By Anthony Miller (Guest Author)

Now there is a surprise!

“Our plan to cut debt is failing”, says Cameron.

The Dunces of Downing Street

If a Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are reliant upon the same bunch of civil servants who failed to see the signs that led this country into the 2008 financial crisis, then it is little wonder their plan is failing.

Has nobody told the Prime Minister or the Chancellor that it needs more spending not less to overcome a recession, or that the paying off of debts reduces the amount consumers have to spend?

Has anyone told them that our economy is debt based, that 97% of the money in circulation is debt based and that without new debt constantly coming into the economy, there is no way out of this recession without fundamental changes?

Yes many of us have tried to tell them, but their officials ensure that our letters never reach them, so the country is left to drift on a raft of failed ‘solutions’.

Open up Mr Cameron and let us reach you. It is fresh air that you need, not the stale air of Whitehall.

http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/2011/11/our-plan-cut-debt-failing-cameron/

……The “sin” here is not that of any one person or company – it is the collective failure of our society to educate itself about the nature of the financial, economic and banking systems we have depended upon for our material needs. The money system we have acquiesced in having foisted upon us operates on a kind of alchemy, which allows private banking interests to generate what we rather ludicrously refer to as “our” money.

Those who interpret the meaning of these events speak as though there was a fixed pool of money which belongs to the Irish people, inferring that what has happened is that certain people have “stolen” from “us”. This is nonsense. “Our” money system is owned and controlled by the banks. This is the way our leaders have decided things should be, and there has been no appreciable dissent.

Privately-owned banks, operating all but indifferently to the public good, create and destroy money more or less at will. Consequently, all but a tiny percentage of our money system exists in a digital limbo inaccessible by the people. For every euro of money created, a corresponding debt is brought into being, and this is multiplied over time by the process of levying interest. Thus, our economy consists overwhelmingly of debt, at once spelling our salvation and our doom.

When you extend to bankers the power to create money ex nihilo, your can hardly be surprised if they start to believe themselves superhuman……

….

Why pick on Seán FitzPatrick because he was simply more “successful” at implementing the system as it was designed? Why the Quinns just because they happened to be at the scene of the collapse?

Those who revel in the Quinns’ misfortune suggest they inflicted some damage on Irish taxpayers. But the Quinns did not ask to do business with taxpayers. They did business with a bank, which ill-advised politicians went on to nationalise, thus lumbering the public purse with unconscionable levels of debt.

We are informed that certain loans were extended by Anglo to Seán Quinn to prevent a collapse in the Anglo share price, to shore up confidence in the bank at a time when the banking crisis was deepening. In what sense is this is at odds with the overall ethos of our current banking and money systems? The fact that the manoeuvre is frowned upon by the “regulations” is no more than a fig leaf designed to maintain the pretence that the operation of this system has a basis in reality.

What has happened to our economy is much bigger than Seán Quinn, Seán FitzPatrick, and even the bank formerly known as Anglo. The pursuit of small-fry individuals is a way of distracting the public’s attention from this reality, of implying that the system itself is still fit for purpose.

Seán Quinn’s greatest failing is one most of us share: a fear of economic insecurity expressing itself as an inability to grasp the concept of “enough for now”. Those who survey his undoing may succumb to Schadenfreude and gloating, but behind the rejoicing is the selfsame emotion: the fear of losing what they think is theirs.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0727/1224320884392.html

See also: http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/2012/08/irish-times-privately-owned-banks-create-and-destroy-money-at-will/