http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/%e2%80%9cmarket-fundamentalism%e2%80%9d-and-the-tyranny-of-money-by-richard-c-cook/Recommendations for Reform of the US Monetary System
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I. What We Must Do Today
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are, or should be, the fruits of democracy. But the political democracy defined by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution has not been achieved because economic democracy has not been achieved. The attainment of real economic democracy is the next task for the American people.
In the midst of the most productive economy in history, the U.S. and much of the world today are in crisis, with stagnant or falling incomes, rising prices, and skyrocketing debt. Many experts are predicting an economic collapse, and people with money are scrambling for safe places to protect it. No one in an official capacity has provided a convincing explanation; few have even tried.
We are taught that economics is a “science” and that it operates under unchangeable laws that are understandable only to specialists. People speak with reverence of “market forces” as existing beyond the reach of human intelligence and will.
None of this is true. There is no such thing as “laws” in economics.
Of course there are plenty of habits and conventions, myths and prejudices. But the “laws” are the ones created by governments, usually under the control of powerful people who work the levers of power to acquire greater wealth through legislative favor. These laws are man-made. In some cases the laws may provide benefits to those who work for a living, but in many cases not. What we forget is that any of these laws can be changed and that many of them should be changed.
Besides, haven’t we learned by now that what has aptly been called “market fundamentalism” is really shorthand for the tyranny of money? It is a fact that control of economic life, at least in most of the Western nations, has been turned over to the monetary elite who control the world’s industry and resources through the private issuance of credit that originates from the privilege of fractional reserve banking.
This vestige of the financial systems of the Middle Ages allows the banks to produce credit “out of thin air” and lend it at a profit. They lend to consumers, businesses, investors, speculators (such as hedge funds), and to federal, state, and local governments. Under the banking laws, they generate this credit against a small “reserve base” consisting of customer deposits, government debt, overnight deposits from corporations and government agencies, and even—as has been well-documented—by laundering the proceeds of drug dealing and other types of crime.
The dependence of economic life on debt has assured that there has been a steady flow of wealth from the producing economy of goods and services into the financial web which surrounds it. Debt from lending at interest grows at an exponential rate.
Further, every period of economic growth in the last generation has been largely a bank-created bubble. Each time a bubble bursts, the financiers gain more wealth by buying assets at bankruptcy prices. The latest is the housing bubble.
Now we are about to see the bursting of an even larger bubble consisting of stocks and other business assets. In fact, the financiers are now positioning themselves to take advantage of a broad economic collapse.
Control of wealth by Continued>>>>
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/%e2%80%9cmarket-fundamentalism%e2%80%9d-and-the-tyranny-of-money-by-richard-c-cook/