The Web of Debt ...
"Secretary Paulson, out in the real economy, the unbridled pursuit of greed that you and your friends on Wall Street have celebrated as a national religion has taken a terrible toll on ordinary Americans. Jobs with stagnant real wages have now given way to massive lay-offs, home foreclosures and real suffering."
Leo Gerard (USW) | Letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson October 28, 2008
The shifting of the political "site of struggle" from the bloodied sands of Mesopotamia to Wall Street was accompanied by a growing realization that the global economic crisis is far graver and more complex than many of us care to admit — but the solution far simpler.
However, economic illiteracy obscures both the problem and its solution.
If you read one book over the next year, choose The Web of Debt. Should you find yourself changing one or two misperceptions, you'll find Ellen Brown's skilfully researched reportage from the front lines of the global economy changing your view of economics radically and unequivocally.
The nut of it? We've fallen lock, stock, and barrel for one of the simplest, oldest, most dangerous, and frequently-practiced con tricks of all time.
Put simply, a private elite is charged with issuing money — created out of nothing — to the public and private sectors, for which it charges interest (not issued). The result is a dog-eat-dog world in which income disparity, scarcity, and the absolute concentration of wealth are inevitable. Bailouts of the uber-wealthy banking fraternity are not new and a derivatives collapse, worth several hundred trillion dollars and against which there is no insurance, looms.
In short, if you think the past few months have been rough ... When it comes to money, regulating a private sector given carte blanche to legally create its own wealth at the expense of others ain't gonna cut the mustard.
The scam is as blunt as it is craven. Rigging, fixing, and manipulation are entrenched, pandemic, pervasive and legal — infecting every part of the system. Share and gold prices will never again behave rationally.
Not for nothing is the current contrived charade posing as an economy derided as a Ponzi scheme. Yet, because we fail to question or do anything about it, it's hidden in plain sight. We are living in a cocoon of self-delusion and that's something for which we cannot blame the banks, the government, the economists, or the stockbrokers.
They have not deceived us. We have built our castles in the air and, a long time ago, decided to take up permanent residence. They're merely collecting the rent. We have conned ourselves and sought refuge in denial.
It's time to wake up and move beyond calls for Roosevelt-style New Deals to systemic change. Will Obama go the distance? It's not his call. It's up to the American people and central bankers worldwide to salvage a fundamentally sound infrastructure from the terminal folly of fiscal fools.
The author of Forbidden Medicine, Brown's remarkable work — unashamedly draws on the likes of Von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, and LaRouche¹, runs to 500 pages but, covering every rejoinder she might encounter to proposed solutions, it is current, immediately relevant, and reads as easily as a novel.
There is a way out of this mess — and it does not include cooperatives and credit unions, which do not address the interest problem; but it demands economic literacy (which this book provides in great measure), a willingness to take on the most powerful vested interests in the world, and the fortitude needed to endure changing to an equitable, sustainable system.
The good news? As it stands, and epitomized by the private Federal Reserve, much of the dysfunction tacked to the present system has been around less than a century — the 1913 Federal Reserve Act formed a tipping point. It forms a mere blip on the history of economics. Its solution, wholly American and capitalist — refining age-old European economic practices, was the norm in saner times.
Better still, it worked (you can blame the Brits and the gargoyles of Wall Street — watering away the wealth of taxpayers, for its disastrous demise).
It's time to spread the wealth.
¹ On making a couple of references to the controversial Lyndon LaRouche (an undoubtedly brilliant but morally repugnant man), Brown comments:
"On LaRouche, I'm neither a supporter nor a detractor; I'm just a researcher, reporting what I read that seems interesting and worth repeating, and his researchers have some of the most interesting material available on the subject, as you acknowledge."To her credit, Brown's research rigorous and all-inclusive shows neither fear nor favor. She eschews embellishment and partiality to 'tell it like it is'. Our practice of economics, underpinning our daily reality, is far stranger and infinitely more terrifying than any fiction.
Note: If anyone can point to comprehensive reviews by recognized economists criticizing or highlighting technical or substantive shortfalls in The Web of Debt, please send me the links. I doubt there will be many. It'd take a sage or a fool to argue the veracity of the fundamentals espoused by this most necessary antidote to the malignant tumor destroying our global economy.
"And perhaps the most important, there's been — the Fed in 1989 created what is called the Plunge Protection Team, which is the Federal Reserve, big major banks, representatives of the New York Stock Exchange and the other exchanges, and there — they have been meeting informally so far, and they have kind of an informal agreement among major banks to come in and start to buy stock if there appears to be a problem."
Clinton economic advisor George Stephanopoulos [September 17, 2001]
