I’ve posted on this site another excerpt from my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. This portion of Chapter 17 outlines my view of an emergent Complete Web Based Trading Platform. Click here or find it in the sidebar under “Resources, Excerpts.”

The book can be ordered from Chelsea Green Publishing, Amazon.com, or your local bookstore — t.h.g.

The recent testimony before Congress of the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve is laughably outrageous—a startling example of the persistent stonewalling and obfuscation by the private central bank that runs our government. Fortunately, we have a few courageous Representatives who are willing to ask the right questions. This video of questioning by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Florida) is a “must see.”

Here is an excerpt from Rep. Grayson’s newsletter dated June 11, 2009:

Since last September, the Federal Reserve Bank has handed out over $1 trillion.  That’s $1,000,000,000,000.  It won’t tell us who got the money.

The Federal Reserve Bank also has guaranteed loans for an even larger amount.  Bloomberg News says around $9 trillion.  That’s $30,000 for every American.  It won’t tell us who got those guarantees.

I’m a member of the House Financial Services Committee.  A few weeks ago, the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve Bank was called as a witness.  I asked her if she knew who got the money.  She said no.

The Inspector General also admitted that she didn’t know how much money the Federal Reserve Bank has lost, already, on those deals.

That video was posted on YouTube, here.  Over 650,000 people have downloaded it and seen it.  That makes it the 6th most popular news video in the world last month, as you can see here.

Add the number who have seen the high-fidelity version, here, and the number of viewers is over 900,000.  Counting those viewers, it was the 4th most popular news video in the world last  month.

900,000 concerned citizens.  That’s more than the total circulation of every newspaper in Central Florida, combined.  That’s more than the total number of viewers watching the local news at 6 pm and 11 pm, combined.

The media did not cover this hearing at all.  But people found this clip on YouTube and told their friends about it, over and over again.

What this clip shows is that the Federal Reserve Bank is out of control.  And I’m working to do something about it.

I was the first Democrat to come out in favor of Rep. Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve Bank, H.R. 1207.  And I’ve used this video to mobilize bipartisan support for the bill.  Since the hearing, dozens and dozens of members of Congress have signed up.  They can see for themselves how badly this mess needs to be cleaned up.  We’re getting close to 218 co-sponsors, a majority of the House.

Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) has introduced a bill to not only audit the Federal Reserve, but also to abolish it (The Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act, H.R. 833. February 4, 2009). It’s encouraging to see the money and banking problem once more in the political spotlight. This is a time of great opportunity for liberating the “credit commons,” but it is also a time of great danger. Most politicians know little about the principles of sound money and banking, they believe in the centralization of power that is enabled by laws like “legal tender,” and they can easily be manipulated or bought off by the financial powers who will use any crisis as an opportunity to promote “solutions” that further enhance their power and ability to dominate economies, nations, and peoples.

It’s not only the Federal Reserve that’s “out of control,” it’s also our government and virtually all of our institutions and life support systems. The situation calls for the application of our collective intelligence to solving our problems and the devolution of power to the community level.

As I said in an earlier blog post, Eventually, it may be possible to act effectively at the governmental level, but only after the people have strongly asserted their own power to mediate the exchange process using their own credit apart from banks and the political money system. Only that assertion can bring about the “true free-market economy” that Mr. Paul desires. The nature of this power and how we can assert it are thoroughly addressed in my latest book, The End of Money and Future of Civilization. Please read it, and ask your representatives to read it. Better yet, send them a copy. –t.h.g.

An excerpt from my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, has been published on Reality Sandwich. Is is one of the more important chapters, which contains a prescription for community empowerment and enhanced self-determination. That chapter, A Regional Economic Development Plan Based on Credit Clearing,  is also here on this site under “Excerpts.”

Bill Bonner is absolutely correct in calling the monetization of debt The Grandest of Larcenies. He points out that, “Rather than honestly repaying what it has borrowed, a government merely prints up extra currency and uses it to pay its loans. The debt is “monetized”…transformed into an increase in the money supply, thereby lowering the purchasing power of everybody’s savings.”

As I argue in my new book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, enabling governments to spend more than they take in is half of the purpose of the central banking regime, the other half being to give the banking elite the privilege of charging interest on the people’s own credit.

As Bonner further points out,  “Of course, the Fed will not want to do such a dastardly deed; but it will do it anyway.” They are desperate to keep the game going and the only other alternative is to let interest rates rise as government seeks to sell more of its debt to increasingly reluctant lenders abroad.

Government, for its part, must either cut its profligate spending or raise taxes, or both. From the rhetoric coming out of Washington, it is clear that social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, are on the chopping block, but not sacred cows like military spending or bailouts for banks and corporate dinosaurs–the empire must be preserved.  Trial balloons for new taxes are now being floated. Is a VAT (value added tax) on the horizon?

As in the Weimar Republic between the World Wars, the politicians and bankers today may decide that hyper-inflation is the least onerous of their available options. The middle-class can say goodbye to their hard-earned savings.

This chart should tell you something about where stock prices are headed. Either earnings will have to make a dramatic recovery, or stock prices will have to fall a long way.

An article in The Financial Times reports that Brazil and China are working toward an agreement that will enable the use of their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar. This will be a major step that will encourage other countries to do likewise, thus reducing the longstanding dependence upon the US dollar as the international payment medium. As foreign dollar holdings stop increasing or are reduced, the US government will have a harder time selling its bonds. The buyer of last resort, of course is the Federal Reserve.  As the Fed and the banking system monetize ever greater amounts of US government debt, the purchasing power of the dollar will drop precipitously.

The only thing that has supported the value of the dollar thus far has been the “great recession” in which the business sector is starved for credit and ordinary people are starved for cash; that and the abiding myth that the dollar will always be “as good as gold.” — t.h.g.

On May 4 I was interviewed by Tim Lynch of New Zealand’s GreenPlanetFM radio program. You can lsiten to it here.

Deirdre Kent and conference organizer Laurence Boomert have provided a link to audio records of the New Zealand Community Currencies Conference 2009 that was held in Whanganui April 17-19th.

Here is their note:
Here is a link to the audio recording of our keynote speaker Thomas Greco at the conference.
http://miscellaneous-sonstiges.blogspot.com/2009/04/thomas-greco-talk-on-radio4all-notes.html
Click on the link in the yellow box then scroll to the bottom of the new page and click on the red download arrow – enjoy

Audio recordings of other speakers at the conference will also soon be available and a bit later we will have the videos that go with the talks.
The written resource document that records the different models of currency brought forward at the conference will soon be available.

I’ve also now posted the photos to my photo gallery. — t.h.g.

To cut through all of the peripheral points, the main problems with the political money and banking system are:
1. The issuance of money on improper bases, mainly government debt, real estate, and assets of questionable value.
Principle: Money should be issued on the basis of goods and services already in the market or shortly to arrive there. All other needs (capital formation and consumer spending) should be financed out of savings.
2. Legal tender laws that force acceptance at par of debased political currencies.
Principle: Legal tender laws should be abolished. Only the issuer of a currency should be required to accept it at par. In the absence of legal tender, debased currencies will either be refused or pass at a discount in the market.
3. The charging of interest on credit money that is created as “loans.”
Principle: Money should be created interest free as a generalization of trade credit that facilitates the exchange of goods and services.

— t.h.g.