Path to Perdition

The world has been fixated for decades in using GDP (gross domestic product) as measurement of economic growth thereby replacing all humane and spiritual values as a means of providing balance to what not only genuine growth is, but whether in the process we are leading even vaguely meaningful lives. The tendency to focus exclusively on the misguided notion of ‘productivity’ at all costs has led to the kind of ‘growth’ that is not only destructive all round but ruinous to our health as human beings.

Sofsky goes on to write about the extermination process of the CCs (bold and italics mine):

“A death factory is a work organization whose purpose is the annihilation of large numbers of human beings…Mass annihilation was organized on the basis of a division of labour. The process was integrated into a kind of assembly line, its stations coordinated in temporal sequence. Killing was mechanized by the installation of stationary gas chambers, into which hundreds of persons were lured and then poisoned by carbon monoxide or hydrocyanic acid fumes. The death factory was an apparatus that functioned smoothly, virtually trouble-free, working at a high capacity and speed. A death train arrived at the ramp in the morning; by the afternoon, the bodies had been burned, and the clothing brought to the storerooms.” (p259, Sofsky)

No doubt, ‘productivity’ can be applied to the above. No doubt efficiency and high volume of results are showcased by the quote. But to even ask at what ‘price’ belies the horror of what Sofsky’s words describe. Yet we have bought into this system where whatever the human, environmental and spiritual cost, there is the need to mindlessly churn out stuff to keep GDP ‘growth’ going. Never mind the non-monetary cost, anything that doesn’t add to the mechanized numerical increase of monetary measurement is just an externality (economists love this term). The human being and the whole world is an externality: so you have the dangerously ridiculous situation of mindless ‘production’ and ‘growth’ while destroying the planet and its life forms that sustain that ‘growth’ apparently for the good of the human species.

Therefore, many economists would be aptly represented as dangerous bozos.

Normally people who think like the above are clinically diagnosed with various mental issues, but up to now, we give them titles, degrees, Nobel prizes and call them ‘experts’, ‘leaders’ and ‘captains’ of industry. And so the term GDP, in honour of such illustrious ones, will be used here as gDp which signifies gross Destructive product as a more accurate way to depict their fantasy of 'growth'. [For more details on new ways of measuring growth and the blatant harmful nature of GDP as it transforms into gDp, please see the earlier posts at this site.]

While some of us struggle to bring across the facts to help the rest of the world to come to an understanding as to why GDP = gDp, a likely scenario that will develop increasingly is one where GDP as a measurement will be clung onto while different ways of measuring progress like the GPI, or Genuine Progress Indicator, may be used in tandem with it to provide ballast. But either the GPI or something similar will finally have to replace the GDP/gDp as a growth measure.

In the end, the way we destroy the natural world, its ecosystems and our selves with gDp is parallel to the death factories where we are in effect using the misguided notions of neoclassical economics meshed with fear and anxiety promoted by the controllers of the world to forge a world of Terror: maintain a system of production that creates inequality throughout the globe through exploitation of human and natural resources resulting eventually in a culling of the global population as a way of limiting population growth and further competition for resources.

The 20^th century has seen the ultimate attempt by the OT to assert its control over all of us by excessive mechanization and dehumanization of the entire planet (bold and italics). As Sofsky says:

“Along with the state monopoly on violence, rational bureaucracy, and organized work, modernity has also given rise to sites of discipline, surveillance, and conditioning. Modernity has confined human beings for life and trained them to be obedient, docile subjects. The manufacturing plant, industrial factory, and administrative office are the centres of bookkeeping and bureaucratic filing, economic exploitation and political rule. However, the military barracks, prison, penal colony, hospital, workhouse, and insane asylum – these total institutions are the laboratories of power. Here, far from the scrutiny of public surveillance, a special agenda is pursued: the transformation of human beings by other human beings…But in the concentration camp, no one was supposed to be healed, educated, or trained to obedience. Absolute power makes use of the technology of the disciplines, liberates them from their aims, and transforms them into instruments of terror. Its systematic nature is based on this transfer of the disciplines of control, on the coerced unification of action, its Gleichschaltung [“forcible coordination” or reorganizing all social, political, and cultural organizations to be controlled and run according to Nazi ideology and policy]; on minute, total surveillance and control.” (p277, Sofsky)

Again look at how our daily schedules and our entire lives have had all sequence of time come under fitting into the murderous Procustean bed of the work flow. Virtually every aspect and time frame of our existence has been absorbed and forced into the “forcible coordination” of survival, attending to material needs, and fear and trembling not only about our future and that of our loved ones, but the saturation of violence and mistrust bred across the world (played up to a scatological degree by the mass media).

The ultimate sign of victory for the “forcible coordination” of our existence to the capitalist structure of monetary growth and value is the belief that ‘time is money’ and phrases like ‘buying time’. We have lost all control of our lives when we are plugged into a system of control, like in the CC, where our entire value system and the way we ‘spend our time’ is crunched and assimilated into the living dead concept of money being the centre of gravity of the world. Space-time and gravity are no longer natural phenomena and part of cosmic laws, they have undergone with us the “forcible coordination” into adjusting to acknowledging and worshipping money and those who control it as the blasphemous multi-headed hydra at the centre of darkness.

Before examining how the OT has tried to control all of us, we need to look closer at what the ideology of control they have been carefully and successfully pulling across the globe. This may sound difficult to accept at first, but careful thought and researching and the willingness to suspend preconditioned thought will help give a different perspective to the world we are living in.

The ideology that the promoters of Terror have used to spread the gospel of hate, prejudice, destruction and domination is known to us today as ‘democracy’, not Democracy as we have a theoretical or intuitive understanding of, but ‘democracy’ as spread by major proponents of this ideology. This is why it is hard to spot and come to grips with it because it is like the most insidious of viruses – it masks itself as that which is ‘helpful’ to the individual/society but is in effect the start of a destructive consumption of life.

First, try this exercise: spend some time thinking of what you think genuine freedom and Democracy is for an individual and for a society, a nation, and the rest of the world. Write it down irrespective of whether it sounds ‘utopian’. Be honest about it as it is a private exercise. Compare what you have written (take your time with this) to what you will read further on. [Stop reading this post here, and try this exercise. After thinking through what you’ve written, then continue reading on. But, yes, I already here the objection: ‘who has the time….?’]

Below are some aspects of what ‘democracy’ as an ideology, masquerading as Democracy as a political philosophy or idea, has tried to do so as to enslave us:

1. Follow the ‘American’ way unconditionally according to the diktats of, for instance, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime (you can look at this in the context of almost any US administration in living memory with arguably the exception of Kennedy’s). Bear in mind that both Bushes have openly declared that they have “hate” in their “hearts” towards their so-called ‘enemies’. This is a matter of public record, check it up. This was used at least in relation to North Korea and its nutty (no, not the lovely Thelonious Monk piece) leader. We would normally link those who call themselves ‘leaders’ and voice out hate openly for others as leaders of another sort, but certainly not of Democracy

2. This means: unimpeded access by the US and its so-called allies to (this is not in reference to the people of the countries but the network of controllers who secretly run the country, government, business, media, pharmaceuticals, etc) all countries and economies throughout the globe for what suits their own interests

3. Meaning: unimpeded access by the controlling cabal in the ‘US’ (what we term ‘America’ today is anything but America) to all natural resources of all kinds whether it is oil (which requires control of Middle East oil supplies) or any natural resource to promote ‘growth’ and GDP (gDp) at the expense of all life and human welfare

4. The ‘American’ way means a one superpower world and all those aligned to it who have as is possible complete corporate, financial, media control of the world. This is sometimes achieved through utilizing corruption and subversion of other governments elsewhere – especially those that resist the ‘American’ way openly – with the use of US fiat currency (which is worthless like any currency that is not backed by precious metals) as the dominant means of economic and political control, followed by black operations and military force. Interesting thing: if you listen to US military officers who speak their mind freely, they’ll mention that they get themselves and their men in ‘trouble spots’ largely due to the CIA’s shenanigans in various states, and their bamboozling politicians, economic bigwigs and defense department bureaucrats in US of A

5. The manipulation and control of world bodies like the UN, WTO (World Trade Organization) and World Bank which serves as a means to hold to ransom, debt, bondage and merciless exploitation people and resources of poorer states by the controllers who have ensconced themselves by hijacking a great nation like America with their viral ideology of ‘democracy’

6. Promotion of wars and the armament industry as a means of fuelling gDp and ensuring some form of global dominance. The best way is to keep the world divided through constant conflict as witnessed from wars throughout the third world and the criminal war in Vietnam which almost sent that state back into the stone age; never mind the wars with Iraq, Afghanistan and prodding of North Korea into a striptease nuclear brinksmanship

7. The need to curtail civil liberties in America which championed Democracy but has been usurped by the cabal as it spreads the ideology of ‘democracy’ via buying over politicians, corporate control of the media, suppression of anything in the media that nationally promotes spiritual learning, thinking and questioning the role of military might and imperialism or material obsession, and spread of capitalist ideology (and gDp)

8. Promote the idea that freedom means excessive and destructive individualism at the expense of everyone and everything else

9. Final solution to destroy the remnants of Democratic America’s civil liberties: creation of the Orwellian situation of permanent war, where spreading war is called spreading ‘peace’, the mind-numbing-soul-destroying promotion of double speak in spreading falsehood, false flag operations by the CIA that subverts many states and national interests by spreading ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ there as opposed to Democracy

10. To consolidate this in a one superpower world, you need to manufacture a massive attack on your soil: September 11^th, 2001. Create a tragic and horrific incident in which ‘two planes’ caused three high rise modern towers to collapse in a meltdown and in which, against all laws of probability, remnants of passport or identification papers were found among the wreckage belonging to the ‘hijackers’ (!)

11. Manipulation and aggravation of a permanent state of war between the Muslim states and others (all of whom also have the their fair share of fruitcase – one step above nutcake -- terrorists) as part of promoting the grander scheme of Terror

12. Further acts of terror within the US (remember those random sniper shootings of civilians post- 9-11?) to cause permanent state of siege that could possibly lead to a suspension of all civil liberties as well as the US Constitution; there is also the convenient establishment of CCs – yes, concentration camps – for US citizens (or any other ‘undesirables’) under the auspices of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency): a search on the Net will provide visual evidence of these camps

First, reactions might be -- well this all very imaginative and not really new and things are not that bad. Really? Why is there a constant state of anxiety and terror being spread conveniently all over the world…where does all the funding come from. How convenient it is, that the state of ‘terror’ we have been put in has led to the rise of constant and heightened surveillance (understandable in some cases) of public spaces. It’s even worse for some private spaces. Paranoia is the order of the day. The Panopticon of observation keeps everyone on a macro and micro level under duress. The constant fear and anxiety spread at airports and modes of travel, and the work place fear of sabotage is very much like the war and fear mongering mentality spread through the time of WWII and most of the Cold War.

This is a most useful way of getting people mistrustful and fearful of one another and strangers. Not that there are no genuine security concerns etc. But the Terror being spread from 9-11 has been an attempt to drag humanity back to a state of wartime tension. Moreover, every surveillance camera is a reminder that things are not right and that people are not right and that the world is not right. The world and humanity may not be perfect as we well know, but there is a difference between that and being made to live under “forcible coordination” that it can never be otherwise. That is what the controllers want.

This state of tension if you like, then also encourages the other crazies to go about their business of terror. The media collaborates with them by highlighting their activities thereby ensuring that the best way to get a megaphone and ‘buy’ media time is to commit atrocities. Note: good and well being don’t often get much air time, but acts of violence and that which flirts with the prurient not only get air time, they get prime time advertising to boost it all.

Again, where does the money come from to keep supporting these groups of ‘terror’ and even terror. There are bigger players who want to keep terror groups up and running, their activities being media highlights right up to this moment and thrust upon people as part of “forcible coordination”. Terror, with its unchecked and unregulated international banking cartels and arrangements, and its abilities to print fiat currency money or debt currency as via the US Federal Reserve Bank, has ample resources to fund its pet projects.

Ask yourself, how is it that a state like North Korea which has been repeatedly stated to be bankrupt and has its population living in precarious conditions still manage to have access and maintenance of nuclear weapons coupled with haphazard saber rattling announcements. Who are the groups that are sustaining the North Koreans and keeping them from total collapse so that they can conveniently add to the potential destabilization of North East Asia and keep the world in nuclear angst ?

How is it that despite the global financial crisis, spiraling debt of the US, the never ending wars, and the rising unemployment world wide, the world financial system is still tottering but not collapsing yet: how is it being maintained, propped up and kept alive when it too seems to be turning into one of the living dead? If the global scene is not somehow manipulated and controlled by major players this system would have collapsed well before now, but it is still being controlled and puppeteered as it has always been.

Look past the curtain of current economic theory’s mumbo jumbo and see the controllers grappling over the levers behind the curtain of illusion drawn across the world from the land of Oz.

The New Slavery

On a macro scale the stage has been set to keep the world and all of us in debt through a debt based economy of fiat currencies, interest rates and squeezing every drop of labour from us till we drop dead. But on a micro scale, Terror must still be spread to dovetail with the global template of “forcible coordination” that major players are implementing through international institutions and power play.

As Sofsky unrelentingly continues (bold and italics mine):

“For its (modern terror) purposes, the small-time tormenter suffices: the conscientious bookkeeper, the mediocre official, the zealous doctor, the young, slightly anxious female factory worker. In order to spread fear and terror, all the personnel had to do was to apply the rules that had been set down. This orderly foundation of camp routine provided the soil conducive to the development of those behavioural patterns that spring from the tradition of quasi-military movements: esprit de corps, camaraderie, personal allegiance, the mentality of the emergency situation, corruption, and the lust for the kill.” (p278, Sofsky)

That last line sums up ‘American’ domestic and foreign policy for many a year and, unfortunately, much of the world has followed suit or allowed the virus from that kind of ‘democracy’ to spread to them.

What cannot be denied as well is the Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare of petty tyrants who impose meaningless rules and regulations to wield (absolute) power as best they can largely because the social and national atmosphere most people operate in permeates the same unto them. This system of bureaucratic control is spread on the macro level in turn by the controllers and serial invokers of ‘democracy’ who claim to be saving the world by using things like the UN, WTO, World Bank etc.

Total control by the cabal (controllers) and denizens of Terror require it to be practiced throughout all of society without exception as far as it is possible. It is part of the strategy of spreading “forcible coordination” globally. The best way is to instill a sense of fear and loathing in each layer of society, but primarily through the work place as it is the inevitable arena where we try to sustain ourselves.

To do this the cabalists of controllers need the Grand Poobahs and Great Panjandrums to exercise the diktats of control. And so Sofsky continues with (italics and bold mine):

“Without the supervisors, sentries, and administrative officials, the accomplices and accessories from the ranks of the inmates, camp terror would have been impossible. The face of modern systemic terror is not stamped by the all powerful and inviolable master, but by the unbridled actions of the sedulous servants of power. It is an inconspicuous face, quite mean and shabby, without the grimace of wild frenzy, the ecstasies of brutality, the passions of sovereignty...The triumph relished by the auxiliary was the laughter of the accomplices, the mortal anguish of the victims, the bottom line on the balance sheet of death.” (p278-9, Sofsky)

So absolute control is spread by the cabalists via set ups international and national, which is seen through by trickle down (and forced) indoctrination abetted by the mass media. The message transmitted daily and unremittingly is that people are not powerful and that the individual is not an empowered being.

The little Hitlers and Napoleans at the micro level of the work place go around determining control and spreading the gospel of the cabal through punitive sanctions and the constant threat of throwing one out of employment, or stymieing progress/promotion. We are born into the world and don’t know any better as we are imbibed with received deception (not wisdom) of control and subservience to the dark ideas of the cabal which we take as normal and the way of the world. [Under no circumstances is it being claimed that people do not choose wrong and evil themselves and that only the cabal/controllers are responsible for everything, but to qualify statements each time with this would be tedious and add to the meandering of an already lengthy post].

We learn further from Sofsky (bold and italics mine):

“Absolute power transforms deterrence into terror, terror into horror. It shapes space, time, work, and society into instrumentalities of itself, plunging its victims into the abyss of helpless anxiety. The destructive power of terror extends into the furthest corners of sociality, the deep structures of human subjectivity. It destroys not only by violence, but by starvation and misery, humiliation and murder of the soul. It is sheer destruction, pure and unadulterated…Terror concludes every struggle. It gets the job done. The reciprocity characteristic of all social power is shattered.” (p279, Sofsky)

Again on a micro level, just take a look at going from one place of employment to the next. The nihilistic philosophy of the cabalists to control, dehumanize, humiliate and disempower people pervades through almost everything. From every situation of authority (real or imagined) there is often an attempt to assert some aspect of absolute power; this is an ego based energy that seeks to use the pyramid structure of a disenfranchising hierarchy of control. Do as you are told, the boss man is always right, and we the cabal and its nether children of control can throw you out on the streets and let you starve unless you serve us as the slaves that you are.

The human power of reciprocity and responsibility towards one another through a web of connection with all life and compassion needed to give balance to the world, our societies and our lives is constantly crushed through the deleterious stamping of the OT imprimatur usually in the form of material and largely monetary (valueless fiat currencies) ‘rewards’ for selling and destroying your soul and those of others. These are the bargain basement prices of all the hells imaginable: save your skin, not your soul, by abetting the physical and spiritual destruction of others and life on the planet via the promotion of mindless monetary growth and as much as possible for sensual gratification. Reciprocity is made negative through the encouragement of an ‘eye for an eye’ way of the world, not one of mutual aid, support and nurturing to create cooperation and collaboration among people and countries.

We continue to chillingly learn (bold and italics mine):

“Terror separates labour from all production value and any moral rules. It intensifies compulsion and exploitation to the pitch of destruction; it transposes production into ravagement. The teleology of human labour is extinguished. The productive meaning of work, self-preservation of the species, is transformed into its opposite. Nowhere is human labour so directly linked with death as in the concentration camp. Here work does not secure life, it devastates it. This political economy of waste cannot be comprehended by following the principle of calculation and value enhancement. Absolute power overcomes the laws of production. It increases not wealth, but misery.” (p280, Sofsky)

Shocking as it may seem, the above is an apt description of our daily lives especially our so-called working lives. The entire economic and financial system that has been imposed on us by the cabal, and those sometimes quite unwittingly carrying out the worldview of the controllers, is one of mindless accumulation of wealth through making many things that are not needed and that have an in-built obsolescence in them; this in turn continues the destructive cycle of pure monetary ‘growth’ while destroying the planet, robbing it of life and natural resources and steadily allowing for the fear and anxiety based destruction of ourselves and our social relations. A political economy of waste.

We are usually alienated from what we do and the apparently productive processes we are involved in. So many times have employees deliberately gotten back or ‘sabotaged’ the system and the boss man by wasting time at work through idleness and Net surfing, and consuming office materiel and expenses for personal use and benefit. This is usually an act of rebellion and resentment for being pushed around and doing something we dislike and even hate but consider necessary to sustain our material needs. What is productive about this set up or the commodities that arise from it? A political economy of waste.

From the wasteful system of built in obsolescence and greed of the capitalist ideology to its mindless accumulation of money as a means of remuneration and definition of meaning to existence; and with the cat and mouse game between employer and employees who try every once in a while to monkey wrench the work place, we have a fine system of wastage and negativity. Yet another facet of a political economy of waste.

To maintain control over us, there is a need for a system of destructive sustenance that sees to it that (bold and italics mine):

“Society is permeated by the informers and accomplices of terror; the victims are driven to a life-and-death struggle for space, shoes, and bread. Although a good many examples of elementary solidarity have come to light, the extent of social indifference, mutual repulsion, and animosity in the camps was staggering. The dissociative strength of camp power shatters the basic rules of social intercourse, fundamental trust in the continued existence of the social world, the prospect of assistance, the certainties of social action, the continuity of time…The camp hurls human beings back into a primal state of nature: the struggle of all against all…The concentration camp is the modern facility of isolating and destroying the “dispensable”. The superfluous are searched out everywhere, seized, confined behind barbed wire, starved, murdered.” (p280-1, Sofsky)

What is supported throughout most societies and certainly in the economic framework of the cabal is the ‘state of nature’ scenario of ‘survival of the fittest’ and everyone struggling to stay alive through brandishing tooth and claw. We have fooled ourselves into buying into the so-called ‘free market’ myth (which is just a not-so-secret secret society code for greed, selfishness, monopoly, destructive ethos, etc as explored in an earlier blog entitled There is No Such Thing as a Free Market, which has laughably been seen as a sign of ‘freedom’.

Yet you cannot be free if you are a slave to unethical/immoral behaviour that often belies ‘market’ forces, a slave to pure monetary gain at the expense of everything else, and a slave to blind sensual drives while throwing any spiritual force within a human being off course.

And in case the message still hasn’t gotten through we are reminded that (bold and italics mine):

“Absolute power sunders the physical unity of the person, devastates spirit and soul, destroys the ability to act, drains all vitality. Prior to industrialized mass murder, it carries out a transmutation of human nature. The transformation of human beings into materiel and the fabrication of the Muselmanner, the waking dead, are its greatest triumphs. In sharp contrast with all earlier forms of power, absolute terror creates nothing. Its work is totally negative, a project of obliteration without a trace. It realizes its freedom in the complete and total annihilation of the human being.” (p281, Sofsky)

Through a system of control through the mass media, economic and financial institutions, the cabal has sought to keep us at each others’ throats through the perpetuation of fear and loathing, anxiety and obsession with destructive individual ‘rights’ which do not involve the reciprocation of duties to respect and honour the rights of others; it’s all about ‘I-me-mine’ as the advertising/marketing world keep reminding us (the destruction of reciprocity).

So some key points that can be raised from all this on the strategy of OT:

1. Use a feudal hierarchical pyramidal structure of top-down control

2. Institute capitalism as the primary economic model which leads to a system of senseless accumulation of wealth and material products maintained by the use of the media to promote consumerism and obedience to the fetishized ‘market forces’ established by the cabal’s global financial and political institutions

3. All ‘value’ is measured in terms of valueless fiat currency which is printed at whim to finance never ending wars and the creation of eternal debt

4. Keep the world and its peoples in a state of perpetual debt and wage slavery as they cannot rely on their spiritual values and ideas to build economic strength but must rely on ego and fear based energies of impending starvation from reprisals to their physical beings if they resist the cabalists structures (micro and macro)

5. Keep people busy with meaningless work, jobs and employment to just earn money to survive; keep them in debt-bondage and obsessed with sensual indulgence so that they are unable to turn away from the debilitating effects of the idiot-box-and-devices (TV and mobile phones); and turn them away from reading, thinking, and sharing intelligent ideas with one another. Counter serious examination of the state of the world and citizen participation in local, political, or any other sensible activity by a system of disenfranchisement

6. This system of disempowerment is boosted by ego driven cynicism of so-called social commentators as well as the worship of celebrities and mania over the frailties of their personal lives, and attempts to get the rest of us to be more concerned about who earns the most in business and Hollywood. In other words keep us distracted from improving and empowering ourselves through surrendering our attention to nut-cakey-fruity-case flakes and other such media-attention-grabbers

7. Obsession with material goods through the constant promotion of the latest fashion products and accelerate built-in used obsolescence in almost anything (example, computers) and mobile phones which require us to seek constant upgrading (and confuse that as ‘upgrading’ ourselves)

8. Derail us from thinking about why we are here and what is the purpose of life. Ensure that the mainstream media doesn’t focus on spiritual matters but things that engender hatred and negativity through the playing up of violence, war and dysfunctional behaviour. Constant prattling on the ‘weaknesses’ of human nature and never the strength of unity, reciprocity and challenging of absolute power and corporate controllers, that is, the media’s complicity with the agenda of the cabal to ensure that human beings are kept in a state of the living dead while thinking that the lives they are leading are supposedly ‘normal’

9. The constant disruption of time and sequencing of events in our lives due to the stress and anxiety created by the negative media reports and work place demands, coupled with personal/family ones, keeps us in a state of limbo and hectic behaviour that fits perfectly with the ‘forcible coordination’ of the controllers

But to ensure that control can be permanent and the market of global control has been cornered through a one superpower world, the cabal needs to institute a takeover by re-creating what the Nazi’s did in 1933 and 1938 (looked at in more detail below). The need to exercise absolute power by the cabal through the use of terror to establish once and for all OT. We are still living in the shadow of the near successful attempt of using the 9-11 attacks on New York to suspend all civil liberties, and eventually establish openly the FEMA CCs as a step to turning the US into a launching pad for more war, and a base for quickly consolidating and spreading world wide the ineluctable OT. For those who think what they are reading now is fanciful, be patient…it won’t be too long from your reading these words that even more stunning revelations will take place.

 

The Main Burrito, Barack Obama, says that the great BP -- which is desecrating the planet with its oil spill -- may cancel dividend payouts to shareholders and put an initial US$20 billion payment into an independently supervised escrow account to pay for the clean-up needed as well as compensation for livelihoods affected.

But, unsurprisingly, some media reports are claiming that BP sources assert that the company is unlikely to cancel dividend payouts but only delay them, as the dividends are valued at a hefty US$10.5 billion annually.

Nothing has been said about whether top honchos of BP will give up bonuses due to the mishandling of the oil spill.

And as expected, Britain's Big Cheese David Cameron is already under pressure by the money bags there to do more to protect such a hallowed company like BP that accounts for apparently 12 per cent of all dividends paid by British companies.

Meanwhile, British Treasury Enchilada George Osborne further confirms his government's plans for a tax on banks stating that they will see to it that there are also further restraints on pay and bonuses of bankers.

The bank tax is a paltry attempt to get something back for citizens for the billions criminally wasted on bank bailouts using the taxpayers' money.

The UK government is additionally supposed to establish an independent commission to study whether big banks should be broken up and their investment and retail arms separated.

But in the end, all this credit and escrow accounts come to naught because the value of the money and how it is created is what needs to be looked at in all seriousness. The world is still being held hostage by fiat currencies that can be just printed to pay for anything.

The money we use is not worth the paper it is printed on as it has no backing by gold or precious metals.

This is aggravated by the dishonest fractional reserve banking system that is a blight upon the world economy. This scam in banking allows banks to keep 10 per cent of a deposit with it as ready cash payment for withdrawals while loaning out the remaining 90 per cent to others until in effect each deposit generates 9 times the amount of itself. The money thus generated is a form of phantom credit money that circulates as the money in our wallets etc.

The whole financial crisis in the first place is largely a side effect of the fiat currency system coupled with the fractional reserve banking system, and until that changes the problems will only get worse until we bring back some form of the gold standard as well as eradicate fractional -- or rather -- fictional reserve banking.

The world monetary system today is a bubble wrapped inside a fraud hidden within the heart of greed.

Here's an extract I had written but did not use for publication elsewhere, but it seems appropriate to use here:

“Towards the end of 2007, it was apparent that things were going wrong badly in the world financial scene. The test case for this was the collapse of the sub-prime speculative bubble in the US housing market. With the swiftly collapsing sub-prime market, banks started calling in loans. When banks start to call in loans they are not just calling in a fixed amount of money. They are calling in inflated amounts of sums of credit with interest to boot. Given the fractional reserve banking system throughout most of the world what this means is that if, as was supposedly the case at end 2007 in the US, banks called in US$200 billion of money they loaned out in terms of their principal sum: they would in effect be calling in just under US$2 trillion from the economy, that is, 9 times the amount loaned out. So it is no surprise at the fiasco that ensued when such vast sums were called in and they were no where to be found.

That in essence is fractional reserve banking and the calling in of loans from the volatile sub prime market. But this is a simplification as the nature of the sub prime market is more complicated. The US sub prime market involved lending money to low income people to buy homes. These are people who due to lack of collateral would not normally be given loans for home purchase. These poor people are given loans that may be interest free at first but require payment over time with rates of interest much higher than rates on loans to people who can usually repay a standard housing loan. The reason for such a precarious arrangement is because banks and financial firms believe they must have something in return for the risk they are taking in making out loans to people who have difficulty repaying them.

This is similar to credit card companies handing out cards to people to buy things on credit without sufficient income, then asking them to make payments and then charging heavy interest rates if they cannot do so.

But in the case of the sub prime market, the debt owed by poor people is in turn made into a speculative market where you can in effect buy and sell these IOUs as part of a speculative enterprise. When the term for repayment arrives, the person who owns the IOU asks the person who took the loan to repay it.

However, the person who took the loan now says they cannot repay it, and so their home is repossessed. There are now homeless people in debt because even after repossession of their homes they still owe money for their other debts. This could also mean that they may have to be declared bankrupt. And speculators are left with empty IOUs in their hands. When the speculative bubble of such IOUs and loans burst because no one can pay anymore, and people who had kept money in financial institutions involved in such activity start to pull their money out, a panic starts.

The banks start pulling in all loans to recoup deposits of clients who want their money back.

Similarly, where does the almost US2$ trillion phantom money come from to repay the actual US$200 billion of deposits? Everyone involved in this pyramid scheme of banking and loans gets burnt, declared bankrupt or is left out on the streets. This a simplified summary of what took place and is only the tip of the iceberg. And all of this because of a system based on risk, speculation and money obsession.”

Perhaps these two clips will help make things a little clearer:

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . . . Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. . . . Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit."

-- Sir Josiah Stamp, director of the Bank of England,
speaking at the University of Texas,1927

Money to end all Money

This piece will look at the new money that is coming into being and which will replace Money as we know it. Money will still be in use, but it will be of a nature that reflects the social relations between people as one that engenders cooperation and mutual respect. As such, I will not traverse more familiar territory that has been explored and expressed better than I could ever do. What I will do, is look at three stages in the move from today’s crumbling debt based monetary system, to the transition and establishment of complementary currencies (CC) holding sway: this would signify the end of Money as we have known it.

For those of you who may not have heard much about CCs/new money before and how they are the part of the wave that is cresting and which will move with us right into the future, then I would suggest some excellent starting points. To have a good acquaintance with the current crisis in money and credit and to get a better perspective of what follows please check out the following:

Reality Sandwich blog entries on “The End of Money?” at http://www.realitysandwich.com/end_money by Daniel Pinchbeck and “Money: a New Beginning, parts 1 and 2” by Charles Eisenstein at http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_a_new_beginning and http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_a_new_beginning_part_2
The other site that is recommended strongly is Eisenstein’s “The Currency of Cooperation” which is an excellent primer on what the new money is about.

For those not familiar with CCs/new money, and who have not taken the time to look at the above sites, I humbly absolve myself for any boggled minds in what follows which may start of as a familiar language, then turn to one of only verbs or nouns, and finally metamorphose into hieroglyphics.

The Three-Step Move

The three stage move I am looking at towards new money is descriptive as it is prescriptive. The first stage will involve a move to a new gold standard due to the impending collapse of the US dollar (USD) and other major fiat world currencies. The dollar will still be in use in the future of course, but it will collapse mainly as a global trading currency and in being used as a reserve currency by national banks of some countries. The second stage involves the rise and enhancement of social businesses as envisaged by Nobel Peace laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus. The third stage will see the establishment of CCs/new money as the prime form of value exchange, relegating national currencies to a limited role.

We need to be clear in understanding that national currencies will not just disappear. The role of CCs is that of complementing other forms of currencies. What will transpire in the years ahead will be the rise of a highly sophisticated system of barter with decentralized sources of new money taking centre stage thereby relegating national currencies to a disciplined and specific role.

The current credit crisis the world is facing is a result of an untenable debt based system of monetary expansion. This is primarily due to the effect of central banks like the US Fed which expand the money supply through the banking system via a pyramid scheme of expanding money which does not actually exist. This comes about by a system of double entry book keeping and expansion of credit. To get a good idea of how this works, check out the wonderful The Creature from Jekyll Island by Edward Griffin.

This pyramid method of expanding money supply has been possible largely due to the use of floating fiat currencies, meaning money that has been unhinged from the gold standard and subject to being printed whenever it is convenient for it to be cranked out. This is soft money that has no tangible backing. A gold backed currency is a hard currency. The US only went off the gold standard in 1971 thanks to President Nixon thereby forcing other nations, by 1973, to all have full floating currencies as well. The reason for Nixon’s move was manifold, partly due to a misunderstanding of how the gold standard works and also, as is sometimes mentioned, the need to print more money to finance the Vietnam War.

Politicians tend to veer away from the discipline of the gold standard because it forces them to stay within the base money supply and ensure convertibility of their national currency into gold. This makes it difficult for self serving political projects and what are now known as earmarks (of the pork barrel kind) to be fully put into play unless there are lots of cash swirling about. But too much money in the system tends to lead to devaluation and eventually inflation which is devastating especially to low income people and the middle classes. Ron Paul’s latest book The Revolution: A Manifesto touches on this specifically.

Please do check this out for greater insight into the matter:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul319.html

The fact is the gold standard has long been a preventive cure for unnecessary wars. That is because politicians cannot just print cash to justify their next act of international ambition. It may be of interest that as this is being written, USD has fallen to almost $1,000 per ounce of gold. This is just the beginning. This fall in USD value is a massive vote of no-confidence in the politicians at Washington, politicos at the Fed and chieftains of the banking industry.

Recent headlines are the rising of oil prices to USD135 per barrel. What is not fully explained by the media pundits is that this is due not to a shortage of oil as such, but to the devaluating USD. There is far more money in the system than demand for it, which is the classic cause of inflation as we know it. So calls for oil from strategic reserves to be used, and trashing the arctic and other areas for even more oil is NOT the answer.

Fiat currencies are among the principal causes for misdiagnosing problems and leading to even worse ones. A similar spike occurred in oil prices, as research will show, in the early 70s after Nixon wrenched the US off the gold standard. Yes, there were problems in the Mid East (when were there never?) but the surge in quantity of fiat USD was central to the rise in energy prices.

But the monetarists and the neo-classical economists that are largely responsible for the economic rut we are in are great believers in fooling around with the money supply. It not only, they think, gives us lots of “moolah” but allows the economy to expand. Yet, what it does do instead is lead to bubbles and booms and busts. Money becomes a tool manipulated via interest rates by unelected super bureaucrats at various central banks.

For instance, check out a recent book by one-time Fed governor-general Laurence H. Meyer in his A Term at the Fed during the crucial years of 1996-2002. He states that the key things the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) were interested were NAIRU (Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment) and the Taylor rule. What this basically means is that Fed gurus would manipulate rates based on economic theories of the Phillips curve and what the acceptable rate of unemployment was before inflation would kick in; and also when GDP would move away from expected/estimated GDP growth: all this would make it necessary to raise/drop rates based on projections. How effective do you think these people can be within the constraints of the highly charged political framework they operate in? Look around you for the results.

Also, it is worth checking out Bonner and Wiggins’s book Empire of Debt to see why the USD cannot last as it is the way it is going. How can the world’s greatest debtor nation with trillions of dollars of debt carry on by increasing expenditure, lowering rates, and not a sign of increasing taxes on the horizon? How much of this money that is being pumped in can stay the course without leading to severe devaluation? Is there productivity to match this artificial influx of cash into the economy? To what extent can you tell a drunk that the way to get over his inebriate state is to drink another bottle of vodka 75 proof? Who will pay for all these debts (or clean up after the drunk for that matter)?

What is happening now is similar to Americans who go to a diner, have a meal and tell the cashier to pass the check to their grandchildren. The future generation will have to pay for all the current debt. It looks like there is going to be a massive devaluation of the USD coming up (best way to settle debts is to lower the value of what you owe too) and, alas, record hyperinflation. At the first sign of this, or something to this effect, states like Japan and China are going to throw their US bonds in saying “Give me the money!” When that happens there will quite likely be a run against the dollar world wide, and then my friends, financial meltdown takes on a new meaning.

All that Glitters is Sometimes Gold

"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
-- Henry Ford

That is why the historical move as practiced in the past will be the viable return to gold. It has been tried, it has been tested, it leads to economic growth and expansion because it is stable money and brings along low taxes. But we will also have been so badly bitten by fiat currencies, that CCs and new money will be the answer whether anyone likes it or not. If you do some research you will find that even Marx advocated a gold backed currency.

We will finally come to see the need to move beyond the blinkered cost-benefit analysis of neo-classical economics to a new kind of economics. Part of that involves going back to basic human values, of older ways of life, of ancient spiritual teachings and practices, and an ecological approach to economics. Part of this process involves going back to mutual trust and reciprocity between people and to the system of barter represented by CCs. Part of this also involves going back to what has worked for millennia, the gold standard.

A new gold standard does not mean 100% reserves of gold backing a currency hiding in a vault somewhere. The new gold standard would be something as advocated by Nathan Lewis in his outstanding Gold: the Once and Future Money. Basically, how it works is that all the currency in a nation will be backed by a value of gold per ounce. What Lewis suggests for the US is a range of USD 360-380 per ounce of gold (lots of USD will have to be recalled and done away it).

The issue of convertibility comes in when the government authorizes banks to give back gold certificates (representing the gold) to those who want to cash the USD for gold. The use of gold certificates is how gold is bought and sold today, nobody goes around lugging nuggets and bars anymore (as some critics think). The banks will hold enough gold as reserves to provide for conversion if required, but this will not happen often as long as the money supply stays disciplined to the value of gold at the fixed exchange rate.

This is where the value of convertibility comes in. Convertibility ensures that the Fed/Treasury maintains and adjusts the base money supply to allow for the demand and supply of USD based on people’s use of Money aligned with the backing in gold. This calls for financial discipline and an end to fiat money 100%. If the supply of money exceeds the gold backing, and that leads to people trading in cash for gold, the Treasury sells gold to banks and takes in cash. If and when the opposite occurs, the Treasury buys gold back and provides cash accordingly. This is a self regulating mechanism akin to what Adam Smith envisioned. The interest mongering monetarists will no longer be the uber bureaucrats controlling fluctuating rate mechanisms and swinging currency values.

The range of movement for gold prices will be minimal. One reason is because only 2% of gold is mined worldwide every year and there is only limited use for it. Apart from dental work, limited industrial use and jewelry, gold is a singularly useless metal. Apart that is from being used as an ultimate Monetary measurement – its sole purpose of existence. And anyone deluded enough to try to hoard gold is going to find that he is going to need cash sometime and will have to, well, trade the gold in back for gold backed currency. With the rise of CCs and new monies, there is hardly going to be a scarcity of national currency. This will also spell the death of the money markets as we know it. In itself, when the gold standard is in play, the gold does nothing for hoarders because the national currency is now as good as gold.

The system would work the same on the international level and unlike what Nixon feared was happening, countries that move back to gold and trade with the US are not going to start throwing USD back and say “Send me the bullion, dude!” They will have the same process in exchange for gold certificates as individual users of currency. What matters is that as long as the US money base is not inflated (as per fiat currencies), the strict discipline and convertibility of USD to gold means they do not need gold to be shipped to them. When they know they can convert USD to gold and trust has been sealed on this, they simply exchange the gold certificates again to buy back the very stable and clearly guaranteed USD. Also, in all this exchange the gold does not physically ship away; what happens is as was done in the post Bretton Woods period, the gold is shifted to an account of the country in the secure vaults of a bank.

So now we have a stable money system backed by gold. There is a fixed exchange rate that ensures this. Gone are the days of currency speculation and falling USDs. But wait, shout the final coterie of monetarists out there, how are we going to create money now that the Fed has been reinvented, and since fiat money and its printing presses cannot just operate to satisfy the political whims of those in charge: how are we going to create jobs, they scream.

Well, by being actually productive for a change and not via the so-called productivity of the wild speculative frenzy of money markets. Interest free banks will operate (some research will show that they exist) and the pyramid scheme of double-accounting-money- expansion will be replaced by the rise of social businesses and CCs. We do not need so much money to make things work. National currencies backed by gold will serve the purpose of official government transactions and trade, while the new system of money will complement this and start a new productive and healthy drive to creating genuine wealth.

A Marxist way to be Capitalist?

Then comes stage two of the Three Step Move. In order to lessen the burden and need for national currencies, the social business model will start to play a prominent part around the world. This idea is an extension of what was put forward and practiced by Dr Muhd. Yunus who won the Nobel Peace prize for his idea of the Grameen Bank which gave microcredit to the world’s poor. In his latest book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Yunus explains that a social business is an enterprise quite different from a cooperative or a charity. It is essentially a business set up to provide necessities for the poor like drinking water, food or healthcare.

In Yunus's own words on social businesses from the book:

So companies or people put in capital to set up the business and provide low cost products for the poor. Once the money invested is earned by the initial investors, all other money that comes in goes towards financing the business itself. Hence, this becomes an exemplar of a self sustaining enterprise. This is a non-profit, non-loss business which does not answer to shareholders in providing them great returns on equity, just the basic sum they put in for that equity. The example looked at in detail in the book is how French corporate giant Danone provides daily yogurt cups which cost 6 euro cents (9 cents US) for the Bangladeshis.

Check this out for more:

http://www.danonecommunities.com/?page_id=145

This will ensure that the poor and even those belonging to low income groups and not necessarily classified as the poor, can also have similar set ups working in their favour all over the world. This concept is spreading throughout many developing countries even as of now. So in the long term, the need for national currencies when such businesses are up and running will be for a limited period. Money given as aid and charity will be lessened as more of such social businesses take centre stage. And these businesses can also eventually, operate under the auspices of CCs and the new money, which leads to even less of a demand and strain in siphoning off national currencies to meet the needs of commerce, etc. The days of scarcity of national currencies will slowly become a thing of the past, and so will all the negative competition that this process engenders.

Money like you have never seen it


 "Only when the last tree has died,
the last river has been poisoned,
the last fish has been caught will we realise that we cannot eat money."

-- 19th century Cree Indian saying

Here we will look at CCs briefly and in the context of what they are and how they operate according to the ideas of Bernard Lietaer, former senior Central Bank executive of Belgium and someone who has proposed a new money called the Terra. The ideas that follow will be based on and evolved from those of Lietaer’s. What will be proposed as a CC that can be used in conjunction with the Three Step Move, is a currency that I call the Indigo.

For some more info please watch:

Briefly, a CC is one that involves the use of private money or scrips as distinct from national currencies which are national legal tender. As Dr Gill Seyfang says in her important “Bartering for a Better Future? Community Currencies and Sustainable Consumption”, a CC “is the generic term for a wealth of alternative types of money which are springing up in communities throughout the world to address social, economic and environmental needs.”

Seyfang goes on to elaborate on three main types of CCs. These include Local Exchange Trading Schemes/Systems (LETS) which aim to “rebuild local economies through cashless exchange; Time Banks [that] promote volunteering, civic engagement and mutual self-help by rewarding unpaid work in the community; the…NU-card, a mainstream ‘green loyalty point’ currency piloted in the Netherlands which incentivises sustainable consumption.”

The focus here will be on the CCs which would fall under the LETS type of new money or what Lietaer would also classify as the Terra new money. According to Lietaer in his influential The Future of Money, there is a four-tiered monetary system for the future. People and businesses will routinely and comfortably deal in this multiple currency system, just as we today use all kinds of value cards, air miles, vouchers, credit and debit cards and virtual currencies in the course of our lives.

The first tier of this monetary structure would be a ‘global reference currency’, which is not linked to nation states as such. This currency, which is what the Terra is supposed to evolve into, is there to provide a steady reliable type of money that can be used for international trade. The Terra will be based on internationally traded items like gold, copper, and wheat. It appears that Lietaer believes that this kind of new world currency could morph into being from various corporate scrips used in cashless trade between businesses today.

Apparently, in the US, 400,000 businesses are linked to about 700 barter exchanges, which results in $8.5 billion in cashless trade. It seems that this kind of trade rips along at 15% a year, three times the speed of dollar commercial exchanges.

A second tier in this monetary structure would be, for example, certain multinational currencies utilized by what would be deemed as geopolitically-close countries. This could include say the NAFTA dollar, the Euro, and an ASEAN (the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations) currency.

On the third level, we have some remaining national currencies which run within or outside the multinational currency regions. But this time, individual states no longer have the monopoly in issuance of currency.

At the fourth level, we have CCs/new money as has been discussed. To Lietaer, these CCs could have an expanded role and greater influence, as they may be widely used and exchanged through community internet clearing houses. The Terra, as it is envisaged now, would have evolved from this category. What we need to look at in some detail is what the Terra is and how this may affect its future as a world reference currency.

The Terra is a CC that would be issued by a nation’s central bank. As outlined by Lietaer in his seminal “A ‘Green’ Convertible Currency”, what we will have is a “commodity-based currency, [for ] a…New Currency backed by a basket of from three to a dozen different commodities for which there are existing international commodity markets. For instance, 100 New Currency could be worth 0.05 ounces of gold, plus 3 ounces of silver, plus 15 pounds of copper, plus 1 barrel of oil, plus 5 pounds of wool.”

This CC/new money is therefore backed by the valuation of the commodities in the basket at the value of the national currency of the society it originates from. So in the US, the value of the basket, in terms of USD, will determine the exchange rate between those trading in USD for the Terra in America.

Once again, we need to understand that the Terra works in tandem with the national currency and is not a new money that supplants everything else in its wake. As the Terra TRC (Trade Reference Currency) White Paper by Takashi Kiuchi, Chairman of The Future 500, states:

“The Terra is designed as a complementary currency operating in parallel with national currencies. Therefore, everything that exists today as monetary and financial products or practices continues to exist. The Terra mechanism is only one additional option available for those international economic actors who voluntarily choose to use it.”

Of course, this may advance into the more generic realm of the four tiered monetary structure put forward by Lietaer. So the Terra would be used as a complement in international trade alongside national currencies. The idea being to not only provide an alternative, but wean nations away from relying on conventional currencies which are fiat money subject to the swings of money markets and the designs of central banks and politicians.

But herein lies a problem. The nub of the issue is that the valuation of the Terra basket is done in the US, for e.g., in terms of USD. At this point, all hell may break loose due to the unreliability of fiat currencies. That is why the Three Step was proposed to overcome the problem of the Terra’s system of backing and help move it further onto the path of its contribution to the world.

Moving the Terra back to Firma

The trouble is how stable can the value of the Terra basket be when based on a valuation of what the source of the problem of our monetary system is: floating fiat currencies. Given the vagaries of the floating currency, anytime a disruption occurs, like the impending crisis coming for the USD as discussed earlier, the value of the Terra basket is going to be affected severely.

So I put this question to Lietaer himself and in a recent email (received only just as I was starting to write this piece), he says in effect that, yes, the components of the basket are quoted in whatever national money as they are today. But, however, the Terra instability I mentioned “is the one reflecting changes in value of those national moneys, not of the Terra. If there is a drop in value of the US$, that would simply mean that the Terra /in US$ /becomes more expensive. The real measure of value is the basket of the Terra itself...”

But it seems to me that it begs the issue of what is the value of the Terra, that is, it is measured in the national currency; but that currency is unstable due to its floating fiat nature and in the case of USD…potentially worse is yet to come. And it gives rise to another exchange rate problem of the falling currency of the USD, say, and the now ever more expensive Terra. This seems like it is back to Money as we still know it today.

Which is where gold comes in: once a national currency (e.g. USD) is on a fixed real value exchange to something truly stable and reliable like gold, the problem vanishes completely. Now we have a Terra basket valued solidly to commodities valued solidly to a currency fully backed by the value of gold. No more exchange rise and fall fiascos associated with fiat currencies.

This stable CC of the Terra then goes onto its next phase, which is the process of demurrage that comes in thanks to the genius of Silvio Gessel.

please watch

The currency in true ecological fashion, has built in entropy that allows it to depreciate at the rate of say 10% a month, which means that if it is not used in 10 months time it will be worth nothing.

This is where the value of this type of CC becomes apparent as it forces the use of the currency in productive enterprises and not in hoarding or speculation of money markets. This inevitably leads to the kind of stimulus to productivity that standard Money can never equate. As seen in practice throughout history, the demurrage of this kind of new money or scrip leads to rapid growth and it does not place a strain on national currencies, nor create the harmful economic competition that national currencies foster. In fact, with a shift back to gold, the CC will truly be a complementary currency in every sense of the term as it comfortably complements the use of stable non-inflationary national Money guaranteed by gold.

The use of the Terra as shown in the Terra TRC White Paper involves a TRC Alliance that issues out the TRC to an oil company producing barrels of oil. The value of barrels of oil for sale is then translated into Terras through a currency conversion. The Terra is then used among those allied to the TRC network, as the demurrage takes effect. The demurrage takes place over the period of a year.

Indigos and Terra Firmas

With all this in place, I will look at a specific type of CC, the Indigo, that can be used within a LETS framework of a community and which is a parallel prototype of the Terra. This is the kind of currency that can be used before long and can evolve to the type envisioned in the form of the Terra (with the use of a commodities basket). The following way of creating the Indigo is an analogue of Terra creation adapted accordingly from the TRC White Paper.

Let us say we take a community of several municipalities or a province. This would provide a framework for a healthy dose of activity and business. These steps would follow in the creation of Indigos for a community of 50,000:

a. Let’s say the population of 50,000 has a median income of $24,000 a year (this national $ is backed by the new gold standard).

b. we take one-third the median income (as the rest of the income will be for other use, savings, insurance, etc) and multiply that by 50,000 so we get $8000 x 50,000 = $400 000 000

c. the basket of commodities for the Indigo includes the value of selected areas in townships like property value of public housing, areas of green spaces and/or agricultural land, community playgrounds, and healthcare centres. Choice of items and areas can be changed or rotated. So let us say that the value of this basket comes to $500 (figures chosen are for simplicity to get the calculation going).

d. we now have $400 000 000 divided by $500 = 800 000 Indigos

e. the Indigo has a 1:1 exchange with the $ (national currency). So this amount within a year is available from banks in the area. People buy them and this paper and virtual currency system (which will have a proper system of accounting) starts with its demurrage from the moment of purchase.

f. the rate of demurrage is 8.3% per month, which means that the Indigo will be worth almost zero right at the end of the time period of the year from its issuance. This would come to about 0.27% depreciation of the Indigo per day.

All national money used to purchase the Indigo goes to the community fund of the area/province it operates in. This fund will also keep the difference from Indigo cash-ins for national $. The cash-in difference earned by the community fund comes from factoring in the demurrage for cashed-in Indigos against $ reimbursements. At the end of the year, the community fund is recycled into community projects, etc.

So, anyone can cash-in on the Indigo at the bank at anytime for an equivalent $ exchange which would be less than initial purchase due to the demurrage. The difference from loss in $ value from the cash-in (thanks to demurrage) goes into a fund that various municipalities or communities will redistribute as funding for community projects. These recipients from the cash-in fund are designated each year by each local government (for e.g.). This is gleaned from the practice of demurrage used in certain north European townships where the cash-in ‘loss’ goes to various good causes.

What happens to Indigos cashed-in early? Well, they are up for sale to others. They are still bought at the 1:1 ratio with national $. So if the Indigos are reacquired say 6 months before their expiry, then the demurrage that kicks in will be twice the official one. That is because the money is not an infinite value store nor like the pyramid scheme expansion of current Money. That is one of the reasons for the demurrage, to eradicate pyramid schemes for money and an obsession in it as an end in itself.

So the reacquired Indigos with a shorter life span simply lead to more intense usage of the Indigo which is all the better in promoting growth. Also, if there are further cash-ins for reacquired Indigos then the cash-in difference goes back as usual to the community fund. People who acquire cashed-in indigos would be aware of this and would participate wholeheartedly in what is a community currency.

This process only emphasizes the natural and ecological nature of the Indigo and such CCs or new money. It is meant to decay and rejuvenate again when the next batch is issued for the following year based on renewed calculations for the Indigo currency basket. This is ecological money.

This reinvestment cycle from the use of the Indigo is a great way to improve community wealth. This in turn adds to societal growth. In the end, it is about the community, not the money per se. This in turn ensures that anyone buying and selling Indigos thinking they can ‘profit’ or make a ‘killing’ in exchanges with the $ are genuinely mistaken. They have to spend the new money or they will simply lose its monetary value. So when they realize this and cash-in, the difference from this goes back to the community, yet again. The purpose of the new money is always to promote growth, mutual trust and reciprocity, and more $ actually put back into the community.

This is a complete virtuous cycle meant to move forwards and upwards with communities gaining more and more each time. It is win-win in the best sense of the term. At an international level, the Indigo could transform into a firmer version of the Terra. Now we can have a Terra used by individual states backed not just by commodities, but by a nation’s value of national natural land areas, and high end human spaces. Cash-ins would be given to the state treasury for reinvestment into communities and/or national areas in need of assistance or development.

Or let us take it a step further. If the world’s nations have generally moved back to a gold standard, then a new world currency could develop backed by an international basket of swathes of the Amazon, arctic wildlife areas, world cultural icons, commodities like rice and wheat, solar and wind farms, etc. The basket would be measured in this case against the value of gold. So when this new world reference currency comes into play, called the Terra Firma, we actually finally have a stable world currency which can be cashed in any country because the equivalent in national $ will be given back with ease since everything is now measured in terms of stable gold value.

So a Terra Firma worth say 10 ounces in gold may be cashed in (after demurrage sets in), for the national currency in its country of use depending on that national currency’s gold value. The difference from the cash-in goes to a national fund of the country which reinvests into either needful areas in that country or split into reinvesting at an international level as well (that is, the reinvestment is handled by, for e.g., a new and reinvented UN backed International Monetary Fund). Since the basket involves world heritage areas and resources, a UN type body can supervise reinvestment into similar areas. This needs further clarification for as of now, international law is such that the natural green areas of the world, for e.g., would fall under the jurisdiction of the nation state it is in. In the end, the plan is for the world community to gain from this, and it reduces again competition for national currencies.

There will be a national CC fund from which countries participating in the Terra Firma Alliance will buy their new money from. The fund will also handle reimbursements and keep the difference from cash-ins. All the money earned here will be recycled into community/national community projects as designated by national government in consultation with some local governmental entities, at year end. Similarly at the international level, a UN body (IMF) would look to the reinvestment process from money earmarked for it from the relevant national CC funds.

One objection that tends to arise is would people start to rush to change national $ for Terras or Terra Firmas? Why would they when there would be a four tier world currency system and a whole host of CCs and new money all over the world among different communities to use? Terra Firmas are but the top layer of a multi-tier monetary environment. This decentralized use of money ensures we will relate to and use money in completely new and sophisticated ways different from the way it is used and viewed today.

What if people horde this new money and try to create shortages? Please go ahead and watch the demurrage eat away at your ‘golden hoard’. Again, there is such a choice for the new money in a multilayered monetary system which makes hoarding quite meaningless. There is the assumption, I must admit, that in the years ahead there will be a fundamental shift in human nature. And that shift would be complemented by CCs (proving its complementariness yet again) and that will ensure the growth, success and meaningfulness of the new money.

How it all hangs…

So, my friends, at the end of this experiment in ideas for CCs and new money, the Three Step move is of use because the crash of floating fiat currencies is in the works whether any of us like it or not. The USD, which some countries are rethinking as use as a reserve currency even as you read this, is going through the calm before the Great Debt Unraveling. When this happens, the natural recourse of nations, as has been done throughout the ages will be to return to the stable form of money that it has always used in such times: gold.

The advent of a new gold standard will see to a stabilization of the world monetary system. This will also allow for the flourishing of innovative forms of business like social businesses and CCs and the possible advent of the Terra. Examples of use of CCs linked to stable national money would be the Indigo, which can be fine tuned and improved by those better experienced in the operation of CCs. This in turn could lead to the Terra Firma, a real world reference currency.

These will be the first moves in serious decentralization of power from central governments, and to a more democratic participation of people in their communities and countries. Whichever way one wants to see this, it cannot but bode well for all of us in the long run by returning to what matters more than all the money in the word: human values.

Be well and happy.