Subject: | GREENING THE DOLLAR | |
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From: | GREEN PARTY BMRC | |
Date: | November, 2022 |
TABLE OF CONTENTS
International Anti-Corruption Day — December 9
The Green Party of the United States calls attention to the International Anti-Corruption Day for the purpose of bringing awareness to the vast corruption in our federal government and its institutions.
The observance of International Corruption Day was established in 2003 by the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), which is a legally binding multilateral treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2003, and entered into force in December 2005.
Among provisions for international cooperation in prosecuting crimes of corruption, the treaty also encourages member state to enact legislation for the prevention and elimination of corruption at all levels of government. It calls for the protection of witnesses, victims, and whistle blowers to promote efficient law enforcement. There are few signs of improvement in our government since 2003. In fact, corruption seems to have increased to the point where there are few attempts to even hide the level of corruption. President Obama left a legacy of war against whistleblowers. Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange continue to be persecuted and prosecuted by the U. S. Justice Department.
The Supreme Court effectively legalized bribery through its decision in the Citizens United case that allows unfettered spending by corporations on political campaigns. This has effectively allowed banks and other large corporations to “buy” members of Congress. As a result, studies have shown that public opinion has virtually no impact on policy decisions and legislation enacted by Congress. We no longer have a democracy. Members of Congress continually violate the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act, by trading stock based on their insider knowledge gained through Congressional committees. The act only requires reporting of stock trading, and the fine for violation is only $200 and is often waived by ethics officials.
Private banks and financial institutions are the heaviest contributors to election campaigns. The Banking and Monetary Reform Committee of the Green Party is engaged in educating its members and the public about the corruption of the banking institutions. The special privilege and authority of creating the country’s money supply by making loans, has allowed the banks to accumulate enough wealth to control the largest corporations and dictate public policy in the country. The Green Party platform calls for reform of the monetary system, requiring a change to public creation and issuing of the country’s money. Bankers have been given de facto immunity from prosecution. There is a reason why no bankers were prosecuted after the economic collapse in 2008, despite having created the collapse through use of massive fraudulent transactions.
The Green Party supports the work done by some nongovernment organizations that promote an end to the massive government corruption. One such organization, Represent.us, focuses on corruption through the promotion of a federal Anti-Corruption Act. It has also been instrumental in passing anti-corruption legislation in 161 state and local governments during the last 10 years. Effective anti-corruption legislation at the federal level, together with monetary reform of the Federal Reserve System, would provide solutions that would return democracy to the country and eliminate much of the social injustices that plague our society.
The Federal Reserve Banking System
A GREEN PARTY DISCUSSION OF OUR TAXPAYER-DEPENDENT CENTRAL BANK
INTRODUCTION
In reforming the money system as laid out in the Greening the Dollar part of our GPUS Platform — the private bank Members of the FED will no longer be the creators and issuers of our nation’s "money." Nor will those banks have the power to determine what "Economists" call the capital development of the national economy.
This Earth that Greens are trying to save, for the children to love and to enjoy, is a separate monetary economy from that of today’s "Bankers World" sphere. It is the Banker’s School of Money system, after all, that will be coming in for a softer-landing than it deserves — after monetary reform is achieved.
With a Pen.
A Green Party Discussion of our Central Bank
First, from the ‘Eight-Miles-High’ perspective, let’s explore the ancient GoldSmith Bankers origins of the FED’s fractional-reserve banking system of money — central banking today.
Understanding central banking’s particular institutional history can go a long way to gleaning what is needed for progressive political activists to achieve socio-economic and monetary justice — for the children — and their planet.
Second, let’s explore the modern FED’s operations from the micro level. Let’s lay bare the economic tyranny that this central banking system called the FED has wrought upon our nation and our people — just during the last week or so.
1. ON CENTRAL BANKING’S IMMORAL, IF NOT ILLICIT, ORIGINS
I remember being surprised when my dad pointed out that the truth of the centuries-old beginnings of this money system — what Soddy called the “confidence trick’ of private, journal-entry money creation and issuance — was clearly spelled out in the Fed’s Modern Money Mechanics publication. And there I read it. (Please recall Soddy in this learning moment.)
MODERN MONEY MECHANICS FRB-Chicago. (1972)
”… This unique attribute of the banking business was discovered many centuries ago.
It started with goldsmiths. As early bankers, they initially provided safekeeping services, making a profit from vault storage fees for gold and coins deposited with them. … Everyone soon found that it was a lot easier simply to use the deposit receipts directly as a means of payment. These receipts … were acceptable as money …
Then, bankers discovered that they could make loans merely by giving their promises to pay, or bank notes, to borrowers. In this way, banks began to create money …
Transaction deposits are the modern counterpart of bank notes. It was a small step from printing notes to making book entries crediting deposits of borrowers, …"
Central Banking’s "ABOUT US". I have always appreciated its candor.
So this FRB system was started by a bunch of ‘privileged pretenders’ — liars, cheats and crooks — unjustly enriching themselves through trickery and sleight of hand … unlike, it seems, the bankers of today. The Goldsmith bankers stepped in with their new fictitious Gold “receipts” to fill the credit gap, profiteering for a few hundred years — smooth sailing around the world.
UNTIL … the North American Colonies — those independent rascals who had devised their own working money systems to achieve their prosperity, and used their ‘Colonial Scrip’ monies for longer than we’ve had the FED. The Colonists defended their right to use their monies. England passed laws against these colonial money powers, and King George ordered the law’s enforcement.
Our forefathers Declaration of Independence was necessitated, and its declared rights were then defended in a bloody Revolutionary War — won by the stalwart revolutionary Colonial patriots demanding only the use of their own money.
But look around. Once more today, that hard-won monetary freedom has been eroded to nothing in our 250-year evolution as a failed experiment of monetary democracy. I would argue that perhaps more than any other potential driver of future social equity and justice, it is this nation’s "monetary democracy" experiment that is in dire need of the wisdom of the Colonies, as presented in the Platform of the U.S. Green Party.
Let’s move that People’s Money’ revolution forward once more, For the last time.
2. THE FED’S MODERN-DAY TYRANNIES — SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY CAN
From the Fed’s ubiquitous Goldsmith Ancestry to this week’s pilfering of yet another $24 Billion from American Taxpayers, without even a need to shout: "HANDS UP!!"
By increasing the Fed’s target (Fed Funds) interest rate by another three-quarters (¾) of one percent last week, the Fed at the same time increases the amount of the CENTRAL BANK’s interest payments to its Member Banks holding so-called central bank "reserves," this time by another $24 Billion, all at no cost to the Federal Reserve Banking System. This is ONLY because that money is stolen from the US taxpayers — who have already paid it in interest TO THE FED‘s Reserve Banks holding Treasuries they bought, also for nothing.
So, five or six hundred years after central banking’s origination, the total fraud and deception of the American people continues.
In considering this injustice of the Fed’s move, please keep in mind its ancestry.
The FED never asked Congress its opinion on increasing the payments of interest on reserve balances. They say this is because the Fed is INDEPENDENT of possible political pressures that might interfere with maximizing, or optimizing, the economy’s output — strictly for political gain.
HOW does the Fed PURLOIN $24 Billion of hard-earned and paid-in taxpayer money, being held, ostensibly in trust by the FRBS — to be returned as a remittance TO THE TREASURY — and then hand that taxpayer money over to the Fed’s Member Bankers — as an interest payment on the Member Bank’s holdings of some odious fiduciary media that the Fed itself created out of nothing — colloquially, central bank reserves.
HOW?? Answers: 1. Accounting, and 2. The Nation’s Money Power
A quick review of the Fed’s Annual Report of the Fed’s Operating Statement provides the answer. Open this link: https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/files/combinedfinstmt2021.pdf
At the top is the source of ALL the Fed Bank’s Operating Income — the Interest that taxpayers pay on our Public Debt. $122 BILLIONS.
[page 4, Combined Statements of Operations (in millions),
Total Interest Income: 2021 $122,555, 2020 $101,542;
Net Interest Income: 2021 $116,806, 2020 $92,943 increase $23,863 billion)]
Then, the Fed’s expenses are deducted, here listed from back when the Fed’s target interest rate was in the One Quarter of One Percent range. The Interest expense on reserves (a deduction to Net Interest Income) was only $5.74 BILLIONS. And that, ladies and gentlemen is the ‘payment-deduction’ that just went up BY ANOTHER $24 BILLIONS.
The “payment” of the ‘Interest On Reserve Balance’ (IORB) accounts becomes a deduction from the Net Income of the Fed.
That deduction from ‘net income’ of the Fed is a matching reduction in the amount of ‘net income’ the Fed repays, via remittance, annually to the Treasury. When that $24 Billion is added to the two previous increases — like $75 Billion, and then we pay the cost of the Fed Banks and the Board of Governors LUNCHES, so another $7 Billion or so. The next thing you know, we the people are out the whole $122 Billion we already paid in interest on those holdings.
Then, what happens? The government is short, let’s say, a Hundred Billion in paying its Bills, and must either cut spending (very difficult), or BORROW ANOTHER $!00 BILLION.
So, take a vote. Central Bank Independence. A Bad Thing? Or A Very Bad Thing?
IN CLOSING
I have tried to advance our understandings of the reality of the history of fractional reserve banking at the Fed, born inauspiciously by the printing of fraudulent ‘receipts’ by the Goldsmith Bankers of yore. A long travesty of private privilege centuries old. Yet enduring.
I have tried at the same time to shed some light on the very real anti-social monetary outcomes, the TYRANNY if you will, that such a PRIVATE money and banking relationship brings into evidence.
TO THE RAMPARTS!
Thanks.
Joe Bongiovanni,
The Money Apprentice
Green Party of Virginia
The Most Important History is the History We Don't Know
BENJAMIN BUTLER, GREENBACKER
Benjamin Franklin Butler (November 5, 1818 – January 11, 1893) was an American major general of the Union Army, politician, lawyer, and businessman from Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Butler is best known as a political major general of the Union Army during the American Civil War and for his leadership role in the impeachment of U.S. President Andrew Johnson. He was a colorful and often controversial figure on the national stage and on the Massachusetts political scene, serving five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and running several campaigns for governor before his election to that office in 1882.
Butler, a successful trial lawyer, served in the Massachusetts legislature as an antiwar Democrat and as an officer in the state militia. Early in the Civil War he joined the Union Army, where he was noted for his lack of military skill and his controversial command of New Orleans, which brought him wide dislike in the South and the "Beast" epithet. Although freeing an enemy's slaves in wartime was nothing new, Butler created the legal idea of doing so by designating them as contraband of war, which led to ending slavery becoming an official war goal. His commands were marred by financial and logistical dealings across enemy lines, some of which may have taken place with his knowledge and to his financial benefit.
Butler was dismissed from the Union Army after his failures in the First Battle of Fort Fisher, but he soon won election to the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts. As a Radical Republican he considered President Johnson's Reconstruction agenda to be too weak, advocating harsher punishments of former Confederate leadership and stronger stances on civil rights reform. He was also an early proponent of the prospect of impeaching Johnson. After Johnson was impeached in early 1868, Butler served as the lead prosecutor among the House-appointed impeachment managers in the Johnson impeachment trial proceedings. Additionally, as Chairman of the House Committee on Reconstruction, Butler authored the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and coauthored the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1875.
In Massachusetts, Butler was often at odds with more conservative members of the political establishment over matters of both style and substance. Feuds with Republican politicians led to his being denied several nominations for the governorship between 1858 and 1880. Returning to the Democratic fold, he won the governorship in the 1882 election with Democratic and Greenback Party support. He ran for president on the Greenback Party and the Anti-Monopoly Party tickets in 1884.
“I stand here, therefore, for inconvertible paper money, the greenback, which has fought our battles and saved our country, which has been held by us as a just equivalent for the blood of our soldiers, the lives of our sons, the widowhood of our daughters, and the orphanage of their children. I stand here for a currency by which the business transactions of forty million people are safely and successfully done, which, founded on the faith, the wealth, and property of the nation, is at once the exemplar and engine of its industries and power—that money which saved the country in war and has given it prosperity and happiness in peace. To it four million men owe their emancipation from slavery; to it labor is indebted for elevation from that thrall of degradation in which it has been enveloped for ages. I stand for that money, therefore, which is by far the better agent and instrument of exchanged of an enlightened and free people than gold and silver the money alike of the barbarian and the despot.”
[Speech on House floor, January 12, 1869 on national currency]