The only ‘political party’ idea I’ve seen that might have a remote possibility of actually happening was the one David suggested – try to get one person from each country elected to the EU Parliament on a 99% vs. 1% ticket with ‘Reform The Banks’ as the issue – and those 27 to vote together as a block.

On the home front, realistically, the only hope is for Labour to make reforming the banks, particularly the Positive Money position, the keystone of their manifesto for the next election. What chance is there of that happening?

There are lots of us who ‘know the score’ but only a small percent of the population have the time or the inclination to self-educate. They need a simple, emotive message to stir them into action. Public demonstrations, as we know, achieve very little, if anything. Maybe if all of us who are switched on to the situation concentrated on campaigning to get maybe David elected to the EU Parliament and for Labour to make reforming the banks their number one priority…

Otherwise it wont make any difference who gets elected next time around, the circus will go on with different clowns in the ring.

Any thoughts?

In any case, a long view tends to put the tinfoil hat in some pretty good company. David Mills’s Jefferson quote prompted my to look for some others I’d come across over the years. I found them, but a treasury of others too. From the top:

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812),

‘The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks’ Lord Acton

Two more from Jefferson:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

‘The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating’

‘Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!’ Andrew Jackson

‘The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.’
Abraham Lincoln

“The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt civilization.” Otto von Bismark (1815-1898), German Chancellor, after the Lincoln assassination

‘Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to…provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands’. – Theodore Roosevelt

Despite these warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. A few years later he wrote: ‘I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.’

”It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning’ Henry Ford

‘ We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred’ Franklin D. Roosevelt

What paranoid leftist ninnies, eh?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone, anyone, within a bull’s roar of power with balls even half the size of some of those quoted? BUt the chances of that have been gamed too. No prizes for guessing who by…

Mike,

“When the rentiers take over democracy, well, there is no democracy”

There was never democracy, Mike, as the rentiers owned it from the very beginning. If you rip away the idealistic rhetoric of our founding, the US has always been an oligarchy.

I am not saying that you are identifying a phenomenon that is not real. There is definitely something fundamentally different and wrong about what we are witnessing. I just think you are misidentifying it.

The reality is that all states are set up to organize the masses to benefit the few, the rentiers and oligarchs. Troubles arise, however, when the rentiers and oligarchs rely on usury to “double-dip” and take more from the masses than the state had allowed. This creates fractures in our understanding of how the state works and calls into question the purpose of the state, which is always presented as promoting the common good but which is always, in actuality, to perpetuate the status of the rentiers and oligarchs. This happened in Athens and Rome, and it is happening today.

So, the problem is the rentier’s purposeful use of usury to impoverish and enslave the masses. When they are allowed to do that, the illusion of democracy disappears.

bill40,

Economics is politics. The only difference between the politics of MMT and the politics of neoliberal economics is who gets to do the central planning.

“Irreversible victory is within our leaders’ reach. Yet at the same time they are only a stumble, a determined opposing push away, from irrevocable disaster.”

Convinced as I am by PositiveMoney’s analyses and fixes I have a goal but little idea of where and how to push beyond trying to raise awareness among friends of PM’s ideas and your brilliant polemic.

Is there a plan for action that we can all get behind?

Sorry to say this, Kate, but you are still subject to bank tyranny. The bottom line in the US, and in most of the world outside China, is that the currency you use is issued by banks, and for extending you the “privilege” of having a currency, they will exact their pound of flesh. No matter how you slice it, there is an interest payment — to bankers — associated with every single dollar you have or ever will have. It is like a slow, steady current that you must swim against your whole life. When you are awake and working, you may successfully overcome that current, but every moment you are not exerting energy against it — every moment you are sleeping, every moment you are relaxing, every moment you are having fun with your friends — you are being inexhorably drawn back downstream.

Have you ever wondered why it is that so many people work their whole lives and end up with practically nothing? The financial media like to blame it on indolance or stupidity, but this is just a McGuffin — a ploy to distract you from pondering the issue at length. The real truth of the matter is that the currency itself is designed to drain the wealth from the people who create it and send that wealth downstream into the hands of the financial industry and its owners.

Your really have two lines of defense. One is to minimize your contact with the money economy. Hard to do, since taxes must be paid and Federal Reserve notes or their electronic proxy are the only acceptable means of payment. The government is prepared to enforce the bankers’ monetary scheme to the point of stripping you of your entire wealth and depriving you of your freedom if you refuse to participate. The other line is see things the bankers’ way and invest sufficient money to generate a return that will make up for the drain on that money, as well as the money you use to make your way in life.

It’s an ugly game, but right now, it’s the only game in town for most people.

Nice addendum there Sir Tagio. Of course we will be expected to buy the assets back when they aren’t making any money! At a highly inflated price! This has already happened to the NZ rail system.

The current government in NZ is now turning the nation into an offshore tax haven. So perhaps this is the end-game. Every country in the world is a tax haven. ie no wealth is ever taxed. Funny that.

Adverts are fine with me, I’ll click one on each visit.

NB:

I don’t think you should just click willy-nilly on the ads.

Google knows which IP addresses the click-thoughs are coming from and if they suspect fould play they might kick Golem off the Adsense network.