Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Ichingcarpenter

(36,988 posts)
Sat Jun 13, 2015, 11:27 AM Jun 2015

Fast-Track Would Hand the Money Monopoly to Private Banks—Permanently

Fast-Track Would Hand the Money Monopoly to Private Banks—Permanently

It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. — Attributed to Henry Ford

In March 2014, the Bank of England let the cat out of the bag: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it. So wrote David Graeber in The Guardian the same month, referring to a BOE paper called “Money Creation in the Modern Economy.” The paper stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong. The result, said Graeber, was to throw the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.

The revelation may have done more than that. The entire basis for maintaining our private extractive banking monopoly may have been thrown out the window. And that could help explain the desperate rush to “fast track” not only the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), but the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA would nip attempts to implement public banking and other monetary reforms in the bud.

The Banking Game Exposed

The BOE report confirmed what money reformers have been saying for decades: that banks do not act simply as intermediaries, taking in the deposits of “savers” and lending them to borrowers, keeping the spread in interest rates. Rather, banks actually create deposits when they make loans. The BOE report said that private banks now create 97 percent of the British money supply. The US money supply is created in the same way.

Graeber underscored the dramatic implications: .........................................

This is well worth the read and explains how fast track gives the private banking system even more power and what provisions point to this.


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fast-track_hands_the_money_monopoly_to_private_bankspermanently_20150613

the author;


Ellen Brown is the founder of the Public Banking Institute and the author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles. She developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In the best-selling Web of Debt, she turned those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She showed how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back.


In The Public Bank Solution, the 2013 sequel, she traces the evolution of two banking models that have competed historically, public and private; and explores contemporary public banking systems globally.

8 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Fast-Track Would Hand the Money Monopoly to Private Banks—Permanently (Original Post) Ichingcarpenter Jun 2015 OP
K & R n/t RufusTFirefly Jun 2015 #1
Drives me nutz that so few people are interested in how money works. dixiegrrrrl Jun 2015 #2
K&R..... daleanime Jun 2015 #3
To understand the sociopathic behavior of banks, one needs to understand this Jack Rabbit Jun 2015 #4
I have never taken an economics course, SusanCalvin Jun 2015 #6
That's pretty much it; I'll make a small critique Jack Rabbit Jun 2015 #7
Right you are. SusanCalvin Jun 2015 #8
.. Cheese Sandwich Jun 2015 #5

dixiegrrrrl

(60,010 posts)
2. Drives me nutz that so few people are interested in how money works.
Sat Jun 13, 2015, 01:04 PM
Jun 2015

and of course this is never taught in school, at any level.

I can remember when articles and videos saying "The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air" were dismissed as conspiracy theories,
people who supported the idea were "nut jobs".

Jack Rabbit

(45,984 posts)
4. To understand the sociopathic behavior of banks, one needs to understand this
Sat Jun 13, 2015, 03:16 PM
Jun 2015

Nothing sends a shiver down my spine the way some idiot banker boasts that when a bank makes a loan, it "creates" money. The money isn't there, really, but now the borrower has it in his account; he can make withdrawals and spend it or pay his workers for services rendered.

This isn't the Fed chairman just casually hitting the print button and sending freshly printed cash to Goldman Sachs or JPMorganChase at 0% interest. (That's the next best thing to what the banks are doing; for something actually worse, imagine organized criminals counterfeiting billions for their own purposes.) This is free money. It isn't connected to any actual wealth. We have more money chasing the same amount of wealth, so things have been thrown out of balance.

This is called inflation. It's bad enough when the government does it; it a potential disaster when organized criminals do it -- whether we're talking about Al Capone or Carlo Gambino; or Legs Dimon or Pretty Boy Lloyd.

I think the difference between the Reaganauts of the eighties and the deregulators since is that the Reaganauts had a good appreciation of Adam Smith; the deregulators act like they've never heard of economics, let alone read anything by a classical economist.


SusanCalvin

(6,592 posts)
6. I have never taken an economics course,
Sun Jun 14, 2015, 01:19 PM
Jun 2015

but I have an opinion, unfounded as it may be.

Wealth is natural resources and human manipulation of same.

Money is a way to keep track of wealth. Money can do its job well or poorly. Right now it's doing it poorly.

Jack Rabbit

(45,984 posts)
7. That's pretty much it; I'll make a small critique
Sun Jun 14, 2015, 01:47 PM
Jun 2015

While you're right in this distinction between wealth and money, money doesn't perform a job. Humans work, not money. It's bankers who are doing their jobs poorly.

That is a result of banking deregulation. It allows the bank to make a loan by simply writing an IOU (as the OP puts it) to the borrower.

Latest Discussions»Retired Forums»Socialist Progressives»Fast-Track Would Hand the...