MODERN COMMERCIAL 'CREDIT'

by Betty Luks
We have come a long way from the days when the fraudster money changers secretly issued their tickets 'redeemable in gold on demand' to the tune of nine times the amount of gold they had stored in their strong rooms; gambling on the daily chance of only one in ten people ever coming in to claim their gold. Not unlike the basis upon which the Insurance Industry must have got started, and still 'gambles'. This was in the days of 'gold backed' money systems. When the nations went off the gold standard, we were then told the fiction that they only loaned out the monies deposited with them upon which the depositors earned interest.
These days they don't even pretend they lend out only the monies (or gold) deposited with them.

Above a doorway's upper-level entrance to Moody's Investors Service, 99 Church Street, New York stands a huge 12-square-metre relief covered in gold leaf which reads: "Commercial credit is the invention of the modern world, and only the enlightened and best-governed nations are entitled to it. Credit is the life's breath of the free system in modern trade. It has contributed more than a thousand times as much to the wealth of the nations than all the mines in the world."
As the authors of Global Trap: Globalisation & the Assault on Democracy & Prosperity (1996) tell their readers: "Beyond this gilded creed lies a domain of power and secrecy that has no peer. Nowhere else in the world are the secrets of so many governments and companies so well guarded."

In truth, 'commercial credit' is not the invention of the modern world, this type of 'credit', (read debt…ed) i.e., fraudulently 'creating' money 'out of nothing', claiming it as their own 'legal currency', to be repaid - with interest, probably goes back, at least, to the Sumerian civilisation.
It was in 1694AD that the shadowy forces behind the Bank of England gained the power to create the nation's money supply 'out of nothing' -- claiming it as their own, to be repaid with interest -- thus usurping the prerogative of the King, and thereby becoming more powerful than the King in Parliament. In the U.S.A. the same shadowy forces took control of the nation's money supply when they set up the Federal Reserve in 1913.

The Good News
At last! The people of the world are waking up to the fact they have been defrauded of their true wealth and inheritance. Many are beginning to realise 'money' is simply another name for a national or community accounting system, and because they are tired of the fraudsters 'lording it over them', are setting up their own accounting systems!
Having been 'de-hypnotised', they have come to the realisation the banker's 'credit' is a form of "debt-black-magic", it has no real substance, it has no intrinsic value in itself, the bankers didn't earn it in the sense of payment for work done -- and yet it is being used to enslave us all.

Thanks to the work of such groups as the French-Canadian "Pilgrims of St. Michael" many people of other nations are studying social credit.
And you can bet your fraudulently-created bottom dollar, the Money Power, the political parties and Governments know about social credit. Social Credit is the one thing that really worries them.

The more who understand the basics of social credit means that more and more of mankind will grasp the truth… more and more people of every nation will grasp what is the true purpose of a money system and will say to their political and financial masters: "Enough is enough of this fraudulent tyranny!"

SOCIAL CREDIT ACTIVITIES

by Diane Boucher
Diane Boucher is a French-Canadian social crediter. Because English is not Diane's native tongue we have had to make some very minor changes to her text for ease of reading. Her news is most encouraging. Diane had the privilege of attending a conference in Poland where she spoke with representatives of the Church as well as academics, including economists, about Social Credit. She wrote of what came out of the conference:

"The subject of the conference in Zakopane was about practical ways to implement social credit policies. (The) people interested in social credit in Poland do not want to use a top-down strategy but a bottom-up one. That is to say they choose not to implement social credit at the national level, but to create small communities using local monies. Maybe you know that there are now more than 3000 experiments of local monies in the world and many were supposedly inspired by the story of five men establishing a social credit system on an island after their ship sank. The story of the five men on an island was published by the Pilgrims of St. Michael in ten different languages. People in the Louis Even Institute think that the way Poland chose (to go) is a good way to begin an implementation of a social credit system."

ARGENTINIAN "CREDITO SOCIALO"
by Diane Boucher
"After the IMF destroyed completely the financial system in Argentina, people were suffering starvation. I saw a film on DVD relating that 80 children were dying each day from having no food to eat. So people began to exchange goods for goods (barter) in local markets. After a while, to alleviate the problems of barter, they printed money called "credito socialo". Yes! Yes! They used the story Louis Even wrote about establishing a social credit system on an island! It worked well -- many thousands of people used the new money printed not by the government but by the people. Representatives from the Pilgrims of St. Michael, Canada met the organizers in Argentina only recently.

IMF ordered Government - "inflate the currency"
A few months ago we were told that the IMF gave orders to the government in Argentina to print a lot of "creditos socialos" to create *inflation of the "creditos socialos" and destroy the value (purchasing power…ed) of this money. The government acted as a "faux-monnayeur" (I don't know the English translation for the one who makes 'false' money.) It is amazing! But terribly sad to see how a government could be against its own people!
Because of (the flooding of the market) with "creditos socialos", the people abandoned them and now they use electronic money on smart cards."

Definition of monetary Inflation: An increase in the money supply accompanied by an equivalent rise in prices. This is equivalent to depreciation of the purchasing power of the unit of money.
Further reading: "Freedom and Inflation" by Bryan .W. Monahan. $2.00 posted.

The compensated discount 'price'
Diane Boucher continues: "But the correct answer to this problem of inflation of money would have been to implement the compensated discount. This is a practical way to look at the problem of whether or not to implement the discount. In my view, in a social credit system fully implemented for many years, each one (each citizen…ed) in a country would receive very high dividend cheques and the biggest problem would be, as usual, keeping the value of the money stable.
The compensated discount is the reverse of the A+B Theorem, (the chronic shortage of purchasing power exacerbated by the automated industrialised system…ed) the solution for the devil of inflation viewed as money going out of the system TOO FAST (a dynamic view!!!).
In my opinion Social Credit is basically an anti-inflation theory -- and more than that if you consider that the dividend resolves the problem of each one having enough money to buy the necessities."

IN REGARD TO CONSUMER DISCOUNTS OR SUBSIDIES

Jeremy Lee had this to say
During the Second World War in Australia, the departure of about 10% of the population for wartime activity left gaping holes in the production system and shortages of essentials, from building materials to barbed wire. Shortages threatened a spiral of prices (too much money chasing too few goods…ed). The wartime government tried wage and price controls. But prices continued to rise.
The government then introduced subsidies at the point of sale on essentials - bread, coal, fuel, wool and other essential foodstuffs. Although these price discounts were paid from taxes, thus postponing a later cost effect, it was a good demonstration of a technique that was successful.

The Australian Year Books for the period show three years where there was no inflationary rise at all and, in fact, costs dropped slightly. There was no recessive side effect. All that happened was that some money was injected into the economy in a way that countered the otherwise inevitable cost squeezes that the debt system generates. The same system was used in New Zealand, Britain and I believe Canada.
When war ended there was immediate and shadowy pressure to dismantle the scheme. The Chifley Labor government dismantled the scheme in 1947.

The Opposition, consisting of a Liberal-Country Party Coalition, campaigned for the 1949 Federal election on the slogan "We'll put the shillings back into the pound" (modern parlance - "cents back into the dollar") Asked how they would do this, a number of politicians including Sir Robert Menzies and Jack McEwen said they would immediately return to the wartime consumer subsidy scheme which, they said, did not need price and wage control to work effectively. But once elected, the policy mysteriously disappeared!

When I first toured New Zealand in 1969 the scheme still applied to bread and milk. Bread was a penny a loaf and milk fourpence a quart. The poorest family could still feed itself. In Britain the dismantling of the scheme was the price required for entry into the (then) European Common Market (now the EU). In Indonesia they had a similar scheme under Suharto, which brought the price of rice, cooking oil and fuel within reach of all.
One of the demands of the IMF when it intruded during the 1992 financial crisis was the dismantling of price subsidies. The result was the revolution which overthrew Suharto and started a period of crisis.

A consumer subsidy is different to a producer subsidy in that it is only applied to goods actually sold. There is no chance of subsidising an article for which there is no demand. Therefore, it allows supply and demand to work by ensuring that "consumers who want something can pay for it."

Further reading: For those who want to know more about Social Credit the League's Book Services carry the story of "The Island and the Tree", the 5-part series "An Introduction to Social Credit" which gives simply that - an introduction to the basic concepts of social credit, plus a full range of C. H. Douglas' works. Send to any of the League Book Services for a book list.

THE TRUE FUNCTION OF CREDIT IN A MODERN ECONOMY

CAN'T BLAIR (AND HOWARD) SEE THE COUNTRY IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE?

THE OLIGARCHS OR HOW THE VIRGIN BECAME A WHORE

by Uri Avnery From Israel Shamir July 31, 2004:
This is a TV series about Russia. But it could have been about Israel. Or about the United States. It is entitled "The Oligarchs" and is now being screened on Israeli television. Some of its episodes are simply unbelievable - or would have been, if they had not come straight from the horses' mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about their despicable exploits. The series was produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia.
The "oligarchs" are a tiny group of entrepreneurs who exploited the disintegration of the Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state and to amass plunder amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they took control of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews.

The rule of the few
In popular parlance they are called "oligarchs" - from the Greek word meaning "rule of the few".
In the first years of post-Soviet Russian capitalism they were the bold and nimble ones who knew how to exploit the economic anarchy in order to acquire enormous possessions for a hundredth or a thousandth of their value: oil, natural gas, nickel and other minerals. They used every possible trick, including cheating, bribery and murder. Every one of them had a small private army. In the course of the series they are proud to tell in great detail how they did it.
But the most intriguing part of the series recounts the way they took control of the political apparatus. After a period of fighting each other, they decided that it would be more profitable for them to cooperate in order to take over the state.

At the time, President Boris Yeltsin was in a steep decline. On the eve of the new elections for the presidency, his rating in public opinion polls stood at 4%. He was an alcoholic with a severe heart disease, working about two hours a day. His bodyguard and his daughter in practice ruled the state; corruption was the order of the day. The oligarchs decided to take power through him. They had almost unlimited funds, control of all TV channels and most of the other media. They put all these at the disposal of Yeltsin's re-election campaign, denying his opponents even one minute of TV time and pouring huge sums of money into the effort.
(The series omits an interesting detail: they secretly brought over the most outstanding American election experts and copywriters, who applied methods previously unknown in Russia.)

The campaign bore fruit: Yeltsin was indeed re-elected. On the very same day he had another heart attack and spent the rest of his term in hospital. In practice, the oligarchs ruled Russia. One of them, Boris Berezovsky, appointed himself Prime Minister. There was a minor scandal when it became known that he (like most of the oligarchs) had acquired Israeli citizenship, but he gave up his Israeli passport and everything was in order again.
By the way, Berezovsky boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya, in which tens of thousands have been killed and a whole country devastated. He was interested in the mineral resources and a prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an end to the peace agreement that gave the country some kind of independence. The oligarchs dismissed and destroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular general who engineered the agreement, and the war has been going on since then.

In the end, there was a reaction
Vladimir Putin, the taciturn and tough ex-KGB operative, assumed power, took control of the media, put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky is in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in Israel, another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here- Israel.)
Since all the exploits of the oligarchs occurred in public, there is a danger that the affair might cause an increase in anti-Semitism in Russia. Indeed, the anti-Semites argue that these doings confirm the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a document fabricated by the Russian secret police a century ago, purporting to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to control the world.

Moving from Russia to America - the same thing happened, of course, in the US, but more than a hundred years ago. At the time, the great "robber barons", Morgan, Rockefeller et al, all of them good 'Christians', used very similar methods to acquire capital and power on a massive scale. Today, it works in far more refined ways.
In the present election campaign, the candidates collect hundreds of millions of dollars. George W. Bush and John Kerry both brag about their talent for raising enormous sums of money. From whom? From pensioners? From the mythical "old lady in tennis shoes"? Of course not, but from the cabals of billionaires, the giant corporations and powerful lobbies (arms dealers, Jewish organizations, doctors, lawyers and such). Many of them give money to both candidates - just to be on the safe side.
All of these expect, of course, to receive a generous bonus when their candidate is elected. "There is no such thing as a free lunch", as the right-wing economist Milton Friedman wrote (so said Malcolm Fraser former Australian prime minister…ed). As in Russia, every dollar (or rouble) invested wisely in an election will yield a ten or hundred-fold return.

The problem is rooted in the fact that presidential candidates (and all other candidates for political office) need ever increasing amounts of money. Elections are mainly fought out on TV and cost huge sums. It is not a coincidence that all the present candidates in the US are multi-millionaires.
The Bush family has amassed a fortune from the oil business (helped by its political connections, of course.) Kerry is married to one of the richest women in America, who was once the wife of the ketchup king, Henry John Heinz. Dick Cheney was the chief of a huge corporation that has garnered contracts worth billions in Iraq. John Edwards, candidate for Vice President, has made a fortune as a trial lawyer.
From time to time there is talk in America about reforming election finances, but nothing worthwhile ever comes of it. None of the oligarchs has any interest in changing a system that enables them to buy the government of the United States.

In Israel, too, talk about "Money and Power" is now in vogue
Ariel Sharon and one of his two sons have been suspected of accepting bribes from a real estate magnate. An indictment was blocked by the new Attorney General who happened to be appointed by the Sharon government at the height of the affair. Another investigation into Sharon and his sons is still pending. It concerns millions of dollars that reached his election coffers by roundabout routes, crossing three continents.
Shimon Peres' connections with multi-millionaires are well-known, as are the huge sums poured out by American Jewish multi-millionaires for extreme right-wing causes in Israel.
One of the Russian oligarchs is the part-owner of the second biggest Israeli newspaper.

A political scandal concerning the Israeli Minister for Infrastructure has mushroomed into an affair involving giant multi-national corporations competing for contracts for supplying natural gas to the Israeli Electricity Company, an affair of billions in which underworld figures, politicians and private investigators play their parts. This disclosure has made it clear to Israelis that here, too, politicians of the highest rank have long ago been acting as mercenaries for powerful financial interests.

These facts must alarm everybody who cares about democracy - in Israel, Russia, the United States (Australia …ed) and elsewhere. Oligarchy and democracy are incompatible.
As a Russian commentator in the TV series said about the new Russian democracy: "They have turned a virgin into a whore."

BASIC FUND

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB

SOUTH AUSTRALIA'S STATE WEEKEND

NATIONAL WEEKEND COMING UP

BOOKS, BOOKS FROM THE MAILING SERVICES

"Not Happy, John" by Margo Kingston: Solicitor, lecturer in business law and political commentator, Sydney Morning Herald journalist Margo Kingston thinks its crunch time for Australia. She tells us she isn't interested in the old, out-worn left-right rhetoric, what she is interested in is the urgent need for Australians to reassert the core values that once made this nation a humane, egalitarian, liberal democracy - the core values with which she agrees. We could agree with her on many issues.
She writes that she is not happy with the way Howard:
o He snuck us into the Iraq war without ever really telling us why.
o Trampled on our democratic right to know.
o Wants to give the Media Moguls control of ALL our news.
o Lets Big Donations/Big Business share a barbecue with him and George.
o Uses "globalisation" to avoid accountability.
o Treats Australians as passive consumers not as CITIZENS and people of goodwill.
And much, much more. Paperback, pp446, $30.00 posted.

"Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. Mr. Gatto spells out so clearly just what is the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling - and has been for many, may years! Central to understanding Gatto's warnings is understanding schools are not failing; they are doing exactly what they were intended to do… Dumb our children down!! This is an excellent expose of the hidden agenda in modern education. $28.95 posted.

"The Disaster Road" by Jean Wallis. The book should be read in conjunction with John Taylor Gattos' "Dumbing Us Down". Mrs. Wallis fought hard to warn Australians what was happening to the education system in the 1970-80's. $18.00 posted.