Debt-Based Money is a Weapon of Mass Destruction

Why are we ruled by debt? Our history is afflicted with debt, poverty, corruption, wars and assassinations, all underscored by the power of debt-based money. How has this happened? Banking fraud is as old as the hills. The ancient Greeks knew the destructive power of interest, or usury. Money was intended to be used in exchange but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth, this is the most unnatural. Aristotle 325BC (1258b, POLITICS) The money changers of the Bible also knew the power of interest. As the story goes, Jesus knew their ways and drove them from the temple, being arrested soon after and later delivered to his biblical fate. All religions once denounced the extraction of usury (any interest) as a corruption of money, and a sin. Why does interest corrupt money? Aristotle said that money was intended to be used in exchange. He was saying that money is simply a medium, with no intrinsic value. It doesnt breed like livestock, or grow like crops, nor can it be dug out of the ground like gold and multiplied. Its not a commodity. neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries. Modern Money Mechanics, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. So the interest mechanism is a scam, because it converts money into something that it is not a multiplying commodity. Money is a medium of exchange that makes it easy for people to exchange their goods and services. It costs virtually nothing, and should never be in short supply, restricting trade and the economy. How have we been deceived? In the past, items of value have been used as money, such as livestock or gold. Because of this and the interest scam, over time, people have come to believe that money is a commodity. Whereas, the real value comes from the human labour that produces the goods and services, sourced from Nature. The credit has always belonged to the man or the woman doing the actual work. This innate credit is money. It is born with us and it grows with us, and we should be free to exchange it for value according to our abilities. Whether this value is represented by dollar notes, recorded credit, plastic tokens, paper coupons, or IOUs, it is all a convenient promise of something of value.

By Lewis Verduyn

However, if we believe that money is a commodity, and then allow it to be monopolised, we are fated to pay interest and fall ever deeper into debt. What are the bankers doing? Suppose you go to a bank to borrow $1000. When you sign the contract, the bank creates $1000 in your account by typing in that amount, because you have agreed to pay them $1000 plus interest. But that $1000 doesn't come from customer deposits. The bank creates it from the debt instrument based on the value of your signature your promise to pay. The essence of the contemporary money system is the creation of money out of nothing by private banks' often foolish lending. Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Editor, Financial Times, London. Not only are you contracted to work for your own credit (the principal), but you must pay interest as well! The bank is renting you your own credit! So if the banks are not loaning any real value, then there is no debt. Collectively, we are all in debt on paper only, and we work for the banks for free. At this point, money has been turned into a false commodity, and we are paying interest on our own credit, so could it really get any worse? Impossible to get out of debt The bankers knew that they could bankrupt citizens and governments simply by demanding payment at an opportune time. They also realized that they could remove all hope of payment, and control everything. Prior to 1933, anyone (if they were fortunate) could pay off their bank debt with gold. Everyone had a chance to be debt-free. But on April 5, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt, under Executive Order, declared: "All persons are required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933 all Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates now owned by them to a Federal Reserve Bank, branch or agency, or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System." Finally, on August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon closed the gold window, ending the ability of central bank nations to be paid for debt in gold. Since 1971, it has been impossible to pay our collective debts. Even if you work hard and dont owe the bank a cent, the money in you account is still someones debt. The wealthier you become, the more you put others in debt. Debt cannot be paid with more debt. Its that simple. The debt-money monopoly But worse, there was now no physical limit on the amount of debt that could be created by banks in the pursuit of profit. The only brake holding them back had been gold. The stage was set for financial deregulation and market excess. The debt game was always rigged, because the banks create the debt and not the interest, requiring ever more debt. But now the tragedy was fast-tracked.

The only possible outcome, until the game ends, is more debt and austerity, more global destruction in a hopeless attempt to grow GDP enough to service impossible debt, and more bankruptcies, more unemployment and more poverty. The disease of interest-bearing debt is so powerful that not only does it consume the debtors, ultimately, it must also consume the so-called lenders. Interest-bearing debt for the majority The banking sector extracts about half of the earned income of the population through either direct or hidden interest built into the cost of all goods and services (see graphic).

Interest-bearing debt functions as a redistribution mechanism, constantly transferring wealth from those who have less to those who have more, causing growing income inequality. A money system that perpetuates and increases social polarization will eventually undermine any government. Economies are unique living groups (family, community, nation) sustained by the flow of their credit. Money is like blood that should circulate steadily to maintain optimum health. When these groups are exposed to predatory bloodsuckers (banks, speculators), their life is drawn away until the host collapses. Globalization, financial deregulation, and monetary union, all assist this bloodsucking process, which weakens and collapses economies. What can be done? Since money is the people's instrument of credit, it should not function as a private commodity. This can be achieved locally with mutual credit currencies, and nationally with Full or 100% Reserve Banking. Leading economists have proposed Full Reserve Banking since the early part of the 20th century. They include early economic reformer Frederick Soddy, and later during the 1930s the great American economist Irving Fisher. Canadian advocates of Full Reserve Banking include John Hotson, Henry Pope and William Hixon. Other notables include James Tobin, John Kay, Mervyn King (Governor, Bank of England), and Herman Daly, former Senior Economist at the World Bank. Groups such as the American Money Institute, and Positive Money UK, are promoting Full Reserve. Remarkably, in August 2012, the IMF released a Working Paper fully supporting this reform. Many communities can't wait, and are simply creating their own mutual credit currencies, which is the ultimate self-preservation response. Monetary reform, to be viable, should also remove land from the threat of speculation, otherwise the greedy will simply dominate production and make fortunes while they sleep. But the democratisation of money must overcome centuries of habitual social conditioning, and the deep roots of imagined entitlement. Taking away the free lunch The international bankers have long since gained a strangle-hold on the politics and laws of our global economy. The dangerous struggle between the private bankers and public money is the history of America. Thomas Jefferson defeated the private money power of his day, and Andrew Jackson also succeeded, though he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Abraham Lincoln went further by establishing the greenback, but he was assassinated, and his public money was ruined.

Garfield came next. Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate. 1881, President James Garfield assassinated a few weeks later on July 2nd, 1881. On June 4, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No.11110, instructing the U.S. Mint to issue public silver-backed currency, bypassing the privately run Federal Reserve. He was assassinated five months later, and no more debt-free notes were issued. State-backed racketeering The banking sector has hi-jacked the people's credit for private profit. In doing so, governments and the law have been corrupted and harnessed to function against the common good. Bank 'loan' contracts are made under the pretense that deposits are used, when in fact the credit does not exist until it is created by the 'borrower's' signature. Contract law requires full disclosure, and equal consideration, neither of which happens. This is fraud. Nevertheless, legislation supports the banks, so that when a default occurs, the courts act against the victim to obtain property, though the banks have not suffered a loss. Such extortion is state-backed racketeering. This singular power is disturbingly parasitic. It distorts and destroys society, and it is severely limiting human potential at a critical time in our history. What's going to happen next? The Titanic banks are being struck by ever more revelations of fraud. The banking class is being exposed and depised as never before. Top level bankers are resigning in droves, jumping ship like rats. Historically, collapse events have resulted in wars, which can be described as economic weapons, because they typically apply all the levers of power forcefully enough to reboot a new order of corruption. But we cannot reset any form of debt-based system. Debt has increased incrementally through many business cycles, and there is now no practical way to control it that will restore confidence. If the banking system freizes up, even temporarily, there would be unthinkable disruption. Given the fact that governments have practiced extend and pretend, we would be fools to depend on their contingencies, whatever they are.

As it happens, the brains of society are overwhelmingly outside government (you should know this by now!). Some of these people travel to raise awareness, including Steve Keen, Nicole Foss, Ellen Brown, and more. In New Zealand, there are others including Raf Manji, Lowell Manning and Deirdre Kent, whose work is noless valuable. We certainly have sensible proposals to heal our economy in the long-term, and some strategies to mitigate short-term disruption. But the transition phase is new territory for everyone. The people are their own credit Every man and woman is endowed with credit, being able to provide something of value. For a healthy economy to exist, it is only necessary to allow people to freely exchange their credit. This is a fundamental human right. The world doesn't lack work that needs doing, or people with ability. Only the medium of exchange is lacking. Governments that allow private banks to monopolise public credit are literally subjugating the citizens of that nation, through taxation and austerity, in the service of the banking cartel. But neither governments nor banks can maintain a self-destructive system. No country can be sovereign without the public issuance of money, and in the end the power of sovereignty, and money, is in the hands of the people. One of the primary attributes of sovereignty is the monetary function. Professor Irving Fisher, 1936. It follows that no man or woman can be sovereign without the ability to use their innate credit, which should not be issued as debt by a bank.