Awesome Essay on the Federeal Reserve

[Levi Philos]

Eric is correct in one thing about the present system. It has been the driver of a very large increase in human well being. That much I agree is a good thing. Those "good old days" were not all that good. I'm old enough to know that when I was a kid, not every home had hot and cold running water or indoor bathrooms. I personally know that a hot shower is one of the true luxuries of life.

The ability of the present banking system to hypothecate into general circulating currency the promise to create and deliver value in the future is the strong point of the present system. However, I believe the present system can be greatly improved.

Once you see as I see - that money is an extension of language by means of symbols and contracts - allowing humans to exchange real things by proxy - then you can start to ask "Why all the misery - the bankruptcies, and the uncertainties? "

Here is the crux of what the Mondragon Cooperative created. They were able to forward issue the money that would be used to purchase the products they created. Understanding this is very important. They did collateralize their own intellectual and physical labor.

So, I started looking at ESOP design and asking whether any US bank was ever owned by the people who worked at the bank. Well, guess what - YES!The Phelps county Missouri bank is owned by the people who work in the bank.
http://www.phelpscountybank.com/history.asp http://www.ncesa.org/html/ownmat.html
http://www.futurenet.org/9economics/howard.html

So, I ask, "If a group of business leaders in a community were to form a holding company and acquire a local bank, could they duplicate what the Mondragon cooperative did? Could bank profits be recycled within a community?

THE ULTIMATE OWNERSHIP SOLUTION, BINARY ECONOMICS SOLUTION -- IS TO OWN AND CONTROL THE BANK.

You can discover more on Binary Economics and Capital Ownership from the books listed at this page:
http://www.globaljusticemovement.org...ce_reading.htm

[Levi Philos]

Some extracts from the 1999 discussion of Jeff Gates book THE OWNERSHIP SOLUTION are found here: http://www.cooperativeindividualism....iscussion.html

I was one of the participants in this University of Colorado sponsored discussion.

You can do your own search using the terms "capital ownership" + Mondragon and you will get a lot of hits, but very few seem to have recognized that the banking industry needs to be either outright owned by the users or placed into a tightly regulated agency relationship to the creators of the values being traded by proxy.

This site: http://cog.kent.edu/PapersMay2001/HomesteadSummary.htm - scroll down to bolded line: "Capital Homestead Act for America"

This is a proposal to provide tax, monetary, inheritance policy and other structural reforms to national economic policy to provide every citizen an equal opportunity to own, control and share profits from productive capital. Facilitated by the monetization of capital credit under Federal Reserve policy and reinforced by loan default insurance as a substitute for traditional collateral, the Capital Homesteading reforms would enable every citizen to establish at a qualified local lending institution a tax-exempt Capital Homestead Account (CHA) to purchase and ac***ulate dividend yielding shares to supplement his income from other sources, including Social Security when he retires.


Like ESOPs the citizen would put up no money but through the CHA would gain access to self-liquidating capital loans at low service charges to buy equity shares that are expected to recover their purchase price out of future pretax dividends. The loan default insurance, whose premiums would be paid out of dividends, would cover the risk that the loan failed to be self-liquidating. CHA loans could be invested in shares of (1) the company he or a family member works for, directly or through an ESOP, (2) the companies he regularly buys from, directly or through consumer stock ownership plans (CSOPs), (3) a Community Investment Corporation (CIC) to link him to profits from and control over local land planning and development, and (4) a variety of blue-chip growth companies with a track record of profits. The double tax on corporate profits would be eliminated for companies that sell full dividend payout shares to CHAs.


A key feature of these ideas is that those who have no capital should have equal access to credit to acquire capital, and that that credit should be made available by the government's central bank and allocated through local lenders for financing the capital needs of the productive economy. (In today's US economy productive capital is growing annually at a rate exceeding $7,000 per capita.) The idea behind Capital Homesteading is that there is no reason that those who already have capital (and collateral to qualify for capital loans) should have a monopoly over the government's ability to create more wealth through credit.

Another little known writer who puts things into bold tones is JW Smith, who has written several books of which two are free to read on line or download in two formats. ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY http://www.ied.info/books/ed/ and COOPERATIVE CAPITALISM: http://www.ied.info/books/cc/ Check out his site for similar suggestions about placing the banks under control.

Levi Philos

[Levi Philos]

The real problem is one really bad assumption that seems to have been recently codified i.e. the presumption made by the fifth plank of the communist manifesto that all credit is the property of the state.

Levi Philos

[Levi Philos]

Some of you will doubt the last post (#12) asserting the the government has taken ownership of the people's credit.

To those doubters, I pose these questions.

When a government bond is created, is this a promise to pay based upon future tax revenues? When the bureaucrat creates the bond and signs the bond, is he not assuming he owns the credit of the people? Where is it entered into the books that the original source of the value of the bond lies with the taxpayer?

So, if I have a problem making my property tax, can I write off the property tax by means of some kind of bill of exchange drawn against a vested interest in the bond?

Chew on those questions, and get back to me with your answers.

Because my answers are so far outside the box I fear people will suspect my sanity.

Levi Philos

[David Merrill]

Yes Levi;


Spoken like a true priest - Levite.

That is why I include the case cited in the Article in my new video.


http://friends-n-family-research.inf...ublicMoney.wmv

http://friends-n-family-research.inf...ney_case_1.jpg
http://friends-n-family-research.inf...ney_case_2.jpg
http://friends-n-family-research.inf...ll_juliard.jpg


The Supreme Court acknowledges the right or entitlement to REDEEM.


Regards,

David Merrill.

[PANICPASS]

LP wrote:

Where is it entered into the books that the original source of the value of the bond lies with the taxpayer?

The original source is the the Full Faith and Credit given to the people of the United States. Wherever that is written-- that is the original source.

So, if I have a problem making my property tax, can I write off the property tax by means of some kind of bill of exchange drawn against a vested interest in the bond?

I don't think you write of the property tax by means of a BOE drawn off other people's credit.

[Levi Philos]

There is a direct tie-in between the bonds and the ownership of the value of the bonds and the CAFR problem exposed by Walter Burien.

Don't know how many of you are aware that one of the prime investments made by the portfolio managers for the retirement funds of the bureaucrats are these very same bonds. This is a clear conflict of interest that gives these bureaucrats a vested interest toward promoting these bonds. Understanding this allows you to understand what appears to be some silliness in what happens with public projects.

Here is a blurb and a video by Alex Jones;

About this video


Local, State and Federal governmental institutions own over 70% of the stock market!


Alex Jones interviews Walter Burien, Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) of 15 years about the biggest game in town. There are over 85,000 Federal and regional governmental institutions: school districts, water and power authorities, country and city governments -- and they own over 70 percent of the stock market. This is an absolute must-see to pull back the curtain of lies on the private takeover of our society. This tape also includes an interview with Joe Banister, former IRS Special Agent exposing how the IRS is a collection agency for the private, run-for-profit Federal Reserve.

The video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...e+in+town% 27

My confuser is old and glitchy and I'm on dialup, so I haven't actually watched this. Please report your impressions.

Walter Burien is regarded as an "Enemy of the State" - http://www.thepowerhour.com/news2/wa...ien_jailed.htm

[Levi Philos]

I suggest you read what Thomas Edison and Henry Ford said about bonds: http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperi...es/edison.html , and then investigate the channel islands of Guernsey and Jersey experience.

For more details on Guernsey see the following links: http://www.monetary-reform.on.ca/archives/6d.shtml
http://www.feasta.org/do***ents/shor...aryreform.html http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ijccr/message/4048
For details on tax warrents, read the two Dr Popp books. They are both short; under 100 pages. Money: Bona Fide or Non-Bona Fide E-Book by Dr. Edward E. Popp 1970 685k (PDF) http://www.appropriate-economics.org/materials/Popp.pdf (61 pages)
The Great Cookie Jar E-book by Dr. Edward E. Popp 1978 829k (PDF) http://www.appropriate-economics.org...pCookieJar.pdf (98 pages)

Please refer to Gang 8 messages http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/grou...8/message/4048 and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/message/4086

The Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey created their own system loosely based upon the pound sterling but not redeemable in silver. The notes were accepted in remission for taxes and are often cited in arguments that say basically that if the currency is acceptable for taxes; that alone will be enough to assure validity.

This is gang 8 message #4086

HOW GUERNSEY BEAT THE BANKS by EDWARD HOLLOWAY

The point which Holloway carefully ignores is how much the contractors inflated their prices in order to take account of the fact that the Guernsey currency they had to accept would be at a discount to Sterling. Conceptually there is no difference between "discount" and "interest".

Holloway was delightfully naive. He and his fellow members of the ERC committee tried to persuade the government in 1940 that the war could be paid for without incurring interest. The Treasury ignored his paper, but proceeded to achieve the same effect by a different method. Interest rates were kept very low, below the level of inflation!

But Holloway's book "Money matters" is still worth reading. Just don't believe it all. The remaining unsold copies are in the hands of Jack Quill, Anmer Lodge, Anmer, Norfolk, UK, PE31 6RN. (Jack rents the cottage from the Queen; it is part of the Sandringham Estate.) Geoffrey

PS. since I wrote this Jack phoned (telepathy at work?) and confirmed he has over 100 copies of Holloway's book.

**** The original question here: ****

I am sorry but I do not have Holloway's book on Guernsey. The Edward Holloway Collection is maintained by Jim Bourlet, secretary of the Economic Research Council, 7 St James Square, London SW1Y 4JU, but I doubt if he has a spare copy. The existence of such a book surprised me when it was recently quoted as I could not recall any mention of it, and there is no reference to it in the index of his biography. I wondered for a moment if there were two Edward Holloway's with similar interests.

Hollway's biography, "Money Matters" is available from E J Quill, Anmer Lodge, Anmer, Norfolk, PE31 6RN.

Interestingly Guernsey is now one of the key places in the globalisation story. Tomato growing has been abandoned in favour of financial services. It was already a major off-shore centre when I visited the island to learn about it in 1972, and now it must far greater. Jersey, the other large Channel island, is doubtless the bigger off-shore financial centre. Politically they are both separate states.

Holloway's theme was that if a nation has the physical resources and the skills, it does not need money from abroad but can create it itself. He was consulted about this by Johnny Graham (aka Duke of Montrose) when the latter was a minister in Ian smith's government in Southern Rhodesia. Smith did not understand and Graham was sacked, being characterised as a racist as a reason for getting rid of him. Holloway was right, but Southern Rhodesia was not the ideal testbed for the proving of an economic theory if it was to be politically acceptable.

What happened later to Zimbabwe probably makes a good case study for your purposes. Southern Rhodesia was economically better off when it was being boycotted by the world than Zimbabwe has been as a recipient of overseas investment.

Regards, Geoffrey Gardiner

**** end of paste ****

[Levi Philos]

The next reply was from Ken Palmerton of England

Although Fools rush in and all that, the comments in this post are absolute rubbish.

For a start why should contractors in the case that Edward Holloway reports inflate their prices in the manner claimed? Stirling did not come into the transactions in any way. The construction took place using locally acquired materials, with local labour. ALL transactions were within the community that was thoroughly familiar with a medium of exchange issued by their own Government. For what Edward did not know, and I knew him well, and respected him immensely, was that this, particular period of difficulty in Guernsey was dealt with in a manner used since time immemorial in BOTH of the Bailiwicks.

It just happened that this particular episode was picked up by the Chartists at the time, who also advocated community creation of the medium of exchange. And the story entered the body of political ideas, but unfortunately only a part of the story.

The condemnation of Usury and Usurers is deeply imbedded in the feudal system that was in force at the time. In fact it still persists today. Those societies knew then what we have clearly forgotten today on the mainland that no sovereign Government needs to borrow. Providing they have the right to tax their citizens they have the duty to create its medium of exchange. That is the reason the Bailiwicks of the Channel Islands have no debt. Criticise that if you dare.

If Edward Holloway was Naive, my name is Jack Cade, which it is most certainly NOT. There is much more to be told of his involvement in the Governments reduction of interest rates in the early 1940s. It does no one credit to criticise what they clearly do not understand.

Ken.

**** **** **** **** **** ****

Reform of the most fundamental sort is what is needed.

Another interested party is: Michael Pierce McKeever, Sr. Economics Instructor, Vista Community College, Berkeley, CA McKeever Institute Of Economic Policy Analysis [MIEPA] URL: http://www.mkeever.com

[Levi Philos]

This feedback (2003-04) from Thomas Greco:

I've recently met John Coleman at John Papworth's house in Purton, Wiltshire. Coleman is editor of World Review, an excellent publication of "Authors writing on themes of their own books." Anyway, he told me of his visit to Guernsey last week and what he learned while he was there. He was not focusing particularly on the money but he did say that Guernsey still has its own currency. What that means is not clear. He said it passes at par with Bank of England currency and I suspect there is a formal link, like the Bank of Scotland currency.

John said they have their own Parliament (the oldest in Europe) and are not bound by acts of the British parliament. Guernsey is not part of the European Union, for example.

There's been a lot of hype and misinformation about Guernsey and its currency. Who has the facts???

There is additional information on the Guernsey Island experiment here: http://www.monetary-reform.on.ca/archives/6d.shtml