Money, Power, Democracy, and War

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Money, Power, Democracy, and War

• Finding the path toward global peace, harmony,
  and prosperity

Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
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Who Shall Rule?Property or People?

• The Divine Right of Kings
• has been transmuted into
• The Divine Right of Capital
• An aristocracy of property
• Elitism vs. Egalitarianism.

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How Do Elites Gain Power?

• Appropriate essential or desired resources, and
  compel everyone to pay to gain access.
• Monopoly, Oligopoly, Cartels
• Land Enclosures
• Government-granted privileges

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Money Creation is the Mother of All Monopolies

• The entire machinery of money and banking has
  been contrived to centralize power and wealth.

5
Money is to People as Water is to Fish
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Why is Money so Important?

• Exchange is a fundamental necessity in advanced
  civilizations.
• Most of what we need, we get by trade.
• When the division of labor has been once
  thoroughly established, it is but a very small
  part of a mans wants which the produce of his
  own labor can supply. Adam Smith, Wealth of
  Nations.

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Whoever Controls Money Controls Everything Else

• Give me the power to create a nations money, and
  I care not who makes its laws. Mayer Amschel
  Rothschild
• Whoever controls the money in any country is
  master of all its legislation and commerce.
  President James A. Garfield
• Who controls the food supply controls the people
  who controls the energy can control whole
  continents who controls money can control the
  world. Henry Kissinger
• I sincerely believe that banking establishments
  are more dangerous than standing armies...
  President Thomas Jefferson

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Hamiltonian vs. Jeffersonian Government

• Hamiltons goal was to create a firm alliance
  between government and business.
• Jeffersons vision was of a more egalitarian
  society based on widespread land ownership and
  distribution of wealth.

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The Central Government-Central Bank Nexus

• Hamilton founded the First Bank of the United
  States 1791-1811.
• FiBUS was modeled after the Bank of England. Both
  were privately owned.
• The debt economy rests upon a conspiracy between
  the political state and the banking interests
  against commercial exchange
• E. C. Riegel

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The Central Government-Central Bank Nexus

• The Bank of England was the prototype central
  bank.
• The banking cartel enjoys special privileges
  granted by the government.
• The government, in return, gets to spend as much
  as it wants without regard to limited tax
  revenues (by deficit spending).

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The Struggle for Power in AmericaHistorical
Landmarks

• Jefferson vs. Hamilton
• The First Bank of the United States
• Andrew Jackson vs. Nicholas Biddle
• The Second Bank of the United States
• Abraham Lincoln vs. the Bankers
• The Greenbacks
• Woodrow Wilsons Error and Lament
• The Federal Reserve Act

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The Bank War Andrew Jackson vs. Nicholas Biddle
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Lincolns Greenbacks
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The FED The Creature From Jeckyl Island

• The Federal Reserve Act, passed in 1913,
  reestablished central banking in the U.S.
• It was sold as a decentralized system, but in
  reality operates as a unitary power instrument at
  the center of the banking cartel.

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The New World Order?

• The powers of financial capitalism had a
  far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a
  world system of financial control in private
  hands able to dominate the political system of
  each country and the economy of the world as a
  whole... Their secret is that they have annexed
  from governments, monarchies, and republics the
  power to create the world's money
• - Prof. Carroll Quigley, Georgetown historian,
  mentor of former President Clinton, and author of
  Tragedy Hope A History of the World in Our Time

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The Global Political Money System is Destructive,
Undemocratic and Unsustainable

• The political money system starves productive
  enterprise but finances lavishly the destructive
  activities of war. -- E. C Riegel
• Its undemocratic because it concentrates power
  in the hands of a few unelected people who are
  unresponsive to the needs and wishes of the
  people.
• Its unsustainable because interest (usury)
  creates a growth imperative.

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DysfunctionalPolitical Money System

• Political money based on debt is
• Misallocated
• Kept artificially scarce
• Expensive and exploitative

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Monetary Scarcity and Misallocation

• Most present-day money is backed by loans
  which should never be made
• -- loans made to monetize the debts of
  government loans made to finance war and the
  military-industrial complex, monetize the
  securities of giant corporations which should not
  exist at all, and to finance speculations in
  securities, commodities, and land.
• -- Ralph Borsodi, Inflation and the Coming
  Keynesian Catastrophe

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Democratic Government Requires the Separation of
Money and State.

• In the exercise of the money power, under the
  dictates of political expediency, the state is
  driven inevitably from libertarian forms of
  democracy and republicanism to the autarchic
  forms of fascism, socialism and communism.
• -- E. C. Riegel

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The Growth Imperative

• The interest burden of debt-money forces
  cancerous growth!

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Debt Grows Exponentially Over Time
Debt
Time
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The Magic of Compound InterestGrowth of One
Dollar
6 10
50 years 18.42 117.39
100 years 339.30 13,780.65
200 years 115,124 189,906,200
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The Good NewsMoney is Being Reinvented

• At the grassroots level
• LETSystems and local currencies
• At the business level
• Trade exchanges or barter exchanges
• The governmental level
• Municipal and provincial bonds and tax credit
  certificates are circulating as currency.

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Money is CreditMoney Has Evolved in Stages

• Commodity Money, to
• Symbolic Money (redeemable paper), to
• Credit Money

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The Money Problem Must Be Solved

• As long as the banking cartel controls our credit
  and charges us interest for using it,
  environmental destruction and social degradation
  can only worsen.
• The key to the survival of civilization lies in
  regaining popular control of our own credit.

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How Is Money Created Today?

• The process by which banks create money is so
  simple the mind is repelled.
• -- John Kenneth Galbraith
• Money is credit.
• Banks create money by lending our credit back to
  us at interest.

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The Creation of Bank Debt-Money as Deposits
Account Deposit (liability)
Debt Money
Mortgage Note (asset)
Mortgage note
Banks now create only debt money, not as notes,
but in the form of bank account deposits when a
loan is granted.
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Transcending the Money Monopoly

• Requires Commercial and Non-commercial Action at
  All Levels
• Local
• Regional
• National
• Global

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Relocalization - Building Safe Harbors
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Liberating Exchange

• Two Synergistic Approaches
• Mutual Credit Clearing Exchanges
• Complementary Private Currencies

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Mutual Credit Associations and Community
Currencies Provide Exchange Media that are

• Sufficient
• Interest-free
• Community controlled
• Democratically allocated
• Self-adjusting
• Stable and Sustainable

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Mutual Credit Issuance and Circulation
Member - Issuers
Mutual credit clearing association
Member - Non-Issuers
Issuing members begin the process by buying from
other members. Then credits are used to pay for
purchases within the association.
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Currency Issuance and Circulation
Member - Issuers
Mutual credit clearing association
Member - Non-Issuers
Non-member users
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Advantageous Outcomes

• Reduced need to borrow from banks, lowering
  interest costs and the risk of default.
• Supplements the supply of scarce official money,
  enabling businesses to sell more of their unused
  capacity, and consumers to buy it.
• Increases independence from outside manipulation
  of interest rates and money supply.
• Enhanced ability of local businesses to compete
  with large corporate chains.

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Learn More and Keep Up-to-date on Developments

• Explore the website
• http//www.ReinventingMoney.com
• Read, Money Understanding and Creating
  Alternatives to Legal Tender, and
• Money and Debt A Solution to the Global
  Crisis by Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
• Make a donation to Community Information Resource
  Center.
• Get involved with Sustainable Tucson