Barnaby Is Wrong

9 May

3D-Wrong

From the Australian:

SENATOR Barnaby Joyce says he will vote in a referendum to recognise local governments in the constitution and allow federal funds to flow directly to them.

But he has slammed the federal government’s timing of the announcement and its failure to say what the exact wording of the referendum will be.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard launched the “yes” campaign for the referendum on Thursday

At the federal election on September 14 voters will be asked to decide whether local councils and shires should be recognised in the Constitution.

Mr Joyce told reporters in Sydney on Thursday he would vote “yes” but questioned why the government had announced the referendum now.

“They’ve announced a dopey wedge that’s actually going to compromise our capacity to get up financial recognition of local government,” he said.

“They’re trying to create a distraction and this is why people don’t like politicians and get so cynical.”

No, people don’t like politicians because we have learned … and they daily continue to prove … that everything they say and do is just a smokescreen.

A smokescreen of words, camouflaging an unrelenting self-interest.

“Financial recognition of local government”, they say?

Bollocks, I say.

This referendum is about nothing more, and nothing less, than enabling the bureaucrats and politicians in Canberra to bypass the State governments.

In other words, to further increase the centralising power of the Federal government –

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore described the referendum as “necessary” but about a “non-contentious” change.

“This referendum is essential to ensure that the Commonwealth parliament has the power to provide direct financial assistance to local government,” Ms Moore said in a statement.

I say “No” to this referendum proposal.

Indeed, I would generally say “No” on principle to any referendum proposal suggested by politicians and/or bureaucrats.

The only referendum that is likely to be worth even thinking about voting “Yes” to, would be one suggested by the general public.

Which is why I am a supporter of Swiss-style Direct Democracy.

Where the people are recognised in the Constitution, and have the power to force a referendum on the topics that they think are important.

Such as revoking the laws passed by politicians.

UPDATE:

From Quadrant (h/t Twitter follower @HiggsBoson4) –

While, at first reading, this proposal might have a benign appearance, a little thought reveals that the proposal restricts the state governments.

The idea of “democratic recognition” being included in the Constitution has the effect of limiting the power of the state government to fulfil its governmental responsibilities in such way as the state parliament chooses.

The “independent” panel’s discussion paper presents two possible proposals as follows:

Each state shall, and each Territory may, establish and maintain a system of local government bodies directly chosen by the people.

Each state shall, and each Territory may, provide for the establishment and continuance of a system of local government elected in accordance with the laws of the state or Territory.

Each of these proposals is an attack on state sovereignty. If either is appropriate at all, the place for it is the state constitutions, not the Commonwealth Constitution. Inclusion of either in the Commonwealth Constitution would limit the states’ power on how their governmental responsibilities should be administered….

Recognition of local government in the Australian Constitution has been rejected three times. The first was when the Constitution was drawn up, the second was at referendum under a Labor government in 1974 and the third was at a referendum under a Labor government in 1988. There is now an opportunity to appreciate the reasons for the three previous rejections, the reasons for now rejecting the proposal a fourth time and voting “No”.

As I was saying …

Tags: , , ,

“Australian Dollar Is Not A Sacred Cow”

9 May

Barnaby Joyce writes for the Canberra Times:

National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce droving a mob of cattle west of Longreach, Queensland. Photo: Peter Rae

National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce droving a mob of cattle west of Longreach, Queensland. Photo: Peter Rae

Government has left cattle industry out in the cold

Fred Pascoe’s family goes back a fair way in the Gulf, possibly about 40,000 years.

His family didn’t meet a “whitefella” until 1904. That was his great-great grandfather, “Kangaroo”. In Fred’s words a “lusty” fellow who had seven wives. Fred jokes with a smirk that unfortunately that part of the family genes did not flow down.

Fred’s great-grandfather started working the cattle that have been a fixture of the Gulf ever since. His love of the country was too strong for the city. He died six days after moving to town in retirement.

Now Fred manages his own cattle property. Cattle have given Fred and his family a additional connection to his country. Cattle are now part of their culture.

Cattle are part of the nation’s culture too. The economy of the north depends on cattle. The truck drivers depend on them, the stock and station agents depend on them and even the local show and rodeo would not exist without them.

That’s what makes the government’s bungling of the live cattle saga a few years ago so galling. It was an attack on a culture. A culture that has been built up over more than 100 years, and now threatened by a combination of government incompetence, the roaring of money printing presses in other countries and the failure of monsoonal rains.

We can’t do much about that rain. I will leave that one to the local graziers and their God. We can, however, stop making bad policy decisions and start a debate about the high Australian dollar.

When we shut down the live cattle trade, we affect the food supply to a nation of more than 250 million people next door. Because of the undisputed barbaric acts of a small number of people in a very large industry we impugned an entire nation’s culture. The message was implicit but clear: we don’t trust you enough to provide you with food anymore.

Our government engaged in a prejudicial policy condemning the many based on the actions of a few. Since then the Government has made little attempt to support our own domestic cattle industry or make amends with our largest neighbour.

Because governments caused these problems, there is a moral obligation on them to help solve these problems. On Tuesday, I attended a beef crisis forum in Richmond. In a town of only 500 people in the Gulf, a crowd of 500 turned up, in a mood, not to vent frustrations, but to propose solutions and to look for leadership.

One of those solutions was for the government to purchase 100,000 head of cattle to put an immediate floor price in the market. Because the live cattle trade fiasco has dropped demand by about 300,000 head of cattle a year, beef prices are plummeting. In Longreach, cattle sold for $20 per head last week. That’s the equivalent of buying your scotch fillet for 10 ¢ a kilogram.

But the price of the dollar means our beef is still expensive to those overseas. More than 30 foreign central banks now hold Australian dollars, along with Google, Apple and Berkshire Hathaway.

The Botswana central bank is not diversifying into the Australian dollar because they share our love of a sunburnt country and wide, open plains, but because we are becoming a “safe haven” currency. Our exporters are paying their insurance policy.

Our terms of trade have fallen by 15 per cent, and economic growth is being downgraded. Still, our dollar remains relatively high.

The Reserve Bank recognised this on Tuesday by cutting interest rates, in part aimed at the high dollar. The Australian dollar is not a sacred cow.

The RBA has clearly announced that its monetary policy is now looking to target the dollar, and we have intervened directly in foreign exchange markets on 35 separate times in the past 24 years, including eight times since 1997.

Other nations are not as restrained as we are. The United States is now delivering quantitative easing at a rate of $85 billion a month. The Swiss have imposed a ceiling on their currency, and the new Shinzo Abe government in Japan is actively adopting policies to devalue its currency, by 20 per cent since last December.

Meanwhile, we are keeping our innocence and making life near impossible for those who we are relying on to figure ourselves out of our current financial mess. What’s the good of being pure, if you end up broke?

Regular readers know that I have written on this topic of the over-valued Australian dollar (due incoming “hot money” from other, currency-depreciating nations) since late 2011 –

Australia’s Debt Dreamtime

Bob’s No Mad Katter On RBA “Independence”

The Single Biggest Reason Why I Will Vote For Bob Katter’s Australian Party

Queenslander! This Is Why You Are A Complete Idiot If You Don’t Vote KAP Today

It’s wonderful – if all too belated – to finally see a politician from one of the so-called “major” parties speaking truthfully about the AUD exchange rate, and the close-mindedness on the part of our economic mandarins which has caused so much damage to Australian businesses (and thus, the economy) over the past couple of years.

Barnaby for PM.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

“You CAN Influence The Price Of The Dollar, If You Actually Want To” – Barnaby

7 May

black-check-mark-hi

Bookmark this post, dear reader. This is historic.

Once again, Barnaby Joyce is the first major party politician (to my knowledge) to speak truth to power concerning a(nother) vital economic parameter.

In late 2009 and early 2010 – before new Opposition Leader Tony Abbott wilted like a week-old lettuce leaf and sacked him – then Opposition Finance spokesman Barnaby warned of the dangers of Australia’s rising Federal and State government debt trajectories.  Only in recent weeks, some three years later, leading economists have begun to acknowledge that Barnaby was right.

Today, 7 May 2013, appearing on radio 2GB, he is the first major party politician to state that the government can bring down the exchange rate value of the Australian dollar, and tell the plain truth about why they (the ALP, Treasury, and RBA) have not done so:

The dollar, if you actually want to, you can actually affect it. It’s not written on tablets of stone and presented from Mount Sinai. You can influence the price of the dollar down if there is real motivation and desire to do so. One of the reasons they don’t do it is because they want to be economically pure. The way we’re going at the moment we’re going to be pure in debt, economically dead, so let’s make sure we keep our industry going.

Just so.

Over the past few years, our great economic leaders – the World’s Greatest Treasurer Wayne Swan, and the Million Dollar Man, RBA Governor Glenn Stevens – have deliberately chosen a policy of not joining the global currency wars.  Of deliberately allowing the AUD to rise and rise versus other currencies, and to remain at unprecedented elevated levels. Why?  In order to “make room for the mining boom”.

In other words, because of the inflationary impact of the mining (investment) boom, they have chosen to let a far-too-high AUD deflate the rest of the economy … to “make room for the mining boom”.

(Yes, the same mining boom that is now ending; the one that they so confidently believed would give Australia a period of “unprecedented prosperity”, a China-funded “golden age” lasting “to 2050”, according to former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry).

They have pursued an economic policy of allowing the rest of the Australian economy to be hollowed out, white-ant style, so that their precious little (bogus) economic performance figures for “inflation” (ie, the CPI) would not get too far beyond their arbitrary boundaries of preference.

While the rest of the country (except mining and related industries) has watched countless businesses, and whole industry sectors such as manufacturing, slowly getting squeezed towards, and in a record number of cases, into bankruptcy, our ivory-towered boffins have sat back applauding themselves for their ideological purity, self-congratulating for their not acting to influence the AUD exchange rate.

Despite the fact that practically every other nation in the world who can, is.

As usual, it takes the little ol’ bush accountant to bell the cat.

Barnaby for PM.

He’s the only one with both brains, and b***s.

Tags: , , , ,

“Gillard’s An Imbecile” – Barnaby

7 May

I do love that rare, near-extinct breed … the Straight-Talkin’ politician:

2GB Chris Smith Afternoon Show Transcript
7 May 2013

Topics: Beef industry crisis, Budget deficit.

Chris Smith: Barnaby, good afternoon.

Barnaby Joyce: Good afternoon Chris. How are you today mate?

Chris Smith: I’m very well. I’ve heard from your team to say that you are in Richmond at a beef industry meeting, but this is not the Richmond near Windsor in Sydney right? You’re in the middle of Queensland.

Barnaby Joyce: This is Richmond in the Gulf. We’re up here because we have a Beef Crisis Meeting. What that means Chris is that last week we had cattle selling for merely $20 a head at Longreach. That’s disastrous. When you think that you’d need 25 head of cattle to pay for the fortnightly groceries. You can’t do that, you’re not going to survive.

What is it caused by? Well, three things. One thing is the drought. There’s not much you can do about that except pray for rain. There are two you can do something about. One is the live cattle trade. When you shut it down; it completely decimated our markets so that people don’t have a market to sell into. Now all those cattle are going south and they’re forcing down the price in other areas.

The Indonesians are happily sitting back saying: “Well you made our life a misery and now we’re making your life a misery”. That’s why we need to be so careful that we never overreact. Sometimes we see these terrible things on television. They’re terrible but we have to fix the problem not stuff the industry.
We have a parliamentary secretary who doesn’t believe in the live cattle trade. This just shows you how incompetent the Labor Government is.

Chris Smith: It’s so out of whack. Maybe it’s because of all those farming-oriented cabinet members Barnaby?

Barnaby Joyce: They just don’t seem to get it. Why isn’t the Trade Minister Mr Emerson, instead of doing his funny little dances and his OP Ed pieces about et al and sundry, why isn’t he, the actual Trade Minister, over there trying to fix up our trade? Why isn’t he over in Indonesia trying to fix it up?

The other thing is the dollar’s high. The dollar, if you actually want to, you can actually affect it. It’s not written on tablets of stone and presented from Mount Sinai. You can influence the price of the dollar down if there is real motivation and desire to do so. One of the reasons they don’t do it is because they want to be economically pure. The way we’re going at the moment we’re going to be pure in debt, economically dead, so let’s make sure we keep our industry going.

Chris Smith: Let’s give people an idea. You’re saying $20 a head, right? Two years ago, one head of cattle sold for $500. That’s how far the industry has plummeted.

Barnaby Joyce: Yes, obviously they didn’t all sell for $20 a head but that was the bottom of sale. It gives you a sense that what happens then, so your listeners would understand, people won’t sell them at the saleyards; they’ll just shoot them in the paddock because the cost of transport is more than what you’re going to get. More to the point, these people are under the pump. The bank manager’s screaming at them, the values of their place is going down. If you think about it in another way, imagine if you got your pay packet and it was only a fifth of the money or an eighth of the money you usually got in it. You’d be a little bit shocked wouldn’t you?

Chris Smith: Now, the deficit, it seems to get worse by the day. We’ve had Penny Wong this morning on the ABC today confirming the blow out will hit $17 billion.

Penny Wong: What I can confirm is that we are facing a very significant revenue shortfall from what was anticipated. Certainly in the current financial year if you look at what was expected at Budget until now, we’re going to be receiving as a government, about $17 billion less and we do anticipate that we will see revenues hit across the Forward Estimates. So, in that context, given the challenges the Budget faces and the nation faces, the Government has to take responsible decisions, so we have indicated today that we won’t be proceeding with the boost, the additional boost to the Family Tax Benefits that was planned for later this year. That’s a regrettable decision, but one that’s responsible in the economic circumstance.

Chris Smith: Okay, so the Family Tax Benefit is out of the picture because there will be no added bonus associated with that. Another broken promise out the window – but they have to do that. While Penny Wong tells it how it is Barnaby, we have the Prime Minister yesterday with school children, she seems to have school children with her almost every week now, she didn’t think the deficit was such a problem.

Julia Gillard: Now, we’ve got to work our way back to a surplus and obviously pay off the debt, but the scale of the debt is around 10 per cent of GDP. What does that mean? It’s the same as someone who earns $100,000 a year, having a mortgage of $10,000. I think most of you would know, you’re probably living in homes mum and dad are buying, that they have mortgages well in excess of $10,000 and they would happily change places with someone whose mortgage was just 10 per cent of their income. That’s not something that you have to worry about.

Chris Smith: So Barnaby, relax, it’s only a $10,000 mortgage.

Barnaby Joyce: She’s an imbecile. This is incredible, the debt as we speak right now is $271.1 billion gross. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself, AOFM, Australian Office of Financial Management website. On top of that you’re going to have your state debt. Of course if things fall over you’ll be picking up the state debt as well. Between the State and Federal Government debt we would be well in excess of half a trillion dollars. Our GDP of this nation is 1.3 to 1.4 trillion dollars. So if my mathematics are correct, even if you just take the Federal Government debt, it’s getting close to 15 to 20 per cent of our GDP.

Dear reader, this really, REALLY angers me.

The “GDP” fallacy.

GDP is not … NOT … government income!!!!!!!!!!!

The government’s income (ie, from taxing us) for this financial year, was projected in the October MYEFO to be $373 billion.  Finance Minister Penny Wong has now declared that the actual budget outcome will likely be $17 billion less than predicted. So that’s about $356 billion in annual income for the Federal government this year.

The Federal debt is (so far) $271 billion. Meaning that the Federal Government debt-to-income ratio is 76%.

So Ms Gillard … and Barnaby … the correct, honest analogy would be as follows:

“It’s the same as someone who receives $35,600 a year on public welfare, having a personal line-of-credit of $27,100.”

Please, please … get this right!  GDP is not … NOT … government income!!

Chris Smith: She’s fiddling with the numbers mate.

Barnaby Joyce: You see what they do, it’s so annoying, they say, “Oh the net debt, the net debt…” So where are we going to get this magic money Ms Gillard to pay off your gross debt? Where they’re going to get it is the cash reserves in the Future Fund. The Future Fund’s there to pay the public servants’ superannuation because they never put the money aside for. So all you’re doing to taking money from one credit card to pay off the other credit card and both credit cards are overdrawn.

Chris Smith: So there was no real surprise about the Newspoll results today. Labor’s primary vote has fallen to 31. That’s normally shock horror stuff. I just get the feeling that we’ve become desensitised to these numbers now.

Barnaby Joyce: The Australian people have given up on them. The Greens and the independents go with this crowd. They’re also ducking for cover now, pretending they weren’t there. Mr Windsor gave us this government. Mr Oakeshott gave us this government. The reason they’ve done this to our country is because they let them. To this day they are supporting them. They’re all in there together. They all wanted their time in the sun where they ran the show. Well they ran the show and what an absolute and categorical disaster it is, from Richmond in the north where they’re dealing with a cattle industry in crisis to down in the south where we’re running out of money. Left, right and centre and all over the joint, we’ve gone out the back door.

Chris Smith: I want to put this to listeners this afternoon, Julia Gillard also last night spoke about her desire to see more female Prime Ministers and hoped there would be less focus on makeup, hairstyles and choice of fashion. Now as I remember, a lot of the cartoonists and commentators had a great deal of fun with his glasses and his eyebrows. What about Bob Carr’s glasses, etcetera, etcetera? I don’t think that we’ve been overly critical of Julia Gillard’s state of dress or what she wore or how she looked any more than we mentioned the same with other Prime Ministers. It’s just how good you do the job.

Barnaby Joyce: We all get caricatures. They’ve had me tangled up in barbed wire fences and hayseeds hanging out of my mouth. It comes with the territory. If you don’t like the heat get out of the kitchen. They probably will have more female Prime Ministers and I hope they do, but by gosh I hope they’re vastly more competent than the current one we’ve got.

Tags: , , , ,

Greens “Land Of Little Pink Clouds Of Happiness”

6 May

How remiss of me. Here’s Barnaby’s column last week for the Canberra Times (my bold added):

Political fiasco drawing to an end, but the pain will linger on

It feels like the political show is rolling the credits and the crowd is leaving the cinema on this Green-Labor-independent matinee.

One evening this week, Tony Windsor flagged one evening his inclination for a same-sex marriage referendum; then, the next morning, he said he was not going to raise it with the Prime Minister, nor was he going to vote for it.

This was followed by some incredulous babble about Facebook, social media and all in all translated to utter confusion.

Julia Gillard told us that the economy was going so well that the deficit had blown out to $12 billion. The debt went up by another half a billion and now the earnest scribes who swore black and blue that the debt was not a problem are now looking earnestly at the camera saying it is. Meanwhile, Labor delivered a similarly confused explanation from the Windsor book of high Athenian rhetoric.

But we do have one cost that is proportionally going down and that is unfortunately, our defence spending, which is now at its lowest level since 1937. I find that the most powerful tool to engage the electorate is to suggest what would happen to our nation if we let this Green-Labor-independent political fiasco continue in the job.

At the current Wollomombi Falls trajectory, there would not be much among the rocks at the bottom to pick up.

The Greens want everything ever dreamt of in their Kubla Khan, Xanadu euphoria, otherwise known as party meetings, to be paid for by a mining tax. The fact that they can never nominate a mine they support or wish to expand seems irrelevant in the land of little pink clouds of happiness and chatty tea parties with hesitant girls, tardy rabbits, and mad milliners.

From our side of the political debate, my friend Clive has not been helping out. Clive, please, starting a party is what Bob Katter has made into an art house film. Why join him on the set? It is a little more difficult than what is first anticipated and new parties gather new ideas at about the same rate as they gather self-appointed messianic figures who wish to grace Australia with their unrecognised talent.

Business is sitting back biting their nails. Business wants certainty, sanity and honesty; it sees the government crab walking to a new tax to cover the National Disability Insurance Scheme because they have no money for its promises.

It is a genuinely essential program to look after those severely disabled, but to be genuine in your belief in this, the government must suggest what current plans would be cut to pay for it. Anything recurrent you borrow for is a sign of bad management and temporary in its sustainability.

Taxes are always a drag on economic growth. If you keep putting on a little new tax that won’t hurt you, you will ultimately get to one that, in combination with all the others, economically kills you.

At this juncture my feelings are not excitement at what the polls say is an impending election win; my choice to stand in New England makes my participation in that event a lot less likely. My feelings live somewhere between apprehension and anger.

How did this harlequin political crowd manage to formulate such a financially disastrous voyage? If they had done nothing more than continue on from where the Coalition left off, if they had basically gone on holidays, giving instructions that nothing much should happen beyond the set course of 1997, then our position would be vastly better than it currently is.

I remember very well the excited glee as Labor members went around a barbecue in the Parliament House courtyard at the start of the global, but actually more US and Europe – financial crisis. They proclaimed that government had to “go hard, go early, go household”.

I remember thinking they should have added “go off your head and go broke”. It was like the kid who had just learnt a rude word in a foreign language and was showing all in the school yard how smart they were.

They had no knowledge or desire to genuinely delve into the vast complexities of the financial grammar or even to undertake the sober step backwards, to have a good sleep, cold shower and observe the situation and our very minor global role soberly.

Now, Michael Chaney, chairman of National Australia Bank and Woodside Petroleum, is comparing our financial fate to that of Ireland. I wish him better luck than I had a few years ago.

Tags: , , , ,

Proof We CAN Make The World A Better Place

5 May

Hat tip to Chris Becker ( @ThePrinceMB ) for sharing the following video compilation “from the ‘notorious’ Russian dash cams”, and the words below:

“To help people out – the weak, the infirm, those who just need a little leg up – is not selfless, nor altruistic or “welfare” or evil….

Its an investment – it makes the world a better place as we all gain something by being better people – particularly our kids.

Thought for the day.” – Chris Becker

Tags: , , , ,

Great Minds Discuss How To Fix The Banking System For Good

3 May

Screen shot 2013-05-03 at 10.57.49 AM

Near the conclusion of my essay explaining an alternative solution to the global financial crisis (The People’s NWO: Every Man His own Central Banker), I pointed to an October 2010 speech by the central Bank of England governor, Mervyn King.

In that speech, King suggested that the world should “divorce the payment system from risky lending activity – that is … prevent fractional reserve banking (for example, as proposed by Fisher, 1936, Friedman, 1960, Tobin, 1987 and more recently by Kay, 2009)”.

My warning then, was that the elite string pullers of the present global financial system appear to be planning their own “solution” to the crisis; one that is particularly cunning and dangerous. Why? Because often it is not falsehoods, but the deceitful mis-use of truth that is the most dangerous to our well-being.

The “solution” being canvassed by the world’s economic, academic, and banking elite does appear to address one (1) fundamental structural flaw that most of the “sound money” and “anti-bankster” activists correctly identify and oppose – fractional reserve banking, or, the creation of “credit” out of thin air by banks, in the form of loans-at-usury.

To recap, this is what I wrote on 7/7/11 in reference to Mervyn King’s suggestion that the world should now “prevent fractional reserve banking”:

Their current plan to address the fear of global systemic banking risk – a fear which they have created through control of the boom-and-bust “cycle”, of which the GFC is only the most recent example – is to divorce the transactional currency system from the store of wealth system.

This is precisely what my idea would achieve … without the centralised control.

…

We need to understand the true and proper nature of “money”, and “currency”. So that we are not hoodwinked by the next stage of the global bankster scam.

Many are aware of the evils of “fractional reserve banking”. And it is these who will be the first to sing “Hallelujah!” and fall for the trap, when TPTB suggest doing away with fractional reserve banking as a “solution” to the global systemic banking crisis that they have created.

Well, it appears that I was right.

(More correctly, Dave Harrison was right.)

From Positive Money, one of those well-meaning activist groups who I fear are just the kind to fall for the trap being prepared, and thus naïvely serve as “useful idiots” in supporting a deceptively appealing proposal to “fix” the problems of the global money system, without removing the two greatest problems of all (usury, and central control by elite bankers), we learn that:

A very interesting conference took place on 17th April 2013 in Philadelphia, USA.  Big senior figures in the economic, monetary, and financial worlds, including Adair Turner, Laurence Kotlikoff, Michael Kumhof and Jeffrey Sachs were discussing fundamental solutions to current global monetary and banking problems.

This was probably the first conference ever where the top academics were seriously discussing ending fractional reserve banking.

Now you can watch the recording of their presentations, highly recommended:

If the video doesn’t play on your browser, please click here.

Michael Kumhof, Deputy Division Chief, Modeling Unit, Research Department, International Monetary Fund, explained in very clear and straightforward way how exactly banks work and presented the Chicago Plan proposal.

“The key function of banks is money creation, not intermediation. And if you tell that to a mainstream economist, that’s already provocative, even though it’s hundred percent correct.”

His presentation starts at 1:02:12

Adair Turner, Former Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority and Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, gave a noteworthy presentation on “Money and Debt: Radical Solutions to the Challenge of Deleveraging”

“Fractional reserve banks create whole new level of danger. Because the fundamental fact is, that when people say  ”banks take savings and intermediate it to loans” – that’s not true.

One of the most fundamental insight is that banks simultaneously create new credit and new money ex nihilo.

And that is one of the most fundamental, important things for people to be taught, which economics undergraduates should be taught about the nature of how monetary economy with banks works.”

His presentation starts at 4:06:07

…

Jeffrey Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, on Implications for Global Development 

“Could we really have liquidity without fractional reserve banking? If we could, we might be able to address another degree of this problem.”

His presentation starts at 2:35:08

In the opinion of your humble blogger, herein lies great danger.

What these lauded men are saying here … is the Truth.

This is how the world’s modern “money” system works.  Most people in the world do not understand that this is how it really works. And yes, the power of banks to create endogenous money via the fractional reserve system is dangerous, risky, and profoundly flawed, and does lie near to the root of the world’s financial troubles.

The great danger here rests in the fact that so many intelligent, well-meaning activists and opponents of the present global financial system are certain to applaud and support the act of stating these truths, and as a result, be lulled into a false sense of security – the idea that these “truth-tellers” must therefore be “honest brokers”, whose proposed solution to the problem they (now) highlight is the best solution for all of us.

And not just the best solution for them.

I will state the case bluntly, dear reader.

The only way that humanity can ever be truly freed from the power of the moneylenders, and the only way for “money” to be rendered a true servant of humanity rather than our master, is for usury – the taking or offering of any interest on “money” – to once again be outlawed.

And for the power of issuing “currency” to be maximally de-centralised.

See also:

The People’s NWO: Every Man His Own Central Banker

The World’s Most Immoral Institution Tells You How

A May Day Economic Jeremiad For All Ages

On Savages, Barbarians, And Money-Lenders

A Tale Of Usury, Explosions, And A Used Car Salesman

Usury – The Golden Age Of Big Money Oligarchy

A History Of The Legal Case Against Usury

Conspiracy Theorists Proved Right: Everything Is Rigged

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Abuses Stript And Whipt

3 May

“And yet in these days, if that men have riches,
Though they be hangmen, usurers or witches,
Devils-incarnate, such as have no shame
To act the thing that I shall blush to name,
Does that disgrace them one whit? Fie, no.
…There is no shame for rich men in these times,
For wealth will serve to cover many crimes.”

– George Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613)

Wither’s writing “gave such offense that he was committed to the Marshalsea prison for several months.” British Bibliographer 1 (1810), pp 4-5.

From Michael Hoffman, Usury In Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not (2013).

Tags: , , , ,

Politicians To Share Burden Of “Burden Sharing” Budget

2 May

Hogs-at-Trough-014

From The Australian:

A CRACKDOWN on existing disability entitlements and a levy on higher-income earners are being considered as part of the Gillard government’s plans to fund the $15 billion-a-year national disability insurance scheme…

Yesterday Ms Gillard said reasonable options, even those previously rejected, were being considered. She said the concept of “burden sharing” would guide the government’s decisions.

“The more who share the work, the lighter the load for all: business, families, institutions,” she said.

Fine.

But rather than starting with a “crackdown” on the usual populist political targets – people on Disability Support pensions, and “higher” income earners – how about we see our erstwhile “leaders” … well, lead … with a personal example.

Let us begin this concept of “burden sharing” with a May budget that includes a “crackdown” or “levy” on these high income earners –

Prime Minister Julia Gillard – $495,430

Deputy PM Wayne Swan – $390,627

Cabinet Minister – $328,698

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott – $352,517

Speaker – $333,462

Shadow Minister – $238,187

Backbencher – $190,550

Source: The “independent” Remuneration Tribunal.

flying_pig_rainbow_announcements-r4d422547306d495e975d2bda962a3baa_8dnd0_8byvr_512

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

A May Day Economic Jeremiad For All Ages

1 May

jeremiad

An Act Against Usury

Edward VI, King of England and Ireland

“…For as much as usury is by the word of God utterly prohibited as a vice most odious and detestable as in divers places in Holy Scriptures it is evident to be seen which thing is by no godly teaching, and persuasions can sink into the hearts of divers greedy, uncharitable and covetous persons of this realm, nor yet by any terrible threatenings of God’s wrath and vengeance that justly hang over this realm for the great and open usury therein daily used and practiced, they will forsake such filthy gain and lucre, unless some temporary punishment be provided and ordained in that behalf. For reformation whereof be it enacted by the authority of this present parliament, that from the first day of May, which shall be in the year of our Lord 1552, the said act and statute concerning only usury, lucre, or gain of or for the loan, forbearing, or giving days of any sum or sums of money, be utterly abrogated, void and repealed. And furthermore be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that from and after the first day of May next coming, no person or persons of what estate, degree, quality or condition, soever he or they be by any corrupt, colorable or deceitful conveyance, slight, or engine, or by any way or mean shall lend, give, set out, deliver, or forbear any sum or sums of money to any person or persons, or to any corporation or body politic to or for any manner of usury increase, lucre gain, or interest to be had or hoped for over and above the sums so lent, given, set out, delivered or forborne, upon pain of forfeiture of the value, and well of the sum or sums so lent, given, set out, delivered or forborne, as also of the usury, increase, lucre, gain or interest thereof. And also upon pain of imprisonment of the body or bodies of every such offender or offenders, and also to make fine or ransom at the King’s will and pleasure.”

By this proclamation, the boy-king Edward VI restored the longstanding English legal prohibition against all forms of usury; a prohibition revoked by his father, Henry VIII.

It is well to consider thoughtfully the state of the English economy, and especially its social conditions, during the period where usury was outlawed:

What was our western world like before the debt-economy?

Thorold Rogers, Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University in the middle of the 19th century wrote: “At that time (i.e., the Middle Ages) a laborer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year by working fourteen weeks.”

…the fiery 19th century historian William Cobbett, after visiting Winchester Cathedral and marveling at its beauty, told his son: “That building was made when there were no poor wretches in England called paupers… when every laboring man was clothed in woolen cloth and when all had plenty of meat and bread …”

Thus we have a picture of a well-fed, prosperous community, working commercially, or for gain, about one third of the year and with dozens of holidays a year… It was a time when Englishmen called their land “Merry England,” when they owned their property with allodial title (irrevocably free and clear), instead of paying “rent” (as property owners do now… in the form of property taxes to the government).

It was in the Middle Ages of Europe when the magnificent Gothic cathedrals were constructed with voluntary subscription and labor, edifices of such beauty and power as to amaze the modern onlooker. Dozens were constructed, all without mortgages or debt of any kind; without usury. A society without usury is nowadays derided as inevitably backward, if not impossible. Those who visit the medieval Gothic cathedrals of Britain and Europe gaze upon massive edifices of splendor and proportion which we, with our usury and technology, have yet to equal.

Source: Michael Hoffman, Usury In Christendom (2013)

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started