What Will Happen If We Don’t Reform The System?
If the government lacks the courage to implement the reform that I have outlined, then our standard of living for the next few decades will be approximately 40% lower than it should naturally be. In addition, the government will be ill-placed to deal with the pensions crisis that will start to hit in the next 10 years.
Throughout the history of mankind the form of money that we use has developed and evolved. The form of money which we are using now is highly defective, as we can see only too clearly now.
The solutions being proposed by our current leaders involve appropriating wealth from the taxpayers of the future in order to maintain the profits and the size of banks today. As a result of the bailout, you will lose on average 3 weeks’ income (per year) to funding the interest on the national debt.
In short, less of our income will be our own, holding the real economy down and artificially propping up the financial sector.
This may be considered a price worth paying – until we realise that this will not hold off the inevitable collapse of an unsustainable debt-based monetary system. (In other words, if we survive this crisis, the one that follows will be ten times worse).
The hard reality is that our current financial system – specifically, the process of allowing commercial banks to create money whenever they make loans – is going to lead us all in to extreme poverty. And the bitter truth is that this will be completely unnecessary.
THE RECESSION IS UNNECESSARY
The shocking reality is that this recession is completely unnecessary.
Nothing has changed in real terms – we have the same number of people, the same amount of food, the same technology, knowledge, office space, houses, and the same amount of hours in the week as we have had throughout the last decade of economic boom. We have everything we need to create and sustain a prosperous economy, so why are people with real skills losing their jobs and being left to sit at home doing nothing productive with their time?
What is at fault is really our accounting system – our way of tracking money and preventing it being created from anyone other than the state.
The recession/depression was 100% inevitable, but also 100% avoidable – if the reform that we are proposing was implemented. However, there is no way out of this financial crisis until the state prevents high-street banks from creating money.
Dear Ben Dyson, thank you very much for your very clear and non-conspiracist account of the big money scam. However, here is one little knot of things I still don’t understand – how publicly accountable is the Bank of England at this time (who exactly owns/influences it?)? What is its real current relationship to the commercial banks who create the money? and how come, if the Bank of England is truly a public interest organisation, can it still remain silent about the socially destructive nature of the present money creation system? The Bank of England, with its ringside seat and keen intelligences, surely cannot plead ignorance or stupidty.
In addition, at least some people in our government must have a good grasp of all the effects you describe? If reforms are easy and pain free, what is actually holding back our government from acknowledging the problem and getting on with the reforms? In common political terms, surely that’s just the thing any government would want to take credit for.
My questions are to some extent irrelevant to positive action, but need some sensible answers as people will naturally ask them, and without answers, not believe that the solution can be as easy and straightforward as you and Mr Robertson and Mr Huber outline.
All good wishes, Linda Hurrell.
Hi Linda,
I don’t believe the questions that apply to the US Fed (ie. being owned by the very banks that it rescued) apply in the UK. The Bank of England has been nationalised since shortly after the Second World War.
From speaking to contacts at the Treasury, the atmosphere over the last two years has been one of constant fire-fighting. The commercial banks had to be rescued not simply for the sake of the system, but because nobody at the Treasury (or the Bank of England for that matter) wanted to deal with the nightmare of winding down one of the big 4.
In terms of how the Bank of England can support a socially destructive system, I would imagine that about 80% of the staff have given very little thought to the wider impacts of the system. I’m sure there are others who do understand that the system isn’t working, but considering what has happened over the last 2 years I doubt anyone at the Bank Of England or the Treasury has been given time to investigate alternative models for the system – they have been too busy trying to prevent the current system collapsing.
The reform is easy, and a lot more pain-free than the spending cuts and tax rises that we’re likely to face in the near future. However, when there is no demand for something from the public, why would they create extra work for themselves? This is why we need to make this a publicly-understood issue and apply pressure on MPs to change the system. Once the political parties understand the real benefit of this reform, they will be fighting each other to implement it, but we need to make sure that the public demand outweighs well-funded lobbyists working for the commercial banks and the British Banker’s Association. (Although bear in mind it’s not ‘Us vs Finance’ since the pension fund and investment half of the financial sector will actually benefit from the reform).
Remember that the Bank of England, Treasury, FSA and the banks are only made up of employees. Most employees in any organisation would have ideas about how the organisation could be better run, but would never expect the CEO to pay any attention. These institutions will be very much the same. It is only the people at the top who can start things rolling, and at the moment they are too busy plastering over the cracks in the system to look at more fundamental reform.
Call4Reform.org will be where the change really starts.