| Sunday, February 16, 2003 |  |
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 Below is an article I wrote a number of years ago about how the money system works and what is wrong with it. Maybe I'd put more nuances in it today, but I still believe it is basically correct. Most people don't really have any clue about money and think it is being 'made' by doing good work. It isn't. It is being made by borrowing it from somebody who doesn't have it, but who invents it out of thin air. Which I think is alarming. I'm no economist, but I haven't heard anybody educated in economics challenge this. The feedback I've mostly gotten from experts is that it all doesn't really matter. Anyway, read on...
"Some of the problems with our prevalent economic system as I understand it is this:
Money is created by banks. In part by central banks who can make up amounts and lend them out, mainly to central governments, but also to regular banks.
The worst problem is not that the central banks are mostly outside the control of any elected representatives of the population, even though that is certain cause for some suspicion and alarm. In some areas, such as the U.S., the central bank is a completely privately owned institution, owned by its member banks. The central bank of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements in Basel Switzerland, is also not controlled or owned by any government, but is a corporation with stocks. It is located on land that is not considered part of Switzerland or any other country, it is not answerable to any public body, and it does its business in secret.
However, the worst problem is that interest is being charged for the money that is lent out. It might well be a good idea to use fiat money, that is, money that doesn't have any inherent value, but is only valuable because we trust that it is. All currencies on the planet are, as far as I know, fiat money. However, the problem is the interest.
[ Information | 2003-02-16 16:49 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 Few people seem to be aware of the existence of the Bank for International Settlements, also known as the BIS Bank. It is the central bank of central banks, located in Basel, Switzerland. It is no longer quite as unknown and hidden as it was. It has its own website now. When I last searched on the web there were only a few hundred entries about it, but now there's a lot more. The article below, 'Ruling the World of Money' which you also find here, is 20 years old, but gives a good overview of what the BIS bank is about.The membership of this club is restricted to a handful of powerful men who determine daily the interest rate, the availability of credit, and the money supply of the banks in their own countries. They include the governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank, and the German Bundesbank. The club controls a bank with a $40 billion kitty in cash, government securities, and gold that constitutes about one tenth of the world's available foreign exchange. The profits earned just from renting out its hoard of gold (second only to that of Fort Knox in value) are more than sufficient to pay for the expenses of the entire organization. And the unabashed purpose of its elite monthly meetings is to coordinate and, if possible, to control all monetary activities in the industrialized world.
[ Culture | 2003-02-16 16:49 | | PermaLink ] More >
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 Dan Hon has done an excellent analysis of CNN's doctoring of the transcript of Hans Blix' report to the U.N. Friday.After grabbing the text from the two transcripts, correcting for where the BBC inserted a whole bunch of whitespace, there it was. A count in Word says that there's 866 words in one version that aren't in the other. At all. And they're, variously, about Iraqi moves towards compliance and partial refutation of the evidence presented by Powell to the UNSC. Get that. CNN deliberately left out the things Blix said about Iraq complying with the UN resolution, and the parts where he refutes Colin Powell's evidence from the week before. Look for yourself. BBC's full version is here and CNN's fake version is here.
[ Politics | 2003-02-16 22:58 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Here's a wild story that might possibly shed some light on why the U.K. and Australia are so dogged in their support for the U.S. war plans, for no obvious good reason. Anti-gravity. Apparently both the U.K. and Australia are involved in a very hush-hush anti-gravity project with the U.S., and might have been promised that they can have the technology too, if they play nicely enough. Doesn't sound all crazy to me. There must be something of that magnitude at play, for those governments to risk everything, and go against the very stong opinions of their populations in backing a war that doesn't have a reason.
[ Science | 2003-02-16 23:10 | 0 comments | PermaLink ]
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 And, to avoid being all stuffy, go vote for the first annual Nude Blog Award, with categories such as 'Nudity in Design', 'Nudist with a Cause', and 'Weblogger we'd like to see nude'.
[ Inspiration | 2003-02-16 23:17 | | PermaLink ] More >
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