WEALTH AND MONEY, PART IV: THE CREATION OF MONEY AND DEBT
Please take time to watch the above video – – – The Money Myth: A Ted Talk by Professor Jim Bendell
PART 4: THE CREATION OF MONEY AND DEBT
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – – Thomas Jefferson (1809)
“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented.” “But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.” – – Sir Josiah Stamp, a director of the Bank of England (1920)
“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.” – – John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1975)
The prescient fears of Jefferson and Stamp have come to fruition. In America and around the world, governments are crippled with debt. Nation upon nation is said to have overspent and now must pay the price. Government services are slashed, schools and communities are defunded, social benefits disappear, pensions evaporate, homes are foreclosed upon, infrastructure crumbles and the cream of public property is sold at fire sale prices. The children of those who “conquered the continent” slip into poverty as debt slavery is imposed upon nations. It is called “austerity.”
But the question is never asked – – – who are nations in debt to – – – and why? Using Galbraith’s words, the answer is so simple “the mind is repelled.” NATIONS ARE IN DEBT TO PRIVATE BANKS BECAUSE WE ALLOW PRIVATE BANKS – NOT THE GOVERNMENT – TO CREATE THE NATION’S MONEY. Government is therefore required to borrow, at interest, what should be its own money for all government expenditures – – – money it could, and should, legally create itself. It is impossible to exaggerate the implications of this simple reality. Austerity justified by government debt now dictates all federal policy in America and most other nations.
It is almost universally assumed by Americans that the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) is a public institution in control of the nation’s money creation. It is not. Quoting lawyer and author Ellen Hodgson Brown in her book Web of Debt;
“The Federal Reserve is not actually federal. Its twelve branches are privately owned by a consortium of very large multinational banks.”
It is also almost universally assumed that money is some physical entity that has always existed which circulates through the nation allowing us to conduct business. Again quoting Brown;
“Tangible currency (coins and dollar bills) together make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. money supply. The other 97 percent exists only as data entries on computer screens, and all of this money was created by banks in the form of loans. The money banks lend is not recycled from pre-existing deposits. It is new money which did not exist until it was lent.”
This bears repeating: Ninety-seven percent of all money is created out of thin air by the private banking industry and then lent to the government and elsewhere as interest bearing debt. Virtually the entire U.S. money supply now consists of debt to private banks for money created out of nowhere on computer screens.
U.S. government debt is currently approaching $19 trillion dollars. Annual interest alone on this debt is over $200 billion. Due to an expected rise in interest rates (controlled by the Fed), the Congressional Budget Office predicts that by 2022 interest on the federal debt will reach $650 billion and surpass spending on defense. If this does not stagger the mind of every American, it should. This is all for money created directly or indirectly out of thin air by what is now effectively an international banking cartel. This is all for money that could have been created debt and interest free by the government itself.
Virtually all government debt is the product of deception and fraud. It has legitimacy only because we, the people of nations around the globe, accept it as legitimate. Every time we see a legislator pontificate about “runaway government spending” and the evils of federal “debt,” we are witnessing a display of either abysmal ignorance or total collusion. The banking cartel has no intention of ever allowing the U.S. or any other nation to get out of debt.
History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.” – – James Madison, “Father of the Constitution,” 1751 – 1836
Part 5 will discuss: The Federal Reserve