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 23, 2012

Magic Money the Government Makes

Click here to access article by Robert Oak from The Economic Populist.

I won't pretend that I understand all of this piece, but then that is a problem for most of the 99 Percent. The money system and the "financialization" of our economy has been so obscured behind many layers of secrecy and deceptions that few people understand how it really works. And that ignorance works against us. What is clear to me is the incestuous relationship that exists between the banksters and the government which has resulted in social-economic catastrophes and wars.

The title which refers to the government making money is part of the Fed's public relations effort to legitimatize the control by the Fed of the nation's money supply. They pay back to the US Treasury a small portion of the fabulous profits they make by loaning the US Treasury money the Fed creates on their computers. It's an irrational circular system that feeds the banking parasites who suck out much of the wealth created by the 99 Percent and keeps us in debt servitude forever. 

One must give them credit for creating such a brilliant scam! Of course, the current banksters didn't invent this system yesterday, they, as ruling classes or in close collaboration with ruling classes, have been working on it over more than 5000 years in class structured societies such as our own. (Read The Lost Science of Money by Zarlenga and Debt: The First 5,000 Years by Graeber, also an online series is helpful entitled "Wizards of Money".