By Carl Herman, National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history, who blogs as the Nonpartisan Examiner at Examiner.com. Carl was one of the leaders who launched the microcredit movement, and is a tireless activist for peace and justice.
Occupy Wall Street (and nationwide) has three objectives:
- Public recognition of the 1%’s crimes, centering on war and money.
- End war and money crimes that annually kill millions, injure billions, and loot trillions of our dollars.
- Build a brighter future for 100% of humanity, centering on full constructive employment and the creation of money that maximizes public good.
This article will show how the Federal Reserve System causes the opposite of their stated goals. This is criminal fraud. Before I get into the details, I invite readers to embrace the power of calling what the 1% does as CRIMES. When the 99% recognize these as CRIMES and demand arrests and prosecutions, we’ve won. My Open proposal for US Revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic economics explains and documents these CRIMES:
- war and money crimes so they are “emperor has no clothes” obvious,
- Gandhi and Dr. King’s strategy for victory, with recommendation for a Truth and Reconciliation window to encourage criminals’ peaceful surrender,
- Historical consideration and today’s possibility of the US creating money to cause full employment and optimal infrastructure. This replaces the Orwellian “debt supply” the 1% creates and controls as their main weapon of dominance (more on economic solutions here).
My Occupy This: US History exposes the 1%’s crimes then and now explains and documents that criminal Wars of Aggression and looting have been central in US policies for over 150 years. History is useful to recognize patterns of behavior in the present.
Now to the Federal Reserve System causing unpayable debt, unemployment, inflation, and high interest rates:
Federal Reserve System causes unpayable debt: Because private banks and their admitted privately-owned pinnacle bank, the Fed, create credit/debt for what we use as money, this becomes the mother of all conflicts of interest (and I’m not just being punny). If the Fed were to deliver its three stated goals of “maximize employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates,” we have a stunning observation:an honest Fed would at least ask for independent professional cost-benefit analyses to determine if government-created debt-free money would do better than their ever-increasing and unpayable aggregate debt.
US debt is unpayable under the Federal Reserve System because the US does not have a money supply; it’s a “debt supply.” If we paid the debt, what we use for money would disappear entirely. The 1% in government gave the 1% in banking legal authority to create debt and lend it to the 99% of us at interest. The 1% in government can also borrow at interest and then tax the 99% to pay the interest cost. The Federal Reserve System causes Americans to be perpetual debt-slaves. This is the 1% parasitizing the 99%’s work.
Federal Reserve System causes unemployment: To maximize employment, isn’t the only policy one can imagine to do so for the government to use debt-free created money to be the employer of last resort for infrastructure investment?
Think about this, please.
Can you think of any other policy that could maximize employment other than the government employing people for useful work who do not find it in the free market?
Debt-free money has no direct cost. And because infrastructure investment (hard and soft) historically contribute more economic output than cost of inputs, we have the triple benefits of full employment, the best infrastructure available, and lower overall prices.
Federal Reserve System causes inflation: Banks expand what we use for money, credit, when they make loans. Banks profit from making loans. Increased credit, our “debt supply” and Orwellian opposite of debt-free money supply, works to increase inflation. So in our current Federal Reserve System, the very profit-generating mechanism of the banks is in conflict with a stated goal of the Fed. The 1% is thereby causing inflation to charge the 99% interest on the increasing “debt supply.” The 99% pay for this twice: in the decreased value of their savings and by paying interest.
Federal Reserve System causes high interest rates: Corporate banks with fiduciary responsibility to maximize their own profits are OBVIOUSLY NOT the best people to minimize interest costs. Banks maximize their profits by maximizing interest rates. Minimizing interest rates would occur only at non-profit rates as a public service. Bank profits are over $100 billion a year; a cost to the average US family of $1,000/year (~100 million US households). This $100 billion cost doesn’t include all the business and advertising costs that would disappear if banking were a simple public service.
The simple and obvious solutions: More detailed explanations are in the economics section of Open proposal for US Revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic economics. The summary of my proposed solutions:
- Nationalize the Federal Reserve to keep their administrative functions. Stop corporate banks from creating debt for their profit.
- Create money to end the national debt, have government be the employer of last resort for infrastructure investment and full employment.
- Allow experimentation with states also having the capacity to create credit or money. Centralized money-creation for a nation the size of the US is probably not efficient. State-created mortgages at 2% interest, for example, would probably pay their entire tax needs.
- Create Truth and Reconciliation for the 1% in economic “leadership” who committed criminal fraud in their lies that the Federal Reserve System was in the public interest. Exchange the truth and return of fraudulently-gained assets for no prosecution. This would extend to other financial fraud, and to other cartels such as energy and so-called “health care” (before their elimination in favor of universal health care).
- Disclose economic breakthroughs in energy and health. Explore alternative economic systems, such as the Zeitgeist Movement’s resource-based economy.
The 1% in government changed the definitions of unemployment and inflation to mask their damage: The 1% lie to the 99% every time these figures are reported because they do not remind us of the changed definitions. When adjusted to their previous definitions, economist John Williams’ Shadow Statswebsite shows inflation to be at ~12%, rather than the ~4% reported. Unemployment is roughly double when adjusted to its previous measure. The same criminal liars will never honestly ask to compare the system of the 1% that we have to alternative systems.
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and Assistant Editor for the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts explains:
“The unemployment rate, as reported, is a fiction and has been since the Clinton administration. The unemployment rate does not include jobless Americans who have been unemployed for more than a year and have given up on finding work. The reported 10% unemployment rate is understated by the millions of Americans who are suffering long-term unemployment and are no longer counted as unemployed. As each month passes, unemployed Americans drop off the unemployment role due to nothing except the passing of time.
The inflation rate, especially “core inflation,” is another fiction. “Core inflation” does not include food and energy, two of Americans’ biggest budget items. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) assumes, ever since the Boskin Commission during the Clinton administration, that if prices of items go up consumers substitute cheaper items. This is certainly the case, but this way of measuring inflation means that the CPI is no longer comparable to past years, because the basket of goods in the index is variable.
The Boskin Commission’s CPI, by lowering the measured rate of inflation, raises the real GDP growth rate. The result of the statistical manipulation is an understated inflation rate, thus eroding the real value of Social Security income, and an overstated growth rate.”
And why do you have to hear this from a high school economics teacher rather than government, corporate media, or economics journals?
For government, this is what the Occupy Movement is about. Chair of the Economics Department of George Mason University (ranked 8th in the world for political economy by econphd.net), Donald J. Boudreaux, concludes that US politicians in their economic policy act like pimps who supply taxpayers’ services as enslaved prostitutes to corporate customers who lust after the taxpayers’ money.
Corporate media has been suspect since 1917 when the House of Representatives found evidence (but never formally investigated) that J.P. Morgan purchased the editorial boards of the leading 25 publications.
As for economics journals, half their editorial board members are current or former Fed employees.
Together we’ll accomplish our three objectives:
- Public recognition of the 1%’s crimes, centering on war and money.
- End war and money crimes that annually kill millions, injure billions, and loot trillions of our dollars.
- Build a brighter future for 100% of humanity, centering on full constructive employment and the creation of money that maximizes public good...
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