This is the latest chapter to be published of my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. It summarizes the dimensions of the money problem and the pathways toward solving it as we described them in the previous chapters, and elaborates upon the various functions of money and finance and how they can be handled in ways that are honest, fair, and empowering.
Here is a brief excerpt:
The political money system is the keystone in the arch of power. —Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
Having laid the necessary foundation in the first eleven chapters, we can now proceed to summarize the requirements for solving the money problem. We have shown how money has been politicized and how the control over its creation and allocation has become, what I call, “the keystone in the arch of power,” a power which is at once financial, economic, political, and social. Those who control money are able to control everything else. The inherent dysfunctions of the present monetary regime derive mainly from the following structural elements:
The monopolization of credit by the banking cartel in collusion with national governments
The creation of money by banks as interest-bearing “loans”
Legal tender status for official debt-money
The elimination of any operational concrete measure of value and unit of account
We have seen how that system:
Enables national governments to finance endless wars and other projects that are wasteful, destructive, and contrary both to the wishes of the citizenry and to the common welfare
Enables banks to reap inordinate profits while deciding to whom and for what purpose the money shall be distributed among “borrowers”
Gives a small, elite “super-class” the non-bona-fide money to acquire an ever-increasing proportion of the world’s real wealth and the ability to control political and economic affairs worldwide
Forces the exponential growth of debt, and destructive competition for an always-insufficient supply of money for all debts to be repaid
Emerging Exchange Alternatives
The most graceful and promising approach to empowering ourselves and our communities is through voluntary, entrepreneurial activities that can liberate the exchange process and reclaim “the credit commons.” So long as people have the freedom of association and the right to contract it will be difficult if not impossible for governments to prevent the creation of exchange media and mechanisms by private initiative. We can thereby, step-by-step, reduce our dependence upon bank borrowing and political currencies, taking control of our own credit and organizing independent means for allocating it directly to those individuals and businesses that we trust and wish to support. Riegel reminds us that, “there is no constitutional or statutory barrier to the inauguration of a private enterprise, non-debt, non-interest, mutual money system.” Only popular control of credit and competition in currencies can transcend the money problem. As Ulrich von Beckerath has observed, “Extension of exchange transactions without State money is in reality the beginning of a new system of settling accounts, indeed the beginning of a new economic order.” A new economic order is precisely what is needed at this point in history.
Jem Bendell, former professor and founder of the Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria (UK) has a highly credentialed background that is impressive by any measure. After a life changing experience, he embarked upon a different life path, delving deeply into diverse disciplines, including the latest climate science, that led to his writing, in 2023, his book, Breaking Together: A freedom-loving response to collapse, in which he summarized his startling conclusions:
“The collapse of modern societies has begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking Together. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other & nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what should we do? This book describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously & creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse. Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming our freedoms is essential to soften the fall & regenerate the natural world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an ecolibertarian agenda for both politics & practical action in a broken world.
Jem has since abandoned academia and his “illustrious career of delusion” in favor of a different path that embraces reality and includes practical decentralized actions of adaptation. Breaking Together is available as a free download, but if you would like to get a taste of it before plunging into his 500 page volume, I highly recommend that you listen to this two-part interview in which he quite articulately explains his main ideas, and how we can, by working together, adapt to the inevitable and ongoing collapse of our present version of civilization, and in the process build a better one. Interview Part 1; Part 2.
The work of Richard Flyer puts my own work, and that of Jem Bendell and others within a more comprehensive and foundational context.
In a recent message, Richard Flyer alerts readers to a short video that he posted a couple years ago on his YouTube channel to explain his work of empowerment and societal change. By his own description, “It not only provides solid content about building Symbiotic Cultures and Networks, but it really captures the Spirit, enthusiasm, and hope we need now more than ever—the possibility and reality of Fractal Community Empowerment. It was released more than a year before the book Birthing the Symbiotic Age: An Ancient Blueprint for a New Creation came out on Substack as a weekly series. It shares many of the stories of on-the-ground grassroots movements I have been affiliated with, including San Diego, CA, and Reno, NV, as well as the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement of Sri Lanka – and their relevance today.”
This is the latest chapter to be published of my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization. It continues the story begun in the previous chapter of how money has evolved and changed its character over time.
Here is a brief excerpt:
Money has become merely an accounting system, a way of “keeping score” in the economic “game” of give and take. —Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
Let us begin by summarizing the evolution of the various kinds of money that have been used to mediate reciprocal exchange:
The circulation of gold and silver coins gave way to paper banknotes that were redeemable for gold or silver coins, which made the notes essentially warehouse receipts for gold on deposit.
Then, banks began to lend bank notes into circulation based on the pledge of collateral assets (some valuable and others not) other than gold, some of which included government obligations (bonds, notes, etc.).
But ALL notes were redeemable in gold. This became known as the “fractional reserve banking” system.
Bank account balances (checkable bank “deposits”) increasingly took the place of paper bank notes, and bank customers began to write checks against their deposits instead of using bank notes to make payments.
As banks created ever greater amounts of non-bona-fide money based on national government debts and other illegitimate collateral assets, the fiction of gold-backing and redeemability could no longer be supported, and governments reneged on their promise to redeem their currency for gold. This broke the final link between political fiat money and the real economy of valuable goods and services.
But, despite that, the emergence of credit clearing to offset credit obligation against credit claims was a major leap forward in facilitating the reciprocal exchange of value.
You can now read or listen to the entire chapter at Future Brightly:
I am pleased to present this guest editorial by my long-time friend and correspondent, Christopher Quigley. Christopher in an expert in market analysis, and a proponent of the Social Credit philosophy of C. H. Douglas. I think you will find it useful. — T.H.G.
Excerpt:
Social Credit and the End of Meta-Feudalism
The King is dead long live the King” so goes the feudal aristocratic mantra establishing power continuity. Death and birth are a part of reality and amidst the pain of death the love of life must prevail. Currently many say that American society is dying but in fact it is experiencing a transformation. — Major Clifford Douglas
The quote above, made in 1934, perhaps would have been more correct if Douglas had said that America was going through a “paradigm shift” rather than a transformation. This shift was in essence a revolution at the time, a revolution based on growing consciousness, labour unrest, social dysfunction and expanding poverty. Today this trend is still emerging with other forces driving the trend, forces such as the growth of internet learning networks and the diminished effectiveness of mass broadcasting. Thus, average Americans are finally starting to think as sovereigns again. Their enlightened thinking had stopped following the disaster of the civil war of 1861-1865. This national cessation of practical awareness allowed the then Federal micro-system to usurp the Union macro-system through credit power. As a result, today the Federal Government is now macro, and the Union of States micro, but this could change over the next 50 years.
The global elites want the real American economy to contract. They desire a constrained and hobbled society which is more dependent and demanding, more complex, more controlled, more diverse, more fractured, more locally ineffective— In a word, meta-feudal. To understand a world that is meta-feudal you should watch movies such as “Brazil,” “Rollerball,” and “Blade Runner.” These worlds are technologically advanced but disintegrated and astonishingly unequal.
The meta-powers work through fabricated “crises.” The elite set up the last economic “crisis” through the “originate to distribute” Basel banking agreement of 1998. From this model evolved the hyper property bubble of post-2000, the “credit” collapse of 2007-2008, and the market-fixing credit derivative system and asset laundering off-balance-sheet accounting protocols currently in place. The credit collapse eventually led to the new “improved” post-Covid, bailed-out banking oligarchy now in place. This club involves far fewer players than existed heretofore but the financial club that is in power is now manifestly more globally influential.
The vast majority of people remain unaware of it, but the fact is, we have in our own hands, right now, the power to create or completely transcend money. As I’ve been preaching for many years, money is nothing more than credit, i.e., the willingness to trust that the value we provide as sellers of goods and services will be reciprocated when we become buyers. But, as we are now becoming so painfully aware, our trust in conventional political currencies and banks has been misplaced; we have been betrayed. It’s not only a matter of fraud and malfeasance, bad as that is, rather, the entire system was designed from the very start to enable the few to exploit the many.
There are two parasitic elements that are built into the central banking, debt-money system—interest and inflation. Every national currency is supported by the collective credit of the people. It is our own credit that we entrust to the bankers, then beg them to lend it back to us, and pay interest for the privilege. Besides that, the national government gets first priority in the allocation of credit. Banks like to lend to governments instead of to producers, because government securities are relatively risk-free and provide a guaranteed profit. When our collective savings prove insufficient to satisfy government’s spending demands, the banks will create enough new money to enable deficit spending, which is the essence of inflation. It is a hidden tax that eventually shows up as higher prices in the markets.
All of that will continue until the people are able to take back the reins of government, but that cannot happen until the people take back control of their economy, and that requires that we adopt new ways of mediating the exchange of goods and services that puts control in the hands of the people. E. C. Riegel eloquently expressed that prospect:
“To trade goods and services is a natural right of all people. To issue the money necessary to make these exchanges is also the natural right of all people who are intelligent enough to do so. We need not beg for money. We do not need to be money slaves: we can be money masters. When we have become money masters we shall master all our economic and political problems.
Dig up this treasure, your money power, that has been lying dormant in your consciousness and express it for wealth, health, peace and happiness by associating with others who are similarly awakened.”
The way to express our “money power,” and to achieve true democracy is to organize businesses and individuals into credit clearing associations and networks for the direct allocation of credit and payment without the use of political money. My writings, and those of E. C. Riegel, provide directions on how to do that.
I am currently in the process of publishing a major rewrite of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009). The first nine chapters are already available for free download on this website here, and the works of E. C. Riegel are available on this website in the Library.
2012 was a very busy year for me, which included a five-week tour of Europe and the UK during which I gave a total of 15 presentations and workshops to various groups, in addition to consultations, discussions, and meet-ups with many kindred spirits and colleagues working in the realm of societal transformation. If you’re interested, you can read my report about it in my November 2012 Newsletter.
Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state’… is absolutely essential in a free society. — Thomas Jefferson
The established beliefs about money in today’s world have become a sort of religion in which a fundamental tenet holds that government must, either directly or indirectly, have power over the system of money creation and circulation. This erroneous belief has taken the world to the brink of disaster which will surely ensue unless we take steps to depoliticize money by achieving the separation of money and state. It should be obvious by now that there will never be peace in the world so long as those who control our national governments are able to conjure up out of thin air the seemingly endless amounts of pseudo-money they need to pay for wars and whatever else might bolster their political and economic interests.
Read all about it in Chapter8—The Separation of Money and State, the latest chapter to be published in my new 2024 edition of The End of Money and the Future of Civilization.
Further chapters will continue to be posted as they are completed. Watch for Chapter Nine to be posted soon. As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed, Thomas
Chapter 4, Central Banking and the Rise of the Money Power is now available here on this website, complete with end notes, along with previously published chapters 1, 2, and 3. Click on the links below to access the text and the audio narration directly. Additional chapters will be posted as they are completed here. Watch for Chapter 5 to be posted in about two weeks.
As always, your comments and suggestions will be welcomed. Thomas
Chapter 3, The Contest for Rulership—Two Opposing Philosophies. is now available. You can find it on my website, complete with end notes, along with previously published chapters 1 and 2. Click on the links below to access the text and the audio narration. Additional chapters will be posted as they are completed here. I expect to complete Chapter 4 and post it around the end of this year.
As always, your comments and suggestions will be welcomed, Thomas ___________________
The Tyranny that is the Global Money System My new video has emerged out of the power point slide presentations I gave earlier this summer. It is a greatly improved description of the tyrannical nature of the global political money regime, how it has evolved, how it operates, and how we can free ourselves from its grip. Based on my more than 40 years of research, experience, and innovation in the realm of value exchange and finance, it succinctly reveals the truth about the money power, and more importantly, outlines tried-and-true exchange mechanisms by which people, businesses, and communities everywhere can transcend their dependence upon political money and bank borrowing by taking control of their own credit and using it in ways that can bring about a world of peace, justice, and freedom in which everyone can thrive.
Read the entire newsletter here or here, and you can Subscribe to receive my future occasional newsletters.
To satisfy my curiosity about AI, and ChatGPT in particular, I’ve been posing certain questions to it and been pleasantly surprised by the results. ChatGPT uses information that was publicly available online up to September 2021, so the responses that it generates will not include recent changes.
Here is one of my requests which, while much shorter, pretty well summarizes what I myself have written about the matter. I present it here for your information and your comments.
THG: Summarize the unique features of the work of Thomas H. Greco, Jr. on money and economics.
ChatGPT:
5/5 Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is known for his groundbreaking work on money and economics, focusing on alternative monetary systems and local economies. Some of the unique features of his work include:
Decentralized Monetary Systems: Greco advocates for the development of decentralized and community-based monetary systems that empower individuals and local communities to create their own means of exchange. He emphasizes the importance of currencies that are not controlled by centralized authorities like governments or banks.
Complementary Currencies: Greco promotes the idea of complementary currencies, which are designed to work alongside national currencies to facilitate local transactions and trade. These currencies are often tailored to specific communities or regions and can help stimulate local economies.
Democratization of Money Creation: He challenges the conventional model of money creation by banks and governments. Greco believes in the democratization of money issuance, allowing communities to create their own money based on real value and resources.
Mutual Credit Systems: Greco’s work includes the concept of mutual credit systems, where participants can extend credit to one another within a network. This can foster cooperation and exchange without the need for traditional banking intermediaries.
Localized Economies: He emphasizes the importance of localized economies that prioritize community resilience and sustainability. Greco’s work encourages communities to rely more on local production and resources to reduce dependency on distant supply chains.
Interest-Free Economics: Greco criticizes the conventional practice of charging interest on loans and believes that interest-free systems could lead to more equitable distribution of wealth and resources.
Advocacy for Change: Through his writings and lectures, Greco advocates for individuals, communities, and governments to explore and implement alternative economic and monetary systems. He believes that a shift away from the current monetary paradigm could lead to more just and sustainable economies.
In summary, Thomas H. Greco, Jr.’s work revolves around reimagining money and economics by proposing alternative monetary systems, promoting decentralized currencies, advocating for interest-free economies, and encouraging the development of localized, community-based economic structures. His ideas challenge conventional economic thinking and aim to create more resilient, equitable, and sustainable societies.
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Update: Monday, August 28, 2023 This iteration is a bit more complete:
Thomas H. Greco, Jr. is known for his unique contributions to the fields of money and economics, particularly in the realm of alternative currencies and monetary systems. Some of the key features of his work include:
Local and Complementary Currencies: Greco emphasizes the importance of local and complementary currencies as tools for promoting economic resilience and community development. He advocates for the creation of currencies that are tailored to specific communities or regions, helping to stimulate local economic activity and reduce dependence on centralized national currencies.
Decentralization of Money Creation: A central theme in Greco’s work is the decentralization of money creation. He believes that allowing communities to create their own currencies empowers them to meet their specific needs, bypassing the traditional centralized banking system and enabling greater control over their economic destiny.
Credit Clearing Systems: Greco explores the concept of credit clearing systems, which facilitate transactions without the need for traditional currency. These systems work by enabling participants to exchange goods and services directly based on mutual credit agreements, reducing the reliance on scarce official currency.
Integral Theory and Economics: Greco integrates principles of integral theory into his economic thinking, considering not only economic factors but also social, ecological, and cultural dimensions. He emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to economics that takes into account the interconnectedness of various aspects of human life.
Monetary Reform Advocacy: Greco is an advocate for monetary reform, particularly in response to issues such as inflation, financial instability, and wealth inequality. He proposes alternative monetary systems that prioritize stability, fairness, and sustainability.
Educational Efforts: Beyond his academic work, Greco is involved in educational efforts to raise awareness about alternative currencies and monetary systems. He has authored books and conducted workshops to help individuals and communities better understand and implement these concepts.
Focus on Empowerment: One of the overarching themes of Greco’s work is empowering individuals and communities to have a greater say in their economic affairs. He believes that by rethinking the way money is created and circulated, people can gain more control over their economic lives and reduce their vulnerability to systemic financial crises.
Sustainability and Resilience: Greco’s work aligns with the principles of sustainability and resilience. By promoting local economies and alternative currencies, he aims to create systems that are more environmentally friendly and less susceptible to the boom-and-bust cycles of traditional monetary systems.
In summary, Thomas H. Greco, Jr.’s work on money and economics revolves around the development of local and complementary currencies, decentralization of money creation, credit clearing systems, integral theory integration, monetary reform advocacy, educational initiatives, empowerment, and a focus on sustainability and resilience. His ideas challenge conventional economic thinking and offer potential solutions for creating more equitable and community-driven economic systems.
The US dollar is rapidly losing its status as the global “reserve currency.” One after another, nations outside of the western coalition are waking up to the fact that dollars are needed only to pay for imports that come from the United States. In trades with other countries they are choosing to begin paying one another by using their own currencies, as reported in videos like this. They are recognizing that the real resources that they own are much more valuable than the empty promises that are embodied in inflated US dollars or other political currencies. The exploitation of weaker nations by the western powers that has been ongoing for centuries is coming to an end and the emergence of a multi-polar world order is now unstoppable.
The Bretton Woods agreement that established the post-war world financial order in 1944 was based on the promise that US dollars would be redeemed for gold at $35 an ounce. But the continuous debasement of the dollar over the years made that completely unrealistic, and ultimately its impossibility was formally recognized when President Nixon in 1971 “closed the gold window” and announced that the US government was reneging on that commitment. It would no longer give gold for dollars except at the prevailing market price. From that point on the fate of the dollar was sealed; it was just a matter of time. Despite the imposition of a series of extreme financial, economic, political, and military measures by the US and its western allies, time has run out on dollar dominance and the unipolar world order.
The main questions now are, 1) to what further extremes will the western empire resort in its desperate effort to forestall the inevitable political reordering, and 2) what sorts of new monetary and financial arrangements will be established to supplant the old Bretton Woods arrangement?
Regarding the first of these, the past several decades have seen a succession of both covert and overt interferences designed to weaken or neutralize monetary dissidents and potential political and economic rivals. Notable among the former have been Saddam Hussein, who in 2000 began selling Iraqi oil for Euros instead of dollars, and Muammar Gaddafi the Libyan leader who had plans to launch a pan-African currency called the Gold Dinar to free Africa from American domination. As a consequence, both men were murdered and their countries destroyed. Following the NATO invasion of Libya, and the murder of Gaddafi, then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, disgustingly and arrogantly boasted, “We came, we saw, he died!”
But nuclear armed Russia and China are not so easy to push around and brought to heel. When their Russian puppet Boris Yeltsin chose Vladimir Putin to succeed him as prime minister, the globalist western oligarchs thought they could continue to rape Russia and exploit its vast resources for their own purposes. But Putin surprised them with his loyalty to “Mother Russia” and his unwillingness to betray the Russian people to the globalists. Whatever we in the west might think about the man, his stance has clearly endeared him to the Russian people.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the western powers promised not to move NATO farther to the east, but they have reneged on that promise, and one by one have brought the former Soviet republics into the western fold. [Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has elaborated on this point in his recent speech and highlighted the importance of respect for Russia’s legitimate security concerns if ever there is to be peace]. Then, in 2014 the CIA engineered the overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine and replaced it with their own puppet government to further pressure the Russian government to play ball. The perceived existential threat of NATO weapons, even nuclear ones, on their very doorstep, was too much for Russia’s leadership to bear. It should have come as no surprise to anyone that the Russians reacted as they did to counter that threat by launching their “special military operation.” Putin had stated repeatedly that he hoped to negotiate a deal that would respect Russia’s national security interests but the US government has chosen to perpetuate the war in order to weaken Russia and force it to submit. Former nuclear weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, with his military experience and vast knowledge of the region provides a much more nuanced picture of that siltation than the biased sound bites one typically gets from the mainstream media.
Farther to the east, China a major economic, political and military power, has also balked at submitting to a New World Order in which the Western Empire calls all the shots. So now the globalist oligarchs who control the US government see China as a major obstacle to their plan for establishing a trans-human, technocratic utopia under the control of the elite Super Class. Hence, we see continual saber rattling, military and political provocations, and endless prating about the “Chinese threat.”
Regarding a new system of exchange and finance, I expect that we may soon see the emergence of a multilateral system for clearing credits among nations, one that will be more along the lines of the Bancor plan that John Maynard Keynes proposed at Bretton Woods in 1944. Not that Keynes should be the last word on the matter, but he at least proposed a way of preventing trade deficits from becoming perpetual as they are now, by imposing a levy (interest) on positive balances, as well as negative balances, that would seem to eliminate the debt trap. Professor Perry Mehrling provides a brief description of the Bancor plan in this video.
I expect eventually to see the complete depoliticisation of money and the broader application of credit clearing directly among buyers and sellers at the level of individual traders, as they have been doing for decades through the scores of commercial trade exchanges that have been operating around the world. Money is, after all, merely an information system about credits and debits that enables goods and services that are sold to pay for other goods and services that are bought. Further, the settlement of accounts will be done not only through reciprocal exchange, but also through cooperative support and forgiveness of debts, which will bring with it greater fairness and finally a peaceful world. Indeed, there may someday be a world government, but it will not be imposed by force, nor will it be the product of greed and materialistic human minds.
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Addendum: In this excellent article, America Has Just Destroyed a Great Empire, Prof. Michael Hudson offers a history lesson that underlines the points I’ve made in my article.
Here is a small excerpt:
Having endowed the region’s cosmopolitan Temple of Delphi with substantial silver and gold, Croesus asked its Oracle whether he would be successful in the conquest that he had planned. The Pythia priestess answered: “If you go to war against Persia, you will destroy a great empire.”
Croesus therefore set out to attack Persia c. 547 BC. Marching eastward, he attacked Persia’s vassal-state Phrygia. Cyrus mounted a Special Military Operation to drive Croesus back, defeating Croesus’s army, capturing him and taking the opportunity to seize Lydia’s gold to introduce his own Persian gold coinage. So Croesus did indeed destroy a great empire, but it was his own.
Fast-forward to today’s drive by the Biden administration to extend American military power against Russia and, behind it, China. The president asked for advice from today’s analogue to antiquity’s Delphi oracle: the CIA and its allied think tanks. Instead of warning against hubris, they encouraged the neocon dream that attacking Russia and China would consolidate U.S. control of the world economy, achieving the End of History.
But that’s not the way it’s working out. Please read the full article.
The first edition of my book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization, was published by Chelsea Green Publishing in 2009. While it remains as relevant today as it was when first published the printed book has been out of print for several years. But, having had the rights reverted to me by my publisher, I am making the entire book available for free in PDF format. You can read it or download it HERE. If you would like a hard copy of the first edition used copies can still be found on Amazon.com, Abe books, Thrift books and elsewhere.
Better still, you can avail yourself of the new revised and expanded 2024 edition which I have been working on for almost two years and is almost complete. Eighteen chapters have already been posted and can be freely read or download HERE.
My previous books, as published, may be freely accessed in digital format by clicking the title below.