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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 4312932, member: 93416&quot;]Many thanks, you must be one of the very few who read right to the end!</p><p><br /></p><p>So now I will try connect this up to the main theme here. Previous generations of fiercely independent thinkers in the UK and the US have seen the events in London around the 1690’s, the time of the formation of the Bank of England, as a kind of swindle perpetrated on the English general public. This was the view of eg Tom Paine, William Cobbett and Alexander Del Mar.</p><p><br /></p><p>In 2002 Thomas Sargent, Nobel Laureate Economist, sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank, advanced a different thesis, involving the suggestion that the prominent government advisor at the time, John Locke, (traditionally seen as the founder of British Empiricism) was “an idiot”.</p><p><br /></p><p>Does it seem even inherently likely that Locke was “an idiot”? Should we not fear that Sargent was failing to act as a dispassionate historian, but rather was concocting an alternative story line? A story line assisting public relations for the Banking industry, who after all, he seems to have some financial relationship with? A story line that diverted attention away from stories of banking swindles?</p><p><br /></p><p>It is that I fear, in a world where scholarship is now dominated by professionals, who have financial as well as scholarly aims, in situations when funding comes from people outside scholarship altogether.</p><p><br /></p><p>In case my views have appeared rather black and white - I will add the I spent a year of rather fraught negotiation over publication of ‘Maria Graham’ with an editor who is an independent amateur. It went to publication due solely to the backing of two referees – both of them professional scholars. The world is never black and white.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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