The Gloom of Central Banking

By Tuur Demeester
MacroTrends.be
November 2012

Gloom of Central Banking  

Introduction

On october 29th, the ECB published a 55-page report titled “Virtual Currency Schemes”. With this dysphemistic title, the central bank refers to private, unregulated initiatives of virtual currency. With 183 references in the text, it seems obvious that specifically the fast growing peer to peer currency Bitcoin is under scrutiny.

In what follows, I sketch an evolution of how central banks—the monopolists of the current fiat money paradigm—have dealt with the threat of free market competition coming from the internet, and how they are now reacting to the sudden appearance of an enigmatic rival.

Be warned that this is a subjective take on the issue. People from central bank and government circles will no doubt accuse me of being unbalanced and unfair in my interpretations and conclusions. So be it. my goal here is to scrape off the veneer of these reports and thus catch a glimpse of what may actually be happening behind the closed doors of Basel and Brussels.