Can We Balance Prosperity And Economic Justice?

Can We Balance Prosperity And Economic Justice?   By Jeff Bell

Yes, I believe we can.  (There is a tie to health and you’ll see it soon.)

Those of you who know me and have been following me for a while know that in addition to my passionate pursuit of uncommon and highly valuable health knowledge, I have long been a dedicated student of matters financial.  Parallel with my focus on health matters, I have made it my business to cut through the layers of disinformation surrounding money and to drink deeply from the well of knowledge that the financial “powers that be” do not want any of us to know. 

I’m quite serious about the “powers that be” not wanting us to know these things.  Recall that Henry Ford, (himself a long-standing member of the financial powers that be), once famously said, ““It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and money system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”   He later tried to deny making any such statement.  Lucky for him and his cronies, the Powers That Be, most of the people were asleep and paid no attention to his statement.  But perhaps it is high time that we look into what he revealed.

I am sharing this information with you on a health blog because I believe that financial health and physical, emotional and spiritual health are intimately tied together.  In the absence of financial health physical and emotional health often become much more challenging. Especially in these potentially bewildering economic times, understanding what is going on behind the curtains can really help to lower our stress levels.  Empowerment always starts with knowledge.  And as with many important areas of life, that knowledge that is most crucial for us is often the uncommon knowledge that is hardest to come by.

First we need a couple of simple currency definitions.  Currency can be divided into two basic types:  money backed by tangible assets and “fiat money”.

Money backed by tangible assets is usually currency backed by a specific amount of a precious metal, generally gold or silver.  Of course, I am talking about paper currency here – there is no need to back coins by precious metal as long the coins themselves are minted from precious metals.  (I realize that the everyday coins we mostly encounter and use these days have very little precious metal in them anymore, except for the very old ones, but let’s set that aside for the moment.)  So a thousand dollar bill would be backed by an amount of gold that is worth $1,000.00.  That makes sense, right?  Ah, but it gets complicated rather quickly.  Who determines how much gold is actually worth $1,000.00 and how is that determination made?  We’ll come back to that question.

Fiat money is money that is NOT backed by any tangible asset at all.  Instead it’s paper money that is worth a given amount because the government or other issuing agency says it is.  So its value is set by decree or “fiat”, and the money is actually worth that as long as we all agree that it is.  But as soon as a critical mass of the people, begin to doubt the value, the value actually declines.  This occurs because a lowered trust level actually decreases the purchasing power of the fiat money. Another way that fiat money can quickly lose its value is if one or more of the very large trading institutions begin “short-selling” the currency.  That is, they set contracts to sell it in the near term future for less than it is selling for now.  That will very quickly drive down the value of the money, often ruining the little people who are unfortunate enough to have their savings stored in that currency. 

When a fiat currency loses its value, regardless of the cause, this is known as “inflation”.  In addition to losses by deliberate manipulation by large financial institutions and “investors”, fiat currency generally loses its value if the too much money is printed.  I hear you asking, “How much is too much?”  Great question – we’ll come back to that in a minute.  Until very recently I was a strong advocate for a return to currency backed by tangible assets.  Until the early 1970s, the U.S. currency was at least to some extent tied to tangible assets.  It was backed by a certain amount of gold.  Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard and the U.S. currency has been pure fiat money ever since. Many of us in either the financial sector or who have been activists, working for a saner fiscal policy for the U.S., have promoted a return to tangible asset money, also known in some circles as “real money”.  The obvious implication is that fiat money is not real, not valid, and not an example of good fiscal policy.  Until recently I accepted that concept as self-evident truth, and really never thought to question it. 

Here’s what quickly caused me to question that “truth” and to subsequently change my views:  I learned that the strongest advocates for currency backed by tangible assets are actually the world’s largest and most powerful banks.  This got my curiosity up.  Just as I am immediately suspicious of any health agenda promoted by Big Pharma, I look carefully at any financial agenda promoted by the largest corporations and banks.  They generally can be counted upon to have their own interests at heart, and these are almost always in opposition to the interests of the vast majority of the human beings who live on this planet. Once I learned who was pushing hardest for tangible asset money I began to ask why.  You’d think that on the surface, the huge mega-banks would prefer fiat money that is easier for them to manipulate at will.  But, in fact, they do not. 

Here’s what we are not supposed to focus on:  The number of people who own and control these gargantuan banks are relatively few.  We outnumber them by several hundred million to one.  Let me say that again:  We outnumber them by several hundred million to one!

What is their most important goal?  Is it the ongoing accumulation and concentration of wealth?  You might think so, but that is a little off-target in a subtle but important way.  Their primary agenda is control, and wealth is merely the means to that control.  Think about it for just a minute: It has no effect on the lifestyle of the CEO of some huge Swiss bank that most people never even heard of, has a net worth of 6 billion dollars or 15 billion.  None at all.  However, that difference in wealth certainly does affect the degree of control over the rest of us and the planet that the CEO can wield. 

In fact, since we do outnumber these largest bankers by such a staggering ratio it is essential that they maintain control over us.  Otherwise when enough of us are hungry or lacking the other basics needed to sustain life, we will rise up and take their wealth away.  This is not theory.  History is replete with examples where this has occurred.

One of the most important hidden agendas of these mega-banks is to make sure that there are always currency scarcities.  That is how they manipulate us into competing against each other for the always-inadequate money supply.  This is their deliberate tactic for distracting us from even finding out who they are, let alone contesting their monopolies of wealth and control.  They love to see us playing our adult version of musical chairs.  As long as there are not enough chairs to go around, when the music stops, someone is a loser.  This holds true for money, as well.  If there is never enough money to go around, then all those except the mega-rich spend much of their time and energy competing with each other for the always scarce money.  That is just how the big banks like it.  We fight each other and they get to concentrate on ever greater levels of control and wealth concentration without much interference from us.

There are other reasons why these huge financial corporations see limiting currency supply as in their direct interests.  For example, if they can limit the currency that would otherwise be used by a resource-rich, developing nation, and thereby prevent it from developing and exploiting its own resources, the chances are good that they will sooner or later be able to exploit that country’s resources themselves.

To tie this all together, we need one more financial principle:  In order for an economy to function efficiently, smoothly and without significant poverty, there must be sufficient currency in circulation for the citizens to use to buy and sell the sum total of the available goods and services.  Of course, there are other requirements for an economy to function well, but without sufficient currency, even a “rich” country, as defined by its natural resources and/or its ability to produce valuable goods and services, will suffer significant poverty.  Further, without sufficient currency the growth of the economy will not keep up with the real richness of the country. 

Why do the mega-banks advocate for asset-backed currencies?  The reason is simple.  In almost all cases the amount of gold and silver, or other precious metals available to back the currency is much less than the sum total of the goods and services available to buy and sell.  So by promoting asset backed currencies they are ensuring that there will be currency shortages, and that we will be manipulated into competing with each other for this scarce resource – money.  They love this!  It is a key element of their agenda to maintain control.

How do we solve this problem?  There isn’t enough gold and silver in the world to back the amount of currency needed to buy and sell the available goods and services.  The amount of gold and silver that can be mined, world-wide, can never keep pace with the value of goods and services developed, world-wide.  Perhaps it could centuries ago, but not in the modern world. 

So backing the currency with gold and silver, (and other precious metals for that matter), insures that there will be widespread poverty, even if there is plenty of real wealth – goods, services, resources, etc.

But doesn’t fiat money always lead to inflation?  Isn’t that inevitable?  Not necessarily!  It actually turns out that there is nothing wrong with fiat money, as long as the amount issued is corresponds with the available goods and services that need to be bought and sold. 

For example, if a country produces an annual total value of goods and services in the amount of 180 billion dollars, and it has roughly 180 billion dollars in fiat money in circulation, the money holds its value just fine.  It turns out that the real backing of the money is the value of available goods and services and not some arbitrarily assigned monetary value of some metal that is in short supply. This has been tried many times throughout history on various scales.  And the theory stands true in the practical – the fiat money holds its value very well, with no persistent or significant inflation as long as the currency supply matches the supply of available goods and services. 

Of course, this article of necessity simplifies some of these currency principles.  (If it didn’t it would be book length.)  But the principles hold.  I hope you are skeptical about this.  I was at first.  I had been a staunch advocate of a return to tangible asset money for so very long that it took me awhile and some focused thinking to even open my mind to these ideas.  But after a while I did come around to this new way of looking at money.  If you want to learn more about these ideas and the historical facts that underlie them, I highly recommend one of the most interesting and radical books on money and finance I have ever read:  “The Web Of Debt” by the brilliant Ellen Hodgson Brown, JD.  I have read a great many books on finance and money.  And most of them are either comprised mostly of misinformation that serves to disempower the reader, or they are weighted down with such arcane and poorly explained material as to be all but unreadable.  In contrast, this book was filled with completely new information, and was so well written that I nearly sprained my wrist turning the pages. 

Although I hope that the principles presented in this post and more thoroughly explained in Ms. Brown’s book come to fruition soon, we still need survival strategies to get through the transition or transitions it will take to get to what’s next. I am convinced that our current system is not sustainable.  History teaches us that when the concentration of wealth and power reach certain critical thresholds, the wealth and power get redistributed.  Mostly this happens violently, and occasionally peacefully.  I hope it does happen peacefully, but I don’t think we can realistically count on that. 

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