Overflight, 61
The two groups came together and formed an alliance. No, that is too soft a word. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a cabal as "A conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers." There is no other word that could so accurately describe this group. With much of the same secrecy and mystery that surrounded the meeting on Jekyll Island, the Cabal met in Mercer’s Chapel in London and hammered out a seven−point plan which would serve their mutual purposes:
1. The government would grant a charter to the monetary scientists to form a bank;
2. The bank would be given a monopoly to issue banknotes which would circulate as England’s paper currency;
3. The bank would create money out of nothing with only a fraction of its total currency backed by coin;
4. The monetary scientists then would loan the government all the money it needed;
5. The money created for government loans would be backed primarily by government I.O.U.s;
6. Although this money was to be created out of nothing and would cost nothing to create, the government would pay "interest" on it at the rate of 8%;
7. Government I.O.U.s would also be considered as "reserves" for creating additional loan money for private commerce. These loans also would earn interest. Thus, the monetary scientists would collect double interest on the same nothing.
The circular which was distributed to attract subscribers to the Bank’s initial stock offering explained: «The Bank hath benefit of interest on all the moneys which it, the Bank, creates out of nothing.» The charter was issued in 1694, and a strange creature took its initial breath of life. It was the world’s first central bank.