Pakistan, my fatherland, I weep for thee

Add comment October 22nd, 2007

By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring

On the worst carnage in Pakistan’s history in which close to eight hundred innocent people were killed and maimed.

Today I weep for this blood-smeared mournful land that you have become, marooned in the blazing desert, torn and tormented, plundered and ravaged, disfigured by the scars of myriad wounds, tears dropping from your dolorous, longing eyes. Today I weep for thee.

Today my grief is a sea–a fathomless, boundless sea. In this dark expanse drifts my soul…aimless, doleful and in mortal pain. Today I weep, unreservedly, unashamedly and in gushing torrents for Pakistan my fatherland. Today I weep for thee.

Today I weep with grief for Pakistan of flowering fields and blooming orchards, that wondrous land of jasmines and daffodils in freshest blossom, of tall snow capped mountains with rose fragrant valleys. I weep at your slow death at the hands of boisterous evil. I weep at your bloodied countenance and contorted face. Today I weep.

Today I weep for the demons of extremism that are stalking your splendid fields and farms. I weep for none can see that these monsters come clothed as messiahs bearing gifts steeped in poison. Nurtured on a diet of hate, these are now out of control. Rejuvenating in each bloodbath, they are consuming innocent humans at will. And while these demons have taken our nation on a guided tour of hell, the good men continue to wallow in their deafening silence. Today I weep.

Today I weep for the hapless victims. I weep for the unsung songs of the dead, for their unlived lives, for their untold stories. I weep for the loss of innocent souls whom no amount of crying or wailing can now bring back. I weep for scores of disabled whose limbs were torn asunder and will now hobble on ugly crutches through the rest of their miserable existences. Today I weep as I gaze upon your once promising past and then the present full of pain and then again upon the ominous unknown towards which you are headed. Today I weep as I find myself unable to soar above this dark abyss, weighted down with the mute silence of my good countrymen as I am. Today I weep.

Today I weep for this blood-smeared mournful land that you have become, marooned in the blazing desert, torn and tormented, plundered and ravaged, disfigured by the scars of myriad wounds, tears dropping from your dolorous, longing eyes. Today I weep.

Today I weep in the full knowledge that in vain are my bitter tears. In vain and useless because man the man-eating beast is on rampage in your bosom in the name of God while my good countrymen sit in meek acquiescence to the evil sermonizing from the pulpit. With their heads bowed, they listen to bigotry, intolerance and oppression spewed out in the name of God. Today I weep.

Today I weep for even as these lines are being written, somewhere at the fringes of humanity, in some dark recesses devoid of fresh air and sunlight, ominous creatures huddle together planning more massacre as the good men sway in trance to the bellowing from the pulpit. Today I weep.

Today I weep at the festering wounds in your body the gangrene in which is alive and spreading fast. Today I weep because your sons who could cure these boils with air and light now sit cowering in fear in their homes hoping that time somehow will pass healing all your injuries. I weep for they fail to realize that the time to break out of our collective apathy and lead the nation from its present state of gloom and despair is now or never. Today I weep.

Today I weep because my countrymen think that their religion is just about prayers and worship. I weep for they forget that a significant portion of their Book deals with purification of self, interaction with others, knowledge of the universe and what is contained therein. I weep because they do not see that while they are busy loathing the West, the West is busy conquering the same universe, solving its riddles, harnessing the nature for the benefit of mankind and finding that time is their only competitor. I weep because my countrymen counter the West by suicide bombing, beheading of innocent human beings, issuing Fatwas to that effect, continuing to pray for Divine intervention and by hating the whole West for the stupidity of just a few of their leaders. I weep because nobody seems to care that the only, repeat only, way to walk tall and strong in the comity of nations is to come at par with the West in education, technology and economy. Today I weep.

Today I weep for the once wonderful madarasah that was supposed to be a bastion of knowledge and a guiding light to the world where every order of learning from mathematics to science, from medicine to astronomy, from philosophy to jurisprudence were taught, where great Muslim luminaries such as Al-Beruni, Ibn-e-Sina and Ibn-e-Khuldoon produced timeless works is now being used to mislead innocent Muslims by promoting intolerance, hatred and violence. I weep because from its podium and the pulpit, the so called clerics are inciting adherents to kill innocent people, while singing sweet lullabies of their marvelous past. I weep because we are told to keep hugging past glories to our chests and remain prostate in prayers waiting for a Saladin to appear and restore us to our rightful destiny. Today I weep.

Today I weep for the horrendous indifference of the good people, for the hush, impotence and disappearance of moderate voices from across the national scene. Today I weep over the past three decades that have seen Pakistan navigating a course strewn with blood, bones, and bodies of innocent victims. I weep for I have witnessed firsthand -the whole nation slowly caging itself into an obscenity of horror, pushed by the hands of decent men who remain quiet when they should speak. Today I weep.

Today I weep, O country mine, for each new pain the beasts inflict upon you. My breast is torn again and again as you reel from the countless wounds inflicted by the savage hordes. I weep in the sure knowledge that neither God nor fate had destined you to become this vale of sorrow and anguish that you have now become. I weep for I cannot see any time soon that dawn will rise and put an end to your murk and gloom. Not unless we the silent ones arise from our slumber and pour sunshine into your stricken heart that you may burnish with new light, my Fatherland. And that I do not see. Today I weep.

Today I weep for I see nary an effort to get up and start carving tunnels of hope though the dark mountains of despondency and disillusionment that we have allowed coming up all around us by remaining a silent majority. I weep because the dark clouds and the deep fog of extremism now engulf our communities from all around. I weep for I cannot see any where on the horizons the radiant stars of happiness, harmony and prosperity that should have been shining by now over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. Today I weep.

Today I weep for the thousands that have paid for our apathy with their lives and the thousands more that surely will because we continue to remain silent. I weep for this harvest of hate season after season. I weep for our failure to face squarely the extremists who sell their dark dogmas as superior to enlightened reason. I weep for my countrymen who fail to see through the naked, twisted, mindless logic of the bigot. I weep at the silence of the good men who have brought this about. I weep at the impotent look in their dead eyes as they gaze on at the slowly erecting sorrowful tomb of Pakistani nation. I weep at their terror-stricken question that they ask each other in hushed tones….what happened to Pakistan?

YOU happened to Pakistan.

Pakistan, I weep for thee.

Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain

If I were a tank, men would bite dogs

Add comment October 8th, 2007

By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
There are main battle tanks, there are fish tanks and there are simple water tanks. Then there are ‘Think Tanks’.

Odd as it may seem, Think Tanks are tanks that think. And just as when a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news, their ‘thinking’, whenever they do that, makes it straight to the main stream media. Ours, on the other hand, remains confined to free google blogspots.

So when in a recent study, the Oxford Research Group Think Tank said the “war on terror” has been a disaster, it was a man biting the dog but when we poor bloggers cried ourselves hoarse to, “bring out the nails to hammer into the coffin of the Empire dream because the Empire seekers tried to defeat with brawn what should have been conquered with brain”, it was a dog biting the man.

When the Tank warns against attacking Iran it was a man biting the dog but when we said, “America’s invasion of Iran may finally prove to be that last straw on the camel’s back in the unraveling of that great country a la the Soviet break-up post Afghanistan invasion” and that “it is not wise to deliberately alienate 1.3 billion Muslims and act as lackey for the miniscule Zionists who are the only ones to benefit from the Iran misadventure while the Americans will foot the bill and take the brunt of Muslims’ wrath” it was a dog biting the man.

When the Tank asks for major changes to West’s military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan because the two places had become jihadist training grounds, it was a man biting the dog but when we said, ” from Sudan to Pakistan and beyond, the ranks of America haters now stand swollen like never before. The recruiters for suicide brigades now drool non-stop with glee at the long cues of raging applicants outside their murky caves”, it was a dog biting the man.

When the Tank said,” every aspect of the so-called war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan has been counterproductive” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” for the time being however, riding on the wings of terra, the Americans are being sleep marched into history’s hall of shame. But when they do finally wake up, they are sure to ask themselves, in a deafening global chorus of error, error, error, the fateful question, ‘What have we done?’ ” it was a dog biting the man.

When the Tank said that “From the loss of civilian life through to mass detentions without trial, in short, it has been a disaster,” it was a man biting the dog but when we said way back in March,” post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq now totals 1 million” and, ” when Bush hastily declared mission accomplished, he stated that “Saddam’s torture chambers are closed.” He did not tell the world that he had already opened his own…the first one at Bagram” it was a dog biting the man.

When the Tank talked of secret detentions and renditions, it was a man biting the dog, but when we said, “America’s torture trail at the present weaves across the globe. America has now become the biggest patron of torture by proxy in the history of planet earth” it was dog biting the man.

When the Tank said,” Western countries simply have to face up to the dangerous mistakes of the past six years and recognize the need for new policies” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” That this bloody US occupation practically guarantees that Americans and their sidekicks will continue to be targets of violence wherever and whenever possible and that the soon-to-come Iran misadventure is most likely to swell the ranks of these very ‘terrorists’ like never before” it was a dog biting the man.

When the Tank said,” Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region” it was a man biting the dog but when we said that there is a,” likelihood of hundreds of thousands of Taliban types who will come screaming banshee-like down the surrounding mountains to take revenge on our unfortunate troops bogged down in Iran” it was a dog biting the man.

When the Tank wants the West to take heed, the main stream media sits up and takes notice because it is a man biting a dog but when we shrieked from the rooftops for years that America has to realize, “that many other empires have had their day in the sun as superpowers before which others trembled. But today their crumbling ruins stand witnesses in mute silence to the fact that none were sovereign over the kingdoms of men for infinite times. All came to sad, inglorious ends” it was a dog biting the man.

If I were a Tank, every time I would think, men would bite dogs.

Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain

Burma: The Back Story

1 comment October 4th, 2007

By Rowan Wolf

The current protests in Burma are attributed to a 500% increase in fuel prices which crippled an already struggling population’s ability to survive (BBC). The people of Burma have been descending into deeper and deeper poverty over the last decade. According to Jonathan Head, author of the BBC article, the people of Burma spend an average of 70% of their income on food. The dramatic increase in fuel prices on August 15, 2007 was too much to bear.

It appears that the government of Burma (Myanmar) were reacting to a “suggestion” by the International Monetary Fund, that they needed to phase out the state subsidizing of oil prices. Myanmar is a member nation of the IMF. This makes one wonder at the seeming naivity of this statement by Head:

Like so many decisions made by the reclusive generals, the sudden hike in fuel prices is hard to fathom.

The IMF had advised weaning the population off subsidised fuel, because with rising world oil prices it was becoming an unsustainable burden for Burma, which although rich in natural gas, relies on imports for almost all of its refined petrol and diesel.

But it is unlikely the IMF would have supported such a dramatic, and unannounced price rise.

The IMF indicated in 1998 that Myanmar was an HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Country). That debt was to the World Bank. The current information on Myanmar at the World Bank site states:

The World Bank has approved no new lending for Myanmar since 1987, and has no plans to resume its program. The country is currently in arrears to the World Bank, and has failed to enact economic and other reforms.

Myanmar remains a member of the World Bank. The World Bank continues to track data about the country and also remains in contact with the United Nations and other development partners regarding Myanmar. And the Bank also accompanies officials from the International Monetary Fund on their annual visits to assess the country’s economic situation.

In 1998, then Junta Finance Minister for Myanmar reported to the IMF on the governments efforts to apparently meet the demands of structural adjustment reforms to acquire aid from both the IMF and the World Bank:

Let me now touch on some features of Myanmar’s economic development. Since the latter part of 1988, streamlining of foreign trade procedures and liberalization of both internal and external trade had been introduced. Foreign investors are allowed to invest in Myanmar and foreign bankers are permitted to open their representative offices. Myanmar has been participating in regional cooperation programmes and cooperating with both developed and developing countries for its technological advancement. Rural and border areas development activities are being implemented to alleviate poverty and also to reduce gaps in differences between rural and urban populations.

…

Myanmar is the land with rich natural resources to be tapped for development purposes. Unfortunately, multilateral financial assistance to Myanmar have been unfairly suspended since 1988. Myanmar has been a legitimate member of the Bank and the Fund since 1952. As a legitimate member, Myanmar is fully eligible for the Bank’s development assistance. However, the Bank has neglected Myanmar’s development efforts and it has failed to assist Myanmar for the past eleven years. However, we have cooperated with the Bank and the Fund and we have been servicing our outstanding payments to the Bank regularly, up to the end of 1997.

In 2003, further economic sanctions were placed on the country, and were protested by Major General Hla Tun - Governor for the Bank of Myanmar. Each year, Mayanmar has reported to the IMF its step by step progress towards the “adjustments” apparently being demanded by the World Bank and the IMF, and has made a plea for economic support. Since the same plea is repeated year after yer (up through 2006), The IMF and World Bank have refused to raise restrictions on lending, or easing the debt burden of Burma.

This is not to excuse the brutality and repression of the Junta government of Burma. However, it is important to acknowledge that the economic situation in Burma is not due simply to the “chronic mismanagement” of the government which is one of the primary issues pointed to by Jonathan Head.

There is of course another aspect of the story. In the process of its structural adjustment, a few in the Junta have pocketed significant amounts of money. The business deals and corruption have siphoned off significant amounts of the wealth of Burma. The elite lives in opulence; the government sequestered itself deep in the forests establishing a new capital. The details of corporations involved are discussed in a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled “Burma: Foreign Investment Finances Regime.”

According to HRW, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), allocates only a fraction of the available resources to social programs (for example health and education). This is consistent with the typical structural adjustment program regime which requires significant decreases in spending on social infrastructure - though HRW does not discuss this. Also typical of structural adjustment, massive amounts of the economic resources have been redirected to the military. It is estimated that 50% of the Burma’s funds are designated for the military.

Burma has significant natural gas reserves which have created strong trade relations with both India and China, and there are significant hardwood exports to China as well. This gives China and India (among others) some degree of influence with the Junta. However, it is also likely that the Junta elite are directly beneffiting from these relationships. Whether China and India would do more than “request” the Junta back away from its brutal repression is questionable. After all, their agreements are with the current government. It is not surprising given the dramatically increasing demand for natural gas to fuel the growth in China and India, they (and Russia) have been very active in helping finance the development of Burma’s natural gas reserves. Also involved have been major petrochemical companies. According to HRW:

At present the SPDC receives the bulk of its gas money from the onshore “Yadana” and “Yetagun” gas fields. The Yadana consortium is led by Total of France and includes UNOCAL (now Chevron) of the United States and Thailand’s state-controlled PTT Exploration and Production Co Ltd (PTTEP). The Yetagun consortium, led by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas, includes Japan’s Nippon Oil as well as PTTEP. PTTEP, a subsidiary of the largely state-owned PTT Public Co Ltd (PTT) of Thailand, buys the gas for export to Thailand.

Major offshore natural gas projects are under development. A consortium of South Korean and Indian firms, in partnership with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, has made a large gas find off the coast of Arakan State in western Burma. Known as the “Shwe” gas project, it is expected to produce massive revenues once it is in production. Estimates of the gas yield of the Shwe deposits range between US$37 to US$52 billion, and could lead to a total gain in revenues to the junta or future Burmese governments of US$12 to US$17 billion over 20 years.

The Shwe gas consortium is composed of the South Korean company Daewoo International, state-owned companies from India and South Korea, and the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise. Some of the foreign partners also have separate deals with the Burmese government entity for other concessions.

On September 24, for example, India’s state-controlled Oil and Natural Gas Co (ONGC), whose subsidiary ONGC Videsh is a partner in the Shwe consortium, signed a deal with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise to explore for gas in three more offshore blocks. Under the deal, Oil and Natural Gas Co pledged to invest US$150 million through ONGC Videsh.

India’s Office of the President holds nearly 75 percent of the shares in Oil and Natural Gas Co. India’s minister for oil, Murli Deora, traveled to the Burmese capital last week to sign the agreement as thousands of protesters in Burma took to the streets to call for political freedom, an end to the SPDC’s abuses, and economic improvements.

India, China and Russia have also provided military support to the Junta according to a separate report from HRW.

The money gathering in the pockets of the Burma elite are certainly being kept outside of Burma. Tom Malinowski of HRW testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 3, 2007. The transcript is not yet available though the hearing was broadcast on C-Span. Malinowski testified that the strongest international bank relations of the Burma elite has been with Singapore, though certainly they have other international finance connections. He recommended that targeted sanctions freezing the international accounts of the Junta and others might be most effective in pressuring the government to release the political prisoners and relax their response to the protests. This seems like a most reasonable response as broader sanctions against the country would only cause more damage to the population. The Burmese military is a huge organization - second only to China in number of forces. Given the record of the ruling Junta, they would not hesitate to further mobilize against the population.

But there is perhaps a deeper and darker link to U.S. interests in Burma, and why for 40 years the U.S. has shown little concern for the people of Burma. That goes to the Vietnam war. Burma is part of the “Golden Triangle” - the rich opium producing region of Asia. In fact, until recently, Burma was second only Afghanistan in opium production. The French utilized the opium production and support of war lords to finance their covert networks, and when the U.S. stepped into France’s shoes they inherited that lucrative network (Alfred McCoy). The CIA utilized the opium trade, and the network connected to it, in the Golden Triangle to finance covert operations in Laos and Cambodia (the secret wars). They also used it to help fund anti-communitist armies of people such as the Hmong (Djedje and Korff).

Of course that is ancient history (perhaps).

Part of the Burma Junta’s efforts with the IMF and World Bank has recently been anti-drug activities including the elimination of opium production. If a March 7, 2006 Reuters report - War on opium gives Golden Triangle a different hue - is accurate, that war on opium has been largely successful. Of course, that success might be part of the deteriorating economic situation of the people of Burma. Much of the population of Burma lives by agriculture, and there is no more lucrative crop than opium. Look to Afghanistan as a companion example.

It seems odd that the U.S. is taking official attention to the most recent protests and Junta response in Burma. For 40 years the U.S. has largely looked the other way. Similarly, the U.S. continued to work with the Taleban government of Afghanistan despite its repression and abuses - until they also successfully drastically reduced opium production. Perhaps it is just coincidence, and of course both situations are more complex than this.

Regardless, it is well past time to ease the conditions of the people of Burma. It is well past time for us to speak out to end the repression and the resulting displacement of millions of Burmese. It is also time to demand debt relief for Burma. Like all such burdens, it benefits interests outside of Burma while crushing the people of Burma.

Information and Support Efforts
Free Burma!

Global Voices

Witness (Real Media video from Witness)

Of Related Interest
Christopher Wren. 5/11/98. NY Times. Road to Riches Starts In the Golden Triangle

Kieran Cooke. BBC. 12/06/2003. Drug tourism in the Golden Triangle.

CNN. 9/30/07. A look at Myanmar’s insular military leadership.

CNN. 10/04/07. Myanmar troops launch nighttime roundups to intimidate activists.

The Crash is a Good Thing?

Add comment September 30th, 2007

By Dale Allen Pfeiffer of The Mountain Sentinel

Since Bernanke cut interest rates last Tuesday (Sept. 25th), the already weak dollar has gone into a tail spin. Bernanke’s banker friends complained that they did not have enough money to cover their obligations and Bernanke responded by revving up the presses and printing up a slew of fresh funny money. In doing this he ignored the rest of the world, which was hoping that he would show some backbone and stand firm in support of the dollar. So now, everywhere you look, the dollar is losing its value against other currencies.

The Saudi’s unpegged their currency from the dollar for the first time since the oil dollar was established. They had no choice; it would have been suicide for them to follow Bernanke’s move. And elsewhere, other countries will have to follow suit or the US will drag them down. Japan is scrambling for shore.

Not long after the cut in interest rates, the dollar passed a key point against the Euro when it surpassed 1.41 dollars to one Euro. Since then the value of the dollar has continued to drop. The US dollar has been dropping against the Euro since January 2003. It now worth less than 59% of the value it had four years ago. At this point a dollar crash is nearly inevitable. US dollars may soon have as little value as confederate dollars.

For many years we have depended on foreign investors to support our economy by stockpiling our currency. These foreign investors cannot hold onto their dollars for much longer. Already they have lost over 40% of their investment. They will have to cut their losses and divest. This has already started to happen, and as the sell-off accelerates the dollar will find itself in a freefall which will quickly leave it a worthless currency. A massive sell-out could see the dollar losing as much as 90% of its value within days.

Snake Oil

You would not know any of this from the major news networks. They are trying to tell us that the drop in the dollar is actually a good thing. They reason that foreign consumers will flock to the US to buy devalued goods. This is a load of crap, and they know it.

US goods will not devalue. There are very few goods that are wholly US-made today. Most are at least partially manufactured offshore. Because of that, US goods will not devalue, they will simply go up in price. Soon, US consumers will find that their dollars can only purchase half of what they currently buy. And this ratio will worsen as the dollar continues to plunge. Once this crash is complete, US consumers will learn that they have lost everything. They will find that their salaries, their pensions, their health insurance coverage, everything is worthless.

So why is the media trying to sell us this lie? Simply to keep up consumer confidence. If US consumers understood what was really happening, there would be a panic. The truth could cause a run on the banks. Along with foreign investment, consumer spending is the only other pillar supporting the US economy. Consumer spending has already become sluggish. If the reality of our situation were understood, US consumer spending would quickly crumble.

The smart money is already fleeing the US market. It is diversifying into precious metals and a host of other currencies. It is quietly moving outside of the US. This migration has been going on for years, but now it is beginning to speed up. Yet, while this flight is going on, they want the general public to remain unalarmed. The smart money is trying to make its exit before a stampede blocks the fire doors. There were only so many lifeboats on the Titanic and the first class passengers were evacuated before anyone else was allowed out of steerage.

Black Monday and Bloody Tuesday

Monday, October 1st is the day of fiscal reckoning. October 1st is New Year’s Day for businesses, and on that day all the banks are required to open their books and honestly assess their current standing. The fear for the last couple months is that more than a few banks may close their doors. On Monday, we will find out for sure.

For several years now, the banks have been playing wide and loose with loans and investments. Spurred by low interest rates, they lured in consumers and home owners into mortgages and loans that they simply could not afford. It used to be that a bank would underwrite and fund every loan it made. But in the past decade, banks have developed the practice of making loans, storing them on their balance sheets for a short period of time and then packaging them into derivatives called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). These CDOs were then sold off to investors expecting a high rate of return on the investment. Through this mechanism, the banks did not tie up their own collateral with the loans they issued, so they could issue more and more loans.

CDOs were bought up by insurance companies, hedge fund managers, pension funds and even other banks throughout the world. Due to low interest rates, these managers even purchased CDOs with borrowed money. The CDOs themselves became collateral for more borrowing.

There are hundreds of billions of CDOs out there, and until now it has been mostly speculation as to what percentage is junk. Monday, October 1st the banks will have to fess up, and we will know once and for all whether or not they are capable of covering their losses. The losses in CDOs will be amplified and complicated by the problem of commercial paper.

“Commercial paper is highly-rated short-term notes that offer investors a safe haven investment with a yield slightly above certificates of deposit or government debt. Banks use the money to purchase longer-term investments such as corporate receivables, auto loans, credit card debt, or mortgagees.” (Wall Street Journal 9-5-07)

There is $2.2 trillion in commercial paper in the US. Much of this commercial paper is currently worthless because it is tied to toxic CDOs. Yet the banks are obligated to cover this commercial paper and refinance it regularly. Right now nobody will touch anything connected to CDOs, so the banks are sitting on whatever commercial paper they have in their possession and will have to cover its finances and make up for its losses on their own.

And here is the problem. The banks do not have the collateral to cover hundreds of billions in commercial paper and failing CDOs. So they have turned to the Fed, and their friend Bernanke has tried to come to their rescue by making billions in emergency bank loans and by lowering the interest rate. This lowering of the interest rate will not be used to lure in more shady mortgages. Nobody is offering mortgages right now. The funny money the Fed is currently printing up is supposed to help cover the banks’ losses.

Unfortunately, it is too little too late. Nor would it solve the problem anyway. The toxic CDOs are still there, as is the commercial paper. At best, the lowering of interest rates will simply buy a little time, while making the crash worse when it does come. That is all Bernanke was hoping to achieve when he lowered rates last week. And he did this as a wager that the weak dollar would not unravel as a result.

That is precisely what is happening. The dollar is unraveling, and on Monday, October 1st, we will find out just how much help Bernanke provided to his banker friends. If the banking news is as grim as many analysts believe it will be, then we will hear of banks defaulting and closing their doors. Thousands of small businesses and millions of regular customers will find that they cannot access their accounts. Where they can do so, there may be runs on the banks until they do close their doors.

A Black Monday will likely be followed by a bloody Tuesday as the banking news leads to a route on the stock market. In this climate, the dollar is likely to plummet even farther as foreign investors hurry to divest themselves of their shrinking dollars. It could all be over for the US economy before the week is out. And we may well see our once vain public standing in soup lines by the beginning of November.

Police States & the North American Union

Yes, we already live in a police state. But after the economy crashes, they will act to consolidate this police state and bring it to a new level of repression. Protests will be dealt with severely and encampments of the homeless will be aggressively policed.

It is possible that they will ram through new debt regulation that could turn the US into a nation of debt-servitude. The power-players may walk away from their financial obligations, but they will not want the general public to do so. If you can declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy, do so right now. Otherwise, try to discharge all of your debts while the dollar still has some value.

Eventually the government will announce that it is abandoning the dollar and creating a new regional currency: the Amero. This new currency will coincide with plans for consolidating the US with Mexico and Canada. It will be announced as our answer to the European Union, and will be touted as the road to future prosperity.

It probably will bring some prosperity to large corporations. But for the rest of us, it will mean lower wages, environmental destruction, a strengthening of the police state and the further encroachment of fascism. The North American Union is just more snake oil to benefit the rich and oppress the rest of us.

Stock Up and Drop Out

What can be done to prepare for the worst? The best thing you can do right now is to stock up on essential goods before the dollar collapses and prices go up. Purchase dried goods such as beans, grains, flour, dehydrated milk and dried fruit. It would be wise to stock enough of these durables to last your family for a month. Keep them someplace dry and air tight.

You might also invest in other items such as soap, razor blades, batteries, gardening seeds, socks, and other small but important items. A good supply of fishing gear could come in handy. Bicycles, spare tires and bicycle trailers would also be good items to have around.

These are goods that you will find useful. They are also goods that will have a high barter value if the dollar becomes worthless. If you think about it for a while, you can probably come up with a long list of such items. Things such as deodorant, spices, solar stoves, water purification kits and/or tablets, antibiotics, vitamins and other first aid supplies could also be worth a premium.

After stocking up, it is time to wash your hands of the system which has brought us 9-11, the “War on Terror,” global warming, energy and resource depletion, environmental destruction and increased economic disparity. George Bush told us how to do this when he told us that it was our patriotic duty to consume.

Stop consuming. Find some like-minded people and work on disconnecting yourself from the system. Default on your debts if you can and pay them off if you cannot. Leave your job and find a way to support yourself outside of the system. Stop going along with business as usual and build that sustainable lifestyle that we all know is the only sane alternative. Don’t put it off any longer. Start right now while there is still a chance. Or you will find yourself slaving away in a collapsing police state in short order.

Mindful Economics

2 comments September 24th, 2007

By Rowan Wolf

I must say that I never thought I would enjoy reading an economics book, but one has come to my attention that is just that - a enjoyable and interesting read. The book is Mindful Economics: Understanding American Capitalism and Alternatives by Joel Magnuson. I want to clarify up front that Joel Magnuson is a fellow faculty member at Portland Community College. I knew him in name only until he reached out to me about this book. Since then we have talked via email and in person several times. I do feel that I am offering my honest appraisal of his work.

The first part of the book takes the reader on a cogent journey through some basic economic theory in a way that is accessible. Magnuson then examines two nexuses of capital: households, corporations and the market system; and labor unions and business associations. He then moves into the role that government has played in the ascent of capitalism in the U.S. These build a story that launches us into the world of finance in its various forms and ultimately brings us to the current capitalist form.

Now if this sounds like a snore thus far, it certainly is not. Magnuson tells a story that traces the connections of the development and transformation of U.S. capitalism. I certainly do not have the economics background to tell the cogent story that Joel Magnuson weaves. This historical economic tale includes the human side (and costs) of the development of what I have referred to as “hegemonic capitalism” though he does not use that term.

Joel Magnuson approaches this topic holistically with the focus on the human, social and political implications of the development of American capitalism. I learned some things I did not know in the process of reading this book. I knew of some of the changes and forms that capitalism has taken, but did not have the players and details which Magnuson supplies.

He goes into great detail about the construction and operation of the financial system, and how even “instabilities” are organized to maximize the gains and power of the capitalists. All of this sets the stage for Magnuson’s proposal of what he refers to as “Mindful Economics.” The title itself is nudging the savvy reader towards Joel Magnuson’s “bias” in his work - namely Buddhism. While the work is not Buddhist in a religious sense, that approach certainly colors his work.

Magnuson’s idea of mindful economics is that we can transform this social institution by changing the goals and center of the economy and how it works. In other words, we can reclaim the institution and restructure it to work for the betterment of all and the planet by changing the goals of capital and economic activity. While I generally agree with this argument, I do believe that there is a basic problem with what Magnuson proposes - time. Magnuson seems to present a belief of a relatively gentle and long term transition of the economic system to serve the higher good. I see this as a problem as the I personally don’t think that we have that kind of time. However, the premise is good, though I believe the transition will be much quicker because the current system is headed for either a total loss of the middle class and the peonage of the masses, or a chaotic collapse.

Magnuson argues at the beginning of the book, and then again Chapter 12, the fundamental incompatibility of capitalism and democracy. I must say that I found it affirming that a point I have argued for years was being seriously dealt with by an economist. He details this incompatibility in discussing how the economy needs to change to actually be reinforcing of true democracy rather than inimical to it. Magnuson offers a direction and a model for that change with his “mindful economics.”

If you want to learn more about the development and functioning of U.S. capitalism, and an interesting approach to a different economic focus and organizations, take the time to read “Mindful Economics” by Joel Magnuson. For sure check out the Mindful Economics web site. In addition to more information about the book, Magnuson offers some interesting resource links.

The End of America: The Police State is Right Here, Right Now

Add comment September 19th, 2007

By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power

s nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air-however slight-lest we become unwilling victims of the darkness. ~Justice William O. Douglas~

In April, 2007 I was pleasantly surprised to find Naomi Wolf’s article, “Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps” posted in several places online. I have been a fan of Wolf for many years, greatly appreciating her works and especially her 1991 book, The Beauty Myth. I had been looking for a list-or more specifically, an encyclopedia of the losses of civil liberties in the United States that might clarify for my history students the extent to which America has become a fascist empire. Wolf’s “10 Easy Steps” was perfect, but her just-published book, The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot, from which the 10 easy steps was compiled, offers an even fuller picture-a succinct and engaging explanation of how our civil liberties have been hijacked in the past decade. It is the most poignant, powerful, genuinely patriotic piece of literature I have encountered since Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. No wonder then, that the book’s cover greatly resembles that 46-page tract by Paine written in 1775-as well it should.

One of the most frightening realities of teaching college history is that most students rarely have a clue what fascism is. They know about Hitler and the extermination of Jews, but they see little connection with Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s and the current political milieu in the United States. Overwhelmingly, they cannot define fascism, nor can they define socialism or democracy. After all, they were pre-occupied during grammar school with becoming standardized human beings by way of taking standardized “No Child’s Behind Left” tests, five hours a day, four days a week. So why would they know the definitions of fascism, socialism or democracy?

Refreshingly, Wolf is not shy about using the term fascism and lets the reader know why. “I have made a deliberate choice in using the terms fascist tactics and fascist shift when I describe some events in America now. I stand by my choice. I am not being heated or even rhetorical; I am being technical.” (20) She explains that where Americans tend to see the various political “isms” as all-or-nothing, that perception is often inaccurate because of what she calls a “range of authoritarian regimes, dictatorships, and varieties of Fascist states…there are many shades of gray on the spectrum from an open to a closed society.” (20)

Wolf also emphasizes that America has flirted with fascism openly in the 1930s when numerous corporations and robber barons helped finance Hitler and when as Edwin Black notes in IBM And The Holocaust, some American corporations assisted the Nazi regime in carrying out its “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.” In fact, several of these corporate tycoons attempted to stage a coup d’ etat to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 and restructure the American government under fascist control. A thorough investigation of American politics and society from the end of the Civil War until the present moment reveals, as I have carefully traced in my book U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You, that much of recent American history is replete with a preference on the part of corporations and the politicians they own for an economic and political system on the far right end of the spectrum. In fact, resistance to fascism in the United States has been an arduous and daunting struggle for those who have been able to understand and oppose the appeal that fascism has to the corporatocracy, and in fact, take seriously Mussolini’s fundamental definition of fascism: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

As an historian who views American history as the complex unfolding of events that it is, I feel invigorated upon hearing someone like Wolf-especially the Wolf of feminist Beauty Myth fame-part company with the presentation of the Founders as “dead white men” inwardly tormented by various hypocrisies, such as the ownership of slaves and the subordination of women. Yes, Jefferson owned slaves and fathered six children by one of them, but what gets lost in that drama and other colorful stories of the Founders is that they were also thinking, speaking, and writing highly subversive thoughts. “You are not taught,” says Wolf, that “these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were wiling to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.” (27) I do not wish to romanticize the Founders and their generation living in a milieu replete with racism, misogyny, and classism, but neither will I throw their achievements out with the bathwater of political correctness, nor is Wolf willing to do so in her examination of them.

In the “10 easy steps” outlined by Wolf, countries move from open to closed and repressive societies by devolving past certain markers, and Wolf makes a powerful case for the way in which the United States is following a similar pattern without any significant deviation. In each instance she compares and contrasts how America’s adherence to the pattern compares or contrasts with the pattern in pre-World War II Germany. The 10 steps are:

1. Invoking an external and internal threat
2. Establishing secret prisons
3. Developing a paramilitary force
4. Surveiling ordinary citizens
5. Infiltrating citizens’ groups
6. Arbitrarily detaining and releasing citizens
7. Targeting key individuals
8. Restricting the press
9. Casting criticism as “espionage” and dissent as “treason”
10. Subverting the rule of law

As noted in the quote from Justice Douglas above, the fascist shift is a protracted process; it never happens overnight, and in U.S. History Uncensored, I offer an historical narrative describing exactly how we have arrived where we are-at “the end of America”. Some aspects of the process were generated before the U.S. Civil War, but our recent history is nothing less than the story of the acceleration of the fascist agenda and the death of the Republic.

Frequently, books come into our lives with momentous timing. Several weeks ago a friend of mine was traveling through a small town in upstate New York looking for the location of a meeting he was scheduled to attend. Realizing that he was lost, he spotted a police officer in a marked car and waived to the officer to pull over. The officer pulled over, and my friend innocently got out of his car to walk back to the officer’s car. Suddenly, the officer’s voice came blasting across a loud speaker, “Get back in the car! Stop where you are! Get back in the car!” My friend returned to his vehicle and waited for the officer to approach his driver’s side window. The officer, with a hand on his holstered firearm, angrily asked my friend what he wanted. When my friend asked him for directions, he replied with hostility that he didn’t know the location of the place for which my friend was searching and once again repeated, “Never get out of your car when you’re dealing with a police officer.” So much for asking directions from a police officer these days.

On another occasion, two friends of mine returning from Canada were detained at the U.S./Canadian border, and while one of them had a U.S. passport, the other had forgotten to bring his. He produced a variety of identification but was taken aside, questioned, shouted at, and harassed in an extremely hostile manner as if he were an enemy of the state. Fortunately, after over-the-top intimidation from a couple of surly customs officers, he was allowed to enter the U.S.

About three weeks ago I was returning from a routine visit to the dentist in Mexico and had a U.S. passport with me, even though none will be required for returning from Mexico until January, 2008. I was told by a very aggressive female customs agent to pull over to the center where vehicles are detained. I was ordered in a very hostile manner to give her my driver’s license and the keys to my vehicle and stay in my vehicle. When I asked what the problem was, I was told to be quiet and again, to stay in my vehicle. Having taught in Mexico for three years, returning to the U.S. every day and rarely having to show any identification whatsoever, I found this procedure to be astonishingly rigid and unnecessary. I have made many trips to Mexico in recent months and have never had any problem when the automatic photos that are taken of every license plate crossing the border appeared on U.S. Customs computer screens.

After what seemed like an eternity the female officer returned and told me that it appeared that I had had an expired vehicle registration four years ago which I had not taken care of and that I needed to do so at once. She gave me the name of the court where the offense was allegedly registered. The very next day I contacted the court and discovered that indeed I had been stopped four years ago for an expired registration for which I was given a warning. Every year since, I have purchased my annual registration well before the deadline, but the offense was never brought to my attention, and I even acquired a new driver’s license last year through the motor vehicles division and was not informed of the offense. Not wanting any further hassle regarding the “heinous crime” of having an expired registration four years ago, I agreed to pay the small fine imposed by the court. Some readers may assume that I was harassed because of who I am and my open delivery of alternative news and opinions on this website daily. I, on the other hand, do not believe that this was “all about me.” Whether or not it was, it is blatantly obvious to me that the behavior of law enforcement in the United States has shifted dramatically in recent months. Whether or not I was targeted, which I sincerely doubt, this kind of treatment is becoming standard in law enforcement procedure throughout the United States.

And now fast-forward to yesterday, September 18, 2007, at Florida State University and the tasering of a student questioning John Kerry regarding the 2004 elections and Kerry’s membership in Skull and Bones-an incident which has been viewed by millions on the internet and on mainstream TV news broadcasts. Writing of this debacle, Wolf’s article “A Shocking Moment For Society” appeared on various internet sites this morning, and in it she states:

There is a chapter in my new book, , entitled “Recast Criticism as ‘Espionage’ and Dissent as ‘Treason,’” that conveys why this moment is the horrific harbinger it is. I argue that strategists using historical models to close down an open society start by using force on ‘undesirables,’ ‘aliens,’ ‘enemies of the state,’ and those considered by mainstream civil society to be untouchable; in other times they were, of course, Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals. Then, once society has been acculturated to that use of force, the ‘blurring of the line’ begins and the parameters of criminalized speech are extended - the definition of ‘terrorist’ expanded - and the use of force begins to be deployed in HIGHLY VISIBLE, STRATEGIC and VISUALLY SHOCKING WAYS against people that others see and identify with as ordinary citizens. The first ‘torture cellars’ used by the SA, in Germany between 1931 and 1933 - even before the National Socialists gained control of the state, during the years when Germany was still a parliamentary democracy - were informal and widely publicized in the mainstream media. Few German citizens objected because those abused there were seen as ‘other’ - even though the abuse was technically illegal. But then, after this escalation of the use of force was accepted by the population, students, journalists, opposition leaders, and clergy were similarly abused during their own arrests. Within six months dissent was stilled in Germany.

What is the lesson for us from this and from other closing societies, some of them democracies? You can have a working Congress or Parliament; newspapers; human rights groups; even elections; but when ordinary people start to be hurt by the state for speaking out, dissent closes quickly and the shock chills opposition very, very fast. Once that happens, democracy has been so weakened that major tactical and strategic incursions - greater violations of democratic process - are far more likely. If there is dissent about the vote in Florida in this next presidential election - and the police are tasering voters’ rights groups - we will still have an election.

What we will not have is liberty.

We have to understand what time it is. When the state starts to hurt people for asking questions, we can no longer operate on the leisurely time of a strong democracy - the ‘Oh gosh how awful!’ kind of time. It is time to take to the streets. It is time to confront those committing crimes against the Constitution. The window has now dropped several precipitous inches and once it is closed there is no opening it without great and sorrowful upheaval.

As I read Wolf’s latest article, I realized that despite my enormous admiration for her and The End Of America, there are a number of areas where I must disagree with her.

First, the only thing shocking to me about the University of Florida incident is that so many Americans are shocked that it happened. Last night I posted a communication to her mailing list regarding the incident from former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who says:

No police officer should be in the business of denying Constitutional rights to anyone; I am particularly chagrined when it appears that a black police officer participated in this attack on an innocent student.

What is happening to us???? How much more will the people accept?? I was outraged as early as 2000 when Florida was stolen and the Democrats said nothing!!!! Now, innocent students get tasered just for asking questions.

What kind of US Senator do we have who can’t or won’t answer a question about his own election that affects all of us???

Wolf has given us a compendium of civil and Constitutional rights stolen from us during the past eight years of the Bush administration. If one understands this odyssey of oppression, then yesterday’s tasering of a questioning student makes perfect sense. I appreciate why Wolf used the word “shocking” in her most recent article, but I’d be willing to bet that she isn’t shocked at all-not after the extraordinary documentation she has given us in The End Of America. What I do believe she wishes to clarify is the intentionally traumatizing methodology of law enforcement to maintain social control.

Secondly, I must take issue with Wolf regarding her statement that “…we on the left must snap out of our ‘it’s-all-the-WTO-the-two-parties-are-the-same’ torpor…We have to reengage in an old-fashioned commitment to democratic action and believe once again in an old-fashioned notion of the Republic. We need to help lead a democracy movement in America like the ones that have toppled repressive regimes overseas.” (141)

Again, let’s fast forward not to yesterday, but today and the headline ““-a decision which supports the Bush administration’s denial of habeas corpus to Guantanamo prisoners who want to challenge their imprisonment in court. Need we reiterate one more time that since the 2006 elections, the Democrats have done virtually nothing to end the occupation of Iraq? Need we watch the video one more time of John Kerry standing mute and statue-like on the University of Florida auditorium stage-saying or doing nothing as a student was tasered for asking him why he handed the 2004 election to George W. Bush? Does anyone seriously believe that in a world where fellow students applaud as police remove and taser a questioning student and do nothing to speak up against such an outrage that we will see a viable, effective “democracy movement in America like the ones that have toppled repressive regimes overseas”?

As for Wolf’s suggestion in today’s article that we “take to the streets”, the police state is preparing for that eventuality as well by letting us know that it has developed severely injuring electromagnetic crowd control technology that will dramatically limit how many and how often people can “take to the streets.” Welcome to full-spectrum “1984″.

I repeat: the police state is right here, right now!

Moreover, some pivotal factors that Wolf has not addressed are global energy depletion, climate change, and global economic meltdown which are exacerbating the fascist shift about which she so brilliantly writes and which will continue to embolden that shift as energy scarcity, climate chaos, and financial crises add fuel to the fires of terrorism that the ruling elite have so consciously and carefully incited and fanned throughout America. As American society continues to unravel, the fascist shift will escalate, and what is left of our civil liberties will further evaporate.

As for political parties, I prefer the definition offered by Mike Ruppert in “America: From Freedom To Fascism” in which he explains that the two major parties are like two crime families-the Genoveses and the Gambinos. They function like players in a crap game that feign opposition to each other, but when the chips are down, they will always unite to serve their common interests. (If the Iraq occupation is not a case in point, then I don’t know what is.) When we vote in presidential elections for corporately-owned candidates or “the lesser evil”, we are merely choosing between the two crime families, and even if one candidate were not a crime family member, our votes in the past two presidential elections, as Bev Harris has so astutely demonstrated, have been hacked. In the throes of the current, and I might add, rapidly-accelerating fascist shift, what evidence do we have for assuming that if there is an election in 2008, anything will be different? Tell me again, what’s the definition of insanity?

At this moment another Naomi comes to mind-Naomi Klein whose book Shock Doctrine I shall soon review on this site. In that work Klein documents one of the key strategies of fascist empires: shocking their citizens into submission in a variety of ways from widespread societal terrorism to the administering of electroshock therapy to individuals. What we witnessed at the University of Florida yesterday, and what we are likely to see more frequently in America, are deliberate shock tactics applied by law enforcement to citizens for the purpose of achieving massive social control.

Some of my students who are criminal justice majors tell me that the latest strategies now being taught to police officers are “shock doctrine” techniques which terrorize and intimidate civilians in order to control them. Law enforcement officers are no longer encouraged to “keep a cool head” but to “follow their own instincts” (which usually means their own internal, adrenaline-charged state of terror) and react with full force because it’s easier to apologize (or encounter a lawsuit) than to ask permission or risk being killed. Terrified people should not be wearing a badge and carrying a gun, and when they are, a fully terrorized society is guaranteed.

In spite of my disagreements with Naomi Wolf’s suggested solutions, I cannot recommend The End Of America enthusiastically enough. It is now a permanent part of my U.S. history curriculum and is an ideal tool not only for educators, but for parents who want to teach their children where all those civil liberties we used to have actually came from as well as how and why they are disappearing in the present moment.

Ethical Markets: The Exuberance of What is Possible, the Reality of What is Likely

Add comment September 7th, 2007

By Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power

Just recently I learned of Hazel Henderson and her latest book, Ethical Markets: Growing The Green Economy as well as Henderson’s Quality of Life Indicators which assess America’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), not in the terms used by traditional economics, but in terms of qualities such as: education, income, employment, infrastructure, energy, national security, environment, public safety, health, recreation, human rights and shelter. A quality-of-life assessment of every indicator reveals that contrary to the macroeconomists, America’s GDP may be impressive and exceed that of any other nation, but its quality of life according to these indicators is mediocre, and in some cases, abysmal. Henderson also produces Ethical Markets TV which addresses these same issues and more and takes her message into the public television arena.
Ethical Markets is a wonderfully “feel-good” book because it illumines what is possible in the United States and in the world in terms of re-engineering our economic system into one that is authentically sustainable. However, I cannot digest the book in a vacuum unless I choose to ignore the current reality which is inimical to everything promoted by Henderson and the stories of the extraordinary people included in her book. Therefore, I must read and review the book not with an either/or perspective but rather a both/and outlook because many of the concepts enthusiastically presented in Ethical Markets are impossible to implement on a broad scale under the current paradigm. And in my opinion, the paradigm will not transform sufficiently in order to make widespread changes possible without the collapse of every American institution-which incidentally, we are now witnessing and most dramatically in terms of the world and national economy.

Henderson begins Ethical Markets by grouping the three main areas of change that she envisions in moving toward a green economy: 1) lifestyles of health and sustainability, 2) socially responsible investing, and 3) corporate social responsibility. All of these have meaning only when viewed in the context of quality of life as the fundamental definition of success.

That said, Henderson follows her chapter on Redefining Success with a hard-hitting demand for Global Corporate Citizenship, for it is the corporation after all, that has behaved most egregiously, not only against consumers, but especially against the environment. The crux of Henderson’s argument is that “Corporations can be good citizens-and provide good financial returns. Hundreds of studies now show that companies do well by doing good.” (36) Her chapter on global corporate citizenship is replete with stories and photos of CEO’s and other corporate players who are remaking their industries by requiring that their companies behave responsibly toward consumers and toward the planet.

Yet, neither GDP nor quality of life can be accurately assessed without inclusion of the Unpaid “Love” Economy” of housewives and other uncompensated providers of goods and services. This “hidden” economy is a crucial factor in times of an economic depression or currency crisis such as the one experienced in Argentina in 2001 and in the U.S. during the Great Depression when banks collapsed and people “remember that they can create their own local ’scrip’ currencies, barter clubs, flea markets, and community credit-systems to keep local exchange and production humming.” (45)

It is at this point in the book that we begin to catch the flavor of relocalization and the transition from global to local that is pivotal in transforming the current economic system into one that serves human beings and the environment. For example, Henderson refers to Riane Eisler who believes that “economics is basically about what we value, and we must value the work of caring and care giving and develop caring policies.” In the current system of empire, the most effective milieu for accomplishing this is at the local level.

Edgar Cahn, founder of the Time Dollar Institute which has devised a local system of time/work exchange, says that in this system “You put in an hour, you get an hour’s credit then you can spend it to get help for yourself or your family or you can give that time credit to someone else who needs it more.” One result of this arrangement is the rebuilding of a sense of extended family in the communities where the system is utilized.

Ithaca Hours is another scheme implemented in upstate New York. It is essentially a barter program which is currency-based rather than time-based. At its inception each person who wanted to participate received $20 worth of money for free for joining and after that the Ithaca Hours newspaper shopping directory of offerings grew slowly, but soon businesses began accepting the program, and Ithaca Hours became a successful program because it kept money in the community a little longer than other money. The program helps build community by getting people talking to each other and in some cases enables them to get interest-free loans, mortgages, and healthcare. While traditional economists still disparage bartering as “primitive”, we now have the world’s largest garage sale online, ebay, which demonstrates how the mainstream economy can be bypassed.

Another section of the book highlights green building projects constructed with sustainable, environmentally-friendly products, as well as the proliferation of companies, such as the Fairmont Hotel chain, which uses organic cleaning products instead of the usual toxic cleaning products and encourages its Washington, D.C. employees by subsidizing their use of public transportation rather than driving their cars to work.

In a chapter on investing in one’s local community, the Business Alliance For Local Living Economies (BALLE) is highlighted as an example of how sustainable local economies can be created and maintained. Countering the global economy, BALLE works with local communities to provide products such as coffee and chocolate which cannot normally be obtained locally. “…it’s not about buying everything local. It’s about buying everything in a way that supports a local community where that project originates; in other words, paying fair trade prices.” (77) TransFair USA is an organization that certifies companies and products that meet the international Fair Trade standards and audits the entire global supply chain. Henderson lists the principles of Sustainable World Trade as:

1. Adherence to all United Nations principles, treaties
2. A well-regulated transparent, democratic global financial architecture
3. Ending corruption
4. Ending relocation practices based on tax holidays
5. Calculating all traded goods and negotiations in full-cost prices
6. Truly level playing fields on subsidies
7. Connecting GDP per capita based economic growth measures: Rio de Janeiro in Agenda 21 (1992)
8. Correcting stock and bond markets evaluations (101)

Although fully acknowledging the reality of Peak Oil, Ethical Markets, while offering a number of energy conservation guidelines, does not mention the fact that no amount of conservation or technological innovation can be implemented in time to avoid a massive global energy crisis. Nor does Henderson mention the suppression of alternative energy technology during the past 60 years or the fact that globalization will be reversed by Peak Oil alongside the global economic catastrophe whose storm clouds we now see gathering.

A fascinating chapter on the Transformation Of Work proposes practical strategies for implementing ever-shorter work weeks which allow workers to enjoy the arts, sports, self-improvement, learning new skills, and having more time for travel and vacations, ultimately creating a whole new economy. Three concepts make this possible: 1) A guaranteed minimum income for all 2) guaranteed jobs, 3) employee stock ownership plans. A genuine “ownership society”, not the one proposed by George W. Bush, is possible-a form of ownership benefiting the working and middle classes, not the ruling elite.

“Clean Food” is a chapter that illuminates the machinations of agribusiness and its intention to own and dominate world food supplies. Alternative food production and education endeavors such as Rodale Press and Institute, Forestrade, Inc., the Clif Bar company, and others are models for the creation of non-toxic food products and supplements. Yet once again, because so many formerly “healthy” food companies such as Ben and Jerry’s, Horizon Organics, and Boca Foods have been purchased by corporate giants, it is relocalization and local food security programs that are more likely to ensure the proliferation of clean food.

Especially helpful at the end of the “Clean Food” chapter is Frances Moore Lappe’s “Ten Actions For Just Food And For A Just World”:

1. Enjoy food fresh from the [local] farm
2. Vote your values with your dollar
3. Eat a sustainable and whole-foods diet
4. Support fair trade products and workers’ rights
5. Transform the buying power of your community, ie. Bringing fresh, local, organic foods into your schools, hospitals, etc.
6. Create brand-free zones
7. Get a diverse media diet
8. Get involved with issues that matter to you
9. Host a teach-in, study group, or gathering in your area around any cause you choose [But what about one that educates the citizens of your area about food?]
10. Vote [And to this I must add that the local level may be the only venue where legitimate, non-fraudulent elections still exist. I cannot concur with Lappe on the importance of voting in federal elections where the likelihood of fraudulent, computerized election tampering is rampant. See Bev Harris’s documentary “Hacking Democracy“.]

Fortunately, Ethical Markets is not a book for “white people”. Its pages are filled with stories of Hispanic, African American, Native American, Asian, and Middle Eastern women and men who are working to transform the global economy into more localized, community-based endeavors that seek to expand and enhance genuine prosperity, produce safe and healthy products and services, and remake the capitalist system. In terms of ethical investment, the Calvert Group was the leading mutual fund to divest from companies doing business with South Africa during apartheid.

For those interested in socially responsible investing, Henderson offers an entire chapter which along with Catherine Austin Fitts series on “Socially Responsible Investing” is an invaluable resource for individuals who are looking for profitable yet ethical investment opportunities.

In summary, Ethical Markets is a must-read for anyone committed to relocalized powering down and creating sustainable economics. Nevertheless, I must interject some concerns. The first is that Henderson does not clearly or adequately address the levels of greed, fraud, and corruption that pervade corporate America, nor does she explain the corporatocracy-that is the enmeshment of government with corporations which makes it virtually impossible to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. , this is the fundamental definition of fascism. Failure to do so may foster hope where it is not fully warranted because when one understands the symbiosis of government and corporations, not to mention the legal precedent of “corporate personhood” which evolved from 1886 until the present, one can easily grasps that the inevitable outcome is government being conducted as a criminal enterprise in concert with organized crime. (See “Godfather Government: A Way of Life Is Not A Scandal” which I wrote in 2007 and “Godfather Government: The Sopranos Aren’t Leaving” in 2006.)

And, as stated above, I believe that since all institutions are in a state of collapse in juxtaposition with Peak Oil, global economic meltdown, and climate chaos, activism which does not take into account the conjunction of these phenomena alongside a government that has morphed into a police state and continues to do so daily in front of our very eyes-such activism can only operate myopically. Rather, I believe that current events overwhelmingly indicate that an economic catastrophe on the order of or exceeding the severity of the Great Depression is unfolding rapidly which may result in the collapse of many of the remarkable enterprises documented in Ethical Markets. At the same time, the opportunity exists for all of those enterprises to rebirth or re-invent themselves on a local level both in the throes of collapse and post-collapse. The latter, in my opinion, is the ultimate value of Ethical Markets-a blueprint of sorts for how we might survive and create localized economic opportunity in a post-petroleum, post-paper currency world.

For Hazel Henderson’s commentary on current issues, see her September update. Her articles may be downloaded at Ethical Markets TV, and the book may be ordered at Calvert-Henderson website.

Painful 9/11 Truth

6 comments September 5th, 2007

BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention

Many technical analyses cast doubt on the official explanation of the collapse of three World Trade Center buildings, including those presented by an impressive new group: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. More difficult than discovering the truth, however, is convincing most of the public to accept the bitter truth.

Americans easily block out painful truths. Powerful societal forces keep much of the population distracted and uninterested in complex issues. Entertainment-oriented mainstream media contribute to mass ignorance. And the political establishment often buries the truth, uses propaganda and manipulates citizens. Intelligent, strong-willed people can fight all these.

But on a deeper level, many truths are blocked psychologically, because they produce too much pain. This results when truths sharply disagree with strongly held beliefs. The conflict produces cognitive dissonance that can block full acceptance of the disturbing truth. People fall victim to self-manipulation and self-delusion. Truths are dismissed and false beliefs remain embedded.

When it comes to 9/11, we face the strong belief that only Al-Qaeda caused 9/11. But analyses by many experts reveal the collapse of three WTC buildings was not caused by the two airplanes exploding into the two towers. Without getting into details that one can spend many hours examining on a number of websites, the general view is that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition.

If correct - IF - the immediate reaction is like a cosmic big bang. It would have taken considerable effort by a number of people with expertise and access to the buildings to rig them so that they could be intentionally collapsed when the two jets hit the towers. Tough questions flood in: Who could have engineered all this? Could foreign agents accomplish such complex actions - and if they did, why not take credit for it? If Americans did it, why would they intentionally inflict inevitable mass death and devastation? Worse, they seemingly knew about the plan to fly the jets into the towers.

Post-9/11, why have the government and official investigations not come to the same controlled demolition conclusion? This might be explained if the government was involved.

Pull one string and the whole 9/11 story unravels as your imagination triggers unending questions. Can Americans support a reinvestigation and rethinking of the 9/11 event? Or would they rather avoid even more pain and preserve the official account that places all blame on Al-Qaeda? So easy to criticize those who offer different explanations as conspiracy nuts.

After all, the new truth would be so shocking that we would have to question our political and government system. Could there have been such malevolence somewhere in our government? Did a monumental conspiracy push us into attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq? Did petroleum and corporate interests shape 9/11?

Like other groups, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth wants a new, honest and comprehensive study that considers all the evidence for controlled demolition. First, let the technical truth emerge. Then, if necessary, cope with the inevitable political, conspiracy and other questions. But let us not allow a possible painful truth block the primary task of determining once and for all what caused the collapse of the WTC towers and building no. 7.

If there were non-Muslim forces - possibly U.S. government ones - that played a major role in the WTC catastrophe, then let us have the courage to face the truth. Suppose some element of our government played a secret, awful role. If we do not uncover it, then we are vulnerable to repeat nefarious and unimaginable activity in the future - possibly to impact the 2008 presidential election. Discovering 9/11 truth would enshrine the wisdom of the old adage: the truth hurts. That means suffering the pain of revealing lies and cover-ups. Mourning over the deaths of building victims and heroic first responders would expand with new anger. And another reason to hate and oppose the Iraq war would surface.

If those that believe the official 9/11 story - especially elected officials - trust their views, then let them support a serious investigation to test the validity of the controlled demolition hypothesis. If they fear and reject doing so, then let us see that as suspicious and unacceptable.

As a former engineering professor with growing skepticism about the official WTC story, I joined Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth; you can learn about the controlled demolition findings and other similar truth-seeking efforts at www.ae911truth.org. You choose: seek the truth yourself or take the easy way and just criticize those who question the official story.

To sum up, horrific possible answers can cause us to shun a question. But clearing our minds of fears of painful truths is essential to clearing our nation of destructive lies. Otherwise, we stay stuck in a delusional democracy.

Bush’s Bogus Bailout: Introduction to Tony Soprano Economics 101

2 comments September 3rd, 2007

By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth To Power

We have only begun to see the reverberations of the mortgage meltdown. They will be as sweeping and mindboggling as global warming or an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale.

I’m an historian, not an economist, so anything about economics-macro, micro-whatever, has been as foreign to me for most of my adult life as soil samples from Mars. But several years ago I had an epiphany that shattered my then-left-liberal/progressive world. I awakened from decades of delusion that I could adequately grasp world and national events without understanding the essential nature of how money works in the capitalist economy in which I live. I realized that until I acquired that understanding, all of the other subjects I preferred to talk about-war, social justice, race, gender, environment, energy depletion, civil liberties, globalization, and many more were inextricably connected with the financial machinations of the imperial beast within whose belly I reside. Today, I do not claim for one moment to be an authority on economic issues, but I have studied the works of some folks who are, such as Catherine Austin Fitts, Michael Panzner, Michael Hudson, John Crudele, Paul Grignon, and Hazel Henderson.

From them I have learned to more skillfully read the tea leaves of the current economic upheaval that is brewing within the United States and is now rippling into the global financial markets. Furthermore, I have realized that my government and the economy of the United States is being run as a criminal syndicate, and that the most useful way to understand the subprime mortgage meltdown and its implications was to familiarize myself with the economics of Tony Soprano, that infamous main character of the HBO TV series “The Sopranos”, Mr. King of New Jersey “waste management” and proprietor of the Bada Bing.

On Friday morning I opened an email from a friend who sent me an article by an old “leftie” I’ve admired since my college days, historian Gabriel Kolko, entitled “The Predicted Financial Storm Has Arrived.” Writing about the subprime mortgage crisis, Kolko noted that, “What the subprime market did was unleash a far greater maelstrom involving banks in Germany, France, Asia, and throughout the world, calling into question much of the world financial system as it has developed over the past decade.” After explaining the international ramifications of the crisis, Kolko concludes:

We are at an end of an era, living through the worst financial panic in many decades. Now begins global financial instability. It is impossible to speculate how long today’s turmoil will last-but there now exists an uncertainty and lack of confidence that has been unparalleled since the 1930s-and this ignorance and fear is itself a crucial factor. The moment of reckoning for bankers and bosses has arrived. What is very clear is that losses are massive and the entire developed world is now experiencing the worst economic crisis since 1945, one in which troubles in one nation compound those in others.

But later that day, President Bush stepped up to the cameras and declared that the U.S. government would provide assistance to borrowers in the U.S. who had been hit by the subprime crisis. Knowing full well that anything this government promises in the way of “relief” or “assistance” is almost guaranteed to be as “helpful” and “assisting” as that which it provided New Orleans in the throes of Katrina, I wanted to put this so-called bail out under the microscope and comprehend its actual substance.

You Mean This Didn’t “Just Happen?”

I started with Catherine Austin Fitts’s statement on her Solari site that “As we work to mitigate investment losses in the mortgage market and the harm done to communities through the fraudulent inducement of debt, we are well served to understand what has happened, who is benefiting, and why.” And what is fraudulent inducement? Nothing more or less than inducing people who cannot pay their debts to borrow huge sums of money. The subprime crisis has now revealed the myriad “creative” methods used by lenders to make this happen. Tony Soprano would not only be proud of them, but would promote them.

In a CNN Money article “Mortgage Meltdown: Here Come The Judgments” from August 21, a California real estate attorney speaking about the many lawsuits that are resulting from the mortgage meltdown, stated that “Most claims will be against mortgage brokers for putting them into loans where they shouldn’t have been.” A property law professor at the University of California added that “…overly exuberant brokers and loan officers told clients not to worry about concerns like their ARMs (adjustable rate mortgage) resetting; they could always refinance and, anyway, interest rates were bound to fall.” The end result, of course, has been millions of people with houses, which as one Florida real estate law attorney stated, they can’t refinance, they can’t sell, and they can’t afford. For many of those borrowers, class action suits are the only way they can find some sort of remedy for their nightmare.

I was now getting clearer on what fraudulent inducement really means and the tragic ramifications for borrowers victimized by it. None of this, obviously, “just happened.” Or as Fitts asserts:

Recently, we have seen numerous press accounts of bank and hedge fund losses from sub-prime mortgages. Remarkably, these reports imply that the losses are the result of a market downturn or contracting credit cycle. But there has been no mention of the extraordinary profits that were generated or who reaped them. There is no mention of who is poised to make a fortune on the bubble collapse. Even the most sophisticated commentators of our day are describing this financial coup d’etat as the unintentional consequence of “market forces”.

But how exactly did this work? And how exactly does the “bail out” serve the interests of lenders, not borrowers?

My research has led me to conclude that the bail out will unfold in the following manner:

The Federal Reserve is lending money-that is, digital entries into accounts payable to hedge funds based on worthless mortgages, meaning that the these funds can borrow money cheaply in ways that will enable them to make huge profits. This is essentially a back-door subsidy from the Fed. At the same time, the Fed is most likely pumping credit into the market to pull it up because while feigning calm and cool, the Fed is terrified about the markets tanking. As Steven Weisman wrote in the New York Times on August 31, “Despite the assertion that affecting the markets is not the goal, one administration official said concern about Wall Street’s reaction did affect the timing of the briefing. He said there was a fear that if the White House announced in the morning that Mr. Bush would be making an announcement on housing, there could be confusion as buyers and sellers of mortgage securities guessed what the announcement would be.” As a result of Bush’s announcement, of course, the markets spiked.

Or perhaps it wasn’t just as a result of the bogus “bail out.” After all, John Crudele has been writing profusely about the Wall St. Plunge Protection team, euphemistically referred to as the President’s Working Group On Financial Markets which was established on March 18, 1988 by Executive Order 12631. In a June 8, 2006 New York Post article, Crudele stated:

Back during a stock market crisis in 1989, a guy named Robert Heller - who had just left the Federal Reserve Board - suggested that the government rig the stock market in times of dire emergency. ….. Proposed as an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, it’s a seminal argument that says when a crisis occurs on Wall Street “instead of flooding the entire economy with liquidity, and thereby increasing the danger of inflation, the Fed could support the stock market directly by buying market averages in the futures market, thus stabilizing the market as a whole.” Had Heller been any other schmoe who writes op-ed pieces for The Journal this would have been long forgotten. But he had served for three years as a governor at the Fed and this proposal had the look of a trial balloon since stocks had just fallen sharply on Oct. 13, 1989, and memories of the 1987 crash were still fresh. Over the next few years people like me … suspected that Heller’s plan was indeed in effect. Whenever the stock market was in trouble someone seemed to ride to the rescue. Often it was a Wall Street firm that seemed more courageous than fiscally responsible. Often it appeared to be Goldman Sachs, which just happens to be where Paulson and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin worked. …For a while I thought something called the Currency Stabilization Fund - which actually exists at the U.S. Treasury but is meant for currency stability - was the slush fund used for this venture. I was told by people who claimed to know that this part of the theory wasn’t so.

WWTSD? (What would Tony Soprano do?)

The Bush bail out means that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will refinance mortgages in trouble, but this put borrowers in debt-yet again. In addition, it’s important to understand that the FHA has two funds: The General Fund and the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund which provides insurance for single family homes. Essentially, what the bail out will do is create a huge pool of mortgages guaranteed by the FHA into a Ginny Mae pool which will end up bailing out, not borrowers, but mortgage brokers! Investors from hedge and other funds, will buy these so-called mortgage-backed securities, guaranteed by FHA, but they are in fact worthless, resulting in both borrowers and investors being defrauded. For example, a mortgage banker may have 100 mortgages which are worthless, and he puts them into a pool and issues securities tied to those pools and sells them to investors in Europe and Asia. Former FHA Housing Commissioner, Catherine Austin Fitts, has written extensively on the fraudulent behavior of FHA which put her at odds with the agency and ultimately led to her departure. Apparently, the FHA leopard has not changed its spots in the slightest.

Basically, what we have is a scenario comprised of three players: the borrower, the middleman (mortgage lenders), and the investor. The middle man is fraudulently inducing borrowers to borrow, and investors to invest, but the bail out helps no one except the fraudsters.

Or as Michael Panzner, author of Financial Armageddon writes:

Even assuming that some troubled borrowers manage to hang on, the truth is that enabling more of the same kind of bad behavior that got people in trouble in the first place will only make matters worse.

The hair of the dog that bit them isn’t a cure. It merely delays the moment of reckoning.

In reality, guaranteeing loans for homeowners who can’t afford the payments, encouraging mortgage-holders to hang on until they’ve been bled dry, and giving false hope to those who would be better off cutting their losses really only benefits one group: The lenders.

Commenting on “the greedy global financiers”, The London Observer’s Will Hutton states: “Little people’s taxes are underwriting the mistakes of big people, who in the process have made riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Globalisation, it is now clear, is run in the interests of a global financial class which has Western governments in its thrall.”

Calling the mortgage meltdown exactly what it is, theft, Hutton continues:

The last few days have seen some recovery in the financial markets and some hopes for a return to normality, but what does normal mean? The system that has delivered hundreds of billions of dollars of written-off loans with a global impact can hardly carry on as if nothing has happened. The banks at the epicentre of the crisis should go bust and heads should roll. The hedge funds which bought the debt, traded it and sold it on to banks globally should also be allowed to go bust and be subjected to much closer surveillance and regulation….

Instead, most central banks and governments across the West are straining every muscle to limit the fall-out, assure banks and hedge funds that there is limitless public money on tap and that governments’ first aim is to get back to ‘normal’. The explanation is obvious. The Western financial system is too important to be allowed to implode; credit is any economic system’s life-blood and if the supply lines get gummed up because of a collapse of confidence and severely punctured balance sheets, everybody suffers. Quite right, but at least we can be careful in future about the terms on which supportive cash and potential bail-outs are made, as well as drawing larger conclusions about the nature of the implicit contract between finance and society.

The last thing borrowers need is more debt! Instead of a refinancing arrangement, the borrower needs a higher income and lower expenses which will allow him/her to pay down debt and improve his/her skills.

In the current George W. Bush-Tony Soprano scheme, every time a corporate player commits fraud, he gets to keep the profits, and borrowers have to pay an inflation tax as a result. Eventually, this results in the fraudsters owning more and more of the nation and world economy until they own it all. Money is simply printed out of thin air to bail out the fraudsters which causes all of our expenses to rise because we don’t have the rigged income to hedge those costs as the fraudsters do.

One of the key fraudsters for more than a decade has been Goldman Sachs which not only fraudulently induced a plethora of borrowers and investors, but promoted the outsourcing of millions of jobs during the Clinton administration so that lucrative jobs that could have employed borrowers and enabled them to pay off their mortgages were moved offshore. Goldman Sachs has given us three Secretaries Of the Treasury in the past 15 years: Robert Rubin (Clinton Administration), Steve Friedman (Clinton) and Henry Paulson (Bush II)

It appears that the primary fraudsters are New York Federal Reserve member banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and AIG (American International Group) which has also been deeply connected with drug trafficking and money laundering. These are also the same players involved in the housing bubble of the 1980s and other scandals and such as Enron, World Com, and the shady Harvard Endowment Fund.

In his August 7 blog, Charles Hugh Smith asks “Is the USA a Giant Enron?” noting that our financial system is based on cooked books, lies and deceptions such as: Bogus inflation numbers; unemployment statistics manipulated downward; a GDP back-adjusted every quarter; balances sheets of corporations, pension funds, and government agencies massively understating liabilities and egregiously overstating assets and future earnings; and visible, laughable lies from the mouths of top officials, all spoken with a straight face.

Economist Peter Schiff forecasts that:

“Issued by government agencies, interpreted by spokespersons for the Government and the financial community … the information we get has been manipulated to mould a public understanding favourable to the agenda of the powers that be.” Schiff’s prediction of economic doom has everything to do with the US mortgage and housing meltdown, a prophecy he made in the book before the latest market turmoil.

“The collapse of consumer spending, associated with higher mortgage payments and vanishing home equity, will plunge the economy into severe recession, further exacerbating the collapse in real estate prices, worsening the recession and continuing the vicious cycle,” he says.

We have only begun to see the reverberations of the mortgage meltdown. They will be as sweeping and mindboggling as global warming or an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale. Tony Soprano economics aren’t necessarily noisy, but they are gargantuan in their reach and ramifications. Global economic meltdown, initiated by the ruling elite of the United States with full knowledge of omnipresent, pervasive global resource depletion-or as some have called it “Peak Everything”, will obliterate the American middle class and result in the ownership of the planet by a voracious ruling elite.

Tony’s predecessor said it best decades before Tony was even a twinkle in his father’s eye:

Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.

Al Capone

Daddy, Where Does Money Come From?

Add comment August 23rd, 2007

By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth To Power

The U.S. government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices. ~ David Walker, U.S. Comptroller General

Anyone who hasn’t watched “Money As Debt,” an animated DVD by Paul Grignon, should consider purchasing this extraordinary explanation of money’s origin in an economy totally dependent on debt. Almost everyone has seen footage of federal printing presses cranking out paper money, and some of us have even visited a government mint or two and have observed the process firsthand. But like so many other illusions with which the U.S. economy is replete, money is not created by government printing presses.

During the first few minutes of “Money As Debt” I began feeling my eyes glazing over in anticipation that I would soon begin viewing photo footage instead of animation. I then realized that I, like the masses of Americans who demand that every video experience provide them with entertainment, was unconsciously holding the same expectation. I then promptly hit the rewind button and started over, this time listening and watching attentively.

“Money As Debt” is not entertainment-far from it. The film offers amazingly elementary facts about the creation of money in the United States, narrated by a soothing voice, which could make for a bland presentation, yet the film’s message is anything but vapid. In fact, if it doesn’t leave your blood boiling, it behooves you to check your vital signs.

Beginning with the most fundamental question of all, Grignon asks: Where does money come from? The answer to this question will almost never be found in grammar school-or even college. What we aren’t told in formal education is that money is created by central banks.

Banks create money, not from their own earnings or from the funds deposited by customers, but from the borrowers’ promises to repay loans. Most importantly, borrowers not only promise to repay, but to repay with interest, and the bank writes the amount of money of both into the borrower’s account.

Grignon opens with a story from antiquity. In the days before paper money, goldsmiths produced gold coins and kept them safe for the purchaser in the same way that banks hold deposits today. These goldsmiths soon noticed, however, that purchasers rarely came in for their actual gold and almost never all at the same time. So the gold merchants began issuing claim checks for the gold which made the exchange of gold in the marketplace easier and less cumbersome. Thus, paper money was born which made doing business much more convenient. Eventually, goldsmiths began loaning money to customers and charging interest on the loans, and borrowers began asking for their loans in the form of claim checks. The goldsmith shared interest earnings with depositors, but since no one actually knew how much gold he was holding, he got the idea that he could lend out claim checks on gold that wasn’t actually there and soon started becoming enormously wealthy from the interest paid on gold that didn’t exist.

Thus began the power to create money out of nothing, but it wasn’t long before bank runs began, and banking regulations evolved regarding how much money could be lent out. However, the regulations allowed a ratio of 9 to 1-that is, banks could lend out 9 times the amount of the deposits that were already there. This policy has come to be known as Fractional Reserve Banking. Regulation also arranged for central banks to support local banks with emergency infusions of gold, and only if there were many runs at once would the system crash.

Fast forward to 1913 when that so-called progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, signed into law the Federal Reserve Act which created the banking cartel now in charge of America’s money system. For those who have not seen Aaron Russo’s DVD “From Freedom To Fascism” run don’t walk to see or purchase it. It is required viewing for understanding the Federal Reserve System and the power it has over the U.S economy and over our individual lives. Very few Americans know how money is created and even fewer know how the Fed originated and what it actually does. Does anyone really believe this is an “accident”? As the media guru Marshall McLuhan is reported to have said, “Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.”

Whereas U.S. paper currency used to be backed by gold, that is no longer the case, and we have instead a fiat currency backed by nothing except the word of the Federal Reserve that the money is worth its stated value. Moreover, money today is created as debt, that is, money is created whenever anyone takes a loan from a bank. In fact, every deposit becomes a potential for a loan-a process which can be and is repeated many times, ultimately creating infinite amounts of money from debt.

Whereas the 9 to 1 ratio reigned at the beginning of banking regulation, today in some banks, ratios are as high as 20 to 1 or 30 to 1, and frighteningly, some banks have no reserves at all!

The bottom line is that banks can create as much money as we can borrow!

One wonders how individuals, banks, governments, and other entities can all be in debt at the same time, owing astronomical amounts of money. This question is answered when we consider that banks don’t lend actual money; they create it from debt, and since debt is potentially unlimited, so is the supply of money.

But what is so wrong with this scheme? Hasn’t it been working all these years? Actually, there are several things very wrong with it.

The first issue is that the people who produce the real wealth in the society are in debt to those who lend out the money in that society. Moreover, if there were no debt, there would be no money.

Most of us have been taught that paying our debts responsibly is good for ourselves and for the economy. We imagine that if all debts were paid off, the economy would improve. In terms of individual debt, that’s true, but in terms of the overall economy, the exact opposite is true. We are continually dependent on bank credit for money to be in existence-bank credit which supplies loans. Loans and money supply are inextricably connected, and during the Great Depression, the supply of money plummeted as the supply of loans dried up.

Secondly, banks only create the amount of the principal of loan. So where does the money come from to pay the interest? From the general economy’s money supply, most of which has been created in the same way.

A visual image is helpful. Imagine two pools of water-one full and one empty. The pool with water in it represents the amount of the principal of a loan; the empty pool represents principal plus interest. The pool of principal has only a certain amount of water in it, so that it can’t possibly fill up the other pool of principal plus interest. The rest of the water needed to fill the pool doesn’t actually exist and has to be acquired from somewhere.

The problem is that for long-term loans, the interest far exceeds the principal, so unless a lot of money is created to pay the interest, a lot of foreclosures will result. In order to maintain a functional society, the foreclosure rate must be low, so more and more debt must be created which means that more and more interest is created, resulting in a vicious and escalating spiral of indebtedness. Furthermore, it is only the lag time between the time money is created to the time debt is repaid that keeps the overall shortage of money from catching up and bankrupting the entire system. It takes only a few second of reading the headlines of the financial pages during this month, August, 2007, to notice that foreclosure rates and lag time are threatening to meltdown the entire U.S. economy. The preferred method of the Federal Reserve and central banks addressing this calamity is, yes, you guessed it: to create more debt. The lowering of interest rates in recent years, the bombardment of credit card applications we find regularly in our mailboxes, the red ink in which the United States government is drowning are all an attempt to stave off the collapse of the entire system.

Can any sane human being believe that this situation can persist forever? What is the inevitable outcome of a fiduciary game of musical chairs? Monetary historian, Andrew Gause, answered this question:

One thing to realize about our fractional reserve banking system is that, like a child’s game of musical chairs, as long as the music is playing, there are no losers.

And finally, a system based on fractional reserve banking is, to say the least, not sustainable because it is predicated on incessant growth. Perpetual growth requires perpetual use of resources and the constant conversion of precious resources into garbage just to keep the system from collapsing.

Grignon suggests that in order to begin addressing and resolving the nightmare of money as debt, we must ask four pivotal questions:

1) Why do governments choose to borrow money from private banks at interest when governments could create all the interest-free money they need themselves?

2) Why create money as debt at all? Why not create money that circulates permanently and doesn’t have to be perpetually re-borrowed in interest?

3) How can a money system, dependent on perpetual growth, be used to build a sustainable economy? Perpetual growth and sustainability are fundamentally incompatible.

4) What is it about our current system that makes it totally dependent on perpetual growth? What needs to be changed to allow the creation of a sustainable economy?

A crucial assumption that must be questioned is the practice of usury or the charging of interest for lending money. Grignon asserts that it is a moral and a practical issue because it necessarily results in lenders ending up with all the money, particularly when foreclosures happen. Not only is debt deplorably profitable for lenders in terms of interest and service charges, but when borrowers cannot pay, as in the case of housing foreclosures, lenders walk away with the proceeds. In a recent article “Panic On Wall St.“, Andrew Leonard explains how obscenely advantageous subprime and liar loans have been for lenders and provides damning evidence to support the long-time assertions by Catherine Austin Fitts that the housing bubble has been engineered by centralized financial systems.

In a transformed economy, which I do not anticipate happening in the twenty-first century, banks would exist as non-profit services to society-lending without charging interest at all. But, as Grignon says, if it’s the fundamental nature of the system that’s causing the problem, then tinkering with the system can’t solve the problem. It must be replaced.

One solution might be the replacement of paper dollars with precious metals, which of course, could once again become cumbersome and inconvenient, unless the economic system had experienced collapse and digital and paper transactions were no longer possible.

Perhaps the best solution offered by “Money As Debt” is the creation of locally-based barter money systems in which debt is repaid by hours of work valued at a dollar figure. Additionally, government spending on infrastructure, not using borrowed money, would also create value locally and nationally.

The Federal Reserve banking cartel has been shrouded in secrecy and lack of information among the American people regarding its creation and functioning. One American president appeared to have understood it very well:

Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate. ~James Garfield, 20th President Of U.S. Assassinated, 1881

“Money As Debt” is not only a must-see for any American who wants to be politically and economically literate, but is particularly crucial for high school and college students to see in order for them to understand how the money works in the United States. Yet we should not assume that the film’s simplicity of presentation ranks it as less than adult because most adults in this nation are clueless regarding the connection between money and debt.

I personally hold no hope of changing the money/debt system which is truly the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the American economic landscape. What I do envision, and what must happen, in my opinion, is its total collapse, whether gradual or sudden, so that the transformation and relocalization of the nation’s economic system will be possible, which it is not in the current milieu. However, what we are presently witnessing in the bursting housing bubble and credit crisis may well be the beginning of the end of “money as debt.”

Suggested Reading:
, by G. Edward Griffin
, by William Greider