<p>Dear Friends,</p><p>It’s time to reintroduce the N.E.E.D. Act (National Emergency Employment Defense Act HR 2990) which calls for banking reform echoing the work of Irving Fisher and Henry Simons who formulated the Chicago Plan at the University of Chicago in the wake of the Great Depression. The NEED Act takes the Chicago Plan one step further and allows a safe and productive way to put the money issuing power back into the hands of the public administration, and away from the bankers who currently operate the Federal Reserve. The American Monetary Institute is reaching out to the nation to reassure the American people that there is a viable way to institute free healthcare, education, and jobs for all; that it is not “unrealistic” to pay for, as we have been led to believe. Restructuring the Federal Reserve is necessary because the money issuing privilege is fundamental to transitioning from a debt based economy into a modern sustainable economic system.</p><p>With your growing support, a candidate for president will be ready to make the N.E.E.D. Act a fundamental part of their platform, and pressure Congress to reintroduce it. By signing this petition you are helping to bring this issue to the forefront of the political debate so we may begin issuing new money through an honest and fair system of banking that takes away risk from the taxpayer.</p><p><a title="Reintroduce the NEED Act" href="http://www.monetary.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HR-2990.pdf" target="_blank">Click here to read more about the N.E.E.D. Act! </a></p><p>For your pleasure and enjoyment we have included a collection of quotes (in rough historical order) from people in the past who came to understand at least a part of the banking problem. All citizens are hereby asked to read these quotes, do research, and if you become convinced of the necessity of this change, please sign the petition.</p><p>1473 – BIRTH OF NICOLAUS COPERNICUS, MATHEMATICIAN AND ASTRONO<br />"Among the countless evils that bring about the demise of whole states, these fours are surely the most critical: internal discord, high mortality, infertility of the soil, and deterioration of money. <br />The first three are so apparent that hardly anyone would contest them. The fourth evil, however, stemming from the nature of money, is noticed only by those few who think deeply, for it causes the states to crumble not at one fell swoop, but gradually, near invisibly.”</p><p>1694 – ROYAL CHARTER GRANTED TO THE BANK OF ENGLAND<br />King William II (William of Orange) created the privately owned central bank via a charter (a license to exist) out of urgency. England needed to rebuild its navy to counter the French, but the sovereign King William II lacked the money or credit. He traded his exclusive right to create money to the private bank. The bank raised money from shareholders, which was loaned to the King at interest. The bank also created money out of nothing. As William Patterson, the bank's co-founder and early Director, said, “The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.” The bank is located in the 1 square mile City of London, a separate city within the larger London municipality.</p><p>1706 – BIRTH OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN<br />“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war.”<br />“This effect of paper currency is not understood in England. And indeed the whole is a mystery to the politicians how we have been able to continue a war for four years without money and how we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency...is a wonderful machine.”<br />However, England, early on in the Revolutionary War learned the power of this paper money well enough that it had two ships in the New York harbor producing perfect counterfeits of this money to be used to hyper-inflate our currency.</p><p>1787 – CONSTITUTION DAY <br />“The Congress shall have power to…coin money [and] regulate the power thereof" Section 8, US Constitution.” “Coin” is a verb used in this way, representing the power to issue money.</p><p>1735 – BIRTH OF JOHN ADAMS, 2ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES<br />"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from the defects of the Constitution or confederation, not from the want of honor or virtues, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nation, of coin, credit and circulation.”</p><p>1826 – DEATH OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, THIRD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES<br />“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”</p><p>1832 - ANDREW JACKSON, SEVENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES<br />This was the first presidential election focused on the issue of money creation. Jackson was opposed to re-chartering the private Second National Bank of the United States. A few Jackson quotes: <br />"The bold effort the present (central) bank had made to control the government ... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it." "If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations." "I have no hesitation to say if they can re-charter the bank, with this hydra of corruption, they will rule the nation and its charter will be perpetual and its corrupting influence destroy the liberty of our country."</p><p>1834 - ANDREW JACKSON, SEVENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES<br />“I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the Bank and annul its charter. I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be a true, gentleman, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have <br />Determined to rout you out and, by the Eternal, I will rout you out.”</p><p>1860’s - ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES<br />“The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.” Under Lincoln’s administration, the US Government issued 450 million “Greenbacks” – interest and inflation free money. They weren’t government bill, bonds or any other debt-bearing note. This was money not borrowed from banks, but created (as authorized in the US Constitution, Article 1, Sec 8) by the government to meet the nation’s needs.</p><p>“The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of "government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity. The financing of all public enterprise, and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and will then become servant of humanity.”</p><p>1860s - HENRY CAREY, PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISOR<br />Carey advised Lincoln on creating public money, Greenbacks, rather than take loans from private banks. He helped prevent the destruction of Greenbacks by the National Banking Act and its subsequent modifications (which were presented as monetary “reforms”) by banks but with the intent of eliminating Greenbacks. In referencing the US economy under the Greenback system, he said, …”for the first time, too, in the history of the world, there has been presented a community in which nearly all business was done for cash, and in which debt has scarcely an existence…there has been a large and general diminution of the rate of interest…traders have therefore become more independent of the capitalist, while the country at large has become more independent of the ‘wealthy capitalists’ of Europe.”</p><p>1868 – SPEECH OF CONGRESSMAN SAMUEL FENTON (INDEPENDENT REPUBLICAN) OF OHIO ON FLOOR OF HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES<br />“Our Constitution gives to Congress the exclusive power to coin money and regulate the value thereof... These are attributes of sovereignty and belong exclusively to the representatives of the whole people...The value of money has no relation to or dependence upon the material of which it is made. If it has the properties or powers of representing, measuring, and exchanging value, it is money; and these properties or powers are not inherent in any substance, but are conferred upon any chosen material by the sovereign power.... The Greenback, as it has been denominated, was an invaluable expedient, backing our boys in blue and covering their backs at the same time. It served our purpose well and will serve us still if permitted. It helped us through one danger and will bear us triumphantly through another unless the cupidity of bankers, bondholders and shoddy contractors shall triumph over the industrial and tax-paying classes of our people...The first step in the right direction will be to pass a law to call in and cancel the entire bank circulation and simultaneously issue an equal quantity of Treasury certificates or legal tenders.”</p><p>1869 - BENJAMIN BUTLER, UNION ARMY CIVIL WAR GENERAL AND MEMBER OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE <br />“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]</p><p>1874 – PETER COOPER, US INDUSTRIALIST, PHILANTHROPIST (FOUNDED COOPER UNION) AND GREENBACK CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT<br />“The substitution of greenbacks for National bank notes will make a uniform currency of money. A greenback legal tender is to the full as much real money as a gold legal tender, the only difference being that as many nations make gold a legal tender, there is more demand for it than for paper legal tenders which have the sovereign stamp of only one Government. The substitution of greenbacks for National bank notes would have the bounty now paid to banks which being invested as a sinking fund would in less than thirty years pay off the whole debt of the country.”<br />The Greenback Party was founded in this year at a convention in Indianapolis. Many of its members were farmers hurt by the financial Panic of 1873 (also known as the “Crime of ‘73”). The party supported “Greenback” paper money (U.S. Notes) issued and spent into circulation by the Lincoln administration. They opposed all money systems backed by any precious metal, believing that those who owned gold or silver (banks and corporations) would possess the power to define the value of products and labor. Government control of the US money system would also ensure sufficient quantity of money was in circulation to help small businesses and farmers. Twenty-one independent congressmen, mostly Greenbackers, were elected in 1878.</p><p>____ – ALEXANDER DEL MAR, AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMIST, HISTORIAN, NUMISMATIST, AUTHOR, DIRECTOR US BUREAU OF STATISTICS<br />"As a rule political economists…don't take the trouble to study the history of money; it is much easier to imagine it and to deduce the principles of this imaginary knowledge."<br />“[T]he State alone had the right to issue money and to decide of what substances its symbols should be made, whether of gold, silver, brass or paper. Whatever the State declared to be money was money.” <br />“Lexington and Concord were trivial acts of resistance, which chiefly concerned those who took part in them and which might have been forgiven; but the creation and circulation of bills of credit by revolutionary assemblies in Massachusetts and Philadelphia were the acts of a whole people, and coming, as they did, upon the heels of the strenuous efforts made by the Crown to suppress paper money in America, they constituted acts of defiance so contemptuous and insulting to the Crown, that forgiveness was thereafter impossible…Thus the bills of credit of this era, which ignorance and prejudice have attempted to belittle into the mere instruments of a reckless financial policy, were really the standard of the Revolution. They were more than this: they were the Revolution itself.”</p><p>1897 – DEATH OF HENRY GEORGE, AUTHOR OF “POVERTY AND PROGRESS,” POLITICIAN AND ECONOMIST<br />“On the other hand it is the business of government to issue money. This is why the issuance of this money should be made a government function become still stronger. The evils entailed by wildcat banking in the United States are too well remembered to need reference. The loss and inconvenience, the swindling and corruption that flowed from the assumption by each State of the Union of the power to license banks of issue ended with the war, and no one would now go back to them. Yet instead of doing what every public consideration impels us to, and assuming wholly and fully as the exclusive function of the General Government the power to issue money, the private interests of bankers have, up to this, compelled us to the use of a hybrid currency, of which a large part, though guaranteed by the General Government, is issued and made profitable to corporations. The legitimate business of banking – the safekeeping and loaning of money, and the making and exchange of credits, is properly left to individuals and associations; but by leaving to them, even in part and under restrictions and guarantees, the issuance of money, the people of the United States suffer an annual loss of millions of dollars, and sensible increase the influences which exert a corrupting effect upon their government.”</p><p>1913 - CHARLES LINDBURGH, SR., REPUBLICAN US REPRESENTATIVE AND FATHER OF THE FAMOUS AVIATOR<br />"Ever since the Civil War Congress has allowed the bankers to control financial legislation. The membership of the Finance Committee in the Senate (now the Banking and Currency Committee) and the Committee on Banking and Currency in the House have been made up chiefly of bankers, their agents and their attorneys. These committees have controlled the nature of bills to be reported, the extent of them, and debates that were to be held on them when they were being considered in the Senate and the House."<br />"This [Federal Reserve] Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the president signs this bill, the invisible government by the monetary power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately but the day of reckoning is only a few years "removed, the worst legislative crime of the ages perpetrated by this bank bill.”</p><p>1910’s – WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, SECRETARY OF STATE<br />"We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government…Those who are opposed to the proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson...and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business...When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and ... until that is done, there is no reform that can be accomplished.” Bryan had originally supported the 1913 Federal Reserve Act as Secretary of State under the Wilson administration. His position was crucial in gaining the support of many Congressional Democrats and Progressives. He later regretted his decision. "In my long career, the only thing I genuinely regret is my part in getting the banking and currency legislation enacted into law.”</p><p><br />1921 – THOMAS EDISON QUOTE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES<br />“If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good... If the Government issues bonds, the brokers will" sell them. The bonds will be negotiable; they will be considered as gilt edged paper. Why? Because the government is behind them, but who is behind the Government? The people. Therefore it is the people who constitute the basis of Government credit. Why then cannot the people have the benefit of their own gilt-edged credit by receiving non-interest bearing currency… instead of the bankers receiving the benefit of the people’s credit in interest-bearing bonds?”</p><p>1920’s – FREDERICK SODDY, NOBEL PRIZE RECIPIENT (CHEMISTRY) AND MONETARY REFORM AUTHOR<br />“There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. Our money system is nothing better than a confidence trick.”<br />“It was recognized in Athens and Sparta…centuries before the birth of Christ that one of the most vital prerogatives of the State was the right to issue money.”<br />On money: "To allow it to become a source of revenue to private issuers is to create first, a secret and illicit arm of the government and last, a rival power strong enough ultimately to overthrow all other forms of government.”</p><p>1930’s - ROBERT HEMPHILL, CREDIT MANAGER, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ATLANTA<br />If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.</p><p>1939 – PAUL DOUGLAS, ECONOMIST, US SENATOR, QUAKER<br />A prominent University of Chicago economist, Douglas was one of several economists who developed A Program for Monetary Reform (PMR) in 1939. It was sent to President Roosevelt as a proposal to end the Great Depression. More than 230 economists from 150 universities approved it without reservations while an additional 40 supported it with some reservations. <br />In assessing the problem of the day, the PMR states, “If the purpose of money and credit were to discourage the exchange of goods and services, to destroy periodically the wealth produced, to frustrate and trip those who work and save, our present monetary system would seem a most effective instrument to that end.” It also stated monetary systems based on a gold standard “has had…disastrous results all over the world.”<br />The PMR called for government creation and maintenance in the quantity of money. “Our own monetary policy should…be directed toward avoiding inflation as well as deflation, and in attaining and maintaining as nearly as possible, full production and employment.” The plan also called for eliminating fractional reserve lending – the process of banks loaning multiple the times the amount of money in their possession. Back in the 1930’s the reserved requirement was 5:1. Today it’s 9:1. Some of the major banks involved in the economic collapse of 2007 had ignored this law and were loaning out 50 times their reserves. The PMR called for a 100% reserve requirement – banks could only lend the amount of money they possessed.<br />The document goes on, “In early times the creation of money was the sole privilege of the kings or other sovereigns – namely the sovereign people, acting through their Government. This principle is firmly anchored in our Constitution and it is a perversion to transfer the privilege to private parties to use in their own real or presumed interest. The founders of the Republic did not expect the banks to create the money they lend. <br />Their plan to reduce the national debt was simply to have the government purchase government bonds with new US debt-free money. <br />The PMR was the outgrowth of an earlier similar proposal from many of the same economists, The Chicago Plan, which was introduced as federal legislation in 1934, as a means to end the Great Depression The Chicago Plan called for the issuance of debt-free U.S. money and the end of banks lending less that their assets as means to reduce public and private debt, eliminate bank runs, and gain control over money creation.</p><p> 1941 – STATEMENT BY MARINER ECCLES, CHAIR OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE <br />Statement before the House Committee on Banking and Currency:<br />"That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money."</p><p>1942 – DEATH OF DAVIS RICH DEWEY, AMERICAN ECONOMIST AND STATISTICIAN<br />“The underlying idea in the greenback philosophy…is that the issue of currency is a function of government, a sovereign right which ought not to be delegated to corporations.”</p><p>1930’s 40’s – LYON MACKENZIE KING, 10TH PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA (1935-1948)<br />"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations’ laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.... The Liberal Party believes that credit is a public matter, not of interest to bankers only, but of direct concern to every citizen. The Liberal Party declares itself in favour of the immediate establishment of a duly constituted national bank for the control of the issue of money in terms of public needs. The flow of money must be in relation with the domestic, social, and industrial needs of the Canadian people...If my party is returned to power, we shall make good our monetary policy in the greatest battle between the money power and the people Canada has ever seen." Mackenzie King won re-election. The private Bank of Canada, which had been a private corporation, was converted to a "Crown Corporation," belonging to the people of Canada.</p><p>1942 - STATEMENT OF REVERENT WILLIAM TEMPLE, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, CALLING FOR THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND<br />“The private issue of new credit should be regarded in the modern world in just the same way in which the private minting of money was regarded in earlier times. The banks should be limited in their lending power to the amount deposited by their clients, while the issue of newer credit should be the function of public authority. This is not in any way to censure the banks or bankers...But the system has become anomalous, and, so often happens when anomaly has persisted through a long period of time, the result is to make into the master what ought to be the servant.”<br />Temple’s advocacy for banks being “limited in their lending power to the amount deposited by their clients” was for the ending of “fractional reserve banking” – the common practice of financial institutions providing loans in amounts many times in excess of the actual amount held by them. This feature is one of the major components of HR 2990, The National Emergency Employment Defense Act.</p><p>1947 – DEATH OF IRVING FISHER, PROFESSOR AND ECONOMIST<br />"Thus our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess. "</p><p>1956 – QUOTE OF J.R.R TOLKIEN, AUTHOR (THE HOBBIT AND LORD OF THE RINGS) AND UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD PROFESSOR, IN CONTOUR MAGAZINE<br />“The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or what is most important of all, the banker of the backer. Enthroned above all, in a manner without parallel in all past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic, and delivering oracles in a language not understood of the people."</p><p>1959 – ROBERT B. ANDERSON, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY UNDER PRESIDENT EISENHOWER <br />"When a bank makes a loan it simply adds to the borrowers’ deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower." August 31, 1959</p><p>19__’s WRIGHT PATMAN, DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN OF US HOUSE COMMITTEE ON BANKING & CURRENCY (1965-75)<br />“When our Federal Government, that has the exclusive power to create money, creates that money and then goes into the open market and borrows it and pays interest for the use of its own money, it occurs to me that that is going too far. I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiot system to continue."<br />“The Constitution of the U.S. says that Congress shall coin money and regulate its value. That does not mean that the Congress of the U.S., composed of the duly elected representatives of the people, have a right to farm out the great privilege to the banking system, until today a few powerful bankers control the issuance & distribution of money -- something that the Constitution of the U.S. says Congress shall do.”</p><p>1975 – JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH, AMERICAN ECONOMIST, PUBLIC OFFICIAL AND DIPLOMAT<br />"In numerous years following the Civil War, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. But it could not pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no more bonds to back the national bank notes. The pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply."<br />The same is true today. Since most money is created as debt via loans (to individuals, corporations and the government), paying off the debt would reduce the money supply. A severe depression would inevitable result since not enough money would exist to permit all our economic transactions. The solution is not to “reform” our debt-based money system, but to replace it with a system where money is created debt-free.”</p><p>1980 – DEATH OF MARSHALL MCLUHAN, CANDADIAN PHILOSOPHER OF COMMUNICATION THEORY<br />“Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.”<br />This certainly applies to money creation. Most people are unwilling to believe that the vast majority of money created and circulated in our society is done privately by financial interests.</p><p>1980’s – HERMAN DALY, ECONOMIST, AUTHOR OF “STEADY STATE ECONOMICS” <br />“If our present banking system, in addition to fraudulent and corrupt, also seems 'screwy' to you, it should. Why should money, a public utility (serving the public as medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account), be largely the by-product of private lending and borrowing?...Why should the public pay interest to the private banking sector to provide a medium of exchange that the government can provide at little or no cost? Why should seigniorage (profit to the issuer of fiat money) go largely to the private sector rather than entirely to the government (the commonwealth)?<br />Is there not a better away? Yes, there is. We need not go back to the gold standard. Keep fiat money, but move from fractional reserve banking to a system of 100% reserve requirement…Banks would no longer be able to live the alchemist’s dream by creating money out of nothing and lending it at interest.”</p><p>1993 – LOBBY DAY ON MONETARY REFORM<br />Over 1000 people traveled to Washington D.C. and hand delivered petitions to the U.S. Congress calling for monetary reform. One of the authors of the measure was Byron Dale. Concerning debt, he stated: "Nobody can borrow themselves out of debt no more than you can drink yourself sober.”</p><p>1997 – SPEECH BY EARL OF CAITHNESS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, UK <br />“[I]t is also a good time to stand back, to reassess whether our economy is soundly based. I would contest that it is not, not for the reason to which the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, alluded, which is that it is the Government’s fault, but our whole monetary system is utterly dishonest, as it is debt-based. ‘Dishonest’ is a strong word, but a system which by its very actions causes the value of money to decrease is dishonest and has within it its own seeds of destruction…Governments…have abdicated their responsibility for producing new money and controlling the money supply so that now they are marginalized…The next government must grasp the nettle, accept their responsibility for controlling the money supply and change from our debt-based monetary system. My Lords, will they? If they do not, our monetary system will break us and the sorry legacy we are already leaving our children will be a disaster.”</p><p>2005 – PUBLICATION OF "A MATTER OF INTEREST" BY WILLIAM HIXSON, CANADIAN ECONOMIST<br />"The very idea of a government that can create money for itself, allowing banks to create money that the government then borrows, and pays interest on, is so preposterous that it staggers the imagination. Either everyone in government in charge of the procedure is lacking in intelligence or they have been bought and paid for by those who profit from their skullduggery and their infidelity to the public interest."</p><p>2007– BEN BERNANKE, CHAIRMAN OF THE US FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM<br />On October 31, 2007 Bernanke stated: "It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve – nor would it be appropriate – to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their financial decisions.”<br />Turned out the Fed provided $1.2 trillion in secret loans to many of the nation’s biggest banks from 2007-9, which allowed them to grow even bigger. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html<br />This bail out of Wall Street by the Fed was not accompanied by any bail out of Main Street (small businesses) or the side streets (homeowners). The Fed served its constituents – banks.</p><p>2009 – COMMENT BY DICK DURBIN, US SENATOR, ILLINOIS<br />“And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”</p><p>2010 – SPEECH BY SIR MERVYN KING, FORMER GOVERNOR OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND<br />“Of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today."<br />“Change is, I believe, inevitable. The question is only whether we can think our way through to a better outcome before the next generation is damaged by a future and bigger crisis. This crisis has already left a legacy of debt to the next generation. We must not leave them the legacy of a fragile banking system too.”<br />From speech, "Banking: From Bagehot to Basel, and Back Again" </p><p>2011 – NATIONAL EMERGENCY EMPLOYMENT DEFENSE (NEED) ACT REINTRODUCED IN CONGRESS BY US REPRESENTATIVE DENNIS KUCINICH (HR 2990)<br />The bill would shift the private Federal Reserve System to the US Treasury Department, end fractional reserve lending by banking corporations (which permits them to lend out many more times the amount of their deposits) and authorizes the US government (in accordance with Art 1, Sec 8 of the US Constitution) to print US money to repair our nation’s physical and human infrastructure. Money issued in this way by the US government is debt-free and inflation-free vs the financial industry which currently issues the vast majority of our nation’s money as debt. No longer would banking corporations have the license to create our nation’s money. That would become a public function.</p><p>2011 – REPORT BY US SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS ON AUDIT OF THE US FEDERAL RESERVE<br />“The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic 'crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."</p><p>2012 - MICHAEL KUMHOF, GERMAN ECONOMIST AND CO-AUTHOR OF “THE CHICAGO PLAN REVISITED,”<br />From the paper: <br />"At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.” - "The Chicago Plan Revisited," IMF Working Paper Research Department, Prepared by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof</p><p>2013 – PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN ENGLAND, "THE WAY MONEY IS CREATED IS AT THE ROOT OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS" BY BRUCE NIXON<br />"Do you know how our money is created? Most people don’t…<br />97% of our money is created by commercial banks when they make loans, i.e. interest bearing debt…Only 3% is created in the form of notes and coins. Thus the profits of creating money go to the commercial banks rather than the public coffers…<br />The current way of creating money gives the big banks enormous power…It means that the commercial banks, not our government, control one of the key levers of our economy. So it is one of the ways we let big banks subvert democracy…<br />The way money is created is at the root of the environmental and economic crisis.<br />Firstly, it drives unsustainable growth and consumption. Corporations must produce and sell more to pay interest and repay loans. Easy credit encourages more and more unsustainable consumption.<br />Secondly, this way of creating money increases the cost of everything and fuels the nation’s escalating debt… <br />We are encouraged to worship great god growth (GDP) rather than the creation of wellbeing.<br />Meanwhile millions of people suffer unemployment and needless austerity through so-called “Neo-Liberal” policies which have never worked… <br />It does not have to be this way...<br />There is a growing realization that fresh ideas are needed if these crises are to be avoided...<br />Under proposed monetary reforms, commercial banks would be prohibited from creating money. That would be the sole responsibility of national reserve banks: to provide the money supply required for national objectives, decided by democratically elected government. Meanwhile, commercial banks would continue to fulfill their proper role of providing both the traditional bank services that individuals and businesses require and investment services… <br />Ordinary people, so-called, know that something is wrong; it’s up to us to inform ourselves and demand radical reform. Otherwise governments will continue with fixes that won’t work rather than the radical change that is needed.”</p><p>2014 – PUBLICATION OF ARTICLE IN FINANCIAL TIMES: “STRIP PRIVATE BANKS OF THEIR POWER TO CREATE MONEY” BY MARTIN WOLF, CHIEF FINANCIAL WRITER<br />Since banks create money out of thin air, they should be stripped of this power, and limited to normal depository functions. Wolf indicates the centrality and importance of the issue with his subtitle: "The giant hole at the heart of our market economies needs to be plugged.”</p><p>2015 - Edward Hadas: Iceland May Have the Cure to Bad Banking:<br />“The clever child may not notice some important issues Sigurjonsson glosses over, for example foreign currency inflows and shadow banking. But children do know about greed, so even a 12-year can identify the largest flaw: sovereign money will be at risk as long as too many people want to make too much easy money from investments.<br />Still, the Sigurjonsson plan is a plausible blueprint for better banking and Iceland is a good place to start. The population may be embittered enough to try something new and the established global powers of banking would probably tolerate an experiment in this miniature economy. But they might regret it. The bankers’ lucrative money-creating power could be threatened by a monetary revolution which started in Reykjavík.”<br /><br /></p><p>*Shoutout to: Steven Walsh, Greg Coleridge, Allen Smith and Joe Bonjiovanni, independent thinkers and members of the American Monetary Institute </p><p>For more information go to <a title="Monetary Reform Website" href="http://www.monetary.org">The American Monetary Institute Website!</a></p><p><a href="http://www.monetary.org/contribute">We welcome donations of any shape and or size! </a></p><p>Sign the petition, keep in touch and enjoy the short clip from Director, Stephen Zarlenga who is speaking out to Occupy Chicago. </p><p>Thanks Again for your support!</p><p>Yours Truely, AMI</p><p> </p>
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