looting has lowered the price of real estate).

2020 (June 4) John Titus reports on the Solari Report Money & Markets that the Fed has expanded its balance sheet by $2.8 trillion, or 60%-70%, since March 11, 2020. A similar size expansion in 2008-2012 took many years. The reported increase is primarily in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, but the Fed has authorized portfolios to buy corporate bonds and municipal bonds and to finance bank small-business loans. Some portfolio operations are outsourced to BlackRock. Some are backstopped by the Exchange Stabilization Fund.

2020 (June 30) The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) announces it will open Innovation Hub centers in collaboration with the Bank of Canada (Toronto), the Bank of England (London), the ECB (Frankfurt and Paris), and four Nordic Central Banks in Stockholm. It will also form a strategic partnership with the Federal Reserve System (New York). The BIS has previously established Innovation Hubs in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland.

2020 (June-July) GAVI reports that Mastercard's "Wellness Pass" program will be adapted to the pandemic response and integrated with Trust Stamp's biometric identity platform in a test on low-income Africans to prototype vaccinations integrated with biometric identity and payment systems. (See "Africa to Become Testing Ground for 'Trust Stamp' Vaccine Record and Payment System" by Raul Diego, MintPress, July 10, 2020.)

2020 (July 16) Carlyle Group announces it is seeking to raise $2 billion for an Americas growth equity fund dedicated to mid-size private equity deals in North America, "according to people with knowledge of the matter" (Bloomberg). Chairman Powell of the Federal Reserve is considered to be worth over $100MM made as a partner at Carlyle during the explosive investment in globalization that occurred as money began going missing from U.S. accounts.

SOURCES:

Children's Health Defense. Conflicts of Interest Undermine Children's Health [eBook].

Davies, Glyn and Davies, Roy. A Comparative Chronology of Money: Monetary History from Ancient Times to the Present Day; 1996 & 2002.

Goodson, Stephen Mitford. A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind (4th edition). Black House Publishing; 2019.

Knowledge Ecology International Microsoft-Gates Timeline, 2011

Luft, Gal and Korin, Anne. De-dollarization: The Revolt Against the Dollar and the Rise of a New Financial World Order Independently published; 2019.

Martens, Russ and Pam. Wall Street on Parade

Schwartz, Anna J. From obscurity to notoriety: a biography of the Exchange Stabilization Fund. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 1997;29(2).

Voltairenet.org. "What spooked the USS Donald Cook so much in the Black Sea?"

Wikipedia.