WEALTH AND MONEY PART XI: ENDING GOVERNMENT DEBT
The town of Plentyville had public land used to grow food for its people. The farmer was hired to plant the yearly crop and at harvest time the village sold the produce to its citizens for sustenance through the winter. Proceeds were used to provide community services.
The system worked well until a year when the farmer had problems with his tractor and had to spend his savings on repairs. Low on money, the farmer bought his annual seeds and fertilizer from the supply store on credit. This, of course, left him in debt. Because the supply store was waiting for payment from the farmer, it was unable to pay cash to the trucking firm that delivered supplies, so they were in debt to the trucker. The trucker needed new tires and, lacking the money from the supply store, bought them on credit from the tire store. The tire store needed new tools and, waiting payment from the trucker, bought them on credit from the hardware store. A heavy rain came the following day and washed out the landscaping in front of the hardware store blocking access to the doors. The hardware store hired the farmer to bring his tractor to repair the landscaping, but since they lacked the money from the implement shop, they paid the farmer with an IOU. Soon everyone in the village was in debt.
Summer passed and the community garden produced a bumper crop. Food was everywhere. But when the village scheduled the annual sale to its citizens, everyone was in debt. No one had any money. It was heartbreaking but the village had no choice. The food would have to be left to rot in the garden and community services would be slashed. There would be great suffering the following winter, but austerity had to be imposed. To make ends meet Plentyville sold the public land to an out of town billionaire who thereafter rented the land back to the village. This endless extraction of wealth resulted in a slow but certain spiral into poverty for the people of Plentyville.
If this situation sounds completely insane, it shouldn’t. It is exactly how we are running America (not to mention the world). The United States is awash in true physical wealth. There is absolutely nothing we do not have the physical resources, energy, knowledge, and manpower to accomplish. But the “food” must be left to rot in the garden. Entirely because of faulty manmade constructs, largely the result of a parasitic and predatory banking and financial industry, we are forbidden to utilize the vast physical wealth at our disposal. We as a nation, as a people, are deliberately and methodically being kept in debt. The billionaires wish to own the garden.
But let us look at a different scenario for the indebted village of Plentyville. Just before harvest time the farmer’s rich Uncle Fred arrives in town for a visit. Fred stays for a few days and when he leaves he forgets his wallet on the kitchen table. The farmer notices the wallet contains $3000 – exactly the amount he owes the supply store. He gives the $3000 to the supply store who then uses the money to pay off their debt to the trucking firm. The trucker pays off his debt to the tire store and the tire store gives the $3000 to hardware store for the tools they purchased on credit. The hardware store pays off the IOU to the farmer for clearing their entrance and repairing the landscape. Everyone in the village is now out of debt. The farmer puts the $3000 back in the wallet and returns it to his rich uncle. Plentyville has the annual food sale from the garden the following week and since no one is in debt, the sale goes well. Community services will be provided for another year and citizens will have more than enough food for the winter. The garden remains in the public domain.
We must all ask – – – just who is in debt to whom –and why? And do we have a rich uncle (we’ll call him Sam) who can put an end to this insanity? The answers to these questions are becoming clear:
We are in debt to the private banking cartel because we have been deceived into giving them the power to create the nation’s money, thus forcing us to borrow our own money at interest.
If we reinstate the constitutionally established right of our government to create its own money, we do indeed have a rich Uncle Sam who can rescue us.
Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution states: “The Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the value thereof.” It is accepted by constitutional scholars “to coin money” meant the creation of all of the nation’s money. However, through manipulation and deception, the U.S. Congress was convinced the constitution meant the government could create only metallic coins. All other money should be created by the private banking industry through the Federal Reserve. This meant 97 percent of the nation’s money would be created out of nowhere by the private banks and lent to the government at interest.
In her book The Public Bank Solution, author/lawyer Ellen Brown has a section called “The Trillion Dollar Coin.” Discussing an idea that was first proposed in the 1980’s in the Coinage Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, Brown explains the concept was that the government could pay off its debt virtually overnight by minting a few trillion dollar coins and using them to buy back government bonds etc. The proposal has been scoffed at, but as Brown states:
“The idea is not, however, as ludicrous as it sounds.” “Somehow we have come to accept that it is less silly for the central bank to create money out of thin air and lend it at near zero interest to private commercial banks, to be re-lent to the public and the government at market interest rate, than for the government to simply create the money itself, debt- and interest-free. We have forgotten our historical roots. We have lost not only the power to create our own money but even the memory that we once had it.”
Brown goes on to explain how since money is simply “created” to purchase government debt, it is also “un-created” when debts are paid off. As such there are legitimate arguments against trillion dollar coins being inflationary. The coins would never enter the market. They would simply negate debt that was created through deception and fraud in the first place.
Government debt is a con game being played by the Wall Street banking cartel. We can put an end to it. “Too big to fail” banks can and must be converted to public utilities. It will not be an easy battle – parasites do not willingly give up their host – but “we the people” must begin retaking control of our nation.
Part XII will discuss: The Unconditional Basic Income