We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, March 20, 2015

Money as Debt

Click here to access this latest edition of his website which lists many of Paul Grignon's explanatory works on the subject of money. Grignon is a rugged individualist and iconoclast who has dedicated much of his life to understanding money. 

The subject of money and debts has long been obscured by people who benefit from people's ignorance: bankers and other financiers who make up the core decision-makers of capitalist societies. Their control of money as sovereign debt is a layer of activity superimposed on normal capitalist practices which exploit the labor of people and natural resources of our home, the planet Earth. They reap enormous benefits in terms of wealth and power from our ignorance of how money and debts are created.  

Bankers are not especially clever people, but they have learned over several millennia how to control the issuance of money and to have their money backed by the power of the state. They are then called central banks which is a bank owned by a consortium of banks and granted a monopoly by a government to issue its money. Major bankers have been able to achieve this feat and get away with it because they are the core part of any capitalist ruling class. They play a key role in what gets produced in any society, and of course, what gets produced is always the most profitable to them regardless of consequences to society. War is the most extreme example.

For more information to help you to understand money creation, I recommend two other sources. The first, called Wizards of Money [broken link--try this] is organized as a series of (audio) lessons designed by someone by the pseudonym of "Smithy". (Transcripts can also be accessed under the "Reference" column.) Smithy has degrees in mathematics and economics, and she works as a consultant calculating investment risk for financial institutions. For this reason, she can't reveal her real name. I also highly recommend a book entitled The Lost Science of Money by Stephen Zarlenga, but it is rather expensive. The latter book traces the 2000 years history of the development of money that has evolved into what we have today.