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‘End the Fed’ Rallies Spur Honest Money Efforts Across States
By Mark Anderson
THE 39 END THE FED RALLIES held across America recently inspired
two Milwaukee neighborhoods to create their own local currency.
The tanking economy—run with Federal Reserve debt notes that represent the captivity of the people’s money and credit by entrenched private bankers—is aggravating an increasing number of Americans who are fed up with living in “Fedville.”
The Chicago Tribune, to its credit, acknowledged the local currency idea in nearby Milwaukee. Tribune reporter Erika Slife, on Dec. 3, wrote: “They may be talking funny money, but it’s not funny business. . . .Residents from the Milwaukee neighborhoods of Riverwest and East Side are scheduled to meet . . . to discuss printing their own money. The idea is that the local cash could be used at neighborhood stores and businesses, thus encouraging local spending. The result, supporters hope, would be a bustling local economy, even as the rest of the nation deals with a recession.”
This money is scrip, which has a long and noble history.
Conventional reporters usually fail to realize that the real “funny money” is the “official” money that the U.S. Treasury prints for the private Federal Reserve for pennies on the bill, regardless of the denomination.
Only it’s not funny that the Treasury turns the money over to the Fed so the central bank can loan it back to the federal government at full face value plus interest. Federal Reserve notes are loaned into circulation, not spent into circulation. This creates the paradox that more development means more debt. And since the Fed and commercial banks only loan credit to borrowers, there is always much more debt than there is cash in circulation to pay all the public and private debts. It is a debt-treadmill that helps only the international Rothschild money monopoly and their greedy, partner bankers.
In Milwaukee “you have all these people who have local currency, and they’re going to spend it at local stores,” Sura Faraj in Milwaukee, a community organizer who helped spearhead the plan, was quoted by the Tribune. “They can’t spend it at the Wal-Mart or the Home Depot, but they can spend it at their local hardware store or their local grocery store.”
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A key aspect of this populist idea is spending the planned currency at local stores, not at the big chain stores whose main stock in trade is Asian merchandise, especially that from China. The chain stores help forge the chains that bind the American economy by creating a far-reaching distribution system for selling massive amounts of foreign manufactured goods, thereby overwhelming the fragile remnant of American manufacturing.
Any remaining productive American factories that are not eyeball-deep in debt like the Big Three automakers are as rare as a congressman who supports tariffs on imports to cancel the financial advantage for American-domiciled companies to outsource their manufacturing jobs overseas.
A local publication, ExpressMilwaukee.com, noted: “While creating cash for designated neighborhoods isn’t an entirely new concept, it’s definitely new to Milwaukee,” adding that Ms. Faraj was recently quoted in Newsweek magazine about the plans of her organization, Riverwest Neighborhood Association.
“The currency is tentatively called ‘river currency’ and if local businesses get with the program, it could be used as cash at their respective establishments,” the local paper added.
Ms. Faraj also told the local paper, “We do hope this will boost the economy, and define what it means to shop locally.” Incentives have been considered to entice consumers into using the new money. For example, they could trade $100 Fed notes for $110 in local scrip money, essentially netting them a 9.1 percent discount at participating stores.
And “as long as communities don’t create coins, or print bills that resemble federal dollars, organizations are free to produce their own greenbacks—and [they] don’t even have to be green,” observed the Tribune, which historically was one of America’s leading populist daily newspapers.
Yves Jacques, an advocate of the “social credit” monetary system, as advanced by the Pilgrims of St. Michael (the White Berets), told AFP by phone from a California monetary conference that it’s too soon to tell how the Milwaukee experiment will go. He said it depends on the basis and nature of the system and how well it’s planned.
But Jacques believes there is little to stop people from trying innovative, new ideas, given the sharp economic downturn Americans and other people are experiencing.
Recent newspapers (including The Michael Journal) and informational bulletins from the St. Michael Pilgrims note that local currencies have been tried or are being tried in some 35 countries, including Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Brazil.
Reach Mark Anderson at [email protected].
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(Issue # 51, December 22, 2008)
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