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To: PieterCasparzen
If people in the private sector are allowed to create money, they have no need to earn money.

Anyone should be allowed to print money -- why not? Of course, the catch is getting other people to use it. But if they can do that and it becomes generally accepted as a means of trade, what's wrong with it?

Tell me just why government should have a monopoly on it? After all, if government is allowed to create money, it has no need to earn it.

111 posted on 12/26/2013 3:30:35 PM PST by BfloGuy ( Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.)
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To: BfloGuy

Some background:

The bare bones essential function of government is the military. It follows with the simplest and smallest of real or theoretical “nations”, for example, the early colonies in America. A shared defense of a community by that same community.

Of course, national defense in peacetime hardly seems worth it to many citizens. Though preparedness is the cheapest, in terms of both blood and treasure, in the long run, everyone won’t necessarily see this during peacetime and happily donate to the cause of national defense preparation. They get no immediate, direct and personal benefit from having to pay for such an operation, hence it’s an “overhead” cost. Of course, if the amount is miniscule, no one cares much, but as the amount becomes very large, it becomes burdensome.

Of course, today’s national defense preparation in America is far more costly that it would have to be if new world order had not engineered so much war in the last 200 years. But the US, like every nation, still would need some national defense even if there had not been any NWO meddling.

Perhaps the next “shared” cost government could legitimately incur - especially at the local level - would be transportation infrastructure. While we may not want to have to directly pay for the road in front of our house the first time it’s put in, we certainly do like a road in front of our house or business. Of course, it’s highly cumbersome to everyone else if I “own” the road in front of my house, operate it differently than my neighbor, etc. So I think most would agree that transportation can have some government involvement.

The point is, government should not be “earning” its money by providing products or services to citizens, since that is the domain of the private sector, and when the private sector operates businesses (as long as legitimate rights are observed as to making contracts and private property)... we see three wonderful resulting effects: 1) the profits from business operations results in an increase of wealth and 2) the profits allow for reasonable taxation and 3) there is employment and thus earnings for citizens that does NOT have to be paid for by taxing other citizens (i.e., the productive activities are self-funded by satisfied customers who buy products and services of their own volition.

Private money:

First, we need to differentiate from commodities, goods, accounts payable/receivable, etc., and money. Unless a bank account is set up as a 100% reserve account, meaning my cash is not loaned out, then my bank balance is not money, it’s a customer account the bank keeps to track what they owe me. With 100% reserve accounts, there is never any question that the bank has the cash on hand so all their depositors can withdraw the money in their cash accounts.

Time deposits, or debt instruments of various kinds, like a certificate of deposit (CD), on the other hand, do not give me rights to immediate full withdrawal without penalties. I can only get my principal and interest back in full if I wait until the time deposit matures. So CDs are not money, but debt instruments, i.e., a loan from me to the bank.

Now when we get to “private money issue”, folks often talk about the “money” being “backed” by something. This means that I could take the “money”, present to the entity who issued the “money”, and exchange it for whatever “backs” it - but NOT exchange it for other money.

In essence, the entity, say a bank, would need assets on their balance sheet with NO matching liability. Since Assets - Liabilities = Equity, that means that the bank could only issue as much money as they had equity on their books to be sure that they could redeem all the money they issued and not be insolvent.

There’s a problem, however. Since the redemption is done with something other than cash, say gold, or grapes, or some other commodity, first, the equity that was being held in reserve for redemptions would have to be held in gold or grapes, or whatever was “backing” the money. The business would also want cash on hand IN ADDITION to those commodities. This presents a problem for the financial performance of the issuing bank; it has to keep part of its assets tied up in this commodity, which then serves as a constraint on it’s business operations.

The big problem for everyone, however, is that the price of any commodity varies over time based on supply and demand.

If the value of money has a hard-link to the value of its redemption commodity, i.e., gold, grapes, etc., then the value of cash on hand changes with the value of the commodity.

Commercial transactions often occur over a period of time. Say a company buys a computer on June 12. The seller creates an invoice for, say $100,000 with the date of June 12 and sends a bill to the customer. 4 days later, the bill arrives at the customer and an accounts payable voucher is entered into their a/p system; this recognizes the $100k liability, but does not pay the bill. 4 weeks later, the computer is shipped and arrives at the customer site. It’s installed the customer signs for it on July 11. The customer’s accounts payable system then matches the receipt of the computer with the voucher and generates a check for $100k; the next morning, July 12, it’s mailed out to the vendor. The vendor receives the check 3 days later, it’s matched to the outstanding invoice and an offsetting accounting entry is created for the $100k invoice, which closes the invoice. It’s real straightforward.

Now, what if the customer paid their bill in Euros instead of Dollars, because the European subsidiary made the sale ?

Well, even though both accounting systems would have recorded everything in the local Euro currency, back in the US the holding company that owns the European subsidiary would need to translate the amounts to Dollars when they create their US financial statements. Suddenly, ouch. The amount billed would be translated to dollars based on the exchange rate on June 11. But the payment ..... would be translated based on the exchange rate on July 12. Probably a different exchange rate. It would look, in US dollars - like their was either a gain or loss on the sale due to currency translation !

Now what if our currency was backed by gold, or barrels of oil. The value of those things changes between June 11 and July 12 as well - the price of 1 oz of gold or 1 barrel of oil or one bushel of grapes varies over time based on how much the world is using and wanting at the moment and how much is sitting around at the moment.

Ergo, we discovered the concept of money. It does not need to be translated or redeemed for something. It can always be used to pay for things directly. We still have the issues related to multiple currencies, i.e., changing from one countries money to another, but if we stay within our own country and our own currency - every asset we own, every sale we make, every bill we pay - it’s all done in our local currency (dollars, etc.).

So let’s back it with debt...

Say somebody owes my business $100. I print up a $100 PieterC note. Can I go spend that ? Wait, my balance sheet was $1,000 Assets (including the $100 owed to me), $700 Liabilites, $300 Owner’s Equity. When I printed my $100 PCNote, I just added to my assets ! Without doing anything other than printing a note, I instantly had $1,100 Assets. Where’s the balancing credit ? I have no additional $100 Liability... I would then credit Owner’s Equity. I just created $100 out of nothing. But it’s “backed” by the $100 receivable I have that someone owes me. If you want to “redeem” your $100 PCNote, you can come give it to me - and I’ll give you the loan note that some schmuck owes me $100 on. Doesn’t sound like much backing, sounds like there would be tons of money out there that does not have the backing we think it does even though we say it’s “backed”. And even if that issue is somehow addressed, our private money is enabling people to print money instead of earning it.

So let’s remove the “backing” on private money... which of course still does not work.

Now, let’s see what happens if we let people or businesses create/print their own currency backed by nothing. Well, I’d go right out and buy the printers, inks, etc, and start printing - wouldn’t you ? I would therefore not be producing my goods and services. Why bother ? We have a license to print money ! Woo-hoo !

Government in the open

If only the government can print money, everyone, every business, every banker, every financial elite - everyone - will have to earn their money. Thus we have a basis for productivity.

If the government publishes accurately exactly how much money it creates, then everyone knows this figure. Too much or too little, if they start causing pain, can translate into political pressure.

Can there be lies and behind-the-scenes dealings, yes, but there is now.

We’re just racking up a future tax burden to pay back every Treasury bond - with interest - the government issues.

Unfortunately there is absolutely no answer that works well as long as the leadership of society is a bunch of criminal elitists that keep our government buried in debt which is “backed” by future taxes on productive citizens.


114 posted on 12/26/2013 5:13:16 PM PST by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves)
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