Money News

The world is now 188 trillion dollars in debt, and that number continues to grow rapidly each year. It is a form of enslavement that is deeply insidious, because most of those living on the planet do not even understand how the system works, and even if they did most of them would have absolutely no hope of ever getting free from it.

The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the global financial system is designed to funnel as much wealth to the top 0.1% as possible.

Of course throughout human history there has always been slavery, and the primary motivation for having slaves is to extract an economic benefit from those that are enslaved. And even though most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as “slaves” today, the truth is that the global elite are extracting more wealth from all of us than ever before...

Close on the heels of the Public Banking Act being signed into law last week, LA City Council President Herb Wesson announced he will be introducing a motion within the week to hire a banking expert to draft a comprehensive plan for a public bank for the City.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Francisco was also pushing ahead with plans for a city-owned bank.

Public banking is banking operated in the public interest, through institutions owned by the people through their representative governments. Public banks can exist at all levels, from local to state to national or even international. Any governmental body which can meet local banking requirements may, theoretically, create such a financial institution. 

Public banking is distinguished from private banking in that its mandate begins with the public’s interest. Privately-owned banks, by contrast, have shareholders who generally seek short-term profits as their highest priority. Public banks are able to reduce taxes within their jurisdictions, because their profits are returned to the general fund of the public entity. The costs of public projects undertaken by governmental bodies are also greatly reduced, because public banks do not need to charge interest to themselves. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of such projects, on average, by 50%. 

https://www.publicbankinginstitute.org 

When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week, commentators were asking why. According to official data, the economy was rebounding, unemployment was below 4% and gross domestic product growth was above 3%. If anything, by the Fed’s own reasoning, it should have been raising rates. 

Market pundits explained that we’re in a trade war and a currency war. Other central banks were cutting their rates, and the Fed had to follow suit in order to prevent the dollar from becoming overvalued relative to other currencies.

...

We cannot win a currency war through the use of competitive currency devaluations that trigger a “race to the bottom,” and we cannot win a trade war by installing competitive trade barriers that simply cut us off from the benefits of cooperative trade. More favorable to our interests and values than warring with our trading partners would be to cooperate in sharing solutions, including banking and credit solutions. The Chinese have proven the effectiveness of their public banking system in supporting their industries and their workers. Rather than seeing it as an existential threat, we could thank them for test-driving the model and take a spin in it ourselves.

Why a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 per month as proposed by Andrew Yang as the “Freedom Dividend” would be the most progressive policy achievement in the history of the United States. 

The Freedom Dividend as proposed is an unconditional cash transfer of $1,000 per month that would go to every American citizen age 18 and up. The dividend is unconditional in that it carries no requirements, including any of the typical work requirements imposed on standard benefits.

Unemployed? You get it.

Do you have to prove you’re looking for a job? No.

Do you have to attend any classes? No.

Employed? You get it in addition to your paycheck.

Can you spend it on anything? Yes. It’s cash.

You are free to use it in any way you want, to buy anything you want.

Money constrains our choices of technology in the direction of death and destruction. We need to change how we view money to change our technologies.

If you've ever wondered why the world seems hopelessly fraught with endless conflict, ruled corrupt states, and bent on developing a never-ending supply of advanced weaponry, you'd need to understand the nature of our debt based economy.

Katherine Austin Fitts says "planet earth is a real estate investment trust because we’re paying a dividend some place every year, and I don’t know where it’s going... it is possible that planet earth engaged in some type of trade with extra-terrestrials."

Looking at global debt as a transaction between the planet and some other ET force makes a good bit of sense, as it definitely does not make sense for the human race to enslave itself to itself with such an insane system. 

Read the whole article by following the linked headline...

Italy’s ruling populists pushed ahead this week with efforts to seize control of the central bank and its gold reserves.

“We need a change of course at the Bank of Italy if we think about what happened in the last years,” said Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, leader of the 5 Star Movement... 

“The gold belongs to the Italians, not to the bankers,” said Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, a far-right opposition party that supports both bills. “We are ready to battle everywhere in Italy and to bring Italians to the streets if necessary.”

A universal basic income could shift our economy from an ownership to an access-based model. 

Let us stop and imagine for a moment what we might do if we no longer had to work in order to meet our basic needs.

In the present system, we are all burdened with the stress that comes with knowing that failure to earn a living could result in social isolation, the worst punishment possible for a social being. Imagine the psychological shift in knowing that no matter what happened, you would have a roof over your head and food to eat without having to give anyone any of your time.

How would not having to work to survive change your day to day life? What might you do instead?

A UBI has the potential to unleash unimaginable amounts of human time, energy, creativity, and passion that has the potential to radically transform society.

Instead of everyone attempting to attain the same unattainable “dream” sold to us by the advertising industry, people would have the means to pursue their own unique dreams, or just focus on the quality of time they are able to give to their relationships with their family, friends, and community.

Ronald Bernard Ex-Elite Banker (finance expert) Speaks Out ... exposes the Financial Industry and the power of the Elites. This is the full interview with English audio and subtitles. 

Ronald Bernard gives an insight into the ugly world of international finance, the world that most of us have no idea exists. Through his work in the world of high finance, he came to know the satanic controllers of our society... 

When it was time to participate in satanic sacrifices, he got out of that world and he's telling now.

1. Stability of the value of any asset holdings is systematically precluded. 

2. Asset value can only increase or decrease. 

3. The probability of decreasing asset value is systematically made greater than that of increasing it NO MATTER HOW RICH YOU ARE.

• We are entering a new era in which the current way we run our economy won’t work.
  
  
• In this new era, our economy must do two things it doesn’t do now: operate in harmony with nature and provide adequate income for all. 
  
  
• The best way to achieve these goals—that is, the way that requires the least involvement of government—is to “propertize” some common wealth and share the income from that wealth equally. (I’ll explain what I mean by ‘propertize’ in a minute.)
  
  

Why is this important? It’s important because if we do what I’m proposing, we can have a market economy that does what a 21st century economy needs to do. We can have a market that works for all, including our shrinking middle class, nature, and future generations.

We can have the kind of locally rooted economies that many of you are working to build in the Berkshires and elsewhere—economies that will flourish once the global corporate economy is made to pay the costs of using common wealth—costs that it’s not paying today.

To get from here to there, the key is to think differently about the wealth we own together, and to organize that wealth in new ways...

The gathering of world leaders in France this week offers an opportunity to address the existential issues of our time.

Within many of the G7 countries, affluence is not breeding happy and healthy societies but lonely and anxious ones. The global balance of power is shifting from nation states to multinational corporations, threatening the very democratic principles that bind the G7 countries. Meanwhile, the rapid rate of biodiversity loss and climate change threaten our very existence. 

These existential issues cannot be solved by any single country alone. They are a product of a global economic system that desperately needs to be reformed. The G7 countries represent over half of global economic wealth and still have the power to change this system. Tinkering with exchange rates and select tax policies will not cut it. 

We need our leaders to be brave at this critical juncture in history when the world is splintering, and to realize there is far more that binds us than divides us. 

My new paper, published today by The Wellbeing Economy Alliance, offers 7 Ideas for the G7 in the spirit of hope and a belief that a more just and sustainable economy is not only possible, but a few strategic decisions away...

Read whole article here:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/seven-ideas-g7/ 

Technology is not the solution because our way of life is wrapped around a global business model that legally allows corporate persons with no greater god than growth to keep extracting our value. 

Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, has painstakingly explained how ‘Corporations are people’ is built on an incredible 19th century lie but today, our man-made world is legally more tailored for corporate persons (business entities) than human beings. 

With no higher god than growth, business entities then pay the least possible to make as much profit as possible for their key owners. With technology, they have been able to gradually monetize-to-own the four main economic finite resources for production: 

• Land or naturally occurring resources like forests or minerals 
• Labor or all forms of human input
  
  
• Capital or inputs into production like factories and machines
  
  
• Entrepreneurship, the human resources that take risks and innovate to bring together land, labor and capital to secure production.
  
  

It’s how they maximize profits, outsourcing their risks while extracting to reap all the (financial) benefits.

Facebook's "Libra" is not just an attempt to corner the global online payments market—it is a direct challenge to the authority of nation-states. 

The Libra is intended to be a unified global payment processor and optionally-pseudonymous cryptocurrency, backed by real assets and supported by some of the world’s best companies, that can be used by any company or individual that has access to a Facebook account—in short, it is the future of money. 

To help oversee, design, launch, and manage the Libra, Facebook is putting together a Switzerland-based governing association composed of a consortium of partner organizations. The list of founding members alone is impressive: it includes Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Stripe, eBay, Uber, Spotify, Vodafone, and many more...

Evo Morales has been highlighting his government's independence from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has been highlighting his government’s independence from international money lending organizations and their detrimental impact the nation, the Telesur TV reported. 

“A day like today in 1944 ended Bretton Woods Economic Conference (USA), in which the IMF and WB were established,” Morales tweeted. “These organizations dictated the economic fate of Bolivia and the world. Today we can say that we have total independence of them.” 

Morales has said Bolivia’s past dependence on the agencies was so great that the International Monetary Fund had an office in government headquarters and even participated in their meetings...

A two-year universal basic income study in Finland concluded that in 2017, those who received payments worked the same amount and were healthier overall.

Could it be so that it is a badly-constructed monetary system that is holding humanity back in its shared project of peace on Earth? Or at least this miss-construction is not doing us any good?

Marc Gauvin, money theoretician and author of two websites Money Transparency and Bibo Currency offers some interesting angles on money as a system. In recent correspondence, he suggested that the money system itself impacts peace negatively, but the system could be adapted to be a peace-promoting tool for humanity.

“The 2008 financial crisis was the consequence of a loosely regulated banking system in which power was concentrated in the hands of too limited a cast of speculators,” Nomi Prins tell me. “And after the crisis, the way the US government and the Federal Reserve dealt with this corrupt and criminal banking system was to give them a subsidy.” 

Such strong, withering analysis is, perhaps, unexpected from someone who has held senior roles at Wall Street finance houses such as Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. But Prins is no ordinary former banker.

The US author and journalist left the financial services industry in 2001. She did so, in her own words, “partly because life was too short”, and “partly out of disgust at how citizens everywhere had become collateral damage, and later hostages, to the banking system”. 

Since then, Prins has chronicled the closed and often confusing world of high finance through the 2008 crisis and beyond. Her writing combines deep insider knowledge with on-the-ground reporting with sharp, searing prose. Alongside countless articles for New York Times, Forbes and Fortune, she has produced six books – including Collusion: how central bankers rigged the world, which has just been published. 

Her main target in the new work is “quantitative easing” – described by Prins as “a conjuring trick” in which “a central bank manufactures electronic money, then injects it into private banks and financial markets”. Over the last decade, she tells me when we meet in London, “under the guise of QE, central bankers have massively overstepped their traditional mandates, directing the flow of epic sums of fabricated money, without any checks or balances, towards the private banking sector”. 

You can read the whole article here...

Last year President Morales kicked Rothschild banks out of Bolivia. Now, with "total independence" gained, the country is thriving. 

Morales said Bolivia’s past dependence on the Rothschild controlled agencies was so great that the International Monetary Fund had an office in Bolivian government headquarters and even participated in their meetings. 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and US-dominated World Bank have been major players in the global economic landscape ever since their creation in 1944. These international banking organizations, which are privately controlled by the notorious Rothschild banking family, first pressure nations to deregulate their financial sector, allowing private banks to loot their economies. 

Once the governments are forced to bail-out their deregulated financial sector, the IMF or World Bank sets up a loan package written in secret by central bankers and finance ministers that undermine their national sovereignty and force them to adopt policies of austerity that harm workers, families, and the environment...

Hawaii state representative Chris Lee wrote a Reddit post about House Concurrent Resolution 89, a bill he says he introduced in order to “start a conversation about our future.” According to Lee, “After much work and with the help of a few key colleagues, it passed both houses of the State Legislature unanimously.” 

The bill has two major provisions. First, it declares that all families in Hawaii are entitled to basic financial security. “As far as I’m told, it’s the first time any state has made such a pronouncement,” wrote Lee. The second provision establishes a number of government offices “to analyze our state’s economy and find ways to ensure all families have basic financial security, including an evaluation of different forms of a full or partial universal basic income.”