Promising to teach her listeners more about the money system “than 90 percent of the people on the planet” know, U.S. medical doctor and author Nancy Banks recently intrigued a small crowd of students and professors at Guadalajara’s Tec de Monterrey by explaining how greed dominates the functioning of international business and banking.
While some listeners at the prestigious university March 28 said they expected a medical talk in line with the first word in the title of Banks’ book, “AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire,” her presentation focused on economic factors mentioned farther along in the title. Many in the audience responded positively to these ideas.
A principal topic of Banks’ speech was the “debt-based financial system we are enslaved to,” said Tec international relations Professor Hrvoje Moric, who interned with the World Health Organization in Geneva during the swine flu scare. “She has the kind of perspective I have and it’s not shared with many other people.”
Moric said that after his work with WHO led him to realize the swine flu was a hoax, he hoped Banks would talk about the details of medical hoaxes. Yet he enjoyed her emphasis on economics, noting that he was familiar with many of the economic writers she recommended in her talk — Catherine Fitts, Stephen Zarlenga and Ellen Hodgson Brown — and agreed with some of their perspectives.
Banks explained the fractional reserve banking system to the crowd, saying that when she studied it while getting a master’s in business, it “blew my mind. You [banks] only have to have on hand 10 percent of what you lend. The other 90 percent is created out of thin air. Then you charge interest on money that never existed. That’s why the world is in debt.”
Banks quoted classical intellectuals — Aristotle, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Aquinas and Pope Benedict XIV — who warned of the dangers of banking and usury. Her talk also covered the effect of two world wars on the economic system and touched on narcotrafficking as a business, noting that it represents a larger portion of the world economy than the auto industry.
“Her subject was a little difficult for Mexico. Not everyone is open to conversations like that,” said a professor who teaches German at the Tec. “She talked about world financial problems, corruption, the World Bank and globalization. It was good to get to know her. She’s a really intelligent person.”
Such an upbeat assessment seemed to be what Banks was after, as she sought to inspire the students in the audience by noting that they might have their chance to set things right.
“Thinking for yourself today is a little bit dangerous,” she cautioned, but added that “one of the great things about being alive today is that there are so many interesting things that are going to be happening over the next century.”