An Open Letter to the Dean of SBE and all Economics Professors at Maastricht University (UM)
https://pinemaastricht.wordpress.com/pine-open-letter/?fbclid=IwAR3Sv7A1ReZTGUsd1Ks7FiMANBXOzCybqHpedMXG6Pnd2uuUyvHhDOM7JqE
Young people are increasingly stepping up to demand systemic change on many fronts — not just ecological but economic.
Here, it’s economic students blowing a hole into arguably THE greatest financial myth of all time — that banking corporations only lend money that they have. Total and complete BS. They create it out of thin air as debt. Why does this matter? When you add the fact that most money creation in our society originates from financial institutions as debt and that corporate money creation is THE greatest example of corporatization/ privatization in our society (a mammoth corporate coup since Art 1, Sec 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money), what we have is a political and financial system controlled by financial corporations.
We’re all in debt to financial corporations — individuals, governments, even non-financial corporations. That means we’re all serfs to financial institutions. Even if you personally have no debt, a portion of everything you buy is priced to account for the debt of the producer.
Democratizing our money system goes hand-in-hand with democratizing our political system and Constitution. Good luck trying to having a real political democracy when banking corporations can create money out of nothing and convert their financial power into political power. The FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) industry remains #1 in legalized bribery (political donations) and right up there in lobbying. It’s been this way (sometimes dropping all the way down to #2) for a long time.
It’s also is directly connected to saving the planet. How? Under the current debt-based corporate money system, the only way to collectively to pay off debt (not just the principle, but interest — which wasn’t created by financial corporations) is to race and compete with one another in a system where there isn’t enough money to pay off our loans. We must race as fast as possible to earn as much as we can in competition with others, which for many in our economy means working at jobs which convert natural resources into stuff that can be sold/consumed as quickly as possible, which of course results in massive amounts of ecological “externalities” (trash, garbage, pollution). We absolutely MUST plunder the planet to collectively pay off our debts. Of course, it’s in the end a losing proposition for the losers of this race. The result — like addicts, more debt to pay off past debt (which of course means more interest payments due which weren’t created). It’s why we have cyclical financial bubbles and bursts of those bubbles when people/governments/non-financial corporations see more of their debt payments going to pay just the interest.
We’re now in the midst of the mother of all bubbles (what some call “the everything bubble” — the bursting of which in the next year or two will be devastating.
The alternative is publicly-created debt-free and inflation-free money. WE decide how much is created and where it should be spent, not financial corporations. Human and physical infrastructure is the priority. It’s how to fund any real Green New Deal. It’s what the NEED Act of a few years ago was all about.
Of course, we don’t have the people power to force the end of the banking coup of money creation. That must be the first step. And that’s where the #WethePeopleAmendment sponsored by #MovetoAmendcomes in. We have to take charge of our political system.
It won’t be easy.
The Second National Bank of the U.S. threatened to cause a financial depression (by calling in all their loans) when their corporate charter was not going to be renewed in the 1830’s. Cleveland’s banks threatened default of the city (and followed through) when then Mayor Dennis Kucinich refused to sell the city’s public electrical utility to CEI, the private electric utility (tied to the banks). By the way, Kucinich was the main sponsor of the NEED Act when in Congress. He gets it. We must too.
Financial corporations have the most to lose to democratize our political and monetary systems. They will both push (lobbying and political investments/contributions) and pull (call in loans) as means to disrupt, demean and distract.
What choice to we have?
create real democracy 