Banking and credit industries have been in existence since the first coins were minted in Lydia. Maybe the British banking system began as a pirate operation, but many bureacratic institutions from the Knight Templar to Italian merchant cartels served as banks for the aristocracy. One of the earliest investment banking schemes involving government bonds were the tax farming system under the Roman Republic. The infamous publicanii (tax collectors of the Synoptic Gospels) were but enforcers of this banking scheme.