An aggressive experiment 

Richard Duncan, writing in the London Financial Times on February 10, 2004 , pointed to an even more disturbing development.  The Bank of Japan was reported to be printing yen and using the money to buy US dollars, which were then invested in US government bonds.  The United States was going deeply into debt to a private foreign bank – in debt for a loan of money created out of nothing.

Duncan called it ‘the most aggressive experiment in monetary policy ever conducted’.  He wrote:

" Japan is printing yen in order to buy dollars in such extraordinary amounts that global interest rates are being held at much lower levels than would have prevailed otherwise …. Since the beginning of 2003, monetary authorities in Japan have created Y27,000bn with which they have acquired approximately $250bn.  (This sum) would amount to $40 per person if divided among the entire population of the world.  (It is) enough to finance almost half of America ’s $520bn budget deficit this year …. Japan is carrying out the most audacious endeavour as conjure wealth out of nothing since John Law sold shares in the Mississippi Company in 1720."

US is now the world’s largest debtor

By the time the great Asian tsunami hit on December 26, 2004 , the US federal debt was up to $7.6 trillion; and half of the privately-held portion was owned by foreigners.  Just during the week of the disaster, the Federal Reserve reported that foreign central banks purchased another $5.6 billion in US government debt.  How much is $5.6 billion?  The United States promised to send $350 million abroad in the form of disaster relief.   That means the United States took back to full $350 million it promised to send abroad in about half a day in the form of loans.  The US is now the world’s largest debtor, borrowing an estimated 80 percent of the world’s savings annually.  Moreover, the foreign investors who buy US bonds are essentially giving the money away, because under the existing monetary scheme the debt never will or can be repaid. (2)  Why this is true, and why foreign central banks lend the money anyway, is complicated; but to validate the point, here is a quote from a noted economist, John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in 1975:

"In numerous years following [the Civil War], the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus.  It could not [however] pay off its debt, retire as securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes.  To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply." 

That is one reason the debt can’t be paid off: our money supply is debt and can’t exist without it.  But there is another obvious reason: the debt is simply too big.  To get some sense of the magnitude of a $7.6 trillion obligation, if you took 7 trillion steps you could walk to the planet Pluto, which is a mere 4 billion miles away.  If the government were to pay $100 every second, in 317 years it would have paid off only one trillion dollars of this debt.  That’s just for the principal.  If interest were added at the rate of only 1 percent compounded annually, the debt could never be paid off in that way, because the debt would grow faster that it was being repaid. (3).  To pay it off in a lump sum through taxation, on the other hand, would require increasing the tax bill by about $100,000 for every family of four, a non-starter for most families. 

The US federal debt hasn’t been paid off since the presidency of Andrew Jackson nearly two centuries ago.  (4)  In fact in all but five fiscal years since 1961 (1969 and 2998 through 2001), the government has exceeded its projected budget, adding to the national debt.  When President Clinton announced the largest budget surplus in history in 2000, and President Bush predicted a $5.6 trillion budget surplus in 2001, many people got the impression that the federal debt had been paid off; but this was another illusion.  The $5.6 trillion budget ‘surplus’ not only never materialised (it was just an optimistic estimate projected over a ten-year period, based on an anticipated surplus for the year 2001 that never materialised), but it entirely ignored the principal owing on the federal debt.   Like the deluded consumer who makes the minimum monthly interest payment on his credit card bill and calls his credit limit ‘cash in hand’, politicians who speak of ‘balancing the budget’ include in their calculations only the interest on the national debt.  By 2000, when President Clinton announced the largest-ever budget surplus, the federal debt had actually topped $5 trillion; and by March 2005, when the largest-ever projected surplus had turned into the largest-ever budget deficit, it had mushroomed to $7.7 trillion. 

Financial Weapon of Mass Destruction? 

For the foreign holders of US debt, this could be the ultimate ‘weapon of mass destruction’: they have the power to pull the plug on the US economy.  Foreign central bans, concerned with the dramatic flip from a US budget surplus of $236.4 billion in 2000 to a deficit of $413 billion by the end of 2004, are quietly switching their reserves from dollars to Euros and yen.  Mark Weisbrot, do-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington , observed in January 2005: 

"The timing of any drastic move by big players is very hard to predict.  China and Japan for example, either one of those, can cause a complete crash, a total collapse of the dollar just by selling a small portion of their reserves.  In fact, probably they won’t have to sell their reserves, all they have to do is stop accumulating or slow down their rate of accumulation and it will be dollar crash. (5)" 

According to a January 2005 Asia Times article: 

"All Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires.  It would devastate the US economy more than a nuclear strike." 

When China withdraws its support from the US account deficit, the US could be facing the sort of currency devaluation that ‘crashed’ the German mark and turned it into worthless paper in the 1920’s.  If the United States has to declare bankruptcy, its foreign loans will dry up, and it will be thrown back on its own resources.  But that spectre is not something new to the United States .  The American colonists faced such a challenge in the eighteenth century, when they found themselves son the frontier of the New World without the precious metals that served as money in the Old World .  The same solution the colonists came up with then could be used to extricate the country from its financial crisis today. 

Returning the Money Power to the People 

The American colonies were an experiment in utopia.  In an uncharted territory, you could design new systems and make new rules.  In England , paper money in the hands of private bankers was becoming a tool for manipulating and controlling the people; but in the American colonies, paper money was being generated by provincial governments for the benefit of the people.  The colonists’ new paper money worked surprisingly well, financing a period of prosperity that was remarkable for isolated colonies lacking their own silver and gold.  By 1750, Benjamin Franklin was able to write of New England : 

"There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace was reigning on every border.  It was difficult, and even impossible, to find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe.  Comfort was prevailing in every home.  The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread." 

Different provinces experimented differently with the new paper money.  Under the Massachusetts plan, it was issued by the provincial government and spent into the economy.  The system worked well until the Massachusetts government got overzealous and issued too much, when the paper ‘scrip’ became seriously devalued.  Despite that flaw, the Massachusetts scrip served to fund rapid economic development that would not otherwise have occurred.  But it was the colonial scrip of the Pennsylvania provincial government that was the admiration of all.  The Pennsylvania bank lent money into the community, to be repaid by borrowers at interest to the provincial government.  Because the scrip was returned to its source, the money supply did not become over-inflated and the currency retained its value.  It also returned profits to the government, sometimes funding half the province’s budget. (6)  This paper money scheme, said Franklin , was the reason Pennsylvania "has so greatly increased in inhabitants" having replaced "the inconvenient method of barter" and given "new life to business [and] promoted greatly the settlement of new lands (by lending small sums to beginners on easy interest)." 

The Real Cause of the American Revolution 

The colonies thrived without silver or gold until 1751, when paper ‘legal tender’ was outlawed in New England by King George II.  The result was to force the colonists to borrow the British bankers’ silver and gold (or their paper banknotes that were ostensibly receipts for it).  In 1764, Parliament extended the ban on paper money to all of the colonies, and ordered that only gold and silver could be used to pay taxes.  Only a year later, Franklin wrote in his Autobiography, the streets of the colonies were filled with unemployed beggars, just as they were in England .  The money supply had been suddenly reduced by half, leaving insufficient funds to pay for the goods and services these workers could have provided.  This, Franklin said, was the real reason for the Revolution.  It was "the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament which has caused in the colonies hatred of the English and …. The Revolutionary War." 

The colonists won the Revolution against the British Crown, but they lost the right to create their own money to the British bankers and their cronies in America .  The bankers won by stealth, propaganda, and misrepresentation concerning the nature of money and banking.  In 1863, Congress under President Abraham Lincoln broke free and again issued its own paper notes, which were used to finance the North’s victory in the Civil War.  But after the war was over, the ‘Greenbacks’ were withdrawn and bankers paper notes were substituted.  In 1913, the exclusive right to issue the nation’s currency was usurped by a private central bank called the ‘Federal Reserve’, although it is not federal and keeps no gold reserves.  In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard.  Today, all of our money is ’fiat’ money (money ‘by decree’), issued by private banks as credit either to the government or to individuals and corporations.

The Greenback Solution

A $7.7 trillion (+) debt tsunami is currently bearing down on the United States .  Congress needs to liquidate it before it liquidates the United States .  But how?  The debt was created by sleight of hand.  It can be eliminated by sleight of hand.  Factional reserve lending can be abolished by legislative fiat.  The Federal Reserve can be made what most people think it now is – a truly ‘federal’ institution – and the power to create money can be returned to the people.  

The $7.7 trillion federal debt was created with accounting entries on a computer screen.  It can be eliminated in the same way.  The simplicity of the procedure was demonstrated in January 2004, when the US Treasury called a 30-year bond issue before its due date.  The Treasury’s action generated some controversy, since government bonds are generally considered good until maturity.  (7)  But calling (or paying off) a bond before its due date is done routinely by other issuers.  Corporations and municipalities buy back their bonds whenever it is advantageous for them to do so.  When interest rates fall, they call their bonds in order to refinance their debt at lower rates.  The difference between a bond called by a corporation and one called by the US Treasury is that the Treasury has the power to make payment solely with a bookkeeping entry, without ‘real’ money backing it up.   And that appears to be exactly what was done in this case.  The Treasury cancelled its promise to pay interest on these particular bonds simply by announcing its intention to do so (or by fiat, as they say in French).  Then it paid the principal with an accounting entry. 

Here is its January 15, 2004 announcement: 

TREASURY CALLS 9-1/8 PERCENT BONDS OF 2004-09 

"The Treasury today announced the call for redemption at par on May 15, 2004 of the 9-1/8% Treasury Bonds of 2004-09, originally issued may 15, 1979, due May 15, 2009 (CUSIP No 9112810CG1).  There are $4,606 million of these bonds outstanding, of which $3,109 million are held by private investors.  Securities not redeemed on May 15, 2004 will stop earning interest.   

These bonds are being called to reduce the cost of debt financing.  The 9-18% interest rate is significantly above the current cost of securing financing for the five years remaining to their maturity.  In current market conditions, Treasury estimates that interest savings from the call and refinancing will be about $544 million. 

Payment will be made automatically by the Treasury for bonds in book-entry form, whether held on the books of the Federal Reserve Banks or in Treasury /Direct accounts." (8) 

The provision for payment ‘in book entry form’ means that no dollar bills, cheques or other paper currencies are to be exchanged.  Numbers will simply be entered into the Treasury’s direct online money market fund (‘Treasury Direct’).  The investments will remain in place and intact and will merely change character – from interest-bearing to non-interest-bearing, from a debt owed to a debt paid. 

Where did the government plan to get the money to ‘refinance’ this $3 billion bond issue at a lower interest rate?  Whether it was from the private banking system on the open market, or from the Bank of Japan with notes printed up for the occasion, or from the Federal Reserve as the purchaser of last resort, the money was no doubt created out of thin air.  As Federal Reserve Board Chairman Marriner Eccles testified before the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1935: 

"When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered …. they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars."

Treasury securities

If the Treasury can cancel its promise to pay interest on its bonds simply by announcing its intention to do so, and if it can pay off the principal just by entering number sin an online database, it can pay off the entire federal debt in that way. It just has to announce that it is calling all of its bonds and securities, and that they will be paid ‘in book-entry form’.  No cash needs to change hands.

The usual objection to this solution is that it would be dangerously inflationary, but would it?  Paying off the US federal debt by ‘monetising’ it would not change the size of the money supply, because the US money supply already includes the federal debt; in fact, it consists of the federal debt.  Treasury debt takes the form of Treasury securities (bills, bonds and notes); and Treasury securities are a major component of the money market funds and other time deposits included in the Fed’s calculations of M2 and M3.  Converting bonds (government promises to pay) into cash (actual payment) would not change the total of these money measures.  It would just shift the funds from M2 and M3 into M1.  Treasury securities are already treated by the Fed and the market itself just as if they were money.  These are traded daily in enormous volume among banks and other financial institutions around the world just as if they were money.  People put their money into highly liquid Treasury bills in money market funds because the consider this to be the equivalent of holding cash.  Converting Treasury bills and other securities into actual cash (US Notes) would not affect the size of the money supply.  It would just change the label on the funds.  The market for goods and services would not be flooded with ‘new’ money that inflated the prices of consumer goods, because the bond holders would not consider themselves any richer than they were before.  The bond holders presumably had their money in bonds in the first place because they wanted to save it rather than spend it.  They would no doubt continue to save it, either as cash or by investing it in some other interest-generating securities.

A Newer Deal

In 1933, President Roosevelt pronounced the country officially bankrupt, exercised his special emergency powers, waved the royal Presidential fiat, and ordered the promise to pay in gold removed from the dollar bill.  The dollar was instantly transformed from a promise to pay in legal tender into legal tender itself.  Seventy years later, Congress could again acknowledge that the country is officially bankrupt and propose a plan of reorganisation.  By simple legislative fiat, it could transform its ‘debts’ into ‘legal tender’.

Roosevelts ’s plan of reorganization was called the ‘New Deal’. [Ed note: reorganization means BANKRUPTCY!]  In this ‘Newer Deal’, foreign creditors would actually be getting the best deal possible.  They have enormous amounts of money tied up in US government bonds, which the US cannot possibly pay off with tax revenues.  If America ’s creditors were to propel it into bankruptcy, the US government would have to simply walk away from its debts, and the creditors would be out of luck.  If the United States pays off its debts with real ‘legal tender’, the creditors will have something they can take to the bank and spend in the global market.  If it looks like a dollar, and feels like a dollar, it is a dollar.  The only difference will be that the dollar will have been issued by the federal government rather than ‘borrowed’ from a bank. 

One objection that has been raised to paying off the federal debt by ‘monetizing’ it is that foreign investors would be discouraged from purchasing US bonds in the future.  But once the government reclaims the power to create money from the banking cartel, it will no longer need to sell its bonds to investors.  It will no longer even need to levy income taxes.  It will have other ways to finance its budget. 

A Modest Proposal for Eliminating the Personal Federal Income Tax 

Returning the power to create money to the government and the people it represents would generate three new sources of revenue for the public purse:

1.  The interest earned on loans would be returned to the government

Using the figures for 2002 (the last relatively normal year before the United Sates was at war in Iraq ), total assets in the form of bank credit for all US commercial banks were reported to be $5.89 trillion. (9)  Assuming an average interest rate of 6 percent, about $353 billion in interest income was thus paid to commercial banks.  This interest was earned, not be lending anything of their own, but by advancing the ‘full faith and credit of the United States .’  Returning this interest to the collective body of the people to whom it properly belongs would thus have generated revenue for the government of $353 billion in 2002. 

2.  Congress could issue new interest-free US Notes (Greenbacks) to the extent (and only to the extent) needed to ‘grow’ the money supply in order to cover productivity and interest charges.

In the monetary scheme of Benjamin Franklin, paper money was issued ‘in proper proportions to the demands of trade and industry’.  What is the ‘proper proportions’ of monetary growth?  One way to approach the problem is to look at current growth.  The money supply (M3) grew from $7.96 trillion in November 2001 to $8.49 trillion in November 2002, an increase of $529 billion or 6.6 percent. (10)  Under the present system, the expansion in the money supply needed to keep up with productivity and interest charges must come from federal borrowing, since private borrowing zeroes out on repayment.  If the government were to quit ‘borrowing’ money into existence, this source of growth would dry up, and there would be insufficient money to cover the interest due on commercial loans.  Like in a grand game of musical chairs, some borrowers would have to default. 

If the average collective interest rate is 6.6 percent, and if the government can no longer ‘borrow’ that money into existence, it will need to issue enough new Greenbacks to increase the money supply by 6.6 percent just to keep the system in balance.  In 2002, that would have meant creating $529 billion in new debt-free US Notes. 

3.  If the government were to pay off the federal debt with new Greenbacks, it would no longer need to budget for interest on the debt.

Using 2002 figures, money paid in interest on the federal debt came to £333 billion.  Paying off  the debt would have reduced the collective tax bill by that sum. 

Combining these three sources of funding - $353 billion in interest income, $529 billion in new US Notes to cover annual growth in the money supply, and $333 billion saved in interest payments on the federal debt – the public coffers could have been swelled by $1,215 billion in 2002.  Total personal income taxes that year came to only $1,074 billion. Thus by reclaiming the power to create money from the private banking system, Congress could have eliminated individual income taxes in 2002 with $141 billion to spare.  How much is $141 billion?  According to the Unites Nations, a mere $80 billion added to existing resources in 1995 would have been enough to cut world poverty and hunger in half, achieve universal primary education and gender equality, reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters, reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and halve the proportion of people without access to safe water world-wide (11)

REFERENCES

(1)      J Lawrence Broz, et al., Paying for Privilege: The Political Economy of Bank of England Charters, 1694-1844 (January 2002), page 11, MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "www.econ.burnard.columbia.edu." claiming to be www.econ.burnard.columbia.edu.

(2)      "How much are we giving to Asia ?  Nothing, Really"
Journal Inquirer ( January 13, 2005 )

(3)      George Humphrey, Common Sense
(Austin, Texas: George Humphrey, 1998), page 5

(4)      ‘The Presidential Facts Page’, The History Ring, www.scican.net/-dkochan.

(5)      Mead McKay, ‘Central Banks Dump Dollar for Euro’,  Asia Times, www.atimes.com ( January 27, 2005 ) 

(6)      Stephen Zarlenga, The Lost Science of Money ( Valatie , New York : American Monetary Institute, 2002), pages 367-71. 

(7)      ‘US Treasury Defaults on 30 Year Bond Holders’, www.rense.com ( January 20, 2004 ) 

(8)      Department of the Treasury, ‘Public Debt News’, Bureau of the Public Debt, Washington , CD 20239 ( January 15, 2004 ). 

(9)      Federal Board of Governors, ‘Total Bank Credit Outstanding’, see W Hummel , ‘Financial Data Current and Historical: Money Stock’, www.wfhummel.cnchost.com/linkshistoricaldata.html

(10)    Federal Reserve Statistical Release, ‘Money Stock Measures’ ( January 2, 2003 )

(11)    Jan Vandermoortele, Are the MDG’s Feasible ( New York : United Development Program Bureau for Development Policy, July 2002)

Ellen is an attorney in Los Angeles, California and the author of ten books, including the best selling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker.  This article is drawn from her forthcoming book The Wizards of Wall Street and How They Are Bankrupting America .

Published in Namaste Volume 8 Issue 3  

INTERVIEW: Aaron Russo's 'America: Freedom to Fascism'

—Radio Your Way, Tue Sep 26 16:32

ENOUGH WITH THE DOUBLESPEAK AND OXYMORONS:

— by Fred Cederholm), Tue Sep 26 17:44