| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Re: the goldsmith "fraud" story | | Date: | Monday, June 23, 2008 07:51:56 (-0700) | | From: | Joe Thomson <thomsonhiyu @....ca>
|
| In reply to: | Message 5399 (written by william_b_ryan) |
(Richard Werner):- 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.
------------------------------------------------------
(Bill Ryan):- [Reply] I have read it and continue to read it. Thank you
for writing it and making it available.
-------------------------------------------------
(Joe Thomson asks):- Would it be possible to reproduce "chapter 12 of New
Paradigm" in whole, or the relevant parts of it here, so that we all might
read it? Or would this violate the copyright? Perhaps, considering the
very interesting discussion you've been having with Richard, he might give
permission, since it might help to further explain his position?
----- Original Message -----
From: <william_b_ryan@yahoo.com>
To: <socialcredit@elistas.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 8:43 PM
Subject: [socialcredit] Re: the goldsmith "fraud" story
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.
------------------------------------------------------
[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.
-
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. ------------------------------------------------------
[Reply] Actually, much knowledge from antiquity was lost by the Middle
Ages, which is one reason why they are sometimes called the "Dark Ages."
-
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...
------------------------------------------------------
[Reply] It would certainly require value judgments on particular
circumstances.
-
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!
------------------------------------------------------
[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.
-
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.
------------------------------------------------------
[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).
------------------------------------------------------
[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."
------------------------------------------------------
[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."
------------------------------------------------------
[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
-
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.
------------------------------------------------------
[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.
-
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).
------------------------------------------------------
[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.
-
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?
------------------------------------------------------
[Reply] That is not my position; I was summarizing a portion of your
argument.
-
If so, then you seem blissfully unaware that through credit creation
individual banks have the ability to create new money out of nothing,
------------------------------------------------------
[Reply] The theorem that I accept is that loans create deposits.
-
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
------------------------------------------------------
[Reply] They are neither fictional or counterfeit.
-
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.
------------------------------------------------------
[Reply] They are completely equivalent to any other deposits inasmuch as
all of them are equivalent and fungible liabilities of the banks.
-
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).
------------------------------------------------------
[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/
-
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.
------------------------------------------------------
[Reply] I have read it and continue to read it. Thank you for writing it
and making it available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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