Author Govert SchullerPosted on Categories Economics By Nick Egnatz
Celebrating 10 Years of Resistance to Banker’s Wars
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Hwy of the Flags Vets Memorial
SE Corner Indianapolis Blvd & Ridge Rd,
Highland, Indiana 46322
Noon-1PM Vigil
Party to follow at 8340 Baring Ave, Munster, Indiana 46321
Food and beverages will be served. Not sure on the menu yet.
Feel free to bring something if you can. But it is not necessary.
Your attendance is the best thing that you can bring.
Bring lawn chairs if you have them.
Contributions to the American Monetary Institute will be accepted. Cash or check.
This is entirely voluntary. It is done because the funds are needed.
Those that can afford, please donate.
Those that can’t please come and learn.
About creating a society where fundraisers for just causes are unnecessary.
Introduction
10 years ago, July 23, 2005 twelve people stood against the Iraq War at the Hwy of the Flags Vets Memorial in Highland, Indiana. At the time many of us were under the delusion that one of our political parties supported war and the other one would in some way give us peace. Flushed with this delusion, many thought that a Democratic victory in the 2006 Congressional election and a Democratic victory in the 2008 Presidential, Congressional and Senate elections would bring about a more peaceful nation that would be able to address the growing inequality that indicts the country as an abject failure to the hopes and aspirations of those that believed the words, “all men are created equal.”
Many of those who stood against war when it was portrayed as Republicans — bad, Democrats — good, became confused when the wars continued under the Democrats. Some of us chose however to hold the Democrats to the same standards that we had demanded of the Republicans: championing a peaceful and more equal society that lived up to the Declaration of Independence’s promise.
All Wars Are Banker’s Wars
When we say that all wars are banker’s wars we refer to the first profit center of war — the banks loaning money created out of thin air to the national government so that it can go to war, build up vast arsenals of weaponry and operate 700-1,000 foreign military bases. The Bank of England began in just such a way in 1694, when Richard III abdicated his sacred duty to provide sovereign money for his people by gifting the Money Power to the private Bank of England. In return the Bank of England promised to create and loan the British government whatever monies were needed for its wars in return for the payment of interest on the forever debt that was created. The implication was that the loans were backed by gold or silver, the reality was they were created out of thin air and the practice continues today to the extreme anguish of the nations and people it has indebted.
They could be comfortable that there would never be a run on their bank because “The Bank’s notes had the one supreme advantage of being accepted by the Government for all payments due, and of being paid out by the Government for all state expenses. Thus they came to be identified with the government.” (Stephen Zarlenga, Lost Science of Money). What a scam!
A final irony, after the two World Wars of the last century the Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple led the fight that nationalized the Bank of England in 1946. Because they neglected to stop other private banks from creating money, the money creation in England just morphed over to the other private banks and the reform had very limited benefit. In the U.S. the private Federal Reserve System was modeled after the Bank of England and it remains private. It provides whatever funding is needed for war and militarization. While it does return its income, after profit is deducted, to the Federal government, the private banks that own all 12 Federal Reserve Regional Banks are allowed to keep all the profit they make in the money creation scheme.
For 10 years a handful of us have stood every Saturday at the Hwy of the Flags Vets Memorial. We have been out in the cold of winter and the heat of summer. A few times only one of us has been able to continue the vigil, but has done so. There have only been at most 3 or 4 Saturdays out of more than 500 that no one has been able to observe the protest at the ‘corner’ and those extremely rare occasions occurred because those in our core group had been involved in actions at other locales.
On Saturday, August 1, we will mark the 10th anniversary of repudiating the myths that American militarism and power is used for peace and that an equitable and sustainable lifestyle for our people can ever be achieved by allowing banks to create and control what we use for money.
What Then Must We Do?
Luke asked it in the Bible, Leo Tolstoy in his book of the same name. Today, overwhelmed with the plethora of issues pelting us daily like The Hard Rains Gonna Fall that Dylan wrote and sang about, every thinking individual asks the same question. End the Wars, A More Equal Society, Living Wage Jobs for All, Clean Sustainable Energy are just a few of the solutions that many of us would like to achieve.
Yet neither of the political parties are interested in the monetary reform that would be the cornerstone in building a new peaceful, more equal, prosperous and sustainable society. How can I make such an audacious claim? In 2011 Dennis Kucinich put the NEED Act (National Emergency Employment Defense Act) before Congress. John Conyers was the sole co-sponsor. One could certainly say that Kucinich was the sole real progressive voice in Congress and he was promptly redistricted. Since then in the midst of a depression for the poor and working class, not another single Democrat or Republican politician has had the intestinal fortitude to sponsor the NEED Act.
What does the NEED Act do?
1. It federalizes the Federal Reserve System. Most Americans mistakenly think that the Federal Reserve is part of the Federal government, yet all 12 Federal Reserve Banks are entirely owned by the private banks in their respective regions that they are then tasked to regulate.
2. It decisively stops the creation of almost all of our money by private banks when they make loans. The Bank of England confirmed this fact in their Quarterly Bulletin for Q1, 2014, “Money Creation in the Modern Economy”, which ” … explains how the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans…”. Under the NEED Act, money loaned by banks will be actual money already in existence, exactly what the majority of Americans presently think is the case.
3. US Money will be created (originated), debt-free, by the federal government, in non inflation/deflationary amounts and spent, not loaned, into existence for the needs of the nation and its people, immediately putting 10 million Americans to work at good paying jobs rebuilding our country’s broken infrastructure.
10 million new good paying jobs and zero support in Washington for the NEED Act? Yes, but the power structure’s refusal to debate the monetary reforms needed in the NEED Act is actually much worse. The NEED Act also:
Pays off the national debt, as it comes due, an impossibility under the debt money created by banks monetary system.
Provides for a tax-free Citizen’s Bailout called a Citizen’s Dividend, that could easily be $10,000 per person or $40,000 for a family of four.
Channels 25% of all newly created money to the beleaguered state governments, debt-free, to use as they see fit. Could our neighbors in Illinois find a use for this money? In Indiana individual communities are forced to pass referendums to increase local taxes just to keep the schools going.
Provides interest-free loans to local governments for capital improvements such as schools, libraries and roads. Municipal bond indebtedness in Chicago is a scandal, as it is in many other U.S. cities.
Calls for US Money to be used for education and healthcare. Yes we can: fund a real national healthcare system and free public education, including university, for all.
Not only do all of our politicians avoid supporting or even debating the NEED Act’s benefits, but other organizations that should be leaders in the fight for social justice and a monetary/economic system that works for the entire nation have been woefully absent from the discussion.
The NEED Act has been presented to countless union officials and only one union and one local have bothered to study and endorse it: the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Local 126 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Why are the country’s major unions not interested in supporting legislation that would allow their members to get out of debt and provide jobs for 10 million workers?
The American Society of Civil Engineers 2013 Infrastructure Report Card gives our infrastructure a D+ rating and calls for $3.6 trillion to be spent by 2020 rebuilding our country’s crumbling infrastructure. Under the present bank debt money monetary system, Congress can’t come up with enough money to fix the potholes, let alone do the major repairs called for by the ASCE. Yet the ASCE refuses to study or endorse the NEED Act that would provide needed jobs for their members and those that work for them.
A rational person would assume that the nation’s contractors that employ the union workers might be interested in participating in $3.6 trillion worth of future contracts rebuilding our country. The American Road & Transportation Builders Association and the Transportation Construction Coalition representing 31 different national associations and labor unions have all been presented with the NEED Act. They are not the slightest bit interested.
Churches have so far been largely content to sit on the sidelines in the struggle for peace and monetary reform. While many smaller groups within churches have taken up the cause for peace and social justice, the larger organizations have been content to sit this one out. And sadly even the smaller groups that fight for peace and social justice have not made the connection that both are impossible without first taking the power to create our money away from banks and putting it where it belongs with the people through our elected government. The one notable exception — Pope Francis “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.” But even though the Pope is on the right track, he has not yet discovered the solution to the problems he enumerates — monetary reform.
This is what we must then do — educate everyone we know about the monetary reforms of the NEED Act. That is how we create a bottom up movement that will allow us to get the things our society needs: peace, sustainability and a level of equality and prosperity for all. You might think I’m nuts. How can this ever come about when no politicians or institutions support it? I leave you with the conclusion from my free pamphlet Linking Social Justice to Monetary Reform.
Author’s Conclusion
“It is this author’s conclusion that improved levels of social and economic justice within the capitalist system are possible only through the monetary reform of the NEED Act. Why did the Bank of England, after 320 years in operation, choose now to address the bank creation of money? Why did establishment insiders Adair Turner and Martin Wolf do the same? Why did the UK Parliament on November 20, 2014 have a discussion on money creation for the first time in 170 years? Brought about in large part by the efforts of Positive Money, a UK based monetary reform movement similar to the American Monetary Institute in the U.S.
In either case there is a fundamental realization that a monetary system that produces progressively greater and greater inequality–as the bank money creation as debt system does–is unsustainable and eventually will have to be replaced. Or the elites have realized that people have become more knowledgeable about money creation and want to bring up a discussion. But then ultimately dismiss the real reform of the NEED Act and allow a non reform such as adding state banks to the mix which does nothing to fundamentally change the bank money created as debt monetary system.
I believe that the capitalist class is very interested in self preservation. If necessary to preserve their dominant position in society, the 1% may very well ultimately sacrifice the bank money creation as debt system to remain at the top of the societal heap. This would allow the elites, at least for now, to save the most basic capitalist principle of private ownership of the earth and its resources, without which capitalism could never exist.
It is beyond the scope of this article to challenge this basic assumption of the capitalist system. While this author believes that monetary reforms of the NEED Act are the only way to save the capitalist system, he also believes that the democratization of our money, accomplished by the NEED Act, strengthens the possibility of an eventual socialist system. Neither system though, socialism nor capitalism, will ever be successful for the vast majority of the people as long as bankers control our money creation.”
Our job is to educate our friends and neighbors about monetary reform. The monetary reforms of the NEED Act are really very simple, it only gets complicated when the bankers and economics profession tries to explain their nefarious system. When the next crisis comes, and come it will, those we have taught to be knowledgeable about monetary reform can assist us in creating a movement to put pressure on the power structures of government and institutions to demand the NEED Act. Those at the top of the heap, the 1%, will then weigh the benefits of giving us monetary reform to save the overall capitalist system of private ownership.
Nick Egnatz
Nick Egnatz is a Vietnam veteran. He has been actively protesting our government’s crimes of empire in both person and print for some years now and was named “Citizen of the Year” for Northwest Indiana in 2006 for his peace activism by the National Association of Social Workers. For the last few years he has worked closely with the American Monetary Institute to bring about monetary reform.
Contact Nick OccupyNick@yahoo.com