Thanks to

Where Does Money Come From? A Guide to the UK Monetary and Banking System

I.e. This book looks at money and not economics as the pseudo-science that covers up what central bankers, banks and other financial institutions are doing, with the Government sanctioning it.

Amzon publishes customer reviews and here’s the one by Quaker James Bruges of the New Era Network:

He opened: “Spiralling inequality, chaos in the financial world and the Occupy protests force us to engage with economics. A Guide to the UK Monetary and Banking System is about money itself, a subject that has, surprisingly, received little attention and about which there is widespread misunderstanding.”

Selected extracts:

Tony Greenham, Richard Werner and Andrew Jackson, studied the implications of bank-created money through talking to key people in the City, including members of the Independent Commission on Banking, and referring to 500 documents from central banks and regulators.

On receiving a copy of the completed book, David Miles of the Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England, said, ‘the way monetary economics and banking is taught in many – maybe most – universities is very misleading and what your book does is help people explain how the mechanics of the system work.’

Banks charge interest on loans, necessitating the amount of money in circulation to increase each year in order to cover this interest. The choice is either growth or recession. It was a Quaker philosopher, Kenneth Boulding, who quipped, ‘Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.’

The government wants banks to finance the productive sector but ‘the government has in practice no involvement in the money creation and allocation process’. It is not surprising that little of the vast sums given to banks have been loaned to small businesses, which they regard as risky. The banks have invested most of their windfall in assets such as prime property, the value of which is enhanced by Russian oligarchs.

The book discusses financial instruments that ‘are increasingly traded in a money-like fashion, moving around the world at great speed and frequency by investment banks and hedge funds’. The financial elite, joined by African dictators and corporations, have salted away £3 trillion tax-free in secret locations, many – perhaps most – of which are UK protectorates or ‘British Overseas territories’, the City of London itself being one of them. The UK loses £70 billion in tax annually. The value of trade in financial derivatives is ten times the value of all goods and services in the world. No one knows what’s going on but these activities are the cause of global instability and deprive governments of funds to help those in need.

James concluded that the present monetary and banking system is at odds with Quaker testimonies to integrity, justice, equality, community and the environment and called on Quakers to help to develop an alternative to laissez-faire capitalism that relates to real life in all its local variety, provides social welfare, and encourages cooperation, creativity, relationship and play.

The full review is here.

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• A massive financial con trick foisted on the voters – by the dictators of the West (forumnews.wordpress.com)

• he asks his collegues in Wall Street why they don’t report ‘properly’
• he blames Western governments for giving their power to banks, derivatives traders and rating agencies
• he points to the “slovenly and dishonest coterie of experts from America’s top universities and think tanks”.

Maybe 2012 will become the year of enlightenment when enough people will realise the con tricks in operation, ever since the first central banks were created in Sweden and the UK:

• the creation of “credit” from thin air that is being sold as “money” – but at interest
• the deadly embrace between central banks and national treasuries
• the complete con and illusion that governments are entitled to take “taxpayers’ money” in order to spend it.

May the Occupy Movement be the messenger of enlightenment!

And may the Bank of England Act 1694 become enforced, for the writers of that Act knew about the powers that the central bankers assumed for themselves: the manipulation of the tool to oppress Their Majesties’ Subjects (and other ‘democratic citizens’)…

And may our online petitions be understood and signed:

• Stop the Cash Crumble to Equalize the Credit Crunch
• Financial Fairness for Voters and Taxpayers, please!
• Stop the Oppression of the British people!

This book is new in our armoury, as Anne Belsey from the Money Reform Party writes:

MRP e-Newsletter

November 2011

Let’s be the Voice of Authority

Since the European Conference on Banking in September and ever more since last month’s Positive Money conference, I have been pondering on what to do next. Particularly, I have been thinking about the book Where Does Money Come From?.

I think that this book is an excellent new weapon in our armoury. This is not because it is better than other books, such as Mike Rowbotham’s The Grip of Death, or Helen Brown’s The Web of Debt, or any of the many works produced by James Gibb Stuart over the years, or, indeed, better than any of the many other publications by money reformers.

What sets this book apart is its provenance, particular with respect to the writer of the foreword. This gives it an authority with which all previous writers cannot compete. With such a book in our hands, we are no longer a crazed minority spouting some nonsense about banks creating the money supply. Suddenly, we have become part of the Voice of Authority on the subject.

We live in a world where it is not a matter of what you say or what you know, but who you are. It was ever thus. Over the centuries, sententious individuals have set themselves up to be the Authority on some matter or other, and their view has prevailed (until the contrary evidence became overwhelming), because thinking things through is difficult for most people and not helped by the fact that many people are able to hold two contrary ideas at the same time.

I have heard MP s on the radio talk about about the need to reduce debt within our economy and then a moment later to talk of the need to get the banks lending again, without apparently noticing the evident contradiction in their statements.

Let’s educate our MP s

We need to educate our MP s and we now have the means to do it – WDMCF? This is not only because of the sheer authority of the book, but also because it includes its own summary or Overview on the first three pages.

This Overview fits nicely onto a single sheet of A4 in 12 point type, so can be used as the basis of a leaflet. (See the four attachments.) Even if they don’t buy the book, but merely read the Overview, MP s might begin to understand why the UK (and much of the rest of the world) is facing problems in the economy.

So I have begun a programme of sending such a leaflet, with an accompanying letter, to all our MP s. I have done 240 so far, just another 400 to go.

Everyone can help by writing to their own MP, including a copy of one of these leaflets should they so choose. At the PM conference, Josh Ryan-Collins talked about the book and made the offer of sending a free copy to any MP who was interested. You might like to extend this offer, but my own view is that if any MP really is interested, then they won’t begrudge the £15, whilst any who is not won’t even read a free copy.

Also, if anyone is feeling flush, they could help out this project by sending a few pounds, payable to ‘Money Reform Party’, to 34 Berkeley Close, Dunkirk, Faversham. ME13 9TR. For example, £36 will pay for a book of 100 second class stamps.

After the MP s, whom?

I had 1000 leaflets printed up, as the cost for 1000 was about the same as for 650, so I shall have 350 leaflets left over. To whom should I send these? What do you think?

I am thinking that they should go to economic journalists in our mainstream media, but other ideas would be welcomed (along with the stamps to enable the mail out).

The Positive Money conference

This was a good little event, well attended (uncomfortably so, given the setting), but we had some good speakers, putting across a range of viewpoints.

It was good to see two MP s there (Steve Baker and Michael Meacher), who pretty much confirmed my suspicion that the reason why politicians do nothing about our money system is not because they are involved in some conspiracy to cover it up, but because they simply don’t understand it. Hence the need for a campaign to start educating them.

Steve Baker came out as a gold bug. I don’t mind people advocating bullion as the basis of money, even though I don’t think that it will work. but they do have a tendency to conflate debt-based money with fiat money, when the two are quite distinct. Also, he kept referring to our present money as ‘irredeemable’. I am sorry that he is unable to redeem his money. Personally, I redeem money all the time – I redeem it in the supermarket for groceries, in the pub for beer, and so on. I could even redeem it for gold at a jewellers or bullion dealers, if I so choose.

That’s not the problem with our money supply! The problem is that it based on people being in debt, with overall debts having to grow year on year simply to avoid recession, unlike, of course, a positive, debt-free purely fiat currency.

The shadow of Weimar looms large

The problems in the Eurozone have loomed large over recent weeks and seem set to continue on into the future.

The solution that many Euro politicians want is one of greater fiscal integration, creating one body responsible for taxation and public spending throughout the zone. This will effectively create one sovereign entity called maybe Euroland or the United States of Europe or, by its opponents, the Fourth Reich.

Given the sheer dominance of Germany in such a fiscal union, I cannot see it happening, certainly not for those countries that suffered at the hands of the Third Reich.

Of course, such a union will not solve the Eurozone’s problems, but it would disguise them, just as in Britain we have been able to disguise the dominance of the City of London, which parasitically feeds off the rest of the country, by a small degree of taxation upon it to subsidise the rest of the country.

Nor will the ECB consider such a measure as Quantitative Easing, which has been applied in Britain and the USA, QE has not solved the economic problems in either the UK or the USA, nor will it, because its purpose is not to reduce debt, but to increase it. However, it has given the money markets confidence that UK and US debt will always be redeemed, so kept gilt yields (the price of Govt. borrowing) low.

QE will not be implemented by the ECB, because the ECB is based in Germany and is dominated by Germany, and Germany fears hyper-inflation more than anything else. Given the phenomenal levels of debt in the Eurozone, QE is no more likely to see an upsurge in borrowing and hence hyper-inflation in the Eurozone, than it has in the UK or the USA. Even so, the idea will not even be considered.

As for the creation of a debt-free money supply… that is beyond even non-consideration, if one can have such a place.

Britain must lead the way

Nor will the USA nor Japan lead the way towards debt-free money – the USA because there is too much resistance to government power, nor in Japan because, well, they have not sussed the solution yet, despite being 20 years ahead of us in their debt-crisis.

As ever it will fall to Britain to lead the world towards salvation from the troubles of its own making. All we need to do is get enough MP s to understand the cause of the present problems and then gently guide them towards a simple and sensible solution.

And we have to do this because, in the immortal words of Colour-Sergeant Bourne ( from the film Zulu ) ‘There’s no one else.’

And we now have the means, not in the shape of Martini-Henry rifles, but the wonderful new weapon called Where Does Money Come From?

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Well written, once again, dear Prem!

But I’d go a bit further and deeper, of course. I’d like the right to see:

1. how much ‘money from thin air’ is generated per month and per year by
a) the Bank of England (aka ‘quantitative easin’)
b) commercial banks (aka ‘credit)
c) other financial institutions such as trading firms offering ‘credit’.

2. who are the beneficiaries of the interest payments
a) shareholders
b) staff
c) current and former politicians.

3. regular statistics about the money supply as a whole
a) the percentage that the Government’s budget represents
b) the percentage that interest payments represent, compared with ‘capital creation’ [money from thin air].

Is that too much to ask for?

With best wishes for continued power to your writing elbows,

Sabine
Web publisher
http://publicdebts.org.uk/
http://moneyasdebt.wordpress.com/
http://forumforstablecurrencies.info/chronology

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John Fullerton
Founder and President
Capital Institute

I’m a former banker, a one percenter, and I’m mad as hell too.

Let’s be clear. The Occupy movement is not a product of frustration, as President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner, and now Eric Cantor have suggested. Frustration is passive; anger is active. Martin Luther King was not frustrated. But beyond my anger is a real concern for democracy, for America, for the people of the world, for the planet upon which we all depend, and for my children’s future. It’s why I do what I do. It’s the inspiration for Capital Institute.

This concern led me to Liberty Park Plaza last week to listen, show my support and empathy for the peaceful demonstrators, and learn about the occupation first-hand. I wanted to see if I could build a relationship with some of the organizers — which I did — and find out if the prominent media narrative of disorganization and unclear goals was accurate.

I learned that OWS is first and foremost about restoring democracy in America, and that I was right to be concerned about the media’s portrayal.

Since the beginning of the protests, leading politicians and members of the media have been asking the question “What does OWS want?” This is the wrong question. Policy priorities are for interest groups, working their battle plans within the system. Proposals are what the media and politicians of the left and right want so they can put the complex issues that led to the occupation into pre-existing boxes before they are fully understood.

OWS as I understand it today, is building a movement of everyday people who are fed up with Wall Street’s corrupting influence on our democracy. Wall Street does not mean capitalism, although capitalism’s critics are on hand at OWS. It means the socialized losses and the unchecked power, greed, speculative excess, violence, and theft from fellow citizens that has gone unchecked by our bought and paid for government — Democrats and Republicans alike. But it also means the dominant influence of Wall Street culture on short-term corporate behavior and misbehavior, from Enron’s derivatives-enabled fraud to the Koch Brothers’ and Exxon’s funding of climate change denial, to the health insurance industry’s power over lives and affordable health care, to McDonald’s and Coke’s impact on childhood obesity, all to further short-term corporate and financial interests no matter the cost to “we the people.”

This is different from “We are the 99 Percent,” a divisive, although clever phrase that has not been formally adopted by the OWS General Assembly. Wall Street’s culture is the target because money has corrupted the Republic. Through this power lens, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the rest are mere tools in the system, not worthy of protesting against. Instead, the right question we should be asking is, “what is emerging at OWS?”

It is useful and eye opening to go back to see how OWS began, and to view the original Adbusters blog post dated July 13, 2011. Like the world we live in, the OWS movement is complex and filled with uncertainty.
But the answer is simple: the Occupy movement is a mass experiment in participatory and deliberative democracy. It says “fix government,” not “eliminate government.”

I engaged with one of the many experienced organizers at OWS during my trip. He was unusually calm, articulate, experienced (a Seattle WTO alum) and well informed — he had read much of the leading alternative economics literature. He explained that the General Assembly that meets every evening to deliberate the course of the movement had determined explicitly not to develop a set of demands at this time. Instead, he shared, OWS is focused on setting up a governance system for the movement, expecting to be around for the long haul. As of today, any list of demands that you may hear, therefore, are unsanctioned by the governing General Assembly of OWS.

The emergence of the practice of participatory democracy as the movement’s only initial priority says everything. OWS is about taking back democracy. Don’t be fooled by their clothing, drums, or hand signals. There is something serious afoot here that is organic, influenced by experienced social movement organizers, and yet uncontrolled. Whether it can last is unknowable and not yet determined. It will depend upon how we all react — politicians, business leaders, police, and most importantly, we the citizenry. Their strategy is to build the power of the movement before seeking to use that power. A million demonstrators speak louder than ten thousand, just like a trillion dollar balance sheet speaks louder than a hundred billion dollar one. Right out of Goldman Sachs’ playbook I’d say.

So far, OWS has established working groups, in areas like media, de-escalation (there is an explicit commitment to non-violence — let us hope there is a discipline to match), the kitchen, first aid, security (they have adopted strict no alcohol and drug use rules), sanitation, and more. The day I was there, they were organizing to create a phone book for the community. There is a library and groups working to promote new economic thinking. OWS’s next and overdue priority is how to be better neighbors to their immediate downtown community.

William Blake cautioned that abstraction without the particular becomes demonic. As a society, we became intoxicated with the pursuit of money, and then in our stupor, allowed forces emanating from Wall Street to layer abstraction upon abstraction in the name of innovation. This morphed into nothing but leveraged speculation at best, and into manipulation, conflicts of interest, cynicism, cheating, and fraud. I know because I was there at the creation in the 1980s. Back then, these tools were innovative, purposeful and productive. But they have since metastasized into a cancer. Free market fundamentalism blinded us to a timely diagnosis, and continues to do so today.

It is time for finance to resume its proper and humble place as servant to, not master of, the real economy — an economy that promotes a more equitably shared prosperity while respecting the physical limits of our finite planet. Such transformation is the Great Work of our age; work that drives the Capital Institute and many other organizations fostering the emergence of a new economy. The restoration of our democracy OWS seeks is an essential step, which may be at hand. It’s still a long shot, but we shall see. One thing is for certain: OWS has started a national conversation long overdue.

John Fullerton is the Founder and President of the Capital Institute, whose mission is to explore and effect economic transition to a more just, resilient, and sustainable way of living on this earth through the transformation of finance.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdb5YT8RPDA&feature=related
Lord Monckton : End of Democracy in England – Alex Jones Report
Part 1 15:18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8BtzzqJNgM&feature=related
Part 2 9:52

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y41g8S-Wnkg&feature=related
Part 3 12:13

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Pieces of paper devalue one’s labour
printing press process cuts like a saber
through the worth of the sweat – off of one’s brow
in the form of a system we have allowed
through default of inheritance – to continue
to create money from nothing… and this for a fee!

The economics of banking and legal tender
esoteric complexities which typically render
most individuals dazed and confused
clueless about this system we use
on a daily basis – throughout our lives
an idea we’ve been sold… and continue to buy.

Promises of debt pass through our hands
everyday we undertake what we don’t understand.

But money is a thought form for those who don’t know
a conceptual idea, become tangible
a faith and trust that’s become blind
running amuck with the passage of time
as legitimate illegitimacy remains the norm
a concensus reality that remains uninformed.

For those who don’t believe this can be so
this disbelief is what gives it Control!
For legal tender representation
has taken hold of every nation
one by one… all on this planet
have fallen prey to the proverbial carrot
in front of the horse, luring it forward
but only forward – till it is lowered
to a state of servitude for the rest of its being.

Look around at the world we’re seeing:
legal tender is more than just paper.
Historically speaking, it’s the greatest caper
pulled off in front of humanity’s eyes
at our own expense – we believe a lie.

As the roots of its birth remain forgotten
unfolding evolution having gone rotten.
Begin to realise: things are not as they seem
entire money systems as Ponzi schemes!

For there is no need to give private incentive
or monopoly control to an external inventive
of a nation’s economic and monetary wealth
no need to pay unjust interest as well.

Yet this is the way that it is
a profound truth we blissfully dismiss.
Everything’s fine and always will be.
Hence we have this world we see!

A nation can coin its own currency
beholden to citizens and interest-free!

Not at the mercy of some private sect
in a runaway train of national debt.

And though indeed no system is perfect
attempt to fix what is not working!
In history’s pages such a solution was sought
the primary reason the revolution was fought!

4closure for Fraud is a site that highlights the problems of home repossessions in America. Their efforts paid off when Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum began investigating whether Florida’s largest foreclosure firms had submitted false affidavits and other documents in order to obtain final judgments against property owners.

Same circus, different clowns as we’ve watched in the UK (see Victims Unite!:

• “Potentially fabricated documents”
• many with signatures they believe are forged
• “suspicious documents”.

Now sponsored by a law firm, 4closureFraud.org gets 100,000 views a month, including visitors from the White House, the US Justice Department, the US State Deparment, the International Monetary Frund and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

And thanks to their Warrior Lawyers, a class action against the Fed is in preparation!

The Contact page lists 9 interesting traps for victims to consider!

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Since 2008 the vast majority of the Western population dream about saying “no” to the banks, but no one has dared to do so. No one except the Icelanders, who have carried out a peaceful revolution that has managed not only to overthrow a government and draft a new constitution, but also seeks to jail those responsible for the country’s economic debacle.

The government sues some bankers. Finally!

So where is the democracy? Austerity budgets imposed against public will, a deficit substantially increased from a royal pageant imposed without democratic consultation, and war expenses loaded on to the suffering public – even though these wars are opposed by the majority of voters.

But the royal wedding is not just a peculiar Big Day for the seemingly quaint House of Windsor. It is in many ways a celebration of the dictatorship of global Capital over democracy in Britain and elsewhere around the world, including the ‘Republic of the USA”. As the assorted global dictators assembled in London’s  Westminster Abbey might say in harmony with the happy couple: “Till death do us part”.