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It is one of the many ironies of history that a religious order so poor at its inception that the very word “poor” was incorporated in its name (the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem) should not only gain wealth but become famed for its financial services. Cynics looking at the record of the Knight Templar might even be justified in suggesting that the Templars were better bankers than fighters.It all started quite humbly and, I believe, innocently. In an age where there was not yet paper money, much less online and mobile banking, liquid capital took the form of metal, primarily gold and silver, coins. These coins were bulky, heavy and valuable to anyone, so very tempting to thieves. Anyone in the Middle Ages in possession of gold or silver coins was at pains to protect it in some way, either by hiding it or placing it in “treasuries” of some kind, with locks and metal bindings, preferably in a deep cellar or high tower, guarded by reliable thugs.Life being what it is, however, not everyone had reliable thugs to protect their gold and silver. So it became the practice for people of a civil occupation (i.e. without large numbers of armed men at their disposal) to place their valuables in “safekeeping” with religious institutions because these were supposed to be immune from theft and robbery. Unfortunately, religious houses being by definition home to men who did not pursue the profession of arms yet known to be in possession considerable gold and silver, became particularly attractive targets for sack and pillage by heathen, irreligious or merely desperate armed men. (e.g. Viking raids on monasteries and churches, and the sack of the like by desperate mercenaries and kings.)The establishment of the Knights Templar, however, provided a perfect solution to the problem of keeping large sums of gold and silver safe. Here was a religious institution with its own highly-trained and fierce fighters. Within a very short space of time, Templar houses from Ireland to Jerusalem had become the preferred place to deposit liquid capital assets (gold, silver, and jewels) for safe keeping.The Templars dutifully assumed responsibility for the safe-keeping of these valuables, without ― it should be well noted ― charging interest for such services or using the money for their own purposes. As Helen Nicholson writes (The Knights Templar: A New History. Sutton Publishing, 2001, p. 163): “Money deposited with [the Templars] was not pooled and reinvested, but remained in its owners’ strongboxes within the Order’s treasury, and could not be accessed without the owners’ permission.”The Templars, it should be noted, took this duty to protect money deposited with them very seriously. The most famous example of their diligence in this regard occurred during the Seventh Crusade when King Louis IX of France was taken captive along with the bulk of his nobles and knights. A ransom was at length negotiated (characteristically for a man who would be a saint, King Louis bore the full financial burden for the men captured with him), but when the royal treasury was counted the French found to their dismay that it was short some thirty thousand livres.The Seneschal of France, Jean de Joinville, realizing that the Templars must have that much money aboard their flagship, promptly requested that the Knights Templar advance the sum to the King of France, so he and his leading nobles could escape captivity. The Templars refused because it was not Templar money and they had sworn not to release it to anyone without the owner’s permission. The threat of force by Joinville persuaded the Templars to bend the rules a little, but less dire circumstances would have made a threat of force against the Templars nearly unthinkable and their surrender even less so.From accepting deposits to transporting those deposits was only a short and logical step. The Knights Templar rapidly built up a network of houses and commanderies stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the River Jordan. They were constantly sending armed men from one place to another and their raison d’être was the protection of pilgrims. So what could have been more natural than that they would take on the job of transporting money from place to place ― a sort of medieval Brinks armored service?But, then again, why risk and expend resources carrying heavy coins around, when a letter would do the same thing? So the “letter of credit” was invented. Now people could deposit money at the nearest Templar establishment, and withdraw the same amount of money (adjusted, of course, for currency conversion) in a different town, province or kingdom! This was truly a brilliant innovation, but only made possible by the fact that so much money was being deposited all across Christendom and the Temple itself was earning so much money from its own properties and business that they were now (by the late 12th century) truly in possession of sufficient cash in any major house to meet demand.Not that Templar resources weren’t occasionally strained. When King Louis VII of France (the great-grandfather of Louis IX) washed up in the Holy Land having lost the bulk of his army and all of his treasury in a disastrous overland crusade, the Knights Templar loaned him so much cash to cover his expenses during the remainder of his time in the Holy Land that it “brought the Order close to financial ruin.” (Barber, Malcolm. The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 271.)But by then, the Templars and the French crown already had a symbiotic relationship that lasted roughly 100 years ― until Philip IV decided to bite the hand that fed him and unscrupulously attacked, tortured and destroyed his former friends. During the preceding hundred years, however, the Temple in Paris served as the treasury of France. Period. The royal treasurers were all senior officials of the Temple, and the French treasury was housed in the Paris Temple.Although in no other kingdom was the relationship quite so close, many other monarchs likewise appointed Templars to serve as their financial managers. In England, a Brother Geoffrey of the Knights Templar was appointed by Henry III to manage all his personal expenditure. The Kings of Scotland, Ireland, and Aragon and many popes did the same at various times. Yet while the Templars were frequently found in the role of “almoner” ― i.e. the person who dispenses royal largess ― they were also often entrusted with collecting money as well.Thus the Templars were made responsible for raising the “Saladin Tax” levied on every household in England to support the war in the Holy Land. The Popes also entrusted them will collecting exceptional tithes, usually those in association with the defense of the Holy Land in some way. There were also instances where the Templars were simply employed as reliable agents, men who had a reputation for scrupulous honesty combined with effective military might, to collect purely secular dues, such as customs duties in Ireland.When they weren’t directly involved in collecting or distributing funds for royal or papal authorities, their, by now formidable, reputation as sophisticated accountants earned them the task of auditing the accounts of others. In short, if a monarch, lord or bishop had any reason to doubt the accounts his own servants put before him, he could turn to the Knights Templar and ask them to audit said accounts.Although the evidence left to us is fragmentary, it is sufficient to confirm that the Templars were indeed by the mid-thirteenth century very sophisticated accountants. They had to be in order to keep track of all the money they managed from so many different sources. Debts and credits were carefully noted in parallel accounts with sources and destinations meticulously noted. Receipts and books were signed by individual cashiers ensuring accountability. Templar money could not ― and did not ― simply disappear or get lost.But at some point along the way, doing all those services for others turned into a business and a function in its own right. From rescuing crusading kings in financial distress (1150) to offering loans to merchants for purely commercial purposes (1300) was not so great a step, perhaps, but it was a significant one nevertheless. The once incorruptible “poor knights” of the early 12th century, had become the “money-lenders in the Temple.” From providing the poor with protection (for their goods as well as their person) they had become tax-collectors for kings and “money-grubbing” financiers. That loss of innocence and reputation, along with the loss of their justification for being ― the Holy Land ― undoubtedly contributed to their downfall.As to their contribution to “banking,” the Italian banking houses were emerging at roughly the same time, but it would take considerable in depth research to determine who was imitating who, and where the greatest innovation originated. It is fair to say, however, that the Templars were often at the cutting edge of financial services in their own time and thereby helped the evolution of banking during this period.

Question: In the Breaking Bad universe, how would Ed the Disappearer actually go about doing what he does?Great question.Some thoughts:Ed is either a former intelligence operative, an insurance investigator, or a retired US Marshal who specialized in fugitive tracking. He puts his skills to work now helping people hide from whoever might be seeking them.He’s built up a network of connections which allows him to obtain forged documents, add people to databases, and create legends (convincing backstories) for clients. These people also help him to obtain vehicles which are properly registered (See El Camino) as well as assisting him with obtaining safe houses like the one Walter White was staying at just before the series finale of Breaking Bad.He apparently works through word of mouth and he requires that anyone seeking his services repeat a code phrase which is extremely unlikely to be said by accident. When they have uttered the code phrase, he gives them a set of instructions, arranges for them to meet him somewhere, and requires a payment of $125,000 USD in cash upfront (the series doesn’t say that he’ll take payment in any other form) for his services.He picks up the individuals, takes them to a set location, and they remain there for several days or longer while he (Ed) makes the necessary arrangements. At that destination, they are not permitted to have communication devices, or to leave. If they do, they likely forfeit their payment, and Ed will no longer do business with them.Within several days, Ed arrives with new identification paperwork and then works with the individual until they know their new identity convincingly enough to withstand moderate scrutiny by the authorities. When he is satisfied, they depart from another location that Ed takes them to, and they begin their new life.When he leaves them, he again rehearses their backstory with them to make certain that they are still prepared. In some rare cases (like Walter White) he will come to their safe house location with supplies or medication; however it can safely be presumed that the additional risks of doing this require additional payments. However in most cases, as shown in El Camino, when he deposits the person at the vehicle waiting to take them away, that’s the end of the transaction.In real life what Ed does would be relatively easy, except for the fact that many people are f*ck ups, and they would screw up their disappearance. In El Camino, Jesse Pinkman broke one of his protocols by going to his business directly, and by attempting to extort him. That’s why he was hesitant to assist Pinkman, especially since he was also short on the total amount required for the transaction.What might also be difficult is that older clients, clients with substance abuse problems, or people with low levels of education might present difficulties when it comes to remembering their backstories. While it’s a virtual certainty that he wouldn’t give refunds, it’s also likely that for some clients, Ed would have to spend days or even weeks prepping them for their new life. Some people would screw up no matter how much they were coached, and Ed would likely have to allow them to “go it alone” rather than risking their being caught around Albuquerque and exposing him.It’s apparently a “one shot, good deal”, as it’s unlikely that he’ll take repeat customers. Not only would that be bad for business, eventually that client would reveal to the police what they know and that would require that Ed use his own services.Sooo…Ed has an extensive network of people who can assist him in making people “disappear”. He’s very good at what he does, meaning he’s had training and years of experience. He’s nearly impossible to rattle as is seen in El Camino where he doesn’t get angry at Jesse Pinkman; nor does he express anything that seems to resemble fear. And he would have to earn a considerable sum from it to make it worth his while, although from his dress and the lack of glitz in his vacuum repair/sales store, he doesn’t spend his money obviously.RIP Robert Forster

From German Economic MiracleGerman Economic Miracleby David R. HendersonAfter World War II the German economy lay in shambles. The war, along with Hitler’s scorched-earth policy, had destroyed 20 percent of all housing. Food production per capita in 1947 was only 51 percent of its level in 1938, and the official food ration set by the occupying powers varied between 1,040 and 1,550 calories per day. Industrial output in 1947 was only one-third its 1938 level. Moreover, a large percentage of Germany’s working-age men were dead. At the time, observers thought that West Germany would have to be the biggest client of the U.S. welfare state; yet, twenty years later its economy was envied by most of the world. And less than ten years after the war people already were talking about the German economic miracle.What caused the so-called miracle? The two main factors were currency reform and the elimination of price controls, both of which happened over a period of weeks in 1948. A further factor was the reduction of marginal tax rates later in 1948 and in 1949.BeforeBy 1948 the German people had lived under price controls for twelve years and rationing for nine years. Adolf Hitler had imposed price controls on the German people in 1936 so that his government could buy war materials at artificially low prices. Later, in 1939, one of Hitler’s top Nazi deputies, Hermann Goering, imposed rationing. (Roosevelt and Churchill also imposed price controls and rationing, as governments tend to do during all-out wars.) During the war, the Nazis made flagrant violations of the price controls subject to the death penalty.1 In November 1945 the Allied Control Authority, formed by the governments of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, agreed to keep Hitler’s and Goering’s price controls and rationing in place. They also continued the Nazi conscription of resources, including labor.Each of the Allied governments controlled a “zone” of German territory. In the U.S. zone, a cost-of-living index in May 1948, computed at the controlled prices, was only 31 percent above its level in 1938. Yet in 1947, the amount of money in the German economy—currency plus demand deposits—was five times its 1936 level. With money a multiple of its previous level but prices only a fraction higher, there were bound to be shortages. And there were.Price controls on food made the shortages so severe that some people started growing their own food, and others made weekend treks to the countryside to barter for food. Yale University economist (and later Federal Reserve governor) Henry Wallich, in his 1955 book, Mainsprings of the German Revival, wrote:Each day, and particularly on weekends, vast hordes of people trekked out to the country to barter food from the farmers. In dilapidated railway carriages from which everything pilferable had long disappeared, on the roofs and on the running boards, hungry people traveled sometimes hundreds of miles at snail’s pace to where they hoped to find something to eat. They took their wares—personal effects, old clothes, sticks of furniture, whatever bombed-out remnants they had—and came back with grain or potatoes for a week or two. (p. 65)Barter also was so widespread in business-to-business transactions that many firms hired a “compensator,” a specialist who bartered his firm’s output for needed inputs and often had to engage in multiple transactions to do so. In September 1947 U.S. military experts estimated that one-third to one-half of all business transactions in the bizonal area (the U.S. and British zones) were in the form of “compensation trade” (i.e., barter).Barter was very inefficient compared with straight purchase of goods and services for money. German economist Walter Eucken wrote that barter and self-sufficiency were incompatible with an extensive division of labor and that the economic system had been “reduced to a primitive condition” (Hazlett 1978, p. 34). The numbers bear him out. In March 1948 bizonal production was only 51 percent of its level in 1936.The DebateEucken was the leader of a school of economic thought, called the Soziale Marktwirtschaft, or “social free market,” based at Germany’s University of Freiburg. Members of this school hated totalitarianism and had propounded their views at some risk during Hitler’s regime. “During the Nazi period,” wrote Henry Wallich, “the school represented a kind of intellectual resistance movement, requiring great personal courage as well as independence of mind” (p. 114). The school’s members believed in free markets, along with some slight degree of progression in the income tax system and government action to limit monopoly. (Cartels in Germany had been explicitly legal before the war.) The Soziale Marktwirtschaft was very much like the Chicago school, whose budding members Milton Friedman and George Stigler also believed in a heavy dose of free markets, slight government redistribution through the tax system, and antitrust laws to prevent monopoly.Among the members of the German school were Wilhelm Röpke and Ludwig Erhard. To clean up the postwar mess, Röpke advocated currency reform, so that the amount of currency could be in line with the amount of goods, and the abolition of price controls. Both were necessary, he thought, to end repressed inflation. The currency reform would end inflation; price decontrol would end repression.Ludwig Erhard agreed with Röpke. Erhard himself had written a memorandum during the war laying out his vision of a market economy. His memorandum made clear that he wanted the Nazis to be defeated.The Social Democratic Party (SPD), on the other hand, wanted to keep government control. The SPD’s main economic ideologue, Dr. Kreyssig, argued in June 1948 that decontrol of prices and currency reform would be ineffective and instead supported central government direction. Agreeing with the SPD were labor union leaders, the British authorities, most West German manufacturing interests, and some of the American authorities.The ChangeLudwig Erhard won the debate. Because the Allies wanted non-Nazis in the new German government, Erhard, whose anti-Nazi views were clear (he had refused to join the Nazi Association of University Teachers), was appointed Bavarian minister of finance in 1945. In 1947 he became the director of the bizonal Office of Economic Opportunity and, in that capacity, advised U.S. General Lucius D. Clay, military governor of the U.S. zone. After the Soviets withdrew from the Allied Control Authority, Clay, along with his French and British counterparts, undertook a currency reform on Sunday, June 20, 1948. The basic idea was to substitute a much smaller number of deutsche marks (DM), the new legal currency, for reichsmarks. The money supply would thus contract substantially so that even at the controlled prices, now stated in deutsche marks, there would be fewer shortages. The currency reform was highly complex, with many people taking a substantial reduction in their net wealth. The net result was about a 93 percent contraction in the money supply.On that same Sunday the German Bizonal Economic Council adopted, at the urging of Ludwig Erhard and against the opposition of its Social Democratic members, a price decontrol ordinance that allowed and encouraged Erhard to eliminate price controls.Erhard spent the summer de-Nazifying the West German economy. From June through August 1948, wrote Fred Klopstock, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, “directive followed directive removing price, allocation, and rationing regulations” (p. 283). Vegetables, fruit, eggs, and almost all manufactured goods were freed of controls. Ceiling prices on many other goods were raised substantially, and many remaining controls were no longer enforced. Erhard’s motto could have been: “Don’t just sit there; undo something.”Journalist Edwin Hartrich tells the following story about Erhard and Clay. In July 1948, after Erhard, on his own initiative, abolished rationing of food and ended all price controls, Clay confronted him:Clay:“Herr Erhard, my advisers tell me what you have done is a terrible mistake. What do you say to that?”Erhard:“Herr General, pay no attention to them! My advisers tell me the same thing.”2Hartrich also tells of Erhard’s confrontation with a U.S. Army colonel the same month:Colonel:“How dare you relax our rationing system, when there is a widespread food shortage?”Erhard:“But, Herr Oberst. I have not relaxed rationing; I have abolished it! Henceforth, the only rationing ticket the people will need will be the deutschemark. And they will work hard to get these deutschemarks, just wait and see.”3Of course, Erhard’s prediction was on target. Decontrol of prices allowed buyers to transmit their demands to sellers, without a rationing system getting in the way, and the higher prices gave sellers an incentive to supply more.Along with currency reform and decontrol of prices, the government also cut tax rates. A young economist named Walter Heller, who was then with the U.S. Office of Military Government in Germany and was later to be the chairman of President John F. Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers, described the reforms in a 1949 article. To “remove the repressive effect of extremely high rates,” wrote Heller, “Military Government Law No. 64 cut a wide swath across the [West] German tax system at the time of the currency reform” (p. 218). The corporate income tax rate, which had ranged from 35 percent to 65 percent, was made a flat 50 percent. Although the top rate on individual income remained at 95 percent, it applied only to income above the level of DM250,000 annually. In 1946, by contrast, the Allies had taxed all income above 60,000 reichsmarks (which translated into about DM6,000) at 95 percent. For the median-income German in 1950, with an annual income of a little less than DM2,400, the marginal tax rate was 18 percent. That same person, had he earned the reichsmark equivalent in 1948, would have been in an 85 percent tax bracket.AfterThe effect on the West German economy was electric. Wallich wrote: “The spirit of the country changed overnight. The gray, hungry, dead-looking figures wandering about the streets in their everlasting search for food came to life” (p. 71).Shops on Monday, June 21, were filled with goods as people realized that the money they sold them for would be worth much more than the old money. Walter Heller wrote that the reforms “quickly reestablished money as the preferred medium of exchange and monetary incentives as the prime mover of economic activity” (p. 215).Absenteeism also plummeted. In May 1948 workers had stayed away from their jobs for an average of 9.5 hours per week, partly because the money they worked for was not worth much and partly because they were out foraging or bartering for money. By October average absenteeism was down to 4.2 hours per week. In June 1948 the bizonal index of industrial production was at only 51 percent of its 1936 level; by December the index had risen to 78 percent. In other words, industrial production had increased by more than 50 percent.Output continued to grow by leaps and bounds after 1948. By 1958 industrial production was more than four times its annual rate for the six months in 1948 preceding currency reform. Industrial production per capita was more than three times as high. East Germany’s communist economy, by contrast, stagnated.Because Erhard’s ideas had worked, the first chancellor of the new Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, appointed him Germany’s first minister of economic affairs. He held that post until 1963 when he became chancellor himself, a post he held until 1966.The Marshall PlanThis account has not mentioned the Marshall Plan. Can’t West Germany’s revival be attributed mainly to that? The answer is no. The reason is simple: Marshall Plan aid to West Germany was not that large. Cumulative aid from the Marshall Plan and other aid programs totaled only $2 billion through October 1954. Even in 1948 and 1949, when aid was at its peak, Marshall Plan aid was less than 5 percent of German national income. Other countries that received substantial Marshall Plan aid exhibited lower growth than Germany.Moreover, while West Germany was receiving aid, it was also making reparations and restitution payments well in excess of $1 billion. Finally, and most important, the Allies charged the Germans DM7.2 billion annually ($2.4 billion) for their costs of occupying Germany. (Of course, these occupation costs also meant that Germany did not need to pay for its own defense.) Moreover, as economist Tyler Cowen notes, Belgium recovered the fastest from the war and placed a greater reliance on free markets than the other war-torn European countries did, and Belgium’s recovery predated the Marshall Plan.ConclusionWhat looked like a miracle to many observers was really no such thing. It was expected by Ludwig Erhard and by others of the Freiburg school who understood the damage that can be done by inflation coupled with price controls and high tax rates, and the large productivity gains that can be unleashed by ending inflation, removing controls, and cutting high marginal tax rates.