Money and Power
“…money is not willing to rest contented in its proper place alongside other things we value. No, it must have supremacy. It must crowd out all else.” Richard Foster
It’s 1756. A 12-year-old Jewish boy takes a job at a bank in Hanover, Germany. Young Mayer surprises. He has abilities and ambition in generous quantities – despite his modest background.
His business apprenticeship finished, Mayer returns to his home town of Frankfurt, armed with his growing expertise, his contacts, and his grand ideas. He begins trading in rare coins and medals.
Jews don’t get many opportunities in Frankfurt, and life is hard for them. But one opening they do manage to exploit is business. Some even manage to become “court agents” – financial dealers in the courts of German rulers. There are plenty of them; Germany of the 1700s is not a single state but a patchwork of states, mini-states, duchies, principalities and “Free Imperial Cities”.
It’s not long before Mayer’s fledging business takes a fortunate turn. He manages to sell some rare medals to William, the Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Kassel. This first transaction quickly leads to others – and then in 1769 Mayer is appointed a court agent for William. A year later, at the age of 26 he marries, a strategic alliance, for his new bride is Gutle, the 16-year-old daughter of another court agent. The dowry is substantial. It greatly adds to Mayer’s capital and it is not long before he is Frankfurt’s leading dealer in medals, coins and antiques.
By the early 1790’s, Mayer’s business has taken off. No longer is it just trading. Now he is extending credit to his clients; the world of merchant banking offers rich prospects. The name of Rothschild begins its climb to both fortune and fame.
Mayer and Gutle Rothschild are a fruitful couple. They produce 19 children in almost as many years, though only ten live beyond infancy. Five are sons, and by the end of the eighteenth century they have joined the business. Mayer is determined to keep it within the family, and his sons are apt pupils. They too make strategic marriages.
Rapid wealth creation generally requires a measure of good fortune – and the readiness to capitalize on the events of the moment. For the Rothschilds, history served up two dramatic upheavals: one in France, one in Britain.
As to the first, the violent French Revolution spilled over into Germany and Austria. Mayer secured a contract to provide grain and cash to the Austrian army in their campaign against the French. Meanwhile in Britain something was happening which may have been less violent, but was to change the world every bit as much. The factories of the British Industrial Revolution were beginning to pour out cheaper, mass-produced articles. Mayer’s response was to send his third son Nathan to England in 1799. Nathan showed himself to be the ideal person. Like his father, he had an eye for opportunity and for income. His establishment in London quickly began to reap the profits of trading in lowcost English textiles. Mayer was encouraged to develop a Europe-wide enterprise. While Mayer’s eldest son, Amschel, remained in Frankfurt, Salomon was sent to Vienna (Austria), Calmann to Naples (Italy) and Jakob to Paris (France). Their family influence mushroomed and their wealth ballooned.
Because Britain was the spearhead of European opposition to Napoleon, Nathan was perfectly positioned to funnel the financial support of the Rothschilds in their direction. He it was who found a way to both help fund the war effort and ensure the gold coinage got to the front lines. Then when Napoleon over-reached himself with his disastrous invasion of Russia, Nathan’s special moment came. To begin with, Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba. However, he soon escaped from there, returned to France as its hero, raised a new army and faced the allies at Waterloo. And it was the crisis caused by Napoleon’s escape from his exile that provided the greatest opportunity for the Rothschilds’ wealth to skyrocket – though it nearly proved to be their undoing.
According to Niall Fergusson, the legend goes that “…the Rothschild family owed the first millions of their fortune to Nathan’s successful speculation about the effect of the outcome of the battle on the price of British bonds.”
However, the reality was that the quickly-won victory by the Duke of Wellington came close to ruining the Rothschilds since they had committed their finances to a long and protracted military campaign. Nathan’s clever and audacious ploy actually came afterwards. What saved his family from insolvency was the way he played the bond market in the months following Napoleon’s defeat. By buying up in huge quantities the British bonds that had been raised to fund the war effort, he was able to manipulate the market by increasing demand for the bonds. As a result their price soared. It wasn’t until late 1817 – more than two years after Waterloo – that Nathan sold his bonds. By then prices had increased over 40%. It is little wonder Nathan was soon labelled “the Financial Bonaparte”. The Rothschilds’ fortune was established and it allowed them to grow enormously in power and influence over the next century.
It’s a little difficult to separate out fact from fiction when it comes to the Rothschilds, as the Battle of Waterloo legend illustrates. Over the years they have certainly been both credited with, and accused of, much greater influence than is the case. In fact, if you scour the literature you’ll “discover” they have been responsible for most of the major events in the world in the last two hundred years – the major wars, the stockmarket crash of 1929, and most recently, the Twin Towers tragedy of 9/11 – as well as being leading lights in a secret society called the Illuminati!! The conspiracists have had a field day. So did the Nazis. They included them in their hate propaganda directed at Jews, and anti-semitic attacks account for other charges – like the legend of the Waterloo profiteering, which has since been traced to a leaflet produced in France in 1846.
No doubt much of this over-imaginative speculation has been fuelled because so much of the Rothschilds’ business has been done behind closed doors. Right from the word go Mayer determined that the family business would be exactly that – run by the family only, thus keeping the control of the growing fortune in the hands of the direct progeny. Even daughters and their children were excluded from ownership and decision-making. Everything was tightly managed and controlled. The magnitude of their wealth and the ways they have used it are shrouded in a great deal of secrecy. Because of this, we don’t fully know how much power they were able to exercise over people and events down through the years.
But whatever the extent of their influence, Mayer Rothschild well understood that what he had was more than just money. In fact, he once said: “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws…”
Though he died in 1812, Mayer’s statement has an ominous and prophetic edge to it.
Less than thirty years later a French journalist remarked that “There is but one power in Europe and that is Rothschild.” Another writer, the German poet Heinrich Heine, declared in 1841, “Money is the god of our time and Rothschild is his prophet.” By then, it had become clear to many in Europe that the family dynasty and its money had indeed begun to hold sway over the affairs of nations.
Their story demonstrates that money does talk. It is a powerful force – for both good and evil. It can influence, dominate and manipulate us, even demand our allegiance. It can speak in ways that nothing else can.
Money is not peripheral
Few people will ever amass the kind of fortune the Rothschilds have. However, the truth is: none of us can live without money. It is part of the essential fabric of life.
Of course, I’m not just meaning cash – the banknotes and coins we carry in our wallets and purses. Money is a synonym for much more than “legal tender”. It includes anything that carries economic value in our society: land and houses, shares and bonds, vegetables and luxury yachts, businesses and products, superannuation schemes and real net worth.
All this “stuff” provides a medium of exchange. It can be traded for other things. And therein lies some of its inherent power. When we say that “Great-uncle Victor has money”, we effectively mean that he has the necessary resources to make choices – not only about what he owns, but where he lives, how he lives and how he spends his time. Money means choices.
And it’s not just the wealthy. For all of us, money plays a central role in our lives, no matter whether we are rich or poor, employed or unemployed, old or young.
We expect the Bible to address our lives. It figures then that it must have something to say about this stuff of life. And indeed it does. Lots to say, in fact.
Money is not neutral
Contrary to popular opinion, money is not just a medium of exchange. Money carries power. Even more, it is a power – all of its own.
Most of us are used to thinking that money is neutral. We believe that it only carries as much weight as we are prepared to give it. “It’s just printed money, for heaven’s sake!”
But we are dangerously underestimating money’s seductive strength.
One theologian who understood this well was Jacques Ellul. He suggested that money is in fact, one of the “principalities and powers” that the Apostle Paul talked about in the New Testament. And the way Jesus talked suggests that Ellul is right. In Matthew 6 he speaks about a strange creature. Mammon. It’s as if Jesus pronounces this Aramaic word for money/wealth … with a capital letter. As if it’s a real person. Mammon, he says, is a power that demands servitude. Our “master” is either Money or God. Do these sound like the words of reasonability and neutrality?
Building on Ellul’s thinking, Marva Dawn explains:
“Such things as money and technology are human constructions, but they both display a force that is more than human. The principalities and powers are created (ultimately by God) for good (Colossians 1:16). They have a vocation – that is, a rightful place in God’s purposes for human well-being. But the powers share in the fallenness of all creation (Romans 8:19-22), and thereby always tend to overstep their vocation. Thus, money is not neutral.”
What indications do we have that this is so? The list is long and varied, but here are just a few:
- Most of us dream of having more of it.
- We lie awake at night worrying about it. More anxious energy is consumed on money matters than on anything else.
- Money is the cause of more arguments in marriage and more separations and divorces than any other issue. Plus, disagreements over inheritances cause many family relationships to splinter. Some siblings end up never talking to each other for the rest of their lives.
- Our “financial markets” are controlled by two heavily charged emotions – greed and fear.
- The prospect of making a fast buck or of losing what we have, is frequently enough to drive many of us to do things we normally wouldn’t – like committing fraud, being less-than-honest, sacrificing a friendship, and compromising our values.
These are all pointers to the importance and the power of the dollar. Money definitely matters. For most of us, far too much.
And the most telling fact of all, perhaps, is that every one of these signs is experienced not just by those of us who are in the middle classes, not just by those of us who are poor … but by the world’s millionaires too. They suffer from the very same complaints. John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in America through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was once asked how much money was enough. His answer: “Just a little bit more!”
“Just a little bit more…” The dark side of money.
Os Guinness observes that:
“Throughout history the most universally acknowledged problem with money is that its pursuit is insatiable. As we seek money and possessions, observers note, the pursuit grows into a never-satisfied desire that fuels avarice – described by the Bible as a vain ‘chasing after wind’ and by moderns as an ‘addiction’. The very Hebrew word for money (kesef) comes from a verb meaning ‘to desire’ or ‘languish after something’.”
It is a ravenous beast, capable of consuming us. Which is rather ironic really. Because we’re often tempted to think that we are in control of our money – and of our attitude to money. That we are the consumers – not the ones being consumed.
However, the reality is that when it comes to money we are like a small boy “taking” a large dog for a walk. The youngster thinks he’s in control. After all, he’s been charged with the responsibility of leading the dog and ensuring that it doesn’t wander where it shouldn’t. But the dog has other ideas. It senses the child is not strong enough to handle it. The dog will go where it chooses to go and at the pace it wishes to travel! What’s more, whenever the boy thinks he has at last got the dog under control, it only takes one lunge…! Being in control is a figment of the child’s imagination!
So it is with money. Richard Foster notes that:
“It is money’s desire for omnipotence, for all power, that seems so strange, so out of place. It seems that money is not willing to rest contented in its proper place alongside other things we value. No, it must have supremacy. It must crowd out all else.”
With money – whether we have it or whether we don’t – the battle for control never ends. Money is something you can never treat lightly.
Yet you still hear people claim that they “don’t have a problem with money”. Perhaps for a small minority that may true. However, for the rest of us … we’re just kidding ourselves. It has certainly been an issue for me. What about you?
REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
1. People who have money have influence. Can you think of wealthy people who have used their “power” well?
What about those who have abused their “power” and influence?
(Think of both historical and current figures)
2. What, in your terms, might determine whether the power of money is used well or poorly?
3. I write that “money is not just a medium of exchange. Money carries power. However, even more, it is a power – all of its own.” Do you agree? Why or why not?
4. Can you think of other indications that money is “a power”?
5. In what ways is money a problem for you?
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