A Review of the "Alyona Show: "I majored in debt, July 22, 2010

A Review of the "Alyona Show: "I majored in debt, July 22, 2010

Alyona interviewed Natalie Clay - a college graduate with a debt load of $70,000. and no job. John Turmel interspersed some comments between those of Alyona and Natalie Clay.

0:00 = Clips from the Alyona video
JCT = John Turmel
NC = Natalie Clay

The interview is posted at YouTube at this url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K19bjtGowlQ

Jct: Real Caouette said creating jobs was as easy as replacing a bulldozer with50 guys with shovels. Want more jobs? Take away their shovels and give them spoons. It's not jobs that are sought, there are plenty of them needing to be done. It's paychecks that are sought. And how to create money is really how to create jobs. Attached is my video "How banks create money" to explain there are never enough paychecks for everyone to have a job. I've posted a 4-page parsing at my blog.

JCT: Youtube doesn't allow links so they'll have to find my blog. What can I do when I hear the pleadings of the sheople who have been taken in by the hunt for jobs when I know the real quest is the hunt for paychecks that create jobs.

I parsed Alyona's "I majored in debt" and I hope I haven't been too rough on the kids.

THE ALYONA SHOW JULY 22 2010
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0:40 Alyona: "What it's like being a college grad looking for a job in this economic climate."

Natalie Clay (NC) : It's a hunt and I haven't caught anything.

JCT: Hunting for jobs instead of hunting for paychecks.

NC: I apply for about 5 jobs per day...

JCT: Puts out 5 hooks per day hunting for a bite.

NC: Nobody is hiring.

JCT: No bites.

1:20 Bills are piling up and no one tells you as the caps are flying how to survive.

JCT: Welcome to the Kingdom of the Paupers where you have to use a LETS software to create your own job through barter and community currency paychecks.

NC: I don't know what to do. I'm kind of stuck in this problem.

JCT: You signed your "mort-gage" musical chairs "death-gamble" and it's now time to pay the penalty through denial of life- support tickets, poverty. Jesus called it the "alley where men weep and gnash their teeth" when he explained how to fix it. Your priests didn't tell you how to run banking on Earth as it is in Heaven, no loansharking, sad. In those days, the women and children were also seized in the foreclosure with the papa.

Alyona: It's interesting that no one ever prepares you for real life.

JCT: Of course, they can't teach survival of real life, they'd have to figure out what's knocking people into poverty and teach that it was a death-gamble first. And some people might ask why not switch from the usury charge to the simple service charge. After all, didn't John The Engineer ask the Supreme Court of Canada five times to restrict the banks' computers to a service charge and abolish the interest charge as a panacea for global money shortage 30 years ago?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN4pvPDL7hY

http://johnturmel.com/scc3.htm

Alyona: Do you ever feel gypped by the education system?

1:50 NC: Obama said we shouldn't be punished for getting educations. News flash, I'm broke and eating noodles.

JCT: Join or start a LETS with a restaurant and do his bookkeeping or waitress one night.

2:20 NC: I traded my debt for a degree. The system is setting me up for failure.

JCT: That's how death-gamble works. It's set up to generate a certain amount of failure among debtors. Not everyone can escape their death-gamble.

NC: I worked hard for 4 years and what did I get? I got debt. I majored in debt and that's not fair because I could have worked at the Dairy Queen but pursuing a higher education that left me $70,000 in debt.

2:53: Alyona: That's not chump change. Are you scared?

JCT: On the verge of bankruptcy and starvation, is she scared?

3:10 Alyona: What are your alternatives?

JCT: There are no outs from the "death-gamble" contract other than winning a lottery or the equivalent.

3:11 NC: It's a lot of anxiety, stress, I can't sleep because it's all I think about. As the debt piles on and on, I have to find immediate work... I've signed up to donate plasma, and my body, becoming a substitute teacher for $100 a day, temp agencies. I'm living dollar to dollar. I'm being punished for getting an education.

JCT: No, you're being punished for signing a usurious contract. If all payments went against principal with no interest with all the time needed to pay, you'd succeed.

3:50 NC: I have so much stress, anxiety, it's really hard.

JCT: Welcome to the Kingdom with alleys where we weep and gnash our teeth.

4:05 Alyona: You're not the only one in this situation. The recession is hurting everyone, especially college grads.

JCT: Too bad the college grads didn't have the brains to start up their own "College Grad" timebank to offer their services to the world.

4:20 Alyona: What about your classmates? Do they have jobs?

NC: No, no one has jobs.

JCT: Looking for jobs under the rocks, up in the trees: here jobs jobs jobs jobs. Come here jobs jobs jobs jobs. The futile search for jobs without realizing it takes a paycheck to create a job and maybe trying to create paychecks instead of trying to create jobs is the way to go.

4:27 NC: Or an intern. But those internships aren't paid to get experience.

JCT: Rich grads can afford to work for free to get experience as interns while poor kids must can get experience with paid work at Dairy Queen.

4:30 NC: Everyone's in the same boat and we're all sinking together.

JCT: The Australia Bulletin called the LETS Greendollar timebank an economic lifeboat a couple of decades ago and it's just too bad Natalie hasn't found LETS Economic Lifeboat in her searches. Of course, she's hunting for a job, not a paycheck which she'd have to create herself.

4:35 NC: The class of 2010, we're on the same boat and it's sinking. I'm drowning in debt and I don't know why.

JCT: Because you can't pay the banks 11 when the banks only loaned everyone 10 so there's always shortage and someone must always get knocked out of the mort-gage death-gamble. That's why, and you've got a exponentially growing mill-stone around your slave neck because you're not in the hunt for control over paycheck creation, you're in the hunt for a "job."

4:47 NC: Friends are just as low and down as you are.

JCT: Start a self-help LETS timebank to swap skills and at least some of your needs will start to get covered. Set up your LETS lifeboat or drown, sucker. LETS has been called an anti-poverty system, it's been there for your use for years.

4:52 It's hard and aggravating because I need to call on networking skills...

JCT: So get one of the LETS timebank softwares and use your networking skills to build up your own economic lifeboat. Besides, In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with a timebank IOU for a night back in Canada worth 5 Hours. Do you endorse the UNILETS Millennium Declaration C6 to governments for an interest-free time-based currency to restructure the global financial architecture?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnsKjudzAdU

is my video "UNILETS Timebank in U.N. Millennium Declaration"

5:00 Friends can only do so much.

JCT: If you register how many Hours ($10US = 1 Ithaca Hour) you owe them in public, they and you will feel a lot better about doing more.

5:10 I can't blame it on the economy. I could twiddle my thumbs and blame it on the economy but I have to keep pushing myself and stay positive.

JCT: No, it is the economy to blame for not providing enough paychecks for all to have jobs. Or rather, the banksters who run the economy choose to create the unemployed underclass in the alley where we weep and gnash our teeth. You have to quit hunting for a "job" and create yourself a community currency bank to fund your own paycheck for a "job." Laying out hooks in waters with no fish isn't paying off now, and it's not going to get any better. Quit the hunt for jobs and join the quest for money reform.

5:15 Alyona: But who else are you going to blame?

JCT: How can Natalie know who's to blame for her not finding a job when she's bears some blame for not helping finding herself a paycheck through community currency, if not federal currency? But the loansharks are to blame.

6:05 NC: Internships should be paid.

JCT: Yes, if only you could only hunt up the money. But you're so busy with the job hunt, you never thought of the money hunt so internships could be paid. Okay, I have.

6:30 Alyona: What do you say to the people who also have families and mortgages to pay. Are they more important than you?

JCT: Musical Chairs mentality. Who merits survival. Kind of like the "build a home for a worthy slave" shows on TV. Someone's go to suffer the recession, why not you? There's no out from the death-gamble we're all in.

6:45 NC: Not more important because we're all in the same boat.

JCT: Yes, nobody's looking for how to create paychecks in the focus on how to catch jobs.

6:48 NC: No matter the circumstances, you have to stay positive.

JCT: Sorry, staying positive about a losing strategy is not the answer. Switching strategies from job hunting to paycheck hunting and not why jobs are so hard to find but why paychecks are so hard to find, is the answer.

7:00 NC: If you think you're more qualified and I'm going to show that I'm hungrier and want it more... it's a hunt out there...

JCT: It's a musical chairs with money death-gamble out there.

NC: And that's something I'm getting used to and adjusting to, that it's a hunt. I don't think they're necessarily more important than me, or they deserve the job more than me, I'm going to he quicker, faster, hungrier,

JCT: The kill or be killed mentality from playing musical chairs for jobs hasn't worked so far. How about creating enough chairs?

7:20 Alyona: Sounds you're going to provide some stiff competition out there in the work force.

JCT: Fighting it out over not enough jobs because they don't know they should be looking for the paychecks that create jobs. You kids keep hunting for "jobs" and I'll keep hunting to create paychecks for those jobs even without help from you who are too busy looking for jobs to help look for paychecks.

7:30 Alyona: Good luck in the job hunt. Even though you're sinking, you've got a smile on your face.

JCT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WefdeNLup3M

is my video "How banks create money" if you want to know "How to create paychecks for jobs" and really get a smile on your face.

JCT: Anyway, Alyona's a rare sharpie. If she sees the silliness of the invading army that couldn't use the captured railway because the trainmaster had destroyed all the..... tickets, she might see the silliness of not creating jobs because they don't create enough tickets to pay them and save her generation from being like the Great Depression generation to sit down before their trees with hammers and chains saws unable to build themselves housing because they had no money tickets.

About The Creation Of Money

By Tom J. Kennedy

Ask any person how money is generally created and s/he is likely to tell you that the banks or the mint does it somehow. Ask any person specifically where the money for their personal loan or mortgage comes from and s/he is likely to say that it comes from depositors'’ funds.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the signature of the debtor on the promissory note that authorizes the bank to create the principal out of thin air and hypothetize your asset. Such money is created by debt. Banks don’t lend money. The money is really created by the borrower who signs the promissory note. Almost all money is created by debt, so if there was no debt there would be no money. The primary way to expand the money supply is to create war.

Furthermore, the bank does not create the interest or usury but it exacts such along with the principal from the debtor. Through a process of constructive forgery where neither the debtor (borrower) nor the banker (creditor) bring anything to the table a loan is created whereby you sign an IOU to the bank and the bank treats the IOU as money. You have created new money by a pledge of debt.

During the 20th Century the ‘fractional reserve’ system permitted banks to create and loan $9000.00 when a depositor deposited $1000.00. Fractional reserve banking means that commercial banks were required to keep a specified reserve to qualify them to create and lend mortgages or loans to debtors legally. Governments took away the fractional reserve requirements for most commercial banks during the latter years of the 20th Century.

Government relies on taxes and/or borrowing as their prime methods of financing. Any government commonly raises funds through the borrowing method by selling its bonds on the open market operations. These government bonds are bought by the large transnational corporations, insurance companies and/or commercial banks.

By this government borrowing method to raise funds the taxpayers pay the principal for the infrastructure of highways, bridges or whatever plus the interest or usury costs. Most government funding of this modern era is by this borrowing method and the taxpayer pays the interest or usury to the banks and large corporations for just about everything the government offers, with most taxes giving directly for debt service on the government debt.

In summary, the funds of the wage earners are transferred through taxes to the wealthy holders of capital. Even more noteworthy, is the fact that the community must pay more back than it originally received, which of course is an impossibility. There is a withdrawal of currency when debtors pay back their loans.

The alternative to this conventional system of money creation through reliance on debt is the action of the government directly investing into the production of consumer goods. The Parliament of Canada has the authority to create and spend the money directly into the economy without an interest or usury cost.

In the early 1800's, the small island of Guernsey off the coast of Normandy, France implemented a system of money creation where a direct expenditure was used. The island of Guernsey was impoverished and the population was in decline. The local town council simply issued Guernsey Island paper notes instead of seeking usury-based loans from banks. This resulted in a dramatic improvement in the island’s standard of living.

Money was issued on road construction and public market and neither inflation nor public debt occurred as the notes were removed by taxes.

As we progress into this 21st century, it is imperative that municipal governments study the Guernsey model with a goal to implement such a creative strategy to solve the ever-present shortage of money. The usuryfree community currency movement is likewise positioned to offer resources and expertise on how any municipality can create and spend its own usuryfree community currency.

Note: Readers are invited to read "The Innovative Proposal" at this url:
http://usuryfree.blogspot.com/2010/04/innovative-proposal.html

The Coming Crash: Usury and the Irrelevant Church

By Damon Vrabel Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Please, let us stop this usury! - Nehemiah 5:10

It’s been a wild couple of weeks—increasing unemployment, Greek debt crisis, yet another ridiculous bailout, pressure on Goldman Sachs, accusations of commodities manipulation by JP Morgan Chase, and new freakish levels of market volatility that might be signaling the next phase of market collapse. The many day-to-day issues can leave us dazed and confused, so most people ignore them. Huge mistake.

They are all related to the most powerful force on earth that controls our lives because it is the very foundation of our society—usury. We are ruled not by governments anymore but by financial powers that use interest-bearing debt to exert control over governments, corporations, and people. Almost all other political issues with which we concern ourselves are secondary symptoms of or purposeful distractions from this larger narrative that is never reported by the Wall-Street-funded media. Sadly the church has remained silent as well.

Explaining the details can be extremely complicated, but the basic core to understand is that the US government issues no money. Instead all money comes from private banking institutions with interest attached. At times in the past the US government issued real money for people to use—US notes and coins. But today all money comes from the Federal Reserve’s private banking system by putting the US government, i.e. 308,000,000 Americans, in debt. If the US government were not in debt to the banking system, the American people would have no money.

More technically, the Fed and its Wall Street cartel banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs make billions by doing nothing but controlling our money. They have the monopoly license to create the core money in our system from holding US Treasury bonds on their balance sheets. These bonds represent the debt of the United States. Thanks to interest, the bonds pull a large portion of our wages to the banks. The primary purpose of the IRS is to take your wages to pay the interest back to the banks. In effect, Wall Street owns a good bit of your labor. And the more bonds they hold, i.e. the more debt the population is in, the more money they make thanks to the interest flows and the profits from gambling on your debt. The system is very much one of “us vs. them.” Such is the nature of monopoly power and usury.

Economics and Morality

Controlling others and living off their backs by forcing them to borrow with interest in order to have any money is called usury (this does not include standard, self-liquidating bank loans to businesses to fund production). It is a system that ensures everything we do, whether in the public or private sector, feeds Wall Street and the controllers above it. It creates a two-tiered societal pyramid of money pushers on top vs. money users on bottom. The power differential is huge. Everyone is hostage. In doing something as simple as buying food to survive, we contribute to usury because we only have usury-based money, not real money. Like the slaves who built the Egyptian pyramids, today we are stuck building an invisible pyramid of monetary power.

In such a system there is never enough money to pay back all the interest to the money pushers. The only solution is for the money users—government, corporations, individuals—to borrow more. This is the reason our debt continues skyrocketing to increasingly insane levels. It isn’t about politics, but the fundamental exponential math underlying the system—the users must borrow more and more to pay back interest and keep the system afloat. Such math is guaranteed to fail. Iceland and Greece have reached the point of failure. The rest of the Europe and the US will experience failure as well. Then we will see money and assets vacuumed up the pyramid by the money pushers—the banking establishment that owns the collateral and can take your property.

The exponential math not only creates exponential debt growth, but also exponentially increasing:
Scale – government and businesses keep getting bigger; we get smaller and local communities lose their meaning
Velocity – the hamster wheel keeps spinning faster; human life suffers
Consumption – we buy more and more things that break more quickly
Production – we make more and more things that break more quickly
Inflation – the dollar buys less and less; we can’t seem to make progress

None of these things have to happen in an economic system. They only happen in ours because of debt-based money, usury, that greatly benefits the top of the pyramid while everyone else suffers to a certain degree depending on their level in the pyramid.

So this system is guaranteed to fail due to not only the impossible math, but also the fundamental immorality. Taken together those five issues paint a horrible picture. Republicans blame Democrats and vice-versa. Nope. It’s all a very simple result of a system based on usury, which used to be considered profoundly immoral. It was a fundamental violation of every major religion. It still is for Islam, but Christianity succumbed long ago. They thought a free market economic system would be beneficial, but got snookered into thinking that usury had to be part of that system. On the contrary, monolithic usury kills the free market.

Our monetary system is a top-down controlling machine, not a free market. It is run not by government, but by the most powerful financial interests in the world. Some people feel in their guts that someone must be stealing from them because they just can’t get ahead no matter how hard they work. Well that’s because it’s true—someone is legally stealing from them. The simple math of usury pulls money from people on the bottom of the pyramid who create real value toward those at the top who create no value. MBAs and others serving the system must reckon with this truth rather than remaining blind. Farmers understand it well, having lost their property over the years to the bankers. Families feel it in the fact that it’s difficult to get enough money to feed the kids compared to 50 years ago when one parent could work a standard week and feed a family of five. Everyone in the system will feel it once the debt system collapses as it is doing in Greece.

Living off the backs of others was called feudalism 300 years ago. It was slavery 100 years ago. Today it’s called the “free market” thanks to the propaganda and fraud of neoclassical economics. It completely ignores the truth of our monetary system, the math behind it, and the eventual collapse that will result from it. Greece is giving us a glimpse, but it is only a mild pre-game warmup compared to what’s coming. The world will rue the day it was ever seduced into accepting usury and the illusion of prosperity driven by nothing but debt.

The Irrelevant Church

On this issue of monolithic usury, the issue from which many of our other problems spawn, the church seems to have no voice. Recently, an older church leader told me, “Keep it up, this needs to be addressed, but you have more guts than me, I don’t want to be killed.” Sobering comment, to be sure, but in the shadow of Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Martin Luther King, is the church now impotent? Are its leaders now too afraid to speak truth to power, to stand against darkness? Or is the problem that the church is, like most of us, fooled by the myth that we live in a free market so we don’t realize we are immersed in an immoral system of controlling usury?

Lower class Greek citizens are now learning the painful truth about the mythical free market. A few of them have died as the police brutally repress them to enforce the usury system for the rich bankers like Goldman Sachs. Where is the voice of Bishop Romero? “I order you, stop the repression!” Iceland learned the lesson a few months ago. Several other populations have learned the lesson in the past as the controlling debt peddlers punished, conquered, and restructured their countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, England, etc.). The same lesson is coming to the rest of Europe and the United States. But again, the church seems to be oblivious. It failed to heed Martin Luther King’s warning, “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake…today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake.” The church has fallen asleep.

The Dialectic of Left vs. Right

A possible reason is that the church has been co-opted by the manipulative left vs. right civil war created by the corporate media. In fact, Protestant denominations have split into conservative vs. liberal camps so they war against each other—Wall Street is brilliant at divide and conquer. Some sermons in conservative denominations sound like speeches from conservative politicians. Liberal Christian magazines sometimes seem to be just liberal political magazines with an added dash of Jesus.

Postmodernism should inform us that the left vs. right narrative is contrived to keep people from noticing the real power structure behind Wall Street that controls our lives. As long as the church submits to the false framework, church leaders will be “safe.” But that means they will also be irrelevant because they are not speaking to the primary narrative in our world that has always caused problems and is getting ready to unleash far more pain and poverty in the near future—the issue of monolithic usury and debt servitude. By not speaking against usury, the church has become a pawn of it. So the church has largely been conquered by the same concocted civil war that has divided society.

Dollar Tyranny

Another reason the church may be silent is the simple fact that it depends on money just like everything else does. Since all money in our system comes from usury, it is difficult to even notice it. And what authority would the church have to speak against it since it is itself complicit in it? Anybody or any organization that uses a Federal Reserve Note or a credit/debit card, which everyone must do, is unknowingly participating in usury because, again, all of that money comes from the bonds held by Wall Street. But knowingly or not, how could the church or any organization speak against the very thing that fuels its own existence?

The church’s tax-exempt status may be another reason for the silence. Tax exemption is one of the powerful ways the financial empire system influences and controls other entities. If the wrong person says the wrong thing, the IRS has the ability to suddenly remove the exemption, which doubles the cost of running that organization. The church never should have submitted to such tyranny over what may or may not be said.

Comfort of the Middle Class Bubble

Finally, it seems the comfort provided by the monetary system for the great mass in the middle, which is a key part of the church, keeps us from wanting to really think about it. The illusion of peace and prosperity that has lasted for so long has been nice. Some of us even thought we had that comfort because we were better people, so God blessed us. Reckoning with the truth will be painful for those who believe this. The fact is that our perceived comfort today is a result of the darkness of usury. The middle can only exist because there is a bottom that keeps our system afloat. They are the only reason the middle class exists. Moreover, the comfort is currently an illusion because most in the middle class don’t realize how indebted they are. Total unfunded liabilities currently hidden on the government’s financials put each American in an extra $300,000+ in debt that they currently aren’t aware of. That debt comes from the fact that, again, our money comes from usury.

Since the bubble was built on usury, its very existence is immoral, and everyone who participates in it becomes infected. It is also flimsy because usury means the bubble is sustained by debt. Many are already aware of the hollowness of the bubble since it has destroyed the fabric of our communities and a sense of deeper meaning in life. But others are able to ignore that and focus on the material comfort. What will happen to them once the material comfort itself crashes? It will soon. Some market forecasters predict the final collapse of our debt system will be worse than the Great Depression. The math is clear—it will be worse. Just like Greece, we will then see Wall Street paying the government to crackdown on the people, cancel social programs, and take their assets from them to hand them over to the upper class behind the banks. That is the end result of usury—using debt to control others and take their assets so they have no equity. At that point it will be too late for the church to save the lower and middle classes from violent repression and the upper class from their narcissistic detachment from the horror.

“Silence is Betrayal”

So is there a wing of the church that has not yet sold its soul? Is there a remaining Christian voice against usury, or are Muslims the only people in the world who stand against it? The church must wake up to the truth of our system and become relevant again. This is the civil rights issue of the 21st century, only this time it is not black vs. white but a few money pushers vs. the great mass of users. The power of the bond market is getting ready to wreak havoc. We’re all in it together this time. As Martin Luther King said, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal….That time has come for us today.” Will the real church please speak up?"
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Damon Vrabel has had two fairly different lives—one as an overachiever serving the financial empire, and another as a hopeful advocate for the victims of the empire: local community, indigenous population, the American republic, and the individual heart. He graduated from the United States Military Academy, served as an officer in the US Army, then graduated from Harvard Business School, took a short detour on Wall Street, and had a career in Silicon Valley in several leadership positions in technology corporations. Since leaving empire service, he became a mountaineer, attended Mars Hill Graduate School, and now works toward redemption as a writer and post-neoclassical economic philosopher.

Damon can be reached at: strabes23@gmail.com

NOTE: This article was published at this website:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23067

The Federal Reserve debunked

In recent American history, remarkable and knowledgeable authorities denounced the racket of the Federal Reserve. Here are some of their quotes:

Wright Patman (1893-1976) was a Democratic representative from Texas, who served in the U.S. Congress from 1929 to his death on March 7, 1976. He was chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency for 40 years. For 20 of those years, he introduced legislation to repeal the Federal Reserve Banking Act of 1913.

Here are excerpts from what he said on September 29, 1941, as reported in the Congressional Record of the House of Representatives (pages 7582-7583):

“When our Federal Government, that has the exclusive power to create money, creates that money and then goes into the open market and borrows it and pays interest for the use of its own money, it occurs to me that that is going too far. I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money... I am saying to you in all sincerity, and with all the earnestness that I possess, it is absolutely wrong for the Government to issue interest-bearing obligations. It is not only wrong: it is extravagant. It is not only extravagant, it is wasteful. It is absolutely unnecessary.

“Now, take the Panama Canal bonds. They amounted to a little less than $50,000,000 — $49,800,000. By the time they are paid, the Government will have paid $75,000,000 in interest on bonds of less than $50,000,000. So the Government is paying out $125,000,000 to obtain the use of $49,800,000. That is the way it has worked all along. That is our policy. That is our system. The question is: Should that policy be continued? Is it sane? Is it reasonable? Is it right, or is it wrong? If it is wrong, it should be changed.

“Now, I believe the system should be changed. The Constitution of the United States does not give the banks the power to create money. The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to create money, but now, under our system, we will sell bonds to commercial banks and obtain credit from those banks.

“I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with this Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. I make that statement after years of study.

“We have what is known as the Federal Reserve Bank System. That system is not owned by the Government. Many people think that it is, because it says `Federal Reserve'. It belongs to the private banks, private corporations. So we have farmed out to the Federal Reserve Banking System that is owned exclusively, wholly, 100 percent by the private banks — we have farmed out to them the privilege of issuing the Government's money. If we were to take this privilege back from them, we could save the amount of money that I have indicated in enormous interest charges.” (End of Patman's 1941 speech.)

Under Patman, a little booklet summarizing his views, in the form of questions and answers, called “A Primer On Money”, was prepared by the Sub-committee on Domestic Finance, House of Representatives, Committee on Banking and Currency — 88th Congress, 2nd session, August 4th, 1964. Here are excerpts:

Q.: Who has the right to create money in the United States?
A.: Under the Constitution, it is the right and duty of Congress to create money. It is left entirely to Congress.
Q.: To whom has the Congress delegated this money-creating right?
A.: To the banking system, that is, to the Federal Reserve System and to the commercial banks of the country.
Q.: If the Government can issue bonds, why can't it issue money, and save the interest?
A.: A few clear-headed and firm individuals, such as Abraham Lincoln, have insisted that the Government should.

The late Thomas A. Edison stated the matter this way: If our Nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds, and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay: but one promise fattens the usurer, and the other helps the people.
However, it has long been one of the political facts of life that private banks must be allowed to create the lion's share of the money, even if not all of the money. Thus there is little opposition to the Government's printing bonds, and then permitting the banks to create the money with which to buy those bonds; but proposals that the Government itself create the money instead of the bonds have always set off tremendous political upheavals. For example, Abraham Lincoln set off a political furor when he insisted upon having the Government issue $346 million in money (the so-called “greenbacks”) instead of issuing interest-bearing bonds, and paying interest on the money.

Q.: If the Government issued more money instead of Government bonds, isn't there a danger that the Government would issue too much money, and cause inflation?

A.: No. It is no more or no less inflationary for the private banks to create $1 billion of new money than it is for the Government to create $1 billion of new money. Furthermore, as an agency of the Government, the Federal Reserve System decides in any case the total amount of money to be created.

Louis Thomas McFadden (1876-1836) was chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920 to 1931. He said, on June 10, 1932:

“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the nation's debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the national debt several times over. ”

Jack Metcalf, Washington State Senator for 20 years, and U.S. Congressman from 1995 to 2000, a republican senator in Washington, waged a war to abolish the Federal Reserve and restore to Congress its power to issue money, a power that is clearly stated in the U.S. Constitution:

”Our most basic document, the U.S. Constitution, states in Article 1, Section 8: `The Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof.' Nowhere is there the slightest hint of authorization to delegate that power even to another governmental institution — much less to a private banking system. That is absolutely outside the most broad interpretation possible.”

In 1986, Metcalf single-handedly persuaded the National Conference of State Legislators to endorse unanimously a resolution urging states to challenge the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve. He wrote a book, “The 200-year debate”, and undertook a campaign to educate the population on the workings of the banking system. One of his favorite ways to explain the workings of the Fed is to tell the story of the “Federal Reserve saloon”:

“Four cowboys put up their belongings as collateral to borrow a deck of cards. The hitch is that each of he four must bring back 14 cards at the and of be evening — a mathematical impossibility (there are only 52 cards in all, that is to say, 13 to each). In the end, one player ends up with only 10 cards and loses his belonging... that is the problem with be fed. It creates money to make loans the doesn't create the money to pay the interest.”

This article is originally published at this website:
http://www.michaeljournal.org/feddebunked.htm

Behind The Drums Of War With Iran: Nuclear Weapons or Compound Interest

By Ellen Brown

"On October 25, 2007, the United States announced harsh new penalties on the Iranian military and its state-owned banking systems. Sanctions, bellicose rhetoric and the implicit threat of military action are goads for another war, one that critics fear is more likely to ignite a nuclear holocaust than prevent one. The question is, why is Iran considered such a serious threat? The official explanation is that it is planning to develop nuclear weapons. But the head of the UN watchdog agency IAEA says he has "no concrete evidence" of an Iranian weapons program.1 And even if there were one, a number of countries have tested or possess nuclear weapons outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Pakistan, North Korea, India, and probably Israel; yet we don't consider that grounds for military action. Iran would just be joining a long list of nuclear powers.

Another theory says the push for war is all about oil; but Iran supplies only 15 percent of total Persian Gulf oil exports, and its oil is already for sale.2 We don't need to go to war for it. We can just buy it.

A third theory says the saber-rattling is about defending the dollar. Iran is threatening to open its own oil bourse, and it is already selling about 85 percent of its oil in non-dollar currencies. Iran has broken the petrodollar stranglehold imposed in the 1970s, when OPEC entered into a covert agreement with the United States to sell oil only in U.S. dollars. As Dr. Krassimir Petrov explained this suspected motive in a 2006 editorial in Gold-Eagle.com:

As long as the dollar was the only acceptable payment for oil, its dominance in the world was assured, and the American Empire could continue to tax the rest of the world. If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist. Thus, Imperial survival dictated that oil be sold only for dollars. . . . If someone demanded a different payment, he had to be convinced, either by political pressure or military means, to change his mind.3

An interesting theory, but it still fails to explain all the facts. In a March 2006 editorial in Asia Times Online, William Engdahl noted that war with Iran has been in the cards as part of the U.S. Greater Middle East strategy since the 1990s, long before Iran threatened to open its own oil bourse.4 And Iran is not alone in wanting to drop the dollar as its oil currency. To curb currency risks, Russia is planning to open an Energy Stock Exchange in St. Petersburg next year to trade oil in rubles, something that will have significantly more impact on the dollar than Iran's oil bourse. Central bankers in Venezuela, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates have all said they will be investing less of their reserves in dollar assets due to the dollar's weakening global position.5 When those countries switch to other currencies for their oil trades, will the United States feel compelled to invade them as well?

These theories all have some merit, but none of them seems sufficient to explain the war drums. What is so special about Iran? Here is another possibility: Iran poses a serious threat, not only to oil and the dollar, but to a secret financial weapon that keeps a global banking empire in power. . . .

Compound Interest:
Financial Weapon of Mass Destruction

Around 1980, when interest rates were soaring, Johnny Carson quipped on The Tonight Show that "Scientists have developed a powerful new weapon that destroys people but leaves buildings standing – it's called the 17% interest rate." Compound interest is the secret weapon that has allowed a global banking cartel to control most of the resources of the world. The debt trap snapped shut for many countries in 1980, when international interest rates shot up to 20 percent. At 20 percent interest compounded annually, $100 doubles in under 4 years; and in 20 years, it becomes a breathtaking $3,834.6 The devastating impact on Third World debtors was underscored by President Obasanjo of Nigeria, speaking in 2000 about his country's mounting burden to international creditors. He said:

All that we had borrowed up to 1985 was around $5 billion, and we have paid about $16 billion; yet we are still being told that we owe about $28 billion. That $28 billion came about because of the injustice in the foreign creditors' interest rates. If you ask me what is the worst thing in the world, I will say it is compound interest.7

What bankers call the "miracle" of compound interest is called "usury" under Islamic law and is considered a crime. It was also a crime under Old English law until the sixteenth century, when Martin Luther redefined the offense of "usury" to mean the taking of "excess" interest. Modern Islamic thinkers are not averse to a profitable return on investment when it takes the form of "profit-sharing," with investors taking some risk and sharing in business losses; but the usurer gets his interest no matter what. In fact he does better when the borrower fails. The borrower who cannot afford to pay off his loans sinks deeper and deeper into debt, as interest compounds annually to the lender.

The debt trap that snapped shut in 1980 was set in 1974, when OPEC was induced to trade its oil only in U.S. dollars. The price of oil then suddenly quadrupled, and countries with insufficient dollars for their oil needs had to borrow them from international lenders. By 2001, enough money had flowed back to First World banks from Third World debtors to pay the principal due on their original loans six times over; but interest had consumed so much of those payments that the total debt had actually quadrupled.8 In 1980, median income in the richest 10 percent of countries was 77 times greater than in the poorest 10 percent. By 1999, that gap had grown to 122 times greater. In December 2006, the United Nations released a reported titled "World Distribution of Household Wealth," which concluded that 50 percent of the world's population now owns only 1 percent of its wealth, while the richest 10 percent of adults owns 85 percent. At interest compounded annually, the debts of the poorer nations can never be repaid but will just continue to grow.

The Private Global Banking Scheme

It is this debt scheme, with its lethal weapon of interest compounded annually, that has allowed a small clique of financiers to dominate the business of the world. In Tragedy and Hope, Professor Carroll Quigley wrote from personal knowledge of this financial clique, which he called simply "the international bankers." Dr. Quigley, who was Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown University, said the aim of the international bankers was "nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole," a system "to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements."9 The key to the bankers' success was that they would control and manipulate the money systems of the world while letting them appear to be controlled by governments.

Most countries have now been brought into this private global banking scheme, with most of the world's money being created by commercial banks in the form of interest-bearing loans. In the United States today, the only money created by the government consists of coins, which compose only about one one-thousandth of the total money supply. Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) are created by the Federal Reserve, a private banking corporation, and lent to the government. The vast bulk of the money supply, however, is created when commercial banks make loans. They do this by double-entry bookkeeping: the sum of the borrower's promissory note is simply credited as a deposit to the borrower's account and offset with a matching liability on the bank's side of its books.10 Money creation is now a private affair in most other countries as well. Even where the central bank is technically state-owned, as in the United Kingdom and Canada, the central bank creates only the paper currency of the nation, leaving most of the money supply to be created by commercial banks as compound-interest-bearing loans.11

The alternative to this independent "central bank" system is what used to be called "national banking." A state-owned central bank issued the national currency as an agent of the government, and the government spent the money or lent it into the economy for internal development and public needs. The "seigniorage" on this money -- the difference between the cost of creating it and its face value – accrued to the government, which got the money debt- and interest-free. The goal of the international bankers was to privatize this system and bring it under their control. The central bank would still create the national money supply, but it would lend the money to the government, leaving the government with a massive debt on which it owed interest. Once caught in the debt web, the government could then be induced to privatize other assets, making them available for purchase and control by international finance capital.

At a 1968 meeting of the secretive globalist group known as the Bilderbergers, a U.S. official named George Ball spoke of creating a "world company." Ball was U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs and a managing director of banking giants Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb. The "world company" was to be a new form of colonialism, in which global assets would be acquired by economic rather than military coercion. The "company" would extend across national boundaries, aggressively engaging in mergers and acquisitions until the assets of the world were subsumed under one privately-owned corporation, with nation-states subservient to a private international central banking system.12

Before World War II, the head of this private global banking system was in England; but it moved to Wall Street with the economic ascendancy of the United States. Under the Bretton Woods Agreements, the U.S. dollar became the world's "reserve currency" along with gold. In 1971, President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, and the dollar became the world's reserve currency without that tether. U.S. lenders could create and lend dollars to whatever extent the world could be induced to borrow them. To insure that the lenders got their interest, in the late 1970s the World Bank and International Monetary Fund began imposing "conditionalities" on loans to Third World debtors, requiring them to open up their capital markets, slash spending on social programs, and privatize their industries. Meanwhile, speculative attacks on local currencies that had been left to "float" in foreign exchange markets without the tether of gold caused radical currency devaluations, allowing foreign investors to pick up these privatized assets at bargain basement prices." (snip)

Read the complete article at this website:
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/war-with-iran.php

Competing currency being accepted across Mid-Michigan


by Dan Armstrong

New types of money are popping up across Mid-Michigan and supporters say, it's not counterfeit, but rather a competing currency.

Right now, you can buy a meal or visit a chiropractor without using actual U.S. legal tender.

They sound like real money and look like real money. But you can't take them to the bank because they're not made at a government mint. They're made at private mints.

"I sell three or four every single day and then I get one or two back a week," said Dave Gillie, owner of Gillies Coney Island Restaurant in Genesee Township.

Gillie also accepts silver, gold, copper and other precious metals to pay for food.

He says, if he wanted to, he could accept marbles.

"Do people have to accept dollars or money? No, they don'," Gillie said. "They can accept anything they want or they can refuse to accept anything."

He's absolutely right.

The U.S. Treasury Department says the Coinage Act of 1965 says "private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash, unless there is a state law which says otherwise."

That allows gas stations to say they don't accept 50- or $100 bills after a certain time of day in hopes of not getting robbed.
A chiropractic office in Lapeer County's Deerfield Township allows creativity when it comes to payment.

"This establishment accepts any form of silver, gold, chicken, apple pie, if someone works it out with me," said Jeff Kotchounian of Deerfield Chiropractic. "I've taken many things."

Jeff Kotchounian says he's used this Ron Paul half troy ounce of silver to get $25 worth of gas from a local station.
While the government and banks don't accept them, many others do.

So why is there interest in these competing currencies?
Is it just novelty or is there something deeper?

Coming on July 13th on NBC25 news at 6 p.m., you'll see why supporters of competing currencies say their money is worth more and is inflation proof. 

This article was originally posted at this website: 
http://www.connectmidmichigan.com/news/story.aspx?id=481793

UsuryFree Networks Growing

By Kerri Birtch - (Special to the Eye Opener)

“Thou shalt not take usury from another man,” reads one of our most read holy books. But somewhere in the last 100 years in particular, this notion has disappeared on our modern economy. The definition of usury is “the lending of money at exhorbitant interest rates.”

While most people have never heard the word before, its simplest translation is “interest.”

Nowadays, usury is everywhere. It comes with the bank loan you took out for your down payment; it comes with the mortgage on your house and the credit card you are working feverishly to pay off.

One way residents of rural Ontario are attempting to combat the pressures of usury is by ascribing to the ways of UsuryFree Networks and incorporating the use of community currency in their towns.

Tom J. Kennedy is a retired school teacher and a money reform activist, from Tamworth, Ontario. He became interested in usury back in the early 1980's when interest rates had hit 21-22 percent, he explains.

“I had a mortgage like everyone else, but I had to ask the question: How come the bank gets two houses and we only get one?” referring to the interest being paid on the mortgage.

He calls this problem, “the design flaw of usury” and it relates to the scarcity of federal cash.

According to Kennedy, the design flaw of usury is directly and/or indirectly responsible for much of the pain and suffering experienced by human beings living here on planet earth.

In truth, we are all paying for usury one way or another. Businesses with debt will often need to increase their retail prices in order to make up for their interest rates, therefore we the consumers are indirectly paying for usury. Rising interest rates cause inflation, which in turn, can cause financial distress for the rest of society.

The first usuryfree system was created by Michael Linton, of Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Following a local recession in 1982, Linton created the LETS (Local Employment Trading System) sofware. At the time local unemployment rates were roughly 25 per cent and so, the problem was that people had the skills, but there was no one who could afford to pay to use their services.

Thus, the LETSystem was born. According to Kennedy, the idea was to make a list of things you have and things you want. Then you negotiate a trade. If you had a large enough group of people, you would be able to survive without an abundance of federal cash.

Originally, in Canada, it was all done virtually by calling a system operator and reporting your trade, and then you would be mailed a paper statement, confirming the trade, much like a bank statement. In its first four years of existence the first LETSystem recorded $350,000. Of trading in greendollars that would not have taken place if these participants had relied entirely on hard, federal currency.

Since then, LETS has been spreading throughout the English speaking world. Linton called the virtual community currency “greendollars” after his vision of the environmental and social benefits that would follow general use of the system.

Now, however, the set up has changed to include printed pieces of community currency to make it easier for trades.

“Say you had a product that was worth $100. But the wholesale cost was really $60. In order to trade, someone would pay you the $60. In federal cash to cover your costs, then give you the rest in community currency.” explains Kennedy.

According to Wikipedia, the basics of LETS are that:
- Local people set up a club to trade among themselves, keeping their own record of accounts.
- A directory of members’ offers and requests - goods, services or items for hire, priced on local LETS units - is compiled and circulated.
- Members use the directory to contact one another whenever they wish. They pay for any service or goods by writing a LETS cheque or credit note for an agreed amount of LETS units, or by exchanging printed LETS notes.
- If applicable, the credit note is sent to the LETS book keeper who adjusts both members’ accounts accordingly.
- Unlike direct barter, with LETS members can earn credits from any member and spend them with anyone else on the scheme.

While the system will work just about anywhere that there are enough people who are willing to embrace it, Kennedy says it seems to work best in rural communities.

In Canada alone there are likely about 5000+ people using community currency.

Another example of the system at work was in 2001 after the economic crisis hit Argentina. A community currency was created and used by over seven million people.

One of the key components of successful usuryfree networks; “is that you take the federal cash you saved by using the network, and you pay off a debt of some kind. It’s the people who really understand the premise of it all that do this. We’re all paying interest on debt,” says Kennedy.

Much of the resistance from the general public probably: “comes from the belief that it is a ‘new idea.’ But what most don’t realize, is that our ancestors built our country on a similar system.” says Kennedy.

“Then there are those I call ‘watchers.’ They wait to see if it’s going to work first.”

If you’re ready to stop watching and start participating or you’d just like more information regarding the usuryfree movement, please contact: The UsuryFree Network, P. O. Box 9333, Ottawa, Ontario KiG 3V1 Tel: 1.888.NOUSURY Email: usuryfree@kos.net

Reprinted with permission from Vol. 4, No. 3, September 2006, The Kingston Eye Opener, P. O. Box 2154, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 5J9 (Publisher/Editor: Geoff Matthews)

You Are Invited To Launch A UsuryFree Community Currency In Your Community?

You Are Invited To Launch A UsuryFree Community Currency In Your Community?
By Tom J. Kennedy

It is a recession  Or is it a depression? It certainly is an economic malaise and it seems to be deepening from a recession to a depression. The silver lining in this dark economic cloud is the simple fact that more and more consumers are now ready and willing to change the way they spend their money.

The expressions “usuryfree living” or “living usuryfree” are worthy ideal to pursue. These are simple but positive expressions of our intent to live without paying usury to creditors. It is also the intent of usuryfree creatives to shop locally, with small-to-medium sized retail businesses and/or home-based enterprises where the owner-entrepreneurs agree to accept a portion of any usuryfree community currency as a complement with our diminishing amounts of federal cash.

There is an article posted online titled “Life Without Usury.” Simply search for it at any search engine and read it. It is my conviction that this current generation can follow the lead of our ancestors and abolish usury (this time forever) and thereby usher in a new age of usuryfree living for everyone on this planet.

The forthcoming “Sixth Annual UsuryFree Day/Week” from November 13th to 19th, 2010 is an optimal time to launch a usuryfree community currency for your local community. There is ample time now to do the research and compile the relevant information needed to facilitate the launch of a usuryfree community currency for your local community.

Local trading or exchanging of products and/or services is encouraged and promoted during UsuryFree Week. Committed and potential usuryfree creatives gather each year during UsuryFree Week to share ideas and experiences and engage in networking at workshops and seminars. The pioneering usuryfree creatives are commonly present at these events and willingly share their resources, ideas and experiences with those who attend.

A usuryfree community currency promotes the idea of self-sufficiency within any local community. This self-sufficiency concept is otherwise defined as “bioregionalism” and its supporters advocate shopping locally to help re-build the spirit of community.

Any group or network that advocates using a usuryfree community currency likewise promotes the concept of “bioregionalism” because the participating traders are re-educated on the importance of buying products and/or services from local entrepreneurs instead of continuing to buy from the big box stores. In general, these giant, transnational, retail corporations are not likely to agree to accept any usuryfree community currency as partial payment for any negotiated trade or exchange because store policy will not permit the sales clerks to authorize such unique, loyalty transactions.

However, the local entrepreneur - who is owner of the business - is highly motivated to negotiate trades or exchanges with other participating traders who are seeking to use a usuryfree community currency as a complement with their diminishing amounts of federal cash.

Furthermore, the aware and awakened, local entrepreneur commonly views this innovative concept of trade or exchange as the optimal, customer loyalty program. In a manner, similar to the way that Canadian Tire money functions, accepting any usuryfree community currency for partial payment of any negotiated trade or exchange not only brings in new customers, but also motivates them to come back as a regular customer.

Indeed, local entrepreneurs like participating in a usuryfree community currency group or network because they know they can spend any usuryfree community currency that they accumulate with other traders in the group, thereby never losing any revenue for their innovative decision.

On the Tamworth Hour, paper note, it is written: “This usuryfree note entitles the bearer to receive one hour of basic labour or its negotiated value in real capital (goods or services). This note is backed by the honesty and integrity of time-traders who promise to deliver real capital to ‘Hour Third Market Network’ at a future date. Any time-trader is invited to accept it, then spend it. Time-traders agree to accept notes of usuryfree time currency at par from other time-traders known to them directly and/or indirectly.”

All usuryfree community currencies are commonly referred to as economic tools designed to re-build local economies. A thriving local economy does not require consumers to purchase more and more items. Instead, a local economy thrives when useful and practical products and/or services are exchanged by participating traders within any community.

For example, The UsuryFree Network accepts any usuryfree community currency for seminar or workshop admission as well as for various relevant resources (books, brochures, videos, DVD’s, selected health and wellness products etc.) thereby demonstrating how negotiated transactions can facilitate positive and mutually beneficial exchanges between local consumers.

UsuryFree Day is the perfect day to ponder our financial impact on our respective local community, but becoming and engaged and committed usuryfree creative is a worthy, longer-term commitment. Seminars and/or workshops exposing the design flaw of usury while promoting the usuryfree lifestyle will be scheduled during this “Sixth Annual UsuryFree Week.” If there is not yet an event planned for your community, you are hereby invited to take a leadership role and plan an event any day from November 13th to 19th, 2010.

You do not need to wait for UsuryFree Day/Week to launch a usuryfree community currency in your local community. You can do it NOW   In any case, you are invited to resolve to do your part to make the world a better place by commencing your self-imposed course of study by reviewing various, relevant resources to find out how you can experience the reality of usuryfree living in this incarnation.

For example, you can go to any search engine and type in any of the following words or phrases: usuryfree living; usuryfree community currency; usuryfree network, usuryfree lifestyle; usuryfree creatives; life without usury; money as debt; Tommy UsuryFree etc.

Print Your Own Money

By Jennifer Aitkens

'The unreasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' - George Bernard Shaw

About a year ago, our editor Dale Ennis introduced me to an unreasonable man, Tom Kennedy, or Tommy UsuryFree as he styles himself, believes the world would be a better place without interest or 'usury.' He's not alone in this belief: during my research I have discovered a whole group of unreasonable men and women printing and using their own money. They believe they're sowing the seeds of a better world for all of us. Could they be right?

Most people believe that banks lend out the money their clients leave on deposit. That's true to an extent, but modern banks also create money out of thin air by making loans to their customers. They do this through an accounting sleight-of-hand known as fractional reserve banking. By holding just a small amount of money in currency or on deposit with the Bank of Canada, banks are allowed to loan out far more money than they can ever redeem. The bank makes a profit on this non-existent money in the form of interest or "usury" as it was traditionally called, while the borrower must now earn enough money to cover both the original amount of the loan and the interest.

For many people, interest payments become a never-ending treadmill. Driven by the need to pay their bills, people sacrifice their families, their health and their lives to work at unfulfilling jobs. Even those who take pride in being debt-free pay the cost of interest in social malfunction, environmental decline and the debt-serving costs of the business they patronize. A lucky few get rich; the rest spend their lives trying to escape the debt trap.

The creation of money by our chartered banks raises some challenging questions. What is so special about paper money that we should have to pay interest when we need more of it to buy a house or operate a business? Why can't we get a loan for a nominal fee that covers administrative costs and pay it back, as we are able? It certainly didn't cost the bank anything to create the money in the first place!

It is the injustice of usury that haunts Tom Kennedy and hundreds of others involved in the promotion of various alternatives to legal tender, including multi-party barter and unbacked supplementary currency. The multi-party barter system takes simple two-party bartering to a more useful level. Members negotiate trades among themselves and an independent, third-party agent maintains an open central record of credits and debits. While the system works well for the exchange of services, it is hard to get retailers to sign on. After all, they still have to pay federal cash to their wholesalers. The recording of the trade also creates additional work, and many people can be intimidated by the need to negotiate every trade. How many hours of your time, for instance, are you prepared to give in exchange for an hour of work by a skilled plumber?

Kennedy champions a non-cash-based paper currency system that is backed, not by federal currency like Toronto dollars, but by the assurance that it will be accepted in trade by other members of the community. In a non-cash-based system, your "wealth" is your time, the goods you make, or the services you offer - all of which can be exchanged for supplementary currency in trade with other members of your community. In return, you use the currency you receive to make your own purchases of goods and services from the community. Theoretically, the more members in your group, the broader the range of goods and services available to you. Retailers who buy wholesale from outside the group charge enough federal dollars to cover their costs, and accept partial payment in community currency, which can be used in turn to hire staff from the community. The system encourages the consumption of locally produced goods, creates employment for local workers and builds community-strengthening ties between the traders. And, unlike bank-created money, supplementary currency can be lent out to actively trading members in good standing at 0% interest.

Printing your own currency is a maverick idea and it tends to raise a lot of eyebrows. Why not just use legal tender? Could counterfeiting destroy the system? Is this a way to avoid paying income tax? These are good questions that, if left unanswered, will create more skeptics than converts to the concept of supplementary currency. Let me answer those questions here.

First of all, supplementary currencies are most powerful when legal tender is in short supply due to high interest rates, a lack of jobs or other causes. In Argentina, for example, a supplementary currency called "creditos" has helped the people of that country trade their way around a devastating collapse of the national currency. With the peso barely worth the paper it was printed on and foreign currency hard to come by, Argentines were left without a reliable medium of exchange. They did have time and goods to sell to each other - all they needed was a currency to grease the system. Before long, barter clubs sprang up around the country, served by an assortment of home-grown "papelitos" or paper notes that are still functioning today as currency.

Regarding counterfeiting, early literature on supplementary currency suggested that counterfeiting wasn't as issue. The Argentinean experience taught us otherwise. For everyone's protection, supplementary currencies are now printed with serial numbers, watermarks and other security devices. Poorly rendered imitations can be quickly spotted and removed from circulation. But more importantly, supplementary currency has a built-in, self-regulating mechanism against this threat. It anything threatens the integrity of the system, community members can trade the currency at a discount or refuse to accept it at all until the problem is rectified. That's not an option with legal tender!

When it comes to income tax, supplementary currency is treated like legal tender. As Kennedy explains in the context of his supplementary currency, Tamworth Hours, "Whenever you receive or spend Tamworth Hours, ask yourself: 'If this were a twelve-dollar bill, would I report it as taxable income or claim it as a deductible expense?' If the answer is yes, then you should pay tax on it or report it as an expense. If the answer is no, then ignore it."

To Learn More

There are many good reasons for supporting supplementary currencies. If you're interested in starting or participating in a local currency group, I encourage you to learn more theory than I've been able to offer in this article. Start with Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender by Thomas H. Greco Jr. (ISBN:1890132-37-3, available from the author via email at: circ@mindspring.com). In this month's Products and Services column, I've described some supplementary currency experiments underway in Canada. It you live in one of these areas, get in touch with the organization and learn how supplementary currency is revitalizing their community. For an excellent review of Argentina's response to their currency crisis, see the video "Money" by filmmaker Isaac Isitan (with Carol Poliquin, Canada, 2003). *

Printing our own money is not as unreasonable as it sounds. And if Tom Kennedy and his colleagues are correct, the creation of usury-free local currencies may even speed our progress towards a more caring, sustainable world.

Jennifer Aitkens, Financial Writer, 247 Blair Road, Cambridge, Ontario N1S 2J9 Tel: (519) 620.2626 Email: jennifer.aitkens@rogers.com

Jennifer Aitkens, writes a regular financial column for Canadian MoneySaver called The Informed Investor. Her column, subtitled 'Print Your Own Money' on pages 5 and 6 of the June 2005 issue of Canadian MoneySaver is reprinted here with permission.

Canadian MoneySaver is an acclaimed investment advisory with a recognized reputation for providing a trustworthy and down-to-earth service since 1981. Canadian MoneySaver is published by Dale and Betty Ennis. Box 370, Bath, Ontario K0H 1G0

Canadian MoneySaver welcomes online and print member subscribers. Subscription details are posted at the website: http://www.canadianmoneysaver.ca

A Dad Talks (Types) to His Graduating Daughter

July 13, 2010

Dear daughter:

I am writing this to you on July 13th, from my computer. First, I want to say how proud I am of your academic achievement at University. Though I did not attend the graduation ceremony I was thinking of you walking across the stage with your peers.

On that day, I marveled at you and your generation’s commitment to similar values that my generation and my parent’s generation hold dear: love, honour, justice, fairness, integrity, freedom, prosperity, spirituality, civility, peaceful resolution of conflict etc.

As I admired you and all of your colleagues and your professors and the faculty staff of the University, I wondered if it would be your generation that will dare to take up the challenge to formally address the critical issues of war, terror, violence, poverty, scarcity and lack and how these issues can be forever fixed when we expose the design flaw of usury for the evil that it is.

Contrary to what it may have seemed at times over your university career, I have always been supportive of your academic decisions. I have tried to honour you by not interfering and imposing my bias that has been coloured by my ongoing research and my chosen, real life experiences. You and I may not always agree on specific strategies to realizing ultimate freedom and financial success, but I do appreciate your willingness to hear (read) me out. So here goes ...

I pondered that the .001 percent calculation that is commonly used to measure the general public’s awareness about the design flaw of usury, is likely applicable to the approximate 1000 graduates who received their academic degrees with you. Since you have some exposure to my research about usury, then you would likely be that .001 percenter in your graduating class of 2010. Bravo!!

I know that it’s not easy being a young, graduating adult with a debt load caused (a) partly because your father made choices to pursue research as a usuryfree creative and was therefore incapable of giving you abundant financial assistance during your many years of study and (b) partly because your mother and father separated, thereby causing our meagre monthly earnings to be distributed to cover the cost of two households instead of one & (c) partly because you made your own choices of how to spend your loans, grants, earnings etc. and (d) mainly because the ‘system’ is designed to make sure that graduating students of this 21st Century are financially enslaved as they set out to perform their roles and duties for the next 40+ years.

What makes the debt challenge even more unique is the fact that you - by association with me - have a reasonable understanding of how the function of usury which will be exacted commencing six months after your final graduation. This usury will cause your debt load to grow exponentially, even though you will be making monthly payments.

I recommend that you reduce your debt load as quickly as possible to evade the usury fees that the banking institutions will exact from your future monthly pay cheques as you take your place to perform roles and duties for the ‘system’ that relies on new graduates to replace those who retire annually. This means that you must immediately establish your priorities and balance them with your available finances and commit to following a strict budget so that your education debt is paid off as quickly as possible.

I admire your tenacity and the way that you and your generation are accepting the challenge to learn how to cope with the vagaries, the hypocrisies and the criminalities of this 21st Century. I extend a sincere invitation for you and your generation to support the research of that unique group of usuryfree creatives (of whom I am one) who have exposed (the problem) - the big lie about money creation and offered (the solution) - a usuryfree time currency for the whole world.

When your loans are paid off you can consider yourself a proud usuryfree creative. We, the usuryfree creatives are dedicated to the unselfish, long term goal of experiencing usuryfree living for the whole planet rather than the selfish, short-term goal of experiencing usuryfree living for oneself.

Make no mistake about it. We are in an Information War and it is not just about abolishing usury within your personal lifestyle. It is about knowing of the desire of the usury elitists (politicians, global bankers and their corporate cronies) who have hijacked most governments in the world to create permanent financial slavery - locally, nationally and internationally. They have an ultimate agenda to forever enslave us within their usury-based system of electronic finance enforced with police-state repression. They refer to it as their New World Order, I refer to it more correctly as their New World Dis-Order.

They are advancing their agenda at a rapid rate. The Bilderbergs met in Spain during the first week of June 2010 and the G8 and G20 met in Toronto, Ontario during the last week of June 2010 to further advance their devious plans - certainly not for we-the-people. Indeed, the outcome of this current Information War will shape Canada’s future, America’s future and the world’s future for the 21st century and beyond. Indeed, the stakes are that high.

If we want to preserve and defend the Constitution of Canada, and the best of what we are in the world, and if we want to help advance humanity another couple of feet along the route to civilized behavior instead of falling back into the old habits of violence and repression - if we truly desire that future, we can make it happen with soul force and re-education that begins after you complete your formal education.

So that's where I'm coming from, dear daughter. Let's type, talk and communicate often. Many in my generation have been there and laid the foundations to make usuryfree living a reality early in this 21st Century. So, let's work together to turn this country around for you, your brothers, your nephews, your cousins, your peers, and for my generation, for future generations and for the whole world. Let’s begin NOW

Love you dearly
Dad xoxox

Ramblings on UsuryFree Living

By Tom J. Kennedy

Emile Zola said of truth:  If you shut up the truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way.  As we progress into this 21st Century, the 'truth about money' is being revealed in ways that resemble the spread of an epidemic. People are awakening to the fact that a network of 'high finance' money lenders dictatorially control the wealth, the citizens and the destiny of nations worldwide through a centralized banking process enforced by usurious monetary laws.

A careful reasearch of history indicates that the Federal Reserve Act (USA) of 1913 was passed through the intrigues of these international bankers in order to finance World War I and commence the financial enslavement of the citizens of the western world. There is much evidence to show that the Great Depression of the 1930's was systematically planned to consolidate the plunder and power of the international bankers. And now in this 21st Century, the compounding burden of personal, business, national and international indebtedness has brought the world to the brink of global financial collapse that will leave millions of people destitute and dispossessed - unless we build our economic lifeboats NOW.

While most people are not yet aware of the power of the international financiers, the ranks of the enlightened are growing daily. The global banking industry must be understood for what it really is and not for what it is perceived to be. The objectives and hidden agendas of these global bankers must be thwarted and their injustices redressed. This requires the presentations of knowledge by those who have already learned the realities of international finance.

The banking industry, the transnational corporations and the politicians are but individual facets of the collective power structure of national and international finance. All facets of this power must be confronted and intellectual abdication is a luxury that cannot be afforded. The Revolution of Understanding must be accelerated. A new Intelligentsia must be created to bear the light of truthful concepts about usury or interest and how it affects our orthodox money system.

The conceptual incarceration foisted upon the world by the manacles of establishment propaganda must be destroyed. The people of Canada - and elsewhere - must be freed from the tenacles of international finance and the pernicious influence of the transnational corporations that are charged to do the bankers' bidding. Insidious, subversive legislation will no longer be tolerated by informed citizens. Our founding fathers fought and died to bequeath us the sacred right to free speech. Awakening people are invited to exercise this right and speak out eloquently against the powers of international finance. An infusion of light is being projected into a domain previously enveloped in darkness. And it is being done NOW

Viral marketing and viral advertising is producing an exponential increase in awareness about the possibility of 'usuryfree living' as compared to the reality of 'living with usury.' The messages about usuryfree living and how to experience usuryfree living are being spread by word-of-mouth, and by effective online processes such as word-of-email and word-of-web. Audio cassettes, video cassesttes, DVD's, CD's, websites, books and printed literature about the problems associated with the design flaw of usury and the solutions as offered by the usuryfree community currency movement are being networked by usuryfree creatives as more and more people seek to learn 'what they didn't know they didn't know.'

Usuryfree living is becoming more than just a dream for people who are re-educating themselves on financial concepts that formal education neglects to teach. In fact, usuryfree living is becoming a reality for those usuryfree creatives who are putting into practice the knowledge that they are learing from their self-imposed, re-educational courses of study. Viral marketing and viral advertising by usuryfree creatives within the usuryfree community currency movement can take the credit for the growing awareness of the reality of usuryfree living.

The new element about usuryfree living is that people are becoming aware of how they have been victims of the design flaw of usury and they are now empowering themselves to make a difference. The most staggering truth that absolutely baffles most people is the fact that banks do not lend out depositors' funds. Instead, banks act as the 'creditor' by creating and lending brand new money (the principal) based on the borrower's (the debtor's) signature on a promissory note.

Banks never create the interest (usury) though it is legally required to be paid to the lender along with the principal amount of the borrowed loan. The bottom line is that with a little common sense thinking it is mathematically impossible to repay the interest or usury as it is never created at the point when the loan is created. Ultimately, it is the growth of debt which is the atrocity that must be addressed if we are to shift from 'living with usury' to 'usuryfree living.'

People of our parents' and grandparents' generations instinctively managed their money and financial transactions to avoid paying usury and/or to pay minimal amounts of usury without being aware that banks were involved in a sleight-of-hand process in regards to money creation.

In recent years, it has become very clear that debtors have become pawns in the games of global banking and political power. These debtors are the small to medium-sized businesses and the family farms as well as those middle class families who have mortgages on their family homes. It is the aim of the super rich money lenders of the world banking cartel to check-mate all of the small to medium-sized businesses and family farms and so that we will be subservient to transnational corproations and large agri-business corporate farms.

Unknown to most of the debtors, it is the design flaw of usury (interest) along with the fraudulent practice of fractional reserve banking that is the rampaging, deadly cancer that has been destroying and weakening our economy so that we will have the status of a third world country. Will we awaken enough of our fellow-citizens to save ourselves or will we continue on the road to total financial enslavement by the New World Order advocates?

During the latter half of the 20th Century and continuing to the present, just like any marketable concept - 'Buy Now, Pay Later' - was and still is foisted upon two unsuspecting generations, baby boomers and their children. As consumers, the baby boomers and their children are bombarded with an 'immediate gratification' mentality by radio, TV and print advertising and credit cards are pushed at the youth even in their teens.

For the past 40 years bankers have been using with great success, the age-old 'bait and switch' con game on consumers who are ignorant of money creation. It's about time that consumers - the baby boomers, their children - and their children's children - learned that bankers create money by the stroke of a pen with a hidden agenda to 'snare' as much collateral as possible. Informed consumers will stop trusting bankers when they learn the truth about money creation.

The expected norm of carrying credit card debt has mushroomed into a multi-billion dollar business during the past 40 years. More people than ever before are placing second and/or third morgages on their family homes to pay off usurious, credit card debt.

Enter the usuryfree LETS (Local Employment Trading System) software in the early 1980's and those who participated learned that they could create and spend their own usuryfree community currency in these mutual credit systems known as LETSystems. Ironically, this new-found status of abundant money creation was birthed because of a 'shortgage of money' in the early 1980's when interest (usury) rates skyrocketed to 21% in Canada.

For the past 26+ years, the usuryfree community currency movement has been evolving with the introduction of hybrid usuryfree currency systems that utilize paper notes of usuryfree community currency. The usuryfree community currency movement is shifting us away from cenralized 'dollar and cents' banking towards decentralized 'hours and minutes' banking.

For many visionaries, 'time' is the universal unit of account that is standard in every country on planet earth. Every hour has a value of sixty minutes, so let's find ways to trade 'time' locally and globally by implementing a simple service fee - payable in hours and minutes - to replace the design flaw of usury which is exacted in 'dollars and cents.'

Given the ease of modern technology, we can abolish the usury software that currently dominates the infrastructure (hardware) of the orthodox banking system and replace it with a usuryfree software modelled after the original usuryfree LETS software.

During the 1980's two-income families emerged as the norm and both spouses in a marriage were conditioned to scramble on the economic tread-mill in a frenzied effort to earn enough money to pay the ever-increasing amounts of 'usury and taxes.' Few people realized that most taxes payments are directly and/or indirectly exacted as usury by the orthodox banking system since all levels of government as well as all corporations have loans from creditors that exact interest or usury, otherwise known as 'debt service.' What to do to solve these problems?

That's where the UsuryFree Network comes in. The UsuryFree Network offers workshops/seminars to individuals and/or groups along with an abundance of resources such as audio cassettes, video cassettes, DVD's, CD's, websites, books and printed literature. 'Money As Debt' by Paul Grignon, is the newest and most popular DVD that is now available from the UsuryFree Network.

The UsuryFree Network was launched on May 13th, 2001.

The UsuryFree Network launched a usuryfree community currency in Tamworth, Ontario, Canada on November 13th, 2004. To honour the first anniversary of Tamworth Hours, the first annual UsuryFree Week was declared to be from November 13th until November 19th, 2005. Events were celebrated in Tamworth, Ontario, Canada on November 13th, 2005. 

The sixth annual UsuryFree Week is scheduled from Saturday, November 13th until Friday, November 19th, 2010. Events will be planned for various communities during UsuryFree Week.

The UsuryFree Network invited usuryfree creatives to plan local events and share the details with the UsuryFree Network. Together we rely on viral marketing and viral advertising to network and promote these events so that more people can learn how to avoid and/or eiminate usury in their economic lives. Sharing news about plans to launch a usuryfree community currency in your respective local communities is advocated as one of the best ways to celebrate UsuryFree Week.



The dream of becoming usuryfree and thereby eliminating usury in this incarnation motivates people to step out of their 'hassle-free zones' to re-educate themselves and over-ride the lies, deceit and deception that has been foisted upon them by the media and their formal education experiences during the latter years of the 20th Century.

The UsuryFree Network reports that individuals freely admit that after being exposed to this new information, they may choose to ignore this re-education, but they can never unlearn the 'truth' once exposed and confirmed by their own ongoing research.

Consultations offered by any usuryfree creatives being re-educated by the UsuryFree Network are definitely worth implementing and individuals are encouraged to become self-motivated in a world where usuryfree creatives are still a minority and the dream of usuryfree living is a reality yet to be realized by the masses.



Understand that when usuryfree living is experienced, and usury is eliminated from your life experience, you will truly enjoy 'heaven on earth.' Indeed, usuryfree living is empowering and it is right for you. When you are ready to commence the process of 'becoming' usuryfree consider attending or planning a usuryfree workshop/seminar hosted by the UsuryFree Network and make it an event that will transform your life.



The UsuryFree Network, P. O. Box 9333, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3V1 
Tel: 1.888.NOUSURY Email: tom@cyberclass.net
Websites: http://www.cyberclass.net/usuryfree.htm

http://usuryfree.blogspot.com