The Current Economic System

Sometimes we want to believe things that simply can't be supported by research or facts. One is that the current monetary system benefits the majority of the people and is environmentally responsible. The warning signs that the current financial system is broken are all around us; war, environmental destruction, loss of bio-diversity, poverty are not isolated political or corporate problems they are systemic to the financial system.

The number of leading economists that are breaking ranks with the established financial institutions is growing. Several noted economists are speaking out saying the current financial system is severely broken. That a change in the way we think about money is required for the benefit of the majority and the environment. They see that the current financial system has diverged from its two main roles those being a standard of value and medium of exchange.

Today more money is traded as a commodity than it is used to move commodities and pay wages. Currency trading takes away control from people, corporations, governments (social good) and put it in the hands of a few traders whose interest is only in profits not stability. In fact instability generate more profits. The suffering that the instability causes generates profits. This will continue until an instability that is too large to control occurs.

Witness today the mantra of economic growth and free trade that are not leading us toward economic justice and environmental sustainability. Rather they are taking us in the direction of increasing economic injustice and environmental destruction. The present day economic situation is taking the world back to feudalism where a few controls the majority of the wealth in the world and the rest become indentured slaves due to their inevitable financial debts.

When it comes to the environment the debate always turns to jobs versus the environment. These arguments not only miss the point they are constructed to instill fear and sustain the status quo. The evidence is mounting that in a resource scarce world, neither is possible without the other.

The current economic system produces an irreconcilable conflict between the goal of creating economically just and environmentally sustainable societies and embracing sustained economic growth. The current policies are constructed to produce more millionaires and billionaires. They are not designed to achieving justice (social, economic or environmental) and sustainability.

Economic War

The economic war, and it is a war, for control of the worlds supply of money is being waged every day. It is a war for energy supplies and the currency used for exchange of the energy (petrodollars). Ruinous interest rates and onerous terms of trade are killing millions of people on a plundered planet. Hunger, sickness, homelessness, unemployment and criminality kill them. At the extreme some people receive millions a day in interest and children are sold into sexual slavery to pay off her parents debts.

Workers within countries are being forced into a war of wages and benefits with the current "free trade' and Globalism movements. C. H. Douglas predicted some of the current problems with trade and the protests against Globalism in 1924. His proposal of "Social Credit" does not receive a lot of course time in college economic courses if it is even brought up at all. When it is there is a certain amount of intellectual dishonesty in the discussion.

In all wars there are casualties, dead soldiers, homelessness, a damaged and polluted environment. You are involved in an economic war every month when you have to pay your home mortgage or your credit card bills. You have been drawn into an economic war with your neighbors and other people like you across the nation and across the globe and you probably didn't even notice it.

Just like the shooting wars are a racket so too is the economic war. In the USA it is Congress that passes the laws and in the economic war this is where the battlefield is very heavily stacked against the individual consumer, citizen, voter, man or woman. In Congress the largest political contributions are the banks, credit cards companies, and consumer financial service companies (you know those service companies like debt collectors and you thought they were a service to you). Not big oil, not big pharmaceutical! A great big multibillion-dollar industry talking to Congress, whispering in their ear. Just like in a shooting war big money buys bigger and better guns. As in all wars, to the victor go the spoils, or in this case profits and not just good profits but extraordinary profits, unreasonable profits, unconscionable profits. This is a "feature" of government that is being copied all over the world from first world countries to third world countries. It is any wonder the third world countries are so heavily in debt?

Less than 1% of the population is now claiming ownership to almost 50% of the wealth and the trend is not in favor of the many but in favor of the few.

People control money (if they want to)

The Chinese parable of "The Monkey Master" is a story of what happens when a people wake up the their enslavement and take back control of their destiny. Money is a system designed by people, if it doesn't serve us we can redesign it. Many people in the past have done exactly this. There are examples of alternative currencies functioning for the benefit of all the people. Where there has been too much success, Worgl for example, the central bank of the country had stepped in and outlawed the alternative currency plunging the community back into economic depression.