Monetary reform: reclaiming $1 trillion every year through public creation of money
August 22, 2009
Many Americans believe in the US
without understanding our major economic and government policies.
Collectively, American’s trust in our government to ethically create and
manage money is so pervasive that few of us ever give this
multi-trillion dollar issue a moment’s thought. As a teacher of economics, I hope this brief is helpful for your responsible citizenry.
There are five topics to understand for
civic competence in creating and managing money. The first four are
standard to economics curriculum; the last is rational analysis:
- Money and bank credit.
- Fractional reserve banking.
- Debt (public and private) and money supply.
- Historical struggle between government-issued money and private bank-issued credit.
- Cost-benefit analysis for monetary reform in your world of the present.
I promise you can easily understand
each topic and that your understanding will give you an informed policy
voice over trillions of dollars. I encourage you to verify and
supplement the information in this paper through additional research. My
experience as a teacher is that the best tool to visualize this
information is to literally see it through an online 78-minute video,
“Money As Debt II: Promises Unleashed.” These video segments follow the
brief; and for your use: background and transcript of Money as Debt. Two other sources of information that I recommend: an excellent overview of our monetary system from Want to Know.info, and incisive articles from the most-read author on this topic, Ellen Brown.
“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went
(1975), p.29. Galbraith wrote five best-selling books on economics
(best-selling to the public), was President of the American Economic
Association, economics professor at Harvard, and advisor to four US
Presidents.
Please be advised that the ideas most
people have about how money is created and managed are false. Because
the facts are so different from what most people believe, cognitive
dissonance will push some people to reject the facts. Please reaffirm
your commitment to embrace the facts. Here we go:
Money and Bank Credit: Money is
broadly defined as anything generally accepted for trade. However, in
the real world something is money only when the government authorizes it
as “legal tender.” Its purpose is to facilitate trade. Fiat money (not
exchangeable for a commodity that “backs” the currency) is all that’s
required for this purpose because the government enforces its acceptance
as payment. Commodity money is the attachment of money to a thing, like
gold or silver. This is not needed for legal enforcement and introduces
fluctuation as the value of the attached commodity changes. If you’re
aware of the violent swings of the price of gold, you’ll understand the
risk of a wildly fluctuating value of commodity money. Its proponents,
like my friend Ron Paul, argue that linkage to a thing of limited
quantity is an acceptable tradeoff compared to their prediction of
inevitable corruption of any system designed to limit the supply of fiat
currency.
Bank credit is the legal power
government has given banks to create quasi-money out of nothing and lend
it to the public at interest. Your deposits to a bank are loans to
them. The bank can legally take a percentage of your deposit (90 to
really 100% through clever manipulations of regulations) and create new
credit to lend to the public at interest. They are not lending your
deposit, as most people envision. They are making the new credit out of
thin air! Bank credit increases the supply of money, causes inflation
(by definition as the supply increases), and devalues the money already
possessed by the public. Inflation is a hidden tax on your money because
purchasing power decreases with inflation. The banking industry
benefits from this policy of creating credit out of nothing and lending
it to us at interest, while the public has the costs of paying banks to
“so-called borrow” credit at interest while existing money is devalued. I
use the term “so-called borrow” because the loan wasn’t something
possessed by the bank. The loan was created out of nothing when you
asked for the loan. This can be difficult to grasp. Watching “Money As
Debt II” will walk you through the process.
The fact that banks create credit out of thin air is verified by the Federal Reserve’s Publication, “Modern Money Mechanics.”[1] Excerpts:
“The
purpose of this booklet is to describe the basic process of money
creation in a ‘fractional reserve’ banking system…The actual process of
money creation takes place primarily in banks.”
“[Banks]
do not really pay out loans from the money they receive as deposits. If
they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when
they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to
the borrower’ transaction accounts. Loans (assets) and deposits (liabilities) both rise by [the amount of the "loan"]."
When you understand the power of
creating credit out of nothing, your mind will probably take the next
logical step: why don’t we create money out of nothing to pay for public
goods and services directly rather than surrender this awesome power to
the banks? You’ll begin to realize: isn’t it insane for a government
that has the Constitutional authority to create money to not do so when
we have unemployed workers, work that needs to be done, and the
resources to do the work???
Fractional Reserve Banking: This
is the term for how banks and the banking industry create credit. An
individual bank creates credit and “so-called lends” it to the public as
a fraction of the deposits the public puts in the bank. Because the
money so-called lent ends up in another bank that then so-called lends
the money again, the effect in the overall economy is a multiplier
effect rather than an individual bank phenomenon of a fraction. It works
like this: the definition of “fractional reserve banking” is that banks
keep a regulated “fraction” of their total deposits “on reserve,”
called their reserve ration (RR) that they cannot “lend,” and can create
new credit out of thin air up to the total of all their customers’
deposits minus their RR. Again, because my teaching experience agrees
with John Kenneth Galbraith’s quote above that this is difficult to
grasp: once a bank is established, they must hold a percentage (ratio)
of their total deposits “on reserve” that is not leant to customers.
This rate is set by the Federal Reserve (Fed), 10% for established banks
and less for smaller ones (however, banks get around these limits and
will always make credit on terms profitable to the bank).
This means that if you deposit money
into your bank, they can then create credit up to their limit in new
“loans.” If you deposit $100, the bank can create new/thin-air credit of
$90 to anyone asking for a loan. That’s the micro picture.
The macro picture is that the new
credit then circulates to other banks and is “re-leant” at 90% and so
on. Let’s say that someone borrows the $90 from your bank, purchases
something, and then the $90 ends up deposited in another bank. The
receiving bank can create credit, let’s say 90% of up to $81 in new
credit. The injection of increasing the money supply comes from the
Federal Reserve. They create money out of nothing and then use it to buy
government securities or non-voting shares of banks, etc. If they buy a
government bond for $1,000 from money they create out of nothing, this
new money increases the money by the formula 1/RR. Assuming a simplified
textbook understanding of a RR of 10% of deposits that banks cannot
create credit from, in this case of the Fed creating $1,000 the new
credit/money multiplied from the banking system is $1000 x 1/10%, or
$1000 x 10 = $10,000. This is the macro effect if all receiving banks
create credit up to their reserve requirement and all “lend” out the new
credit.
Because the Federal Reserve is owned by
the banking industry, this causes a classic conflict of interest: the
banking industry’s profit comes from expanding the money supply and then
creating credit to “lend” to us at interest. Expanding the money supply
is in conflict with the public’s interest to limit the supply of money
to guard its value from inflation.
Some people are confused by the Fed’s
ownership. What’s in agreement in all curricula and publications is that
the Fed is owned by their member banks; over half the stock is from the
New York area (also known as Wall Street banks). Court cases have found
in each instance that the Federal Reserve is not a government agency.
You cannot find them in a government agency organizational chart in any
branch of government. They are listed in the business section of phone
books shortly after Federal Express.
Debt (public and national) and the Money Supply: When
banks “lend” credit, the interest charge can double the amount the
customer must repay. Through fractional reserve banking, only the amount
leant is created (principle) but not the interest. Because our US money
is only created as debt in our current monetary system, and the
interest is never created, we can now explain some extraordinary but
predictable outcomes. Money is debt, created out of thin air by
private banks, and then “leant” to us to repay at interest. The debt
will always be greater than the money supply. It’s impossible to ever
repay total debt; we are in debt forever in this monetary system. Please let this important fact have a place of honor in your understanding and think through it’s implications in our economy.
To put this in numbers, the total debt of the US public is currently over $50 trillion.[2] The total US money supply is somewhere around $13-15 trillion.[3]
We don’t know the exact amount anymore because the Federal Reserve
stopped publishing that figure in 2006, claiming it was unimportant and
“too expensive to tabulate and print.” This decision was made without
consultation from Congress or opportunity for comment from professional
economists or the public. Critics responded that this number is among
the most important because inflation is a function of the money supply,
tabulating its cost is negligible, and not keeping track of the total
money supply is potentially crippling to our overall economy through the
risk of inflation. Critics suspect that the Fed is hiding how much
they’re increasing the money supply.[4]
The Fed is
privately-owned by the banking industry with their meetings closed to
Congress and the public. The purpose of all business is to maximize
their own profit with limited interest in the public good. The Fed is
only audited by giving their accounting books to an independent firm to
verify their math is correct in the books. Because the Fed is not
strictly and transparently regulated by Congress, we have to trust the
Fed that the numbers on their books are accurate. As I’ve gently
suggested, trusting people in positions of power is un-American from the
view of the Founding Fathers. The only “oversight” from Congress is
semi-annual interviews for questions and answers with the Chair of the
Federal Reserve. Presidents appoints the seven Board of Governors to
help manage the Fed, but historically these selections always come from a
short-list of candidates selected by Fed ownership.[5]
The term of office for Board members is 14 years. As you may know,
Congresspersons Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have current bills to fully
audit the Fed (HR 1207 and HR 2424, respectfully) that the Fed is
opposing to protect its “independence.”
Because the
Federal Reserve can always create money out of nothing to buy US
government securities, the federal government is tempted to increase the
national debt rather than operate a balanced budget. The current
national debt of over $11 trillion[6] has an annual interest cost to the American taxpayers over $500 billion.[7]
US taxpayers only pay the interest and never pay down the principal of
the debt. When the securities are due to be paid, additional securities
are sold to cover the cost. There is no government plan to pay the
national debt or reduce it rather than vague promises to reduce spending
and reduce the debt from higher tax revenue of a strong economy. This
rhetoric has no track record of performance since Andrew Jackson enacted
partial monetary reform in his administration that ended in 1836.
Please let
that sink-in: we only pay the interest on the debt and actually cannot
pay the debt because it’s far larger than the money supply. Of course,
you’re now thinking there has to be a more intelligently-designed
monetary system, you’re feeling good in your citizenry that you’re
reading this article, and are excited to discover a better policy in
creating money!
But let’s
allow the costs of our current system to be fully understood to fuel
your passion for monetary reform. The interest payment cost of $500
billion every year to Americans is enormous. As we learned in my
article, “The economics of ending poverty,”
the investment to fund the UN Millennium Goals that would save a
million children’s lives every month while decreasing population growth
rates is estimated by professional economists from a low of $40
billion/year to a maximum of $150 billion/year at the project’s most
expensive phase.[8]
This is a ten-year investment, as sustainable and self-funding
development is the project’s goal. Even if we wanted to repay the debt,
the average cost to the ~100 million American households is about
$110,000. We’ll consider alternatives to this monetary system in our
cost-benefit section shortly.
To put this
in another perspective, the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP)
has two buildings, one in Washington, D.C. and one in Fort Worth, Texas.
Imagine each building has two halves: both print pretty pieces of
paper. In one half, money is printed; in the other half, US Treasury
Securities. Securities are mostly T-Bills, Notes, and Bonds; they are
auctioned to the public every week as loans to whoever buys them and are
repaid with interest. Bills are loans for a year or less, Notes are two
to ten years, and Bonds are ten to thirty years. These are mostly all
marketable, meaning that they can be resold.
If Congress
wants to buy government programs beyond their tax revenue, they may
print and sell as many securities as they wish but cannot get money
directly because that is illegal in our current monetary system. If the
Fed wants money, they request as much as they wish at the cost of the
paper and then charge the taxpayers as an operating expense. Of course,
the Fed can also enter money electronically into accounts. We have no
way of knowing if the Fed abuses their power to create money by entering
money into accounts and not reporting this on their books. The only
safeguard the public has is their word that they would never ever create
money for themselves, even though that is possible with a few computer
keystrokes and undetectable.
And please let the above facts and risks sink-in.
For
comparison, imagine if your family was a nation with the power to print
its own money. I offer to take this job from you with the following
spin: I’m a banking expert. Whomever you appoint from your family to
create money will combine ignorance with inevitable corruption that will
be incapable of managing your family’s money no matter what transparent
safeguards you enact. Therefore, I will print money to lend to your
family at interest. With your family’s increased education and economic
productivity, you can only increase the money supply by additional
lending from me. As a “government,” your family need never pay off the
loan, only the interest. Your family will work for me in paying the
interest, and my family will manage the money to lend to your family.
This is fair because printing your own money will lead to your ruin.
Your family
becomes increasingly in debt to me. After decades of this practice, your
family doesn’t give this system any thought and whines about the
interest payment and debt without taking any action to understand the
system and look for alternative structures. This is our Federal Reserve
system today.
Historical struggle between government-issued money and private bank-issued credit: As
you can imagine, privately-owned banks would love to have the legal
right to create and manage a nation’s money. This authority gives a
whole new meaning to “taking your work home with you.” For an excellent
comprehensive history, watch “The Money Masters” online (made in 1996: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936 among many) and/or read the updated 2006 transcript: http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/money-masters.html .[9]
Watching “Money As Debt II” will give you a general appreciation of the
history, as will the historical quotes at the end of this lesson.
Watching “Money As Debt II” is
important. From my conversations among AP Economics teachers, their
reports are in agreement with my experience that students (of all ages)
will not be able to understand our monetary system and creation of debt
without a walkthrough demonstration. I highly recommend that you watch
the beginning of “The Money Masters;” if you like what you learn, keep
watching. The entire video is 3.5 hours, so you might want to watch in
chapters. A short written parable might also help: The Money Myth
Exploded.[10]
The bottom-line of the history is a centuries-long struggle of wealthy
bankers who have endeavored for the ultimate banking job. In the US,
this struggle was won by the banks with the passage of the Federal
Reserve Act in 1913. This allowed for the legal practice of fractional
reserve banking and a monetary system of perpetual debt. Let’s consider
the alternative envisioned for the Constitution but not included because
the debate took so much energy and time at the Constitutional
Convention that the members tabled the issue for Congress to resolve
later.
Cost-Benefit Analysis for Monetary Reform: Monetary
reform would nationalize the Federal Reserve (this name is deceptive so
the public would perceive it as a government entity) and retain its use
for bank administrative functions. Fractional reserve lending by
private banks would be made illegal, with the US Treasury having sole
legal authority to issue new money for the benefit of the American
public rather than the benefit of the banking industry. About 40% of the
national debt is intra-governmental transfers and 10% held by the Fed;
this debt would be cancelled as it becomes a bookkeeping entry with
nationalization. Of the publicly-held debt of various parties holding US
Securities, the US Treasury would monetize (pay) the debt in proportion
to fractional reserves being replaced with full reserves over a period
of one to two years to monitor money supply and avoid inflation. The
American Monetary Institute has a proposal called The American Monetary
Act.[11] Ellen Brown has extensive articles, including how states can act now rather than waiting for federal reform.[12]
The governmental cost of this reform is
negligible. The benefits are astounding: the American public would no
longer pay $500 billion every year for national debt interest payments
(because 40% of the debt is intra-governmental transfers, this is a
savings of $300 billion/year). If lending is run at a non-profit rate or
at nominal interest returned to the American public (for
infrastructure, schools, fire and police protection, etc.) rather than
profiting the banks, the savings to the US public is conservatively $500
billion.[13]
If the US Federal government increased the money supply by 3% a year to
keep up with population increase and economic growth, we could spend an
additional $400 billion yearly into public programs or refund it as a
public dividend.[14] This savings would allow us to simplify or eliminate the income tax.[15] The estimated savings of eliminating the income tax with all its complexity, loopholes, and evasion is $250 billion/year.[16]
The total benefits for monetary reform are conservatively over a
trillion dollars every year to the American public. One trillion is
$1,000,000,000,000. I invite professional economists and committed
citizens to analyze and comment on my observation of costs and benefits.
To give you an idea of this amount,
imagine a new stack of $1 bills. New bills are about 200/inch. Imagine
if you laminated bills in a horizontal stack; this would be the same
size as a 2x4 board. Now imagine that this board of money was to travel
on your nearest freeway. How far would the money-board go to equal $1
trillion? Make your guess, then check the footnote.[17]
The private sector economic costs of
monetary reform are transfers of wealth from the banking industry to the
American public. The replacement would be either non-profit banks
operating as needed with minimum public cost such as fire departments
and the postal service, for-profit banks lending time-deposits in
regulated free-market competition, or a hybrid of the two (perhaps with
government mortgages at a non-profit rate of 1%).
Monetary reform stops the current
built-in increases of the money supply through fractional reserve
banking, and redirects it for direct payment of taxes for public goods
and services. Each dollar transferred from bank creation to public
benefit is one dollar less in public tax payment.
Opponents of monetary reform claim that
even if government issued money with transparency, any oversight
created would be defeated; government would issue too much money and
cause inflation. Ron Paul believes that gold should be used as a
physical-limit barrier to creating money. Some fear that any change will
make things worse. Some also claim that competition for large profits
in the banking industry spur innovation that wouldn’t occur in a
non-profit design. Improvements such as ATMs, on-line banking, instant
purchasing are worth the cost of giving monetary power to the private
sector.
The statutory purposes of the Fed are stable prices, maximum employment, and moderate interest rates. For prices,
consider for yourself how well they’ve done since the Fed began in
1913. Ask parents and grandparents if prices have remained stable in
their lifetimes or if they’ve increased just a teensy-weensy little bit.
You could, of course, also check the data and confirm that the dollar
has lost over 95% of its value since the Fed went to work for stable
prices.[18]
For employment, consider that we
have unemployed people in this country, resources to put to work, and
infrastructure to improve; then judge the Fed’s effectiveness in
creating money only as debt. For example, consider in California that
20,000 teachers were scheduled to be laid-off in 2008 and again in 2009
because of government budget cuts.[19]
We have the need for teachers, the teachers are available, but we have
unemployed teachers because the government must borrow its money to hire
them rather than issue money directly. Nationally, the US had over 11
million unemployed workers at the end of 2008,[20] and perhaps up to 30 million in August 2009.[21]
These millions of individuals are key income earners to a multiple
average of 2.5 additional Americans. This unemployment rate puts these
Americans livelihoods at risk. This only occurs because money is debt in
our current system; we would not have this problem if government
restored this Constitutional power and issued money directly. If we were
serious about achieving the goal of full employment, OBVIOULSY the only
way to achieve it is for government to be the employer of last resort.
In market failure of what free-market capitalism cannot employ, we
either put people to work on infrastructure/public service jobs or we
don’t achieve our goal of full employment. Please ponder that idea to
full realization. If the public jobs provided to the unemployed and
funded by government-created money provide greater economic benefit than
their cost, then inflation will actually decrease from creating those
jobs. That is conservative definition of how inflation/deflation works.
Another angle of minimizing our costs:
consider that the US Government Interagency Council on Homelessness has
compiled every known study on cost-benefits of housing the homeless and
providing food, medical care and job-employment services versus just
leaving them on the streets. In every case study the costs are less to
take action for their care.[22] Ponder that.
For interest rates, the
non-profit rate of borrowing money is generally considered among
economists at 3% in our current inflationary economy caused by
fractional reserve banking. With monetary reform, the non-profit rate
for a home loan would be less than 1%. Ask yourself if the value added
by the banking industry is worth the amount you currently pay above 1%,
understanding as you do that your total cost of a home loan has a higher
cost of the interest than the principle. That is, you’re paying the
banking industry more than your home is worth for them creating credit
out of nothing on their bank books.
Thank you for your attention to this
information. If the performance of the Fed is acceptable to you along
with its trillion dollar annual cost, feel free to defend it. If you
prefer monetary reform, a trillion dollars of benefit every year to the
American public will go far to building a brighter future. Because it’s
so important for your learning in the observations of people who teach
this for a living, I gently request once more: please watch “Money As
Debt II,” below.
My next articles document historical
and sourced quotes to allow America’s brightest minds an opportunity to
speak to you on this topic: here and here. Their contributions to our nation deserve a few minutes of your attention.
[1] Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. Modern Money Mechanics: http://www.truthsetsusfree.com/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf .
[2] Washington Post. Phillips, K. The Old Titans All Collapsed: Is the US Next? May 18, 2008: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603461.html
[3] Shadow Government Statistics. John Williams. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/money-supply .
[4] Wikipedia for overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States , alternative statistics: Shadow Government Statistics homepage. Williams, J. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data , and The Mess that Greenspan Made. M3, We Hardly Knew You. Nov. 22, 2005: http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2005/11/m3-we-hardly-knew-you.html .
[5] This has been the practice for as long as I remember. I wasn’t able to find documentation from the media; sorry!
[6] Treasury Direct. The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds it: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np .
[7] Seeking Alpha. Shedlock, M. National Debt and Interest Payments for 2008. Jan. 9, 2008: http://seekingalpha.com/article/59505-national-debt-interest-payments-for-fiscal-2008 .
[8] Borgen Project: Poverty Reduction through Political Accountability. http://borgenproject.org/Cost_of_Ending_Poverty.html and The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our Time. Jeffrey Sachs. http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/endofpoverty/oda.html .
[9]
Many of their quotes from Presidents are not included at the end of
this lesson because their sources are usually the Congressional Record.
Members of Congress did not footnote their sources and we do not have
other written sources to corroborate the quotes.
[10] Evan, L. The Money Myth Exploded: The Financial Enigma Resolved – A Debt-Money System: http://www.michaeljournal.org/myth.htm
[12] Web of Debt is Ellen’s book. My favorite state-solution article is California dreamin: how the state can beat its budget woes: http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/california_dreamin.php .
[13]
Of $50 trillion total debt, a conservative current interest cost of 5%
is $2.5 trillion every year. The academic estimate of the true cost of
borrowing is about 3%. A $500 billion savings if the profits are
transferred to the American public rather than to the banking industry
is probably low.
[14] The US GDP is ~$13 trillion every year. Three percent growth is moderately conservative.
[15] Of the US Federal government’s ~$2.5 trillion annual budget, about $1.2 trillion is received from income tax.
[16] Tax Foundation. Hodge, S, Moody, J, Warcholik, W. The Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax. Jan. 10, 2006: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/1281.html .
[17]
Over three times around the world at the equator. Yes, that’s a lot.
Earth’s circumference is ~25,000 miles. There are 63,360 inches in a
mile.
[18] US Bureau of Labor Statistics. CPI Inflation Calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl .
[19]
California Department of Education. State Schools Chief Jack O'Connell,
Teachers, Support Staff, Administrators Announce More Than 20,000
Teachers and Support Staff Getting Layoff Notices Due to Budget Crisis.
March 14, 2008: http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr08/yr08rel31.asp
[21] Huffington Post. What a jobless recovery today means for tomorrow? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-hindery-jr/what-a-jobless-recovery-i_b_261667.html . August 17, 2009. Also consider economist John Williams Shadow Stats site: http://www.shadowstats.com/ .
http://www.examiner.com/article/monetary-reform-reclaiming-1-trillion-every-year-through-public-creation-of-money