Debt Virus Mutation
>Date: Sat Jan 16 05:19:47 1999
>From: sspears@suffolk.lib.ny.us ("Spears-Granger")
>Subject: Debt Virus Mutation
>To: johnturmel@yahoo.com
>Dear Sir,
>Your assertions that Mr. Jaikaran is mistaken in his hypothosis are
>incorrect. You attempt to make economic sense of a system that deals
>purely with the imagination.
JCT: I have no idea where you get the impression that I argued
that Mr. Jaikaran's debt virus theory is mistaken. As a matter of
fact, I presented my defence of it to the critiques of Prof.
Flaherty to the Economics Faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnical
Institute in late 1977 which can be found at my web site at
http://turmelpress.com/dvirus.htm
>Fractional reserve banking alone is enough to convince one of the
>overwhelming reality that Article I, Section 10 of the United States
>Constitution has been violated since the signing of the Federal
>Reserve Act of 1913.
JCT: No argument from me here. Check my poem on the FED scam at
http://turmelpress.com/pombank.htm
>When banks are allowed to create money out of thin air, loan it at
>interest, and reap huge profits for virtually no labour, huge amounts
>of money must be removed from the "plumbing."
JCT: Actually, money only leaves the system when loan principal
is paid off and money only comes into the system when loans are made
though I do decry banks creating and lending out new money at
interest.
>Phenomenally high taxes, ever increasing prices which do not reflect
>honest costs of doing business are not only evil and wrong, they
>don't make sense.
JCT: I've been arguing for 20 years that paying taxes so
government can make interest payments to those they've given the
privilege of creating money to is evil, wrong and stupid.
>According to the Constitution, only Congress has the power to create
>money. And although gold and silver are no longer accepted as stable
>representations of money (they are fluctuating commodities), they
>served for many years as a stabilizing influence in the minds of
>citizens around the world for thousands of years.
JCT: Gold and silver are lousy commodities upon which to base
money. If you follow my Babylonian Woe discussions at the
lets@onelist.com listserv, you'll read about the history of control
that gold and silver bullion brokers have had over governments. It is
far far better to have all commodities, especially manpower time, as
base for one's money.
>Credit and debt work well as currency. Electronic symbols generated
>from magnetic strips on the backs of plastic cards are exchanged for
>tangible goods and services millions of times every hour on this
>planet. but in a democratic country, the People should have control
>over its creation, not private banks.
JCT: Absolutely correct. Both "credit" and "debt" work well as
currency. That trading "debt" is just as efficient as trading
"credit" is something I've had a great deal of trouble explaining to
my Social Credit friends who seem to believe that the problem
alleviated by "social credit" is "social debt" rather than the actual
problem of "anti-social credit." They consider that the problem is the
negation of the noun "credit" whereas I consider that it's the
negation of the adjective "social."
>Mr. Jaikaran's book is a brave expose and an important beginning to
>essential discussion regarding our money system. Confusing his simple
>message with economic rhetoric is deceiving and disingenuous.
JCT: And it's the reason I don't understand why you would have
interpreted my defence of the debt virus hypothesis as an attack.
>Being over $5.6 TRILLION in debt is not a good thing. The national
>debt of the United States is guaranteed by every citizen. WE owe the
>debt. Every scrap of paper (currency, bills, notes, bonds) is
>evidence of debt. It is not "money." It has only psychological
>value... not that that is bad entirely. It is bad if the People
>don't understand the principals of its nature. It is good if they do
>and accept responsibility for it; and are allowed to address it as a
>real problem and not live with it as a great untouchable mystery,
>left only to the pundits of financial prognostication (economists).
JCT: People will be surprised how easily it will be to simply
close the current debt books while starting up new LETS accounts for
everyone and only attempt to settle up the old debts years in the
future if anyone even wants to try. But I doubt the third world should
be asked to honor the debts for the arms their dictators used to keep
them in chains. Yet, it is possible to simply park the old accounts
and get on with the new LETS accounts with hardly any negative
transitional effects at all.
>Re-read Jaikaran's book with an open mind. Study the Channel Islands.
>Explore the possibility that maybe, just maybe the man makes sense.
JCT: I know all about the Guernsey Experiment and the use of
their own currency as I've often detailed the use of Tallies by the
British, Wampum by North American Indians, Colonials by early
Americans, Greenbacks by Lincoln, and just recently "Provincial bonds"
by Argentinian states. See http://turmelpress.com/np2.htm
>I agree that his solution is not the best, but it does begin to
>address the impossible notion that we are helpless in a sea of debt
>from which there is no escape.
JCT: And my point is that a Global interest-free LETS currency is
the optimal solution and does completely address the sea of debt from
which there is an escape.
>The problems you and he address are CREATED in the MIND. We can
>resolve the problem if we are honest and employ monetary scientists
>to help create a solution.
JCT: Monetary scientists have had a great deal of difficulty
getting their message out but we're way past that point now that
monetary engineers have created and are installing the better
LETSystem whether the bamboozled population are aware that they are
being saved by joining these financial "life-boats" and "anti-poverty
systems" or whether they don't realize it yet.
>Restoring the power to create money to the People through the
>Congress, as the Constitution clearly intends, is the first great
>step we must take.
JCT: Or allowing everyone to create their own as LETS accounts do
permit is another step that many people just don't understand though
Wampum worked in this way without government control on currency
creation. The problem is not that private persons create it and not
government, it's that private persons have a monopoly. In a LETS, no
one controls the creation of money and it works fine.
>Keep the Federal Reserve System in place, but make it a branch of
>the Treasury, and buy out the owners over 86 years with created
>money from the U.S. Treasury. Check clearing and commercial loans
>would still be its main function, but it would be owned and operated
>by laws and the government, not by a privileged, private few.
JCT: Sure, all we have to do is have the FED and the private
banks operate LETS accounts side-by-side with regular accounts until
the use of regular accounts dies out and commerce is eventually done
totally with Green funds.
>We are currently in a state of default. In 1933 the United States of
>America was bankrupted.
JCT: Financially perhaps but the workshops, machinery and skilled
labor that created the industrial boom of the 1920s didn't disappear
during the Great Depression, it was only the money that was kept
insufficient to make Americans believe that the true wealth had
disappeared too.
>The Secretary of the Treasury works for the collection agency of the
>FED (the IRS) and acts as governor of the bankrupted United States
>to the International Monetary Fund. Who pays the Secretary of the
>Treasury? Not the government. Where do you find the listing for the
>Federal Reserve? Not in the government pages.
JCT: Sure I know that most central banks are privately owned even
if there is a veneer of government control but even where the
government does own the central bank like in Canada, it doesn't make
any difference. So I don't really care who controls the central bank,
I only care about what currency software their computers are using.
>When the first goldsmith issued a receipt for gold that did not
>exist, he created debt and inflation. When that same goldsmith
>wanted to steal the wealth of his community he simply reduced the
>number of receipts for no gold that were in circulation and collected
>the collateral of the borrowers. This was possible because there was
>not enough actual gold to pay off all debts created by the bogus
>receipts, which were exchanged as if they were gold.
JCT: Both David Astle in his "Babylonian Woe" and Dr. Carroll
Quigley in his "Tragedy and Hope" detail the goldsmith's fraudulent
receipts and yet, all the goldsmith was really doing was issuing new
credit which is exactly what a LETS banker does even though the
goldsmith fools them into thinking it's gold in his safe that makes
the credit currency valuable whereas the LETS banker explains that
it's the pledged collateral of the borrower that makes the credit
currency good.
>Our current system is the same. At a 10 to 1 ratio, in a fractional
>reserve system, 10 dollars of debt money (loans) can be created for
>every 1 dollar on deposit. how is this fair? how can this justify
JCT: Actually, 90% of debt money (loans) can be created for every
dollar on deposit though when that new 90% ends up deposited, it
permits the creation of another new $81, then $72, then $64, etc.
until the total new money created becomes 10 times the original
deposit. But to say that a $1 deposit permits them to lend out $10 is
an error that allows the economists to challenge monetary reformers
who are imprecise about how the creation of 10 times the deposit comes
about. See http://turmelpress.com/bankmath.htm.
And a LETS needs no dollars on deposit at all in order to lend
out as many new dollars as are necessary based upon the collateral
offered which is quite fair and justifiable. It's only the power to
refuse a loan and the charging of usury that makes the currency system
evil, not the fact that they're lending out money they, like LETS,
create out of thin air.
>the huge profits made illegally by banks? Banks are the biggest
>thieves on the planet. And just as Jaikaran predicted in his book,
>banks are becoming fewer and fewer. Large banks are gobbling up the
>smaller ones. Media corporations are being consolidated at the same
>pace. Our information and money are being funnelled through the rich
>and powerful.
JCT: When the two largest Canadian banks were trying to merge,
people decried their power while I welcomed the merger understanding
that there is one less central computer to reprogram. I can't wait
until the day when there's only one.
>All the great civilizations on earth have failed for the same reason:
>less than 1% of the population controlling 100% of the wealth.
JCT: If you follow the Babylonian Woe discussions, you'll notice
that we find out about the many great civilizations on earth that have
failed for the reason that the usury-money system centralizes all the
wealth in the hands of the few survivors in the mortgage death-gamble.
>Has that already happened? how far away is our doom?
JCT: We may already be past the point of no return. The amount of
ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere may already be sufficient
to continue to destroy our protective layer in the next few decades or
any number of environmental catastrophes which loom may occur. But the
smart gambler works on the assumption that the finesse will work and
the King is in front of the Ace-Queen and ignores the possibility of
defeat which he cannot control. So he still tries his best in case
he's right. And if he's not, it doesn't matter anyway.
>how much have you contributed to curing the Debt Virus? Or have you
>just helped it mutate? Sincerely, Montgomery J. Granger
JCT: As the only engineer specialized in banking systems, I saw
it as my duty to spend the last 20 years working on the unsafe
engineering design of the money system. Thus, I've supported the
development of the do-it-yourself interest-free LETS currency software
so that people may save themselves by using this anti-poverty
lifeboat. If they choose not to set up their own barter network, then
they will have chosen to financially drown rather than to jump into
the lifeboat I've helped provide for them.
x