This Power Point slide show presentation was delivered virtually to the Alternative History Festival in Poland in September 2020. It highlights several historical turns as modern civilization has evolved that led to our present predicament and then asks how things might have been different and how they ought to be.
You can download it here.
It is almost laughable to see “the powers that be” fumbling around, and bending everything they touch out of shape, as they try to maintain some semblance of life in the deeply flawed zombie system of money, banking and finance. Laughable, that is, if it were not so tragic.
This financial “Titanic” has not been ripped open by a sudden encounter with some unexpected and random “iceberg.” It was doomed from its very beginning because of its flawed design, construction, and operation, which I have repeatedly described over the past thirty plus years.[i] It has been taking on water and shaking itself apart for a very long time, but it is just within the past few years that its inevitable demise has become obvious, and is now imminent.
The Great Revelation of 2008
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This article was first published on Medium
I have recently received from several sources word of a new monetary reform proposal. This one, commissioned by the Prime Minister of Iceland, is titled, MONETARY REFORM A BETTER MONETARY SYSTEM FOR ICELAND, and is authored by Frosti Sigurjonsson.
I’ve taken the time to read only the Overview and summary portion, but that is sufficient to discern the crux of the Sigurjonsson proposal, which is this:
The Central Bank will be exclusively responsible for creating the money necessary to support economic growth. Instead of relying on interest rates to influence money creation by banks, the Central Bank can change the money supply directly. Decisions on money creation will be taken by a committee that is independent of government and transparent in its decision-making, as is the current monetary policy committee.
New money, created by the Central Bank, will be transferred to the government and put into circulation in the economy via increased government spending, by reduction in taxes, by repaying public debt or by paying a citizen dividend.
The Central Bank will also be able to create money for lending to banks for onward lending to businesses outside the financial sector.
Sigurjonsson indicates that his proposal draws heavily upon an earlier proposal titled, A Monetary Reform for the Information Age, by Joseph Huber and James Robertson (New Economics Foundation (2001)), which I critiqued early in 2002. That critique, along with subsequent dialog between the authors and myself, can be found at http://reinventingmoney.com/monetary-reform-information-age/.
Since both the Sigurjonsson proposal or the Huber/Robertson proposal advocate the same basic approach, I strongly believe that any serious consideration of either, should also consider my above mentioned earlier critique and subsequent dialog.
While I agree with much of what Huber and Robertson (and presumably, Sigurjonsson) say about the defects in the present money system, I believe that their proposed centralized “solution” does not go nearly far enough in solving those defects. Continuation of the money monopoly in (presumably) different hands does not get to the root of the problem. It is my view that the key to achieving more equitable and sustainable economic interrelationships lies in liberating the exchange process from monopolized money and banking, enabling the creation of competing currencies and credit clearing exchanges, and allowing the needs of traders themselves to determine the supply of exchange media (money) in circulation at any given point in time.
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Posted in Banking, Developing Alternatives, Finance and Economics
Tagged central banking, Iceland, monetary reform
Thirteen year old Victoria Grant speaks truth to power in calling for a massive change in the way we do money and banking. Brilliant!
Corrupción Extrema, la causa de la Extrema Pobreza. subtítulos en español
Posted in Banking, Geo-politics, The Debt Imperative
Tagged central banking, Victoria Grant
Here is a concise and eloquent statement by Godfrey Bloom, a member of the European Parliament (MEP), describing the fraud that is being perpetrated on the people of every country by the politicians and bankers who collude to perpetuate to central banking regime.
The central banking regime enables parasitic drains on the economy in the form of unnecessary interest charges levied on the people’s use of their own credit, and chronic deficit spending by national governments that is enabled by putting counterfeit money into circulation under color of law.
I, along with many others, have been trying to raise awareness about what the global elites have planned for us. The article, A Global Central Bank, Global Currency & World Government, is Andrew Marshall’s recent offering on the subject.
Posted in Global Economy, The Political Money System
Tagged central banking, world government
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.
Posted in Finance and Economics, Global Economy
Tagged bailout, banking elite, central banking, debt, hyperinflation, inflation, interest, larceny, middle class, value added tax, Weimar Republic
The present disorder in the financial markets and the cascading failures of financial institutions come as no surprise. Those who recognize the impossibility of perpetual exponential growth and who understand how compound interest is built into the global system of money and banking expect the continuation of periodic “bubbles” and “busts,” each of increasing amplitude until the systems shakes itself apart.
Engineers call this phenomenon, “positive feedback.” Such a system cannot find equilibrium. Imagine a heating system in which the thermostat, sensing a rise in temperature, calls for more heat instead of less. Such is the nature of the debt-money system. The imposition of interest on the debt by which money is created, demands that more debt be created. Such is the debt imperative which gives rise to a growth imperative. Among other things, it prevents the emergence of a steady state economy.
Is this the final round? Who can say? Can the system be saved yet one more time? Maybe.
Under the central banking regime which has become all but universal in countries around the world, money has been politicized. The collusion between politicians and international bankers enables governments to extract wealth from the economy by deficit spending and banks to extract wealth by charging interest on money as they create it by making loans. These two parasitic elements take wealth away from productive members of society and lavish it on military adventures, international intrigues, wasteful boondoggles, and financial finaglers.
When the system spins out of control what will come out of the chaos? It is impossible to predict but here are two strong possibilities. When the dollar collapses the financial and political elite class will certainly try to orchestrate a new global monetary regime based on the same old mechanisms for centralizing power and concentrating wealth in their own hands, seeking to complete the New (feudal) World Order which has been abuilding for the past three hundred years. Another possibility is the emergence of the kind of decentralized, democratic, and sustainable system we have been advocating for a long time.
We had better get ready to seize the opportunity that accompanies this impending crisis.
How? By organizing ourselves in our local communities and affinity groups to reclaim the credit commons, to create interest-free, non-dollar, non-bank exchange mechanisms and payment media. This is not as hard as it seems We already know how to do it. All it takes is organization and will.
Back to the current crisis, we should consider the possible actions of America’s creditors. According to Paul Joseph Watson & Yihan Dai, in and article in Prison Planet (http://prisonplanet.com/) dated Friday, September 19, 2008, “China Finance, China News and Chaobao Financial News, all state owned media outlets, slammed the Fed for taking action that will only make long term economic conditions worse and devalue the dollar by “creating money that does not exist which leads to the inflation of liquidity,” a policy contrary to China’s position as a holder of vast reserves of US dollars.”
Central banks have one true function, that is to manage the effects of the parasitic drain, to decide who will pay the price, who will feel the pain. They can either (1) restrict credit, thus causing recessions, bankruptcies and unemployment; or (2) they can expand credit and inflate the money supply by monetizing debts (either public or private) that are uncollectible.
Given China’s position as one of the United States’ biggest creditors, it is in a powerful position to determine the outcome of the current and future financial crises. If they don’t like the restructuring plan that the financial elite wants to put in place, they can kick over the table by dumping their dollar holdings and causing the value of the dollar to crash through the floor. Organized others acting in cooperation might do the same.
“The king is dead, long live the king.”
My upcoming book, “The End of Money,” due to be published early next year by Chelsea Green, will elaborate these points.
t.h.g.
My latest book, The End of Money and the Future of Civilization , can be ordered from Amazon.com , or your local bookstore. You can also read a preview at Google Books.
To order signed copies of my previous books, click on the title below:
Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender
Beyond Money
Beyond Money 