Here we go again. Time has an explanation of the financial crisis. Blaming all the wrong things…
Good Times
Alan Greenspan
Twisted Regulation
Wall Street
The Homeownership Obsession
Too Much Money
The Myth of the Rational Market
You and Me
George W. Bush
Commodity Futures Modernization Act
The Rating Agencies
Letting Lehman Go
What about the siphoning off of wealth from the workers and people who produce to those people who create money from money through the use of usury? Why isn’t that idea on the top of the list? Maybe we should ask, “Where’s the Interest?”
Over at the Counter Punch, Sasan Fayazmanesh discusses The Monk’s Cure, Our Current Economic Crisis. In her post she talks about an economy blame game being waged where arguments on who is at fault for any economic malaise seems to miss the real problem of a crisis. She goes on to show examples of market manipulation and trade manipulation for ones’ gain.
Fayazmanesh continues by saying the cycle of regulation and deregulation has been with us for hundreds and hundreds of years. The early monks told people not to worry about ever increasing wealth or the use of usury, but that advice went unheeded over and over. She goes on to say this:
…we should not expect to see “toxic” mortgages, “troubled” assets, “exotic” financial instruments, and Ponzi schemes to disappear from the market for good. Instead, we should expect every regulation to be followed by deregulation and, then, the cries for reregulation. We should also expect the creation of even more “exotic” financial instruments. That has been, since the age of “commercial revolution,” the pattern of development of the market system and there is no reason to believe that such a pattern will change.
I think she’s correct that we will continue on this cycle as long as we are all taught that usury is bad since you should feel guilty for not helping your fellow man for free. Perhaps if we educated people on how our monetary system works in regard to debt, people would understand what usury really means and they’d begin to ask, “Where’s the Interest?”
Read this article at the Telegraph in the UK and you hear that David Cameron, the Tory leader, wants more morality in the market.
Here’s a quote from the article:
Mr Cameron said that many people around the world are cynical about the merits of capitalism and free-market economics.
He said: “This is what too many people see when they look at capitalism today: Markets without morality; globalisation without competition; and wealth without fairness. It all adds up to capitalism without a conscience and we’ve got to put it right. “
What is interesting to me is that many people will bash these statements and rationale simply because it doesn’t sound free market or capatilistic. Instead of thinking usury is some old world idea about not letting someone borrow money for free, people like David Cameron should educate more people to ask, “Where’s the Interest?”
In Aristotle’s work titled Politics we see this passage:
There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of any modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.
You can read the entire work of Aristotle here (published by Forgotten Books).
Here’s a quote from Plato’s work called The Republic:
The rulers, being aware that their power rests upon their wealth, refuse to curtail by law the extravagance of the spendthrift youth because they gain by their ruin; they take interest from them and buy up their estates and thus increase their own wealth and importance.
The above is quoted from a translation by Robin Waterfield. You can read the entire work at Google books.
Excellent cartoon on what the IMF and World Bank does to the third-world. And as the cartoon finishes, we realize that the same thing the IMF and World Bank does to the third-world is being done to us.
Came across the movie In Debt We Trust by Danny Schechter at my local library. You can watch it online at Google Video or purchase the movie here.
IN DEBT WE TRUST shows how the mall replaced the factory as America’s dominant economic engine and how big banks and credit card companies buy our Congress and drive us into what a former major bank economist calls modern serfdom.
Thanks to Danny for including my note to him on his blog. You can read the post here (scroll down to YOUR LETTERS).
You can see his next project called Plunder. Buy the book at Amazon. The movie should be out soon. For now, here’s the trailer.
At the Atlas Shrugged, they understand the problem:
The monetary system we operate is a debt based, fiat, Fractional Reserve Banking System. In that system money is created out of thin air at the point when a new debt is written which is then spent into the general money supply. Similarly, when the debt is repaid by extracting it from the general money supply, the money is destroyed, disappearing into the black hole from whence it came. During the term of the debt(loan) it is repaid with interest. However, only the capital was created out of thin air, the interest was not created at all. Therefore, to enable the debtor to pay back the principal plus interest he must take some of someone else’s capital from the general money supply to do that. For there to be enough money in the general money supply to remove more than you put in there must be an ever-increasing number of new loanees adding their newly-created capital to the pot.
Not that money supply is independent of the banking system. Much of the money supply is created by the banks. But if the money supply is the reason for depressions and recessions, there is an argument to maintain the current banking system–the Fed can counter panics and so fractional reserve banking’s chief problem (the threat of runs) can be countered. But not if the banking system itself is faulty. Then the argument for the current fractional reserve system is attenuated. Then, fractional reserve banking is in part responsible for misallocation and slowdowns, and money supply (itself a product of fractional reserve banking) is only partly to blame. In that case, a clear thinking public (sans the New York Times, pro-bank “liberals” and the like) ought to ask why the the banking is perpetuated given its dismal performance.
And this clear thinking public should also be asking, “Where’s the Interest?”
From a post from the Natural News. One more point they need to add: “Where’s the Interest?”
“I thought that, as a scientific man, I ought to know something about economics. So I studied the money system for two years and could make nothing of it. Then, one day, the truth dawned on me. What I was studying was not a system, but a confidence trick.” The conclusion that the money system is a confidence trick comes from “the father of nuclear fission” Nobel Prize winning chemist Frederick Soddy.
A confidence trick is a scam, a racket, a rip off, a con. What makes the money system a confidence trick? Put most simply, money is created for private profit by banks rather than created for the common good by the government. Only the government of a nation should create money. The confidence trick that is the money system takes two forms.
First, rather than simply print money, the government, when it wants more money than it has obtained through taxation, issues bonds. The Federal Reserve then creates new money that did not exist before and uses this money to purchase the bonds. Then the populace, through taxation, is forced to pay the interest on these bonds. This is how the National Debt was created. Rather than impoverishing the populace by forcing them to pay interest on bonds, the government could simply create money instead of having the Federal Reserve create money to purchase government issued bonds.
Second, banks devised a subtle way to counterfeit money. Banks invented a separate and distinct form of money other than cash. Banks invented a kind of money which exists solely as entries in their computers. Over 99% of money exists in this form. Anytime a check, credit card, debit card, or money order is used, electronic bank money is being used. Whenever someone gets a loan from a bank the bank is in fact creating entirely new electronic money that did not exist before. Through this subtle form of counterfeiting banks have been able to take control of the money system. This confidence trick is played not only by US banks but by all banks the world over. The money system is the world`s longest running and most successful confidence trick.
"In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone. You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury."-Benjamin Franklin explaining to directors of the Bank of England government issued money (link)
"People who will never turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest...but here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution, pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charge at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan."-Thomas A. Edison
