| Subject: | [socialcredit] Re: the goldsmith "fraud" story | | Date: | Thursday, June 19, 2008 20:43:00 (-0700) | | From: | william_b_ryan <william_b_ryan @.....com>
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Richard, I've archived some of our interesting dialog at
http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/werner/goldsmith.txt
To keep this conversation from becoming interminable, I've attempted to keep my
replies inserted below [Reply] very brief and to the point:-
Bill
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William,
You are falling for the propaganda of the bankers. Usury means interest. The
Bible forbids it. The bankers managed to convince the Bible scholars between the
16th and 17th century to suddenly see things differently, and came up with the
idea of distinguishing 'excessive interest' from 'interest', and only calling
usury the former. Convenient. A fairly see-through plan, but it has worked.
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[Reply] Whether or not the Bible actually forbids it is open for discussion.
But this seems suspiciously like the anti-semitic conspiracy theory that the
Jewish bankers conspired with the Calvinist reformers and Cromwell to introduce
the fractional reserve banking system for some nefarious purpose. I'm not even
sure that the goldsmiths were Jews or descended from Jews. The Jews had
previously been expelled from England and I do not think they had re-entered in
great numbers by the seventeenth century.
I quoted from two citations, the first from a scholar at Utah State University
summarizing Calvin's letter from 1645, and the second from an Islamic scholar at
an Islamic website, that say that there were two words in the Semitic languages
that were translated into English as the one word, "usury." This goes to the
argument that the Bible was written originally in Aramaic, then translated by a
non-native Aramaic speaker or speakers, first into Greek, then from Greek to
Latin. So errors were introduced when first translated into Greek nearly two
thousand years ago, that have been carried forward into the modern translations
that we now use.
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You certainly seem to have bought it, as you seem to think the modern
distinction is the accurate one. You also seem to think that before medieval
times people had it right, but the knowledge was temporarily lost.
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[Reply] Actually, much knowledge from antiquity was lost by the Middle Ages,
which is one reason why they are sometimes called the "Dark Ages."
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Actually, the further one goes back in time the clearer it becomes that
virtually all cultures and civilizations banned interest/usury. (e.g. Hindu
Sutras, Buddhist Jatakas, etc.).
Obviously the biggest problem with this elastic and convenient new
interpretation is that the distinction is entirely flexible concerning what is
considered excessive and what not...
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[Reply] It would certainly require value judgments on particular circumstances.
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the present-day 'expert' interpreters of the Bible would no doubt say that no
interest charged nowadays is 'excessive' hence there is no usury at all!
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[Reply] There are indeed extreme ideologues who say there should be no
intrusion into the market whatsoever. I do not believe in laissez faire in
matters of finance. I believe that the free market in goods and services
requires public oversight and regulation of the financial sector so that the
natural monopoly of finance is not abused.
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Interesting that you seem to think the Koran allows interest. I know quite a few
Muslims who spend more time reading it than I do, and perhaps than you, who think
about this differently, based on their reading of the Koran.
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[Reply] My citation was from an Islamic website.
-
Your interpretation is not convincing, though. Why would Islamic Banking then
exist? (Although it is anyway only a fig leaf, similar to the invention of
discounting in Europe several centuries ago to circumvent the ban on
interest/usury).
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[Reply] Economic progress required subterfuges to get around the pinheaded
legalists. Discounting was effectively charging interest, but the legalists were
too stupid to know that. The same is true in Islamic communities today, which
seem to have a preponderance's of pinheaded legalists. "Islamic Banking" in the
pure sense cannot exist, since a mass production economy that does not charge and
collect interest is an impossibility except in the minds of ideologues.
-
Actually the Bible is also quite clear about it: any kind of interest is
forbidden, see e.g. Deuteronomy 23:19: "Do not charge your brother interest,
whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest."
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[Reply] It does not say that any kind of interest is forbidden. 23:19 goes on
to say, "unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon interest."
-
The subtle distinction between usury and increase can be made, but this is not
fruitful, since the Bible condemns both: Ezekiel 18:8: "He that hath not given
forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand
from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between man and man."
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[Reply] From "John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes":
"Increase — Illegal interest.
"Iniquity — Injustice of every kind."
http://www.christnotes.org/commentary.php?com=wes&b=26&c=18
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That's of course also why the Jubilee cancels ALL debt, not just the debt with
'excessively high interest' or debt to the poor, but also the loans from the
professional 'money lenders' (bankers). This is also the case in the Babylonian
debt amnesty.
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[Reply] It was, for the time, a rationally applied accounting adjustment to
compensate for exponentially expanding debt that was however harmful to
creditors, regardless how they obtained their relationship with debtors, whether
just or unjust. Some of the debt was undoubtedly just, which means its
cancellation was unjust to the creditor. It is however possible to apply an
adjustment in such a way that it doesn't harm creditors, so that trade and
commerce might continue without disruption. I wish you would take up my offer to
discuss the Douglas A + B theorem which is predicated on something other than the
fallacious "debt virus" theory that you favor.
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Jesus was also pretty clear about his views of bankers and their fraudulent
activity: he threw them out. (In ancient times, bankers operated not only in
temples, but often as part of the temple administration - temple banks - which
were a commercially attractive proposition for those who controlled the temple,
since they could not resist the temptation to expand the role of deposit-taking
to one of fraudulently creating fictional deposits).
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[Reply] I don't think the money changers were bankers in the modern sense.
They were people who were haggling and selling the temple tokens that were
acceptable for sacrifice within the temple. Their haggling was undignified
within the temple, so Jesus threw them out. They had no relationship to
fractional reserve banking.
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Concerning the crucial issue of deposits: you wrote: " the existence of deposits
infers that someone must have deposited them". Do I understand you correctly that
you are saying that all deposits have actually been deposited by someone?
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[Reply] That is not my position; I was summarizing a portion of your argument.
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If so, then you seem blissfully unaware that through credit creation individual
banks have the ability to create new money out of nothing,
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[Reply] The theorem that I accept is that loans create deposits.
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and this takes the form of creating fictional deposits which were not deposited
by anyone. The fiction is, of course, that the bank pretends to have 'deposited'
the money, but the reality is that nobody, not even the bank actually made a
payment for the deposits when they come about through credit creation. Yes, the
bank writes the figures into people's bank accounts, but this is not equivalent
to 'making a deposit', because no money is transferred from anywhere else in the
economy to this deposit account. Hence no money was actually deposited. These
fictional or counterfeit deposits
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[Reply] They are neither fictional or counterfeit.
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are then presented by the holders and their banks - who are the accountants and
settlement system of the economy - as being totally equivalent to deposits that
were actually paid up.
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[Reply] They are completely equivalent to any other deposits inasmuch as all of
them are equivalent and fungible liabilities of the banks.
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Since the public is not aware that fictional deposits have been created (in
large scale), the public has been misled about the working of the financial
system. This is why I argue that the practice of banking is based on what
historically was a fraudulent process, and which has not materially changed today
(although the banking laws, sponsored by the bankers themselves, ensure that
technically this formerly fraudulent process is now not illegal).
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[Reply] Since the inception of the process it has never been fraudulent in law
or in fact. When granting loans, the goldsmiths did not give warehouse receipts
signifying that so much gold denominated in pounds was being held in deposit in
their vaults, but promissory notes promising to pay so much gold denominated in
pounds on demand. These were contracts calling for future performance.
Innes informs us that trade and commerce was primarily creditary or contractual,
rather than monetary in the commodity sense, from the earliest times. See the
Innes essays at
http://www.geocities.com/new_economics/innes/
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Since you were unaware of this fact I now understand your reluctance to
recognize the fraudulent historical origin of banking and continued dubious
practice today. First you need to become aware of this reality. I explain it in
chapter 12 of New Paradigm.
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[Reply] I have read it and continue to read it. Thank you for writing it and
making it available.
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