Category Archives: Means of payment

500th Anniversary of #usury approval by pope that opened doors to hell

Praised be the web once again to share and benefit from information, knowledge and wisdom that otherwise might not have crossed our paths.

Here is an excellent article about the immoral concept of usury and how Pope Leo X actually made it permissible – exactly 500 years ago!

Strange, the Vatican has been the ‘moral high ground’ while the City has been the core of the ‘financial elite’.

This morning I published:

after I read what George had put together in Australia about gradual enslavement…

Now I read the bio of the usury author and feel very much comforted living on the edge – in line with the Cliff’s Edge Signalling Company who alerted me to the article on usury in the first place. Joining the Dirty Dots seems to be our task !

OVER 30 MPs debate #MoneyCreation and Society – #Cash vs #Credit – Governments vs #Banks

UK Parliament debated Money Creation and Society for first time in 170 years.  Here’s what they said – on this video – starting at 11:18:

London, 21st November 2014

On Thursday 20th November 2014 over 30 MPs took part in a debate in the House of Commons on money creation and society. This was the first time in 170 years, since the Bank Charter Act in 1844, that the topic has been fully debated.

 

Money creation affects almost every aspect of our lives, and is directly connected to almost all public policy, including public and private debt levels, house prices, and rising inequality, but it’s very poorly understood. A recent poll found that 7 out of 10 MPs believed that only the government can create money[1], when in fact 97% of money is created by banks as they make loans, as recently confirmed by the Bank of England[2]

 

MPs acknowledged the problem of their own lack of understanding of money creation [1]:

 

Peter Lilley MP stated that “A lot has been made of the ignorance of Members of Parliament of how money is created. I suspect that that ignorance…… explains many things, not least why we entered the financial crisis with a regulatory system that was so unprepared for a banking crisis.”

 

Zac Goldsmith MP was the first to admit at the debate that he does not fully understand the system, stating, “I suspect that most people here would be humble enough to recognise that the banking wizardry we are discussing is such a complex issue that very few people properly understand it.” Continue reading

Pied Pipers, Emperor’s New Clothes and Lemmings – the Essence of Money Creation in Banks

HBOS Whistleblower Paul Moore on video – produced by Positive Money. He quotes a saleswoman who said we can never attain our targets if we tried to sell ‘ethically’…

Whoever began to think about ‘financial products’ and sell them???

‘Money’ has ceased to be a medium of exchange as well as a store of value. It’s just become a tool to make money out of money: a deadly sin in Islam!
Related articles

Q: Where does Money Come from? A:Thin air, sold at Interest

As often in life: the answer is so simple that people can’t and don’t want to believe it…

This book is new in our armoury, as Anne Belsey from the Money Reform Party writes:

MRP e-Newsletter

November 2011

Let’s be the Voice of Authority

Since the European Conference on Banking in September and ever more since last month’s Positive Money conference, I have been pondering on what to do next. Particularly, I have been thinking about the book Where Does Money Come From?.

I think that this book is an excellent new weapon in our armoury. This is not because it is better than other books, such as Mike Rowbotham’s The Grip of Death, or Helen Brown’s The Web of Debt, or any of the many works produced by James Gibb Stuart over the years, or, indeed, better than any of the many other publications by money reformers.

What sets this book apart is its provenance, particular with respect to the writer of the foreword. This gives it an authority with which all previous writers cannot compete. With such a book in our hands, we are no longer a crazed minority spouting some nonsense about banks creating the money supply. Suddenly, we have become part of the Voice of Authority on the subject.

We live in a world where it is not a matter of what you say or what you know, but who you are. It was ever thus. Over the centuries, sententious individuals have set themselves up to be the Authority on some matter or other, and their view has prevailed (until the contrary evidence became overwhelming), because thinking things through is difficult for most people and not helped by the fact that many people are able to hold two contrary ideas at the same time.

I have heard MP s on the radio talk about about the need to reduce debt within our economy and then a moment later to talk of the need to get the banks lending again, without apparently noticing the evident contradiction in their statements.

Let’s educate our MP s

We need to educate our MP s and we now have the means to do it – WDMCF? This is not only because of the sheer authority of the book, but also because it includes its own summary or Overview on the first three pages.

This Overview fits nicely onto a single sheet of A4 in 12 point type, so can be used as the basis of a leaflet. (See the four attachments.) Even if they don’t buy the book, but merely read the Overview, MP s might begin to understand why the UK (and much of the rest of the world) is facing problems in the economy.

So I have begun a programme of sending such a leaflet, with an accompanying letter, to all our MP s. I have done 240 so far, just another 400 to go.

Everyone can help by writing to their own MP, including a copy of one of these leaflets should they so choose. At the PM conference, Josh Ryan-Collins talked about the book and made the offer of sending a free copy to any MP who was interested. You might like to extend this offer, but my own view is that if any MP really is interested, then they won’t begrudge the £15, whilst any who is not won’t even read a free copy.

Also, if anyone is feeling flush, they could help out this project by sending a few pounds, payable to ‘Money Reform Party’, to 34 Berkeley Close, Dunkirk, Faversham. ME13 9TR. For example, £36 will pay for a book of 100 second class stamps.

After the MP s, whom?

I had 1000 leaflets printed up, as the cost for 1000 was about the same as for 650, so I shall have 350 leaflets left over. To whom should I send these? What do you think?

I am thinking that they should go to economic journalists in our mainstream media, but other ideas would be welcomed (along with the stamps to enable the mail out).

The Positive Money conference

This was a good little event, well attended (uncomfortably so, given the setting), but we had some good speakers, putting across a range of viewpoints.

It was good to see two MP s there (Steve Baker and Michael Meacher), who pretty much confirmed my suspicion that the reason why politicians do nothing about our money system is not because they are involved in some conspiracy to cover it up, but because they simply don’t understand it. Hence the need for a campaign to start educating them.

Steve Baker came out as a gold bug. I don’t mind people advocating bullion as the basis of money, even though I don’t think that it will work. but they do have a tendency to conflate debt-based money with fiat money, when the two are quite distinct. Also, he kept referring to our present money as ‘irredeemable’. I am sorry that he is unable to redeem his money. Personally, I redeem money all the time – I redeem it in the supermarket for groceries, in the pub for beer, and so on. I could even redeem it for gold at a jewellers or bullion dealers, if I so choose.

That’s not the problem with our money supply! The problem is that it based on people being in debt, with overall debts having to grow year on year simply to avoid recession, unlike, of course, a positive, debt-free purely fiat currency.

The shadow of Weimar looms large

The problems in the Eurozone have loomed large over recent weeks and seem set to continue on into the future.

The solution that many Euro politicians want is one of greater fiscal integration, creating one body responsible for taxation and public spending throughout the zone. This will effectively create one sovereign entity called maybe Euroland or the United States of Europe or, by its opponents, the Fourth Reich.

Given the sheer dominance of Germany in such a fiscal union, I cannot see it happening, certainly not for those countries that suffered at the hands of the Third Reich.

Of course, such a union will not solve the Eurozone’s problems, but it would disguise them, just as in Britain we have been able to disguise the dominance of the City of London, which parasitically feeds off the rest of the country, by a small degree of taxation upon it to subsidise the rest of the country.

Nor will the ECB consider such a measure as Quantitative Easing, which has been applied in Britain and the USA, QE has not solved the economic problems in either the UK or the USA, nor will it, because its purpose is not to reduce debt, but to increase it. However, it has given the money markets confidence that UK and US debt will always be redeemed, so kept gilt yields (the price of Govt. borrowing) low.

QE will not be implemented by the ECB, because the ECB is based in Germany and is dominated by Germany, and Germany fears hyper-inflation more than anything else. Given the phenomenal levels of debt in the Eurozone, QE is no more likely to see an upsurge in borrowing and hence hyper-inflation in the Eurozone, than it has in the UK or the USA. Even so, the idea will not even be considered.

As for the creation of a debt-free money supply… that is beyond even non-consideration, if one can have such a place.

Britain must lead the way

Nor will the USA nor Japan lead the way towards debt-free money – the USA because there is too much resistance to government power, nor in Japan because, well, they have not sussed the solution yet, despite being 20 years ahead of us in their debt-crisis.

As ever it will fall to Britain to lead the world towards salvation from the troubles of its own making. All we need to do is get enough MP s to understand the cause of the present problems and then gently guide them towards a simple and sensible solution.

And we have to do this because, in the immortal words of Colour-Sergeant Bourne ( from the film Zulu ) ‘There’s no one else.’

And we now have the means, not in the shape of Martini-Henry rifles, but the wonderful new weapon called Where Does Money Come From?

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) from a banker’s perspective

A former banker’s articulate article comment on OCCUPY – its origin, process and outcome.

John Fullerton
Founder and President
Capital Institute

I’m a former banker, a one percenter, and I’m mad as hell too.

Let’s be clear. The Occupy movement is not a product of frustration, as President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner, and now Eric Cantor have suggested. Frustration is passive; anger is active. Martin Luther King was not frustrated. But beyond my anger is a real concern for democracy, for America, for the people of the world, for the planet upon which we all depend, and for my children’s future. It’s why I do what I do. It’s the inspiration for Capital Institute.

This concern led me to Liberty Park Plaza last week to listen, show my support and empathy for the peaceful demonstrators, and learn about the occupation first-hand. I wanted to see if I could build a relationship with some of the organizers — which I did — and find out if the prominent media narrative of disorganization and unclear goals was accurate.

I learned that OWS is first and foremost about restoring democracy in America, and that I was right to be concerned about the media’s portrayal.

Since the beginning of the protests, leading politicians and members of the media have been asking the question “What does OWS want?” This is the wrong question. Policy priorities are for interest groups, working their battle plans within the system. Proposals are what the media and politicians of the left and right want so they can put the complex issues that led to the occupation into pre-existing boxes before they are fully understood.

OWS as I understand it today, is building a movement of everyday people who are fed up with Wall Street’s corrupting influence on our democracy. Wall Street does not mean capitalism, although capitalism’s critics are on hand at OWS. It means the socialized losses and the unchecked power, greed, speculative excess, violence, and theft from fellow citizens that has gone unchecked by our bought and paid for government — Democrats and Republicans alike. But it also means the dominant influence of Wall Street culture on short-term corporate behavior and misbehavior, from Enron’s derivatives-enabled fraud to the Koch Brothers’ and Exxon’s funding of climate change denial, to the health insurance industry’s power over lives and affordable health care, to McDonald’s and Coke’s impact on childhood obesity, all to further short-term corporate and financial interests no matter the cost to “we the people.”

This is different from “We are the 99 Percent,” a divisive, although clever phrase that has not been formally adopted by the OWS General Assembly. Wall Street’s culture is the target because money has corrupted the Republic. Through this power lens, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the rest are mere tools in the system, not worthy of protesting against. Instead, the right question we should be asking is, “what is emerging at OWS?”

It is useful and eye opening to go back to see how OWS began, and to view the original Adbusters blog post dated July 13, 2011. Like the world we live in, the OWS movement is complex and filled with uncertainty.
But the answer is simple: the Occupy movement is a mass experiment in participatory and deliberative democracy. It says “fix government,” not “eliminate government.”

I engaged with one of the many experienced organizers at OWS during my trip. He was unusually calm, articulate, experienced (a Seattle WTO alum) and well informed — he had read much of the leading alternative economics literature. He explained that the General Assembly that meets every evening to deliberate the course of the movement had determined explicitly not to develop a set of demands at this time. Instead, he shared, OWS is focused on setting up a governance system for the movement, expecting to be around for the long haul. As of today, any list of demands that you may hear, therefore, are unsanctioned by the governing General Assembly of OWS.

The emergence of the practice of participatory democracy as the movement’s only initial priority says everything. OWS is about taking back democracy. Don’t be fooled by their clothing, drums, or hand signals. There is something serious afoot here that is organic, influenced by experienced social movement organizers, and yet uncontrolled. Whether it can last is unknowable and not yet determined. It will depend upon how we all react — politicians, business leaders, police, and most importantly, we the citizenry. Their strategy is to build the power of the movement before seeking to use that power. A million demonstrators speak louder than ten thousand, just like a trillion dollar balance sheet speaks louder than a hundred billion dollar one. Right out of Goldman Sachs’ playbook I’d say.

So far, OWS has established working groups, in areas like media, de-escalation (there is an explicit commitment to non-violence — let us hope there is a discipline to match), the kitchen, first aid, security (they have adopted strict no alcohol and drug use rules), sanitation, and more. The day I was there, they were organizing to create a phone book for the community. There is a library and groups working to promote new economic thinking. OWS’s next and overdue priority is how to be better neighbors to their immediate downtown community.

William Blake cautioned that abstraction without the particular becomes demonic. As a society, we became intoxicated with the pursuit of money, and then in our stupor, allowed forces emanating from Wall Street to layer abstraction upon abstraction in the name of innovation. This morphed into nothing but leveraged speculation at best, and into manipulation, conflicts of interest, cynicism, cheating, and fraud. I know because I was there at the creation in the 1980s. Back then, these tools were innovative, purposeful and productive. But they have since metastasized into a cancer. Free market fundamentalism blinded us to a timely diagnosis, and continues to do so today.

It is time for finance to resume its proper and humble place as servant to, not master of, the real economy — an economy that promotes a more equitably shared prosperity while respecting the physical limits of our finite planet. Such transformation is the Great Work of our age; work that drives the Capital Institute and many other organizations fostering the emergence of a new economy. The restoration of our democracy OWS seeks is an essential step, which may be at hand. It’s still a long shot, but we shall see. One thing is for certain: OWS has started a national conversation long overdue.

John Fullerton is the Founder and President of the Capital Institute, whose mission is to explore and effect economic transition to a more just, resilient, and sustainable way of living on this earth through the transformation of finance.

Completely brilliant video rap: Money from Nothing

Concentrated Consciousness on www.seektruth.cc produced this exquisite rap on video:


Pieces of paper devalue one’s labour
printing press process cuts like a saber
through the worth of the sweat – off of one’s brow
in the form of a system we have allowed
through default of inheritance – to continue
to create money from nothing… and this for a fee!

The economics of banking and legal tender
esoteric complexities which typically render
most individuals dazed and confused
clueless about this system we use
on a daily basis – throughout our lives
an idea we’ve been sold… and continue to buy.

Continue reading

Heartfelt gratitude to banks – published in the FT

Published: FT February 11 2011 03:02 | Last updated: February 11 2011 03:02

From Mr Peter Fieldman.

Sir,

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the banks, and to George Osborne for handling the negotiations at a time of great economic hardship, that has led to banks so generously agreeing to lend us our own money. [and charging INTEREST for it!!! – bracket by me]

Peter Fieldman,

Madrid, Spain