(This is the first in a series of posts about ending the right of private banks to create money.)
In January Jesse Myerson, writing in the Rolling Stone, called for five seemingly radical economic reforms in an article entitled Five Economic Reforms Millenials Should be Fighting For: guaranteed jobs for everyone, Social Security for all (a guaranteed Universal Basic Income for all citizens), Land Value Tax (which I blog about in Progress and Poverty ), creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (enabling government to buy back and own public assets), and a state-owned bank (like the Bank of North Dakota) in every state.
Personally I found the article disappointing and a little sad. Myerson seems to deliberately overlook the most pernicious problem in our present economic system: the power we give private banks to issue and control our money supply.
Contrary to popular opinion, the government doesn’t issue money, except for a limited amount of notes and coins. As the film below explains, 97% of the money supply is electronic and created by private banks when they issue loans.
A lot of people have the mistaken impression that banks use other depositors’ money when they loan us money to buy a house. What actually happens is that the bank creates the money out of thin air by entering numbers into a computer.
Another common erroneous belief is the the Federal Reserve, which serves as the US central bank, is a government agency. It’s not. It’s a consortium of private banks.
97% Owned (Positive Money 2012) makes the case that the only solution to the current economic recession is to ban private banks from issuing money. They argue for making money creation publicly accountable by restoring this function to government (ironically this is where most people mistakenly believe it lies). Until we make this happen, private banks will continue to use their control of the monetary system to undermine genuine economic and political reform.
The Most Revolutionary Act 