“Work is the basis of all wealth, all well-being, while monopoly and cartels are obstacles for the beneficial processes…[of work]” – Adam Smith.

“Planting, nurturing and harvesting money from it’s own seed takes more effort than obtaining the seed” Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 

Then, if you like, go to the end of this piece for part of Gaius Tacitus’ famous essay on ‘those who systematically increased their wealth by usury…: written around the time Christ threw the Moneylenders out of the Temple.

The IMF has just approved a $17 billion dollar loan to the Ukraine… who is going to pay it back?

But, back to the story – “To Begin at the Beginning”: Benjamin Franklin’s very acute comments on why there was neither debt nor poverty in the early American Colonies. (for ‘Banker’ read ‘Moneylender’).Morality, on the other hand, tells us for what wealth should be used: Sharing. But that seems no longer to exist in this world.

But first, Franklin on America, when… “There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace was reigning on every border. It was difficult, and even impossible, to find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe. Comfort was prevailing in every home. The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread.

“We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had some, there would be nobody to put in them, since there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps.

“The reason is simple. In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called ‘Colonial Scrip.’ We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and services pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one.

“The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War.”

A war we seem to have lost…

Is there any Escape from “Debt Prison America”

Now?

by Tom Dennen:

Today, in America as well as in Europe, we are under the regime of the Moneylenders’ Scrip instead of Franklin’s scrip of the nation. And so there are huge public debts, everlasting interest charges and taxes that rob us of our purchasing power.

Result? A consolidation of the global financial dictatorship and the poverty of nations.

But hope springs eternal: there are several options that can be taken to get out of jail – from the top down or from the bottom up:

One way to avoid America’s ultimate financial collapse is for Congress to exercise Clause 30 of the Federal Reserve Act, buy the outstanding shares of stock, shut down this unconstitutional system contrived for the benefit of moneylenders alone and sell off its assets to reimburse the people of this nation.

But with Moneylenders at the top, in the ruling seats of government, that will not happen,

So, as always it remains in the hands of the people, who can opt out of the debt system from the bottom and adopt, for instance, a credit system like New York’s recently ailing, but now recovering Itheca Hour.

Wikipedia: “The Ithaca HOUR is a local currency used in Ithaca, New York and is the oldest and largest local currency system in the U.S. still operating. It has inspired other similar systems in Madison, Wisconsin; Corvallis, Oregon; and a proposed system in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. One Ithaca Hour Is valued at US$10 and is generally recommended to be used as payment for one hour’s work, although the rate is negotiable.

Taken to its logical conclusion,the Itheca solution is really the localization of its economy. The next step would be to become food secure as soon as possible. This is called ‘thinking global but acting local’, the latter being much more productive in that thinking local could avoid some of the temporary downsides of any large socio-economic disruption.

Another example is the newspaper that printed its own money as IOUs during the Great Depression, asking local merchants to honor the scrip as the paper would take it back in payment for advertising.

Another way out is California Candidate for State Treasurer, Ellen Brown’s take on the North Dakota banking system, a State-owned circulation system that keeps most of North Dakota’s wealth inside the state and stays away from the Wall Street casinos.

North Dakota returns a budget surplus of at least a billon dollars every year, and only 600 000 people live there.

IS THIS A REVOLUTION? YES…

Any form of money that is issued as a true medium of exchange and not based on debt-building just for the ‘privilege’ using it will severely threaten the existing fiat-money lending cabal.

Jack Kennedy was the last Western leader to make any attempt at establishing a government-issued, asset-backed, interest and debt-free currency, the same as Ben Franklin’s Colonial Scrip, called Silver Certificates – spending almost five billion of them into the economy, the amount of cash needed at the time to move goods and services from their creators to their consumers, using ‘money’ simply as a medium of exchange rather than casino chips.

On June 4, 1963, a little known attempt was made to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Mr. Kennedy’s order gave the Treasury the power “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury.” This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.

Kennedy’ Silver Certificate with the red seal did not look like the FED’s version with a green seal.

Here’s how the original silver certificate was removed from circulation.

This could not have pleased the money lenders then, as it did not when Lincoln tried (successfully with his Greenback Dollar) to do the same thing to avoid the %39 interest he would have had to pay on money borrowed from money lenders for his civil war.

I think the world is beginning to understand that the currency we use now is not an asset-backed (gold, silver, platinum) medium of exchange but rather paper that we pay interest on just for using it as ‘real money’.

Francisco d’Anconia, one of the central characters in the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, explains the following in his famous “money speech”:

“…Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or the looters who take it from you by force.

Money is made possible only by the men who produce… Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into bread you need to survive tomorrow…

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values… Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist [except in future promises of mortgage or any other debt payment], backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs upon the virtue of the victims…”

This is the official definition of the New World currency, based on the above description of ‘destroyers’:

“SDRs are ‘supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets’ defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“SDRs are not a currency, and instead ‘represent a claim to currency held by IMF member countries for which they may be exchanged.”

And they can only be exchanged for the Euro, Japanese yen, pounds sterling, or U.S. Dollars.

Oil transactions are largely in Dollars, which is why the middle east gold Dinar was so destructive – wouldn’t you prefer to sell your oil for solid gold ingots rather than a fluctuating, inflationary, interest-bearing piece of paper that holds only a promise to pay “The Bearer, on Demand” another piece of paper?

So, yes the Middle East Conflict is over oil in the sense of what oil is traded for – gold or dollars or SDR’s, but you have no choice, so the West has to control the oil or it will succumb to gold, much like the Bad Guys in Iran are selling India most of its oil needs for Rupees rather than dollars.

“SDRs may actually represent a potential claim on IMF member countries’ non-gold foreign exchange reserves, which are usually held in those four currencies. While they may appear to have a far more important part to play or, perhaps, an important future role, being the unit of account for the IMF has long been the main function of the SDR.”

I believe that this is economic hogwash designed to make Everyman believe that printed, “fiat” money is something valuable just because it has been reduced to fancy words on a piece of paper, that, incidentally, can buy real gold on the understanding that the fiat currency will decrease in ‘value’ and that the price of gold will always be inflationary.

(See “LAST CANDANGO”)

The phrase, “In God We Trust” is no longer printed pn American currency, nor is the phrase, “Pay the Bearer One Dollar in Silver” worth anything because the banks don’t keep real Silver Dollars anymore.

This coin, a ”Flowing Hair Silver Dollar”, believed to have been the first silver dollar struck by the United States Mint, sold for slightly more than $10 million at a New York auction last weekn Thursday, April 24, 2014, .

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take a dollar bill anywhere in the world and get one ounce of ninety-nine fine silver for it?

But you cannot – the dollar is not worth an ounce of silver because it is not backed by an ounce of silver.

Itheca Dollars, on the other hand are real wealth backed by an hour’s worth of solid work.

“As of March 2011, the amount of IMF SDRs in existence is around $238.3 billion, but this figure is expected to rise to $476.8 billion by 2013.”

That was a year ago and how many Bitcoins are there now?

THE PLOT SICKENS

A brief summary of the meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Washington D.C., 10-11 April 2014:

“1. We welcome the prospects for global economic growth to strengthen in 2014 but remain vigilant in the face of important global risks and vulnerabilities. We are determined to manage these risks and take actions to further strengthen the recovery, create jobs and improve medium-term growth prospects.

“2. We commit to working with our governments…”

Sounds like a politician running for office on an already failed platform – “prospects” will “strengthen” is still no road map and the rest is nothing but promises and ‘good intentions’ paving the road to a continuiing Hell on Earth.

Summary of the IMF Paper published on April 30, 2014

“This paper investigates the determinants of bank funding costs for a sample of internationally active banks from 2001–12. We find that changes in banks’ unsecured funding costs are associated with bank-specific characteristics such as an institution’s credit worthiness and the return on its market value, and importantly, on the level and quality of capital.

“Similarly, market factors such as the level of investor [gambler] risk appetite, as well as shocks to financial markets – notably the US subprime crisis (caused by American Bankers fraudulently ‘securitizating’ worthless subprime mortgages and selling them as Triple-A Securities under the eye of the Bush Administration

and the Euro Area sovereign (usurious) debt crisis – have also been key drivers of the sharp rise in bank funding costs. We also find evidence that large systemically important institutions have enjoyed a funding advantage, and that this advantage has risen since the onset of the two crises. With the exception of Euro Area periphery banks, by end-2012 the rise in funding costs had generally been reversed for most major banks as a result of improvements in bank asset quality as well as steps taken to increase resilience, notably higher capitalization.

“Our results suggest increased capital buffers may potentially support bank lending to the real economy by reducing bank funding costs.”

Sounds good, but what it’s saying is that usurious debt will continue to fund the banking cartel’s free supply of real wealth, created by the work of the middle classes.

Ancient Roman counterfeiters minted coins with half an ounce of pewter added to half an ounce of pure gold and passed them off as coins that normally contained one ounce of pure gold – they looked like the ‘real thing’ but it did not take a canny merchant very long to insist on two of those coins for their goods or services to make up the one ounce they normally charged.

Printing money adds ‘virtual pewter’ to the money supply and so the amount of money needed to buy the same thing goes up every year.

Since 1913, the FED’s “Dollar” has inflated some 97%, equivalent to adding around 1% ‘pewter’ to the money supply every year by printing more than the economy needs to function as a trading platform for goods and services.

What a dollar bought then costs just under $100 dollars today.

As far as I can determine the only real financial problem the world needs to overcome is the virtually ignored fact that the banking cartel has been in bed with government for four hundred years since what I call “the Tulip Mania demonstration” in Amsterdam – then the financial capitol of the world, – which showed another way of stealing money in addition to the ‘normal’ Usury and Foreclosure system which so undermined any government tax base in which it was practiced that money lenders were repeatedly removed from civil society when they thus clearly threatened the government – in both Rome in a.d.27 and the British Empire in the late1200s.

By the late 1500s the moneylenders were back but with a new ‘scam’, a thing called a stock exchange which gave “investors” aka gamblers, the chance to bet on future prices of basic commodities like corn, wheat, sorghum, pork belly and so on.

They left stock exchanges alone for over fifty years, time enough for them to become part of the financial paradigm of the time.

In my opinion, this was the opening act in a staged play called ‘Boom-Bust Capitalism” that relied on the stock exchange to periodically force huge numbers of middle-class people into foreclosure.

Stock markets can be and are manipulated, in spite of George Bisos’ advice, “bet on Fashions, not Trends”.

Tulip Mania was the first ‘Pump & Dump” op and thousands lost their fortunes when tulip market collapsed.

“What a good idea!” Is what I believe the crowned heads of Europe said when the money lenders offered them a share in the stolen wealth.

The Tulip Mania Theory is my own: Where today’s rulers came from and why are they all joined at the hip with bankers.

Today’s slow-motion financial ‘meltdown’ is modern history and all of that which I mention can be checked, challenged, researched and then wept over. Because it is the proof that this generation has been parted from its money once again, with the 50′s and 60′s Buy Now, Pay Later Credit-Driven Boom in between – business as usual.

It is history cast in four centuries of stolen wealth based on the experience learned from the earliest use of Usury:

On average, every forty-six years, for the last three hundred years (the lifespan of Capitalism), since the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in the second decade of the 1700s there has been a Boom followed by a commodity peak in the world’s stock markets, followed by a Bust, followed by a depression and the theft of a generation of middle class wealth through the ancient levers of usury and foreclosure.

The above statement is paraphrased from “The Great Reckoning” by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees- Mogg, published by Sidgwick & J ackson, in 1993).

Theft is my interpretation of their observation of the following six events because once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a Declaration of War.

Four times is the realization that the Declaration fell on the deaf ears of sleeping fools, five times is simple daylight rape and plunder of the same fools – the sixth time, this time, Grand Theft, Planet ^©, is perhaps hopefully, a history lesson finally learned?

There has been a nine-year gap between the Boom Peak and the Bust, between commodity peaks and market crashes over the last five generations. Add forty-six years to that (the average number of years between peak and crash) and you have a boom-bust cycle twice every hundred years or once every other a generation, meaning every other generation of working and middle-class citizens, for the last three hundred years has been thoroughly plucked:

• First Time: Commodity prices peaked in London in 1711 (two hundred years before Americas privately-owned Federar Reserve Bank came into the economic picture). The South Sea Bubble burst exactly nine years later in 1720.

Depression followed.

• Second time: Producer prices peaked in London in 1763. The London stock market crashed again in 1772 (nine years later).

Depression followed.

• Third time: Commodity prices peaked in London in 1816.The London stock market crashed in 1825 (nine years later).

Depression followed.

• Fourth time: Wholesale prices peaked in New York in 1864. A worldwide assets crash began in May 1873 (nine years later).

Depression followed.

• Fifth time: Then followed our beloved Great Depression in the 1930s, about which much has been said, from which, little learned.

• Sixth time: Commodity prices peaked some fifty years later in Tokyo, 1980. The Tokyo stock market crashed in 1989 (again, nine years later).

The depression following that crash is now upon us.

Look around you and do the math: The last depression is called The Great Depression.

I call this one ‘Grand Theft Planet’^©.

Given that our only scapegoat for this planetary theft other than Elliot Spitzer was Bernie Madoff, who uttered a guilty plea, was never tried in a court of law, the question, “where is the money?” never arose and there is every possibility that the American government will reimburse his victims.

If, however, Madoff were head of just another finance company that went belly up under the scrutiny of the American Security Exchange Commission’s (SEC), and was tried, it would be tough on his investors, but we might have found out where the money went. Perhaps that is why his guilty plea was accepted.

DID YOU KNOW THAT THE OFTEN-MENTIONED BRETTON WOODS SYSTEM COLLAPSED ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER IT WAS FORMED?

“A few years after the Bretton Woods system was devised, it collapsed and the major currencies shifted to a floating exchange rate regime. In addition, the growth in international capital markets facilitated borrowing by creditworthy governments. Both of these developments lessened the need for SDRs…” and put it off as the new global currency until now?

Sounds good.

But if a national government, like the early American Colonies and Germany between 1933 and 1937, issued their own interest-free paper money backed by either gold, silver or work, there would be no ‘government’ debt and the economy would be very strong, as is witnessed by the Colonial prosperity and in the fact that, from sleeping in the streets poverty in 1933, Germany became the most powerful economy in Europe in just four years, using government scrip “one Reichsmark for one hour of work”, and a free market system.

Nothing like that exists today except it places like Itheca. Bitcoins like the SDRs are neither a currency, nor a claim on the issuers.

The SDR interest rate provides the basis for calculating the interest charged to members on regular (non-concessional) IMF loans, the interest paid to members on their SDR holdings and charged on their SDR allocation, and the interest paid to members on a portion of their quota subscriptions. The SDR interest rate is determined weekly and is based on a weighted average of representative interest rates on short-term debt instruments in the money markets of the SDR basket currencies.”:

Basically, gambling on fiat ‘assets’ whose worth is determined by the House, the IMF, our current ‘benevolent’ rulers.

Usury of course, has been banned by every society throughout history because it ‘disrupts the Social Order” by eroding, the tax base of governments through the illegal and immoral writ of foreclosure,

Today the practitioners of Usury ARE the world’s government.

TACITUS, TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO

“Meanwhile a powerful host of accusers fell with sudden fury on the  class which systematically increased its wealth by usury in defiance

of a law passed by Caesar the Dictator defining the terms of lending money and of holding estates in Italy,a law long obsolete becausethe public good is sacrificed to private interest. The curse of usury,indeed of old standing in Rome and a most frequent cause of seditionand discord… was therefore repressed even in the early daysof a less corrupt morality. First, the Twelve Tables prohibited anyone from exacting more than 10 per cent., when, previously, the ratehad depended on the caprice of the wealthy. Subsequently, by a billbrought in by the tribunes, interest was reduced to half that amount,and finally compound interest was wholly forbidden. A check too wasput by several enactments of the people on evasions which, though continually put down, still, through strange artifices, reappeared.

On this occasion, however, Gracchus, the praetor, to whose jurisdiction
the inquiry had fallen, felt himself compelled by the number of persons
endangered to refer the matter to the Senate. In their dismay the
senators, not one of whom was free from similar guilt, threw themselves
on the emperor’s indulgence. He yielded, and a year and six months
were granted, within which every one was to settle his private accounts
conformably to the requirements of the law. 

Hence followed a scarcity of money, a great shock being given to all
credit, the current coin too, in consequence of the conviction of
so many persons and the sale of their property, being locked up in
the imperial treasury or the public exchequer. To meet this, the Senate
had directed that every creditor should have two-thirds his capital
secured on estates in Italy. Creditors however were suing for payment
in full, and it was not respectable for persons when sued to break
faith. So, at first, there were clamorous meetings and importunate
entreaties; then noisy applications to the praetor’s court. And the
very device intended as a remedy, the sale and purchase of estates,
proved the contrary, as the usurers had hoarded up all their money
for buying land. The facilities for selling were followed by a fall
of prices, and the deeper a man was in debt, the more reluctantly
did he part with his property, and many were utterly ruined. The destruction
of private wealth precipitated the fall of rank and reputation, till
at last the emperor interposed his aid by distributing throughout
the banks a hundred million sesterces, and allowing freedom to borrow
without interest for three years, provided the borrower gave security
to the State in land to double the amount. Credit was thus restored,
and gradually private lenders were found. The purchase too of estates
was not carried out according to the letter of the Senate’s decree,
rigour at the outset, as usual with such matters, becoming negligence.
in the end.”

The Annal of Tacitus
BOOK VI
A.D. 32-37

Sources:

The-Great-Reckoning-Protecting-Depression

world-bank-whistleblower-reveals-how-the-global-elite-rule-the-world

Ellen Brown rense.com

Monetary Reform Institute

whatreallyhappened.com Grand Theft, Planet 

(This photo on the cover of Grand Theft is my version of the New Capitol of the People’s United States of America…)

Please help with this. I will add incorporate relevant comments into the story in the coming week - Tom Dennen

“Mickey Mouse died in Viet Nam along with Mom, Pop and Apple Pie, but that’s not all, America’s moral high ground was stolen from its people – along with their honor, their sense of fair play and justice, virtue, the Pursuit of Happiness; their conscience and duty subjugated with Guantanamo torture; their loyalty, fidelity and trust – love, hope and dreams all stolen, replaced with poverty and fear; all trust in the Body Politic gone now in the wake of a global war for wealth.

“But the public consciousness has discovered and is examining the depth of the theft of not just monetary wealth, but the theft of those virtues the theft of their honor; a grand theft without any precedent in history; theft of the ownership of self through debt” – Grand Theft, Planet,