
In the
middle of the 20th century, the "death of God" was proclaimed.
It was the detective work of an acquaintance of mine who gave me a glimpse
of the new god, one that also creates something out of nothing.
Mark Anielski, a Canadian economist, sent me a paper he Presented at
the 34th annual conference of the Canadian Economics Association in
June. The paper delves into the complex topic of money - the very lifeblood
of our economy - and its creation.

In it, he quotes Reginald McKenna, Britain's former Chancellor of the
Exchequer and former chairman of the Midland Bank: "I am afraid
that the ordinary citizen would not like to be told that banks can create
money and destroy money.
The amount of money in existence varies only with the action of banks
in increasing and decreasing deposits and bank purchases. Every loan,
overdraft, or bank purchase creates a deposit and every repayment of
a loan, overdraft or bank sale destroys a deposit."
We have
a debt-based fractional reserve money system that controls the blood
flow of the economy. Nearly all of our money supply comes in the form
of debt: mortgages, government debt (bonds), commercial debt, margin
debt (borrowing against equity capital gains) and individual debt (credit
cards). This all represents a claim against real wealth, which is finite.
There are basically two types of money - government-created, debt-free
notes (currency and coins) and bank deposits, created through loans.
Over 98 percent of the money in the US and Canada is now in the form
of debt!
"It must be recognized that deposits and loans only represent bookkeeping
entries. As such, when a bank charges interest on a new loan, it is
receiving income on a bookkeeping entry that it created out of nothing.
Thus, over time, it oversees the transfer of wealth to the bankers of
the world.
"Of special significance are bank loans given to government. Borrowing
money through banks makes governments dependent on the bankers, while
over time transferring wealth from taxpayers to the bankers to pay the
interest on these loans that were created out of nothing.
.Today, this
interest represents a large percentage of all taxes collected, with most
tax departments now representing a collection agency for world bankers,"
Aneilski says.
So when president-elect Bush talks about the tyranny of taxes, he's either
glossing over an important truth or is ignorant of a central economic
fact - our tax system is a mechanism of massive wealth transfer to the
rich.
The former director of the Bank of England, Lord Josiah Stamp, says candidly:
"If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the costs of your
own slavery, then let the banks create money. The modern banking system
manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding
piece of slight of hand that has ever been invented. Banking was conceived
in iniquity and born in sin."
That's not how our next president sees the economy. "This is a miracle,
but not a mystery," he told the Greater Des Moines Chamber of Commerce
in a December 1999 speech. "The momentum of today's prosperity began
in the 1980s (when Reagan went on his bank de-regulation bonanza) - with
(get this) sound money, deregulation, the opening of global trade and
a 25 percent tax cut...creating new wealth out of silicon and genius."
The total outstanding US debt has grown from $425 billion in 1950 to $25.6
trillion as of 1999. As of December 1999, US market credit debt exceeded
the entire $2.5 trillion debt of the Third World.
"It is important to realize that, because of the nature of the debt
laying claim to real wealth, in excess of the physical supply of real
wealth, it means the debt is effectively unrepayable," Anielski says.
"There is only one conclusion to this journey:
the repudiation of all debt or the collapse of the entire (economy) as
the debt becomes impossible to repay."
Speaking of the World Bank and IMF, Bush has said: "They should not
impose austerity, bailing out bankers while impoverishing a middle class.
They should not prop up failed and corrupt financial systems."
The Good Book says no man can serve two masters, God and mammon. But who
believes that anymore? Behold our new god.