The Road to Enviro-Economic Ruin?

[Fung Koo]

So two things that have passed by me via the internet recently... Both passed on by multiple people who are reasonably reputable sources and who do not normally pass these sorts of things around -- including people from within the academic community and professionals in directly related industries/services. If anyone cares to look, this could make for an interesting discussion.

Money as Debt. (~45 minutes)

Story of Stuff. (~20 minutes)

These two video essays confirm some of what I already feel about the current state of the world. I'm aware that this confirmation makes it suspect, yet the simplicity of the logic in recognizing the "wrongness" of what these realities entail seems so gobsmackingly obvious that I'm constantly surprised that no one else is outraged.

That being said, the problems these two videos illustrate are ones that are extremely difficult to envision solutions for, and are perhaps too ingrained into who we are to see past.

So, what do y'all think? Is this anything worth getting in an uproar about? Is this just the same ****, different day? Is action demanded? Is the "science" problematic? Is there a solution? What does this do to your moral compass? What, if any, are the ethical imperatives here?

[Hereford Eye]

Watched Money as Debt. Will get to Stuff. Thanks for the links. Led me to want to ask questions of people not on this board. Decided to ask some of those on another board since politics is not something sffworld really wants to host.
Ethical? Moral? Concerned citizen?
Somewhere in between, I think, but as I've described myself elsewhere: definitely curious.

[KatG]

If you think I'm going to watch an hour and a half of video just to have a conversation with you, you're off your Foo philosophy rocker. Summarize the things, please.

As for politics, we allow discussion of religion and politics in Gary's forum. He loves the stuff.

[Fung Koo]

Alrighty

Money As Debt: Director Paul Grignon presents a synopsis of the history of money -- where it came from, how it's changed, and what it is now. Along the way he highlights issues surrounding money related to education, government, and the concept of sustainability. He provides quotations from prominent bankers, government officials (including Presidents and Prime Ministers), and notable academics on the shortcomings of the concept of money.

Money, he says, began with a basic barter system that evolved into a form of symbolic representation. The system was voluntary and organic, and it operated so long as everyone agreed that, whatever the symbolic form, it represented something of a specific value (value defined as time in the form of labour/services, or representative of an amount of certain product). Eventually, using precious metals became the established norm for the symbolism because it was itself perceived as valuable.

Along the way, gold lenders came to be important in the establishment of the concept of money. At first, the gold lender would distribute portions of his gold to others on the promise of repayment. Interest didn't exist, and was known at the time as usury. Usury is written into the texts of every major religion as a form of sin.

Over time, gold lenders came to represent security and began to rent out shelf space in their vaults. The practice of lending evolved from the actual lending of physical gold to the lending of promissory notes, essentially IOUs, which became the paper money we know today. At some point, people began trading the notes themselves instead of the gold.

Further along, the lenders got a bad rap for one reason or another and those storing their money with the lenders came to take their gold (bank run). This crippled the lenders and all but destroyed the note system as there was no longer a centralized core of actual wealth to represent the bank notes in circulation (think Somalia as of the news today).

Rather than outlaw the practice of lending via notes, governments legislated National Reserve Banks to provide actual wealth to banks in the event of a run. In doing so, the original concept of lending "fake money" (aka Debt) began, at a 2:1 ratio. A bank could lend twice the amount of actual money it held in the form of debt notes.

Around the same time, governments decided to produce their own national form of legal tender. Originally it was designed to be traded against the actual wealth it represented. That eventually changed to the point where governments -- rather than print their own money free of interest -- began lending based on the valueless symbol money that banks were producing.

Thus, the switch to what money used to be and what it is today. Over time, the practice has evolved to the point that the ratio between actual wealth and imaginary wealth is between 9:1 and 30:1 (and in some cases X:0, where there is no actual wealth at the core of the lending practice).

Grignon then goes on the describe how this monetary system produces money to account for interest -- the banks simply invent more fake money. To pay interest you have to get more debt to pay interest. So the cycle is locked. He then describes how this system is part and parcel of the modern consumerist model which requires the use of resources to be measured against the rate of inflation. That is, for every dollar created, the 9:1 ration must run backwards to the "actual" value -- natural resources.

Obviously, such a system is designed only to increase and never stabilize. Money is no longer symbolic of value but is now symbolic of debt. As such, it is not a sustainable system.

The Story of Stuff: Annie Leonard goes over the model of consumer production as it exists in today's society, illustrating statistics on the rate of production vs. consumption vs. waste. As with the above, the rate of waste production far outstrips the rate of generation of actual wealth in terms of the resources that are used to make the "stuff" that we buy.

She goes over the energy and monetary values associated with each step of the modern consumerist model pointing out where governments and corporations collide and where the servitude lies. Specifically she points out how the means of production shifted toward a deliberate consumerist model which expressly and openly states that in order to drive the economy, the populous must be convinced to buy the same products over and over again based on a false ideal that new products are necessary.

This is the concept of planned obsolescence -- where consumer products are designed to require replacement after a set amount time. This results in the current situation where (something like) 90% of everything we buy winds up in the garbage within 6 months of our acquiring it.

As with the above, such a system is unsustainable because the earth is effectively a closed economic system. There are only so many resources and so much space, so a system based on consumption creates a massive discrepancy between the amount of actual resources which exist and the used resources we toss into landfills (which we're running out of places to put). She also questions how such a system can possibly meet with the concept of sustainability.

-----

Both pieces are set up to engender questions -- specifically questions for authority to explain how this is going to go in the future.

This seems particularly relevant to me with the current economic depression hitting the US, particularly in the housing market. The rate of foreclosures is at an all time high, which tied directly to the consumerist model and the money=debt model. The economic impacts form the US are hitting Canada by driving housing development companies north and creating a false boom in the Canadian economy. Our money is not worth more -- everyone else's is simply worth less.

The US's national debt is at an all time high, as is the debt of most of the nations of the world. Bono wants to wipe out the debt of poor country's, but under the present system if there is no debt, there is no money. The answer for ailing countries may be to increase their debt, not decrease it.

The social element -- that complicity is made to be voluntary through the concept of democracy. Grignon presents the situation of money (which is really debt) as control. Because the system is voluntary, but we're raised to perceive as involuntary, governments and banks can effectively control everything by shifting the distribution of wealth/debt. Perhaps scariest, even the wealthy who are (under the definition of the present monetary system) without debt are technically carrying around the false wealth of IOU notes which has no correlation to "actual value" -- wealth is just another form of debt.

Recent Stats Canada figures released last week show that the average income of the largest group in Canada -- the middle class -- has remained unchanged since 1950s, despite a perception that we are at our wealthiest period ever in history. The debt, in the meantime, has skyrocketed. The average person in the 20-30 age range is over $30,000 in debt, with the debt increasing per decade up to over $200,000 for the home "owners."

The States, the UK, the EU, etc, are all in the same boat. We are under the illusion of "progress" -- a word without definition in the existing system. Add to the this the false notion of technological progress and "the information age" -- Those same stats indicate that the average person knows less about everything, yet has a higher rated degree, than at any other time in history.

Books/ideas I'm specifically thinking about that relate to all this: Brave New World, 1984, Handmaid's Tale, Bentham's panopticon system, Lord of the Rings (expansionism vs. sustainability), More's Utopia, Bank's Culture...

I'm also particularly interested in the idea that the science fiction ideal of space travel as an extension of the expansionist/consumerist system which will allow the system to continue indefinitely.

All signs point to an imminent crash in the world economy based on the discrepancy between actual value and perceived value. So what, if anything, are we to do?

[KatG]

Well, your belief that anyone is going to do long-term planning is very sweet.

I don't think we're going to have a crash of the world's economy. I think we will have changes. I'm more worried about environmental stuff, and how half-assed everyone is going about it, from the government to the corporations to the environmental activists.

The real estate crash is exactly like the tech crash back in 2000. It's a hot area of the economy that grows as a "bubble" with that area of the economy becoming quickly overvalued. They know that the bubble is going to burst going in -- they've been saying the real estate bubble was going to crash for the last five years -- but they don't do anything about it because they are making money (or imaginary money, I guess you'd argue.) Then the bubble bursts and most of them lose money, we all lose money, the economy goes into the toilet for awhile, maybe a long while, and the formerly hot sector gets a new set of regulations, then the economy chuggs upward again, and a new sector becomes the hot one that expands into a bubble. Like I said, they're not good on that long-term planning thing. The U.S.' debt is at an all time high because of the wars, and much of that "debt" is imaginary, just like some of the money that goes to finance the wars.

Those same stats indicate that the average person knows less about everything, yet has a higher rated degree, than at any other time in history.

Those stats are wrong. They've been giving us the same stats for fifty years. They present as negative the fact that knowledge specializes as the resources and needs of the population are better met, they ignore that illiteracy was the state of most of the populace for decades, that global awareness is an incredibly recent thing and that we have more of it now, not less, etc. The "good old days" were brutish, nasty and short. You lived in your hometown and you died there, frequently killed off by the company you worked for, and you didn't pay that much attention about the world. You could fix a machine and make candles, but you didn't know who your governor was and you weren't going to be inventing a way to fight off cancer.

Part of the U.S. and Canada population still lives that way, and because the population is larger, it's still a large number. But literacy and knowledge of the world have increased, even though most people still can't tell you who their governor is unless he's a former movie star, and are more likely to know how to put together a YouTube video than how to fix their car. We know stuff. There is a lot more stuff to know, and the ability of any one person to absorb it and remember it all has to by logic be limited. But the population is living in less filth, ignorance, and slavery than before. It isn't gone and it needs to be tackled and I don't know if we'll do it.

But I am sick of the crap of being told that I was better off as a kid in the 1960's. I grew up through those decades; they were not better, even though I was a well-educated, upper middle class white kid. They were worse, a lot worse. As a woman, I am extremely aware that they were worse and that people were stupider, and that minorities and immigrants were even more shafted and deprived of knowledge than they are now.

So if the apocalypse is coming, it's not going to be because we know less. It's because we know more and still didn't care.

[Hereford Eye]

...and still didn't care.

There's the issue. I often complain that we, the poeple, are too comfortable and pity help anyone who wishes to disrupt that comfort. That, for me, explains why no one pays any attention to our wars, why no one cares about the Kyoto Concordance, space exploration, commericalizing the national park system, airport security, and a hundred other ought-to-be-issues.
Maybe, though, just maybe I'm wrong...again. Our son sent us this op-ed piece this morning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/op...=1&oref=slogin

So, what does it mean to care?

[Fung Koo]

Well, your belief that anyone is going to do long-term planning is very sweet.

Oh, I doubt anything more than half-assed measures will ever occur. Such is the nature of democracy. Watering it all down...

I'm more worried about environmental stuff, and how half-assed everyone is going about it, from the government to the corporations to the environmental activists.

That's sorta the thing here -- environmental policy is economic policy. There's this false conception of humanity and human inventions as somehow being divorced from environmentalism, as if the two can co-exist without being wholly dependent on one another. If you're concerned about the environment, you absolutely must be concerned about the economy because the reality is that they are one and the same.

There is nothing at all that you use (including the computer screen in front of you, the hair on your head and the product you wash it with) that is not both environmental and economic. To relate this to your closing statement -- that to know better and not do anything is the great unforgivable sin -- this is exactly what you're saying here. There is no division where you can care about one and not the other. To care about one is to care about the other.

That's part of why I posted this -- to a get a sense of what people think about the correlation between economy and environment. It makes total sense to me that they're the same. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. Unless someone can prove me wrong....

...Then the bubble bursts and most of them lose money, we all lose money, the economy goes into the toilet for awhile, maybe a long while, and the formerly hot sector gets a new set of regulations, then the economy chuggs upward again, and a new sector becomes the hot one that expands into a bubble.

Isn't it possible that environmentalism is also a bubble? If you look at the corporate response to the "green" ideology, how many new "green" products do you see? All of them... everything new coming out is tacked onto the new "green" wagon. Environmentalism is being shaped into a commodity. The consumerist commodity system is fickle and based on a 5-year lifespan. So environmentalism will be hot for a few more years and then...? What?

This is the very illusion of change. As you say, the housing boom was doomed. We all know it instinctively. Nothing lasts forever except the cold November rain...

So with that in mind, what do we do to try to take environmentalism back from the corporations -- who are incidentally the ones who control the economy, who are incidentally beholden to the banks. What do we do?

The U.S.' debt is at an all time high because of the wars, and much of that "debt" is imaginary, just like some of the money that goes to finance the wars.

Or it's at an all time high because the response to terrorism was "go shopping." Spending money with credit cards creates interests, creates more money, which means the creation of more debt. Couple that with the war effort which was actually quite sensibly designed to be mostly self-sufficient, but failed because the demand for fuel at home went up faster than expected because people were out shopping and moving further and further away from where they work into homes they can't afford with unrealistic interest rates that further increase the debt....

The "good old days" were brutish, nasty and short.

I didn't say they were good! But 200 years ago the majority of humanity would probably survive a total meltdown of society because they would know how to do things... like forage and farm and purify water without needing chlorine tablets. Nowadays people struggle even to build themselves a suitable shelter or a fire on "Survivor." Pioneers would laugh at their progeny, methinks. Then become horribly depressed...

You lived in your hometown and you died there, frequently killed off by the company you worked for...

The world's been running for much longer and with greater variety of lifestyles than the post-industrial Western world...

Who says moving away from your hometown is good? NAFTA has pushed the need for low education homebodies to Mexico. We don't stay at home anymore because there's no need for us to do so. But is that good? If the future environmental predictions are at all accurate, our mobility will become limited again. Food will have to be local because there won't be enough power to move it around. And then what? Staying home will seem like oppression, but is it?

Isn't any surprise that the consumerist society pushes the idea of leaving home? It creates mobility and disposability in the market and stimulates the economy. Staying at home does not. Consumer society has a vested interest in encouraging mobility. But consumer society is killing the environment. So mobility is....? What?

But literacy and knowledge of the world have increased

C'mon... Going to the Outback versus seeing it on the internet is a totally different thing. Seeing New York on TV versus walking its streets and feeling it rhythm is something else again. Reading about worlds that don't exist won't help you survive when the power goes out. The world is going paperless, and there will be nothing to read when the power goes out. Literacy and false worldliness are not the be all and end all of knowledge. What value do they have?

But the population is living in less filth, ignorance, and slavery than before. It isn't gone and it needs to be tackled and I don't know if we'll do it.

I feel like a slave most days. I have virtually insurmountable debt and only more debt on the horizon. As the song says "Buy this car to drive to work; Drive to work to pay for this car."

Is that not just a different kind of slavery? Debt is perhaps voluntary slavery? The lack of filth is weakening our immune systems. People drink bottled water that's killing them, laced with ozone to make it taste better when ozone is a poison. People drink distilled water and think floating particulate is gross when its the particulate that we actually drink the water for. We wash our hands with antibacterial soaps that are encouraging the growth of resistant bacteria. Our methods of preservation may be causing autism and hermaphrodism with mercury and bisephanol-A. The amount of defective genes in the genepool is rising because our medicine now allows us to save the lives of those who would die otherwise.

Are we so sure this cleanliness is good? Are we so sure that this "freedom" is really free? Do we know it actually has value? Or is it just something that consumer society needs us to believe so we keep the consumer system alive?

As a woman, I am extremely aware that they were worse and that people were stupider, and that minorities and immigrants were even more shafted and deprived of knowledge than they are now.

In the 60's, they released the stat that a woman made ~.86 cents to the man's dollar. Today, that number has dropped to ~.67 cents. Immigrants have dropped from around the same stat as women to ~.54 cents. Is it really better? Or is it just more invisible? What does that say about our actual values versus our perceived values?

So if the apocalypse is coming, it's not going to be because we know less. It's because we know more and still didn't care.

I hear you. But we have this tendency to view all these problems as disparate and unconnected. The reality may be that the injustice is endemic, and that the considerable knowledge we have is valueless, not functional, dare I say decadent. Is our knowledge actually valuable? Maybe we don't care to acknowledge the problems because in our hearts we know that what we're doing is valueless? And we've made the mistake of thinking that if what we have now only has value if we give it value holds true across the board?

Is it possible that environmentalism has an intrinsic value to basic human survival that proves all our cultural relativism and self-made values totally and utterly false? That it's exposing the cracks? Pacifism is valueless and idiotic when your tormentor is threatening the rape of you and your children, is it not?

[Rina]

I was inspired to read your comments on these two videos - its beautiful to see that everyday people are finally looking at how and why our society ended being the slave driving machine that it is. I recommend these to anyone who wants to further understand exactly HOW the system works - i believe that through learning, comes knowledge which gives you the power to be able to change things - this is never going to be achieved through an individual effort but by a combined group of us trying to figure out why we are in the quagmire that we are in.
I would also recommend to anyone who is interested in economics/ money to listen or watch the interview with Benjamin Fulford ( former finance journalist for Japans' 'Forbes' Magazine); it is also available on google video;
http://www.projectcamelot.org/interviews.html

[killhus]

I agree with your opinion of Americans Kung Foo, and i am American. What makes me so mad is the general attitude of Americans, they just dont care about how corrupt America is, and they have this "who cares attitude" which is why we never progress. When I found out that our currency isnt made from the governmnet but is actually loaned to us on interest by a cntral bank, i was outraged and it blew my mind. A lot of people i tell dont care. I agree with your opinion on American history as well it is very biased. I researched all the wars of the past and found out that the U.S. involved themselves in every war for different reasons than what we are taught in history, every war, for example History teaches that The Union fought in the civil war to free the slaves, when in fact it was due to economical reasons.
I never believe anything im taught anymore I always due research. Dont be prejudiced against Americans though not all of us are bad.

I like this quote from "Money as Debt"

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist"
Kenneth Boulding

Our monetary based economy can not go on forever, a collapse is inevitable.

[kater]

Instead of losing the other thread to the ether, I've merged it with this one and then pruned the two posts that don't make sense (by pointing to this thread )

[Fung Koo]

The danger of referring you over to this thread is that now I have to go back and re-read everything...

I agree with your opinion of Americans Kung Foo, and i am American.

In fairness, America mostly just makes for an easy target. That said, the world has rested on its laurels waiting for America to lead the way through the current economic meltdown, and it's a mantle America seems to enjoy wearing. The problem runs much deeper than just America. But America is something that many people, internationally, have a reasonably high degree of knowledge about, so it works well as a central frame for such discussions. The shortcomings of America can stand in as the shortcomings of us all.

That being said...

This thread started off with:

I don't think we're going to have a crash of the world's economy.

So now that it's happening, I'm curious if anyone has any updates on their opinion of the world's economic situation and our approach to environmental policy. New administration in the US, and it looks like we're in for 8 more years of Iraq, trillions of dollars of new debt being generated to slow the fall of the economy and offset the existing debt. Borrowing from one pocket to pay the other, IMO.

So who's satisfied with the Obama plan?

[Gary Wassner]

You're always such an optimist, Fung.

I have faith in Obama. I believe him. I believe that he's sincere and honest and that he's going to try as best as he can to help straighten things out.

Can he do it? Is it possible? I have no idea. But the Americans I know are very very hard workers, and they want to work and they're willing to work.

I'm appalled by the CEOs of some of these banks too. I'm so disappointed. They walk away just fine, with a little tarnish on their gold cufflinks. But it wasn't just their fault. Everyone borrowed too much and charged too much and consumed too much. They just facilitated it, and in the end walked away with enough to secure their own futures. That's where the big difference lies.

There's lots of both misplaced and appropriate anger all around today. But we need to work through it nonetheless. We need to work and move on.

Obama represents a new vision for me. It's not easy for him, I'm sure. I don't envy him at all. But I trust that he's here for the right reason, and I haven't felt that way as long as I can remember. So I'm going to be optimistic and I'm not going to let anxiety and depression turn me into a cynic. I have three children! They have futures. I'll work as hard as I need to in order to provide them with a sense of hope.

[Fung Koo]

You're always such an optimist, Fung.

I am?!?!?

I have faith in Obama. I believe him. I believe that he's sincere and honest and that he's going to try as best as he can to help straighten things out.

Yeah, I think his heart is in the right place. It's the other people in the American government that worry me. I do think, though, that Obama had a chance to really shake things up and missed it by going with business-as-usual. The Stimulus Package only maintains a faulty system that is doomed to a full collapse at some point in the future anyway.

I'm appalled by the CEOs of some of these banks too. I'm so disappointed. They walk away just fine, with a little tarnish on their gold cufflinks. But it wasn't just their fault. Everyone borrowed too much and charged too much and consumed too much. They just facilitated it, and in the end walked away with enough to secure their own futures. That's where the big difference lies.

Now this I'm not so sure about. Because it's not just the "bank" portion of the financial industry that is being bailed out. The banks are no longer just store houses for our money; they're investment firms, and their trading capital is our money. How they handle our money, even if we do step into it with some degree of volunteerism, places the "blame" more with them than us. They didn't just make the debt available to be had -- they peddled it. They've convinced us to put our money into investment accounts, and they gamble with it.

I think that investment banking needs to be taxed the same way we tax casinos. I don't mean the individual who gains at the casino -- trading on speculation with your money is your business, and if you win by investing its no different than winning the lottery (not taxed in Canada, unlike the US -- I don't think it makes any sense to tax lottery winnings). But as an institutional practice, whereby organizations and their officers gain massive profits off trading other people's money about in a game chance, Investment Banking is fundamentally no different than gambling. IMO, it should be treated as such.

[killhus]

After watching a documentary called Zeitgiest I learned a lot about the federal reserve and money that I didnt realize. The federal reserve isnt any more federal than Federal Express. The federal Reserve is a group of private banks. Like any other bank the federal reserve loans out money with interest charged. All american currency in existence is loaned by the federal reserve, with a ton of interest. Think about all the U.S. currency in existence. I dont know what it is, but lets say for the sake of argument its 2 trillion dollars. Imagine the interest on a two trillion dollar loan. Thats a lot of money. You must be thinking right about now, "who cares", or "whats so bad about that", well, first of all who do you thinks paying for that interest, second of, all we dont need to borrow money from a bank we could just make are own money, then we wouldnt have to pay interest. We used to do just that, heres a little history lesson.

the folowing is from
"Secrets of American History - Timeline of Assassinations, Presidents in Opposition of Central Banks, and the Rothschilds" it didnt mention the author of this article on the website

1790: Mayer Amschel Rothschild states “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”

1791: The Rothschilds get, “control of a nation’s money,” through Alexander Hamilton (their agent in George Washington’s cabinet) when they set up a central bank in the USA called the First Bank of the United States. This is established with a 20 year charter.

1811: The charter for the Rothschilds Bank of the United States runs out and Congress voted against the renewal. Nathan Mayer Rothschild is not amused and he states, “Either the application for renewal of the charter is granted, or the United States will find itself involved in a most disastrous war.” However the United States stands firm and the Charter is not renewed which causes Nathan Mayer Rothschild to issue another threat, “Teach those impudent American’s a lesson. Bring them back to colonial status.”

1812: Backed by Rothschild money, and Nathan Mayer Rothschild’s orders, the British declare war on the United States. The Rothschild’s plan was to build up such a debt in fighting this war that they would have to surrender to the Rothschilds and allow the charter for the Rothschild owned First Bank of the United States to be renewed.

1816: The American Congress passes a bill permitting yet another Rothschild dominated central bank, which gives the Rothschilds control of the American money supply again. This is called the second bank of the United States and is given a twenty year charter. The British War against America therefore ends with the deaths of thousands of British and American soldiers, but the Rothschilds get their bank.

1832: President Andrew Jackson (the 7th President of the United States from 1829 to 1837), runs the campaign for his second term in office under the slogan “Jackson And No Bank!” This is in reference to his plan to take control of the American money system to benefit the American people, not for the profiteering of the Rothschilds.

1833: President Andrew Jackson starts removing the government’s deposits from the Rothschild controlled, Second Bank of the United States and instead deposits them into banks directed by democratic bankers. This causes the Rothschilds to panic and so they do what they do best, contract the money supply causing a depression. President Jackson knows what they are up to and later states, “You are a den of thieves and vipers, and I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out.”


1836: Following his years of fighting against the Rothschilds and their central bank in America, President Andrew Jackson finally succeeds in throwing the Rothschilds central bank out of America, when the bank’s charter is not renewed,

1841: President John Tyler (the 10th President of the United States From 1841 to 1845) vetoed the act to renew the charter for the Bank of the United States. He goes on to receive hundreds of letters threatening him with assassination.

1861: President Abraham Lincoln (16th President of the United States from 1860 till his assassination in 1865) approaches the big banks in New York to try to obtain loans to support the ongoing American Civil War. As these large banks were heavily under the influence of the Rothschilds, they offer him a deal they know he cannot accept, 24% to 36% interest on all monies loaned. Lincoln is very angry about the high level of interest so he prints his own debt free money and informs the public that this is now legal tender for both public and private debts.

1862: By April $449,338,902 worth of Lincoln’s debt free money (Greenbacks) has been printed and distributed. He states of this, “We gave the people of the republic the greatest blessing they ever had, their own paper money to pay their own debts.”


1865: In a statement to Congress, President Abraham Lincoln states, “I have two enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in my rear is my greatest foe.” Later that year, on April 14, President Lincoln is assassinated, less than two months before the end of the American Civil War.

1913: The last and current central bank in America, the Federal Reserve, is set up during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

We were doing fine without a central bank, we definitely dont need one and could do without the interest.


I am not sure about the veracity of this next claim, and would like to investigate further and here anyones info on this: Most of the income tax goes to paying this interest, were paying it.

If you have any illusions on who is really in control of this country ill shatter them now, its most definitely the federal reserve, a group of private corporations. What does this all mean it means that are economy is based on debt and interest. What does it say on dolar bills "this note is legal tender for all debts public and private.

Heres another interesting fact.
All U. S. currency is only worth one tenth of its amount, this is because the federal reserve practices fractional banking.

definition:
Think of it this way. People used have gold and silver which is what real money is. People called goldsmiths would store other peoples gold in vaults for safekeeping for a fee. When a customers gives their gold to a goldsmith, the goldsmith would give that customer a primisary note representing that amount of gold, people would then exchange these notes for goods and services.
The goldsmiths would also loan people the gold they were holding and charge interest. They realized that they could loan out more gold than they held, by making more promisary notes, because they knew that all there customers wouldnt all withdraw their gold at once. For example a goldsmith is holding 100 dollars worth of gold. He loans out 1000 dollars worth of promissary notes to ten different people, a hundred dollars each, it doesnt matter that he only has one hundred dollars worth of gold because it is unlikely for all his custiomers to withdraw their gold. He is using a reserve banking ratio of 1:10 as opposed to 1:1 whitch would be to only loan out what he has in gold. So at any one time he can back up a lone with a hundred dollars worth of gold. He has in a sense created money out of thin air.
The current ratio for the federal reserve is aproximately 1:10. There are actually many benefits to Fractional reserve banking im just pointing it out to people who dont know.

Its actually surprising that no one is taught this in school and that most people think that The U.S. government makes and controls its own currency and doesnt borrow money from a private corporation. The more I think about this the more I realize that our economy is on the verge of collapse, and that the banks control everything. If anyone wants to learn more about this go to "www.movie6.net" from the list of movies and choose "zietgiest addendum"
I would like to hear everyone elses thoughts on this and also if any of my information is wrong or inacurate. Iwould also like to know how many people did not know this until recently, or until they read this post.