The Truth About Money....

[althecat]

Or more accurately a few wee observations which may illuminate the ignorant. Listening to pointy heads on TV about money is pointless they a) work for the money industry b) were never taught how it works c) are sheep.

1. Money is debt it is not savings. Money only exists when people borrow it. Your mortgage borrowings are not a Chinaman's savings. When you borrow money banks create it out of thin air.

2. Nobody knows who has the money - the entire legal and property owning infrastructure is designed to obscure and prevent knowledge of who has the money.

3. The Federal Reserve Bank is a privately owned bank owned by the participating state reserve banks which are in turn also privately owned. Its objectives as a private institution are to earn money for its ownners. Who its ultimate owners are is a mystery see point 2.

4. As the credit crunch unfolds the super wealthy will become more and more wealthy. They will turn vast amounts of paper money into private land and resource ownership through mortgagee and fire sale liquidations. They will become even more powerful than they are now.

...

And that is just the tip of what most people do not know about money.

[kimmerspixelated]

1. Exactly right.

There's a book called "A Happy Pocket Full of Money" that explains how money really doesn't exist at all. It's just an agreement on paper. There are chapters near the end that go into the Federal Reserve, (The Great and Powerful Oz), but I plan on doing a post on it soon. But really the book is about The Law of Attraction.

[althecat]

2. The role of the IMF is to lie about money globally and steal from the poor....

[Captain Angry]

4. The role of the IMF is definitely not in the best interest of the countries to whom they lend.

The IMF will generally force "free trade" methods that are not in the interest of the citizens of the country. Privatization of the resources of the country in exchange for foreign investment. That foreign investment by definition has to chase profits. And if the host country doesn't have labor or pollution laws, all the better for those profits.

Unfortunately, many of the deals by the IMF have been with the leadership of a country that has been taken by force. These leaders are able to skim from the investment that comes in. (If they don't take it all.)

[althecat]

13. Look at South Africa after apartheid....

You are correct about the above. But it is only part of the story. Another thing the IMF typically does is teach debtor countries that they need overseas funds to create investment. The amount of economic growth in a developing nation then becomes dependent on foreign lenders.

The true tragedy is that economics and commerce is such an absurdly intellectually corrupted discipline that diplomats, economists and bankers in the target counttry all beleive this.

Consequently have the planet is having its money created in the US by the (private) US Federal Reserve Bank. And having their liquidity controlled from New York and Washington puts the super-corporate multinationals in a unusually good position to exploit and steal the resources of the planet.

South Africa had a functioning economy of a sort until apartheid fell. After it fell the new government took the advice of the criminals at the IMF. The result in short order was economic collapse, massive unemployment and a social holocaust.

[Captain Angry]

3. Banks do not create money out of thin air.

If I sign a mortgage agreement for $100,000.00, I'm trading the $100K now for a stream of monthly payments + interest for the next 15 to 30 years.

The bank now owns that stream of payments. They can resell that stream of payments to another bank and use the proceeds to make another loan.

If that stream of payments is indeed resold, it will likely be bundled with other streams of payments into a series of bonds. Those bonds are sold to institutional investors that have different time horizons for the payment streams. A pension fund wants an absolute guarantee that they will receive X payment on Y date to coincide with the delivery of benefits payments that they're contracted to provide. A hedge fund may want as much of the payments to come in as early as possible to use for reinvestment, but at the same time bringing in interest on their purchase.

At no point did the bank create fake money. If a bank does end up having a shortfall in its deposits through this process, they would borrow from another bank's deposits overnight. If, like we saw this summer, the banks are unwilling to lend overnight due to fears of collateral, the bank does have the option of going to the Federal Reserve and borrowing at a higher rate to cover their deposit requirements.

You could argue that the Fed is able to produce money out of thin air, but they have to buy existing Treasuries to do it. The act of a bank selling a Treasury to the Fed moves money from the Fed to the bank.

There are certainly problems with the way that banking and investment are regulated around the world, but doomsday videos and shouting about shadowy banks are not going to fix anything. It just scares people who don't understand how this stuff works. And it's almost always accompanied by somebody trying to get the uninformed person to buy gold.


On point 4, I will agree. Several years ago when I saw the housing market puffed up into fantasyland, I sold. There is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines waiting for deals. I would not be surprised to find out that in 5 to 10 years, the largest real estate companies will be banks.

[althecat]

6. Banks do create money... its not fake... thats just the way it is.

When a bank decides to lend you $100,000 money it does 2 things.

1. Creates a credit in your account for $100,000.
2. Creates a debit against your name for $100,000.

The money does not come from deposits though the bank is limited to spending roughly 10 times the funds it holds on deposit. The money is created out of thin air.

When you say you don't like people talking about shadowy banks I would really like to know why. Banks are shadowy. They are secrecy mad.

And when you say the banks will end up owning real estate that is simply not true. The banks will force the sale of property and resources to the privileged few who either a) have money or b) are still allowed to borrow it by the banks.

Banks who created this mess in the first place by forcing credit down the throats of poor people who could not afford it using loans with fishhooks and barbs are proxies. They are proxies for the real masters of money who for some reason decided that the trillions of dollars that they already had was insufficient and so they had to take the land and houses of middle class americans.

[Captain Angry]

15. You almost have it.

Yes, the bank is limited based on its reserves. But if it resells the loan to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/(or recently, Hedge Funds), that goes off their books, and the money becomes available for a new loan.

The money is not created out of thin air.

My theory about the banks becoming real estate companies was based on high foreclosures and no buyers. Eventually, there will be buyers for a lot of it. But a lot of crappy houses were built in the last 10 years to feed the speculation boom. Those houses are not worth investing in.

Banks did not go out into the street with a beartrap and drag people into their offices to sign loan agreements. The lack of regulation and the promise of an automatic resale of the loan set up a situation where banks could use high-net-worth loan systems (ARMs, balloons) and offer them to people who were not creditworthy. The stream of payments by the new borrower was quickly resold, and no longer a concern of the originating bank.

Ordinary banking is not shadowy at all. Every bank has to have a charter, they have to have startup funds, and all of this is on record in the state where the bank is formed. The public ones have boards of directors, 10-Ks and other sources of information. Even the banks that seem private are generally pieces of a larger publicly held company.

The central banking system has layers of crap you have to cut through to get information, so it is difficult. I understand the concept that formed the Fed. I think we all hate it when it seems like a major major decision is made in private by people "who know better than we do." What are the alternatives? No central clearing house for transactions between banks? Or one that is literally political by being a state bank as opposed to an independent one? The actions of the last several years will force a restructuring of the Fed. We'll see if Congress gets involved. I'm not holding my breath.

[althecat]

19. "Banks did not go out into the street with a beartrap and drag people into their offices to sign.."

Yes they did.

They shoved mortgage finance down the throats of people who could not afford it. They were assisted in doing so by the Bush Administration who changed the law of bankruptcy to prevent credit card debt from disappearing. They were assisted by the Federal Reserve Governor who told them to borrow nice cheap floating money rather than 30year fixed money which would have at least given them some certainty about their cost of funds.

Of course there are normal honest people in the banking industry but the macroeconomic path that has been followed since the 1990s has been clear.

Finally a point in relation to the last one.

The private federal reserve banking system should not not be a private federal reserve banking system. It should be publicly owned, subject to congressional oversight and managed in the interests of the people not the super wealthy. Changing this is simply a matter of political will.

[Captain Angry]

22. So, do you have a news story that talks about mortgage sellers using nets in the street?

Nobody was forced to sit down and sign anything. Ultimately, people had to decide to pursue those loans.

Were the documents misleading? Absolutely. Were banks misusing the trust they'd generated in the past? Completely. Should somebody take a stapler to Greenspan for pushing ARMs to non investors? Oh yeah.

But no bank anywhere went out and forced people to do anything.

The problem with a public (as in Congress) controlled central bank system is that can you imagine what it would have been like if Delay and Frist were actually in a position they could control the policies of the Fed? We'd have cheap lending and a booming stock market to maintain one party in power, or when it got obvious the other party was going to take control, they'd tighten and make it look like the new administration caused a recession.

It's independent for a reason. It does need a serious reform though. As does the banking sector as a whole.

[althecat]

24. Hold up... hold up....

You say that if we had a publicly accountable federal reserve then...

"We'd have cheap lending and a booming stock market to maintain one party in power, or when it got obvious the other party was going to take control, they'd tighten and make it look like the new administration caused a recession."

That is precisely what we have right now.

Do you really think that it is pure coincidence that the shit is finally hitting the fan now that it is a virtual certainty that the GOP will lose the white house?

The financial superstructure has been propped up by printed money for several years now. The system is being run for the benefit of the few.

You say the existing federal reserve system is independent.

Independent from what? The public interest?

[Hannah Bell]

44. But even if every sub-prime mortgage borrower committed

blatant fraud on their applications, then defaulted, this would only be a temporary blip.

The banks loaned money - well, they get the houses, which they can resell.

The real black hole, the problem that threatens the entire economy, is the cutting & dicing of the loans & their resale, over & over again, creating pyramids of debt all based on the initial sale, such that no one KNOWS who owns the house - the base asset - in case of default, in many cases.

The sum of that debt pyramid is many times the size of the initial loan. So now its musical chairs - who'll be stuck with the losses? & will the entire lending system freeze up in the meantime, which will = a collapse of economic activity.

Some commenters want the public to focus on the "bad" people who took out the loans, & ignore the pyramid of diced debt, many multiples larger.

Another example of how those lowest on the pyramid are the scapegoats for the sins of those higher up. The low MUST be "responsible," the high are not held to such high standards.

[althecat]

53. The borrowers did not commit fraud... the lenders did....

The fraud was committed by the banks when they enabled mortgage sales people to work with crooked valuation agents to write the loans. It was committed by the most senior bank officials and board members when they created policies which allowed/encouraged the lending of money in this way.

It was subsequently committed in a myriad of different ways when these loans were then laundered and sold to the likes of the Florida Teachers Pension fund.

I am interested that you remark saying "But even if every sub-prime mortgage borrower committed blatant fraud on their applications, then defaulted, this would only be a temporary blip."

This is yet another example of the complete misinformation bubble that surrounds this issue in terms of public commentary. I can only assume that you are saying this because you have heard someone say something of this nonsensical import in the media.

Mortgage fraud has been almost invariably committed by the lender - the borrowers would not have the wherewithall to falsify valuations but dodgy mortgage sales persons working with dodgy valuers employed and paid by dodgy banks - now that is another matter entirely.

[Hannah Bell]

63. I didn't say they did. It was a hypothetical.

EVEN IF they did, the financial ramifications of that piddly little fraud wouldn't take down the economy.

It's 7 times that all the way up that's the problem. Exponential multiplications. With nothing to back it but the original loans.

Who's gonna be left holding the bag? around & around we go, when will the music stop?

I suspect you are accusing me of parroting someone else's opinion because you misunderstood me.

[althecat]

68. Sorry I just wondered if you had heard that from someone else.

Because it sounds like the sort of insinuation that might be made by a banker or an economic apologist. If you had heard someone saying something like that it would be interesting.

Hopefully no offence caused.

[Hannah Bell]

71. No offense. but either you're still misunderstanding me

or i'm misunderstanding you.

It would be interesting if I'd heard something like what? Which part?

[althecat]

73. ....whether you had heard anyone blaming mortgage borrowers ...

I was interested whether you had heard anyone blaming mortgage borrowers accusing them of fraud and holding them responsible the quality of their loans?

[sergeiAK]

86. In many cases, they did falsify their income

With the (knowing?) cooperation of the bank (which I'd imagine many banks are regretting right about now).

[althecat]

88. This makes no sense at all.... why would banks want to create bad debt..

.. on their own books. In order for slackness of this order to have been as widespread as it clearly was it had to be intentional. At which point you have to really really really wonder about the motivations behind these events.

[sergeiAK]

92. They thought housing prices would rise indefinitely

Allowing them to either charge a hefty interest rate (as is normal if you're taking on bad debt), or foreclose the house and make a profit that way. They didn't think prices would fall as far as fast as they did. Oops.

[althecat]

93. House prices fell because someone finally figured out that the mortgage interest was unaffordable...

Is a chicken and egg argument. Banks as a matter of extremely well learned policy are usually not willing to lend to someone who cannot afford the interest. Unless they want to be able to foreclose in the future as a matter of policy. Banks would have known that a situation in which their creditors were going backwards would eventually lead to foreclosure. It is simply a matter of time. Foreclosure in turn would precipitate a market correction. This is not rocket science.

[sergeiAK]

97. Agreed on all counts

The banks made these loans against their own interests. That was really, really stupid of them. And now they pay for their greed.

One way they could get rid of the debt was to sell it as a CDO/SIV/other instrument, thus transferring some of the risk to a 3rd party. Albeit, at the risk of their own credit rating, or the rating of their bond insurer (whom they paid mightily for the privilege). The reason they did this was because they figured people would either pay, or they could take the house and sell it at a profit, provided they hadn't sold the loan (and all the trouble) first.

Some banks held, some sold, most that played the game at all are now in trouble. Guess they should've done their homework.

[AdHocSolver]

104. This mortgage mess is merely the normal, expected end to a giant Ponzi scheme.

Enron is the model for a Ponzi scheme. The insiders get people to invest in whatever they are promoting. The more money people throw at, for example, the company's stock, the higher the stock price is bid up. At some point, the insiders know that the suckers will stop buying and the price will plunge. Their goal is to calculate when the suckers will wise up, so that the insiders sell their shares at the highest price possible before the price drops. The last investors to buy the stock are the biggest losers. They spent "real" money to buy stock that is now worthless paper.

The mortgage lenders knew that the house buyers were poor risks. If they intended to hold on to the mortgages, they would have been more cautious as to whom they gave the mortgages. However, the idea was to "package" these mortgages with others so that the buyers of these "packages" would not know that they were bad investments.

Having the rate adjustments kick in after, say, three years, provided enough time for the insiders to promote these mortgages as good investments. The housebuyers would be making payments at the lower, affordable rate so that potential investors would believe the borrowers were good risks.

The insiders in a Ponzi scheme know it will eventually collapse. Their aim is to bail out before it happens. They don't have expectations that the "good" times will last forever.

The Fed bailout is not to save the economy. Its purpose is to bail out the last group of suckers, er... investors, who bought the mortgage packages before the fraud was exposed. The economy is going to tank, and the Fed doesn't care one bit about it. Pumping billions of "good" dollars into a Ponzi scheme that has already collapsed is the wrong thing to do if you want to help the economy.

[Greyhound]

96. The idea is to write the loan (create the $$), collect the fees, then dump

the paper on the market bundled with thousands of other loans so it is their problem when the game is up, which will cause the investors/funds to go belly up and then dump the loss onto the taxpayers. SOP.

[Karenina]

98. See: Carlyle Capital.

Pump and dump in 18 months.

[Greyhound]

111. That's the game, and we will go along blithely pretending that our

interests are served by taking on the insurmountable debt these scumbags are foisting upon us.:grr:

$514 Trillion!!! More that 10 times the entire planet's production in side bets, and all the assholes that did it will walk away rich beyond most imaginations!

[althecat]

99. If all the banks were not interconnected this would make more sense....

As they are all tied together in a big network this theory would again presuppose that the people doing this were not anticipating the outcome that we see today. In fact the outcome we see today was not unexpected or a mistake. It was the objective.

[Greyhound]

109. Exactly, the end game is to make a ton of $$ fees and then dump the worthless

paper on the bottomless well of the tax paying sheeple. That is our purpose.

[Matariki]

94. When a bank lends you 100k for a mortgage - the 100k goes to the seller

and comes from the bank. If I sell my house, the bank which the buyer has a mortgage with gives me money, not 'thin air'.

There may be plenty with our economic system, but your analysis is simplistic to say the least.

[YankmeCrankme]

95. Where did that money come from that the bank loaned you?

Banks give out more in loans then they have on deposit and are legally allowed to do so. That is essentially creating money out of thin air.

Here's a link that explains it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

[AdHocSolver]

23. When you look at money as a medium of exchange, the banks that are in meltdown...

are in trouble BECAUSE they DID create money out of thin air.

How? The sellers of the mortgages inflated the value of the mortgages to where unsuspecting buyers paid more money for the mortgages than the property used as collateral was worth. Since the money paid by the purchasers was greater than the value of what they were buying, in effect, the sellers created money out of thin air.

By the way, Treasury notes are simply government IOU's, in which the government promises to repay the purchaser of the T-note at some future time, with interest, from future tax revenue. If tax revenues drop precipitously due to, say, a depression, then the government will only be able to pay up by printing money. Printing money without collateral (expected tax revenues) leads to inflation.

All this economic trouble is a result of the fact that the banks and mortgage lenders cheated, committed fraud, ripped off the public. The Fed, the government, and the other big financial institutions are only doing what is necessary to bail out the crooks, not the victims or the American people. The American public is going to pay big time for this theft.

[althecat]

55. All money is created out of thin air by banks. That is the way the system works.

I.e. it is not only money that is not backed by security that is created out of thin air. All money is.

For example the bank writes to you increasing your credit cardlimit by $5000.

The bank does not need to have received a $5000 deposit in order to do this. All they need to have to satisfy their prudential limts is have $500 in cash reserves available on their balance sheet. (And in fact this $500 they keep recycling when they sell packages of mortgages to pension funds.)

All that need happen in order for the bank to grant you the ability to spend $5000 is for them to send you a letter plus they undertake to honour payments that you make on your credit card when and if you make them.

Then when you buy a $100 sweater they simply create $100 and pay it to shop's bank. They simultaneously create a debit in your account to the same sum $100.

[Mike03]

5. Maybe you could put more thought into this and elaborate on it.

Please elaborate, for example, on how the wealthy can turn this depression into more wealth?

I'm listening. Please advise.

[althecat]

8. Pump and dump....

Real wealth is not money in bank accounts it is land, property, resources, industries etc.

The banks and the government through Fannie and Freddie created a bunch of risky debt secured against the assets of sub-prime (poor) borrowers. There is a mountain of evidence that shows that the people involved in lending money, providing valuations etc. knew at the time they were doing it that fraud was occurring.

The super wealthy will become more wealthy as a result of taking these assets from those poor people and effectively turning them into serfs. In the process of disposessing them they will also create conditions which allows them to use the children of the poor as cannon fodder in their resource wars against the poor people of other nations.

[Mike03]

18. Thanks for the response.

I will definitely contemplate what you are saying.

[althecat]

32. If this seems strange and confusing then this is because...

... it has been engineered that way. The way in which the banking system actually works as distinct from how the talking heads lead you to believe it works are poles apart. And if you have had the misfortune to be taught economics then odds are you will be even more befuddled by an array of misinformation around the subject of banking.

[Hannah Bell]

42. "In a depression/recession, money returns to its rightful owners." n/t

[althecat]

59. Who said that?

[Hannah Bell]

62. When I first heard it, supposedly "rockefeller";

when i google it, its "an old saw on wall street" or "the Australian/Rhodesian entrepreneur, Robert Hamilton Holmes à Court," so I suspect Mr. Apocyrptico.

[althecat]

69. So its a nice little joke at our expense.

Great :)

[Hannah Bell]

72. Not my joke. again, i'm not getting your point.

Who's "our".

[althecat]

74. ... by our expense I mean us normal people.... as opposed to the people...

... who are destined to keep and retain all the money.

[Hannah Bell]

83. got it, thanks. n/t

[Greyhound]

16. If I may presume to answer for the OP.

The ruling class has wealth on a scale truly incomprehensible to the human mind. The loss of, say 40% of total worth, still leaves far more than can possibly be spent. Even a 'tiny' fortune of $50 Million would leave vast wealth.

Depression causes a downward spiral in prices and wages simultaneously so any asset can be bought for a few percent of its true worth.

The depression (or whatever they decide to call it this time) is just a part of the artificially created boom-bust cycle and the ruling class comes out the other side with assets worth 10, 20, 100 times what they paid for it.

[althecat]

17. Quite so....

[AdHocSolver]

31. Some examples to explain how the wealthy profit from bad times.

A person buys a car and gets a loan from the bank. Before they pay off the loan, the person loses their job, or for some other reason, stops making payments. The bank repossesses the car. Assuming that the car purchaser paid back some of the loan, the bank gets to keep all of the payment money AND now has the car which they can sell.

A person buys a house, and gets a mortgage. The earliest payments are almost all interest payments. Very little of it pays the principal. If, after making mortgage payments for a few years, the buyer loses the house to the lender, the lender can sell the house and keep all the payments made to date.

These two examples, work for the lender only when they can resell the asset.

A third example. The large corporations have millions of shares of stock. The stock is termed shares of ownership. However, that is misleading. The shareholders don't "own" the company. They only "own" the shares of stock that they paid for. The corporation is "owned", in the sense of being controlled, by the executives and the board of directors. The corporation may have tens of thousands of employees and millions of shareholders, but it is effectively controlled ("owned") by a few dozen people, the insiders.

Even aside from the huge salaries that they give themselves, the insiders give themselves bonuses (often in the form of shares of stocks) as well as stock options. (Technically, it is the board of directors that gives out this largesse, but the executives and board of directors are a very incestuous group.)

The insiders have a vested interest in continually increasing "next quarter's profits". This encourages "outside" investors to buy the stock and thereby bid up its share price. Periodically, the insiders sell their stock shares at a higher price then they paid for it gaining profit which is taxed at the lower capital gains rate.

If the company stock price doesn't appreciate, perhaps because the company isn't really making profit, then the insiders will do what Enron executives did -- they will "cook the books". That is, they will fake the income statements and balance sheets to make it appear that the company is making profit. At some point, the company will be exposed. The insiders will dump their stock before this happens, so they will make a huge amount of money, and the rest of the investors will suffer substantial losses when the stock tanks.

The wealthy insiders who bailed out in time STILL control the company. They made a fortune at the other shareholders expense and still control the company's assets (buildings, equipment, patents, land, supplies, whatever). In some cases, the insiders will neutralize the corporation's debt by declaring bankruptcy, and then restart the company business, buy, or give themselves more shares of the stock at the new lower price, and start the scam all over again.

If they are influential enough, they convince (or bribe) the government into bailing them out by buying up the corporation's debt and then restart the scam as described above.

When this scenario happens to hundreds or thousands of companies throughout the economy, it is termed a depression. Eventually, the economy recovers, and the insiders at these corporations start the scams going again.

This is an overview of how an UNregulated capitalist economy works. All the punditry that you read in the media and even here on DU is either misunderstanding or obfuscation. After the Great Depression of the 1930's, Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats put regulations into place to prevent a lot of the chicanery and prevent the widespread meltdown. For example, the Glass-Steagall Act was enacted to prevent the widespread risky speculation that is the cause of the current meltdown. Glass-Steagall was eliminated in the late 1990's.

I hope this helps.

[althecat]

34. Excellent explanation....

However if you consider that a single person or group of persons may have their fingers in several aspects of the same pie then there are even more ways to profit from other people's debt and misery.

For example you might sell drugs into a poor neighbourhood to make $$$.

You might also make sure that you own the mortgage paper in that neighbourhood and so when the social collapse causes people to default on their mortgages you get to claim the federal insurance on that mortgage paper.

You might also then purchase the houses in those neighbourhoods when they are sold in a distressed state in anticipation of selling the housing back to the county for a profit.

And you might also own shares in the local privatised prison so when the cops arrest the drug dealers and their victims your profit out of that too.

....

[AdHocSolver]

37. Thanks! My aim is to educate the economics-challenged, so I avoid explanations that may be arcane.

I have noticed that a lot of people, even here on DU, stay away from topics dealing with economics. The Economy forum seems to be populated by the same denizens, and so when I saw your OP on the General Discussion page, I had to jump in with my two cents worth.

Most of the punditry about the economy is so much bovine manure, and it is designed to confuse the public. I point out that NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank are NOT "free trade" agreements, but corporate sponsored cartel agreements, designed to eliminate competition in international trade. The term "free trade" is a meaningless buzz word invented by the wealthy as a feel-good descriptor and does not exist.

The Fed is not a central bank to stabilize the economy, but a key element in the scams of the stock market and the large financial institutions. Greenspan, the head of the Fed for several years, is not a "good" guy, but rather he is the designer and implementer of the control of the money supply and the interest rates that made the stock market and mortgage "bubble" scams happen.

Kevin Phillips, Richard Nixon's economics advisor, wrote a book titled "Wealth and Democracy" in which he relates how the greedy, wealthy elites brought down the great empires of the past, such as the Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and others because of the huge debts they built up due to lavish living, colonialism, and constant warfare to maintain their empires. The empires originally grew due to the rise of a middle class composed of merchants, artisans, and craftsmen. This middle class was destroyed in the economic crash, and the empire went with it.

The U.S. is not immune to such a fate.

[althecat]

57. This morning I heard an economist Gareth Morgan say exactly that....

... i.e. that what we are seeing in the US is the end of an empire. "Wars are expensive" he said. Unfortunately I think this view is a little naive.

The market makers want us to beleive that this is out of control. That there is nothing that can be done to prevent a "correction" in the markets and that the pain that will result from this is "necessary" for the stability of the markets.

The truth is that what we are seeing is planned. It is deliberate. It is massive and it is inhumanly evil.

[AdHocSolver]

64. Couple the huge U.S. trade deficit to the Federal deficit and you have a recipe for a U.S....

economic collapse. It is NOT inevitable, but the elite would like it to happen as this could set the stage for a corporate, fascist coup d'etat.

In the 1930's, the right wing plotted to overthrow Roosevelt and replace him as president. The guy they chose was a marine commandant named Smedley Butler. Fortunately, Commander Butler believed in the Constitution and he exposed the plot.

There is a straightforward solution to solve several of this country's economic problems all at once. The solution is to cancel NAFTA, WTO, opt out of the IMF, and the World Bank and bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. This will require imposing restrictions, quotas, and tariffs on imports, as well as changing the tax laws to favor companies who employ American labor here in the U.S. rather than the outsourcing corporations.

How will this help? It will stop sending money overseas, so that we can reduce the trade deficit. It will provide jobs for Americans who will pay taxes and thereby reduce our government deficits. This will NOT harm you in anyway. Keeping the wealth in THIS country will stabilize the value of the dollar and will LOWER the effective costs to consumers.

We have to mandate fuel efficiency standards for all vehicles to force the auto companies to implement the necessary currently existing technology that will reduce oil consumption so as to stop sending so much money to OPEC. This will also reduce the cost of everything in this country that requires oil in its manufacture or transportation. The technology exists NOW. No need to wait for decades for pie-in-the-sky technology such as hydrogen fuel cells. Fuel cell technology won't save us anything anyway.

[althecat]

91. There is an even more straighforward solution...

Repeal the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Restore constitutionality to taxation and assume control over the issuance of currency. And prosecute those who have been involved in banking fraud - up to and including the federal reserve governors.

[Hannah Bell]

47. Kind of like the matrix.

Consensus reality, a creation of the controllers, - and real reality.

They know it from the cradle. We don't learn until later, after multiple headbeatings - if ever.

The daughter of a lawyer I knew, when i asked why her dad voted for Reagan. did he really believe that "Morning in America" stuff, laughed at me.

"That's for stupid people," she said.

I was bewildered, because I believed the storyline of the public debate was "real".

"Well, why did he vote for Reagan if he thinks so?"

She just laughed at me. She never did answer, & I didn't understand until years later.

[Mike03]

7. Money is not debt if you have the money. It's only debt if you borrow the

money. You may have some important point to make, but you need to think this through... Your premise is poor, feeble, and poorly developed.

[althecat]

11. Money supply = the total amount of debt.

When money is borrowed it is created.

When money is paid back to a bank it is destroyed.

The total supply of money has to keep increasing at at least the rate of interest on outstanding debt otherwise there is insufficient money in the system to pay the interest on the debt.

When banks stop lending money as they are now on the basis of a "liquidity crisis" the problem is suddenly and dramatically compounded.

As sure as night follows day when banks stop lending money a recession will ensue.

[AdHocSolver]

45. The money supply is defined as the sum of the "liquid" assets in the economy.

Liquid assets are any assets that can be used in the "short term" to make a purchase or pay off a debt.

The money supply would include paper money, coins, debit card value, the spendable value of a credit card (maximum credit limit minus amount already charged to the account), a refund check, a rebate check, a pay check, the amount in a money market account against which you can write a check, etc.

The banks would sell mortgages, which is essentially an IOU, to other financial institutions to get "liquid" assets so that they can lend money out to other borrowers and earn interest on it. In this sense, the bank converted debt into money, i.e., they sold an IOU for cash.

In a way, it is "smoke and mirrors", but it does work. The "liquidity crisis" occurs when the bank can no longer sell the mortgages, the IOU's, because the potential buyers no longer believe that the mortgage will be paid off. When dozens of major banks can no longer sell these mortgages, because investors with money to spend refuse to buy them, the banks which can't sell the mortgages have no money to loan out. The mortgage holders are, in effect, stuck with worthless paper. If depositors rush en masse to withdraw what little cash the bank now has to do business with, this is called a "run on the bank", and was one of the immediate causes of the Great depression.

The FDIC insurance was set up to guarantee depositors assets, so as to avoid a run on the banks. However, I read somewhere that, over the last few (seven?) years, the banks have not been made to fund the FDIC as much as they were required to do. Another way the rich people have been allowed to screw Americans.

[Xenotime]

101. Money is debt

Money in your pocket means lack of money in somebody elses and debt is the only way to fill the void.

I suggest you look in to basic economics before you claim people thing things through.

[seemslikeadream]

9. All fixed Mr. Cat

Michael Parenti - Terrorism, Globalism & Conspiracy

"Coincidence Theory: By shear chance things just happen repeatedly and coincidentally to benefit their interests without any conscious connivance by them, which is most uncanny. There is also: Stupidity Theory, Innocence Theory, Momentary Aberration Theory, Incompetence Theory, Unintended Consequences Theory and Innocent Cultural Proclivities Theory."

- Michael Parenti

[althecat]

20. ...or all is broken down and dejected....

Hopefully it is through suffering that we find the motivation to fix things.

:bounce:

[AdHocSolver]

10. A better way to explain money, I think, is that it is a means for bartering or exchange.

Instead of trading two hours of mowing and grooming your lawn for a bag of groceries, you pay the guy who does your lawn in dollars and he takes that money to the grocery store to exchange for a bag of groceries.

The value to you and the guy doing your lawn is that you don't have to acquire the groceries that he wants, and he doesn't have to rely on you to acquire the goods that he needs.

That said, the problem arises when the value of the goods that are purchasable are disproportionately worth more to one party or the other.

For example, a woman sews a shirt for which she is paid an amount equal to a can of tuna fish. The "middleman" distributor (company) that "pays" her then trades that shirt for an amount equal to eight cans of tuna fish. The disparity is due to the positions of relative power between the actual worker and the distributor and the final seller (the user of the shirt).

In a true barter situation, the traders have a better appreciation of the actual values of the goods and services being exchanged. Each is also in a position to negotiate better exchange rates for themselves.

The use of money, while it facilitates trade and manufacturing, and enabled the industrial revolution, also reduced the individual's knowledge of relative trading values, and gave extraordinary bargaining power to organized entities (the corporations) relative to the individual.

To address this imbalance of bargaining power between "trading" partners, we NEED labor unions, government regulation (the umpire), and the ability for consumers to work together to ensure a fair trading situation (for example, an independent single-payer health insurance entity).

[althecat]

12. This is one function of money true... but in the modern capitalist system it is not the dominant one

[althecat]

14. The truth about money is that it is a weapon.... a weapon used by the powerful against the weak

[LWolf]

25. I know that this is true.

Why? Because whenever I ponder how to improve my life, it usually revolves around not needing to make money to survive, so that I'm not dependent on my job, and how everything I need and want costs money. I can't have shelter, food, or clothing without money. I can't have transportation without money. I can't have health care or heat or a computer or internet connection without money. I can't live without money, and I can't have money without spending most of that life earning just enough to get by, but not enough to provide the freedom to do all the things I would have liked to do with my life.

[althecat]

26. This is why the theft of poor america's houses is such a crime....

Those small patches of land were the livelihoods of families and communities... when times got bad people could at least grow some vegetables... at least have a place to call home. What is happening now is simply appalling.

[LWolf]

28. I have to agree.

:(

[Beregond2]

27. Happiness

I've said exactly this many times. Happiness in this world requires two things: money and time. But to get enough money, you must sacrifice your time, so it's an impossible paradox.

[LWolf]

29. It is truly an impossible paradox. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

48. andd you give your time to build the power that robs you

of your life. so it may more completely rob your children of theirs.

[northzax]

41. you could barter for all of that, if you wanted to

you could trade labor for shelter and food. You may not like the labor much, but that's the breaks. The superintendent of my apartment building trades labor for shelter. My cousin works on a communal farm, he trades labor for shelter and food. My sister was a nanny for a while, she got shelter, food and transportation. Happens all the time.

[althecat]

51. There is no need to abandon money... just to put it in its proper place.

Money is a means of exchange. It should be our servant. Not our master.

[LWolf]

78. It happens.

I have a difficult time seeing how I could barter labor for shelter, food, clothing, and health care for myself and my dependents.

I did so, earlier in my life. I bartered labor for shelter in a couple of different situations. It provided shelter, and left little time to worry about how to aquire the food, the clothing, etc..

[AdHocSolver]

33. That is why we need government regulation of the economy to protect the "weak" (most of us).

This is what the New Deal was about. Regulating the economy to prevent this kind of exploitation and theft. However, it took a "Great Depression" (and the collapse of capitalism) to get the government to act.

We are now approaching an economic meltdown similar to that of the 1930's. For now, our current government is acting to protect the wealthy, the rest of the country be damned. This is why the coming election is so critical.

[earth mom]

54. The 2008 election is critical-except ALL the candidates are corporatists.

The majority of us are screwed.

[althecat]

60. Not so sure about Obama on that score...

His pastor certainly seems to know who butters the bread.

:)

[earth mom]

61. How many corporate lobbyists contributed to Obama's campaign? Didn't Obama vote to fund the war?

I think many people around here are fooling themselves because they want a "hero" to save this country.

Obama is NOT that hero.

Obama & Hillary & McCain will serve their corporate masters first and foremost. The rest of us can go to hell.

I'm sure many of us around here will say "I told you so" in 2009. But there will be NO satisfaction in it because in the end we all lose.

[AdHocSolver]

65. Obama is our best choice because he will help elect progressives to Congress and state gov't.

Obama has the best coattails. McCain will get only right-wing votes, and his voters will vote Republican. Clinton would draw out a lot of right wingers to vote against her, and that would only help Republicans down ticket.

Obama has proven his ability to attract first-time voters and young people and this can only help put people in government who would be agreeable to change.

[earth mom]

67. Obama is a DINO. He is NOT a Progressive. NO WAY. Obama is Status Quo and he will work for

the corporations who control the U.S. government. Period.

The Obama Cultists need to Wake Up and Smell the Corruption!

They are in for a VERY rude awakening if-and that's a very big IF-Obama wins.

[althecat]

70. He may not be our saviour but surely he is better than HRC?

[earth mom]

76. They are basically the same. nt

[althecat]

89. Not really....

HRC is definitely an insider she has already served as an insider and earned her stripes.

Obama OTOH seems significantly more complex. His speech on race relations was truly extraordinary in political terms on a global scale. I might almost say Ghandhiesque or in the manner of MLK. Clinton by comparison is a completely compromised.

[earth mom]

100. Not everyone is fooled by Obama. Anyone who practices can give a great speech.

It's what's behind that speech that matters. Obama has shown nothing but lukewarm air.

Answer me this-does Obama want the war stopped? NO he does not. He wants to move the War to Pakistan. That should tell you something.

Ghandi or MLK would NOT approve. So please don't sully their names by connecting Obama to them. Even MLK III thought Edwards should be president!

Here's a link for you just in case you don't believe me:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4598201#4605651

[FormerOstrich]

46. Very good analogy and nice post, AdHocSolver

I should have read all the responses before I wrote mine....as you said, very well, what I attempted to say.

[Me.]

21. K

+ R

[althecat]

30. Cheers...

:bounce:

[Orwellian_Ghost]

35. Here is the best series

you will find that lucidly and in plain terms explains money and all of it's aspects that you touch upon.

Good listenin':

http://www.robinupton.com/people/WizardsOfMoney/

Summary: The Wizards of Money is an educational series that questions the validity of the global monetary system. Listen and discover amazing facts about the world-wide debt system we've all been enslaved by, and how this system produces economic disparity and the massive poverty conditions in which most people find themselves today.

About the Host: Smithy has degrees in mathematics and economics. She works as a consultant calculating investment risk for financial institutions, therefore she does not reveal her real name.

K&R

[burythehatchet]

36. this HILARIOUS video does as good a job as any to explain the current collapse

of the pyramid scheme

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/187.html

[althecat]

52. Yes sums it up very nicely indeed...

I am going to send that link to some friends.

Thanks

:)

[OwnedByFerrets]

38. I stopped reading after post 4 because

I dont have any real money or fake money....only real debt that the rich will use to move me to the street if I dont pay them back with real money.

[wildbilln864]

39. That's what I've ...

been screaming. :banghead:

[althecat]

58. Good... and keep on screaming Wildbiln...

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[wildbilln864]

79. Thanks Al...

I intend to. :patriot: You keep it up also!

[althecat]

90. AAAAAAA aaaaaaaaa rrrrrrrrr ggggggg hhh!!!!!!!

...there you go..

[northzax]

40. so are you suggesting a return to the gold standard?

or perhaps the barter system? Maybe your boss will pay you in chickens, you should ask her.

[althecat]

49. No. I am suggesting that the people/govt. should take over control of money supply...

..If it did so then the impending credit asset mashing machine could be managed in a way that could result in breaking up the massive centralisation of monetary power and give the power that belongs to the people back to the people.

We now have perfect economic data. Access to liquidity can be managed in a manner to promote growth and enable the rebuilding of a real economy.

Instead the system as it is currently run will be used to take from the poor and give even more power to the people who perpetrated this scam in the first place.

Is it so much to ask for?

[FormerOstrich]

43. Out of thin air??

I'm having trouble with that theory/premise.

I assume our discussion is limited to US Banks and US currency (money) as both can have different definitions outside of the US.

Money is a medium of exchange. A pure barter system depends on one person possessing the exact goods/service that another wishes to posses, at a given point in time, plus willing to exchange those goods/services for something the other person posses.

Money functions as an intermediary because the timing of the above scenario restricts trade.

The ability to create and/or mint a medium of exchange marked for more units than its current value is the very basis of banking. However, that does not equate to creating money out of thin air.

Try substituting cows or food as your medium exchange. You cannot pluck them out thin air.

Your statement that money is debt is very mis-leading without clarifying whose debt and how that is so.

Your wee observations to illuminate the ignorant certainly fall short of containing any educational value. If nothing else, they would seem only to serve as a way to make you feel superior.

[althecat]

50. "Money is a medium of exchange which banks have a monopoly on the creation of"

What you say is perfectly true. But it misses out a key point.

Money is a means of exchage which is created by banks.

Banks have a monopoly on the creation of the means of exchange because they are the ones who settle transactions.

Economists believe that adam smith's invisible hand controls the banks decision making processes - but this unfortunately is pure nonsense. If banks were run by perfectly rational robots this might be true but it isn't.

Bank decision making policy is dictated by all the usual things.

Politics.

Confidence/Fear.

And most of all by the self interest of bank owners.

Now have a look around and see if you can tell me who owns the banks - bearing in mind that this is not just the shareholders it includes the deposit holders / the creditors / the debtors / the transactional counterparties etc. etc. etc.

[earth mom]

56. The Fed Reserve is a huge problem. Aaron Russo tried to educate and warn everyone before he died.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173

[althecat]

66. Fascinating video.. when did he die?

[earth mom]

75. Russo died last summer. I found out about him here on DU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Russo'

I don't agree with all of his politics-Libertarian & Ron Paul namely, but he was right about the Constitution, the Fed Reserve, Income Taxes, the NWO, and the North American Union among other things.

[althecat]

87. Very interesting indeed.... (comments on Aaron Russo video after viewing)

I see from Wikipedia that part of his motivation was bitterness however the tie up between the Income Tax enforcement and the Federal Reserve legislation of 1913 is truly fascinating.

The interview he does with Sheldon? the former IRS commissioner is truly damning. And the entire narrative on that is fascinating.

He gets a bit loose at the end however.

The stuff about gold and backing is a red-herring and completely misses the point. (Not that the theft of the gold from Fort Knox is not a big deal of course - only that money as a means of exchange is ok.) Devaluation of currency through inflation is inevitable and probably unavoidable too.

Ditto the comparison with silver dollars - currency/money need not be backed by anything it is a tool to enable and create commerce and to manage economic phenomena.

The problem is that it is being managed at present by private individuals for their own ends.

One final point.

The 1040 legal issues actually provide a legal grounds for a peaceful and extraodinarily potent form of public protest against the banking system.

If the tax honesty movement received some form of widespread public backing then the Congress would be forced to reform the federal reserve system quick smart. There is not a lot of use in owning $17 trillion of US Govt paper if there is no legal basis for paying the interest on it.

:)

[jlacivita]

81. Fed may have probs but that video is full of errors

I watched the first few minutes and many of the major points are factually incorrect:

The quote from Wilson that he regrets creating the Federal Reserve seems to be fabricated based on a campaign speech he made before he was president about the existence of unregulated private banks and his belief in the _need_ for a federal reserve. The crap about being unhappy and regretting it does not appear to have any supporting citations that I can find.

Then the film goes on to list all the illegal taxes americans are "forced" to pay. Virtually all of them except SS are state taxes, so they don't fall under the argument of the federal gov having the power to tax or not.

I'm sure there's lots of good points in that documentary, but when they're side by side with so much garbage, it only hurts his case, and makes it harder for someone to really discuss this issue without being put in the conspiracy
theory bucket with this guy.

[earth mom]

84. I don't agree with Russo on everything.

Maybe I need to make my own video. ;)

[Trailrider1951]

77. There was a time in this country when our money was real,

backed by intrinsic value. And, no, I'm not a Ron Paul worshiper. Just the facts, ma'am, a cross-post from another thread:

When I was a little girl, these two were equals:



and


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/United_States_one_dollar_bill,_obverse.jpg/800px-United_States_one_dollar_bill,_obverse.jpg

When Stupid was selected, these two were equal:





and




Today these are approximately equal:




and




Any questions?

[wildbilln864]

80. Aaron Russo tried to warn everyone with his...

excellent documentary titled "America: Freedom to Fascism".
It's a great documentary. Watch it here :hi:

[Trillo]

82. Good post. K & R

Actually, I RECed it yesterday.

Thanks.

[Greyhound]

85. Central banking system and the US tax code have reduced us to servitude.

Is it fascism yet?
:patriot::kick::patriot:

[wildbilln864]

107. Oh yes...

yes it is IMO. :hi:

[autorank]

102. Only if we let them.

And I'm pretty sure that we won't. The level of mendacity and calumny by the super wealthy is so outrageous, it won't fly for them to do the same old same old.

Expect a miracle;)_

[althecat]

108. Ok.. here's hoping

* fingers crossed *

[TreasonousBastard]

103. Wow! Someone read Chapter 5 of an Econ 102 text and...

thinks he knows sumpin'

The "multiplier effect" of banks you speak of goes at least back to the Middle Ages when goldsmithing guilds safely locked up your gold for a fee, and then happily leant it back to you for a fee. This was great business that led to such fortunes as the Fuggers' and eventually to the Knights Templar and Rothschilds.

As technology, empires, and economies advanced, this tidy little setup just didn't work any more and the Dutch and British captains of industry came up with more usable plans, necessary for the new economic growth. Eventually, Ricardo, Smith, and other early economists came up with some rules and techniques for managing the new economies.

So, here we are, in the full flower of Adam Smith's economic world. Some money is indeed purely air-- paper profits and losses that should mean little in the grand scheme of things, unless they suck the life out of real money. Deeper readings of Smith show the way out of that sort of mess, but people who quote Smith rarely read that deeply. One way, as Hamilton argued up to the day he got shot, is a central bank to manage the creation of money. That would be the Fed, which since it screwed up prior to the Depression has learned many lessons well and has kept us out of a lot of trouble since.

So, here we have a central problem-- liquidity and debt are absolutely necessary for capitalism to work. Debt is what allows old businesses to grow and new ones to be created, but this debt must be understood and controlled. So, we need a Fed and other regulatory agencies.

Now, the present crisis is simply one of bad management and even worse regulation. Wall Street continually tells us that it can regulate itself, and every time it has been had a chance to do that it has fucked it up. Alas, alleged "conservatives" always want to give it one more try.

Banks have historically been managed a bit better than Wall Street, but they have always been under tighter regulation. An experiment letting them regulate themselves ended very badly under Reagan, as we all should remember.

Will the wealthy get wealthier if we go down? Maybe, but so what? They're getting wealthier while we're up, too, so what changes? How does this affect you and why should you even care? More to the point would be instead of whining about things you have onlyu moderate knowledge of, you should use whatever skills you have to help solve the problems you see.

[althecat]

105. "How does this affect you and why should you even care?"

You are indeed a treasonous bastard.

But thanks for joining in.

[and-justice-for-all]

106. Oh yes, I know this...

The Federal Reserve Bank is a Federal as Federal Express.

[wildbilln864]

110. I was arguing with some members in the dungeon about this and Russo.

Invited them to participate here but guess they declined.

:hi:

[althecat]

112. Ah well never mind......

:bounce:

[wildbilln864]

113. kick...

4 exposure. :hi:

[anigbrowl]

114. I wonder how many of you have ever taken an economics course

This is as daft as what the ron Paul supporters believe, and that's pretty daft. To correct the misapprehensions of the OP...

1. Money is not debt. Banks do not create the money out of thin air when you get a mortgage. You think this because they don't keep the cash actually lying in the vault to be handed to you, but if you take out a mortgage the amount lent is entered on the bank's balance sheet. The amount they can lend out is limited by capital adequacy ratios.

2. Most people don't know who has the money, because most people are too darn lazy to find out.

3. The federal reserve is not a privately owned bank, it is a government entity. Allegations to the contrary are an idiotic conspiracy theory.

4. The super wealthy tend to increase their wealth independently of the economic cycle. Partly this is because we do not have heavily progressive taxation, but another reason is that they know what they are doing financially. This does not necessarily make them predatory, although some are. On the other hand, the country is awash with people who don't think hard enough about their financial decisions and get burned as a result.


There are a lot of ways that the finance system could and should be reformed so as to improve its integrity and value to consumers, but starting out with addle-brained conspiracy theories isn't going to bring that goal any closer.

[althecat]

115. This deserves a response....

This is as daft as what the ron Paul supporters believe, and that's pretty daft. To correct the misapprehensions of the OP...

1. Money is not debt. Banks do not create the money out of thin air when you get a mortgage. You think this because they don't keep the cash actually lying in the vault to be handed to you, but if you take out a mortgage the amount lent is entered on the bank's balance sheet. The amount they can lend out is limited by capital adequacy ratios.

In what way does your description suggest money is not debt. Banks can lend out 10 to 20 times the amount of money they hold on deposit meaning that 90% to 95% of the money they lend is created from nothing. Moreover once they move a bit of the mortgage finance on by turning it into a CDO or a SIV then they can use their capital all over again and lend another 90-95%.

2. Most people don't know who has the money, because most people are too darn lazy to find out.

That is pure rubbish. Tell me where I can find out. There is not only no place that knows (except possibly some people in the banking industry) but there is no way of finding out. The entire edifice of trusts, limited liability companies and bank confidentiality working together makes it completely impossible to ascertain the wealth of anyone. Ask the IRS.

3. The federal reserve is not a privately owned bank, it is a government entity. Allegations to the contrary are an idiotic conspiracy theory.

Again complete and utter rubbish. It is owned by the states federal reserve banks and they in turn are privately owned institutions mainly owned by other privately owned banks.

4. The super wealthy tend to increase their wealth independently of the economic cycle. Partly this is because we do not have heavily progressive taxation, but another reason is that they know what they are doing financially.

This is purely what they want you to beleive. We are rich because we are smart and it is good for you that we have all the money because we are smart.

This does not necessarily make them predatory, although some are. On the other hand, the country is awash with people who don't think hard enough about their financial decisions and get burned as a result.

So we should blame the victim then I guess. Here's how it works the most trusted man in $$$ Alan Greenspan tells em to borrow on a floating rate. The mortgage sales person says the same and - wonder of wonders - he can show them that on a floating rate they can actually afford the obscenely high asking price being asked by the slum landlord turned property speculator. They buy the house. Then the payments double. Then the bank stops letting them expand the mortgage to cover the $10,000 annual shortfall in household income caused by extravagances like toothache and a busted radiator.

There are a lot of ways that the finance system could and should be reformed so as to improve its integrity and value to consumers, but starting out with addle-brained conspiracy theories isn't going to bring that goal any closer.

Starting with some facts rather than the pure spun toffee that emanates from the newspaper and TV commentators is also a good place to start. Belief in a system is justified until the system spectacularly fails in its purpose. That is what is happening now you might think. Or is it actually doing precisely what it is supposed to do?

[wildbilln864]

116. Ford knew the deal...

“It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system for, if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” — Henry Ford

:hi:

[althecat]

117. Josiah Stamp said it very well....

Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin.
Josiah Stamp

But if you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.
Josiah Stamp

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing.
Josiah Stamp

[mhatrw]

118. Good thread! n/t

[althecat]

120. Now thankyou mhatrw.....

So wtf does mhatrw mean?

:)

:bounce:

[althecat]

119. Good morning......

[seemslikeadream]

121. THE TRUTH ABOUT MONEY?

Let me print a country's money and I care not who makes its laws

Mayer Amschel Bauer, founder of the Rothschild family



the new plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3076643