After 1428 years, here’s what brought down the world’s oldest business

By Simon Black, Sovereign Man, Feb. 8, 2016

In 578 AD, a Korean immigrant named Shigemitsu Kongo made his way to Japan at the invitation of the royal family.

Buddhism was on the rise in Japan at the time; though it had only been introduced a few decades prior, the Empress consort had been actively encouraging the adoption of Buddhism across Japan.

But since the Japanese had no experience building Buddhist temples, they looked overseas for help.

That’s where Kongo came in.

Shigemitsu Kongo was a renowned temple builder, and the royal family in Japan commissioned him to build the Shitenno-ji temple, which still stands today in Osaka.

Kongo saw an incredible opportunity. Buddhism was catching on fast, and he knew he could be kept busy for decades building temples.

It turned out to be centuries. Over 14 centuries, in fact.

Shigemitsu Kongo formed his construction company Kongo Gumi in 578 AD, and it lasted 1,428 years.

It’s extraordinary that any single enterprise could last so long.

Even as late as 2004, temple building accounted for more than 80% of the company’s revenue, which exceeded USD $60 million.

But ten years ago the company finally went under due to the massive debt burden they had accumulated.

It started back in the 1980s. Japan was in the midst of an epic financial bubble thanks to unconstrained credit growth and expansion of the money supply.

Go figure, central bankers artificially suppressed interest rates, keeping them way too low for way too long. And it created a huge asset bubble.

Asset prices in Japan got so out of control that for a short time during the 1980s, it was said that the grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo were worth more than all of the real estate in the entire state of California.

As part of this bubble, banks had relaxed their lending standards and were handing out loans to just about anyone.

And many Japanese companies took on vast amounts of debt, including Kongo Gumi.

Debt was like a popular drug. Everyone was doing it.

But when the bubble burst in 1989, asset prices collapsed. And companies that had borrowed heavily were left with nothing but debt.

Kongo Gumi didn’t go out of business right away. The company was able to limp along for more than two decades on basic life support.

Soon they were borrowing money just to pay interest on the money they had already borrowed, even though interest rates were at record lows.

But eventually the company’s revenues were no longer sufficient to service the debt.

And in 2006 Kongo Gumi was forced into liquidation.

This company lasted over 1,400 years.

They survived countless political crises, wars, and natural disasters.

They survived the Meiji Restoration in the 1800s, a period in which the government set out to eradicate Buddhism from Japan, and hence, the temple building industry.

They even survived two atomic bombs.

What Kongo Gumi couldn’t survive was debt.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an individual, a company, a government, or even a central bank; if your balance sheet doesn’t add up, sooner or later you’re going under.

Dennis Edwards: What Simon forgets to tell you is that the Central Bankers were being influenced or manipulated to bring about that drastic results. History is full of example where those behind the scenes are secretly pulling the strings in order to move society in the direction they wish. Here in Portugal, I watched the same scenario take place when Portugal entered the Euro. We will have one-world government, whether we like it or not, because it is the proposed agenda of the financial international elites. Individual families and their empires that stand in the way of "progress" will need to get on board, or have their empires threatened or destroyed. 

Nevertheless, Simon's article is a good lesson to not get in debt! The borrower is servant to the lender. And yet, nearly every country in the world is in debt to some central bank, a central bank, which is privately owned and operated. We think it's a government establishment, when it is not. It only has a special relationship with the government, which over time, gives it power over the government. Those owners of those central banks are the real rulers of the world. 

That's why Andrew Jackson fought against the central banks throughout his Presidency. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and John Adams had also warned of the private banking threat and established a government with the power to establish a National Bank. They purposely did not want to do business with the Rothschild European banking system. During the Civil War, Lincoln refused to accept their high interest rates on money borrowed and produced his own "Lincoln Greenbacks," to pay the Union troops. That was the beginning of the end of Lincoln and they soon had him shot and his "Greenbacks" removed from circulation. His Vice-President, who took office, Andrew Johnson, was already in their club and a member of Albert Pike's Masonic Lodge. 

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when once we practice to deceive." Jesus told us not to be deceived. Thomas Jefferson even suggested you not read the news paper so that you would think better. He said newspaper reading was brainwashing and the dumbing down of the public, though he didn't use those terms. Alan Watt says that the nightly news is the highest form of mental conditioning and shapes our thinking processes. He says we shouldn't even what a movie for relaxation unless we do it critically and are aware of the hidden agenda that be being preached to us, unawares.