SCHOLAR ISLAND

"No economic activity was more irrepressible (in the 14^th century) than the investment and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western Capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of Usury."

Barbara Tuchman

A Distant Mirror

"With usura hath no man a house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well fitting

that design might cover their face,....

with usura, sin against nature,

is thy bread ever more of stale rags

is thy bread dry as paper,....

Ezra Pound (Cantos,XLV)

"Whatever ye put out at usury to increase it with the substance of others shall have no increase from God; but whatever ye shall give in alms, as seeking the face of God, shall be doubled to you."

The Koran

"The Church forbade Usury, but it did not forbid bankers to be generous toward depositors and to pay them a return on their deposits "as a free gift."Such deposits were called depositi a discrezione because they yielded a return payable at the discretion of the banker."

Raymond De Roover

San Bernardino of Siena & Saint Antonio of Florence

"Much of the antagonism to interest is in reality a disapproval, not of interest as a form of income, but of that distribution of property which makes so great a part of the interest income of the community flow into the pockets of some few privileged individuals."

-Gustav Cartel (1866-1945)

The Nature and Necessity of Interest (1903)

"We have head it said that five per cent is the natural interest of money."

-Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59)

Literary Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review

"Nothing is esteemed a more certain sign of the flourishing condition of any nation than the lowness of interest."

-David Hume (1711-76)

Essays of Interest

"To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."

-Thomas Jefferson

"It is monstrous and unnatural that an unfruitful thing should bear, that a thing specifically sterile, such as money, should bear fruit and multiply of itself."

-Nicholas Oresme (1320-82)

The Origin, Nature, Law and Alterations of Money

"Our modern expedient, which has become very general, is to mortgage the public revenues, and to trust that posterity will pay off the encumbrances contracted by their ancestors."

-David Hume (1711-76

Essays of Public Credit

"The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is the National Debt."

-Karl Marx

Capital

"The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood."

Thomas Jefferson (1816)

"No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond."

-Thomas Paine

Common Sense

Americans charge more than $300 billion on their credit cards each year, and pay about $35 billion in interest on those loans.

"The American dollar has no intrinsic value. It is a classic example of fiat money with no limit to the quantity that can be produced. Its primary value lies in the willingness of people to accept it and, to that end, legal tender laws require them to do so. It is true that our money is created out of nothing, but it is more accurate to say that is based upon debt. In one sense, therefore, our money is created out of less than nothing. The entire money supply would vanish into bank vaults and computer chips if all debts were repaid. Under the present System, therefore, our leaders cannot allow a serious reduction in either the national or consumer debt. Charging interest on pretended loans is usury, and that has become institutionalized under the Federal Reserve System. The Mandrake Mechanism by which the Fed converts debt into money may seem complicated at first, but it is simple if one remembers that the process is not intended to be logical but to confuse and deceive. The end product of the Mechanism is artificial expansion of the money supply, which is the root cause of the hidden tax called inflation. This expansion leads to contraction and, together, they produce the destructive boom-bust cycle that has plagued mankind throughout history wherever fiat money has existed."

G. Edward Griffin

The Creature from Jekyll Island….a second look at the Federal Reserve

"Centuries ago, usury was defined as any interest charged for a loan. Modern usage has redefined it as excessive interest. Certainly, any amount of interest charged for a pretended loan is excessive. The dictionary, therefore, needs a new definition. Usury: the charging of any interest on a loan of fiat money."

Ibid

   "When looking at the debtor nations of the Third Word we must not, however, ignore the fact that the USA, the supreme leader of the world system has herself now become a debtor nation of the first order."

Elmar Altvater/Kurt Hubner

The Poverty of Nations

"In terms of its significance, the US debt mountain should be viewed from two angles. On the one hand, the question arises as to whether, as is often asserted, the USA's net indebtedness signals her ultimate demise as a world power. It is too early to assess the long-term effects, but what is certain, although many of those who control wealth overseas have failed to consider it, is that since the USA's debts have been extended in the lenders' own currencies, repayment could be effected part through devaluing the dollar. The wealthy overseas are now finding themselves in the unfortunate position of being able to see the value of their costly US treasury bonds, expressed in their own currencies, dwindling. In this way they are de facto subsidizing the US budget deficit.

   Another aspect of the situation is the effect which the US debt is having on international indebtedness as a whole. The USA is now absorbing an increasingly large proportion of the savings available internationally for herself, and this is restricting dramatically the number of new loans which it is possible to extend to the Third World. In addition, the USA is finding  herself with less and less room for maneuver in her role as the nation responsible for the international management of the crisis. The strategies provided for by the Baker Plan, which depend on growth and new loans to the Third World, should actually take place with the financial participation of the USA. Yet that situation cannot be allowed to arise, since no other country is prepared to take on the (unpleasant) task of taking overall charge of coordinating the crisis at international level. The the USA's rapidly increasing external debt is beginning to pose a threat to international financial stability. What this suggests is that the only way out of the dilemma may be for lenders to start annulling debts."

Claudia Dziobek

The Role of the USA in the International Debt Crisis

"The last conflict is at hand in which Civilization receives its conclusive form-the conflict between money and blood."

Oswald Spengler

 

"Beware!, The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precautions must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."

Lord Keynes (1937)

 

   "Since it was established 200 years ago, there have seven periods in our history in which the national debt more or les steadily increased, six when it declined, and three when it was stable. Of the seven periods of increase, six were marked by either a major war or a depression. That is why the seventh period, the period since 1960, stands out in such stark contrast. For in the last thirty-six years we have had no more than ordinary fluctuations in the business cycle, and the Vietnam War was, at least relative to the size of the American economy if in no other way, a small war. Yet in this period we increased the size of the national debt by a factor of seventeen.

    And for what? What have we saved-or gained-in exchange for imposing upon the future, generation after generation, interest costs of well over $1000 per person, per year? The answer, I'm afraid, is little more than the political self-interests of a few thousand people, Democrats and Republicans alike, who held public office during this period. They were able, through a happenstantial confluence of economic theory and history, to use the national debt as a means of avoiding tough decisions-which are by definition unpopular with many. Resorting to increases in the debt rather than making those decisions was a short-term avoidance of political pain that will have long-term consequences that may well be much more painful, just as the excessive use of alcohol has short-and long-term consequences that are sharply at odds with each other."

John Steel Gordon

Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt

 

  "According to international figures published in July 1989, the Third World's total debt burden was conservatively estimated to be in the vicinity of 10 trillion U.S. dollars. This is a meaningless figure unless it can be compared to something we can understand. If a million dollars is compared to seconds ticking away on your watch, then it is equivalent to ten months, while a billion is equivalent to thirty years. The Third-World debt burden, then, is equivalent to three hundred thousand years. 

   Some portion of this gargantuan debt burden is owed to such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are financially supported by the industrialized nations. Likewise, the larger portion of this staggering paper debt economy is owed to transactional profit-taking interests (banks,etc.) of the developed nations. As Mr. Osterberg says, in order even to begin to repay portions of the interest on the debt, the developing countries are ruthlessly forced to exploit natural and human resources.

   It has long been clear to informed economic analysts that it will be impossible for the developing countries ever to honor their debts-they often cannot even pay the staggering interest, much less settle the principal. The debt-loaning megasystem has temporarily solved this problem via the transaction economy by rolling over the loans into new ones, to which even more interest is added. Not having the money they need to service the principal of the loans, the developing countries have to pay interest equivalent to approximately $25 million per day to the loan sources in the industrialized nations. This is exploitation the degree of which far surpasses that which took place during the time of colonial empires.

   Since there is no other aspect of the world economy that compares to this $1,250 billion debt hallmark (which is increasing daily), it is this aspect that figuratively is the world economy. This enormous debt will never be repaid, for there is not enough development or enough resources on earth to repay it. Mr. Osterberg (Corporate Renaissance: Business as an Adventure in Human Development-by Rolf Osterberg points out that the right thing to do would be immediately to write off these loans and fully accept the consequences. 

   But he continues, that cannot be done. The loans represent a large part of the total balance sheets of so many banks that if the write-off were done it would result in a breakdown of the industr8ialized world's banking systems-and, as a consequence, a breakdown of the world economy. Accordingly, banks and lending institutions continue to list these debs on balance sheets as assets, which are now nothing more than just so much debt-economy empty air. 

   Since the total world's debt economy now far exceeds the world's real resource economy, the vicious-circle of production-consumption (economic growth) of resources can never be used to bring the world's debt economy back into stability. The only remaining bailout source which will naturally be cannibalized in attempts to bring the debt economy somewhat stable. 

   The taxpaying economy can be as vital as are the taxpayers willing to "contribute" to it. Thus, this solution might be feasible if profit-taking exploiters were not moving the labor needs of their enterprises into the Third World nations, where labor is cheaper than in the developed nations-naturally increasing unemployment in the developed nations-naturally increasing unemployment in the developed nations. At a certain point, then, the tax-paying economy will fail as the final resource for sustaining the world's debt economy. And at that time, the world's debt economy will collapse."

Ingo Swann

Your Nostradamus Factor

*****************************************

Book: "Hot Money and the Politics of Debt" 3rd Edition by R.T. Naylor

 

Book: "Proclaim Jubilee! A Spirituality for the Twenty-First Century" by Maria Harris

Book: "Rejoice!: 700 years of Art for the Papal Jubilee", Ed by Maurizo Calvesi & L. Canova

Book: " Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East" by Moshe Weinfeld

Book: "A Free Nation Deep In Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy" by James Macdonald

Book: "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins