SEPTEMBER 2
1839 – BIRTH OF HENRY GEORGE, ECONOMIST, POLITICIAN AND AUTHOR OF “PROGRESS AND POVERTY”
“[I]t is the business of government to issue money…To leave it to every one who chose to do so to issue money would be to entail general inconvenience and loss, to offer many temptations to roguery, and to put the poorer classes of society at a great disadvantage. These obvious considerations have everywhere, as society became well organized, led to the recognition of the coinage of money as an exclusive function of government. When, in the progress of society, a further labor-saving improvement becomes possible by the substitution of paper for the precious metals as the material for money, the reasons why the issuance of this money should be made a government function become still stronger. The evils entailed by wildcat banking in the United States are too well remembered to need reference. The loss and inconvenience, the swindling and corruption that flowed from the assumption by each State of the Union of the power to license banks of issue ended with the war, and no one would now go back to them. Yet instead of doing what every public consideration impels us to, and assuming wholly and fully as the exclusive function of the General Government the power to issue paper money, the private interests of bankers have, up to this, compelled us to the use of a hybrid currency, of which a large part, though guaranteed by the General Government, is issued and made profitable to corporations.”
1877 – BIRTH OF FREDERICK SODDY, NOBEL PRIZE RECIPIENT (CHEMISTRY) AND MONETARY REFORM AUTHOR
“There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. Our money system is nothing better than a confidence trick.”
SEPTEMBER 3
2014 – “CENTRAL BANK MONETARY POLICY ENABLES US TO PUT OFF REAL REFORMS” ARTICLE BY CHARLES HUGH SMITH
“I finally figured out that the core purpose of central banks’ monetary policy is to enable vested interests to avoid desperately needed reforms in the real economy. This might have been blindingly obvious to others, but I finally caught on to the dismaying reality: the only purpose of central bank monetary policy is to keep the bloated, corrupt, inefficient and self-liquidating vested interests of the state-cartel crony capitalism from having to suffer the consequences of real reforms. …
“In the U.S., we need look no farther than higher education, sickcare and national defense for state-cartels systems operating to benefit vested interests. The Federal Reserve’s policies of zero-interest rates (ZIRP) and free money for financiers have enabled these corrupt, self-serving, parasitic sectors to maintain their skims and bloated cost structure–but at the cost of hollowing out the economy and increasing the risk that the financial Ponzi scheme will collapse in a heap of leveraged phantom assets.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/09/central-bank-monetary-policy-enables-us-put-real-reforms.html
SEPTEMBER 4
2014 – QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON INDEPENDENCE AND MONETARY REFORM — VIDEO
Skip to 2:21:50 for the start of the question and answer session on how Scotland can change the banking and monetary system — not only in their own country but in setting a model for the world in democratizing money creation
2017 – LABOR DAY IN THE UNITED STATES
Begun by President Cleveland in 1894 as a means to distract attention and break solidarity of US workers from workers around the world that celebrated worker progress and activism on May Day (May 1).
The enactment of the National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act, HR 2990 in the last Congress, would create 7 million jobs. The jobs would focus on repairing our nation’s infrastructure. The debt would not need to be raised. Taxes would not need to be imposed. Funding from any other public program would not have to be shifted. Public creation and circulation of U.S. money is all that would be required. Just as the colonists did when fighting the British. Just as President Lincoln did during the 1860 when creating Greenbacks. Just as economists proposed under the “Chicago Plan” during the 1930’s to President Roosevelt to move the nation out of the Great Depression.
For more information on the NEED Act, go to http://www.monetary.org/
SEPTEMBER 5
1927 – BIRTH OF PAUL VOLKER, FORMER CHAIR OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD
QE3 (the third round of Quantitative Easing – the creation and distribution of money by the Federal Reserve, which went largely to financial and other corporations) is the “most extreme easing of monetary policy” that he could ever remember. “Another round of QE is understandable – but it will fail to fix the problem. There is so much liquidity in the market that adding more is not going to change the economy.”
2016 – REPORT ON SOVEREIGN MONEY COMMISSIONED BY ICELAND’S PRIME MINISTER IS RELEASED
“On September 5th, the consulting company KPMG released a new report commissioned by the Prime Minister of Iceland aiming to clarify the main features of a sovereign money system as advocated by the IMMR. The launch event in Reykjavik featured a very supportive speech from the Financial Times’ chief economists commentator Martin Wolf and was commented by the Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland.
“One knows a subject is being taken seriously when the world’s biggest consultancies and accountancy firms such as KPMG start looking at them. The monetary reform movement just passed this milestone this week after KPMG Iceland released a new report entitled “Money Issuance: Alternative Monetary Systems”. The ~40 page report (pdf) was commissioned by the Prime Minister’s office. It provides an overview of the sovereign money proposal, including a summary of the latest political developments and the academic debate. While the report is quite accessible to read, it does not provide any recommendations on whether sovereign money should be implemented or not.”
http://internationalmoneyreform.org/blog/2016/09/kpmg-iceland-report-sovereign-money/
SEPTEMBER 6
1877 – NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ANNOUNCING FORMATION OF FARMER’S ALLIANCE IN LAMPASES, TX
Farmers in the West and South organized to collectively sell their produce, educate one another on economic and political issues and take political action. Among the central issues explored by Alliances and the later Populist Party were the issues of banking and money creation. They supported the creation of postal savings banks. The Northern Alliance of farmers favored overwhelmingly reinstating government issuance of money (i.e. the Greenback during the Lincoln administration) while the Southern Alliance supported the creation of a “sub-treasury” in which the government would create an “elastic” money supply that would stretch to meet emergencies and contract again when the need passed. It could be founded on a commodity possessed by every farmer – grain. The money supply would expand or contract depending on the harvest, but would circulate just like any money.
1943 – DEATH OF RICHARD MCKENNA, FORMER PRESIDENT, MIDLANDS BANK OF ENGLAND
“I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.” (From a 1924 speech)
1951 – BIRTH OF WILLIAM BLACK, AMERICAN LAWYER, ACADEMIC, AUTHOR AND FORMER BANK REGULATOR
“The best way to rob a bank is to own one.”
SEPTEMBER 7
1867 – BIRTH OF JP MORGAN, JR, BANKER
Morgan was instrumental is providing financing several nations during World War I, including loans and other financial support to France, England and Russia. Accusations were made that this financial commitment led him to influence the Wilson Administration to enter the war.
2006 – STATEMENT OF NOURIEL ROUBINI, US ECONOMIST
Roubini warns the International Monetary Fund about a coming US housing crash, failures of mortgage-backed securities failures, bank failures, and a major recession. His work was based partly on his study of recent economic crises in Russia (1998), Argentina (2000), Mexico (1994), and Asia (1997). His warnings proved to be correct.
2013 – DEATH OF ALBERT BARTLETT, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” [Note: Exponential growth requires exponential resources – which are finite. If we have no energy, we have no economy. Also, exponential growth is mandatory under a debt-based money system since exponential natural resources must absolutely be plundered to produce endless stuff to sell to pay off the endless compounding/exponential interest connected to the endless debt. Multiple crashes are inevitable.]
SEPTEMBER 8
1999 – DEATH OF HERBERT STEIN, FORMER CHAIRMAN OF PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISORS
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
[Note: Sounds like our current debt-based money system – an unsustainable system which can only continue if more debt is issued, which happens by banks when they issue loans and purchase treasury bonds, bills and notes]
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Why this calendar? Many people have questions about the root causes of our economic problems. Some questions involve money, banks and debt. How is money created? Why do banks control its quantity? How has the money system been used to liberate (not often) and oppress (most often) us? And how can the money system be “democratized” to rebuild our economy and society, create jobs and reduce debt? Our goal is to inform, intrigue and inspire through bite size weekly postings listing important events and quotes from prominent individuals (both past and present) on money, banking and how the money system can help people and the planet. We hope the sharing of bits of buried history will illuminate monetary and banking issues and empower you with others to create real economic and political justice. This calendar is the original project of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee. Adele Looney, Phyllis Titus, Donna Schall, Leah Davis, Alice Francini, Deb Jose and Greg Coleridge helped in its development. It is currently updated by Greg Coleridge. Please forward this to others and encourage them to subscribe. To subscribe/unsubscribe or to comment on any entry, email monetarycalendar@yahoo.com
To see the calendar year-to-date, go to https://monetarycalendar.wordpress.com/
A second historical calendar, the REAL Democracy History Calendar, in many ways complements this calendar. For information, go to https://realdemocracyhistorycalendar.wordpress.com/about/
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