Social Credit Debate among Friends #14
>Date: Sun May 23 17:36:31 1999
>From: william_b_ryan@hotmail.com ("William B. Ryan")
>John Turmel:
>SEVENTH REJOINDER SIXTH ADDENDUM
>I had written: "One question that you ducked the first time around:
>If the banker PAYS interest--which he in fact does do, not only to 
>his saving account depositors--just who or what is it that is the 
>ultimate usurer?"
>You replied: "So what? The ultimate usurers are the positives who
>don't know any better having been led astray by the bankers and
>economists. So investors are guilty. They collect interest despite
>the prohibitions in all their Good Books. They'll be judged sinners.
>But God says that there's special punishment for those shepherds who
>led the sheeple astray."
>a) "They'll be judged sinners.  But God says..."
>In what Bible, chapter and verse did God say that? In the Scripture
>of what religion? 
     JCT: Go search for "shepherds" in any Bible text and you'll find 
it. 
>Before your revelation, John, I had thought that even shepherds who 
>had led their flocks astray were capable of repentance, and, with 
>God's grace, forgiveness.
     JCT: I didn't say they'd never be forgiven. As a matter of fact, 
I repeatedly quote Ezekiel who says that those who go straight, even 
usury bankers, will have all their sins forgotten. Check my Bible 
poem. So why would you conclude that bad shepherds won't also be 
forgiven? I never said that. 
>So you are not only a self-proclaimed genius "engineer" with an
>intellect superior to Einstein's, you are a prophet of God! 
     JCT: It's true I did score in the top two percentile of Ontario 
high-school graduates in Mathematics but fortunately, it doesn't take 
a genius in math to understand how the deathgamble works. Many non-
geniuses see to get it, Why can't you? 
     And it's true that being able to see a differential equation in 
Christ's words allowed me to decode his anti-usury parables but I 
don't see the connection between being a good codebreakerin and 
prophecy. 
>Is there no limit to the inflation of your ego? 
     JCT: True, you'll find the lower limit stops at false modesty and 
the upper limit is tough to control when arguing with opponents like 
you certainly enhances the ego.  
>What kind of mumbo jumbo is this? "Positives"? "Sheeple"? 
     JCT: There are only two financal classes, those who collect 
interest and those who pay. And you can't figure what the "positives" 
means? 
     "Sheeple" are the people led into error and sin by false 
shepherds. I think the meaning of the word is pretty clear to most if 
not to you. 
>Just who are you, John? Some of us remember the story of the judas 
>goat.
     JCT: You shouldn't count yourself in with the enlightened who 
understand that the judas goat is the one who leads the sheeple astray 
to the slaughterhouse. I don't see how my efforts to free the poor 
from their exponental debts can be said to lead them to the 
slaughterhouse. Pretty cheap non sequitur though. 
>b) Regarding the "positives," this category must include the millions
>who are beneficiaries of pension, insurance and mutual funds--who can
>hardly be called coupon clippers. It must include those with savings
>and interest bearing checking accounts. It must include those who own
>savings bonds. It must include the beneficiaries--all the residents
>of the State--of the Alaska Permanent Fund. Who does it not include?
     JCT: Sure. It includes all the idiots who have been conditioned 
to strive for more money for their food when they could be getting 
more food as their money appreciates. The only difference is that 
instead of real material gains through improved technology, seeking 
monetary gains through usury is a chimera that all inflates away. 
>Date: Mon May 24 16:46:11 1999
>From: william_b_ryan@hotmail.com ("William B. Ryan")
>SEVENTH REJOINDER SEVENTH ADDENDUM
>You wrote:
>>Douglas' whole point was that B payments did not reach the 
>>consumers. It's certainly the case when interest is a B cost, but 
>>not for the others.
>Douglas never made such a point. This is just another one of your 
>straw men. You are the master at mis-representation.
>But aren't YOU here saying that interest does not reach consumers? 
>That would seem to be a reasonable inference from what you just said.
     JCT: As long as you continue to confuse the units of A in the 
numerator and the units of A in the denominator, you will continue to 
think it's a misrepresentation. What do you think the units of the 
denominator and numerator are? 
>I wrote:
>>>A case can be made, I will admit, that when principal is repaid, it 
>>>vanishes. But that cannot be said for interest despite how many 
>>>times you make that absurd assertion for when the banker receives 
>>>it, he transfers it to his personal account, from which he can spend 
>>>as he wishes.
>>I'm amazed that you cannot follow the simple plumbing diagrams. 
>>Evidently I've never made such an absurd claim or I wouldn't have 
>>drawn the pipe for the interest leading to the reservoir
>I thought you just made that claim, in the first paragraph
>above. Or did I miss something?
     JCT: Why would say that the interest doesn't get into the hands 
of the consumers when it's obvious that the interest pipe leads to the 
reservoir? I guess I'm repeating myself but how clear can it be. If  
you have misunderstood my statement that the interest dollars don't 
get destroyed, I don't know how much clearer I can make it. Again,the 
problem is that you don't see the difference between the numerator  
and the denominator that Douglas and I differentiate. 
>>>The banker is himself a consumer. Interest therefore never leaves 
>>>the wheel of commerce, just as profits never leave, and savings 
>>>never leave.
>>That's exactly what Fig 3 [Turmel's bankmath.htm] shows. So why are 
>>you confused unless you haven't been able to follow the pipes with 
>>the rest of us?
>Wait a minute! I thought you were claiming that there is something 
>special about interest that makes it different than an ordinary 
>businessman's profit.
     JCT: I am. But until you do the game theory example, you'll never  
see it the difference. I don't see why you refuse to do the game. It 
makes matters so much more elementary. 
>The banker transfers interest as he receives it into his personal
>account. It is transferred from your account into his. He gets
>to spend it instead of you.
     JCT: That's what money in the reservoir does. That's why I 
cycled the interest there. So there's obviously something I see that 
you haven't yet, isn't there? 
>What difference does it make if the money is in the banker's personal 
>account, your personal account, or Mrs. Smith's in terms of 
>purchasing power available to the macro-economy?
     JCT: None at all. But that's not the problem I am discussing. 
>Let me put it this way. If the banker says, okay, I'm not going to 
>collect interest any more, all it means is that the amount of money 
>you would have had to pay in interest stays in your bank account 
>instead of being transferred into the banker's bank account. Or, it 
>stays in your pocket instead of being transferred into the banker's 
>pocket. Or Mrs. Smith's. Isn't that correct?
     JCT: It has a much greater effect on the denominator than that. 
>And if that is so, it means that interest DOES indeed exist, and is
>created when loans are made, or when money is introduced from any
>source. 
     JCT: As others have pointed out, the banker never created the 
interest when the loan was made. You said they did with front end 
interest charges. We asked you to prove it but you did not respond. 
>It becomes simply a question of distribution. Who gets a bigger slice
>of the pie--the banker, John Turmel or Mrs. Smith? It appears your 
>"bankmath" is a cheap gambler's card trick. Or is it loaded dice? 
     JCT: I guess you could call interest a trick since it seems to 
have completely tricked you but it's quite an exquisite trick. The 
difference shown by the game between interest and service charges is 
so subtle that you seem incapable of seeing the difference. Of course, 
you refuse to try the game so I guess you'll always help keep the 
remedial class occupied. 
---
Social Credit Debate among Friends #15
>Date: Tue May 25 19:33:36 1999
>From: william_b_ryan@hotmail.com ("William B. Ryan")
>John Turmel: SEVENTH REJOINDER EIGHTH ADDENDUM
>I had written:
>>>Assuming cash in hand is kept constant, dC/dt=0. 
>>>Therefore dL/dt=dD/dt."
>>No one has ever challenged that bank loans are new money. In this
>>discussion group, it's a given. So how is citing Major Douglas' 
>>proof of what we already take as a given proving anything?"
>Because it is impossible to determine if any particular loan is new
>money, or merely the lending of money already in existence. 
     JCT: Sure it is. When the money supply goes up, it's new money. 
When the money supply doesn't go up, it's old money. The money supply 
only goes up when loan comes from a bank. The money supply does not go 
up when it comes from another person or a Savings and Loan Credit 
Union. Seems rather simple rather than impossible to me. Ask any 
economist how they determine that the money supply went up and 
you'll see that it's a rather precise definition. 
>The endogenous money theorem is meaningful only at the statistical 
>level of the macroeconomy where there are many overlapping loans.
     JCT: I never heard of the endogenous money theorem but as long as 
it's as simple as I've stated above, I don't think it really matters. 
If it is loaned out by a "deposit-creating" institution, the money 
supply goes up. If it's loaned out by anyone else, the money supply 
does not go up. There's nothing hard to understand about that. 
>The theorem says that dL/dt = dD, which means that if dL/dt = 0, then
>dD/dt = 0. 
     JCT: Actually, it's dD/dt. And it says that the change in new 
deposits over the change in time, dD/dt, equals the change in new 
loans over the change in time, dL/dt. Loans create deposits, deposits 
do not create loans. 
>Which means that if the rate of flow of loans is constant,
>money in terms of deposits is neither being created or destroyed.
     JCT: Wrong. Only if the flow of loans is zero is money neither 
being created or destroyed. The above equation shows that if dL/dt=x, 
a constant, then the rate of flow of new deposits dD/dt being created 
is also constant. If new bank loans are created, new bank deposits are 
too. 
>The money supply in which case may be considered to be a revolving
>fund of finance. But if dL/dt is increasing, money is indeed being
>created.
     JCT: Wrong. If dL/dt is increasing, dD/dt is also increasing but 
even if the rate of creation of loans is not increasing and remains 
constant, money is still being created at a constant rate. It is not 
an increasing rate of loan creation that creates money, it's any rate 
of loan creation. Read your own equation again. 
>This is relevant to your "bankmath" argument, where you start with a
>single loan of, say $10,000 or $11,000. At some point interest or
>service charges are paid. You say that if interest is charged, 10
>cannot pay 11, but if only service charges are levied, 11 can pay 11.
>You are simply playing with words in a nonsensical example without
>real world application.
     JCT: Considering your errors, I can understand why you'd think it 
was nonsensical. But since you haven't tried the game, there's no 
reason for you to understand the sensical difference, is there? 
>You are being trapped by the fallacy of the chicken or the egg.
     JCT: You're the guy who can't keep up with the game theory which 
renders the discussion elementary. Until you do, you'll never graduate 
from the remedial class. And your continual mathematical errors do not 
inspire confidence. 
     And of course, you still haven't provided any proof of front-end 
loans from banks nor any proof of your hypothetical black-hole 
nodalities, have you? 
---
A Social Credit Debate among Friends #16
>Date: Thu May 27 19:34:46 1999
>From: william_b_ryan@hotmail.com ("William B. Ryan")
>Subject: Re: [lets] Money, Taxes, and Government Debt
>William Hummel writes: 
>>"One can hardly deny the truth of Wray's oft repeated statement that 
>>the government must spend its currency into the hands of the public 
>>before the public can pay taxes in that currency."
>The taxman cannot distinguish a dollar created by government deficit
>spending from that created by private sector deficit spending. 
     JCT: Money is not created by deficit spending. Money is created 
by bank loans, whether to the private or public sectors. Sure when 
they spend those loans, they call it deficit spending but who cares 
whether those monies are distinguishable. How does this matter?
>Date: Thu May 27 20:42:20 1999
>From: william_b_ryan@hotmail.com ("William B. Ryan")
>Subject: Re: [lets] Money, Taxes, and Government Debt
>William Hummel writes:
>>"Banks issue credit, i.e. bank money, in the form of loans to the
>>public. However bank money cannot be used as a substitute for state
>>money to pay taxes... When one writes a personal check against a bank
>>to pay his taxes, the bank must use its own deposits at the CB to
>>cover the check."
>For taxes, for groceries, for rent, to pay the electric bill, to
>whomever for whatever purpose the check is written--a bank must use
>its own deposits at the clearing bank to cover the check.
     JCT: So you've repeated what Hummel said. So what's the point? 
>Once again, the fallacy here is breaking continuous dynamic processes
>into periods and segments--Zeno's paradox. Bill Ryan
     JCT: Engineers use calculus to break continuous dynamic processes 
into periods and segments all the time. There's no paradox. We just 
know how to handle it. 
Date: Fri May 28 11:25:52 1999
From: william_b_ryan@hotmail.com ("William B. Ryan")
>1.  Jack O'Donnell writes:  
>>"...the need for government to spend before the government can 
>>collect taxes is lost in the gradualist conversion from preceding 
>>money issues..."
>Before?  Preceding? Yet again we see an example of the fallacy of 
>the chicken or the egg.
 
>2. William Hummel writes: 
>>"Randall Wray's latest book, 'Understanding Modern Money,' is a very 
>>readable effort, arguing the case for the Employer of Last Resort 
>>(ELR) proposal. Those familiar with Warren Mosler's 'Soft Currency 
>>Economics' and 'Full Employment and Price Stability' will find a 
>>remarkable similarity in their views."
>Not so "remarkable" considering the well-funded collaboration by Wray 
>with currency speculator Mosler. I suspect that the book is little 
>more than a polished exposition of Mosler's crank theory, given 
>credence by Wray's academic credentials and reputation. It pays lip 
>service to "endogeneity," but advances a "cartalist" concept of 
>helicopter money. It mouths the word "horizontalist" in a sense 
>opposite to the meaning assigned to the term by Basil Moore. Its 
>"employer of last resort" scheme is a proposed slave system for the 
>twenty-first century, that might indeed have some resonance to 
>emerging authoritarian "capitalist" regimes, but with no chance 
>whatever of being adopted by any Western democracy.
     JCT: "Endogeneity," "cartalis," "helicopter money," 
"horizontalist." 
     Once again, we've been faced with arcane items of no interest to 
our LETS discussions. Bill and I have been sparring for the past 
couple of  weeks with Bill raising hypotheses and hypothetical 
objections but never providing any further proof. I've asked him 
repeatedly to provide examples, as I'm going to point out, and never 
once has he responded to those challenges. 
From A Social Credit Debate among Friends #2
     JCT: So define "dynamic growth vectors in population and 
technology" and tell us how missing this affects the "feedback loop" 
in Fig. 6 of my http://turmelpress.com/bankmath.htm? I'm not 
sure if "feedback loop" means the same thing to you as it does to me. 
I'm using it from a systems engineering point of view. What do you 
mean by "feedback loop?" 
     JCT: So, which island would you rather be living on? Or do you 
still see no difference?
     JCT: And I'm still waiting for you to explain how the problems 
you assume will arise in a LETS system due to taxes and production 
payments to other members since those problems don't seem to arise.
     JCT: Starting with a 1-man game, then a 2-man game, then a 10-man 
game and finally, an n-man game, go ahead and tell me how you pay back 
11 when the banks only printed 10. 
     JCT: What is it about Even's story as I've portrayed it that you 
dispute?
     JCT: How do automation and cheap imports affect LETS service 
charge banking any differently than regular interest-charge banking?
From A Social Credit Debate among Friends #4
     JCT: So how long do you think the government keeps your taxes in 
its coffers before it pays them out into circulation? 
     JCT: I notice you ducked the issue of the difference between the 
effects of interest and service charges on the participants in the 
game. May I assume that you still hold that there is none? 
     JCT: Perhaps you'd like to explain just what exactly it is about 
my two examples that's fallacious or ridiculous. Or is it simply the 
use of game theory that you find so?
-------------------------------
A Social Credit Debate among Friends #6
     JCT: And you still have defined "reflux" which is a term I have 
not encountered in the mechanical engineering study of flows. 
     JCT: So you're wrong whet/turmel/bankmath.htm
     JCT: As all of us can readily see, considering the principal 
payments go down the drain and the interest payments go into the 
reservoir, it would indeed be absurd for me to claim that the interest 
goes down the drain too. Evidently, I've never made such an absurd 
claim or I wouldn't have drawn the pipe for the interest leading to 
the reservoir. 
>The banker is himself a consumer. Interest therefore never leaves the 
>wheel of commerce, just as profits never leave, and savings never 
>leave. Bill Ryan
     JCT: That's exactly what Fig 3 shows. So why are you confused 
unless you haven't been able to follow the pipes with the rest of us?
Social Credit Debate among Friends #14
     JCT: I didn't say they'd never be forgiven. As a matter of fact, 
I repeatedly quote Ezekiel who says that those who go straight, even 
usury bankers, will have all their sins forgotten. Check my Bible 
poem. So why would you conclude that bad shepherds won't also be 
forgiven? I never said that. 
     JCT: You shouldn't count yourself in with the enlightened who 
understand that the judas goat is the one who leads the sheeple astray 
to the slaughterhouse. I don't see how my efforts to free the poor 
from their exponential debts can be said to lead them to the 
slaughterhouse. Pretty cheap non sequitur though. 
     JCT: As long as you continue to confuse the units of A in the 
numerator and the units of A in the denominator, you will continue to 
think it's a misrepresentation. What do you think the units of the 
denominator and numerator are? 
     JCT: Why would say that the interest doesn't get into the hands 
of the consumers when it's obvious that the interest pipe leads to the 
reservoir? I guess I'm repeating myself but how clear can it be. If  
you have misunderstood my statement that the interest dollars don't 
get destroyed, I don't know how much clearer I can make it. Again,the 
problem is that you don't see the difference between the numerator  
and the denominator that Douglas and I differentiate. 
     [*** At no point has Bill shown that he was aware that the 
circuit in the numerator was Dollars of money and the circuit in the 
denominator was Dollars of Price tags. When he talks about adding 
credit to the B circuit, he doesn't realize that credit is only added 
to the money circuit in the numerator, not the price tag circuit in 
the denominator.***] 
     JCT: That's what money in the reservoir does. That's why I 
cycled the interest there. So there's obviously something I see that 
you haven't yet, isn't there? 
     JCT: As others have pointed out, the banker never created the 
interest when the loan was made. You said they did with front end 
interest charges. We asked you to prove it but you did not respond. 
Social Credit Debate among Friends #15
>Which means that if the rate of flow of loans is constant,
>money in terms of deposits is neither being created or destroyed.
     JCT: Wrong. Only if the flow of loans is zero is money neither 
being created or destroyed. The above equation shows that if dL/dt=x, 
a constant, then the rate of flow of new deposits dD/dt being created 
is also constant. If new bank loans are created, new bank deposits are 
too. 
>The money supply in which case may be considered to be a revolving
>fund of finance. But if dL/dt is increasing, money is indeed being
>created.
     JCT: Wrong. If dL/dt is increasing, dD/dt is also increasing but 
even if the rate of creation of loans is not increasing and remains 
constant, money is still being created at a constant rate. It is not