By Sydney White
Talking heads in serious suits intone the mantra “Pay down the debt.” Applause and worship go to those saviours who announce that they have “paid dwon” more on the debt than previous politicians. “Operating on a deficit,” even in times of recession is blasphemy; and those who suggest it are treated to righteous scorn by the hired guns on monetarism in industry and academia.
From time to time, announcements are made by the priests of the temple who proclaim, in weighty tones to the waiting multitiudes, that belts must be tightened, that unfortunately we must sell out our public assets and investments to the privateers because we have mismanaged them. They have become inefficient.
Of course they have! Funding and technology have been withdrawn!
After Maurice Strong removed all the technicians from Ontario’s hydro system, it was stolen from the people. This past January 27, the newspapers made the announcement, what we knew all along would happen: the rates are going up.
In the United States, headlines blasted the news that “Twenty-two states, freezing in the dark, refuse to privatize their hydro” – and they didn’t. But the will of Canadians has been ignored; token hearings were closeted. Private deals choked off any publicity about our vehement opposition. “We,” supposedly have accepted our loss. The taste of corruption is bitter in our mouths.
A few months ago, Ontario’s public education already underfunded, was robbed to reward those who can afford private schools. As defined by the opposition in the legislature, this transfer of money is essentially a voucher system, paid by public school children. The Americans refused the voucher system when it was touted a couple of years ago. Despite the propaganda, the elitist plan didn’t get a foot in the door. But here, Canadians had no say whatsoever in preven ting the few from inculcating a system that according to both the provincial Liberals and the NDP, will cause segregation and elitism.
Regardless of opposition meetings at the Ontario Legislature and protests trying to shore up the foundation of equal opportunity, our objections were so much chaff in the wind. The logic of the Red Queen prevailed; since the public system didn’t have enough funding, the private schools would help out by taking the dissatisfied students. They would get $3500. For each student. The public school system would lose $700. For each student they lost. How’s that for a direct hit without a helicopter gun ship? All because “there’s just not enough funding” to give our children a public education.
The first direct attack on our health came with the Ontario government’s budget cuts to the Ministry of the Environment, particularly regarding water inspections. Much to their chagrin (and it seems to be the only emotion they felt) the “svings” resulted in seven lives lost and the debilitation of more than 2000. The reason given for the cuts was there wasn’t enough funding; we couldn’t afford to keep our water safe.
Now our health care is being vivisected behind closed doors by those who have stolen our other public investments. Until we encounter a health emergency, we will not know exactly what services have been de-listed.
The first step in this legalized robbery is to call our public investments “monopolies.” Since they are shared and supported by all, they cannot be honestly and logically defined as monopolies, But whatever semantics will enable this theft to take place will be used,
The most believed propaganda is, of course, that “there is no more funding available from the federal government.” We are told, once again, that there is no alternative, that we will just have to hand over our hard-won assets to the private sector. That is a lie. But like so many lemmings, most misinformed and over-worked Canadians have resigned themselves to plunge into the arctic waters of privatization, there to await an early and budget-convenient death.
We are told that the credit we have earned as contributors to the welfare of our nation has simply eroded. The decades of taxes we have paid into our social investments are no longer valid. We are not citizens first, but debtors: and to serve the debt is preached as the highest morality.
As we cast our inheritance on the pyre, the flames of compound interest reach new heights, We buckle our belts and lean into the task of dragging yet another stone to the pyramid. Our children will be born in the traces and they will carry on the labour when we die. Instead of homes, mortgages will be inherited: after the mortgage is paid, the home will be taken to pay for home care. Each generation will have to start from scratch: lifetimes of work will leave nothing to our families.
Despite the horrors that march nearer every day, no one ever asks, “To whom do we owe this debt?” If your child should come to you asking for money to pay someone back, you would certainly ask him who his creditor was. Yet, in this country of untold natural riches, we have a debt of more than $600 billion of which 95 percent is interest (usury), compounding as I write. Who, indeed is collecting all our earthly goods? Secondly, and more importantly: why with trillions in natural wealth, do we have this monstrous debt at all? Why do we suffer from an accounting system where the profits are privatized and the debt is socialized? The system that is arbitrarily inflicted on us is one of social debt, one that ignores our contribution to our nation. As Keynes said, “Classical economists have overthrown the understanding of ordinary people and they are wrong as well.”
Everything that is logical in economics has been turned upside down. For instance, Africa is held up as a “poor” continent. Dying children plead from the television for food. But Africa is the victim of mass murder and robbery. The people are poor, but the continent is rich – in diamonds, gold, oil and rich land. It is the people who own nothing, while mauraders and carpetbaggers steal their inheritance. If we don’t wake up, and soon, we will lose our inheritance. It just won’t be as noticeable.
Like Africa’s countries, we are rich with trillions in natural resources. But luckier than Africa, we solved the problem of funding for infrastructure. This was done during the Second World War and for 30 years afterward when our government borrowed all it needed for infrastructure – including our universal health care system – as zero or low rates of interest from the Bank of Canada, our government’s own bank. Thanks to the character of our central bank, more than half of all new money was created by our bank, at no interest – the only way for new money to be created.
Not only did this legitimate accounting keep us out of debt, it also forced the private banks to keep their interest as low as the central bank.
Unfortunately, since 1974 when Jean Chretien became finance minister, the Bank of Canada has been creating less and less new money, while allowing the private banks to create more and more. Today our central bank creates a mere 2 percent of each year’s new money supply – while the private banks are now creating 98 percent of the new money.
The unspoken crime involved here is that the new money or credit being churned out by the private bankers is not based on loans, which may or may not be repaid.
These loans do not come from deposits. They are merely figures in the computer that are entered as deposits, but they do not exist.
Today, banks lend out more than 400 times what they actually have in their depositors’ accounts. When banks tell you they lend out deposits, they do not disclose that they lend out their money-from-thin-air deposits. They want us to believe that all deposits come from us and are real.
In view of all this, our government has committed a folly in taking on the risks of a private person. They have done this on our behalf and without our consent. This means that our physical and social foundations are at the mercy of privateers!
Now you know where your taxes are really going. Every single year we pay $45 billion in interest (usury) alone to a private consortium of bankers. And it is totally unnecessary.
Our Bank of Canada has the same charter it had when we were smart enough to use it. Why is our government, supposedly working for us, not borrowing from our central bank for our infrastructure? We are losing all our public investments because private banks have been permitted to gouge us through our government’s actions.
Before we are penniless and voiceless in our land, we must demand to know, “Why are we not borrowing from the Bank of Canada?”
New money from the Bank of Canada is backed by trillions in resources which we, as citizens, have the right to share. The “money” from private banks represents loans which are merely unbacked numbers in the computer. When they are paid off, they are simply erased.
Why have 40 years of the Bank of Canada’s history been hushed up? I assure you, discussion of that history is verboten – by the CBC, by every radio talk show, by Counterspin and, most regrettably, by our own Appalin’ Martin. Here is an excerpt from the Finance Minster’s letter to the Canadian Association for Equitable Economics, when he was asked about the Bank of Canada providing low or zero interest loans to the government. Despite the fact that martin knows well the history of our central bank, he replies: “If the bank had to borrow the funds that is loaned to the government, it would have to pay whatever interest rate prevailed in the market to get those funds. Accordingly, it could not afford to re-lend those funds to the government at low or zero interest.”
Note that he has avoided the question, and the historical truth, by beginning with “If.”
Nice try, Pauly, but it’s not going to fly. We know that we don’t have to borrow from any private bank and there are plenty of authorities who know it too.
As for Martin’s old ploy that government-created money will cause inflation, he remembers that it did not. We will simply return to the Bank of Canada the 48 percent money creation that the private banks have usurped, leaving the same amount of credits in circulation, but half of it without interest (usury) added.
Now for my next question: “How long do you think it will take the boys on the Hill to change the charter of our central bank so that any clause concerning loans to our government is surgically removed?” Like anything else, it will be done behind closed doors. And it will be done any time now.
If we are to save our water and our health care, we must remove the film from our eyes and act. Whether you have read my previous articles, or whether this is news to you – I ask you now to think about writing to any member of Parliament or anyone in the media that you think would help in getting this information to the public while we still can.
Diogenes himself would probably pale at the thought of what immense propaganda confronts us. But we are on the edge of the precipice now; what have we got to lose? Let us write letters to those who might care; enlighten the call-in shows when they say there is no alternative to privatization; and, lastly, let us write or call those who are telling us we have no way of funding our public investments!
At least they will know we are not fooled.
We know that this spurious monetary system has been superimposed over the economic reality that our true wealth is contained in our national resources, including the intellect and labour of our people. In a roundabout way, this truth was admitted by the International Monetary Fund in 1995 when they disclosed that they had listed nations according to their wealth. Canada was second to Australia, which topped the list. The criteria was the amount of natural resources and the education of the work force.
Now we know why the IMF is so eager to “help” countries to develop their resources – they’ve got more of that banker’s fiat money to lend at compound interest (usury), which will be paid in the true wealth of the country’s resources and labour.
There’s someone from the IMF in the Bank of Canada now. Let’s let them know that we’re not going quietly “into that good night.”
I wish you a safe journey. Give it hell!
NOTE:
This article "We’re Dyimg To Pay The Debt!" is reprinted from the Spring 2002 issue of "Discourse and Disclosure."
Sydney White has been in public and diplomatic work all her adult life. A member of the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform, she teaches “Studies In Propaganda” through the Free University of Toronto. Interested persons are invited to attend her next series of classes that will begin again in the Spring of 2014.
