Where does the buck stop?

Abdalhamid Evans

What we want to do is to try and find out what has happened, what's gone wrong. How did we get to where we are?

Let us imagine that we are looking at the body of a crime victim. Multiple injury, heavy duty GBH, rape and robbery of an unprecedented nature. The victim's condition is serious, critical, but there is still life. It's not yet time for an autopsy, but it soon will be, if something is not done.

We have come across the scene of the crime, stumbled over the body, probably got some blood on our clothes. Naturally we are concerned, horrified, but what can we do? We could walk away, pretend we didn't see it, we weren't actually there. Its probably too much to deal with anyway. Can't handle it. Don't get involved.

Or we can accept responsibility for where we find ourselves. The victim is clearly in need; surely there is something that we can do, even if we are not experts.

The victim is the planet and its inhabitants, the people, animals plants, oceans, forests, the air, earth and water. Life itself.

But how did this happen, who did it, why? It's too awful to be an accident. How can we put it right? Can we put it right? The questions beg an answer.

One does not necessarily have answers, but let's at least try and understand what has taken place.

We do know that the official version of things, the story as we have been told it is highly suspect. It sounds very much like an alibi put out by the likeliest of suspects.

So let's try and start at the beginning. This may all sound rather simplistic, but we want to break down a complex affair into sizable bites, in order to digest it, and use it in a positive and intelligent manner.

We are dealing with something unnatural, a gross imbalance, something so out of sync at the centre, that it has thrown everything else out of step.

In trying to understand and cope with this global imbalance, it is tempting to look at the symptoms, because they are more manageable, and try and deal with it in that way. Let's save the whales, or the rain forests. Maybe concentrate on pollution, or the arms race, nuclear power, inner city crime.

These issues are all valid, but they are all symptoms of this extreme imbalance. They are the results of something, and if we only focus on them we may miss seeing the cause. For if we are to nurse the patient back to life we have to find the cause of the disease. How did the cancer start?

One could describe life as a series of transactions, some simple some complex. Chemical, personal, social, national, global, cosmic. Endless exchanges and interactions. Planets spin, seasons shift, day turns into night.

And people buy and sell, they exchange things. It's probably the most basic human social transaction. Wherever there are people, it's going on. Everything you see has probably been bought, sold or exchanged.

It is a type of social bedrock.

Transactions are exchanges that are mutually beneficial, both parties gain from the exchange, it is part of social movement and growth. I give you this, you give me that, and we are both pleased with the exchange and everyone else can see that everything is OK. 2 + 2 = 4 There is balance, equilibrium.

Things go wrong when someone wants something for nothing

10 = 11, 2+2=5

One pound + Gateway Building Society = Three pounds.

In order for you to believe it, some sleight of hand will be needed.

Barter of one thing for another, goods for goods without the use of money is the obvious basis for trade, but from earliest times a medium of exchange has been found to be necessary. You may not have the goods I need, so if I swap my goods for money, the medium of exchange, I can get what I want.

This medium of exchange must be something of actual value in itself, you are converting your goods into this other thing, this medium, in order to exchange that in turn for what you want. Why would anybody change their goods for something worthless? Would you? You're kidding! My goods represent a lot of my time and energy and sweat, they are worth something, they are real, valuable, they improve the quality of your life, they're useful. Why should I swap them for something of no value? The idea is ridiculous!

And yet this is exactly what we all do, every day.

The medium of exchange is a third element in the equation, or you can almost say its like the = sign in maths. This table equals these chairs. Or the table equals £50 equals the chairs.

This does not mean that the price of my goods or your goods are not subject to normal fluctuations. That's OK. The price may go up and down, it can be 40 or 60 pounds, but the value of the POUND must remain a constant, or we don't know what £50 means. Then we're all in trouble, we don't know where we stand. It's no longer bedrock, its quick sand. The medium of exchange must have intrinsic value of its own, it must be worth something. This is a necessary element of social stability.

It is pivotal, and if you change it, you change every transaction, like shifting the fulcrum on a set of scales.

Gold and silver are the obvious choices. They have value, their nature does not change even over long periods of time, they don't decay. They can be split into lots of small pieces, and then put it back into big ones again. They up into bill, and historically, they have been used with great success.

Ah, yes, that's all very well, they say. But there's only so much gold, what if there isn't enough to go round, supposing it runs out?

Well, lets think about this for a bit. The fact is everything else in existence is finite, there is only so much of anything. There is a limited amount of all of our resources as we are finding out to our concern. There is only so much. This is fine until we get to modern economics.

Modern economics is based on continual growth, endless expansion, it will all keep getting bigger and better, more profits. This idea is now very deeply rooted and as we shall see, it is very closely linked to the whole concept of Progress. Development. To disagree with the idea of endless growth is like saying you're against progress. You want to turn the clock back, put us all back in the dark ages.

Growth is part of life, it is delightful. Endless growth becomes grotesque.

An international banker was recently asked what he thought was wrong with the world economy, and he said “We need more growth.”

This premise of constant growth defies every natural law in existence, it's like trying to deny the law of gravity. What goes up does not keep going up. We don't have endless day, nonstop summer. The wheel turns, there is expansion and contraction, profit and loss.

So, let us, like others have done for thousands of years, accept that a stable medium of exchange with intrinsic value of its own is an integral part of a balanced economy, which is in turn an essential part of a just society. I think that this is a reasonable starting place.

Modern economics is regarded as some kind of specialist subject, it has its own special language. But specialized knowledge should not be necessary to understand something that we all take part in on a day to day basis. The chances are that we all use money everyday. The monetary structure involves us all. In fact it limits us, contains us, we are all subject to its established rules. And if it is unjust, it enslaves us, it traps us. And once trapped, we can be controlled.

And this is actually the crux of the matter. We are proposing that the current economic system, that is now of global proportions, has ensnared all of us. It is unjust, immoral, and highly dangerous. It is like a massive spiders web, spun by the ultimate consumers, and we are all caught in it.

The monetary system is really a control mechanism.

The basis of the system is Usury, and I'm using the word in a broad sense. Usury as a principle. Later on we will examine the historical picture of what events actually took place, but what I want to do here is outline the process whereby money became valueless and unreal, And hand in hand with this process there has developed a network of global banks, markets, and communications, a System, that has permitted those with wealth to get increasingly rich and powerful, and has forced pretty much everybody else, including those of us in the developed countries, into something that approaches slavery. This process has permitted the scale of imbalance that we are now talking about and experiencing.

What's usury?

Well, two key principles are: interest and unreal money.

1. Charging interest on loans of real money, gold.
2. Creation of paper money; i.e.. promissory notes as currency even when backed by gold.
3. Charging interest on loans of paper (unreal) money
4. Creating money out of nowhere, i.e.. not backed by gold.
5. Creating paper money
6. Plastic money
7. Electronic money
8. Stock markets
9. Futures contracts
10. Eurobonds, etc.
11. Commodity speculation

These are the weapons, the instruments.

Funnily enough, you hear people talk about real money, I'd like to get my hands on some REAL money, you know, none of this small stuff, BIG money, They are referring to something almost non existent, on the very edges of the physical world. That real money is nothing more than quivering electronic signals that get sent from one computer to another. Meta physics.

Yet everyone believes in it, accepts it as real and valuable. Any one in a position to create this unreal wealth, to manipulate it, turn it into real wealth, weapons, land, energy, is in a position of great power. And that degree of power surely corrupts.

I am including all of these techniques and instruments as usury, because they all apply the same principle, and are all branches with the same root.

Without these economic tools, it would not be possible to have industry on a scale that causes global pollution, you couldn't build nuclear weapons or power stations, no star wars, no global destruction at the push of a button. You could not enslave a nation by market manipulation, in order to bleed their resources.

It simply could not be done.

Projects of such enormous size need huge financial backing. No individual, or group has enough real wealth to develop and build a fleet of F-11 fighter planes, let alone to finance the star wars programme. Without the help of the banks, and all that funny money.

You couldn't destroy the Amazon rain forest, or pollute an ocean. The concepts themselves are amazing!

Mega projects require mega bucks. And as we shall see, the opposite is also true. These huge amounts of unreal money, all on deposit at attractive rates of interest urgently and desperately need the mega projects. The show must go on.

Lets go back to our gold economy. We used to buy and sell for gold and silver, gold and silver coins were the currency. And it worked. And not just on small localised scale, as well see later. It worked if everyone held to the principles.

The trouble starts with the ones who want something for nothing. Here we can see the roots of the crime.

1. Lending gold out on interest. Even if its real money, its not acceptable, because it opens a door that must be kept shut. You borrow 10 and have to pay back 11. On a small scale I can see that you might say that there's not much wrong with it, and I agree that perhaps on the face of it does not look like the crime oft he age. But lets be patient, and see where we can go down this corridor, once the door has been opened. Because we are not talking theory. All this has actually happened, and somehow we have got to where we are, and we are not happy about it. This is the road we have taken.

Lending on interest allows the one with money to make more money, simply because he has it in the first place. It puts the lender in a strong position and the borrower in a weak position. Being in debt is bad enough, without having to repay more than you borrow. If a group of these lenders get together, start working as a team, that gives them power over the rest of their society. There's no doubt that the lender has the edge on the borrower.

The amazing thing is that usury was outlawed by almost everybody, in virtually every civilisation and society you look back at, it was against the

law. Including England, until very recently. And yet it is now difficult for people to imagine life without it, no interest, no paper money. A thorough job has been done.

2. The next thing that happens is the promissory note. “I promise to pay the Bearer on demand the sum of “ Its easy to imagine the origins. Sure, I'll lend you some gold, but why bother taking the gold. Its here locked away safe and sound. I'll give you a note that says I've leant you the money, you can use that instead. Everyone knows me, its as good as gold! You can pay your rent or whatever it is , and then THAT person can come and collect the gold. Why carry it around?

That's a picture of what became a bank, issuing paper against gold reserves, in equal proportions, 1 for 1, a pounds’ worth of gold, a pounds’ worth of paper. So the door has opened a little wider, we've taken a distinct step away from our bedrock transactions.

Running parallel with this, were the markets. As trade increased and became international, agents of the wealthy merchants would travel around. Someone would make a purchase of some goods and pay with a Bill of Exchange, that could be exchanged for Gold with the merchant who issued it. These bills began to be used to make other purchases, rather than being cashed in. They were used as currency. As differences began to occur in the exchange rates, some bills were worth more than others, and a market developed for the bills themselves.

You can see how this opens the way for the scenario where someone eventually takes the bill back to the original merchant, to find that he's gone bust, died, disappeared. So much for your piece of paper, suddenly its not worth what you thought it was, you have been cheated, its not fair.

Now, the people who control the money tend to be in charge. Traditionally power was in the hands of the Ruler or King, someone who was recognisably in command, everyone knew who he was, and even if it was a bit corrupt, or the currency got debased, it was all on a small scale, it was limited.

But as we shall see later, power and financial control were taken, bit by bit, out of the hands of the traditional rulers, and put in the hands of the merchants, and the bankers. And as trade became international, so international currency emerged, and an international monetary system developed. And with the emergence of this system, the seat of power became hidden, to the point where now no one really knows who is in charge.

One of the high-water marks in the development of this global network came in 1944, when all of the world's currencies were linked together. They were all tied in a fixed relationship to the dollar, and the dollar was itself tied to gold, $35 to the ounce.

For the first time ever, a global monetary system had been established that tied all of the worlds major currencies, and by extension, all of the people

who used them, into a unified structure, with its own rules and governing bodies, that completely bypassed the visible channels of government. Politics had become theatre, something to show on the 9 O'clock news. And it was all done so neatly, that for the most part no one noticed. But if the money was in your pocket, the chances were you were in someone else's.

So, to recap, we are outlining a development that has taken place whereby we have gone from real money, gold and silver, to something that was merely representative of real value. Something that had no actual value itself, but you could swap for the real thing. This was really the first step away from bedrock. It is one step removed, maybe not a huge one, because the paper was still tied to something precious, something of real value. But a very significant step none the less, because promising to do something, and actually doing it are not the same thing, and its dangerous to think that they are.

The next step was the creation of money that was completely worthless. One of the problems with promissory notes is that if you print too many of

them, you may not be able to keep your promises. If there are more bits of paper than there are bits of gold, you are in trouble. Supposing everyone wants to cash them in?

Clearly if this is your situation, you have to find a way to make the paper more attractive than the real thing.

The obvious way is through Interest.

This was really very clear with the situation of the dollar in the 50's. The dollar was very strong, internationally accepted pretty much every where in the world. And if you had some you could put them in the bank and they would earn interest, the money would go to work for you, give you that little bit extra. If you could get enough, maybe you wouldn't have to go to work at all. It was very attractive idea.

Gold on the other hand was not nearly so fertile, it didn't grow, no one gave you interest for it, in fact you had to pay to keep it somewhere safe.

The dollars were altogether better. Unless there start to be too many of them.

Imagine the temptation. You are all set up with the printing presses, you can print as much money as you like, really. Its not against the law … you made sure of that. And there are all these things you want to do, all these things to buy, nice foreign goods, tasty bits of real estate, a bit of influence here and there Well, lets print a few more and go and do it. Its hard to imagine anyone being able to resist such a temptation. Instant money. Influence. Success. And of course, power.

The system however, was not without flaws. All those dollars for example, and all of them theoretically convertible to gold. And when the potential demands on the gold became too great, the dollar was finally cut loose from the gold standard by President Nixon, in 1971, and the dollar, with all the other currencies in tow, started to drift free, blown on the turbulent winds of the market place.

And bedrock is now starting to look rather far away.

To further aggravate matters, the sharp and dramatic rises in the price of oil, and the incomprehensibly large amounts of money that this produced, only made things worse.

Staggering sums of money, the petrodollars, began to be put on deposit in Banks round the world, all earning a nice bit of interest. But this created a real problem, because this money had to be put out to work by the banks in order to make enough to p ay the depositors. And the best way to make money is to lend it out at a higher rate of interest than you're paying.

And the bigger the deposits, the bigger the loans have to be, and the riskier they are likely to become.

Once the concept of worthless money had been totally accepted by everyone without so much as a murmur, it was not difficult to bring some other tricks out of the hat. The audience was nicely warmed up, and it looked like they'd buy pretty much anything.

Like Eurodollars.

Simply put, these are dollars that are totally outside the American banking system. They don't belong anywhere, and they owe allegiance to no one. And they are completely free of the normal banking restrictions, they are not controlled at all. And they were great for business.

Now, the Federal Reserve requires US banks to put up a portion of their deposits as reserves to cover loans, and they can govern the character and size of the loan.

They say that if the Bank gets a deposit of 100, it has to hold on to 10% as reserve, and can loan out the other 90. We go in and borrow that 90, and put it in our bank. That bank has to hold on to 9 and can lend out 81 to someone else, who puts it in his bank, who lend out 72.90 and so it goes on. Money coming out of nowhere.

In itself a pretty good trick.

But not Eurodollars. These can be deposited lent and repaid with no restrictions whatsoever. And for every 100 dollar deposit, the banks can make a 100 dollar loan, each time. And all with interest. And remember, here we are not even talking about paper money, its not MONEY in any

previously accepted sense of the word it's now electronic signals flickering through space, reproducing wildly as they go.

And our bedrock transaction is a speck of dust vanishing into the distance.

This means that if you are in the business of lending money, you can make an astronomical amount of money, and once you have astronomical amounts, you can make even more. 2 astronomical amounts, 3, 5, 100 just buy a bigger computer to keep track of the zeros.

For the bankers, the privately wealthy, the big corporations, this was the ultimate system. Once you had a certain amount, you can put it on deposit somewhere and scoop in the interest. Just because you had a lot, you can make a whole lot more.

But even if the money has now escaped the laws of gravity, nothing else has, everything else is still rooted in the finite universe, and there is only so much to go round. And if one man has a lot, then lots of people have to have a little.

All that fantasy money built great industrial vacuum cleaners, that hoovered up the resources of the rest of the world. And built new gadgets with the resources that were sold back to the third world, for them to buy with money lent to them by the same people who ripped them off in the first place.

It's all very neat.

The fantasy money gives real power to the ones who control it, because everyone believes in it. The paper money is in fact worthless, the banks are in fact virtually empty. But the game of musical chairs goes on, and as long as we all don't try and sit down at once, everything should be OK. It is a belief system, and it must be maintained at all costs if the status quo is to be preserved.

But no one dares to look too far upstream to see what's coming, because the idea of the system collapsing is to awesome to entertain.

But surely as day follows night, contraction must follow expansion, and the longer its held at bay, the bigger the bang.

It is as if we have all been hypnotised, its as if a spell has been cast over the planet. Borrow and spend, borrow and spend, everywhere you go, the message bombards you. Everyone is in debt, nations are in debt, babies are born into debt, even the lenders are all in debt to each other.

And the lenders tell the borrowers what to do, they control them, and dictate the terms. If you can't repay, we'll take your car, your house, your land, resources, your country. We'll put in our man, to make sure he keeps up the interest payments. If he doesn't, we'll kick him out and put in someone who will. Don't subsidise the bread to keep it affordable for the poor, put the price up and keep making the interest payments.

Or else.

I mentioned earlier that these huge amounts of money need these huge projects, like building massive dams in India, or cutting down the rain forests.

If, as a banker, I have taken 100 from you and am promising you say 10% interest, I have got to put that money to work, to make that extra 10 so you can have it when you come back and ask for it. The best way to make money is to lend it out at a higher rate of interest to someone else. This is the safest way.

But if I've taken Billions of dollars on deposit, I've got to find someone with a real mega project up their sleeve, looking for some mega bucks.

Urgently. I've got to find it. Supposing you want your money back. And if I cant find someone who is already looking for this kind of money,

then I'd better get out there and talk someone into wanting it. And here we have the whole myth of development. The politics of progress. Don't be backwards, don't just scratch around in the dirt, growing enough food to feed yourselves and live in peace. Get yourselves together. Get into the Space Age.

Just look at what could be yours.

And in order to do this you need to buy all this stuff.

And you need to buy it with dollars, real money.

Don't have any?

OK what CAN you do. Enough of all this subsistence farming, and hunter gatherer business, you need a cash crop, something you can sell on the world market and get some real money.

You don't have what it takes to set that up?

Well you will have to borrow it, at the going rate of interest, you can pay it back later when you've got on your feet a bit more. It will all work out.

To make it all viable you'll need more arable land? well lets cut down that big old forest over there for a start, you can use that, and you can build some dams to generate power, and you're going to need lots of cement and tractors, and why not have some TVs and stereos too. Might as well have some fun with all of this building going on. I'll bet you've got some handy resources and minerals you can sell too, once you're set up for it. We could probably take them off your hands.

We all know the scenario.

Then they sell you some weapons so you can protect yourself … or is it so they can protect their investment?

Once you're tied into a scheme like that there no easy way out. You will always be in debt, you'll just keep paying interest, wondering where it all went wrong.

But, the point is that the money is burning a hole in the bankers pocket, he's got to keep it moving, investing and lending in bigger and bigger projects and schemes. And every time he turns round there's even MORE money looking for some where to go. Remember endless growth? He's hustling like mad to invent more fantasy projects to use up all the fantasy money.

And ecological balance is a luxury the banker cannot afford. It's not even on his list. He needs short term gain, not long term balance. The System must survive. So what if some people get displaced, you lose a few seals, or there's a bit of pollution somewhere. Maybe cleaning up the mess will turn out to be big business, maybe he can make some investments in that

He is a slave to his own system, his machine is running him. He has to keep the money rolling over, keep it on the move. Its essential, its a ruthless, driving motivation. It's like the dot on the TV screen, if it keeps moving at the right speed, everyone will get the picture, the illusion works. If it stops, everything crumbles.

For it is really, in essence, a belief system. It all works because everyone believes in it. Believes in the money, the Banks, the personalities, the politics, the promises and the lies. And all that belief gives them power.

The money is worthless, the banks are empty, we are all being cheated. And really they are not in control at all, and the great system contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.

For those of us who choose life, rather than anti-life, the question is not so much “What shall we put in its place?”

Rather, we must decide what tools we need, given the current scenario, that will enable us to cope with what we have inherited.

Meanwhile, back at the scene of the Crime, the victim is losing blood, losing consciousness. Species of life are disappearing from earth at a rate of nearly one an hour. If we were looking for a sign that all is not well, we could hardly ask for a more eloquent one than that.

Usury: The Root Cause of The Injustices of Our Times (PAID, Norwich, UK, 1987) The History of Usury

17 May, 2007 23:07