http://en.gravatar.com/rogerglewis
Anyway I got an e-mail today with a reading Group summary of a current study book and a summary of key points from Ellen Browns book Web of debt.
I have been chewing over the notions of Perceptions and realities the past few weeks and particularly the idea of Happiness and contentment. Perceptions it seems to be are groomed in us through modern marketing which has a very particular narrative even from the alternative side of the tracks take Quorn and Vegitarianism for instance.
We try to over complicate or overstate and we try to elevate and objectify to distinguish and almost deify we strive to become branded by belonging in an associsiation with the bling and and the branded and pristine and the soundbite slogan Colgate Ring of confidence ( Sleepers Awake ) Blackhorses gallopping into the Green Pastures of a confident future.
Being and Knowing and sharing and doing with each other and for each other is what provides us with our real contented times in life. Showing off the Show and Tell mentality of the corporate Branded this brand of soap is the panacea of all your ills, see what a posh box it comes in. The Value added is in the Packaging but there is no intrinsic value in the Packaging the Brand is the most elevated form of this kind of emperors new clothes economics.
And So to Money, what is it, we all think we know what it is and we all think we think we all think the same thing about what it is , its a silly question itś obvious isn’t it. Well collectively we are all wrong in our perception of what money is and what function it was invented to perform as a service to our commerce. Remember that History is always written by the Victors at least at first. Money should allow for the creation of credit to facilitate the exchange of goods over time the creation of and trading of debt as a commodity is a quite different thing and to tie the money Supply and creation of money to the creation of debt by private Banks is a particularly stupid thing for a society to do and yet that is what we have allowed to happen again. Its happened lots of times before and had to be reformed 2007 was another time when it should have been reformed but those two puffed up egos Blair and Brown and their cronies are simply not of the Stature of great figures in history who truly understood the nature of the Political economy of nations and the natural choice was lost to us as a society, the opportunity remains to make necessary reforms reading groups on the areas set out in this e-mail I recieved should assist us in our collective goal of prosperity for all.
Here is a schedule we can follow for our second book, Agenda for a New
> Economy– from Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth (be sure to get the 2nd
> Edition), by David C. Korten.
>
> Van Jones says, “Korten turns conventional economic thinking upside down and
> inside out. This book reveals what is really going on in the U.S. and
> global economy–and what can and should be done about it.”
>
> Author of Confession of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, says the book
> “outlines the real cause of– and solutions to– the current economic
> crisis.”
>
> We began our study group with The Web of Debt by Ellen Brown, see key points
> below.
>
> Results from our reading may include writing letters to the editor that
> educate our fellow citizens, and supporting the creation of a California
> state bank.
>
> We meet on Wednesday evenings
> 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 (or 9)
> Village Green Community Room
> 350 Robin Street (at 3rd Street West, south of Pharmaca)
>
> July 27 — The Case for a New Economy
> Chapter 2, The Sport of Money Making
> Chapter 3, A Real-Market Alternative
>
> August 3 — The Case for Replacing Wall Street
> Chapter 4, More Thank Tinkering at the Margins
> Chapter 5, What Wall Street Really Wants
>
> August 10 — Replacing Wall Street cont.
> Chapter 6, Buccaneers and Privateers
> Chapter 7, The High Cost of Phantom Wealth
>
> For more information, contact Lauren at 939-9999 or Lauren.Sonoma@gmail.com
>
> A dollar lent at 6 percent interest, compounded annually, becomes 10 dollars
> in 40 years. That means that if the money supply were 100 percent gold, and
> if bankers lent out 10 percent of it at 6 percent interest compounded
> annually (continually rolling over principal and interest into new loans),
> in 40 years the bankers would own all the gold. To avoid that result, either
> the money supply needs to be able to expand, which means allowing fiat money
> [such as Abraham Lincoln’s Greenbacks], or interest needs to be banned as it
> was in the Middle Ages.
> — Ch. 37 of Web of Debt
> http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/chapter-37-goldbugs-and-greenbackers-debate/
>
> ==============================
>
> 4 articles of interest:
>
> http://open.salon.com/blog/libbyliberalnyc/2011/02/21/can_kucinich_drive_a_stake_thru_the_zombie_heart_of_the_fed
> February 21, 2011
>
> Can Kucinich Drive a Stake thru the Zombie Heart of the Fed?
>
> Kucinich explains http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/NEED_ACT.pdf:
> Banks pyramided their value by spending money into existence, greatly
> inflating the value of bank holdings, inflating the value of their asset
> bases, enticing unknowing investors to participate in financing schemes like
> the bundling of subprime mortgages, and ultimately bringing undercapitalized
> banks and the entire financial system to the edge of ruin, creating
> circumstances where the taxpayers of the United States were called upon to
> save the banks from their own imprudent money-issuing practices, misspending
> and mis-investments. The banks’ ability to create money out of nothing
> ultimately became the taxpayers’ liability, and raises a fundamental
> question about a practice of money creation which threatens the wealth of
> the American people.
>
> Robert Malin wrote: “Rather than paying rent for our currency we could use
> the [freed up] funds to invest in technology, education and the general well
> being of the country providing the basis for a safe and sustainable future.”
>
> Section 24 of the bill: Reclaiming the power of the Federal Government to
> create money, and to spend or lend money into circulation as needed,
> eliminates the need to treat money as a Federal liability or to pay interest
> charges on the Nation’s money supply to financial institutions; it also
> renders unnecessary the undue influence of private financial institutions
> over public policy.
>
> ==============================================
> http://thedailybell.com/printerVersion.cfm?id=1684
>
> Ellen Brown’s concise description of our flawed financial system:
>
> Contrary to popular belief, banks do not lend their own money or their
> depositors’ money; they create new money on their books every time they make
> a loan.
>
> I think lending is a much more natural and efficient way to get new money
> into the money supply than to have an independent body trying to dictate
> what the economy needs. But private banking institutions have proven they
> cannot be trusted with this powerful tool. Except for coins, which are a
> very marginal part of the money supply, all money today is just credit – the
> credit of the people. This function should be a public utility, administered
> through publicly-owned banks.
>
> The power to create money has been usurped by a private international
> banking cartel, which issues our money as debt and lends it back to us at
> interest.
>
> The cartel makes it appear that governments are creating our money, and
> governments get blamed when things go wrong; but they are actually just
> pawns of the cartel. We the people can get back our government and our
> republic only by reclaiming the power to create our own money. We can use
> the same credit system that private banks use, but administered as a public
> utility, monitored and overseen by public servants on the model of libraries
> and courts. To be a sustainable system, profits need to be returned to the
> community rather than siphoned off into private coffers.
>
> The flip side of debt is credit, which is a very good thing. Inventing
> credit is probably the most innovative thing bankers ever did. But because
> the Italian bankers who first came up with that scheme were on a gold-based
> system, they had to do it essentially by cheating, pretending to have more
> money than they actually had. There would be periodic runs on the banks and
> the system would collapse. A public banking system would acknowledge credit
> to be just a legal agreement to pay over time. Creditworthy borrowers would
> get credit. Their access to credit needn’t be contingent on someone else’s
> agreement to give it up. The system would be mathematically sustainable.
>
> Government is necessary to have a free market. Otherwise you have the law of
> the jungle, the exploitation of the weak by the strong.
>
> Government provides: National highway systems, bridges, waterways, dams,
> FDIC insurance, Medicare and social security, to name a few. If you doubt
> the latter two, consider what life was like in the depression of the 1890s,
> when there was no Medicare or social security, and people froze in the
> fields or starved. My grandmother, for whom I was named, died in Detroit
> during the Great Depression at age 42, trying to self-abort her eighth
> child, at a time when my grandfather was an unemployed auto worker and they
> could barely feed the other seven. My father was the oldest child and
> supported the family on a paper route. He never really recovered from that
> traumatic period. I suspect he is hovering about and prodding me on.
>
> Government sets the rules and provides a protective umbrella under which
> individual human endeavor can bear fruit.
>
> [The Tea Party opposes this role for government.] Dr. North said in an
> email that I was a threat to the Tea Party movement, that his intent was to
> destroy me, and that there would be no compromise.
>
> The Pennsylvania colonial bank, America’s first publicly-owned bank, is an
> excellent model. The bank was established by the Quakers, who came from
> England. Franklin saw how well it worked and wrote about it in glowing
> terms.
>
> ===============================================
> http://www.commerce.nd.gov/news/detail.asp?newsID=644
>
> The Bank of North Dakota Is Thriving During Downturn
> AssociatedPress.com, Posted on 2/16/2010
>
> The Bank of North Dakota serves as an economic development agency and
> “banker’s bank” that lessens the loan risks of private banks and helps them
> finance larger projects. It offers cheap loans to farmers, students and
> businesses. The bank had almost $4 billion in assets and a $2.67 billion
> loan portfolio at the end of last year, according to its most recent
> quarterly financial report. It made $58.1 million in profits in 2009,
> setting a record for the sixth straight year. During the last decade, the
> bank funneled almost $300 million in profits to North Dakota’s treasury.
>
> The bank has the advantage of being the repository for most state funds,
> which can be used for loans and occasional relief for private banks that
> need a jolt of cash during sluggish credit markets. “We think of ourselves
> as kind of a little mini-Federal Reserve,” Hardmeyer said. The state earns
> roughly 0.25 percent less interest than state agencies would get from a
> commercial institution. The bank also pays no state or federal taxes and has
> no deposit insurance; North Dakota taxpayers are on the hook for any losses.
> ==========================================
> http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/national-debt-money-supply/42738
>
> National Bank Act of 1863
>
> “From this point on the entire US money supply would be created out of debt
> by bankers buying US government bonds and issuing them from reserves for
> bank notes…In numerous years following the [Civil] war, the Federal
> Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt,
> retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to
> back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money
> supply.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
>
> After the National Bank Act of 1863 took effect, the international bank
> cartel made the national debt the basis of our money supply. Lincoln won
> the Civil War but lost the nation’s financial sovereignty. Later, Secretary
> of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase said “My agency in promoting the passage of
> the National Banking Act was the greatest financial mistake in my life. It
> has built up a monopoly which affects every interest in the country.”
>
> ===================================================
>
> Excerpts from Web of Debt:
> But the real shortage, as Benjamin Franklin explained to his English
> listeners in the eighteenth century, is in the medium of exchange. If
> sufficient money could be made available to develop alternative sources of
> energy, alternative means of extracting water from the environment, and more
> efficient ways of growing food, there could be abundance for all. The
> notion that the government could simply print the money it needs is
> considered unrealistically utopian and inflationary; yet banks create money
> all the time. The chief reason the U.S. government can’t do it is that a
> private banking cartel already has a monopoly on the practice. p.341 of Web
> of Dept
>
> A dollar accruing interest at 5 percent, compounded annually, becomes two
> dollars in about 14 years. At that rate, banks siphon off as much in
> interest every 14 years as there was money in the entire world 14 years
> earlier. The real cause of global scarcity: somebody is paying interest on
> most of the money in the world all of the time. p.342 of Web of Debt
>
> =======================================
> http://www.thedailybell.com/printerVersion.cfm?id=1635
>
> Stephen Zarlenga has been toiling arduously in the sovereign money pits,
> convinced, like Ellen Brown, that if the US government itself prints
> fiat-money that the problems of the day will gradually fade and prosperity
> will reign once more. The Kucinich bill calls for the Treasury to take over
> the functions of the Federal Reserve and basically issue debt-free money.
>
> In an email sent out on the 18th of December, Zarlenga celebrates [the
> Kucinich bill] NEED as follows: “While the bill focuses on our unemployment
> crisis, the remedy proposed contains all the essential monetary measures
> being proposed by the American Monetary Institute in the American Monetary
> Act. These are what decades of research and centuries of experience have
> shown to be necessary to end the economic crisis in a just and sustainable
> way, and place the U.S. money system under our constitutional checks and
> balances. Yes it can be done!”
>
> ———————–
> Lauren Ayers
> 707 939-9999
http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/170271/Lloyds-TSB-brings-back-black-horse/
