Usury is the Greatest Crime on Earth---Leading to Most Others

Part IV

*Why are usury and giving false measure forbidden (productive and unproductive)?*

·     It causes the never ending alternation  of inflation and deflation  created when credit money is expanded or contracted for non-productive use. It causes people to fight to catch up to inflation. It increases the burden of debt when it is allowed to contract.  The "inflation" benefits the private money-lenders since it wipes out savings of one generation so they can not finance or help the next generation who must then borrow from the money-lenders and pay a large part of their life's labor to the usurer. When the savings are gone and people are in debt, then credit and currency are contracted to increase the purchasing power that people must earn and pay to their creditors.

·      It makes people & companies compete for money instead of competing for markets and resources.*

·      It encourages greed and fear of scarcity (in fact, the job of the central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity) and the direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.  Money is created when banks lend it into existence. When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough World to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000.

·      It creates losers and winners, just like gambling and lotteries. Some have to default on their loan in order for others to get the money needed to pay off that interest. Increased interest costs automatically determine a larger proportion of necessary bankruptcies. So when the bank verifies your "creditworthiness," it is really checking whether you are capable of competing and winning against other players - able to extract the second  $100,000 that was never created. And if you fail in that game, you
lose your house or whatever other collateral you had to put up.

·      It influences the unemployment rate and creates unemploymet.

·      It encourages hoarding and creates Tyrants who want to control  the issue of money on which they can demand interest for ever. Today's official monetary system has almost nothing to do with the real economy. Just to give you an idea, 1995 statistics indicate that  the volume of currency exchanged on the global level is $1.3 trillion  per day. This is 30 times more than the daily gross domestic product (GDP) of all of the developed countries (OECD) together. The annual GDP of the United States is turned in the market every three days! Of  that volume, only 2 or 3 percent has to do with real trade or investment; the remainder takes place in the speculative global cyber-casino. This means that the real economy has become relegated to a mere frosting on the speculative cake, an exact reversal of how it was just two decades ago.

·      It creates monetary crises. For one thing, power has shifted irrevocably away from governments toward the financial markets. When a government does something not to the liking of the market - like the British in '91, the French in '94 or the Mexicans in '95 - nobody sits down at the table and says "you shouldn't do this." A monetary crisis simply manifests in that currency. So a few hundred people, who are not elected by anybody and have no collective responsibility whatsoever, decide what your pension fund is worth - among other things.

·      It creates crashes. George Soros, who's made part of his living doing what I used to do - speculating in currencies - concluded, "Instability is cumulative, so that eventual breakdown of freely floating exchanges is virtually assured." Joel Kurtzman, ex-editor at the Harvard Business Review, entitles his latest book: The Death of Money and forecasts an imminent collapse due to speculative frenzy. Just to see how this could happen: all the OECD Central Banks' reserves together represent about $640 billion. So in a crisis situation, if all the Central Banks were to agree to work together (which they never do) and if they were to use all their reserves (which is another thing that never happens) they have the funds to control only half the volume of a normal day of trading. In a crisis day, that volume could easily double or triple, and the total Central Bank reserves would last two or three hours. In 1929, the stock market crashed, but the gold standard held. The monetary system held. Here, we are dealing with something that's more fundamental. The only precedent I know of is the Roman Empire collapse, which ended Roman currency. That was, of course, at a time when it took about a century and a half for the breakdown to spread through the empire; now it would take a few hours.

·       It encourages people to store value in money and let the money grow instead of working, and it concentrates the wealth into the hands of the issuer of money, i.e. the Banking Dynasties. In a non-interest money system where money would be created and issued by the sovereign government debt-free and interest-free, people would only use money as a medium of exchange and not as a store for value. That would create work, because it would encourage circulation, and it would invert the short-term incentive system. Instead of cutting trees down to put the money in the bank and make the money grow with interest, you would want to invest your money in living trees or in installing insulation in your house.

·       It encourages harmful economic activities with discounted cash flows. That means that under our current system it makes sense to cut down trees and put the money in the bank; the money in the bank will grow faster than trees. It makes sense to "save" money by building poorly insulated houses because the discounted cost of the extra energy over the lifetime of the house is cheaper than insulating. We can, however, design a monetary system that does the opposite; it actually creates  long-term thinking through what is called a "demurrage charge." T In  other words, we create a negative rather than a positive interest rate. What would that do? If I gave you a $100 bill and told you that a month  from now you're going to have to pay $1 to keep the money valid, what  would you do? I suppose I would try to invest it in something else. You  got it. You know the expression, "Money is like manure; it's only good  when it's spread out." In the Gesell system, people would only use money  as a medium of exchange, but not as a store for value. That would create  work, because it would encourage circulation, and it would invert the  short-term incentive system. Instead of cutting trees down to put the  money in the bank, you would want to invest your money in living trees  or installing insulation in your house.

·    It reduces the quality of life. There are many examples in the past of  interest-free societies in ancient Egypt, Mandarin China, Saxon Europe,  Saracen Islamic empire, 1935 Germany, etc. Recent studies have revealed  that the quality of life for the common laborer in Europe was the highest  in the 12th to 13th centuries; perhaps even higher than today. When  you can't keep savings in the form of money, you invest them in something that will produce value in the future. So this form of money
created an extraordinary boom.

·     It creates inequalities and breakdown in communities, which create  tensions that result in violence and wars.

·     It encourages wars. The private owners of the central banks provide loans for wars and collect huge amounts of interest.

·     It works to concentrate wealth towards an elite group of multinational  investors. Trade treaties, the IMF and World Bank were aimed at  defrauding Third World countries so that the markets and banks of  the First World countries could survive via economic expansion and  debt transference. Most of the World?s countries have a lower standard  of living than 20 years ago!

·     It's a giant pyramid scheme with the Illuminati Banking dynasties  at the top, then the World's Masses at the  bottom!* Nations borrow Special Drawing Right (SDR) from the International  Monetary Fund in order to pay interest on their mounting debts. With  these SDR's produced at no cost, the IMF charges more interest. This,  contrary to bold claims, does not alleviate poverty or further any development.

.    It creates a steady flow of wealth from borrowing nations to the money changers who now control the IMF and the World Bank. The  permanent debt of Third World Countries is constantly being increased  to provide temporary relief from the poverty being caused by previous  borrowing. These repayments already exceed the amount of new loans.   By 1992 Africa's debt had reached $290 billion dollars, which is two and  a half times greater than it was in 1980. A noble attempt to repay it has  caused increased infant mortality and unemployment, plus deteriorating  schools, and general health and welfare problems. If a country cannot  pay, its natural resources and other assets are sold off the pay the  interest to the Illuminati Bankers. As World resources continue to be  sucked into this insatiable black hole of greed, if allowed to continue  the entire World will face a
similar fate. As one Prominent Brazilian  Politician put it. "The Third World War has already started. It is a  silent war. Not, for that reason, any less sinister. The war is tearing  down Brazil, Latin America, and practically all the Third World. Instead of soldiers dying, there are children. It is a war over the  Third World debt, one which has as its main weapon, interest, a  weapon more deadly than the atom bomb, more shattering than  a laser beam." It is estimated the IMF has produced $30 billion
dollars worth of SDR's so far. In the United States SDR's are  already accepted as legal money, and all other member nations  are being pressured to follow suit. With SDR's being partially  backed by gold, a World gold standard is sneaking its way in  through the back door, which comes with no objection from the  money changers who now hold two-thirds of the Worlds gold  and can use this to structure the Worlds economy to their further advantage.

·      It encourages lies, deceptions, fake-terror and propaganda by the Illuminati Bankers who want to protect their cash cow.  To  maintain and move forward with their cash cow, they have to project  deceptive fronts of capitalism, democracy, religion and anti-Semitism  behind which they carry out their plans (Orwellian tactics from the  book "1984"). G. Edward
Griffin explains (details later in several  sections of this book) how the owners of the privately controlled  central bank known as the US Federal Reserve use their power to  create money tax-free and use their unauditable profits to acquire  control over the power centers of society, i.e. those groups and  institutions through which individuals live and act and rely on
for  their information. They are buying control over the organizations, groups and institutions that control people, politicians, political parties, television networks, cable networks, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, wire services, motion picture studios, universities, labor unions, church organizations, trade associations, tax-exempt foundations, multi-national corporations, boy scouts, girl scouts, you  name it, and particularly over those organizations that represent  opposition to
themselves.

This process has gone on not only to a  marked degree in America and in the other industrialized nations  of the World, but it has gone on in the underdeveloped nations to  such a degree that we would say the process is now complete. They  own these countries already. The money goes to the politicians of  those countries, to their governments and the money is spent to strengthen their power structures, their ability to control their populations. They create a well-equipped army (note the $30 billion  for hiring mercenaries to train the new armies in Afghanistan and  Iraq), a better bureaucracy, for total control of their subjects. That's  where the money's being spent.

Horace Greely 1811-1872: "While boasting of our noble deeds, we  are careful to control the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system,  we have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more  refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery."

If the money is issued by a privately owned corporation, its owners  benefit by causing the money amount and its value to fluctuate and  causing the people to go into debt and pay interest permanently through taxes. Under the present debt-usury system, the extra  burden of usury forces workers and businesses to demand more  money for the work and goods to pay their ever increasing debts  and taxes. This increase, in prices and wages and taxes, is called  "inflation". Illuminati Bankers, politicians and "economists" blame  it on everything, but the real cause is the usury levied on money and debt by the Illuminati Bankers. This "inflation" benefits the money-lenders since it wipes out savings of one generation so  they can not finance or help the next generation who must then  borrow from the money-lenders and pay a large part of their life's  labor to the usurer. With an adequate supply of interest-free money  created by the sovereign Government, little borrowing would be required,  and prices would be established by people and goods, and not by  debts and usury.

The financial system that the World has evolved on is the privately  owned Bank of England USURY model and it is not sustainable. It  creates nearly all money as debt. Such money only exists as long  as someone is willing and able to pay interest on it. It disappears,  wholly or partially, in recurring financial crises. Such a system  requires that new debt must be
created faster than principal and  interest payments fall due on old debt. A sustainable financial system  would enable the real economy to be maintained decade after  decade and century after century at its full employment potential  without recurring inflation and recession. By this standard, a financial  system that creates money only through the creation of debt is
inherently unsustainable. When a bank makes a loan, the principal  amount of the loan is added to the borrower's bank balance. The  borrower, however, has promised to repay the loan plus interest  even though the loan has created only the amount of money  required to repay the principal-but not the amount of the interest.

Therefore unless indebtedness continually grows it is impossible  for all loans to be repaid as they come due. Furthermore, during  the life of a loan some of the money will be saved and re-lent by  individual bond purchasers, by savings banks, insurance  companies etc. These loans do not create new money, but they  do create debt. While we use only one mechanism-bank loans-to  create money, we use several mechanisms to create debt, thus making it inevitable that debt will grow faster than the money with  which to pay it. Recurring cycles of inflation, recession, and  depression are a nearly inevitable consequence. If, in the attempt  to arrest the price inflation resulting from an excessive rate of debt  formation, the monetary
authorities raise the rate of interest, the  result is likely to be a financial panic. This in turn may result in a sharp  cutback in borrowing.

Monetary authorities respond to bail out the  system by increasing bank reserves. Governments may also respond  by increasing the public debt-risking both inflation and growing  government deficits. Let's keep something in mind while reading  this folks, increasing the money supply is not in and of itself a bad  thing. However, the way the Fed does it is ridiculous. First of all every  dollar introduced into the economy is based on debt! New money  cannot be created unless new debt is created. Second of all, the  Fed year after year increases the money supply greater than the output of the economy.

Let's say the economy grows by 3% in one year. The money supply should then grow by 3% in order to not have  deflation. Does the government increase the money supply by 3%?

Nope, it increases the money supply by 4-6%. That extra 1-3% is  money that comes right out of your monetary assets? purchasing  power, a hidden tax. This is why there has been a total of 1500%  inflation since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913. Keep  in mind this is LONG TERM inflation I am talking about. Not short term  inflation, which can be caused by market forces. I think short term  inflation is a smokescreen for the cause of long term inflation as they  can easily be confused by the common man.

Laurence Ball, assistant professor of economics at Princeton University  and a visiting scholar in the Research Department of the Philadelphia Fed: While economists disagree about many issues, there is near  unanimity about this one: continuing inflation occurs when the rate of  growth of the money supply consistently exceeds the rate of growth  of output (of the economy). From: What causes inflation?  http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/hineline/econ520/ball.pdf

Money  loses its value when it is created and put into circulation (spent) faster  than the growth in productivity in the local economy (versus just  being created and held as a reserve).

Churchill to Lord Robert Boothby: "Germany's unforgivable crime  before the second World war," Churchill said," was her attempt to  extricate her economic power from the World's trading system and  to create her own exchange mechanism which would deny World  finance its opportunity to profit.", quoted in the Foreword, 2nd Ed.   Sydney Rogerson, *Propaganda in
the Next War* 2001, orig. 1938. [A bit like what Iran will be doing soon with its bourse]

A few pence lent out at usury some twenty centuries ago would  amount now, at compound interest, to more wealth than there is  in the whole World, which is a sufficient proof that usury is unjust  and, as a permanent trade method, impossible. The large proportion  of usurious payments which are now being made on account of the  impersonal and indirect character of nearly all transactions, is beginning  to lay such a burden upon the World as a whole that there is danger  of a breakdown as the loans were made for unproductive purposes  (such as wars) and created no new wealth. If you keep on taking  wealth as though from an increase, when really there is no increase  out of which that wealth can come, the process must sooner or later,  come to an end. It is as though you were to claim a hundred bushels of apples every year from an orchard after the orchard had ceased  to bear, or as though you were to claim a daily supply of water from  a spring which had dried up. The man who would have to pay the  apples would have to get them as best he could, but by the time the  claim was being made on all the orchards of the World, by the time  that usury was asking a million bushels of apples a year, though  only half a million were being produced, there would be a jam. The  interest would not be forthcoming, and the machinery for collecting  it would stop working. Long before it actually stopped of course,  people would find increasing difficulty in getting their interest and  increasing trouble would appear in all the commercial World.

Now that is exactly what is beginning to happen after about two  centuries of usury and one century of unrestricted usury. So far we  have got out of it by all manner of makeshifts. Those who have borrowed the money and have promised to pay, say, 5 per cent., are allowed to change and to pay only 2.5 per cent. Or, by the process of debasing currency, which I described earlier
in this book, the value of the money is changed, so that a man who has been set down to pay, say, a hundred sheep a year, is really only paying 30 or 50 sheep a year. A more drastic method is the method of writing off loans altogether simply saying: "I simply cannot get my interest, so I must stop asking for it." That is what happens when a Government goes bankrupt, as the
Government of Germany had done. If you look at the usury created by the Great War (1914), you will see this kind of thing going on all sides. The Governments that were fighting borrowed money from individuals and promised to pay interest upon it.

Most of that money was not used productively: It was used for buying wheat and metal, and machinery and the rest, but the
wheat was not used to feed workmen who were producing more wealth. It was used to feed soldiers who were producing no wealth, and so were the ships and the metal and the machinery, etc. Therefore when the individuals who had lent the money began collecting from the Government interest upon what they had lent they were asking every year for wealth which simply was not there, and the Governments have got out of their promise to pay a usurious interest in all sorts of ways - some by repudiating, that is, saying that they would not pay (the Russians have done that), others by debasing currency in various degrees. The English Government has cut down what it promised to pay to about half, and by taxing this it has further reduced it to rather less than a third. The French Government, by inflation and by taxation have reduced it much more - to less than a fourth, or perhaps more like a sixth or an eighth. The Germans have reduced it by inflation to pretty well nothing, which is the same really as repudiating the debt altogether.