This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Founding Fathers' Vision of Prosperity Has Been Destroyed
The
Founding Fathers not only fought for liberty and justice, they also
fought for a sound economy and freedom from the tyranny of big banks:
"[It
was] the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on
the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English
and . . . the Revolutionary War."
- Benjamin Franklin
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."
- John Adams
“If
the American people ever allow the banks to control issuance of their
currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and
corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all
property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent
their fathers occupied”.
— Thomas Jefferson
"I believe that
banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing
armies...The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored
to the Government, to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson
“The
Founding Fathers of this great land had no difficulty whatsoever
understanding the agenda of bankers, and they frequently referred to
them and their kind as, quote, ‘friends of paper money. They hated the
Bank of England, in particular, and felt that even were we successful in
winning our independence from England and King George, we could never
truly be a nation of freemen, unless we had an honest money system. ”
-Peter Kershaw, author of the 1994 booklet “Economic Solutions”
As I noted last year:
Everyone
knows that the American colonists revolted largely because of taxation
without representation and related forms of oppression by the British.
See this and this.
But
- according to Benjamin Franklin and others in the thick of the action
- a little-known factor was actually the main reason for the
revolution.
To give some background on the issue, when Benjamin Franklin went to London in 1764, this is what he observed:
When
he arrived, he was surprised to find rampant unemployment and poverty
among the British working classes… Franklin was then asked how the
American colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor
houses. He reportedly replied:
“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.”
In 1764, the Bank of England used its
influence on Parliament to get a Currency Act passed that made it
illegal for any of the colonies to print their own money. The colonists
were forced to pay all future taxes to Britain in silver or gold.
Anyone lacking in those precious metals had to borrow them at interest
from the banks.
Only a year later, Franklin said, the streets
of the colonies were filled with unemployed beggars, just as they were
in England. The money supply had suddenly been reduced by half,
leaving insufficient funds to pay for the goods and services these
workers could have provided. He maintained that it was "the poverty
caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament
which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and . . . the
Revolutionary War." This, he said,
was the real reason for the Revolution: "the colonies would gladly
have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that
England took away from the colonies their money, which created
unemployment and dissatisfaction."(for more on the Currency Act, see this.)
Alexander Hamilton echoed similar sentiments:
Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary, said that paper money had
composed three-fourths of the total money supply before the American
Revolution. When the colonists could not issue their own currency, the
money supply had suddenly shrunk, leaving widespread unemployment,
hunger and poverty in its wake. Unlike the Great Depression of the
1930s, people in the 1770s were keenly aware of who was responsible for
their distress.As historian Alexander Del Mar wrote in 1895:
[T]he
creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary
assemblies...coming as they did upon the heels of the strenuous efforts
made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America [were] acts of
defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown that forgiveness was
thereafter impossible . . . [T]here was but one course for the crown
to pursue and that was to suppress and punish these acts of
rebellion...Thus the Bills of Credit of this era, which ignorance and
prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a
reckless financial policy were really the standards of the Revolution.
they were more than this: they were the Revolution itself!And British historian John Twells said the same thing:
The
British Parliament took away from America its representative money,
forbade any further issue of bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be
legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in coins ...
Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies . . . discontent
became desperation, and reached a point . . . when human nature rises up
and asserts itself.In fact, the Americans ignored the British ban on American currency, and:
"Succeeded
in financing a war against a major power, with virtually no 'hard'
currency of their own, without taxing the people."Indeed, the first act of the New Continental Congress was to issue its own paper scrip, popularly called the Continental.
Franklin
and Thomas Paine later praised the local currency as a "corner stone"
of the Revolution. And Franklin consistently wrote that the American
ability to create its own credit led to prosperity, as it allowed the
creation of ample credit, with low interest rates to borrowers, and no
interest to pay to private or foreign bankers .
Is this just ancient history?
No.
The
ability for America and the 50 states to create its own credit has
largely been lost to private bankers. The lion's share of new credit
creation is done by private banks, so - instead of being able to itself
create money without owing interest - the government owes unfathomable
trillions in interest to private banks.
America may have won the
Revolutionary War, but it has since lost one of the main things it
fought for: the freedom to create its own credit instead of having to beg for credit from private banks at a usurious cost.
As economic writer and attorney Ellen Brown has tried to teach to Obama, Schwarzenegger,
and anyone else who will listen, the way out of the economic crisis is
to stop paying interest to private banks for the creation of credit,
and to return to the system of government-issued credit used by the
Founding Fathers to create prosperity for the people and to gain
independence from their oppressors.
(And see this).
As I wrote in July:
The U.S. has become a a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, a banana republic, a socialist or fascist state ... which acts without the consent of the governed.
This essay focuses on economics, but - obviously - the other ideals of the Founding Fathers have been abandoned as well. See this and this, for example.
Note: If we can't implement public banking, let's at least return to a gold standard.
- advertisements -
They were able to do it then, because so very few people had gold or its equivalent dollar bills (due to deflation induced by over lending, sucking every bit of money out of the system) and the masses needed relief. Deflation due to debt again, will be the death of the fiat dollar itself one way or another. There is not a system that will work if it is abused.
The important thing is replacing the ponzi fiat scheme with the mega-banks running the world ...
I've been too busy to specifically read North's comments or Brown's replies, but I know Brown, and know that she is coming from good intention. Additionally, check out what Ellen Brown said about derivatives, attack on currencies, mbs and other issues YEARS ago. I have checked, and what she said checked out every time.
And now she's kick butt on the foreclosure gate issues.
Check out her work ... she's been proven right again and again and again on a myriad of issues.
Been following Brown for a while now. Seems pretty interesting. (and so does North Dakota)
http://jec.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=fb217c7f-0907-44b3-a3be-09949429d98c
Max Keiser is apparently scheduling a debate
http://maxkeiser.com/2010/10/09/gary-north-tell-max-keiser-to-set-the-day-all-i-ask-is-that-ellen-brown-be-there-to-defend-her-book-he-can-be-the-moderator-take-sides-do-whatever-he-wants-but-she-must-be-there/
I also have been following Brown, State OWNEDBanks (like BND), and also read the North take down (point-by-point) of Ellen Brown's fiat philosophy. From an Austrian perspective the State OWNED Bank under the FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, is just more poison in a different cup. However if combined with a Freedom in Currency Act, State OWNED BANKS start to make sense. The BND (currently the only operating State Owned Bank) requires all government business to be conducted through the BND and also offers a plethora of services and operations to the private Banks, including risk share, check clearing, currency FX, low interest loans to farmers and business, etc....
Critics of state owned banks point to the fact that they (BND) use the same ol' FRN fiat and operate under the banking laws. They are also insured by the state and therefore the taxpayer instead of the FDIC. This may be true, but the real benefit outweighs the bias against the fiat dollar. All profits from the bank and it's operations get plowed back into the General Fund of the State for programs and theoretically to offset taxes required. They can also play the fractional reserve game and "print money" (within the confies of the law and risk) in order to fund critical operations and projects via loans. William Black may have said it best with the title of his book: "The best way to rob a bank is to own one." Well perhaps the best way to leverage FED Fiat is to produce it yourself.
If State and the Federal Gooberment decriminalized currency exchange for foreign and local coinage, (http://www.dailypaul.com/node/118556)then local municipalities, counties and states could decide if and what "local currency" to recognize, thus not only providing the FRN fiat in the form of low interest loans, but also accepting defined, successful, or defacto coinage (gold and silver as defined by law) or even local bank scrip at par. Again profits from all transactions and services going back into the general fund.
http://www.banknd.nd.gov/about_BND/
I want to see a debate between Schiff and Hudson - that would be the ultimate Rumble in the Markets showdown.
Schiffs weakness is his eagerness to earn compound interest after a currency devaluation and leave no surplus for ANYBODY.
Hudsons is his confidence that increasing Labours consumption will drive wealth creation.
I feel if any fighter could grasp that the key lies with the utilities sector and its capitalisation then they could win the fight although to be fair I think Hudson is closer to that style while Schiff thinks you can have efficient production in a vacuum.
Plantations are never very productive units.
my problem with Schiff is that you must police if you are to avoid concentrated money interests taking over economy...as you note, a planation is no more productive than tyrannical central planning of USSR, both must be avoided and only way to avoid oligarchs, crony capitalism etc is to police and police should report to the people, not one or tow rich entities, the police should be democratic and apply law evenly. As GW says, founding principles, stop govt tyranny via democratic controls, checks and balances, but also make govt strong enough to stop next version of British elite depriving people of liberty. Govt was and can be again a portector of liberty. Schiff would rather have financial anarchy.
this 'debate' is much more simple for me. Decentralize, restore local government rights, eliminate the income tax, open up regional economies to competing currencies, and caveat emptor.
nobody says that we must place our money in publicly traded companies on the NYSE. if the NYSE cannot police the companies that list, then they will experience a boycott accordingly.
however, this government monopoly on force (tax enslavement) used to rescue fraudulent businesses is high treason. Printing money instead of protecting its supply (retroactive enslavement) is high treason. Even "fractional reserve" counterfeiting is high treason.
These practices should not simply end, but their enabling conspirators must be put to death for, you guessed it, HIGH TREASON against the American People. These are some of the greatest assaults upon individual liberty ever known to mankind.
Yes the Austrian solution of exponential contractual relationships is problematic as eventually through the laws of chance or design you will get a concentration of power in one sphere or another and then different dynamics begin to take over.
Earth moves! Someone who thinks he understands Austrian economics allows that it might possibly maybe have some flaw. Man Bites Dog!
Yeah....and here is the list:
Money
Energy
Housing
Credit
Food
The US Govt./Banks must be downsized in a big way....
There has to be a total remake of the system....
"RESET BUTTON" TIME !!!!!
They would have started shooting by now.
Nah, it couldn't be that simple, could it?
/sarc
But where would the banksters go?