ARCHIVE  ...

?

You can read this article in full, plus lots more, at:

http://douglassocialcredit.com/resources/tsc/2008_winter.pdf

Meanwhile, in Whitley Bay shops continue to close  ...

For a long while now businesses towards the Cullercoats end of Whitley Road have been struggling to survive.  Now the town centre itself is under pressure.

With the Co-op moving to smaller premises, opposite the new chain-store shopping centre, and Woolworth's, occupying a huge prime site for the past half century or so, about to close, it's going to start looking like a ghost town.

And it's all down to our crazy financial system: to politicians hand-in glove with those who direct and profit from this system; and, most of all, to the millions of ordinary people who unquestioningly allow themselves to be pushed ever deeper into debt and taxation to maintain the status quo.

Why is there no mass movement demanding reform?  Why do we continue to chuck billions, and now trillions, into the black hole of the banking system?

Take another listen to "Where's my bailout?" here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kIjbMRU1EgU

Why not forward the link to your MP?

Bailiffs get power to use force on debtors

The government has been accused of trampling on individual liberties by proposing wide-ranging new powers for bailiffs to break into homes and to use “reasonable force” against householders who try to protect their valuables.

Under the regulations, bailiffs for private firms would for the first time be given permission to restrain or pin down householders. They would also be able to force their way into homes to seize property to pay off debts, such as unpaid credit card bills and loans.

Read more  ...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5375668.ece

Whose Money? says:

Money, then, is the thing we value most, riding roughshod over human well-being and compassion.

This is the inevitable result of choosing to have an economy which measures its success in terms of increasing financial turnover, rather than improvement in the quality of life for all.

Since "...  Her Majesty’s Courts Service has already handed out guidance to privately employed bailiffs, pointing out that under legislation passed in 2004 they can already break down doors as a last resort to collect court fines", this next step seems to be merely a question of dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's  -  as after the foot and mouth outbreak, when legislation was hastily passed to justify enormities already committed.

We are now longer under the rule of law.  We are under the rule of money.

It is looking more and more certain that we have reached another Magna Carta moment in the history of this country  ...

See: http://www.chestercab.co.uk/htmlFiles/Bailiffs.html



Ground zero on Wall Street: Fed funds and T-bills hit 0% interest

 

Ellen Brown, OpEd News

 

In the last two weeks, two federal interest rates hit all-time record lows.  On December 16, the market was taken by surprise when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke lowered the federal funds rate (the interest banks pay to borrow the reserves they need to meet their reserve requirement) to zero.  The explanation given was that the Federal Reserve was just setting the rate closer to where banks had already been trading with each other for weeks.1   

 

In an even more stunning development, the week before that the federal government itself began borrowing money for free.  “We were all watching it agog,” said a Treasury spokesman of the December 9 auction of three-month Treasury bills.  Investors were so hungry for Treasury debt that they were snatching up the T-bills at zero percent interest.  In the secondary market (investors buying from each other), Treasuries were actually trading at a negative interest rate.  That meant buyers were paying more than they would get back when the Treasuries came due.  Even at these unprecedented rates of non-return, the Treasury was having trouble keeping up with the demand.  Four times as much money wanted in as was sought by the government, indicating much more demand than availability.2

 

What is going on?

 

Read more  ...

 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/GROUND-ZERO-ON-WALL-STREET-by-Ellen-Brown-081219-11.html

 

Whose Money? says:

 

Ellen is right:  " ...  why should we have confidence in banks engaging in 'confidence tricks'?" 

 

What has been happening, as taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic are thrown into unrepayable debt by their governments in order to keep a dysfunctional monetary system afloat, is nothing short of a scandal.

 
While people encouraged by fast-talking banks to take out a new credit card with every passing week default on debts they should never have been allowed to contract in the first place, and are now considered fair game for bailiffs authorised to manhandle them, invade their homes and seize their property, those who led them by the nose to perdition, reaping fat profits at their expense, are being offered unlimited pounds of flesh.

So why aren't bailiffs being set on those who directed negligent, and in some cases fraudulent, banking policy, instead of hounding their unfortunate victims (including the millions of personally unindebted taxpayers who are being stung to fund the bail-out)? 

Because, apparently, the banking system is just too important to be allowed to fail.

 
But this is just not true.  The secret largely ignored by the mainstream media, the secret so carefully guarded by those benefitting from the established financial system, is this:

WE  DON'T  NEED  BANKS  TO  PROVIDE  US  WITH  A  MONEY  SUPPLY!

 

We're not sure, though, whether it would be a good idea to nationalise the banks themselves.  It would probably be sufficient to nationalise money  -  ie, to establish a public authority which would create our national currency, debt-free at source, in line with the real wealth of the nation.

Credit Crunch song of the day:

Chips, Chips

By Ben Dalby

See the video here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tvllSpeZuoM&feature=related

The man with the plan

William Green, The Journal

Balancing act for Darling as North unveils demands

Adrian Pearson, The Journal

 

THE Treasury has been sent a four-page North East wish list as the Chancellor prepares sweeping tax cuts in today’s Pre-Budget Report.

Increased Government spending and tax cuts could help avoid thousands of redundancies in the region, business leaders have claimed, as pressure mounts on Labour to ease the financial burden facing hard hit families.

The North East Chamber of Commerce has called on Alistair Darling to heed its six-point plan which it claims will ensure the region’s economy remains among the UK’s fastest growing.

Read more  ...

http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2008/11/24/balancing-act-for-darling-as-north-unveils-demands-61634-22323506/

Whose Money? says:

Yes, our infrastructure is sorely in need of improvement: but the money to invest in creating this new wealth should be provided freely by public authority, not owed to the banks as a debt against present and future generations.

And yes, small businesses in the north-east of England, as elsewhere in the UK, need support: but fiddling around with taxes within a debt-based monetary system won't do the job.  As the article says, a present government cutting VAT means a future government raising taxes to compensate, as long as all governments operate from a basis of insolvency.

The practice of relying on borrowing to provide the nation with its means of exchange takes us down a dead-end street.  This is perhaps the best opportunity the nation will ever have to ditch the debt, revoke the banks' licence create our currency, and stabilise our economy with both cash and non-cash money issued debt-free at source.

Darling needs to cure a nation hooked on debt

Larry Elliott, The Guardian

When the last raven leaves the Tower of London and it is time to engrave an epitaph on the nation's headstone, there is no doubt what it will say: "Britain: the country that liked to spend now and pay later."

Today's pre-budget report is all about the government's attempt to exploit this deep-rooted character trait. Assuming the nudges and winks from Whitehall are correct, VAT will be cut to entice consumers back into the shops for a pre-Christmas spending splurge. The theory is that behaviour will be driven more by lower prices today than by the threat of higher taxes at some point in the future. On past form, that looks a reasonable bet.

Read more  ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/24/pre-budget-report-uk-economy?showallcomments=true

Whose Money? says:

We couldn't agree more about the idiocy of encouraging people who are already wallowing in insolvency to take on yet more debt.

But if they don't, where is the nation's means of exchange going to come from?

Unless, of course, you relegate the banks to the position of normal businesses, unable to create currency for profit, and nationalise the money supply.

As long as the present system persists, more and more of the population must be persuaded to live beyond their means, laying down their solvency on behalf of their country.

"2.  Over the past months our countries have taken urgent and exceptional measures to support the global economy and stabilize financial markets. These efforts must continue. At the same time, we must lay the foundation for reform to help to ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again. Our work will be guided by a shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction."

This is horrible. They are saying that one of the main causes that facilitated the problem – the notion of so called free market ideology – must still reign unchallenged. This while the only reason anything is still standing in their ridiculous financial world is because of our government.

And they do it again in point # 12:

It's only worth as much as you can get someone to pay for it  ...

A sequence of e-mails between the bank and a client

Dear David,
Our records indicate that your account is overdue by the amount of $233.95. If you have already made this payment please contact us within the next 7 days to confirm payment has been applied to your account and is no longer outstanding.

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.37pm
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Overdue account

Dear Jane,
I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter.

Regards, David.

Whose Money? says:

 

Hedge-Fund Manager Sender's Curator Sees Art Prices Falling

 

Scott Reyburn, Bloomberg.com

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- Todd Levin, the curator of hedge-fund manager Adam Sender's art collection, believes prices of contemporary artworks are heading for a decline.

``Are we dealing with a bubble? Of course we are,'' said Levin in a telephone interview. ``There's just no way of knowing when things are going to shake out. Anyone who tries to predict how and when is an idiot. But it will shake out eventually.''

Photo :http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/new-york/nyc/museum-modern-art.php

Read more  ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&refer=muse&sid=a2QkoRgQZsHE

 

Whose Money? says: 

Are some contemporary art exhibits really any better than the spider? 

Of course, the price you can get doesn't matter, if you actually like the art in question; just as (unless you're trapped in negative equity, and can't keep up your mortgage payments) a property market crash doesn't matter, if you've bought your house in order to live in it, rather than to turn a quick profit. 

It's all a question of distinguishing between price and value.

Forwarded from a fellow money reformer:

Sixty-five years ago  ...

The following letter was written and sent in 1943. It was addressed to His Excellency, Most Reverend William Godfrey, the Apostolic Delegate to GreatBritain, and to the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Wales, and to other ecclesiastical dignitaries in Britain.

It's signed by 32 people, a Nobel Laureate and two aviation pioneers among them. Things haven't changed one iota since this letter was written 60 years ago, and have become a damn sight worse.

Your Grace,

(1) We, all of British blood and descent, having studied the fundamental causes of the present world unrest, have long been forced to the conclusion that an essential first step towards the return of human happiness and brotherhood with economic security and liberty of life and conscience, such as will permit the Christian ethic to flourish again, is the immediate resumption by the community in each nation of its prerogative over the issue of money including its modern credit substitutes.

(2) This prerogative has been usurped by those still termed in general "banker", both national and international, who have perfected a technique to enable themselves to create the money they lend by granting of bookkeeping credits, and to destroy it by the withdrawal of the latter at their discretion, in accordance with entirely mistaken and obsolete ideas which they do not defend against impartial and informed scientific criticism and examination. In this way, a form of national money debt has been invented, in which the lender surrenders nothing at all; and which is physically an impossibility for the community ever to pay. Any attempt to do so produces the artificial economic blizzard", as it did after the 1914-18 war.

(3) This has led to the gradual rise of a form of national, international and supra-national power, dominating through its monopolisaton of the National social credit all the basic creative activities of mankind. Thus, in this as in other countries, it has become impossible to obtain publication in the press, or to broadcast on the radio, the truth concerning this economic enslavement which holds the peoples of the world in thrall.

(4) Under the world's present financial system the money, except for a now trifling portion, is originally created by the issue of a loan at interest by the "bankers", who lend nothing of themselves but in effect make a forced levy in kind on the Nation by conferring on the borrower the power to purchase a corresponding amount of wealth on the market, which wealth does not belong to them, or those who borrow from them, but to the community. The proceeds of the issue of new money - whether of paper or any other form of credit money - belong to the Nation in which it is, or is accepted as, legal tender, and not to the issuer. Herein lies the basic flaw of the existing monetary system.

(5) By this method, which has come to be regarded as legal by virtue of established practice, the banks in our country are responsible for the issue of new money of their own creation amounting today to between two and three thousand million pounds - this being the difference between loans extended, including those to themselves, and those repaid since they instituted the system a number of years ago - and are thereby extracting by means of interest an annual tribute from the Nation of over £100,000,000 for what has now become to them a relatively costless and riskless service. But the real danger, well understood in every preceding era of history, is the undermining of all lawfully constituted authority by the creation and destruction of money carried on in secret for private gain and the acquisition of power.

(6) All forms of government, whether conservative, liberal or labour, fascist, socialist or communist, fall alike under the control of a political Power Group, which is ultimately, and in large measure unwittingly, dominated by the Money Creators and Manipulators. In this way the national political power, which, if the individual is to enjoy the maximum of personal freedom consistent with his duty to his conscience and his fellows, should be distributed throughout the people, has been usurped without their knowledge and consent.

(7) It will be seen that the present monetary system, which by its disregard of primary physical and ethical laws is inevitably destroying the civilisation into which it has been introduced, requires rectification both in the material technique and in the ethics which at present inspire and control this technique. It is particularly in view of its devastating effects in the moral sphere that we have ventured to refer to Ecclesiastical Authority, and to invoke the Churches to action.

(8) We therefore appeal to you in your position of great authority and influence to proclaim the truth to the Nation on this subject and in the hope that you may see fit to disseminate as widely as possible the text of this statement, whereby this vitally important question may be brought to the light of day and earnestly enquired into by the peoples of the British Commonwealth.

(9) We do so in all Christian fellow-feeling, knowing and honouring the efforts you are making against the abuses of our present economic system and the evils of usury, and believing that the world is now in the gravest crisis of its history. The issue of new money by the money-lender is an unforeseen result of the modern cheque as a substitute for national money  -  a valuable invention which in itself was undoubtedly social and benevolent in intention and effect. If the cheque system were corrected, as it can be simply corrected, to restore to the nations their rightful prerogative over the issue of money, there is every reason to retain it. We fully appreciate the services which banking organisations have rendered and can continue to render to the community. But the issue and destruction of money by the money-lender is not a service, but a weapon which can be and has been used to perpetuate poverty amidst abundance, which renders individuals and nations powerless to protect themselves, and which may even be perverted to serve vast designs for the complete subjugation of the human race to tyranny, exploitation and the powers of darkness and evil.

NORMAN A. THOMPSON

(A.M.I.E.E., Research Engineer, Inventor of the Norman Thompson Flying Boat, 1914, and other developments in aviation and in mechanical propulsion; originator of this appeal)

FREDERICK SODDY

(M.A., LL.D., F.R.S, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 1921; pioneer in the Economics of Wealth, author of Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt  - 1926, Money versus Man  - 1931), Role of Money  - 1934)

J. CREAGH SCOTT

(D.S.O., O.B.E., Lt. Col; Advisory Chairman, The Service for Economic Action)

REGINALD ROWE

(Kt., author of The Root of All Evil)

JOHN HARGRAVE

(F.R.S.A.; inventor of the Hargrave Automatic Navigator for Aircraft (1937); Economic Advisor to the Planning Commission of HM Govt. of Alberta (1936-7); Founder and Leader of the Social Credit Party of GB)

WILFRID HILL

(Industrialist, Birmingham and London; President, Comité International d'Echanges, Paris; Chairman, Economic and Monetary Joint Council, London; Anglo-American Comm. World Trade Alliance)

CHARLES TURNER

(Mechanical and Mining Engineer; Knowles Gold Medallist; inventor of the Oil-from-Coal Process and Plant)

ALLIOT VERDON-ROE

(Kt., O.B.E., F.R.Ae.S., M.I.Ae.E.; aviation Pioneer)

A. G. SEAMAN

(M.I.E.E.; inventor of Automatic Sorting of Heavy Goods)

(ed. note: Also signed by 24 other authors, MPs, economists, businessmen and other notables of the day).

Whose Money? says:

Amazing, isn't it!  Sixty-five years later and, despite the long list of eminently sane and respected people who have advocated reform of the financial system from that day to this, we're still using debt as our means of exchange!

And, to quote from point number two, those who control the banking system still operate under the guidance of "... entirely mistaken and obsolete ideas which they do not defend against impartial and informed scientific criticism and examination" (our emphasis).

The reason that no attempt is made to defend these ideas, point by point, "against impartial and informed scientific criticism and examination" is that, outside the questionable premises of orthodox financial dogma, it is impossible to defend them.

With the current financial crisis, we are at the dividing of the ways: either we proceed towards "the immediate resumption by the community in each nation of its prerogative over the issue of money, including its modern credit substitutes" or, with the continuing imposition of global "governance" (ie, of a non-elected government unaccountable to the nations for which it legislates, let alone the individuals and families who make up those nations; a government which at present dares not speak its name, but which is busily engaged in obliterating national sovereignty via "soft" laws cooked up at UN and other international conferences of "stakeholders" and NGOs, translated into Directives by such organisations as the EU and the North American Union, and rubber-stamped into the the statutes of national parliaments and assemblies without adequate open debate; a government armed, moreover, with unprecedented technological advantages in its pursuit of domination) we face "the complete subjugation of the human race to tyranny, exploitation and the powers of darkness and evil".

The supranational kleptocracy enjoys its global ascendancy by manipulating a money system which distorts production and ensures maldistribution of the world's resources. 

Money is at present an instrument of scarcity.  Its proper use is in the service of abundance.

A few home victories

Newcastle Journal Editorial

A billion pounds is a huge amount of money and, were it to come in the form of investment in the North east, it would be welcomed with open arms,

As it is, that is how much councils in the North East are spending on goods and services from outside the region, according to the North East Chamber of Commerce.

It goes without saying that, in these troubled economic times, this kind of financial shot in the arm for local companies would be more than welcome.

It has to be accepted that not everything that local authorities need to function can be sourced within the region and there are also strict tendering rules set by the Government.

But local councils chiefs could take a close look at where they source goods and services.

The danger, of course, is that other areas do the same thing and the business local firms gain is offset by losing contracts elsewhere.

Whose Money? says:

It's the "free" trade argument in miniature, with local protectionism in place of the national variety as the villain of the piece. 

If people had their own land, and enough spare time, of course, they'd probably choose to protect themselves even more, in a world of soaring prices, by producing as much as they could for themselves.  But for most wage slaves, that option no longer exists  -  and besides, in an age of automation, with the potential for both abundance and leisure there for the taking, few would wish to return to subsistence level.

What's wrong, anyway, with supporting your own local economy  -  as long you have an adequate means of exchange?

In the same way that a nation which issues its own currency debt-free, as a public service, would not be forced into cut-throat export competition to get its hands on money created as a debt against people outside its borders, regions and localities within the UK creating their own currencies, and accepting these in payment of council tax, would not be left holding out a begging bowl to Westminster or Brussels if they failed to "export" as many goods as they "imported".

A basic requirement for co-operation, rather than confrontation, among the different parts of a single nation, as well as among the nations of the world at large, are local, national and global financial systems which permit genuinely free trade (ie, the exchange of surpluses and of items which are not universally available) rather than enforcing a ruthless struggle to capture other people's markets with goods which that can perfectly well be produced at home.  (Whenever you doubt this, go back and listen again to what CH Douglas has to say on the subject, here: http://douglassocialcredit.com/douglas.php  -  scroll down to the audio at the bottom of the page.)

If the north east of England is to reduce its imports, whether these come from other parts of the UK or from overseas, a supplementary regional currency, acceptable in payment of local taxes throughout the area involved, is the way forward.

Unfortunately, as we have seen in the case of our utilities, put up for auction, and now owned by supranational companies whose majority shares are held by the controlling plutocracy, the "strict tendering rules" to which The Journal refers take in not only the British Isles but the whole of the EU.

It would therefore be necessary first of all, if we want healthy local economies throughout the UK,  to repeal the (in any case illegal and treasonous) 1972 European Communities Act, as is permitted by the sensible rule that no parliament can bind its successors.

THE TREASURY’S MISSING MINUTES MYSTERY

John Crudele, New York Post

Gordon Brown will not be hitting the G20 spot

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/3465293/Gordon-Brown-will-not-be--hitting-the-G20-spot.html

Whose Money? says:

In fact, the best way to take the lead would be to ditch a national currency based on debt, and initiate a new, healthy régime of publicly-created, debt-free money in the UK.

Any new international arrangements, to be successful, must be based on the firm foundations of a domestic economy which places money at the service of production, and not, as at present, vice versa.

Financial Crisis: Inaccurate headlines are fanning the flames

Dan Roberts, The Telegraph

Since William of Orange first borrowed money to fight the French in 1694, the Bank of England has never missed a payment. Through war, famine and slump, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has stood resolute.

It is a measure of how low economic confidence has sunk, therefore, that there is serious doubt today whether investors are willing to lend to the government at all. With our national debt soaring and billions more in public spending on the horizon, the creditworthiness of the state itself is beginning to be called into question.

Read more  ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/3465194/Financial-Crisis-Inaccurate-headlines-fanning-the-flames.html

Whose Money? says:

The public need to be told the truth about the present financial situation: but we agree that, "fear itself is right at the top of the list" of the things we have to fear, especially if those we have elected get back to basics, and ask themselves what, exactly, an economy is for.

Is the goal of economic activity to produce money?

Is it to produce jobs?

Or is it to produce the goods and services which sustain and enhance human life and well-being?

If they have the wit to decide on the third option, governments throughout the world will work out a way of distributing adequate incomes without the aid of unnecessary labour: and future generations will look back on the present crisis as the moment when financial sanity finally prevailed.

The Bank rethinks importance of house prices

Norma Cohen, Financial Times

The Bank of England has often insisted that the relationship between house prices and consumer demand is tenuous.

At the airing of the quarterly inflation report six months ago, Charlie Bean, the Bank’s deputy governor, said there had been too much “commentary [that] sometimes rather blithely assumes that there is a very tight link between house price growth and consumer spending”. That relationship, he averred, was much weaker than was widely believed.

But now the Bank appears to be engaged in a sober reassessment of the significance of house prices for the economy and its role in consumption, pointing to its particular role as collateral for bank borrowings.

Read more  …

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9b6089d6-b0eb-11dd-8915-0000779fd18c,s01=1.html?nclick_check=1

Whose Money? says:

So “…lower house prices may not reduce household wealth in aggregate” ?  That’s not what we were being told when headlines proclaimed the ever-increasing “wealth” of property owners, as house prices went up and up!

Of course there is a relationship between rising house prices and increased consumer spending.  When the price of houses goes up, so does the amount the banks can lend against them; and so, therefore, does the amount of money in circulation.

The point that isn't mentioned is that a resumption of lending would not be critical to economic recovery if we didn’t depend on borrowing for 97%  of our money supply  …  well, 100% actually, as debt now exceeds the money available to repay it by billions, entirely obliterating any support offered by publicly-created, debt-free notes and coins.

What is really stunning is the fact that the alarm wasn’t sounded earlier.  Do our “experts” really have less understanding than amateurs like ourselves of  how dangerous it is to create a nation’s means of exchange as a debt continuously having to be reborrowed into circulation as it is repaid to the banks? 

Or did the people the people directing government and banking policy achieve exactly what they were aiming for?

Take your choice: either they were exceptionally dim, or they were on the make, aiming at an ever greater concentration, into their own hands, of wealth and power.

At any rate, if Mike Rowbotham could lay the facts and the dangers out so clearly in The Grip of Death, (read the first chapter here, and order from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Grip-Death-Slavery-Destructive-Economics/dp/1897766408) published a full ten years ago, the “experts” haven’t got a leg to stand on when they claim the present catastrophe was impossible to predict.

For ourselves, we have absolutely no objection to people being rich: only to the extremes of wealth and destitution resulting from a financial system which seriously skews the distribution of incomes, imposing a false scarcity on billions in a world of potential abundance for all.

Secret Plan For IMF 
World Dictatorship
G-20 Summit In DC On 11-15-8

Webster Tarpley

This is a confidential strategy paper for the November 15 G-20 summit in Washington DC. This is not a new Bretton Woods in any sense, but rather a British-steered attempt to impose the dictatorship of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the entire planet, wiping out all hope of economic recovery, the modernization of the developing countries, and national sovereignty at the same time.

 Under this plan, the IMF would dictate the economic policies of all states. The IMF orthodoxy is austerity, sacrifice, deregulation, privatization, union busting, wage reductions, free trade, the race to the bottom, and prohibitions on advanced technologies. These policies would strangle humanity.

Read more  …

http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2008/11/secret-plan-for-imf-world-dictatorship.html

Whose Money? says:

Hardly confidential.  This is presumably the script Mr Brown was reading from yesterday.

A blueprint for the continued rule of finance, and debt slavery.

Who are the Architects of Economic Collapse?

Will an Obama Administration Reverse the Tide?

Michael Chossudovsky, Global Research

The October 2008 financial meltdown is not the result of a cyclical economic phenomenon. It is the deliberate result of US government policy instrumented through the Treasury and the US Federal Reserve Board. 

This is the most serious economic crisis in World history. 

The "bailout" proposed by the US Treasury does not constitute a "solution" to the crisis  … 

…  In a bitter twist, the banks are the recipients of  a 700+ billion dollar handout and at the same time they act as creditors of the US government. 

We are dealing with an absurd circular relationship: To finance the bailout, Washington must borrow from the banks, which are the recipients of the bailout.

The US administration is financing its own indebtedness  …

…  The bailout is conducive to the consolidation and centralization of banking power, which in turn backlashes on real economic activity, leading to a string of bankruptcies and mass unemployment.    

Read it in full here:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10860

Whose Money? says:

As Professor Chossudovsky concludes, “There can be no meaningful solution to the crisis, unless there is a major reform in the financial architecture”.  The present course of action only makes sense if the “agenda is to establish a unipolar international monetary system”.

But “main Street appointees” endorsing a pre-arranged 'consensus' with governments wouldn’t be the answer either.

Delegating  power to appointed 'representatives' will never result in economic freedom for the vast majority.  It’s not 'representation' that ordinary people  -  even in 'democratic' countries  -  lack: it’s money in their pockets.

Without the power of the purse strings, how can anyone stand up against the insane regulations dreamt up by increasingly intrusive forms of "consultative" governance, or the punitive rates of taxation which they impose?

And only money issued debt-free at source by an accountable public authority as a non-means-tested national dividend to all adult citizens, can effectively decentralise the power of the purse strings down to the lowest grass-roots level  -  as well as solving the  problem of adequate purchasing power for all, in a world where more and more human labour is being replaced by automation.

Gordon Brown calls for new world order to beat recession

Nick Allen, The Telegraph

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will today set out a five-point plan to create a "stronger and more just" world order in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Mr Brown will call on fellow world leaders to use the current worldwide economic downturn as an opportunity to thoroughly reform international financial institutions and create a new "truly global society" with Britain, the US and Europe providing leadership  … 

Mr Brown's plan for strengthening the global economy 60 years later involves recapitalisation of banks to permit the resumption of normal lending to households and businesses, better international co-ordination of fiscal and monetary policy a new IMF fund to help struggling economies and stop financial problems spreading between nations.

He also wants agreement on a world trade deal and reform of the international financial system based on principles of "transparency, integrity, responsibility, sound banking practice and global governance with co-ordination across borders" …

“…  My message is that we must be internationalist not protectionist, interventionist not neutral, progressive not reactive …”

Photo: BBC

Read more  …

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/3414946/Gordon-Brown-calls-for-new-world-order-to-beat-recession.html

Whose Money? says:

Surprise, surprise!  When we were anticipating something along the lines of the Great Depression this time last year, most of the "experts"  -  and certainly Mr Brown  -  were saying we faced nothing but a minor hiccough.

It looks as if those of us who suspected this disaster was being allowed to build up in order to hand further control to the  plutocracy, were right. 

Global “governance”, here we come: a prospect of centrally-managed economies, “co-ordinated” across borders by planners with no loyalty to any particular nation, only to the one-world-state (whether they call it “the planet”, or “the collective” or “the community of nations”, or any other deceptive name).

We are to be centrally-managed people, with no say in our lives, subject to the will of the state-approved “stakeholders” and NGOs which come together in pre-arranged consensus to rob us of our property and our freedoms.

The idea, it seems is to impose a future of managed scarcity, to keep the hoi polloi cowed and dependent.

Or perhaps it's all being proposed with the best possible intentions  ...

But the fact is that in an intrinsically abundant world, we do not need any of this.  We do not need “…a new IMF fund to help struggling economies and stop financial problems spreading between nations.”   On the contrary: we need to take immediate steps to choke the financial problems off at source.

We do not need to recapitalise the banks, putting the nation back on the old treadmill of endless, unrepayable debt.  All we need do is revoke the banks’ licence to create non-cash money, and replace their disappearing “credit” with enough publicly-created currency (non-cash, as well as the traditionally debt-free notes and coins) to keep the wheels of the economy turning.

If every nation provides itself with a stable money stock, debt-free at source, there will be no debt-ridden “struggling countries”  -  and, therefore, no reason either to go begging to a reconstituted IMF, or to starve whole  populations in order to produce cash crops for export.

Mr Brown contrasts internationalism with protectionism: but why assume that the one excludes the other?  What is wrong with people supplying as much as possible for their own domestic market, and protecting it with tariffs? 

When money is no longer kept artificially scarce, by creating it as a debt, cheapness for the consumer and a big balance of payments surplus for governments will no longer be  priorities, and genuinely free international trade  -  trade of what the nation has in excess, or which it is uniquely capable of producing  -  will be possible.

An international outlook depends on communication and travel far more than it does on cut-throat competition in trade.

Mr Brown advocates interventionism. 

But would state intervention in the economy really be necessary, if we were provided with an adequately distributed, debt-free means of exchange, and left to our  own devices?

As for transparency and “sound banking”, the only sound banks are those which lend money that actually exists.

We would suggest that, by providing a solution which brings us ever closer to an effective one-world government, Mr Brown is, in fact, reacting to a problem which has been carefully set up by those wishing to tighten their centralizing grip on the earth's resources.

Why not be progressive instead, Mr Brown? 

Why not have a new world order based on debt-free money and genuinely free trade among co-operating, debt-free sovereign nations?

'Elite' MPs' £13,000 salary hike will land taxpayers with £1.5m bill

Brenda Carlin, the Sunday Mail

MPs were at the centre of a new pay row last night over plans to spend £1.5million on a fresh layer of Commons bureaucracy that would give some backbenchers a £13,000 salary hike.

Plans have been put forward to create new Commons committees with more staff, travel and accommodation costs, as well as extra pay for an elite group of MPs.

The huge package - to be formally proposed by Commons Leader Harriet Harman on Wednesday - includes a £1million network of eight new English 'regional committees' to oversee Labour's controversial English regional development agencies.

Each would be made up of nine MPs, including a chairman earning up to £13,713 on top of the normal MP's salary of about £62,000.

Ms Harman will also propose eight new 'grand committees' for the English regions outside London, at a cost of more than £300,000. The chairman of each would receive a pay-hike of up to £5,200.

Gordon Brown has specifically requested a new 'Speaker's Conference', costing an estimated £261,075 over the next two years, to try to increase election turn out and regenerate public interest in politics.

Read more  …

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084154/Elite-MPs-13-000-salary-hike-land-taxpayers-1-5m-bill.html

Whose Money? says:

Is this really a time to splash out more on government?  People struggling to pay their mortgages and rocketing food and energy bills, certainly won’t think so.

What exactly are these appointed regional quangos for, with or without the endorsement of MPs?  Why can’t their jobs be done by elected councillors?

More to the point, why do we need all this planning for development anyway?

Why doesn't government face up to its responsibilities, provide the nation with debt-free money, slash the red tape, and take some thought towards solving the problem of distributing adequate incomes in an age of ever-increasing automation?  Human industry and ingenuity could then surely be left in peace to develop a prosperous economy along the lines preferred by ordinary people, rather than carefully selected “stakeholders”.

The fact is that our MPs are paying themselves more and more for doing less and less, while the average young family, with both partners in full-time paid employment, are being paid less and less for doing more and more.

If you doubt this, think back a couple of generations, when most working men were able to support their families on one wage packet, with their wives taking a job for little extras once the children were off their hands.

One MP, at least, has protested against this cynical appropriation of taxpayers’ money by people who have handed most of their legislative duties over to the EU.  You can read the speech Peter Lilley made to Parliament on this subject here:

http://www.ukcolumn.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/maycolumnp4.jpg;

and check out your own MP’s expenses on They Work For You, here: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

If, like us, you live in Tynemouth constituency, you will be interested to see that your MP, Alan Campbell, scores joint first for his Additonal Costs Allowance, and joint twelfth for his Incidental Expenses Provision.

We’d like to see a breakdown of these additional charges to the taxpayer’s account, which apparently helped to make him the 57^th most costly MP, out of a total of 645, for the year 2006-2007.

The Rothschilds: The First Barons of Banking

Rupert Wright, Global Research

Among the captains of industry, spin doctors and financial advisers accompanying British prime minister Gordon Brown on his fund-raising visit to the Gulf this week, one name was surprisingly absent. This may have had something to do with the fact that the tour kicked off in Saudi Arabia. But by the time the group reached Qatar, Baron David de Rothschild was there, too, and he was also in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Although his office denies that he was part of the official party, it is probably no coincidence that he happened to be in the same part of the world at the right time. That is how the Rothschilds have worked for centuries: quietly, without fuss, behind the scenes.

Read more  …

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10855

Whose Money? says:

“In today’s world we have a strong offering of debt and equity,” he says. “They are two arms of the same body looking for money.”

But debt and equity don’t balance out in today’s banking system, do they?  A quadrillion in derivatives, and only a few trillions available to pay them off.  Hardly a “strong offering”.

It’s time that the stranglehold of finance over production  -  a stranglehold which distorts economies, and concentrates real wealth into fewer and fewer hands  - gave way to common sense and efficiency.

Then, as Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England during the 1920s,  pointed out, “… this would be a happier and better world to live in”.

The full quote: 

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they willcreate enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like minewill disappear: and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in.  But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits."

See also:

J.P. Morgan Chase buyout of Bear Stearns – A Trillionaires Delight

Somewhere in the trillionaires room of Heaven three old codgers are sitting around a table smoking cigars and chuckling over the J. P Morgan Chase & Company buyout of Bear Stearns for a paltry $2.00 a share.  Not so much because the price had been over $130 a share a few weeks earlier but because the Federal Reserve Board put up $30 billion of the government’s money to guarantee the sale.

Yes, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, patriarchs of three of the most powerful family fortunes in history have waited nearly two centuries to see their dreams fulfilled.  Perhaps such patience is why their families have remained successful by steadfastly maintaining the rules of the game as set down by their founders.

Read more  …

http://www.prlog.org/10058722-morgan-chase-buyout-of-bear-stearns-trillionaires-delight.html

Whose Money? says:

Yes, “by steadfastly maintaining the rules of the game as set down by their founders”  ...

But the internal rules of the debt-based financial system remain valid only as long as we believe that we must go into debt in order to create the non-cash money supply.

And we can deny the validity of those rules as soon as we choose to step out of the scarcity-bound debt-money paradigm, and into the potential abundance of an economy supported by a publicly-created, debt-free means of exchange and distribution.

The 10 biggest winners from the financial crisis

Money Central, Times Online

High street retailers, estate agents, Iceland…the casualties of the economic crisis are all too familiar. But while there are losers, others have profited from the doom.

We’ve rounded up ten credit crunch Houdinis who’ve escaped the financial crisis and are laughing all the way to the ailing bank.

Find out who they are here:

http://timesbusiness.typepad.com/money_weblog/2008/10/the-10-biggest.html

Whose Money? says:

Yes, money created as a debt is a very convenient instrument for the acquisition of valuable possessions and power  -  as long as you’re creditworthy enough to get the really big loans (the kind that can buy other people out) in the first place. 

Or, of course, if you can get Gordon Brownie points for keeping the whole rotten system afloat, instead of telling the banks they needn’t bother to create any more “credit”, and authorising publicly-created, debt-free money in its place.

House Price Crash in the Media - Video

'Financial Planner', of the House Price Crash website, comments on interest-rate cuts on Sky TV:

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/media-video.php?video=11

And for a bit of light relief in the worst possible taste:

Real Estate Downfall

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bNmcf4Y3lGM

Lenders may have to raise billions more, City analyst warns

Simon Duke, The Daily Mail

British banks may need to raise billions more in fresh capital to see them through the gathering economic crisis, a leading City analyst has warned.

In a bleak prognosis for the UK banking industry, Jonathan Pierce of Credit Suisse said Britain's main High Street lenders are 'staring into the abyss'.

The economy is 'getting worse, faster than we thought', with spiralling losses from soured loans threatening to erode the newly replenished cash buffers of Britain's biggest domestic banks, said Pierce.

Read more  …

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1083711/Lenders-raise-billions-City-analyst-warns.html

Whose Money? says:

Surely it’s time to separate the “real economy” (ie, the only economy) from the illusory financial one: illusory, in that it produces nothing of real value, while restricting and distorting production and distribution!

There is no need for all this pain  …  unless our goal is to starve millions, and reduce millions more to a condition of slavery.  (By the way, slavery does not necessarily imply ill-treatment: it simply means that you have no say in your own life).

It is only the internal logic of the present dysfunctional monetary system that is throwing the world into depression.  Seeds that are planted and tended don’t stop growing for lack of money; nor do people lose their muscle power or their ingenuity simply because the banks are unable to create sufficient debt.

Only by following arcane rules that artificially restrict the means of exchange and distribution, so that,eg, seed can’t be afforded, or people paid for their labour, can production throughout the world be slowed down, or brought to a halt.

We must break the spell that money has cast over us, and realise that it’s nothing but an accounting system: one that becomes inefficient and counter-productive, when compulsory borrowing is thrown into the equation.

Cartoon and Money Gamewebsite: http://home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/world/moneygame.htm

Editorial Daily Express 6 November 2008

Whose Money? says:

Good idea!

Of course, as far as how we got into this mess goes, there’s a third explanation: that those at the very top of the banking system engineered this crisis quite deliberately, to further centralise and consolidate their power.

But there's really no reason to let them get away with it. 

After all, without their interference, we can insist on a supply of publicly-created, debt-free money, and just go ahead with production as usual.

Press Release from the London Global Table

www.globaltable.org.uk/

Norman Baker MP, Member of Parliament for Lewes constituency and Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, presents on the 11^th November a Petition to Parliament in which the London Global Table as Petitioners request that the House of Commons urges the Government to bring forward legislation to enable the Bank of England to issue interest-free loans for public, environmental and clean electricity capital projects such loans to be repaid and, on repayment, cancelled thereby halving or more the usual cost in a non-inflationary way.

Notes for Editors:

>>>> Lower the National Debt by halving the cost of public capital projects<<<<

Present circumstances provide a window of opportunity to initiate incremental changes in the process of money creation which globally could improve life in respect of finance, the economy and the environment. The Global Table believes that  a radical change from the present deplorable and disastrous process of money creation - which does not serve the purposes of an efficient, just economy - could enable the existing commercial banks to stop creating money almost endlessly* and become High Street agencies of the national money supply used properly for developing and spreading productive capacity. The commercial banks would implement the provision of interest-free central bank money as loans for major capital projects. This will allow about twice as many projects for the same amount of money. This process could also be incrementally expanded to provide interest-free loans for micro-credit, small farms and businesses, student loans and also - where wider ownership is thereby furthered (in similar fashion to the John Lewis Partnership or Cooperative Society model) - for private capital investment. For source material visit http://knol.google.com/k/rodney-shakespeare/binary-economics/i2b1ciidsw5u/2#

& http://www.binaryeconomics.net/

* Out of practically nothing commercial banks create money as interest bearing debt. This money is routinely directed at anything other than an equitable and efficient spreading of the ownership of productive capacity. This procedure has been known as fractional reserve banking. A feature of this system is that the amounts of money created are insufficient for the payment of the interest, so more and more interest-bearing debt is continuously needed to prevent the system collapsing. The result is instability and continuous inflation.

Mortgage firms feel pinch as funds dry up

Ray Boulger, the Telegraph

Of the various factors which determine mortgage pricing the starting point is the cost of funds to the lender. Other factors include the availability of funds (which has been a problem all year), how competitive the lender wants to be, competitor pricing and how risky the lender considers a particular type of mortgage. When property prices are falling high loan-to-value mortgages are riskier than when prices are rising. This means lenders are charging a significantly higher rate to buyers with a small deposit or those remortgaging who have little equity.

Read more  …

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/3380060/Mortgage-firms-feel-pinch-as-funds-dry-up.html

And:

Jobs in peril as the relationship between banks and companies worsens, says CBI

Christine Buckley, Gary Duncan and Sam Coates, The Times

The CBI yesterday gave warning that the relationship between businesses and their lenders has deteriorated sharply and that job losses will be acute this winter if the banks fail to lend (see Commentary, facing page).

The warning came amid heightened tensions over banks’ lending and their apparent failure to supply enough credit to small businesses and to pass rate cuts on to mortgage borrowers.

John Cridland, Deputy Director-General of the CBI, told MPs that if businesses were denied adequate credit this winter, employers would be forced into sharp cuts in jobs and investment. Relations between banks and business had suffered badly because of the financial crisis, he told the Commons Business and Enterprise Select Committee.

MPs were told that the crisis had caused banks to be less willing to make lending decisions based on specific companies’ circumstances.

Read more  …

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5084694.ece

Whose Money? says:

So what we will see are repossessions and small-business bankruptcies, with ever-greater concentration of power in the hands of those who have the financial clout.

We bail out the banks, and the banks impose the scarcity laws of  a dysfunctional monetary system on the production and distribution of goods and services.

A complete reversal of sane priorities!

Why don’t our MPs notice this?  And isn’t it time for us to make sure they do?

Write to your MP now!

A great interview with Ellen Brown on the Global Research News Hour!

Listen to it here (click on Monday, November 3, 2008, Hour 2):

 http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=archives.month&ProgramID=33&year=8&month=11&backURL=index.php%253Fcmd%253Darchives.getyear%2526ProgramID%253D33%26year%3D8%26backURL%3Dindex.php%253Fcmd%253Darchives

Whose Money says:

Ellen is certainly an outstanding commentator on the financial crisis  -  let’s hope the new US government will listen to the ideas of people like her and Stephen Zarlenga, as they try to find a way out of the present mess.

Our own preference would be to nationalise the money supply, rather than the banks, here in the UK, and to decentralise power by putting a non-means-tested national dividend into the hands of every adult citizen. An accountable public authority on the lines of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee would assess how much liquidity was necessary at any time; and, if necessary, governments would be able  prevent inflation by taxing excess money out of circulation: it would be in their own interests to do so, as, under a transparent monetary system, they would be judged by the electorate for their success in maintaining financial stability.

As far as nationalising other industries is concerned, this will be a matter to be put to the vote in a general election, once a publcly-created, debt-free money supply has been established. 

We certainly believe that all public utilities should belong to the nation.  It is sheer lunacy to put, eg, your abundant water supply into the hands of a profiteering organisation like Veolea, belonging in large part to Rothschild interests.

Like Ellen, we are optimistic about the possibilities unfolding at present: but, though we agree that government couldn’t possibly make a worse job of creating money than the banks have, we are very cautious about allowing large concentrations of power in the hands of any institution, whether public or private.  The Pennsylvania government Ellen speaks of, for instance, would have been far more accountable to far fewer people than are those currently in power in the USA or the UK.

Yes, let the banks go, and replace them with a system of publicly-created money, issued debt-free at source. This money could be put into circulation both to finance infrastructure projects throughout the country, and to provide a national dividend.  Private businesses and individuals could then borrow from private banks in the usual way  -  the only difference being that they would be borrowing money which actually existed, rather than allowing the lenders to create a financial bubble out of their debt.

We like Ellen’s idea of giving priority to the state banks.  If we followed up this idea in the UK, we could see national currency issued at county level to finance local infrastructure projects, without having to extend a begging bowl to Westminster.

We’ve seen now just how irrational it is to make the entire economy dependent on people’s willingness and ability to undertake ever-increasing amounts of debt.  Time to start using money backed by the wealth of the nation, rather than by  questionable property valuations and speculation.

Financial crisis: Why bother saving, when you can spend it?

Tracy Corrigan, The Telegraph

Some might call it perverse. But in the past three months I have been spending money more frivolously that at any time in the past three years – or decades, come to that. And the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that my spending reflex is, in fact, both sensible and socially responsible.

Read more  …

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/tracycorrigan/3374864/Financial-crisis-Why-bother-saving-when-you-can-spend-it.html

Whose Money? says:

Well, she’s just acting rationally, rather than in the crazy way dictated by our dysfunctional monetary system, isn't she?

After all, the banking disaster is utterly meaningless, in terms of the real and potential wealth available in this world. 

There is no reason whatsoever why people should "starve in the midst of plenty"  ...  as long as we refuse to subject our economy to the illusory internal logic of debt-finance.  

All that is missing, for normal economic life to go ahead, is stable money: the kind which puts purchasing power into circulation without driving more and more people into unsustainable levels of debt.

And one which ensures a more efficient distribution of that purchasing power than the wage packet, in an age when automation is progressively cutting down the number of working hours necessary to maintain a comfortable standard of living.

Revenge of the Left across the world

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

It is not just that the Democrats will win a crushing victory in both houses of Congress, perhaps reaching the 60-seat Senate threshold that lets them steam-roll legislation. It is also that the incoming class of 2008 is of a new creed. Many no longer believe – or actively reject – the free trade and free market catechisms.

As commentator Markos Moulitsas put it in Newsweek: "The big question is, will Democrats nationwide simply 'win' the night–or will they deliver an electoral drubbing so thorough that it signals the utter rejection of conservative ideology and kills the notion that America is a 'center-right' country?" he said.

Read more  …

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3366575/Revenge-of-the-Left-across-the-world.html

Whose Money? says:

But it’s not a question of Left and Right, is it?

Why does it have to be a choice between no-holds-barred profiteering by a super-rich minority, and strict government planning and regulation by a profiteering political élite?

How about something completely new instead?  How about freedom, supported by a publicly-created, debt-free money supply?

The following comment underneath Ambrose’s article puts it in a nutshell:

“...  Here’s a novel idea, if they really want to see an economic stimulus in the USA give the 300 million people living in the country a million dollars a piece, that would be a lot cheaper and would certainly kick start the economy.”

As Stephen Zarlenga says, in this message from the American Monetary Institute, let’s nationalise money, not banking:

Greenspan's   Monumental   Admission of   Methodological   Error

(Apologies for the emphatic language below - but this does deserve emphasis)

Alan Greenspan has made the most important statement of his career and one of the most important statements of any "free market" economist ever. When it’s significance becomes fully recognized it may have the potential to atone for some of the damage his naiveté has caused over the past two decades.

The Statement was to the effect that he was wrong when he didn't favor regulation and believed the markets would automatically solve such problems because he trusted the people in control of the financial system to act in their long run self interest, and that of their shareholders. That’s why he supported unregulated free markets, which have led to the financial debacle.

What’s remarkable about this is that same erroneous belief is THE key pillar of all free market ideology. Without it, the entire edifice supporting the market worship fetish of the Libertarians, the Austrian School, and most economists collapses into rubble, just as our financial system has collapsed.

It’s hard to accept that economists could really believe such nonsense; I suspect that much of their religious attitude toward markets stemmed from their regular paychecks from corporations benefiting from such dumb, unsupported beliefs. These are people who conquer higher math, obtain doctorates, influence public policy, and who in Greenspan's case pontificated for 18 years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve System with an adoring press.  Remember how in total cryptic confidence, he once told Congress that if someone thought they understood what he was saying, then they probably didn't hear him correctly!

As I wrote years ago, when that absurd insult was directed at our Congress and country, a giant hand should have reached down out of the skies, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him out of the halls of power.

The economists and other such true believers, time and time again were warned and alerted to their error. I personally did some of the warning on this very point, in my book The Lost Science of Money. For example in Chapter 16, where it became necessary in the public interest, to destroy the moronic support for "free banking" by Austrian School and Libertarian economists. (Free Banking in brief means allowing bankers to create as much money out of thin air, as they can palm off onto the markets.) They used the same stupid "trust" argument to support the idea that this would be a good practice.

Among the six reasons why they were wrong, I pointed out what was obvious to me and should have been obvious to them:
      "Problem # 4: They think that they have theoretically “proven” that bankers can be trusted to act honestly, because they say in the long term it will build banker’s reputations and therefore be profitable. They don’t consider that often in the short term the potential for loot is so great that it will be taken without regard to honesty. They also ignore that reputation can be influenced by public relations expenditures and advertising. That is in fact the history of business immorality. Men don’t always do the right thing when they are tempted by the opportunity to grab a great amount quickly."

Interested in problems # 1 to 3, and numbers 5 and 6? You should be! They are in Chapter 16 of the Lost Science of Money book (see http://www.monetary.org/lostscienceofmoney.html).

These free market ideologues may be hopeless. Just look at how they are reacting to the current financial debacle. Though the retired Greenspan admits his error, these characters  -  perhaps needing to keep drawing those paychecks  -  rather than admit error claim that the system collapsed because there is too much government regulation! But there is no evidence of that and there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary! That’s understandable. But what about the real suckers, the Victims who are still passionately supporting this flawed ideology? Pray for them?

No matter – “evidence” is not an important part of their thinking process. To them it’s all about ideology; or keeping those checks coming. Fine! Let them further discredit themselves over this. But it’s past time to remove from polite discussion, this belief and confidence in markets to automatically work to benefit mankind. More mature heads must dump such junk not into history's dustbin of errors, but into the toxic waste garbage pail of vicious anti human practices, either purposely designed to harm and hold back the development of humanity in order to enrich the few, or just happening to do that so well by accident! Time to bury those destructive beliefs with Ayn Rand, rather than let them hang around rotting like stinking corpses.

The "free marketeers" will keep up their pretense as long as the media and the rest of us allow them to – and as long as those bribes – er paychecks – keep flowing to them! That means until the media start describing them with the kind of rough but accurate plain talk I’ve used in this brief essay. And it means we must allow the criminal perpetrators who pay them, to go out of business rather than bailing them out and allowing them to control our media! The only kind of bailouts they should be looking for are the ones to get out of jail until their trials.

Slaves to the orgy of money

The International Forecaster

Investors on the outside slammed while insiders getting rich, Market conditions indicate you need to protect yourself with gold and silver, Paulson monetary voodoo reanimates zombie fraudster banks, Market crashes set the stage for bank acquisitions, predicting a financial super entity.

Down go consumer confidence and real estate values to all-time lows, but, nevertheless, up goes the Dow undaunted, claiming its second largest point gain ever as the counterintuitive insider trading beat goes on and on and on, ad nausea.  Insiders get wealthy, and the non-insiders chasing them get annihilated.  This has been the story on Wall Street for over a century.

Read more  …

http://www.the internationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekly/Slaves_To_The_Orgy_Of_Money

Whose Money? says:

All pretty depressing.

What we have to remember is that all this doom and gloom is an illusion.  Nothing that has happened over recent months has affected the world’s real wealth, and potential wealth, one jot.

This is what we must focus on, and we push the issue of how we create our means of exchange to the top of the political agenda.

Ahmadinejad: New world system needed

Press TV

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the systems presently controlling the world are sinking and attempts should be made to set up new ones instead'.

In a meeting with visiting Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim in Tehran on Saturday, President Ahmadinejad noted that Tehran welcomes the prudence and wisdom exercised by South American leaders, particularly the Brazilian president, to maintain solidarity, coordination and unity among states.

"To remove the impact of economic and cultural colonialism in our countries, we need tranquility, collaboration and round-the-clock efforts so as to eliminate poverty and establish peace. Governments should forge fair and amicable ties,” the Iranian present said, as reported by IRNA news agency. 

Read more  …

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=74025&sectionid=351020101

Whose Money? says:

Yes, we certainly need new systems: and those new systems must be based on national sovereignty and publicly-created, debt-free national currencies: because it is our obstinate insistence on using debt as our means of exchange which gives national identity a bad name by driving exponential growth and the resulting compulsory, cut-throat competition in trade among nations.

Let’s listen again to CH Douglas on the causes of war: http://douglassocialcredit.com/douglas.php (scroll down to the bottom of the page for the audio and transcript).

Only on the basis of sound, debt-free national currencies and a fair international medium for the exchange of surpluses and goods unique to specific countries in genuine free trade can governments “forge fair and amicable ties”.

UK seminar: A coherent civil society response to the financial crisis

Bretton Woods Project, 30 October, 2008

On 28 October, more than 40 representatives of NGOs, development organisations, labour unions, think tanks, academia and the media came together in London to discuss how to take forward demands for a fundamental redesign of the international financial system. The participants included not only British organisations but also others from around Europe.

The main themes for the day were about creating a system that works to improve people's live, reduce poverty, and protect the environment. The meeting follows calls from European leaders Nicholas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, and Angela Merkel for an international summit on the crisis. Those calls have been seized upon by US president George Bush to organise a meeting of the G-20 leaders in Washington DC on 15 November. Bush ignored an offer from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon for the United Nations to host the summit in New York.

The seminar started with the finding that the currently proposed international summit is too exclusive if a new financial architecture is going to be fashioned. A statement on the global summit was presented, demanding that the process be much more inclusive not only of developing countries, but also civil society and other external stakeholders. That statement, signed by more than 630 civil society organisations around the world and launched at the end of the day on the 28th, demanded: "a major international conference convened by the UN to review the international financial and monetary architecture."

Read more, and see video of the first session of the seminar here:

http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-562842

Whose Money? says:

We would question whether:

a)      there is any point in reviewing “the international financial and monetary architecture” before individual nations have themselves abandoned debt as their means of exchange in favour of money created debt-free at source by an accountable public authority (our special concern being that there is currently a concerted drive for nation states themselves to be centralized out of existence); and

b)      the right of NGOs, think tanks and other self-appointed “stakeholders” to consider themselves representatives of  “civil society”, and claim to speak on behalf of millions of people who don’t even know of their existence, let alone sanction their decisions.  (This is not aimed specifically at this particular seminar, but at the general trend away from limited representative government towards all-encompassing managerial  -  even dictatorial  -  “governance” by cliques and quangos.

What on earth is "civil society", anyway?  In our opinion, just a catch-phrase which removes power from ordinary people by handing the direction of their lives over to unelected agencies beyond their control.

This is not to discount the points that are made: only to suggest that these points neither get to the root of the problem (ie, the use of debt repayable at compound interest to private lending businesses as both national and global currency) nor acknowledge the need to return economic power and freedom of choice directly to individuals, families and small businesses, if we are to establish maximum self-sufficiency and co-operation among thriving and adaptable economies throughout the world.

A centralised, top-down approach is incompatible with both individual freedom and national sovereignty: and we think that both of these things are important.

The best starting point for those committed to long-term freedom and prosperity would be to take a look at the ideas of CH Douglas  -  as, for instance, in the following consideration of:

The Use of Money

I should like to begin the explanation and the address that I am privileged to make to you, by stating what I have no doubt, to many of you, is a truism, and that is, that we are familiar with two kinds of laws. There is natural law of the nature of the conditions which compel a stone to fall when it is dropped from a height, and which, if it falls, let us say, in a vacuum, always falls at the same rate of acceleration under the compulsion of gravity. That is a natural law, and, so far as we know, those laws are compelling laws. We cannot change the laws of that description, and all we can do is adjust ourselves to those laws.

But there is also a second type of law, a law which is what we may call a conventional law. Of course, our legal laws - the laws of our Government - are conventional laws. We have agreed to rule ourselves by those conventions. On a smaller scale, of course, we have the same sort of thing in connection with playing a game. We agree that, in a game we call cricket, if the ball is struck by the batsman and is caught by a fielder before it touches the ground the batsman is out.

We are not obliged to have conventions of that sort. We could change them if we found that we could improve cricket by some other convention.
Those two laws have to be very carefully separated in one's mind in considering such matters as we are now discussing.

It has been very frequently stated during the past fifteen years or so that
there is no escape from inexorable economic laws.

As a matter of fact, there are no inexorable economic laws with which I am familiar; they are practically all conventions.
What we call an economic law is what happens if you agree to pursue certain ends in industrial, economic, and social organisations governed by certain conventions. That is about all that so-called economic laws amount to.

Read more  …

http://www.alor.org/Library/TheUseofMoney.htm#1a

Whose Money? says:

The financial system was brought ack from the edge of catastrophe at the end of the 1930s by the catastrophe of the Second World War.  Since 1945, however, it has been gathering up steam, and Douglas’s concluding paragraphs make a good deal of sense at the present moment.

In particular, we note his wariness regarding nationalisation of the banks, as exemplified by this comment: “(I)f you unite the powers of governments with the powers of banking before you have changed the banking system, you have got a problem which is doubly difficult to solve.”

Unfortunately, this seems to be precisely what is now happening.

We are struck, too, by the contrast of Douglas’s denial of scarcity (as when he asks, "Is there any requirement of common use in the world today of which you could tell me that there is a definite physical shortage?") with the present panic concerning lack of renewable energy.

This is indeed a powerful argument against potential abundance, even if the use of debt as our means of exchange were no longer an inhibiting factor.  It is also an argument which is highly convenient to the corporate and financial interests which appear to be indistinguishable from each other at the highest level, enabling them both to raise prices, and to exert control by fear.

However, there appears to be ample evidence that alternative “free” energy is well on the way to being available (http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=cold+fusion&emb=0&aq=f&aq=f#q=cold%20fusion&emb=0&aq=f&aq=f&start=20) or even already available (http://www.drjudywood.com).

After examining the evidence, we have concluded that a shortage of energy, like a shortage of money, is a red herring designed to keep a powerful minority in control of the world’s resources: and that the best way to ensure abundance for all is to reform the financial system along the lines suggested by Douglas. 

Only publicly-created money distributed in the form of a national dividend will return purchasing power, and therefore political power, to the grass roots, where it properly belongs.

No, No No!

Local Authorities are reported as having a total of £1bn tied up in the failed banks of Iceland.  Some reports are suggesting that if this money is never returned, then the council tax payer will have to pay again to cover this loss.

Read more  …

http://www.isitfair.co.uk/

Whose Money? says:

Lots of good stuff on this website.

The trouble is, though, that it’s not just our council tax that goes up.  Year on year, everything rises “by more than both the rate of inflation and average earnings”.  That’s the nature of things, in a debt-money system, as explained so well by Mike Rowbotham here:

“Ultimately, the problem is that once money has been created and circulated as a debt, it is pulled in two fundamentally different directions.  Money is needed within the economy, passing between consumers and producers, allowing the exchange of goods and services.  But this money is also required by people and businesses to repay the debts that created it.  This ‘double demand’ on money gives rise to … a chronic lack of purchasing power.”  (The Grip of Death, p39)

Presumably councils invested money to boost their income when, like the rest of us, they found their ordinary sources of funding insufficient to meet rising costs.

Certainly there will be plenty of unnecessary expenses that can be eliminated; and even more certainly, taxpayers cannot be expected to cover the costs of their representatives’ malinvestment, and the banking system’s delinquency.

However, it seems to us that the only way to set things straight is to revoke the banks’ licence to create our national currency as a compound-interest-bearing debt owed to themselves, balance the books with money created by a public authority and backed by the wealth of the nation, and from then on continue to provide all of our means of exchange  -  both cash and non-cash  -  as a service, debt-free at source.

In addition, all taxes should be collected locally, with first use at the grass roots to pay for things which have been specifically approved by genuine communities (ie, those living together within a reasonably small area).  Councils could co-operate across boundaries on larger projects, and absolutely nothing should be passed on to Westminster beyond the minimum required for the satisfactory conduct of truly national business, as specifically sanctioned by the electorate.  (War mongers, eat your hearts out!)

If some places found their tax base inadequate, supplementary local currencies could solve the problem.  There are plenty of workable precedents (eg Guernsey, see http://prorev.com/2008/09/live-on-imaginary-money-die-by.html; and Wörgl, see http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=904); and such currencies are now being introduced in Germany (Chiemgauer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer) and in towns throughout Italy (see our Article Number 15, here).

They are also being used in Transition Towns (ie Totnes, Lewes) in the UK: though, unfortunately, in conjunction with stringent catechisms and credos relating to fashionable ideologies like man-made climate change.  (We think that the adoption of debt-free money would, in itself, abolish the necessity for forced economic growth, and its attendant problems of pollution and waste.)

Reform of council tax is long overdue: but, to be successful, it must go hand-in-hand with reform of both local government and the way we create our money.

World Turmoil may spur Islamic Finance

Associated Free Press

The fast growing Sharia financial system may receive a further boost as an alternative to capitalism amid the credit crunch and banking crisis, Islamic academics and clerics believe.

Already said to be worth 300 billion dollars and expanding at 15 percent a year, the Islamic system forbids the levying or payment of interest, preferring shared ownership and splitting of profits.

The global economic meltdown shows "the need for a radical and structural reform of the global financial system. The system based on the principles of Islam offers an alternative which could reduce risks," Hatem al-Naqrashawi, head of theological studies at Doha University , told AFP.

"Islamic banks don't buy credit but manage concrete assets... which shelters them from the difficulties that American and European banks are experiencing," explained Abdel Bassat al-Shibi, managing director of Qatar International Islamic Bank.

Islamic finance is different from capitalism in two main ways. It bans interest-bearing loans, seen as usury, a practice forbidden by Islam, and also forbids speculation. Instead, it favours sharing risks and profits between a bank and a client.

Sharia compliant products include Ijara, a way of buying a house through a lease and subsequent ownership, rather than through a mortgage. Others are Musharaka, the sharing of profits and losses, and Murabaha, under which the seller declares the profit margin being made on the sale of a commodity.

Murabaha is seen as a way of enabling a buyer to avoid taking an interest-bearing loan, though some Islamic scholars say it is too similar to the charging of 'riba', or interest.

In the past three decades, the number of Islamic financial institutions has risen above 300, spread among 75 countries. Their total assets are more than 300 billion dollars and are growing an at average rate of 15 percent a year, according to studies.

"The collapse of capitalism based on usury and paper and not on the trading of goods on the market is proof that it is in crisis and shows the Islamic economic philosophy is holding up," prominent Egyptian-born Qatar-based cleric Sheikh Yussef al-Qaradawi told a recent conference in Doha .

"We have all the wealth... the Islamic nation has all or nearly all the oil and we have an economic philosophy which no one else has," he said, referring to the fact that Islamic countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, hold a large part of the world's proven crude oil reserves.

Suleiman al-Audah, an influential Saudi cleric, called for an "international Islamic summit to define the framework and the stages of an Islamic economic alternative."

Some Islamists admit, however, that this alternative is not yet operational.

"Theoretically, the Islamic economic system offers a complete and solid mechanism... but in practice, the Islamic banking experience is not yet mature, because it offers limited products like 'Murabaha'," Audah, a moderate Islamist, told AFP.

His caution is shared by Egyptian Islamist intellectual Fahmi Howaidi, for whom the Islamic system "could bring solutions to certain banking problems but cannot be a magic wand" to end the financial upheaval which is shaking the world.

www.dailystar.net

Photos, and further information,  here http://www.sonnenschein.com/practice_areas/islamic_finance/index.aspx, here 
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/4-12-18/25080.html  and here http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=106

Whose Money? says:

As the article makes clear, what moslems object to is "capitalism based on usury and paper and not on the trading of goods on the market".

There is surely enough common ground here for Moslems to work with money reformers towards a system satisfactory to all.

House of Cards

Danny Schechter, Media Channel

…While campaigning in Edinburg, Texas, in February, Barack Obama met with students at the University of Texas-Pan American. “Just be careful about those credit cards, all right? Don’t eat out as much,” he said. After the foreclosure crisis, he warned, “the credit cards are next in line.”

The coupling of home equity debt and credit card debt has gone hand in glove for years. The homeowners at risk can no longer use their homes as ATM machines, thanks to their prior re-financings and equity loans, often used in the past to pay off their credit cards. Indeed, homeowners cashed out $1.2 trillion from their home equity from 2002 to 2007 to pay down credit card debts and to cover other costs of living, according to the public policy research organization Demos.

To compound the problem, fewer people are paying their credit card bills on time. And, to flip the old paradigm, more are using high-interest credit card cash to pay at least part of their mortgages instead of the other way around  …

…  just as with mortgage debt, credit card debt is put into pools that are then resold to investment houses, other banks and institutional investors. About 45 percent of the nation’s $900-plus billion in credit card debt has been packaged into these pools, and so many companies, not just a few, are at risk of being forced out of business by credit card debt write-offs.

Read it in full here:

http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/10/29/house-of-cards/

Whose Money? says:

We ourselves know young people who, during the now-defunct boom, were offered thousands of pounds worth of instant credit without any check on their ability to pay.

With many people up to their ears in debt since their student days, and widespread defaults on credit card debt inevitable as the recession begins to bite, how many houses will be repossessed in repayment of that debt, as reported in last week’s Sunday times ? (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article5014781.ece)

You can see Danny Schechter’s film “In Debt ‘We Trust” on Google Video, here: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-9016886482738598023

Young people are being taught that you can only enjoy material abundance by selling yourself to a future of scarcity.  Caught in “The Web of Debt” (http://www.webofdebt.com) more and more of them look forward to long years tied to ill-paid employment, at the expense of family life, rewarding relationships and more creative career and leisure opportunities: all to service what are essentially unrepayable debts.

And it’s just not necessary.

As far as financial considerations are concerned, only our strange obsession with creating our means of exchange as a compound interest-bearing debt to private money lending businesses makes scarcity obligatory.

Time for a switch to publicly-created, debt-free money.

U.S. Housing Market Boom and Crash Engineered by the Government

Richard C Cook, The Market Oracle

When George W. Bush was named president by the Supreme Court in December 2000, the stock market had begun to decline with the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

In 2001 the frequency of White House visits by Alan Greenspan increased.

Greenspan endorsed President Bush's March 2001 tax cuts for the rich. More such cuts took place in May 2003.

Signs of recession had begun to show in early 2001. The stock market crashed after 9/11. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in March 2003.

The Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates, and by 2002 a home-buying frenzy was underway. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went along by guaranteeing the increasing number of mortgage loans.

According to a mortgage broker this writer interviewed, word began to come down through the mortgage banks to begin falsifying mortgage applications to show more borrower income than borrowers actually possessed .

Read more  …

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6936.html

Whose Money? says:

This article states the facts in a clear and orderly way.

Now you decide for yourself whether we are being stitched up.

Incidentally, we understand that Northern Rock was specifically instructed by the Government to abandon caution and grant mortgages to people who, common sense suggested, would not be able to afford them.

We are being herded into global government under threat of scarcity, in complete contradiction to real possibilities of abundance: the possibilities offered by debt-free money, and constructive use of the free energy which Dr Judy Wood is suggesting was used destructively on 9/11 (see http://www.drjudywood.com).

It’s up to ordinary people throughout the world to say No to global control.  You can be part of the transformation by thinking positively, by telling your friends about the way money is at present used to create scarcity and concentrate real wealth and power into the hands of a few (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279), and by passing on the address of Dr Wood’s website, so that they can view the evidence for free energy for themselves.

When enough people wake up to the enormity of the scam being perpetrated, and get used to the idea that abundance is there for the choosing, a critical mass will be reached and a new and better course will be set for our children and grandchildren. 

Financial crisis: Eat, spend and be merry - this is not the end of the world

Boris Johnson, The Telegraph

…  If we are not careful, a puritanical pall of disapproval will spread over the economy, vetoing consumption, nixing hope  …

I am not suggesting that those in debt should add to their problems by trying to double up on their credit cards; I am thinking more of the people out there who still have dosh  …

… I read the other day that the credit crunch had affected the dress-procurement strategy of the Queen. Sensitive to the mood of her subjects, she had decided not to lash out on any new frocks, but to recycle the old ones. I read that with alarm. Who is giving her economic advice these days? Now is exactly the moment for the Queen - who has a bob or two - to buy dresses, now when the milliners and dressmakers of London could do with a right royal tonic. This is not the moment for dowdiness and self-sufficiency; this is the moment for a life-affirming splurge.

We should remember that the boom-slump cycle is a natural part of our history; indeed, it is indispensable to our psychological make-up. It is like love. It is a basically incurable condition, and we revert to it again and again.

(Picture of Puritans: http://annehutchinson.net/)

Read it in full here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/10/28/do2801.xml

Whose Money? says:

We are sure that Boris has written this article with the best possible motives, convinced that the way out of recession is through big spending on the part of  recent profiteers and beneficiaries filtering down to those who would otherwise be out of a job.  

We are absolutely with him, in his desire to see a flourishing economy.  However, it is clear that he has not the least conception of how the use of debt as the nation’s means of exchange and distribution disrupts the smooth functioning of a productive economy.

The fact is that boom and bust is not, in itself, “a basically incurable condition”.  It is only “a basically incurable condition” as long as we depend on exponentially increasing borrowing to put money into circulation.

Meanwhile, he could sustain London’s own purchasing  power, as jobs in the City are lost, by introducing local currency vouchers, acceptable in the payment of council tax, into the wage packets and pensions of council employees.

Where London leads, the North East could surely follow.  As the following article suggests, without a complete change in our attitude to money this part of the country is unlikely to thrive.

Region preparing for difficult future

Babette Decker, The Newcastle Journal

THE North East economy will have to adjust to a recession lasting well into 2009, business leaders have been warned.

Durham could be one of the worst hit parts of the region as the credit crunch and a looming recession force regeneration bosses to refocus efforts on backing up the county’s faltering businesses.

Figures released to The Journal reveal the North East is already suffering the key signs of a recession, with a huge growth in unemployment benefit claims alongside a sharp drop house sales, a rise in repossessions and a warning from city treasurers that 2009 will not bring any relief.

Read more  …

http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2008/10/28/region-preparing-for-difficult-future-61634-22130265/

Whose Money? says:

Only a short while ago we were being told that businesses in the north-east of England were optimistic about their future outlook.

Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, John Wright, says that “… what is essential for  …  recovery is that the banks start meeting their responsibilities”.

No.  What is essential is that government should start meeting its responsibility both to create the national money supply free of debt at source, and to licence the issue of supplementary currencies, repayable in local taxes, by councils.

With their licence for the creation of non-cash money revoked, the banks would be forced to lend out money which actually exists, encouraging stable, long-term investment in local businesses, and a return to reasonable property prices.

Cost of crash: $2,800,000,000,000

Bank of England calls for reform

Larry Elliott, Philip Inman and Nicholas Watt, The Guardian

Autumn's market mayhem has left the world's financial institutions nursing losses of $2.8tn, the Bank of England said today, as it called for fundamental reform of the global banking system to prevent a repeat of turmoil "arguably" unprecedented since the outbreak of the first world war.

In its half-yearly health check of the City, the Bank said tougher regulation and constraints on lending would be needed as policymakers sought to learn lessons from the mistakes that have led to a systemic crisis unfolding over the past 15 months.

Read more  …

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/28/economics-credit-crunch-bank-england

Whose Money? says:

As usual, the wrong kind of ‘reform’ is being discussed.

We do not merely need reform of banking regulations.  We need reform of the financial system, with a switch from debt-based credit to publicly-created, debt-free money as the underpinning of economic activity.

As long as we cling, quite irrationally, to the idea that only ever-increasing public and private insolvency can provide us with a means of exchange and distribution, there will be no satisfactory solution to our problems  -  as the following article makes clear:

Fixing the crisis is not so easy

Five problems block government success

Danny Schechter, Global Research

New York OCT 27: Most Americans know the phrase, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” In the good times, when the economy boomed and Wall Street prospered, it looked like nothing was broke. The free market, we were told, was working like magic insuring prosperity and progress.

But then it happened, out of sight and out of mind, an upward trajectory turned in the other direction. In what was for many an unbelievable chain of events, markets started melting down, banks began writing down portfolios clogged with asset-backed securities that had no assets behind them. Confidence shattered. Suddenly, believers in unregulated transactions realized something was very, very wrong.

Alan Greenspan was “shocked” and said he was wrong to support deregulation of financial markets. As headlines conjured up breadlines and recession, with “something worse” threatening, the government was pressed to act.

Over a year later, after eight interest rate cuts, with one more promised, and the injection of trillions into credit markets and banks worldwide, little has changed  …

…  Still to be answered: can the system be saved from itself?

Read it in full here:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10699

Whose Money? says:

Whether or not the system can be saved, common-sense suggests that it’s not worth saving because, taking Mr Schechter’s points one by one:

1