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The “means of power of national currencies” are a major pre-requisite to lead war: wars could practically not be financed without the possibility to manipulate (e.g. print) the own national currency. At the times of the Gold Standard is was common “to loosen or abandon the bond to Gold at the beginning of a war and to use the unrestricted capability to create money [through printing] in order to finance the war” (E. Fraenkel, K. D. Bracher). The possibility to lead wars and the inherent possibility of paper currencies to create money out of the nothingness (hence ‘fiat currency’) are directly connected. Without the possibility to simply print money, it becomes quite difficult to finance any war. Using the mind experiment of two city mayors wanting to go to war against each other: a national government would certainly not finance such a war.
Just as nation-states are using their currency systems to protect their national currencies, “corporate currencies” (paypack systems, miles and more...) do not only increase customer loyalty but also the influence of the corporations behind these currency systems. According to a report by the Economist (2002) the international airlines have piled up some eight million millions (8,000,000,000,000) “frequent flyer miles” equivalent to 500 billion (500,000,000,000) US dollar. Thus, according to the British magazine, the ‘bonus miles’ have become the second biggest currency after the US dollar. For comparison: the Gold reserve of the German Federal Bank with a value of 45 billion dollar (December 2003: 3439,5 t) is not even a tenth of these ‘bonus miles’, the US Gold reserve totalling 106 billion dollar are merely a fifth (Dezember 2003: 8135,4 t)! |