Our Problem Is Debt

[bill still]

The problem with the U.S. economy is the same as the worldwide economy - debt - specifically the interest on the debt incurred when governments borrow their money from banks.

In the United States, this year (2009) the interest payments on our National Debt alone will exceed $700 billion. To put that in perspective, there is much debate about ongoing funding for NASA -- a program highly approved of by the general public here. The entire NASA budget for 2009 is $14 billion.

It is the interest on the debt that is killing every economy in the world. The Sumarians (and later the Jews) had a solution for this -- the Jubilee. The Sumarians knew that every 50 years or so the weight of accumulated interest would collapse any civilization, so every 50 years all private debts were cancelled. This is actually what is going on to a certain extent now with banks "writing down" loans. But these small debt cancellations are merely patches to hold off the day when the slaves wake up and revolt, which is absolutely inevitable.

So let's just keep our eyes on the ball here. The bankers try to get us to focus our energies on irrelevancies. It matters not what backs a nation's money, for example. All that matters is who controls its quantity. If we allow the quantity of money to be controlled by banks, then we live in a plutocracy -- rule by the rich. If we give that power to the elected representatives to the national Congress or Parliament, then, and ONLY then, can we aspire to democracy or a democratic republic. There is no in between! Socialism, communism, fascism -- these are all just minor variants of plutocracy. You are either free or slave.

Controlling of the quantity of a national money is THE most important political question humans can ponder. Freedom cannot long survive when bankers are in control of the quantity of a nation's money. Their debt money system is THE cause of most of the bad things in this world; war, poverty, hunger, misery.

All we need to do is to take back the control of our national monies, that is issue our money without debt. To Abraham Lincoln, this was the most important responsibility of government. Make this the new mantra of the new human rights movement: No More National Debt!

Bill Still: www.secretofOz.com

Edited August 4, 2009 by bill still

[AvidFan]

Exactly the conversation I was having at lunch time.

We need to get back to basics. Banks with thin profit margins that connect wealth with the best speculative business ideas in the most accurate way. Offer savers 5% and borrowers 5.1%, or whatever a community needs to do to build growth.

Here's another concept: Bankers dominate because their industry has ultimate liquidity. Why not have corporates run savings banks for their employees? For example, an engineering company could have research and development capital and pay bonuses based on technology market share and profit. Why get greedy bankers involved at all?

[Where is my pen?]

The problem with the U.S. economy is the same as the worldwide economy – debt -- specifically the interest on the debt incurred when governments borrow their money from banks.

In the United States, this year (2009) the interest payments on our “National Debt†alone will exceed $700 billion. To put that in perspective, there is much debate about ongoing funding for NASA -- a program highly approved of by the general public here. The entire NASA budget for 2009 is $14 billion.

It is the interest on the debt that is killing every economy in the world. The Sumarians (and later the Jews) had a solution for this -- the Jubilee. The Sumarians knew that every 50 years or so the weight of accumulated interest would collapse any civilization, so every 50 years all private debts were cancelled. This is actually what is going on to a certain extent now with banks "writing down" loans. But these small debt cancellations are merely patches to hold off the day when the slaves wake up and revolt – which is absolutely inevitable.

So let's just keep our eyes on the ball here. The bankers try to get us to focus our energies on irrelevancies. It matters not what backs a nation's money, for example. All that matters is who controls its quantity. If we allow the quantity of money to be controlled by banks, then we live in a plutocracy -- rule by the rich. If we give that power to the elected representatives to the national Congress or Parliament, then, and ONLY then, can we aspire to democracy or a democratic republic. There is no in between! Socialism, communism, fascism -- these are all just minor variants of plutocracy. You are either free or slave.

Controlling of the quantity of a national money is THE most important political question humans can ponder. Freedom cannot long survive when bankers are in control of the quantity of a nation's money. Their debt money system is THE cause of most of the bad things in this world; war, poverty, hunger, misery.

All we need to do is to take back the control of our national monies – that is issue our money without debt. To Abraham Lincoln, this was the most important responsibility of government. Make this the new mantra of the new human rights movement: No More National Debt!

Bill Still: www.secretofOz.com

This is bullcak.

[Bloo Loo]

the problem is NOT the debt.

Its the sweeping of debt out of view, ignoring it and pretending it wont do any harm.

[Timm]

This is bullcak.

Why?

[bill still]

Well, that's an interesting notion. One of the things we go into in the new film, "The Secret of Oz", is that here in the States - and I don't know how it would work in the UK - there are two tiers of banking, federal and state. You don't have to have federal approval for a bank. State chartered banks are just fine. There is one example of this in the U.S., the State Bank of North Dakota, which, in this horrible economic climate, is turning record profits.

How? Because it totally state owned. The State of ND, deposits all state receipts in it's own bank. Through the fractional reserve concept, it can then loan out 10 times its reserves for state infrastructure projects, student loans, etc. It can make these loans at zero percent interest if it wants, but it charges small amounts of interest to at least break even. This saves the state immense sums of interest on large infrastructure projects, which when funded by long-term bonds can run up the cost of a project by 50%.

Interestingly, for "The MoneyMasters" I told of how Guernsey used to do this exact thing. That's the way their Central Market was built.

In any case, any State can start a state bank and thereby save the state from paying interest for large state-owned projects. But even more interesting is that smaller entities can do so as well. I use the hypothetical example of the "University Bank" in "The Secret of Oz". Any university in the U.S. could form its own bank, they would only have to receive approval of their state legislature and what state legislature would not do that to help their cash-strapped university? All university funds would be put into the University Bank. It has been calculated that universities could afford to provide interest free student loans to all needy students this way, plus be able to expand facilities, all at no debt.

Bill Still - www.thesecretofOz.com

Exactly the conversation I was having at lunch time.

We need to get back to basics. Banks with thin profit margins that connect wealth with the best speculative business ideas in the most accurate way. Offer savers 5% and borrowers 5.1%, or whatever a community needs to do to build growth.

Here's another concept: Bankers dominate because their industry has ultimate liquidity. Why not have corporates run savings banks for their employees? For example, an engineering company could have research and development capital and pay bonuses based on technology market share and profit. Why get greedy bankers involved at all?

[AvidFan]

Well, that's an interesting notion.

The aim is transparency - which leads to efficiency. Why let banks delude us with opaque operations? Allocate the capital to its correct location and have people participate and understand what it is for. Then no-one has to make a profit on money. We can get back to being good at other things - engineering, education, health, etc.

I understand in the US you have state-level and federal level government and taxes. What I'm saying is that that's only one level of subdivision. Take it to it's natural conclusion and allow people to invest in their own productive practises. As long as there's a protection scheme in place based on pooled liquidity, then there's no reason not too.

It'd be a form of motivation too. You own the debt secured on the thing you have to make work...

Edited for spelling.

Edited August 4, 2009 by AvidFan

[Traktion]

EDIT: Brain fart - I was wrong!

Edited August 4, 2009 by Traktion

[Injin]

The problem is that people think it's fine to impose a fiction using violence.

Banking is just one such mad delusion - the state is another.

You can't figh tthe problem of mandated fiction by mandating another fiction. You gotta go with facts, evidence and peace.

[bill still]

Goldbugs can only speak in generalities; "Let the market decide". Well according to Lincoln, controlling the issuance of the money is governments most important responsibility. The U.S. Constitution requires the government to regulate the value of money. In fact, humankind's gradual crawl out of serfdom is the ability to have an elected government lest the rich control everything - plutocracy. This is the absolute essence of freedom.

One of the authors of the U.S. Constitution, Gouverneur Morris put it this way: “The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will.... They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by [the power of] government, keep them in their proper spheres.â€

This is not against incentive-driven capitalism; this is the proper balancing of the powerful rich with the rest of us and allows the rest of us to have some class mobility and some say in the politics that govern our lives.

To deny this basic fact of human existence is not logical.

Why?

[AvidFan]

With fractional reserve banking, the direct link between savers' interest and borrowers' interest has long been lost.

Not if you make banking PERSONAL. If you make people aware you are shrinking reserves, lending long and borrowing short, for example, for a local housing market - but shrink your overheads too - 1 person at the counter and doing the capital flow/reserves analysis - then you're really lean and mean.

Make savers at your bank aware that they may be turned away or be limited in terms of withdrawal and MANAGE the terms of their accounts in consultation with the local market. Avoid bank runs all together - talk to people. If there's a problem with liquidy, negotiate a larger margin between savers and borrowers and comply with people's demands making them aware they are actually being made poorer but that it's necessary sometimes.

Edited for spelling.

Edited August 4, 2009 by AvidFan

[kokyu]

Controlling of the quantity of a national money is THE most important political question humans can ponder. Freedom cannot long survive when bankers are in control of the quantity of a nation's money. Their debt money system is THE cause of most of the bad things in this world; war, poverty, hunger, misery.

Well said. I applaud your efforts to get this more into the mainstream.

[davidhpc]

With fractional reserve banking, the direct link between savers' interest and borrowers' interest has long been lost. Example:

If you have £100 in the bank, getting 5% a year, you will have £105 at the end of the year.

If the bank has your £100 in their bank, they can loan it out many times oven (currently about 32 times @ 3% reserves) and each of those loans can generate interest. If they charged 5.1% to borrowers, they could be potentially earning £5.10 for each of of these 32 loans - or £163.20. If no loans default, that's £5 for you and £158.20 for the bank. Good work if you can get it, eh?

I'm sorry but that is just wrong.

The bank will have a corresponding deposit to pay interest on for all those loans. Paying out 160 in interest and taking in 163.2 giving a profit of just 3.20.

[DiggerUK]

The concept of debt as enslavement, and the argument put that this leads to ruling classes, castes or hierarchies is as old as societies and civilisation itself.

One way this was countered was by having debts, which were seen as the tool to enslavement, broken.

If anybody wants to look into this I can only encourage you to go into the search engines.

In my opinion it is a means to empower ourselves. Even if it only reveals what debts are.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=na...+debts+sumerian

Is as good a starting place as any.

Edited August 4, 2009 by DiggerUK

[AvidFan]

Well, that's an interesting notion. One of the things we go into in the new film, "The Secret of Oz", is that here in the States - and I don't know how it would work in the UK - there are two tiers of banking, federal and state. You don't have to have federal approval for a bank. State chartered banks are just fine. There is one example of this in the U.S., the State Bank of North Dakota, which, in this horrible economic climate, is turning record profits.

Banking is a series of edifices of liquidity and solvency. The savings paradigm teaches us that we should, in theory, be allocating 100% of all capital productively - so even a 1% reserve ratio is wrong.

What's happened in the US is that state banks and whole states have got into trouble - but have been bailed out by the government and the federal reserve. That's the next "edifice".

The next one up may be the world bank or the IMF.

Unfortunately, the greedy bankers have pushed the system so far that they have learned how to exploit the edifice that is national government. The level above that, when countries learn they can operate without being solvent, like the UK, is the IMF.

The harder you push, the more money you create, sure in the knowledge you will always be bailed out as a going concern.

The idea of smaller banks, still able to pool liquidity, means perhaps bubbles and exploitation at national and global levels is less likely to happen.

Edited for spelling.

Edited August 4, 2009 by AvidFan

[HumanAction]

Goldbugs can only speak in generalities; "Let the market decide". Well according to Lincoln, controlling the issuance of the money is governments most important responsibility. The U.S. Constitution requires the government to regulate the value of money. In fact, humankind's gradual crawl out of serfdom is the ability to have an elected government lest the rich control everything - plutocracy. This is the absolute essence of freedom.

One of the authors of the U.S. Constitution, Gouverneur Morris put it this way: “The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will.... They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by [the power of] government, keep them in their proper spheres.â€

This is not against incentive-driven capitalism; this is the proper balancing of the powerful rich with the rest of us and allows the rest of us to have some class mobility and some say in the politics that govern our lives.

To deny this basic fact of human existence is not logical.

I agree that gold has problems but the logic behind the use of gold is simply that the supply of gold does not increase at a fast enough rate to allow deliberate inflation of the supply of money to any meaningful extent, you can debase the metal of course but that's pretty easy to detect and show. You could, I guess, use something else so long as it's supply is similarly constricted. My worry with government issued fiat is simply that it is pretty easy for a government in trouble to debase the currency or even for those in control to print simply to enrich themselves even in good times. I can't really see how any kind of fiat currency is not likely to lead to disaster one way or another because power corrupts even if that power is derived through 'democratic' elections.

[Where is my pen?]

Why?

I think Bill Still's mission is bullcak because he basically advocates the overhaul of one system with an identical one run by different people.

Let the market decide what money is. The rest, quantity, credit etc, follows from that.

We need more FREEDOM, not more FORCE (regulation)

Edited August 4, 2009 by Where is my pen?

[Injin]

Goldbugs can only speak in generalities; "Let the market decide". Well according to Lincoln, controlling the issuance of the money is governments most important responsibility. The U.S. Constitution requires the government to regulate the value of money. In fact, humankind's gradual crawl out of serfdom is the ability to have an elected government lest the rich control everything - plutocracy. This is the absolute essence of freedom.

One of the authors of the U.S. Constitution, Gouverneur Morris put it this way: “The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did. They always will.... They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by [the power of] government, keep them in their proper spheres.â€

This is not against incentive-driven capitalism; this is the proper balancing of the powerful rich with the rest of us and allows the rest of us to have some class mobility and some say in the politics that govern our lives.

To deny this basic fact of human existence is not logical.

Yes, let the market decide.

Do you know what a market is?

[Traktion]

I'm sorry but that is just wrong.

The bank will have a corresponding deposit to pay interest on for all those loans. Paying out 160 in interest and taking in 163.2 giving a profit of just 3.20.

Hmm, good point - I didn't think that one through too clearly! I stand corrected.

EDIT: That does put the banks in an even more precarious position then.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Traktion

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

I think Bill Still's mission is bullcak because he basically advocates the overhaul of one system with an identical one run by different people.

Let the market decide what money is. The rest, quantity, credit etc, follows from that.

We need more FREEDOM, not more FORCE (regulation)

yep

someone who understood the problem with bankers and paper money

edit to add

the market has previously decided what the best medium of exchange and store of value is

but we can let the free market decide again

shall it be sea shells or silver

Dangers of Paper Money

"That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied. --Thomas Jefferson to Josephus B. Stuart, 1817. ME 15:113

"The trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals... it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:430

"Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:189

"The States should be applied to, to transfer the right of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively, in perpetuum." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:276

"The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their cause and consequences, and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then, we must be content to return quoad hoc to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property for want of a stable common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor, passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebankers." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:185

"Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:276

"It is a cruel thought, that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, 1779. ME 4:298, Papers 2:298

"I now deny [the Federal Government's] power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798. ME 10:65

Edited August 4, 2009 by lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)

[Where is my pen?]

yep

someone who understood the problem with bankers and paper money

The problem, of course, being a monopoly on money - exactly what Bill Still is advocating as a replacement.

You understand yet? Probably not, but I tried.

PS There is nothing wrong with banking in and of itself.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Where is my pen?

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

The problem, of course, being a monopoly on money - exactly what Bill Still is advocating as a replacement.

You understand yet? Probably not, but I tried.

eh

[Where is my pen?]

The Lord help us if the likes of Bill Still get their collectivist ambitions realised.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Where is my pen?

[Where is my pen?]

eh

My apologies. I must have misunderstood you.

[_w_]

I think Bill Still's mission is bullcak because he basically advocates the overhaul of one system with an identical one run by different people.

Let the market decide what money is. The rest, quantity, credit etc, follows from that.

We need more FREEDOM, not more FORCE (regulation)

No it's not. Any good system can be abused and turned bad.

His point, which I don't quite agree with, is that the system has been abused and that credit creation would be better handled if in public hands (e.g. by the people for the people) rather than profit seeking private interested.

The same applies to those markets you put so much faith in. Markets are good but can be abused by powerful intersts just the same. Are you against anti-trust laws? Are you in favour of one single bank controlling the mortgage market in the UK? Because this is what unrestricted unregulated markets lead to. Should we do away with markets completely because they can be abused?

Edited August 4, 2009 by williamdb