Der Geist des Geldes (2007)

Patrick Blank: Narrator

Quotes 

• [reads from -then 'top secret', now public- document PPS23, 24th February 1948; written by George Kennan, Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff] 

  Narrator : Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We should cease to talk about vague and - for the Far East - unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

• Narrator : To the church, charging interest is a punishable crime until the 18th century. He who profits from interest will be refused Christian burial. But money prevails even among Christians.

• Narrator : The calculation of interest is absurd. - If Josef would have opened a savings account with one Cent at 5 % interest upon the birth of Christ and if the economy had been inflation-free, Josef's descendants would have in the year 1604 a fortune worth a golden globe the weight of the whole world at today's gold-price.

• Narrator : In the last ten years there has been talk of an economic crisis, yet the number of billionaires worldwide has risen from 423 to 793.