Written by Joe Bongiovanni – Director, The Kettle Pond Institute for Debt-Free Money
I have the specific purpose of putting forth a proposition (hopefully for a wide discussion).
Assertion: The United States Government does not have its own currency to use at it sees fit as an instrument of public policy; rather the government has abrogated the ‘autonomous’ control and direction of its sovereign money system, relinquishing control to private bankers.
To clarify this matter, via the Federal Reserve Act, the control of the issuance of money is assigned to the Federal Reserve System.
This matter of ‘autonomy’ over national money in this country is, in reality, little different from the problem of the European Monetary Union adopting the currency of the European Central Bank, except insofar as the powers needed to enforce that autonomy.
There is no need in this country to put in place additional laws and regulations of ‘other sovereigns’ (over budgets and borrowings) as is done in the EU. It is merely necessary to maintain the private central banking system that was adopted by Congress now some 102 long years ago, with a veiled promise that we would not end up (*) here.
Bankers have complete autonomy over currency
That law gives the private bankers complete ‘autonomy’ over the issuance of ‘our’ currency (or, ‘money’, in the parlance of we, the common owners and users of our money system). This national, legal money is issued in the form of private ‘banker-credits’, again being that which is used as money in every financial transaction in which the American people engage. All of what we use for money in this country is privately issued ‘banker-credit’, legally denominated in the unit of account for our national currency.
Notice I use the term issued, so as not to be confused with ‘created’, for the simple reason that our sub-servient government even ‘creates’ and provides the bankers with our printed currency (Yes, we deliver !), for which we, the owners of the system, are reimbursed for our printing costs, rather than its seigniorage. Only coins enter circulation via issuance by the Treasury, and thus I say that ALL money is issued by private bankers, coins-excepted (c.e.).
Does it matter that the government has given up this ‘money-power’ today?
This question is only answerable and understandable to a group of people who can understand the real premise of the question: Does it matter that we can’t have any money today unless bankers issue more debts?
Does this system have any relation to the terms we often hear: Secular Stagnation? Balance-Sheet Recession?
Because the ‘Bankers-School’ money system is one where all the money is issued through (based upon) a debt contract, or, accounting-wise as ‘balanced’ on the double-entry ledger books as a ‘promise to pay’, the bankers back the money being lent. Thus bankers provide all money, at interest, and for zero banker ‘consideration’. And this zero banker consideration comes only with the borrower’s secured ‘collateral’ pledged to these same bankers.
U.S. monetary sovereignty does not exist.
This reality, if it stands to argument, means that the government is merely another ‘user’ of these issued private banker-credits, being that which the government “taxes” into its treasury account BEFORE spending. The result is that the same privately issued ‘banker-credits’ are what the ‘sovereign’ government must borrow, often directly from bankers, in order for that sovereign government to fund its budget deficits.
The sum there being that ALL of the revenues provided for the government to exchange for goods and services for sale from the private sector originally comes from the private sector, either through taxation or by additional credit issued by the banks. Thus ALL of that is money that the government COULD create and issue itself, must FIRST be borrowed by someone (private sector or the government itself), as the Guv cannot issue currency without change and reform to our money laws.
The system needs fundamental reform.
So:
only if you care to employ our idle national resources in the production of additional wealth, however defined;
only if you care to see that wealth being distributed by the operation of a level playing field in ‘money;
and only if you care to demand your state’s share of that growing economy as a matter of your resident and citizenship rights, (RATHER than it end up with the One Percent);
only then should you care to advance a Bill for reforming the national monetary system.
Such a Bill was recently advanced in 2011by Congressmen Kucinich and Conyers in the 112th Congress as The National Emergency Employment Defense Act (The NEED Act HR 2990 – 112th Congress) and it is there for your study, to fix the broken money system.
Part 2 of this series will address the assertion: But I thought our government was sovereign, and the monopoly issuer of the currency. (Or at least some of the currency.)