Defining Money and Productive
(page 3 of 7)
(1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7)

REAL MONEY DOING UNREAL THINGS

With all the financial debacles, it should be obvious now there is no 'real' money and all money is just something we humans made up.

"the [Federal Reserve] vault had never before processed a single order of this magnitude: $2.4 billion in $100 bills. But ultimately, again, $9 billion of $12 billion gone missing in Iraq."
(Amy Goodman, interviewing Alan Greenspan, Democracy Now, Sept. 24, 2007 )

"By betting $29 billion on derivatives [over four weeks] in the Japanese markets and losing more than $1 billion, Mr. Leeson managed last week to sink Barings [Bank], a 233-year-old British investment firm that financed the Louisiana Purchase and oversaw royal fortunes." (New York Times)

(more on Barings Bank)

How is it 9 Billion can appear and disappear with no explanation? How is it one person can come up with 29 billion of 'real' money in 4 weeks to speculate with and no one noticed?

(What does a trillion look like?)

These are just small examples, what really needs to be examined is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all: interest — something that is economically, environmentally and mathematically impossible.

"Based on interest and compound interest, our money doubles at regular intervals, i.e., it follows an exponential growth pattern. This explains why we are in trouble with our monetary system today. Interest, in fact, acts like cancer in our social structure... the continual payment of interest and compound interest is arithmetically, as well as practically, impossible." (Margrit Kennedy: Interest and Inflation Free Money, 1995 )

"All money created this way is a loan. The money needed to pay interest on the aggregate principal does not exist. Therefore, it is mathematically impossible ever to pay off the aggregate loan principal plus the aggregate interest without depleting the money supply, as in a game of musical chairs. This mathematical impossibility is like asking someone to pour a quart of milk into a pitcher and then pour out a quart and a pint. It is obvious more borrowing is not the answer. More borrowing adds to aggregate debt and simply compounds the problem." ( Engineer Theodore R. Thoren, "Space Age Technology can correct the money system", 1980 )

"An insight I gained many years ago concerns interest, or the ability of money to multiply, to grow, to reproduce itself. I examined the concept inside out, upside down, top to bottom, and concluded that money has no reproductive powers... Interest is a construct invented so that, as John Ruskin observes in Unto This Last, some can take advantage of other's distress." ( Juanita Nelson, On Interest, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, March 2002)

QUESTIONS ABOUT 'REAL' MONEY

The 1% power-holding elite know that there is no 'real' or 'unreal' money. Yet when it comes to the idea of money distribution to common people, some people insist that this money would be "funny" money (not "real") and would be bad (inflationary) for everyone.