Kucinich introduces monetary bill

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/The-Way-Out-by-Richard-Distelhors-090528-664.html

The Way Out
by Richard Distelhorst
www.opednews.com


Here's a truly progressive proposal to reform the privately-owned, debt-based monetary system. Two time presidential candidate Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) will soon be introducing this legislation which truly is the way out of recession and back to prosperity. The following article summarizes the legislation and also provides a link where the proposed American Monetary Act can be read.

THE WAY OUT

The primary cause of a recession is a shortage of money in the hands of the American people, the way out of recession is to put more money in their hands. Under the present monetary system this can only be done by borrowing more and going deeper in debt. It is difficult for people to understand that we have no money, instead we circulate bank-created interest-bearing debt as a "substitute money."

The American Monetary Act takes three simple steps to correct this debt problem.

(1) Incorporate the Federal Reserve Banks into the U. S. Treasury where all new money is created by government as real money, not interest-bearing debt, and spent into circulation to promote the general welfare; monitored to be neither inflationary nor deflationary.

(2) Eliminate Fractional Reserve Banking in a manner that makes the federal government the only entity with the power to create, issue and regulate our money, as Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the United States Constitution mandates.

(3) As the "debt-money" created by the privately owned Federal Reserve System and the commercial banks disappears when debts are paid, it will be replaced with real money spent into circulation to rebuild our badly decayed public infrastructure, which includes roads, bridges, dams, water and sewage plants, mass transit, schools, etc. It also includes universal health care and education for all. This will create millions of high paying jobs. Also a substantial stimulus check will be sent out to immediately put money back in the hands of the American people. We don't need to "get credit flowing," we need to get real money flowing. All of this will be an interest-free, debt-free, inflation-free dividend to the American people.

What the so-called "too big to fail" banks don't want you to know is that all of their money was created in the form of debt, and when they can no longer create more "debt-money" it will disappear as the debts are paid or defaulted, which means we will have to replace their debt money by spending real U. S. dollars into circulation. Then we will finally get the benefits we should have received in the first place - and all these benefits come without debt, without taxes, and without inflation. It will be a permanent money supply, not temporary as the present bank-created "debt-money" which disappears when debts are paid. The real money we will need to spend into circulation to replace this "debt-money" is literally trillions of dollars. And it all will appear as a bonus or dividend for the people. This will be permanent money with no debt or interest charges attached.


To allow this recession or depression to continue when the way out is well known is inexcusable. The American Monetary Act IS the way out of the present recession.
Click the link below to read the American Montary Act
http://www.monetary.org/amacolorpamphlet.pdf

HERE IS HOW THIS "DEBT-MONEY" CREATION PROCESS WORKS - HOW THE FED AND THE BANKS CREATE MONEY "OUT OF THIN AIR."
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Step 1: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York "buys" assets, normally government securities for sale on the open market, by creating the "money" to buy them out of thin air, and, in the process, the big banks are given, free of charge, an equal amount of new, so-called "reserves." These "reserves" become the basis for a 10 to 33 fold expansion of "debt-money" which will be loaned into existence by the banking system - with an interest charge attached. We must all realize that, as Congressman Kucinich says, "The Federal Reserve is no more Federal than Federal Express." It is privately owned and controlled by the "too big to fail" banks.
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Step 2: Based on new "reserves" just created out of thin air and given to the big banks free of charge, the banking system uses the Federal Reserve's Fractional Reserve System to expand or multiply those "reserves" by 10 to 33 times. These so-called "reserves" are sometimes called "high-powered dollars" because of their multiplier effect. The required reserve on demand deposits is presently 10% for big banks and 3% for smaller banks. So, for the big banks, if they received, for example, one million of new "reserves" just created out of nothing by the Fed, they can create out of nothing, and loan out at interest, ten times that amount. If and when any of these new "reserves" trickle down from the big banks to the small banks, those banks, with a 3% reserve requirement on demand deposits, can create out of nothing, and loan out at interest, 33 1/3 times the amount of new "reserves" just received.
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That's the whole process as simply as it can be stated. The end result is that, using the example of one million of new "reserves", our people and their government and businesses are deeper in debt, interest bearing debt, not one million dollars deeper, but someplace between $10 million and $33 million deeper. The more "debt-money" we have, the deeper in debt we are.

The American Monetary Act eliminates this debt-based system and takes back the power to create, issue and regulate our money. This legislation is the way out of recession and back to prosperity.

The banking system presently holds over $7 trillion of deposits. These are all in the form of interest-bearing "debt-money." When banks can no longer create money and loan it into circulation with an interest charge attached, all $7 trillion will disappear as debts are paid or defaulted. But we need this $7 trillion in our economy, so the government, under the American Monetary Act, will replace the "debt-money" as it disappears with real U. S. money spent directly into circulation as a tax-free, debt-free, interest-free dividend to the American people.

HERE IS WHAT REPLACING $7 TRILLION OF "DEBT-MONEY" WITH REAL U. S. MONEY OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS CAN MEAN TO YOU AND YOUR COMMUNITY.

While the final decision on how to spend this $7 trillion will be made by Congress and the President, here are some definite possibilities. The dividend check and the program to rebuild the infrastructure are the first two programs suggested by the American Monetary Act.
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$825 billion to issue a check for $5,000 to every person on the Social Security rolls, both those working and paying in, and those retired and receiving benefits. This is as much as the whole Stimulus Plan passed by Congress but, instead of borrowing the money, it is spent into circulation as a dividend to the American people. $5,000 in the hands of all American workers will go a long way towards ending the current recession.

$300 billion to rebuild and improve the public infrastructure - schools, bridges, roads and streets, water and sewage plants, mass transit, etc. This will be $300 billion a year for at least eight consecutive years. This money is spent, not borrowed, into circulation in replacement of the old bank created "debt-money." Direct grants will be given on a per capita basis in all 435 Congressional Districts. Here's what this would mean in a city with a population of 27,000, a county with a population of 40,000 and a school district with an enrollment of 4,100.

THE COUNTY: $7.4 million - an 8 year total of $59.2 million.
THE CITY: $13.5 million - an 8 year total of $ 108.0 million
THE SCHOOL DISTRICT: $8.2 million - an 8 year total of $65.6 million
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That adds up to a combined $29.1 million a year - an 8 year total of $232.8 million.

THESE ARE DIRECT GRANTS, NOT LOANS. Think how much the public infrastructure and the economy of that city and county will improve with these funds available.
You can figure how much your city and county would receive each year. The formula used to distribute the $300 billion a year is: Your City or town will receive its population times $505 per person. Your County will receive its population times $175 per person. Your Schools will receive $2,000 per student enrolled. And your State will receive its population times $90 per person.

This program will put millions of people to work at high paying construction and manufacturing jobs. Just the dividend check and this program together will end the present recession and return us to prosperity.

$300 billion to provide full employment for all at a living wage. The government would become the employer of last resort. The living wage would be $10.00 per hour plus health care benefits. This program would be similar to the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) of the 1930s.

$100 billion to Save Social Security as it is and, at the same time, exempt the first $25,000 of earned income from the 6.2% employee share of the Social Security tax - resulting in a $1,550 pay raise for everyone earning $25,000 or more a year. The current "cap" on earnings subject to the Social Security tax is $102,000 per year. That cap will be removed and the Social Security tax, like the Medicare/Medicaid tax, will apply to every dollar earned (after exempting the first $25,000).

Universal Health Care. We will finally have universal health care like almost all industrialized countries in the world. We presently pay 17% of GDP for health care and over 45 million people are not covered. The other countries cover all of their people and spend 10% of GDP or less. We're already paying for universal health care, we're just not getting it. Legislation to do this has already been introduced. It is the Conyers/Kucinich bill, H. R. 676.

$50 billion to guarantee a college education to all who meet specified criteria, mainly that their grades indicate that they are serious students. A well educated population is critical to the future of our country.

Monetary grants to the states. Each year the Monetary Authority will instruct the U. S. Treasury to disperse per capita grants evenly over a 12 month period to the 50 states equal to 10% of the money created under Title V the preceding year. The states will use these funds in broadly designated areas of public infrastructure, health care and paying for unfunded Federal mandates.

Last, but certainly not least, we will pay off the privately held portion of our National Debt as it comes due. This is simply a matter of replacing interest-bearing government securities with non-interest bearing U. S. money. The portion of the current National Debt held by the government will simply be cancelled. When we create, issue and regulate our own money we cannot owe money to ourselves. Thus the entire National Debt will be paid off, saving the interest charges now paid to the holders of the national debt.

These are the kinds of benefits we can receive when, instead of letting the privately owned banking system loan our "debt-money" into circulation as interest bearing debt, we, instead, create, issue and regulate our own money. In the process we receive the benefits we would have received in the first place if we had always issued our own money.
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The American Monetary Act is the only way out of this recession and back to prosperity. The time to pass it is now.

Dick Distelhorst, Chairman
Burlington, Iowa Chapter
American Monetary Institute

...what's expedient.

Will Kuchinich's bill pass? Nope.

Is it absolutely the right thing to do? Yep.

Think I'm becoming more interested in organizing outside of the two-party corporate establishment and working in local communities to build a popular base than I am playing party politics anymore.

Having said that, don't misunderstand - when faced with some republican nut vs. an Obama second term in 2012, I'd cast my one little vote for Obama in a heartbeat. But I no longer hold out any hope that the most serious things that need done for the majority of American people will get done through establishment national politics. Thus, I will spend my "capital" on work I can do on the ground in my community, cast my simple vote in national elections as a "lesser or two insufficient choices" vote, and then go right back to working on the ground with social and economic justice organizations outside the entrenchment of corporate politics.

Kucinich, once again, has the right voice on the matter. And, again, will be marginalized by the establishment. This country just keeps getting more fucked upper and more fucked upper.

Take back the power to create money from people who have shown they can be trusted with that ability.

If a person has no morale authority, no consensus of elected authority, or no argument for their authority, sometimes they have only one thing left to try and maintain power. How much money they can make.

They try to make society completely under the control of the one thing they have... Money. If they have the ability to create money, even if through debt, then collect money on that 'make believe' money, then use those profits to control society, they have no claim to rule.

It is clear.

They should not have that power or ability. The power to create money should be returned to the people. When the (few that currently claim some power)'s ability to create money goes away, their station in life will be evaluated based on their values and character, as you would think all people should be.

EVERYONE should get behind this.

After Bernanke had the gall to step before Congress and suggest that our "entitlement" programs must be scrapped to keep the Wall Street BailOut economy floating (but just barely,) every man woman and child needs to wake up to how little the Federal reserve does fo rus.

The Fed certainly did not prevent the First Great Depression, and it certainly did create all the insidious bubbles that helped collapse this economy.

I should have said all people should really think and see the effects of our current system, and find ways to make it better for all of society, and you are correct, that is the responsibility of all of society.

Thanks for the correction.

Three, four or five banking families that somehow just "intuitively" KNOW when to pull their money out so that they are not crushed in the major economic cycles, it is all very amazing.

Of course, I guess this time around, some of those inner banking circles DID NOT Know but in the end it didn't matter -- becuse they had enough clout to receive the BailOut money.

And what they got for it is far less then the losses they had to take. They are on a downward trend as they spend their clout for what they consider important, something that in truth, is not the most important thing.

Dennis Kucinich....one of the very few REAL Democrats left in the Democratic Party.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

currently run our country. Clearly, they will fight this tooth and nail. There needs to be broad public support for this bill for it to become law.
If we didn't have people like DK in congress, it would be a hopeless cause. He really demonstrates what's possible when we have true representation.

:kick:

Never should've had it in the first place. It's one of the dumbest things the USA has ever done.

were created less than 100 years ago, and by who, and how it was accomplished will have their mind blown when they learn the history.

A bamboozlement for the ages!

Bernard Madoff was penny ante compared to the swindlers who unconstitutionally out and out stole our monetary system.

A coup d'etat worthy of a third world banana republic, which the USA pretty much was, politically/economically speaking, a hundred years ago.

it is certainly way past time to wrest our wealth away, get it ALL back from the wretched uber-wealthy pigs literally controlling our destinies for only their own insatiably grasping, greedy benefit.

Convenient foil for the HUGE ponzi scheme that has run our monies' supply, controlled the ups and downs and various bubbles of Wall Street and given the average person a far greater chance of losing his monies than if left alone.

I just finished reading a book about the Bond market and it struck me that we are told again and again that we are not a nation of savers. Well, anyone in the lower to mid-middle incomed classes is struggling just to pay their taxes, their rent, and their health care and insurance.

Since our income tax provisions are onerously slanted against the poor and the middle incomed, fist of all,it is difficult to save. Then if you move up the economic ladder a bit, you don't want to save in a savings account - again because of that tax code. So the government has set it up so that they LOOK generous - the middle incomed can put their money into 401 K's and Roths and other devices, all of which are designed to "shield" the wage earner from having the wages taken by the IRS. But the price that is paid for this is equally onerous - you no longer have any control of your money. Once in those funds, the money manager people start putting it into CDO's and Credit defaults etc. And as we have just seen, you can lose your retirement at the rate of 40% for every pop in the market.

Now that the curtain is being pulled back so very far, we can see that the inter-webbing between someone like Hank Paulson (Of whom Obama said "Hank is working hard" just shortly after being elected) That inter-webbing connects Paulson- Kashkari- Bernanke (et al) to the Goldman Sachs coffers. With AIG serving as a pass through.

The corporate Dems and Obama will squash this before it starts. And the chickens will be told to vote for Colonel Sanders before daybreak.

Other wise nothing will happen. The "money question" can only be put back into American politics when enough people understand how money is created in the American economy as the Populist first proposed a solution to the money question in August 1886 at Cleburne, Texas, where the Farmers Alliance met in state convention. The Texas farmers endorsed federal regulation of the banking system and a national currency that was not restrained by gold.

Called the "sub-treasury plan," it was to use, the pure credit, inherent in the sovereign national U.S. government, to finance directly the productive efforts of the most humble citizens - a democratic money system, much too radical for the American system, then or now.

The Populist plan would employ the full faith and credit of the United States government directly to assist the "producing classes" who needed financing for their enterprises. It would circumvent the bankers and provide credit straight to the users, particularly the small farmers who needed it most, who were most vulnerable to the demands of the private credit system. The government would provide "money at cost," instead of money lent by merchants and bankers at 35 or 50 or 100 percent interest.

Go Dennis!!!! :applause: