Written by Joe Bongiovanni
“I heard that our Sovereign Government was, logically and axiomatically, the Monopoly Issuer of Its Currency?? Even that the government actually creates new money just by spending. How could it not be so?” -Anonymous
Well, indeed you may have heard such a thing, there being maybe hundreds of YouTube videos out there making that claim today, some loosely granted under the purview of prestigious organizations such as the Columbia Law School.
But, only if one does NOT understand the legal complexity of the ‘sovereign’, could one lay out, or believe, any such argument. Any logical axiom is readily and completely made inoperative by law and legal constraints. I would think that any such notion could be laid to rest by considering the situation with the Euro, and as a case in point, with our friends in Greece, and their money history.
Is the Greek government sovereign? Is Greece a monopoly issuer of its currency? Do they create money when they spend? More importantly to consider, please: Did the Greek government EVER have monopoly issuing power over money and create money via spending before it joined the European Monetary Union?
Of course not, and neither do we. Nor does Iceland. Nor does Switzerland. Nor does the Netherlands.
Delegation of Monetary Sovereignty
One can see therefrom that every sovereign nation can pass laws and enter agreements by which the public’s sovereign power to issue the nation’s money (the national money power) is legally delegated to a separate, autonomous system of money-issuers. It is autonomy over money that is negotiated away, not sovereignty itself. Sovereignty cannot be negotiated without surrender. Autonomy here is the keyword.
There is an implication among certain monetary theorists today that no such delegation of the “money power” has been made in this country. This, despite the proof that the same government these theorists claim to be the ‘monopoly – issuer‘ of the nation’s money is $17 Trillion in debt to a consortium of private bankers who have legally claimed and execute the autonomous ‘monopoly‘ issuing power.
So, it just stands to reason that there can’t be a sovereign government (public) monopoly over something (money) if that government has to borrow that something (money) from an existing private issuing monopoly. In the U.S. that is the Federal Reserve System, or to be more exact, the designated member banks of that system.
Legislative Action Needed
Of course, for most people, the logic outlined above simply implies a needed fix to restore the autonomy over the money system back to the sovereign that we empower to make our laws and govern.
That is what today’s modern monetary ‘reformers’ are trying to do. The reform we are trying to advance is a “public monopoly” over money issuance. This modern proposal is today as designed over twenty years by the American Monetary Institute (AMI) , and as proposed in 2011 as a Bill in Congress by Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers, The National Emergency Employment Defense Act (The NEED Act HR 2990 – 112th Congress). This ‘public monopoly issuance‘ is also precariously close to what some of the smartest kids in the room believe happens now, under Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
But here’s the thing – It does not happen now. Never has. Never will, without reform. The government, our government under the Constitution, has abrogated the “monopoly power of issuance” and instituted our bankers’ private money system. That is a fact. That fact premises a reform that MMT should find comforting. It would readily result in what MMT has been claiming all along – a government ‘monopoly issuer‘.
There Are Voices in the Wilderness
Reforms to the private monopoly over money have been proposed under research at the IMF.
Reforms to the private monopoly over money have been proposed by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, to restore to government the power to issue the money.
Reforms to the private monopoly over money have even been proposed by Adair Turner, former top banking regulator in the UK. Today, Turner’s reforms merely add the government to the existing monopoly, being unworkable as a practical matter. But, he’s learning. And, we’re thankful for that.
Sufficient research on the topic of public money has been done over recent years that it should occupy the front-and-centerpiece of our coming political-economic-monetary discussion.
Let’s start here:
They have privatized OUR money.
And we want to take it back.
