*snicker*
A Liberal Think-tank
*/snicker*
a dead-ringer, for an "oxymoron"
Posted on 11/25/2010 9:06:54 PM PST by Pride_of_the_Bluegrass
Let me say that again. ALL MONEY COMES FROM DEBT (for those of us who suffered the most indoctrination by attending schools like Harvard, let's pause here for a moment so we can catch up to the rest of the class). This means in order for governments, businesses, and people to have the liquidity necessary to live, they must agree to sign over a claim on their assets to banks. As the banking system inflates over time passing out credit, which makes everyone feel good with more digits in their accounts, it gathers claims on all the assets in the system for its private capital holders. Admittedly, this is one way of facilitating development (good students would've figured out a better way had they not been stifled). But it's also the method for transferring everyone else's assets to the balance sheets of the capital holders behind the banks once deflation sets in.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
*snicker*
A Liberal Think-tank
*/snicker*
a dead-ringer, for an "oxymoron"
Yeah, like gold and silver coins? Horsepucky.
“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.
Ayn Rand
When I got to this segment, I pretty much figured out what was coming next and I just couldn't put off rearranging my sock drawer another second...
The author is writing about the world that is, not the world that was, or the world you imagine. In our world (in the USA and almost every other nation) gold and silver are merely commodities, not money. Our money is the DOLLAR which has NO linkage with gold or silver, or any other commodity.
Dollars *ARE* created as debt. That is the mechanism for creating money in our system.
You can read any good book about money and it will explain this. It is well explained in J.K. Gallbraith's "Money". It is also well explained in Griffith's "The Creature from Jekyll Island". It is well explained in Murray Rothbard's "The Case Against the Fed". These are men from vastly different backgounds, one liberal, one paleo-conservative, one libertarian. They probably don't agree on much, but they do agree that "money is debt".
So the author is not speaking horse-puckey, he is telling the truth about how the world really *is*.
Plunder Violates Ownership
I do not, as is often done, use the word in any vague, uncertain, approximate, or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptance — as expressing the idea opposite to that of property [wages, land, money, or whatever]. When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.
I say that this act is exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and everywhere. When the law itself commits this act that it is supposed to suppress, I say that plunder is still committed, and I add that from the point of view of society and welfare, this aggression against rights is even worse. In this case of legal plunder, however, the person who receives the benefits is not responsible for the act of plundering. The responsibility for this legal plunder rests with the law, the legislator, and society itself. Therein lies the political danger.
The Results of Legal Plunder
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
Frederic Bastiat
The guy is a kook. The comments section is infested with paranoids. Why did you choose to excerpt a paragraph in the middle of the piece that wasn’t on point with the thrust of the article? why not begin at the beginning?
It’s too bad no one cares. :(
Thanks for the post. I'm a simple minded guy so this is how I see it:
Two produces of wealth, say farmers, each need some of what the other grows,
so they swap good at an excepted rate of equivalency. So far everything is OK.
A third farmer wants to get into the trading, and exchange his crop for some of the other’s crop, so he says lets trade in a common medium to make trading easier amongst ourselves, so they choose pieces of gold as a common medium. Each farmer sells his crop to a “Farmers Market” in exchange for an amount of gold that they agree upon.
Now a city slicker comes along and says, hey carrying all that gold around is burdensome. I'll give you a debt note, saying that this paper ‘money’ is evidence that I owe you an $X.YZ amount of gold. Now the city slicker can't eat gold, so he comes up with a scheme. He sets up a bank, and says he will loan out ‘money’ at an interest rate, and furthermore, he gets the sheriff to agree that for every $X.YZ amount of money he has in actual gold, he can loan out Twice that amount, and collect interest on it too.
So now the banker doesn't have to grow anything, and he gets to eat better than anyone else, and has actually stolen real wealth via the debt instrument called money. The sheriff (The Law) is entirely to blame for this theft and fraud, but it allows the town to grow and prosper as long as not everyone demands that the ‘money’ be redeemed into the original gold!
Did I miss anything?
Robbery - The taking of money or goods in the possession of another, from his or her person or immediate presence, by force or intimidation
The definition of robbery could easily be applied to taxation. The creation of money or fractional banking we witness today is taxation. Those who think the government is moving to own everything are wrong. The banks will own everything and they already own our government. They are positioning themselves to own the world.
My rant aside, thanks for posting Bastiat. I need to read him again.
The only thing you missed by today’s standard is that banks can loan 10 dollars for every dollar they actually possess. I think that is the fractional banking standard we operate under but anyone else feel free to correct me.
Biggest heist in history when banks originate a loan, make a profit, executives get bonuses, package the loans as investment instruments, sell to investors and pension funds, make a profit, get bonuses, and the actual loan or note (risk) ends up belonging to “we the people” (aka Gov’t) through the formation of GSE’s (Fred/Fannie) and bailouts. Bailouts come, big banks buy smaller banks at pennies on the dollar, public is outraged but the dust settles...... executives get bonuses.
Certainly simplistic but did I miss anything? I probably should have added banks paying career politicians in there somewhere.
All wealth is created through work.
Money isn’t the same thing as wealth. :)
A man should be concerned about acquiring wealth and not money...
“I probably should have added banks paying career politicians in there somewhere.”
Yes, since that is the principle problem. If banks had to compete for depositors on the basis of who secure they were, we’d see higher reserve rates and safer investments.
But because they are covered by the FDIC, they have no incentive to compete on security, are free (and in fact forced by market competition) to make riskier and riskier investments, and can get great competitive advantage over rivals by having the right politician in their pocket.
” ... I probably should have added banks paying career politicians in there somewhere ... “
Yep, Bribes are a key component in this scheme. I believe the fractional banking ratio is now in the 16 to 1 range.
So now the banker doesn't have to grow anything, and he gets to eat better than anyone else, and has actually stolen real wealth via the debt instrument called money.
Add in state sanctioned instruments - bonds, derivatives of derivatives mortgage-backed securites and derivatives of derivatives of derivatives credit-default-swaps and create more federal reserve notes and treasuries to play and "pay" off each other for this unaccountable mess and sooner or later you destroy a medium of exchange...a country.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Finance socialism? State socialism? We're all socialists now?
It's unforunate when someone shouts their ignorance at the top of the lungs.
Let me school this fool: First came barter - I'll trade you these colorful shells for arrowheads. Over the millennia, one most acceptable trade item emerged. Most places, this turned out to be gold. Gold had some properties that made it the most desired thing: it's divisible, you trade in infinite increments to fine tune down to the exact gram.
Gold is portable and gold is a store of value and it is uniform. It doesn't deteriorate.
Gold became a medium of exchange. So, rather than trade shells for arrowheads, you'd trade shells for gold, then use gold to buy arrowheads. A medium of exchange.
Paper money arose, when goldsmiths would give receipts to the owners of gold, that they were storing at the goldsmiths. People then traded the paper receipts.
So far, so good, as long as the goldsmiths (banks) did not abuse their position and start handing out more receipts for gold than they had on hand. But that's what they did, especially after the governments got involved.
What we have today is legalized fraud. The banks are allowed, indeed encouraged to lend more money than they have on deposit. Now, if you or I tried that, we'd be arrested for fraud. Banks have a get out of jail free card to do this. The government calls it 'ensuring liquidity', 'stimulating the economy' or some such other magic words.
This is the poison at the heart of our financial system. And having Ron Paul as head of the banking committee is going to be fun and educational.
The author is not ignorant. Your description of the origin of money is interesting, but not accurate as far as how things work today. Today money (dollars) are created by banks when making loans. Money is created as debt. If you don’t understand that basic fact about our system you have no cause to be calling other people ignorant. It is you who needs more education.
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