(Week 13 - Thursday, Nov. 6)
This nation has from time-to-time passed through periods of incredible euphoria for the heights of achievement and sacrifice it has achieve. I sensed such a moment in the aftermath of Obama's victory amidst the throng in Grant Park in Chicago. The People basked briefly in the sublime light of fulfillment in their realization that this nation's very soul, though sullied by its passage through chattel slavery, Jim Crow and racial bigotry, had traversed the length of human mendacity in at last coming to elect as its leader the first African American President.
Few believe that being black, or of any other particular description, is a qualification for high office, but the identity of the candidate in this case cannot be separated from the momentousness of the attainment. Obama had endured the vicissitudes of the process, and that few seemed inclined to question that he had fairly "won" (whatever that means in politics) was somehow cathartic to the nation. Even John McCain could not help but dedicate the first words of his concession remarks to that historic achievement, and President Bush issued his own declaration commemorating the event. We have long been a people that prides itself on the belief that any new soul born into its fold could aspire to any position in the land. Until last night this promise was in some measure hypothetical, but the question is now laid to rest.
Had the election tipped the other way, an historic precedent would have been set in another direction; i.e. the first woman to attain to the office of the Vice-Presidency. There was a time when for even one party to entertain the idea of having a Catholic on the ticket was pushing the bounds of thinkable thought (as for JFK), but now it seems the breaking of the Protestant-white-males-only-need-apply rule was done it stride. Surely as a nation we have grown up.
What now?
The events of yesterday were in part a culmination of the American Revolution, but something crucial remains undone. After a heroic War of Independence announced with a noble Declaration and guided by "founding fathers" of high principles, one might think that the establishment of the right of the nation to create, issue and control its own money would be a foregone conclusion, but if history teaches anything it is to not underestimate the money power (the amorphous principality that the power of money, as co-opted by forces inimical to the commonweal, represents; it is not any particular persons, but persons of every class or description can, and do, fall under its spell). While the People have on occasion arisen to great heights of purpose and sacrifice, afterwards they understandably tend to turn back to their private lives. The money power, on the other hand, never rests, leading monetary historian Alexander Del Mar to observe ruefully:
"Never was a great historical event (the American Revolution) followed by a more feeble sequel. A nation arises to claim for itself liberty and sovereignty. It gains both of these ends by an immense sacrifice of blood and treasure. Then, when the victory is gained and secured, it hands the national credit (the authority to create money) over to private individuals, to do as they please with it."
This is the unfinished business of the American Revolution. It is what we will have to reckon with if the promise of the nation, so clearly reflected in the yearning faces seen last night in Chicago, is to be fully realized. None of this is to take away from the momentous import of what has already been achieved, but if We the People merely turn back to our private lives after the great mobilization of energy, resources and willingness to get involved represented by this election cycle, then our hope will have been allowed to expire in yet another "feeble sequel", and America's promise will in the end ring hollow.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Column #75 ELECTION NIGHT MUSINGS
(Week 13 - Wednesday, Nov. 6)
I have spent the evening in the company of good friends with whom I watched the election returns on the television. At this late hour I am more in the mood to be personal than analytical. Election days are singular in their effect upon me. They are a unique hiatus between one rhythm of life and another. The campaigns are over, and now we go back to work.
I am a quintessential baby-boomer and child of my time. I grew up in what I experienced as the halcyon 50's, and came of age in the turbulent 60's. The thought that kept coming to me tonight is, "what a difference forty years can make". I was born and raised in Chicago, and grew up with familiarity with Grant Park, site of Obama's acceptance speech. Forty years ago it was the location of the massive disorder ("police riot" some called it) that swirled around the '68 Democratic Convention. How different that was compared to the virtual love fest that reigned there tonight.
I did not experience the mayhem in Grant Park in '68 because I was in the midst of another chaotic scene in Vietnam. From there it seemed that "the World" (what we called the states from "the Nam") was coming apart. Over a hundred cities, we were told, were beset by rioting and on fire. Martin Luther King had been murdered in the spring. Bobby Kennedy, who's last public utterance was "And now on to Chicago", met the same fate shortly after. This finished off, it seemed, the innocence of a generation, coming as it did less than five years after the assassination of his brother.
I experienced a particular feeling of sadness upon hearing McCain's most gracious concession speech. I realized that no veteran of Vietnam had served in the office of President, and that McCain was perhaps the last best hope of that happening. It still isn't too late, or course, but I had the feeling that with the public taking a pass on his candidacy, perhaps the torch was being handed off already to a new generation. It seemed that the experience of the souls who had served in the war that marked our generation, but were still keeping it all inside, was somehow being passed over also.
Obama's dignified acceptance address aroused in me feelings of hope. More so did the looks on the faces of his crowd. Much has been said about the shallowness, mendacity and venality of modern political campaigns (not without reason), but I did not see evidence of that in the countenances of this celebratory, but serious, throng. How long will such comportment last? I do not know, but it is reassuring to know that it is there and can be called forth if the moment can be made right.
As I reflect upon the differences between the times now and forty years ago, it strikes me that, culturally and politically speaking, much has changed, except perhaps the one thing that needs most to change. That is, we still cannot have an authentic public dialogue about money. To be sure, there are many partisan ideological arguments about taxes being too high, spending being out of control, having to pay the "debt" so our children won't have to, and the like, but those are not sober soul-searching conversations about what money is, how it is created and controlled, and who it serves.
McCain and Obama both talked in a heartfelt way about the need to come together. Money is one topic that is common to us all. Notwithstanding that it is typically invoked in a divisive manner, my experience is that it is the one subject around which it is most possible to have a unifying transcendent dialogue. I have tried to demonstrate something of that potential through these columns. It is my hope that in the relative political calm between now and inauguration day, the seed of a productive discourse on money can be planted, before the looks on those faces fade again into the disunity of political business as usual.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
I have spent the evening in the company of good friends with whom I watched the election returns on the television. At this late hour I am more in the mood to be personal than analytical. Election days are singular in their effect upon me. They are a unique hiatus between one rhythm of life and another. The campaigns are over, and now we go back to work.
I am a quintessential baby-boomer and child of my time. I grew up in what I experienced as the halcyon 50's, and came of age in the turbulent 60's. The thought that kept coming to me tonight is, "what a difference forty years can make". I was born and raised in Chicago, and grew up with familiarity with Grant Park, site of Obama's acceptance speech. Forty years ago it was the location of the massive disorder ("police riot" some called it) that swirled around the '68 Democratic Convention. How different that was compared to the virtual love fest that reigned there tonight.
I did not experience the mayhem in Grant Park in '68 because I was in the midst of another chaotic scene in Vietnam. From there it seemed that "the World" (what we called the states from "the Nam") was coming apart. Over a hundred cities, we were told, were beset by rioting and on fire. Martin Luther King had been murdered in the spring. Bobby Kennedy, who's last public utterance was "And now on to Chicago", met the same fate shortly after. This finished off, it seemed, the innocence of a generation, coming as it did less than five years after the assassination of his brother.
I experienced a particular feeling of sadness upon hearing McCain's most gracious concession speech. I realized that no veteran of Vietnam had served in the office of President, and that McCain was perhaps the last best hope of that happening. It still isn't too late, or course, but I had the feeling that with the public taking a pass on his candidacy, perhaps the torch was being handed off already to a new generation. It seemed that the experience of the souls who had served in the war that marked our generation, but were still keeping it all inside, was somehow being passed over also.
Obama's dignified acceptance address aroused in me feelings of hope. More so did the looks on the faces of his crowd. Much has been said about the shallowness, mendacity and venality of modern political campaigns (not without reason), but I did not see evidence of that in the countenances of this celebratory, but serious, throng. How long will such comportment last? I do not know, but it is reassuring to know that it is there and can be called forth if the moment can be made right.
As I reflect upon the differences between the times now and forty years ago, it strikes me that, culturally and politically speaking, much has changed, except perhaps the one thing that needs most to change. That is, we still cannot have an authentic public dialogue about money. To be sure, there are many partisan ideological arguments about taxes being too high, spending being out of control, having to pay the "debt" so our children won't have to, and the like, but those are not sober soul-searching conversations about what money is, how it is created and controlled, and who it serves.
McCain and Obama both talked in a heartfelt way about the need to come together. Money is one topic that is common to us all. Notwithstanding that it is typically invoked in a divisive manner, my experience is that it is the one subject around which it is most possible to have a unifying transcendent dialogue. I have tried to demonstrate something of that potential through these columns. It is my hope that in the relative political calm between now and inauguration day, the seed of a productive discourse on money can be planted, before the looks on those faces fade again into the disunity of political business as usual.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Column #74 A POETIC THOUGHT FOR ELECTION DAY
(Week 13 - Tuesday, Nov. 5)
The campaigning is done, and each office seeker has made his or her case. This poem is offered from the heart as something to reflect upon as each reader casts his or her vote. If one cannot find clear expression for the thought and sentiment it raises on the current ballot, then may it at least plant a seed of resolve for the next time around (which starts tomorrow).
"Why?"
Hark the entreaties of the broken
Souls who have borne usury's curse,
Debt-money's train of death and woes.
The huddled betimes scarce awoken
Soon to find wit and will aburst,
The hour, impending, no one knows.
The meek get ready to inherit the earth,
The earth prepares to receive the sky,
The youth anon will discover a future,
The wise, in love, smile – and now you know "Why?"
May we all walk in wisdom on this day of decision.
Thank you for listening.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
The campaigning is done, and each office seeker has made his or her case. This poem is offered from the heart as something to reflect upon as each reader casts his or her vote. If one cannot find clear expression for the thought and sentiment it raises on the current ballot, then may it at least plant a seed of resolve for the next time around (which starts tomorrow).
"Why?"
Hark the entreaties of the broken
Souls who have borne usury's curse,
Debt-money's train of death and woes.
The huddled betimes scarce awoken
Soon to find wit and will aburst,
The hour, impending, no one knows.
The meek get ready to inherit the earth,
The earth prepares to receive the sky,
The youth anon will discover a future,
The wise, in love, smile – and now you know "Why?"
May we all walk in wisdom on this day of decision.
Thank you for listening.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Monday, November 3, 2008
Column #73 - ELECTION DAY: DAY OF DECISION, OR RATIFICATION?
(Week 13 - Monday, Nov. 3)
Tomorrow is "election day". Ostensibly, this is the long-anticipated pivotal day of decision on which we set a bold new direction for the future of ourselves and our children. After observing the pattern set in previous election cycles, it might be fairly asked if it is not instead an empty civic ritual whereby, amidst much expensive political hoopla, we participate in the ratification of the same old system, with no realistic chance of making a choice for the positive? In the persons presented on the ballot (as per John McCain and Barack Obama, for example; not meaning to overlook the fact that there are others also), is there presented a bona fide choice between two divergent roads forward, or is it essentially a non-choice, between "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum". Is the only real alternative to "waste" one's vote on a protest third-party candidate?
Taking the question a bit deeper, is it a constructive act to cast one's vote at all? This, to be sure, may appear to be out of synch with the civic tenor of this special day, but in my travels the question is presented to me frequently by serious-minded souls who are seeking an affirmative way to act, but are torn between hoping that they can make a difference, and feeling that their precious time and energy are being co-opted to add political bunting to the same old corrupted civic structure.
For my part I am encouraged that the level of interest and participation among the electorate, even after what seems like an interminable four-year grind since the last Presidential election. In a peculiar sort or way the vast quantities of cash that have been pouring into campaign coffers is an indication that there is a vast reservoir of hope that is being drawn upon, even to the extent that people are electing to vote with their financial substance through a difficult time. For all that, however, the issue of monetary transformation, is nowhere represented on the ballot, except in the guise of the tired old rhetoric of getting-spending-under-control-and-balancing-the-budget-so-our-children-won't-have-to-pay-our-"debt". What could be more discouraging?
This begs the question, is there a reason for hope? I believe that there is.
Permit me to offer an analogy. In the field of chemistry there is a phenomenon known as a "super-saturated solution." By way of explanation, if one were to take a liter of water and then begin to add small quantities of a salt, the salt would dissolve into the water forming a solution; until, that is, the water held in solution all the salt that it could hold. At that point the solution would be "saturated", and any additional salt added would fall undissolved to the bottom of the container.
Now suppose that one started with a solution that was already saturated (with no extra salt at the bottom), and began to let water evaporate out of the container. As the water evaporated the salt would be left behind, but the measure of salt that was supposedly dissolved by that amount of water would stay dissolved, and not precipitate to the bottom. The solution in the container would have entered a state of being a "super-saturated solution"; that is, it would be holding in suspension more salt than it could supposedly hold. The reason that it would stay in suspension is that there is nothing identifiable in the solution that represented truly the pattern the excess salt would precipitate into if it had the chance. If one were to introduce into the solution a seed crystal, however tiny (it need only be at least one molecular replication of the true pattern), then the excess salt in the solution would precipitate out (this is in fact how crystals are grown).
The state of the macro-political climate at present is analogous. The energy in the hopes, fears, debates, activism, anxieties, seeking and prayers of the people around the world about the present state of affairs constitutes a mighty socio/economic/political super-saturated immersion. There is a great deal of angst-ridden argument out there about having to find a new and better way. Many issues are raised, some which venture tantalizingly close to the core truth, but we remain yet at a collective loss as to what precisely the problem is, and what exactly can be done about it. If, however, the seed crystal of a true alternative can be sown into the public consciousness, what would precipitate out would be breathtaking. That is what this column, hopefully, is all about. If in fact it can be constituted so as to form a seed crystal of what is yet unmanifest, but striving to be born. This is no mere metaphor, but a principle of real power and change.
Seen in this light, the tremendous energies that have been poured into this election cycle, without, in the view of many, evident fruit need not be lost. They do indeed come from a deep font of human hope in the future that can be precipitated out into a bright new vision for the future. The seed crystal that is yet lacking, I would suggest, is a true dialogue about the nature, realities and practice of money.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Tomorrow is "election day". Ostensibly, this is the long-anticipated pivotal day of decision on which we set a bold new direction for the future of ourselves and our children. After observing the pattern set in previous election cycles, it might be fairly asked if it is not instead an empty civic ritual whereby, amidst much expensive political hoopla, we participate in the ratification of the same old system, with no realistic chance of making a choice for the positive? In the persons presented on the ballot (as per John McCain and Barack Obama, for example; not meaning to overlook the fact that there are others also), is there presented a bona fide choice between two divergent roads forward, or is it essentially a non-choice, between "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum". Is the only real alternative to "waste" one's vote on a protest third-party candidate?
Taking the question a bit deeper, is it a constructive act to cast one's vote at all? This, to be sure, may appear to be out of synch with the civic tenor of this special day, but in my travels the question is presented to me frequently by serious-minded souls who are seeking an affirmative way to act, but are torn between hoping that they can make a difference, and feeling that their precious time and energy are being co-opted to add political bunting to the same old corrupted civic structure.
For my part I am encouraged that the level of interest and participation among the electorate, even after what seems like an interminable four-year grind since the last Presidential election. In a peculiar sort or way the vast quantities of cash that have been pouring into campaign coffers is an indication that there is a vast reservoir of hope that is being drawn upon, even to the extent that people are electing to vote with their financial substance through a difficult time. For all that, however, the issue of monetary transformation, is nowhere represented on the ballot, except in the guise of the tired old rhetoric of getting-spending-under-control-and-balancing-the-budget-so-our-children-won't-have-to-pay-our-"debt". What could be more discouraging?
This begs the question, is there a reason for hope? I believe that there is.
Permit me to offer an analogy. In the field of chemistry there is a phenomenon known as a "super-saturated solution." By way of explanation, if one were to take a liter of water and then begin to add small quantities of a salt, the salt would dissolve into the water forming a solution; until, that is, the water held in solution all the salt that it could hold. At that point the solution would be "saturated", and any additional salt added would fall undissolved to the bottom of the container.
Now suppose that one started with a solution that was already saturated (with no extra salt at the bottom), and began to let water evaporate out of the container. As the water evaporated the salt would be left behind, but the measure of salt that was supposedly dissolved by that amount of water would stay dissolved, and not precipitate to the bottom. The solution in the container would have entered a state of being a "super-saturated solution"; that is, it would be holding in suspension more salt than it could supposedly hold. The reason that it would stay in suspension is that there is nothing identifiable in the solution that represented truly the pattern the excess salt would precipitate into if it had the chance. If one were to introduce into the solution a seed crystal, however tiny (it need only be at least one molecular replication of the true pattern), then the excess salt in the solution would precipitate out (this is in fact how crystals are grown).
The state of the macro-political climate at present is analogous. The energy in the hopes, fears, debates, activism, anxieties, seeking and prayers of the people around the world about the present state of affairs constitutes a mighty socio/economic/political super-saturated immersion. There is a great deal of angst-ridden argument out there about having to find a new and better way. Many issues are raised, some which venture tantalizingly close to the core truth, but we remain yet at a collective loss as to what precisely the problem is, and what exactly can be done about it. If, however, the seed crystal of a true alternative can be sown into the public consciousness, what would precipitate out would be breathtaking. That is what this column, hopefully, is all about. If in fact it can be constituted so as to form a seed crystal of what is yet unmanifest, but striving to be born. This is no mere metaphor, but a principle of real power and change.
Seen in this light, the tremendous energies that have been poured into this election cycle, without, in the view of many, evident fruit need not be lost. They do indeed come from a deep font of human hope in the future that can be precipitated out into a bright new vision for the future. The seed crystal that is yet lacking, I would suggest, is a true dialogue about the nature, realities and practice of money.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Column #72 - PRIVATE BANK MONEY: THE STRANGE SUPERSTITION OF OUR AGE
(Week 12 - Saturday, Nov. 1)
Christopher Hollis, British economist and guest professor at Notre Dame University, observed:
"Indeed the historian has to record that in almost every age there was some superstition or other of utter unreason which strangely occupied the minds of men, otherwise of activity and vigor . . . We are sometimes ready to congratulate ourselves that our age has outgrown all superstitions. But the historian of the future will, I fancy, reckon in the same class . . . the strange superstition that, whenever money is invented, a percentage must be paid forever afterwards as a propitiation to a banker. It is on that superstition that the whole empire of Mammon is built."
Private bank money is the "strange superstition" of our time. It behooves we modern scientific sophisticates to ask ourselves if we as a civilization have fallen for an assumption that is as unscientific as the flat-earthery of an earlier time. Frederick Soddy, a British scientist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, was appalled by the anomalies caused by the usury-based monetary system. He wrote,
"The sensationalism of the scientific prophet could hardly imagine anything so sensational as this. A nation dowered with every necessary requisite for an abundant life is too poor to distribute its wealth, and is idle and deteriorates not because it does not need it, but because it cannot buy it."
Such thoughts precipitated an inquiry on his part which resulted in what many consider to be a classic volume, Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt. This treatise compares economics with physical science. The creation of real wealth, he reasoned, always involves the expenditure of energy, and must conform to the laws of thermodynamics, whereas to set up "debt" paper as the source of wealth turns reality on its head. Among his many insights was the conclusion that,
"If we reasoned similarly in physics, we should probably discover that weight possessed the property of levitation."
My observation is that in our "enlightened" era, denial, especially when related to money, is perhaps the strongest human failing. I can imagine a time in the future when our descendents (for whom we are so ostentatious about not wanting to pass on our "debt"), will come to their senses and dispel the bank-money bogeyman back to the irrationality from which he came, and wonder in amazement how an age of "science" could ever have believed in him. They will regard with horror the terrible price we were willing to pay, rather than relinquish our attachment to this pernicious notion.
In my view, the so-called "national debt" is a phantom. By taking it at face value, and arguing within an arena circumscribed by its own ostensible terms ("loan", "debt", "interest", "pay back", etc) , howbeit even "against" it, we effectively legitimize its chicanery and cement it as a fixture of our intellectual landscape. Our reflexive hand-wringing on this "issue" needlessly traumatizes our children into believing this abstraction is real, and unintentionally programs them into an acquiescence to a dead-end future. We do untold violence to their prospects, their psyches and their hopes, however unintentionally, because we are reluctant to break our denial on this.
If We-the-People were to wake up to the reality that the "national debt" is a made-up construct, and that it could be de-constructed, there would be a new world in the morning. What is more, the sky would not fall, and the whole financial mess the nation finds itself in could begin to be resolved directly, systematically, transparently and without default to anyone.
Monetarily speaking the way forward is straightforward. It begins with the restoration of the money creation franchise to the public sector. It continues with the deflation of the "debt" bubble (not a paying of the "debt") by the redemption as they come due of already outstanding U.S. bonds with real money (United States Notes; as per the "Greenback"). It is completed with the scrapping of the fractional reserve formula, and the redefining of all "credit money" already issued as legal money.
The playing out of the transition is bigger and more complex than this of course, but eminently doable. This may sound like a preposterous vision, but, I would suggest, it is not. It only seems so because our minds have been trained out of the ability to even entertain such fits of common sense by the cumulative force of our "debt-money" rooted acculturation.
Next week the citizens of the nation will enter the voting booth in what is widely billed as a "pivotal election that will determine the future of our children's future." In spite of what has come to be years of strenuous campaigning at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, the issue of money is not even represented by anyone on the ballot in any definitive way. Whatever the turnout, and whoever the victors, this is a great tragedy for our nation. It was not always so. Let us resolve that it never be again.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Christopher Hollis, British economist and guest professor at Notre Dame University, observed:
"Indeed the historian has to record that in almost every age there was some superstition or other of utter unreason which strangely occupied the minds of men, otherwise of activity and vigor . . . We are sometimes ready to congratulate ourselves that our age has outgrown all superstitions. But the historian of the future will, I fancy, reckon in the same class . . . the strange superstition that, whenever money is invented, a percentage must be paid forever afterwards as a propitiation to a banker. It is on that superstition that the whole empire of Mammon is built."
Private bank money is the "strange superstition" of our time. It behooves we modern scientific sophisticates to ask ourselves if we as a civilization have fallen for an assumption that is as unscientific as the flat-earthery of an earlier time. Frederick Soddy, a British scientist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, was appalled by the anomalies caused by the usury-based monetary system. He wrote,
"The sensationalism of the scientific prophet could hardly imagine anything so sensational as this. A nation dowered with every necessary requisite for an abundant life is too poor to distribute its wealth, and is idle and deteriorates not because it does not need it, but because it cannot buy it."
Such thoughts precipitated an inquiry on his part which resulted in what many consider to be a classic volume, Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt. This treatise compares economics with physical science. The creation of real wealth, he reasoned, always involves the expenditure of energy, and must conform to the laws of thermodynamics, whereas to set up "debt" paper as the source of wealth turns reality on its head. Among his many insights was the conclusion that,
"If we reasoned similarly in physics, we should probably discover that weight possessed the property of levitation."
My observation is that in our "enlightened" era, denial, especially when related to money, is perhaps the strongest human failing. I can imagine a time in the future when our descendents (for whom we are so ostentatious about not wanting to pass on our "debt"), will come to their senses and dispel the bank-money bogeyman back to the irrationality from which he came, and wonder in amazement how an age of "science" could ever have believed in him. They will regard with horror the terrible price we were willing to pay, rather than relinquish our attachment to this pernicious notion.
In my view, the so-called "national debt" is a phantom. By taking it at face value, and arguing within an arena circumscribed by its own ostensible terms ("loan", "debt", "interest", "pay back", etc) , howbeit even "against" it, we effectively legitimize its chicanery and cement it as a fixture of our intellectual landscape. Our reflexive hand-wringing on this "issue" needlessly traumatizes our children into believing this abstraction is real, and unintentionally programs them into an acquiescence to a dead-end future. We do untold violence to their prospects, their psyches and their hopes, however unintentionally, because we are reluctant to break our denial on this.
If We-the-People were to wake up to the reality that the "national debt" is a made-up construct, and that it could be de-constructed, there would be a new world in the morning. What is more, the sky would not fall, and the whole financial mess the nation finds itself in could begin to be resolved directly, systematically, transparently and without default to anyone.
Monetarily speaking the way forward is straightforward. It begins with the restoration of the money creation franchise to the public sector. It continues with the deflation of the "debt" bubble (not a paying of the "debt") by the redemption as they come due of already outstanding U.S. bonds with real money (United States Notes; as per the "Greenback"). It is completed with the scrapping of the fractional reserve formula, and the redefining of all "credit money" already issued as legal money.
The playing out of the transition is bigger and more complex than this of course, but eminently doable. This may sound like a preposterous vision, but, I would suggest, it is not. It only seems so because our minds have been trained out of the ability to even entertain such fits of common sense by the cumulative force of our "debt-money" rooted acculturation.
Next week the citizens of the nation will enter the voting booth in what is widely billed as a "pivotal election that will determine the future of our children's future." In spite of what has come to be years of strenuous campaigning at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, the issue of money is not even represented by anyone on the ballot in any definitive way. Whatever the turnout, and whoever the victors, this is a great tragedy for our nation. It was not always so. Let us resolve that it never be again.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Friday, October 31, 2008
Column #71 - WHY OUR CHILDREN WILL NOT INHERIT THE "NATIONAL DEBT" – Part 4
(Week 12 - Friday, Oct. 31)
In the previous three columns I have attempted to establish a three-part premise to establish a basis for understanding why our children will not inherit the "national debt". It can be enumerated as follows:
#1 – The so-called "loan" from a private bank by which money is created and issued is not a loan in the dictionary or common sense meaning of the term, but is, rather, a process by which money is created "out of thin air".
#2 – Since no money has been loaned, how can there be a resulting "debt"? In truth what is called a "debt" to the banks within the present monetary system results from the creation and issuance of money by a private corporation out of a power that rightfully and constitutionally belongs to the body of citizenry to whom the money is being "loaned". How can We the People be in "debt" to ourselves?
#3 – The compounding fee called "interest" attached to the supposed "debt" created via bank "loans" makes it impossible, even by the rules of the Feds own system, to "satisfy" the obligation so created in a final sense, because when the principal sum of the loan is issued, the money to pay the "interest" is not. The aggregate of "debt" that created the money supply can only be rolled over by continually "borrowing" ever more money into circulation.
Given that the "national debt" is the aggregate of the principal balances of all outstanding bank "loans" (public and private), that such "loans" are not real loans, that the resulting "debt" is not a legitimate debt, and that this "debt" cannot be satisfied in any case due to the compounding "interest" fees attached, how can our children ever pay it?
The straightforward answer is that they cannot, simply because the very idea of a "national debt" makes no sense. It is an abstraction that has no basis in reality. In truth, it is a belief system that the adult world pays tribute to because we think it is real.
The real burden we place on our progeny, therefore, is not in any objective sense some "debt" that they will inherit, but a belief in such. From the time they emerge from the womb, virtually every adult voice in their world is in effective (though not conscious) conspiracy to convince them that their future is already mortgaged away.
If the economic pundits have it right, when a newborn innocent draws first breath he will already "owe" some quarter-million dollars to a supposedly compassionate world that has gone so mad that this abject absurdity is deemed to be hardnosed, bottom-line "reality" from which to reckon his economic future.
But they have a secret; one which even they don't know. It is that the child is not in "debt". His future is not "mortgaged" (i.e. "death pledged") after all. In the economic aggregate there is no such thing as fiscal "debt". Its smoke-&-mirrors "substance" is the usurious bubble attached as a rider at the birth of money itself into the social flow, as alluded to in the private-bank-loan transaction.
All voices in the child's universe - teacher, politician, financier, scientist, psychologist, clergyman, TV personality, parent - conspire to insure that he will be inoculated against the secret; they being not cognizant of it themselves. If the spell is not broken, it will settle upon the youth a yoke of phantom "debt" which in hypnotic stagger he will bear to his grave. Let us resolve now that we disabuse his tender mind of this spirit-crushing bugbear.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
In the previous three columns I have attempted to establish a three-part premise to establish a basis for understanding why our children will not inherit the "national debt". It can be enumerated as follows:
#1 – The so-called "loan" from a private bank by which money is created and issued is not a loan in the dictionary or common sense meaning of the term, but is, rather, a process by which money is created "out of thin air".
#2 – Since no money has been loaned, how can there be a resulting "debt"? In truth what is called a "debt" to the banks within the present monetary system results from the creation and issuance of money by a private corporation out of a power that rightfully and constitutionally belongs to the body of citizenry to whom the money is being "loaned". How can We the People be in "debt" to ourselves?
#3 – The compounding fee called "interest" attached to the supposed "debt" created via bank "loans" makes it impossible, even by the rules of the Feds own system, to "satisfy" the obligation so created in a final sense, because when the principal sum of the loan is issued, the money to pay the "interest" is not. The aggregate of "debt" that created the money supply can only be rolled over by continually "borrowing" ever more money into circulation.
Given that the "national debt" is the aggregate of the principal balances of all outstanding bank "loans" (public and private), that such "loans" are not real loans, that the resulting "debt" is not a legitimate debt, and that this "debt" cannot be satisfied in any case due to the compounding "interest" fees attached, how can our children ever pay it?
The straightforward answer is that they cannot, simply because the very idea of a "national debt" makes no sense. It is an abstraction that has no basis in reality. In truth, it is a belief system that the adult world pays tribute to because we think it is real.
The real burden we place on our progeny, therefore, is not in any objective sense some "debt" that they will inherit, but a belief in such. From the time they emerge from the womb, virtually every adult voice in their world is in effective (though not conscious) conspiracy to convince them that their future is already mortgaged away.
If the economic pundits have it right, when a newborn innocent draws first breath he will already "owe" some quarter-million dollars to a supposedly compassionate world that has gone so mad that this abject absurdity is deemed to be hardnosed, bottom-line "reality" from which to reckon his economic future.
But they have a secret; one which even they don't know. It is that the child is not in "debt". His future is not "mortgaged" (i.e. "death pledged") after all. In the economic aggregate there is no such thing as fiscal "debt". Its smoke-&-mirrors "substance" is the usurious bubble attached as a rider at the birth of money itself into the social flow, as alluded to in the private-bank-loan transaction.
All voices in the child's universe - teacher, politician, financier, scientist, psychologist, clergyman, TV personality, parent - conspire to insure that he will be inoculated against the secret; they being not cognizant of it themselves. If the spell is not broken, it will settle upon the youth a yoke of phantom "debt" which in hypnotic stagger he will bear to his grave. Let us resolve now that we disabuse his tender mind of this spirit-crushing bugbear.
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
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