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?
In the Spirit of the Forum for Stable Currencies