The Money Mafia: A World in Crisis
By Paul T. Hellyer
Every “Free Trade” treaty is a step down the path to serfdom.
The purpose of the treaties is to transfer power from poor people to rich people, from poor and small countries to bigger, richer countries, and, most significant of all, to abandon rule by elected representatives and hand it over to the New World Order gang.
Clinton’s pay-off to his benefactors was profound and continuing. Most dramatic was his successful negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
Clinton transformed the Democratic Party from one that sometimes listened to and cared about the concerns of traditional allies including trade unionists, environmentalists, the poor and social activists, into just another party, only marginally but not too significantly different from the Republican Party.
The reasons for globalization were always obscure, but they can be summarized as follows: the elimination of the middle class by allowing multinational corporations to move production jobs offshore to foreign producers; a reversal of hard-won trade union gains since World War II; and, above all, the transfer of power to unelected, unaccountable, international bureaucrats
The agenda is the coldly calculated business plan of the richest, most powerful people in the world to re-engineer the global economy and governance in a way that will increase both their power and their already overly generous slice of the economic pie.
If it is allowed to run its course, no country will be able to protect its industries even long enough for them to mature to the point where they could compete in a global market. Neither could any nation state set higher environmental standards than the market would tolerate, nor protect its labor from exploitation
No country would be able to prevent the sale of an industry to a foreign player wishing to include it in its empire, or shut it down to eliminate the competition, or move it to another country where lower wages and environmental standards would permit higher profits.
It is all part of a scheme to rob people of one of their most valuable assets, so the rich can usurp them
In general, they believe that the least government is the best government; that nation states have outlived their usefulness; that markets are infallible regulators of economic activity; and that the rich have no obligation to share their wealth with the poor on whom they depend for labor and as customers for their goods and services.
The aim of the game is, as always, to eliminate competition to the point where market forces are replaced by market power
Until Canada entered into its 1989 free trade deal with the U.S., tariff-protected manufacturers had thrived in big cities and small towns alike. “But free trade changed all of that. Entire sectors collapsed, as U.S.-owned companies shifted production south of the border. That trend accelerated, first when the North American Free Trade Agreement brought low-wage Mexico into the mix and, finally, when worldwide trade liberalization shifted manufacturing to China.”
Corporations are not supposed to run the world; people and their elected governments are.
There is only one possible way to end the economic malaise and massive worldwide unemployment, and that is an equally massive infusion of government-created, debt-free money.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being pushed by the United States is even worse than CETA, which hardly seems possible. With it, we will not only lose control of our financial system but our health, environment, and, most important, control over the quality and safety of our food supply.
“In Gary Null’s eye-opening documentary ‘Seeds of Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOs,’ Dr. Bruce Lipton warns, ‘We are leading the world into the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet…. Human behavior is undermining the web of life.’
What you have just read appears to be a recipe for mass genocide on a scale beyond anything recorded in our histories of the world and almost beyond comprehension by the most flexible of minds.
I have been following the Money Mafia even longer – since the Great Depression of the 1930s. I have seen it increase its share of the take, at every opportunity, until it reached about 95%, which is approximately the new international standard.
As Susan George explains in the September 2013 edition of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor: “One can look at this self-created disaster (austerity) in two ways. Eminent prize-winning economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz believe that the European leadership is brain-dead, ignorant of economics, and needlessly committing economic suicide. Others note that the cuts conform exactly to the desires of such entities as the European Roundtable of Industrialists or BusinessEurope: cut wages and benefits, weaken unions, privatize everything in sight, and so on.
Small businesses are failing in droves, but the largest companies are sitting on huge piles of cash and taking full advantage of tax havens.
If the US Congress and all G20 politicians would really look at the International Banking and Financial System critically and objectively, they would inevitably conclude that it is legalized grand larceny on a scale almost beyond belief.
Meanwhile honest politicians will soon conclude that the system is unstable, unsustainable and so fundamentally flawed that only massive reforms, that will change the balance of power worldwide, will be acceptable to the masses once they understand the extent to which they have been misled. To achieve that level of understanding, however, will require a much more universal knowledge of what money is, and where it comes from.
Money is the gasoline that fires the economic engine. To give private corporations a monopoly to create money is total insanity. To let them create all that money as debt that has to be repaid with interest goes beyond total insanity if that is possible. It is a crime against humanity!
***
The big Wall Street, City of London and other giant banks can only get away with their blatant grand larceny as part of a larger group that dances to the same piper. The cartel comprises the giant banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a worldwide network of central banks of which the U.S. Federal Reserve System (Fed) is the most notorious, powerful, and inimical to the public welfare – both in the U.S. and internationally. Of this list, the BIS, IMF and Fed should all be “terminated” on the basis that their net benefit to the human species is negative.
Susan George is Board President of the Transnational Institute, and author of 16 books, most recently Whose Crisis, Whose Future? and How to Win the Class War, on her website for electronic download
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was established on May 17, 1930
Its original purpose was to facilitate the payment of reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War 1.
The real purpose of the BIS was detailed in its statutes: to “Promote the cooperation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international financial operations.” It was the culmination of the central bankers’ decades-old dream which was to have their own bank – powerful, independent, and free from interfering politicians and nosy reporters. Most felicitous of all, the BIS was self-financing and would be in perpetuity. Its clients were its own founders and shareholders.
It played a significant role in the unification of Europe. Most important of all, just as the top bankers had hoped, it became a powerful vehicle for the transfer of power from democratic nation states to an unelected, unaccountable, bureaucratic institution acting on the private advice from the world’s top bankers. It has usurped the power of nation states to establish their own rules and reserve requirements for banks and used their puppet central bankers to advise their respective governments to accept BIS rules as normal in a new international world order.
Hence austerity and moribund economies operating well below their potential.
After the Wall Street meltdown of 2007-2008, from which the world is still suffering, it became obvious that BIS rules were inadequate to prevent such crimes against humanity.
To give the appearance of doing something new and helpful the BIS established an organization called the Financial Stability Board. Despite the advertising, and the gentle hand of Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and then promoted to Governor of the Bank of England, it is still fraudulently labelled. It is still a Financial Instability Board in reality, despite the hype to the contrary.
In plain English that means a kind of permanent recession that denies many millions of people the opportunity to find useful employment and the self respect of contributing to their own welfare. *
I am somewhat ashamed to admit that for many years I did not pay much attention to what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was doing.
Fortunately, friends recommended that I read The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, by Michel Chossudovsky,4 professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, and 50 Years is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, edited by Kevin Danaher.5 The case histories are enough to bring tears to the eyes of anyone whose heart is not made of granite.
The devaluation of a nation’s currency has often been a pre-condition for IMF “help.” The social impact is immediate and brutal. Prices of food staples, essential drugs, fuel and other necessities increase overnight. Government subsidies for the basics have to be reduced or eliminated. IMF packages often specifically prohibit domestic wage increases to compensate for the rapid decline in purchasing power. Borders must be opened to foreign products. Domestic industries, unable to compete with imports, must be allowed to fail.
Open borders and unrestricted imports create balance of payments problems. So the IMF encourages Third World countries to concentrate on growing food and specialty crops for export, instead of food for their own people. Millions of additional people are subject to starvation diets as a result.
The IMF has served American interests well. It has imposed the Washington Consensus on proud but helpless nations. *
One of the least tenable roles for the IMF is that of global financial watchdog, a kind of “supervisor of supervisors” with authority that transcends national boundaries and treats the world as one financial entity.
As for the IMF, it should be wound up, and the sooner the better.
“The IMF does more harm than good,” Kissinger said: “It almost always pushes austerity measures that result in a brutal fall in standard of living, an explosive increase in unemployment and poverty.” Furthermore, for him, the IMF “is always blind to the consequences of its decisions.”
The bottom line is that there never will be an acceptable solution to the sovereign debt problem so * long as the present insane private banking monopoly remains in place. Bailouts are debt that has to be repaid with interest. But when the IMF is involved the conditions result in more austerity and slower economic growth.
Sovereign countries (outside the Eurozone) can print their own money which doesn't have to be paid back. That is a better solution than letting private banks print (computer entry) each country’s annual shortfall putting citizens in the hopeless situation of spending the rest of their lives trying to pay it off, with interest.
The time has come for a clean start without the IMF and without any of the conditions it has imposed on the poorest of the poor.
*
“The Federal Reserve (privately-owned banks) are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.” – Senator Louis T. McFadden (For 22 years Chairman of the U.S. Banking and Currency Commission)
“The seven men who attended the secret meeting on Jekyll Island, where the Federal Reserve System was conceived, represented an estimated one-fourth of the total wealth of the entire world.”
To put it bluntly, the Congress transferred its sovereign constitutional right to create money to the sole custody of a small group of private bankers. The magnitude of the heist is unprecedented in the history of the world – the numbers now are in the high trillions. *
In fiscal year 2005, total individual income taxes in the U.S. totalled $927 billion. Of that amount $352 billion, or 38%, was required just to pay interest on the federal debt. The figure would be higher now. The tragedy is that probably not one cent of that $352 billion was necessary.
Americans still put their trust in a system regulated by a Fed which gives the interests of the banks and the money-lenders a higher priority than the interests of the country.
When I read that the Fed had never been properly audited I thought of that Biblical adage about “the sins of the fathers being visited on future generations.” That certainly is true of the Federal Reserve Act adopted in 1913. The Congress of that year licenced a handful of the richest people in the world to rob the workers of America of a significant slice of their salaries and wages, and to do so silently
In Canada we know, if only after the fact, what our central bank is doing to us. The Bank of Canada, which is 100% owned by Canadian taxpayers, must keep proper accounts, have its books audited *
The Fed has long operated under the conjurer’s cloak. It required a lifetime campaign by former Congressman, Ron Paul,until it finally became a national issue, to peel the first layer from the veil of secrecy despite the opposition of Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and various other bankers.
The results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s 100-year history were posted on Senator Bernie Sanders’ webpage on Saturday, September 1, 2012.
What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland.
To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that the GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States, spanning its 200+ years’ history is ‘only’ $14.5 trillion.
Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations
The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit (Google: Government Accountability Office audit of the Federal Reserve, July 21, 2011 to read the 253-page report.)
*
What is Quantitative Easing? Quantitative easing is a cute and less offensive way of saying “printing money.” Well not actually printing money. Nearly all of the money supply, or money-base as it is sometimes called, is simply virtual money – a computer entry to be more specific.
So if the Fed, or any other central bank, wants to increase the supply of (virtual) money, it simply buys government securities, or perhaps even bundles mortgages of uncertain value (who knows?), books them as an asset, and then with a flick of the computer keys creates the (virtual) money to pay for them.
The stated object of the policy is to increase the cash reserves of the banks and financial institutions, so that they can increase their loans to business and individuals, thus stimulating the economy and providing new jobs for the unemployed.
That is the theory, but it works only if you have both willing lenders and borrowers.
It is obvious that much of the money – albeit by an indirect route – found its way into the stock market to purchase blue chip securities, people who are lucky enough to own a few stocks feel better, and more likely to spend. That is a plus but a small one. The negative consequences outweigh the advantages.
The bottom line, it appears, is that QE has been good for the banks but not for the people. It is the same old story. Shovel the money into the banking system without any guarantee that it will flow through to the unemployed and underemployed people who are desperate for relief.
The whole policy has been one gigantic flop!
We will probably never know the answer to these questions because there is no law requiring it.
What we do know is that the Fed was subversive to American interests from the outset, and it has to be nationalized or wound up and replaced by a legitimate Bank of the United States that would secure the interests of American taxpayers rather than those of a toxic international banking cartel.
One final point. The fed has long provided much of the power of the international banking cartel which has been squeezing the life blood from the hopes and aspirations of millions of increasingly helpless people.
It is well known that the only way to relax a serpent’s deadly grip is to cut its head off. That done, all that remains is to administer the life-giving serum essential to restore the patient’s health and sanity. Fortunately such a serum can be quickly provided. It is called government-created money (GCM).
The right to create money belongs to federal governments. It was once the exclusive prerogative of Kings, Queens and Emperors. Banks, on the other hand, have no rights. They have only privileges granted by legislatures.
The problem, in a nutshell, is a monetary system in which nearly all “money” is created as debt. Worse, it is all debt that has to be repaid with interest. But no one creates any money with which to pay the interest. The net result is a worldwide sea of debt in which the economies of most countries are drowning beneath the waves of bank-created (debt) money (BCM). *
There are millions of unemployed men and women who ask nothing more than the opportunity to provide the additional goods and services to meet their own needs, and contribute to the general welfare. The only obstacle is an acute shortage of money. So, what the world desperately needs is a massive infusion of government-created, debt-free money (GCM) to dilute the debt and stimulate economic growth.
The difference between bank-created money (BCM) and government-created money is profound. All BCM has to be repaid with interest whereas GCM can be put into circulation debt-free and remains in the money supply permanently. GCM doesn't disappear in times of recession as much of the BCM does. Private banks create “virtual” money out of thin air when they make loans; the opposite occurs when loans are repaid either voluntarily or at the call of the banks.
When this happens, of course, the money supply decreases, purchasing power disappears and jobs are lost, because money is the life-blood of the economy.
How does anyone think the existing debt can be paid off if the only way you can coax an economy to grow is to borrow more debt money into existence and go deeper into debt? Anyone who has studied eighth grade mathematics should be able to detect the folly of that myth.
There are so many real needs that could be addressed if it were not for a shortage of money. There are old neglected bridges and antique sewer and water lines to be * replaced, roads to be repaired, new hospitals to be built to provide better health care, and myriad steps to be taken to preserve our ecological heritage.
Where will the money come from? If the Fed can use its computers to create trillions of dollars for the exclusive benefit of bankers, it is surely possible for governments, whose right it is to create money, to use its power to enhance the health and welfare of its citizens.
As a life-long monetary reformer, I have been seeking a solution that would clip the wings of the elite robber barons who have been ripping off ordinary citizens for centuries, produce a just, workable and stable financial regime worldwide and,most important, transfer control of the most powerful tool in the economic arsenal from private hands to those of the elected representatives of the people. Although this is not an easy task, it is entirely feasible and absolutely essential – the most urgent reform facing humankind today!
The balance of power worldwide is very much on the side of the bankers who, apparently, have the politicians – thanks to the advice of their principal economic advisers – in their pockets. The politicians, in turn, have the armed forces and police under their control, so that even a peaceful protest faces monumental odds.
There is absolutely no excuse for sovereign governments to balance their books by borrowing money from private bankers who create it out of thin air – a computer entry!
Sovereign governments should have no sovereign debt in their own currency. None! They have been taken to the cleaners by the rich, elite bankers who constantly outwit them.
The criterion for any worthwhile reform must be a fast, smooth transition to full employment and the transfer of the ultimate power over interest rates and the rates of growth of the money supply from unelected, unaccountable bankers to the elected representatives of the people who, in theory at least, should operate the system in the interests of their electors.
One also has to question the judgment of anyone who believes that the financial system can operate independently of government. That point was proven beyond question in 2007-2008 when governments had to intervene with massive amounts of taxpayers’ money to prevent the whole international house of cards from collapsing.
The urgency for action cannot be over-emphasized. Millions of people who are unemployed have lost confidence in their leaders and are losing hope in the future. They represent a very volatile element in world society. Their needs have to be met and their futures assured in order to create stability as a by-product of justice.
The idea that government-created money is inflationary is just not true. It is just a myth that bankers and bureaucrats rely on to prevent thinking people from examining the international banking system, and the extent to which we have been robbed generation after generation.
The current system, under which privately-owned banks create about 97% of the total money supply, and all of it as debt on which interest has to be paid, while no one creates any money with which to pay the interest, is inherently inflationary.
The failure of the present system to maintain the value of money can be illustrated by the fact that one U.S. dollar at the time that the Federal Reserve System was established 100 years ago is worth only five cents today. Talk about inflation!
It is no wonder that Henry Ford Sr. said that if people understood the banking system, there would be a revolution before morning. People have to educate themselves as to how the system really works, and then demand a revolutionary change under which governments share the money-creation function with the private banks in a way that would guarantee full employment and steady growth from year to year, without fear of recessions and depressions that have been such a curse for so long.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.1 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower
No one could have been happier than I when the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989.Nearly everyone believed that these historic events signaled the dawn of a new era of peace and prosperity for people everywhere. We blew it! We blew the chance of a lifetime to do good things!
A small group of zealots undermined our golden opportunity to pursue peace, not war. Little did we dream that they had a vastly different “vision” of the * New World Order. That group included U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz...
Apparently all envisioned a world dominated by the U.S. – economically and militarily.Their plan, now commonly known as “The Project for a New American Century,”included preventive wars (in clear violation of international law), regime change wherever and whenever the U.S. desires, and the establishment of a kind of economic and cultural hegemony with America acting as “constabulary” (their word) globally.(It) was a plan to establish an American Empire unprecedented since the fall of the Roman Empire.
There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of about $10 million (U.S.) a year from some of the largest carbon polluters, to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community (about global warming). In actuality, there is very little disagreement. This is one of the strongest of scientific consensus views in the history of science, he said. We live in a world where what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion.
Scientists have been spending years taking readings and assembling statistics that say loud and clear that the future habitability of the planet for millions of people is in crisis mode.
The politicians pay lip service to the “problem” for a day or two while the IPCC report is in the news – not even headline news – and then it’s back to business as usual.
It is my opinion, shared by many friends and colleagues, that allowing any of these projects that are designed to produce hydrocarbons for decades into the future is a crime against both present and future generations
One can understand greedy corporations who don't care about the environment making such plans; but it is incomprehensible that politicians, who have the final say, turn a blind eye at best, or actively aid and encourage new development at worst.
Now, the world is in crisis on the weather front, as on many others. Time, as we know it, is running out.
Will the changeover from carbon-based fuels to clean energy disrupt the economy? Of course it will, in exactly the same way that motorized cars disrupted the carriage business, or, more relevant to the experience of my generation, in the same way that the mobilization required to win World War II was disruptive. First the decision had to be made, and then the administrative and innovative genius of the people went into action to make victory possible. This time, too, there is no other option!
The American health care system, while satisfactory for the very wealthy, is collectively one of the worst in the developed, industrialized world. It is helping to destroy the middle class – the primary engine of social stability. Health issues are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy.
Along with war spending, massive entitlement commitments made without any effort to control that war spending going back to 1960 now place the nation in immediate debt of $17 trillion dollars with an almost incomprehensible long term exposure of $80 to $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
The investment and standard banking industries have bought politicians to pass laws that have allowed a massive shift of wealth to the upper class and stripping the middle class of pensions, jobs, home values, and home ownership. Virtually no one is held criminally accountable for this. Eventual fines are trivial.
Perhaps well-intentioned legislative and judicial blunders resulted in the granting of “personhood” status to corporations leading to a destructive shift of power away from actual persons (citizens) and a wholesale corruption of the election process in the United States at all levels.
A fossil fuel based energy industry has bought politicians in order to get away with monopolizing energy production, fixing prices, misrepresenting both held and potential reserves, not building new refineries and pushing exploitation of more dangerous extraction modalities such as tar sands, shale and fracking.
The food industry is being taken over by a consortium of companies led by Monsanto that intend to own a re-engineered food and seed supply designed to force the use of their own pesticides in mass quantities. Few things are more representative of the concept of system failure than the losses the honey bee population (Colony Collapse Disorder). Growing evidence connects CCD to the actions of companies like Monsanto, easily the most dangerous corporation in the world today. The environmental impact will be devastating. The government does nothing. Huge corporate spending thwarts citizen activism.
The children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the baby boomers are more likely to inherit a greatly diminished rather than a viable society moving forward unless something very powerful, very profound intervenes.
When President Obama said no one working full-time in the world’s richest nation should be poor there are many who would agree. But the Cabal running the United States and much of the Western world dissents. It has been slowly but inexorably destroying the middle class in America and, by extension, around the world. It has been exporting the middle class manufacturing jobs in order to benefit from cheap labor and medieval working conditions.
Public service jobs are being privatized to avoid paying benefits in health and old age. It appears that the bankers and elite industrialists and militarists have declared war on the poor. *
These practices are exacerbated inside the eurozone by the fact that the European Central Bank is banned by treaty from bailing out governments. This restriction, in my opinion,was a coldly calculated move to make the eurozone countries completely dependent on the private banks for either life or growth. It is a case of total dependency and a terrible curse that will have to be removed before the world can move forward.
The 9/11 incident was the catalyst that the neo-cons needed to launch an illegal war on Iraq. The irony was that none of the alleged hijackers came from Iraq. But that didn't seem to matter.The Pentagon’s Plan for a New American Century had targeted Iraq as its first priority on the list of Middle East wars, so that’s where the so-called war on terror began.
If the major media aren't willing to let their good investigative reporters go after the great stories of the century – the legitimacy of the official 9/11 report, a banking and financial system that has * introduced near universal slavery through its system of creating all money as debt that has to be paid with interest, and the trillions of taxpayers dollars used for Black Ops, including space vehicles, there is not much more than a hope in Hades that they would be willing to expose who actually controls them.
interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure, one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.25 I would respectfully disagree! The 60-year dash down the road to rule by “bankers and elite” has not produced a better world. On the contrary! It has created a world of increasing misery, uncertainly and hopelessness.
Fed and the Treasury Department, not to mention the IMF and the World Bank, the close, almost incestuous relationship between the Bretton Woods institutions and the State Department, the information conglomerates that blur the lines between the manufacture of news, and culture and its dissemination. These are all parts of the permanent government that hold the reins of real power. It is a power camouflaged by the antics of the politicians comprising the provisional government.
Remember the admission of President Clinton * that there is a government within the government that he didn't control.
The first and most urgent requirement for the president is to initiate the creation of enough money to stimulate the economy, end the cutbacks, and renew hope for the unemployed both young and old. This should be accompanied by very large increases in minimum wages both federal and state. The short-term goal should be “living wages” that offer everyone the self respect, dignity and comfort they deserve. They are the ones who produce the real essential wealth, as opposed to armaments and machines of war which are, in the end, a total write off.
Most important, as I have stressed in earlier chapters, the total dependence on bank-created virtual “credit” money must end! The omnipotent banking cartel which has captured billions of people, and reduced them to the level of debt slaves, must be converted from master of all it surveys to just another service provider.
This is an absolutely essential first step toward a full employment, recession proof economy that will ultimately free the masses from their slavery to debt!
Legislatures give the impression that they are little more than rubber stamps for laws promoted and supported by the all-powerful banking and corporate interests.
Letting a handful of the richest American and foreign bankers on Earth take over the right of the people to create their own money was one of the biggest mistakes ever made by anyone, anywhere, at any time. The cost has been incalculable! *
The benefit of reclaiming their sovereign right to create money will be a big boon for Americans – and the world. It is also an opportunity to learn how the money system works, and the extent to which taxpayers have been duped for over a hundred years.
The first and most urgent project is to end the Great Recession, create jobs for millions of idle workers and restore hope for a meaningful future. That entails apportioning the 10-12 trillion dollars of government-created, debt-free money for the first round of stimulus.
The eurozone countries have a unique problem. They will have to amend their treaties to give the European Central Bank the power to accept shares in member countries as collateral for the debt-free cash created. There is no real impediment other than its lack of political will in the face of incredible lobbying on the part of the private bankers, who helped engineer the creation of the existing system that has reduced much of Europe to penury and economic impotence.
***
Religions are sturdy organisms that are not eliminated easily. They’ve outlasted many apparent replacements, like Marxism, humanism and a substitute faith in science.
Why not at least hope the old religions die off, making room for people to proceed individually, one at a time, in pursuit of their ‘spiritual’ needs? Because most human beings don't seem to want that either.
Humans are gregarious. They want to bind themselves to others through a tradition that does no harm until it turns into a crusade to control
[amzn:B00NLKPKEM]