The Monetary Creation Stakes
Hello, I am glad to see so many of you.
I have been working for 6 years on
2 unusual but fundamental subjects
that are discussed nowhere in the
media, though.
I came to that step by step.
Like many of us I was politically
inactive before 2005
and I woke up to this during the
debates about
the european union constitution.
Reading this text I got scared because
this text was incompatible
with our national constitution and it
was clearly made to overcome it.
I knew that this treaty was a bad
constitution because
it left people helpless against abuses
of power.
I saw it and denounced it.
I was lucky to be heard.
This kind of luck changes a man because
my point spread widely and quickly
on internet.
People started to discuss and
criticize it,
I spent nights to answer them,
I had to sharpen my arguments and
all this helped me to greatly improve
on the subject.
Finally...
I am trying to summarize briefly what
brought me to this in 2005.
After 2 months I got nearly 800,000
visits on my website,
about 40,000 a day during the
last month.
It is quite something for a
normal person.
I had never been in politics before and
My audience was never larger than a
classroom before that.
People sent me like 400 emails a day,
some enthusiastic, some moving.
But I got some incisive emails too,
calling me a fraud or an idiot,
some very nasty emails.
I spent nights to answer them first
but there were too many.
Therefore I started to answer people
on my web site.
I answered to these people
once for all because
everybody told me almost
the same thing.
So I published my answers to these
emails on my web site.
And you pay a particular attention
to your answers when you know
that you will be read by 40,000 people
during the next 24 hours,
some of them seeking the first
slightest mistake.
It urges you on to read much,
to sharpen your arguments,
you seek help from any clever
source around you.
Therefore, in my first text, I begged
for people's participation.
It was incredible for me to have
an opinion
that differed so much compared to
what I heard on the radio.
I wrote:
"please, tell me where I am wrong.
I must be wrong, I am no match for
leading experts
like Giscard d'Estaing or Delors
that built European Union.
In my text I wrote:
"I might be wrong somewhere.
So please just tell me and I will
correct my mistakes.
But as far as I know,
this is my current position".
And...
it worked. People helped me and
the final text is still
available on internet, it is called
"Une Mauvaise Constitution".
And it is still very relevant since
this very constitution
was finally adopted.
You know that this so called
"new" constitution is a simple
compilation of the older treaty.
The original treaty was
simply differently rewritten.
With minor changes, but basically
the same rules applied.
You know that the constitution
voted in 2008 by the parliament
was rejected by referendum
in the first place.
This is for me an authentic treason,
a Coup d'Etat.
This is deeply legal for having been
voted by the parliament
but this is exactly what I call an
abuse of power.
This is precisely what I want
to discuss today.
This is the heart of my work,
what I am working hard for.
I...
I seek efficient solutions against
abuses of power.
any case of abuses of power:
abuses from socialists,
abuses from capitalists,
abuses from people...
I intend to organize the society in a
way that abuses are not possible.
And in general, abuses of power
are done by rich people.
Not exclusively, people also
might commit abuses.
For example a popular gathering
might become
a furious mob and might commit
injustices and abuses.
But it is most frequently done
by rich people.
We will see when and how.
So I want to resist abuses of power.
For that I intend to identify the
cause of the causes of abuses.
I mean that problems have
more than one source
and
I observe that people I argue with,
politicians from any party...
usually consider a unique aspect of
power abuse, and fight it separately.
For example, one will take care of
and only of ecology.
He will focus on that, he will spend
all his energy on that
and he will drop other topics
He will not try to discover why ecology
is no political concern,
why people who might want to fight for
ecology have no political power
and how comes that people who destroy
environment have political power...
both political and economical power.
Usually no one tries to understand
that but when I seek for
the origin that enables the ecological
destruction of the planet
I find a political cause...
and an economical cause.
I observe that large scale destructions
are done by rich people
who rule politically by means of
election.
Ecology is just an example, there are
many topics like that.
For example, feminism...
Currently, left people are focused on
fighting for feminism,
fighting against racism
and have many similar positions
I may agree with.
But all this is not the main problem
for me.
The multiplicity of social strugles
is dividing us...
because people fight consequences
instead of fighting causes.
As if...
As if we had water-flood.
There is a faucet fully turned on,
and there is a water-flood.
Everyone is mopping up and no one is
considering turning off the faucet
As another example, imagine our social
activity flowing like a river.
This river is extremely polluted by a
pink foam representing unemployment.
On one side of the river, people are
fighting against unemployment.
But these people never try to
investigate upstream,
never far enough to discover the
source of the problem.
And on the other side, people with
another concern are doing their best
to repair ecologic damages, to urge
people to respect the environment,
but once again, without looking for
the original problem.
I am interested in all these topics and
when I try to identify the
deepest cause of all these problems,
I always get the same answer.
We always find...
rich people...
with power...
because they bought election.
They paid for the winner's campaign.
You always have manufacturers and
bankers, namely rich people.
We will see that banks arose
out of storekeepers.
So basically banks and manufacturers
are alike,
it is the wealth accumulation that
enables political corruption.
So...
My works are focused on 2 big topics:
the monetary creation, this will be
the first part of my talk.
This is a wide topic and I could spend
a whole day on that
so I will try to be as synthetic
as possible.
I may come back to that later and go
into the subject in greater depth
during a discussion, according to
your wishes.
In the second part of my talk, we will
discuss the joined political aspect:
I think that we won't take money control
back from bankers without sortition.
For me, election is the problem. It is
desperately considered as a sacred cow.
I can understand that
multinational company
support the election principle.
And they do it.
But there is something strange about
left humanist people
who yearn for a peaceful society
where arms dealers do not decide.
Oddly enough, they defend the election
that enables rich people to buy power.
This will be the second topic
of my talk.
I will show you the
athenian democracy.
It is a great system that
raises objections.
I have been working for a
long time on that system
so I am able to refute all
these objections so far.
But maybe you will ask me
new questions.
This is exactly what I expect
from this meeting:
new objections that I have not
considered so far.
First, let's talk about money.
Well...
We are currently facing many
social problems.
Society is under pressure
because of difficulties
which seem mainly caused by
unemployment.
In our economy where few are
self sufficient...
we need money to trade
between each other.
In a world where money is rare
and people who create it
do not create enough,
we have to work to earn it,
so we strongly depend on jobs,
i.e. work that is willingly
given by an employer.
And...
When we consider unemployment,
there is something strange about it.
Jobs enable people to work
in exchange for payment.
We do not lack workers,
we have plenty of them.
And we do not lack things to do, we
have plenty of useful things to do.
For example, we need to isolate
buildings with
triple glazing to heat them
with less energy.
We need to build housing for everyone.
Well, I won't tell more,
there is plenty of
things to do for us all to live
with dignity.
So there are people who are
ready to work
and many things to do.
We simply lack money.
And...
And... is it complicated to
create money ?
No. It is not.
So why are we lacking money ?
This is exactly my point:
understand why we lack money and
discover the origin of that.
What is money ? Who creates it ?
Is it hard to create ?
What are theories around that ?
I will be quick on that, but it is
useful to know
the theory accepted by present
economists.
And also to know alternative
theories found in
human history.
Some are very interesting.
And also monetary experiments,
also very interesting.
I do not know all of them but...
I will tell what I have discovered
so far and
you may also share your knowledge
with me.
Because the number of money experiments
is amazing and fascinating.
So,
how is money created today ?
I brought many books you may refer to.
I will often mention them in my talk.
About history of money...
When you learn about money,
how old it is,
which form it took...
you discover a fascinating story.
With a book dealing with history of
money you will go through
human history and you will better
understand the world today.
Because the way money became
a privilege for few people,
has a great impact on the way
we live in peace and prosper.
This is decisive for peace.
In other words,
wars are mainly caused by bankers.
So it is crucial to understand this.
I have a huge amount of books
dealing with money creation.
I selected the best of them for you.
There is a first great man, Galbraith,
he is dead, he has a son still living,
He wrote
"Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went",
it is full of british humor,
it is very nice to read.
He described greeds, cheatings,
dirty tricks, plots...
Galbraith has a great credibility,
he worked with important people.
He was a great economist together
with a journalist and a humanist.
He took a stand for people against
oligarchy, bureaucracy and injustice.
And his book...
[Which period ?]
Mid and late 20th century,
he died a few years ago.
And his son seems to be like him,
a good man too.
In this book, the definition of
money is great.
I put a mark on that...
I want to read it, it is very short.
He warns us...
There is something funny about that...
He explains that money is made
complicated on purpose,
to confuse us like doctors
a long time ago, like lawyers...
They maintain a technical jargon
to keep underlings apart.
"The reader should proceed in these
pages in the knowledge
that money is nothing more and
nothing less than what he or she
always thought it was - what is
commonly offered or received
for the purchase or sale of goods,
services or other things"
Anything else is useless confusion.
Indeed, when we address money creation
and how this was stolen to the people,
we will see that it is not complicated.
There is a second book that I like,
also very nice to read:
"La pensée monétaire de l'âge classique
à nos jours" by Christian Tutin
"Tutin", T-U-T-I-N,
He quoted the best parts of
contemporary experts on money:
from Locke to Hayek including
Law, Cantillon, Hume, Thornton,
Ricardo, Marx, Fisher and of course
Keynes and Friedman.
But it is not hard to read
because it is the
best about money written
by the best authors.
It is actually a fierce
debate between
those people to determine
what money is.
So a good book to understand
the stakes.
I won't do history of money,
I will tell you what it is now.
Today we have two kinds of money.
First, there is the money we use,
this money is mostly created
by private banks.
And there is money created
by the state.
A small part of it is paper money,
the other part is exchanged
between banks.
So there are two kind of money.
The money exchanged between banks
is not our concern.
You will never see it,
it is just for banks.
And there is the money that
we exchange between us.
It is hardly created by the state,
it is mostly created by private banks.
How and when is it done ?
Let us take an example
to see how money appears
and then disappears.
Let's say, you need $100,000
for your house.
You go to the bank and say:
"please loan me $100,000".
The banker does not have
this amount of money,
however if you are reliable
he says "no problem".
If you are not reliable,
there is a chance that you
do not pay off your debt
and it will become the banker's
responsability to pay it back.
So he pays attention to it.
I should stand up for that.
The banker has a balance sheet.
I had a drawing for that.
There are assets and liabilities.
I am a bank, assets are what I am owed
and liabilities are what I owe.
Liabilities are what I owe,
so you want $100,000, here they are.
This is on my account,
I owe you $100,000.
There is still something wrong,
it is not balanced yet.
I have to write the same amount
on both sides of the balance sheet.
For now it is not balanced,
but what I wrote here
as liabilities, as debt of my bank,
is new money.
I shall explain how it
circulates after that.
And the credit operation is not
completed yet. The banker says:
"I owe you $100,000" and in the
same time: "you owe me $100,000".
On the other side, as assets
he writes $100,000.
He says: "now you owe me $100,000".
When a bank gives someone credit,
two debts are created.
Bank and borrower together
create two debts.
The debt of the bank is paid now, and
the debt of the borrower is paid later.
Difference lies in term.
[3 debts are created]
What is the 3rd ?
[interests]
Interests... indeed...
but interests are taken
from existing money.
The money is only created
from the amount that
people borrow and that is
granted from banks.
Then, you pay off your debt with
interests. For now I leave that apart.
There is $100,000 on both side of the
balance sheet and then people pay back.
$10,000 back, $10,000 back, money is
progressively destroyed on both sides.
And at the end, money disappears.
Money disappears. If everybody paid his
debts, there would be no money left.
Almost nothing,
just banknotes and coins.
[money as debt]
Money as debt, indeed.
Any money that circulates through
bank accounts is called
"demand deposit". It appears and
disappears just as I said.
Money appears together with debts,
and disappears together with
repayments.
More than 90% of the money today
was created like that.
So... how comes...
I should also tell
how it circulates.
The person has this amount of money
on his bank account.
With that he will pay his suppliers
and his workers.
A part of this money will leave his
account for another in a bank B.
And it works the same way with assets
and liabilities, so let's say
$10,000 have gone, there are $90,000
left and $10,000 arrive here.
And money just go.
It is just a new entry on the
"liabilities" column of a balance sheet.
Money is created as liabilities
and circulates through liabilities
of banks with the help of checks,
credit cards, transfers...
If you take an overview of the bank
system, you see that money consists
of liabilities of all banks and
circulates thanks to checks, etc...
Yes ?
[It is like a unique bank]
Exactly ! They create money together,
they lend to different people.
For example, I am J.P. Morgan, I hold
10% of the stock market,
it means that I am in charge of 10%
of the people's money,
and each time it lends 100, 90 go
elsewhere and 10 remain for me.
In the same time, the other banks
lend money too and
10% of these loans eventually
come into my accounts.
So if all the banks together
create $1,000 during a day,
$100 are for me, whatever
the source of the loan is.
Each bank has to lend in proportion of
the market share of its deposits.
If a bank lends more than the
others in proportion,
money will go to other banks
and it will have to
raise capital, that is it
will have to pay...
I think that it is useless to go
deeper into the detail.
We will come back to that when
we talk about objections.
Bankers pretend that it is a
strong restriction to
money creation that banks
are in competition like that.
But if they lend money at the same
pace, there is nothing to compensate.
The money supply consists of
the sum of all
credits that have not
been paid off yet.
It is like a bathtub that fills up with
a faucet that represents new loans.
So any new credit contributes to
fill the tub of money supply.
And repayments are like the
plughole from which water
flows out regularly according to
the schedule of repayments.
So the amount of money supply fills
and empties like a bathtub...
...but it fills in a way
that has nothing to do
with our needs.
Actually we need money to trade.
Image is a bit old but it is like blood
in the body that enables to trade.
Blood circulates in our body,
it takes particles
somewhere and bring them somewhere else.
Too much blood is bad,
to little is bad as well.
It is important to have
the right amount of blood
as it is important to have
the right amount of money.
In optimistic periods,
when we trust in the future,
we, humans tend to borrow much.
In the same time,
bankers tend to lend much.
This leads to the creation of
much money. money supply inflates
and it leads people to take
more and more risks than they should.
I am simplifying. On the contrary,
and this is what I worry about,
there is the reversed situation.
People's mood switches from
optimism to pessimism,
like during the real estate crisis.
And the market is under the "sheep"
effect, all agents behave the same way.
When everything is fine,
the market is optimistic,
and when it starts to turn, the actors
start to depress all together,
they stop borrowing,
bank stop lending...
whereas people keep on paying off.
The bathtub keeps on
emptying according to the schedule
of repayments while
it stops filling and thus you have
less and less money...
and more unemployment.
The strict connection between
money and unemployment is hard to draw
but this argument has been held
by many theorists for a long time.
And...
the most famous is Keynes.
I think it is not stupid to correlate
the amount of money with unemployment.
I am led to think so
because of some
experiments with alternative form
of currency.
In many cases of alternative currency
in history, I observe that...
First of all,
you need a serious crisis to create
a new currency:
when unemployment rate is very high,
when craftsmen and storekeeper
can not work...
In such situations districts take
locally control of the money
and start to pay civil servants
with money they create themselves.
Money is something highly conventional.
You just need trust to make it work.
And in any experiment I know,
it takes only a
couple of weeks to make
unemployment disappear.
Activity starts again when
you bring money to it.
I mean that there is a relation
between unemployment and
the introduction of new money when
there is not enough.
But you have to pay attention
not to create too much money,
else its value might collapse
and then you might face
other kind of disasters.
But if you create money moderately...
you have a solution to unemployment.
But if you give the money you create
to rich people like today,
to people who do not spend it and
accumulate (like a sickness)
then you will not solve your
problem of employment.
You need to give money to those
who spend it.
Jean-Marcel Jeanneney, a minister of
de Gaulle wrote a book called
"Ecoute la France qui gronde".
It is out of print, hard to find,
maybe as a second-hand but I published
the best parts of it on my website.
First, this guy explains that creating
too much money generates hyperinflation:
money loses its value and it is a
disaster for everybody.
He reminds of Assignats during the
french revolution,
the John Law's system,
the german hyperinflation in the 1920s.
He knows that. However he suggests that
the state should create paper money,
not money for private banks, nothing
you need to pay off but banknotes.
And then, without going through banks,
distribute FF3,000 to any individual,
kids, elder, men, women and observe
empirically what happens.
Does it create inflation ?
If not, then we do it again
6 months later.
Else we stop for a time.
He proposed to distribute money to
people. But the original aspect lies
in that money is given to people
who spend it. This changes everything.
Currently we create billions that we
give to people who do not spend it.
They possibly lend it but with
expensive interests.
About money creation I omitted
a point that should be mentioned.
Until 1973 in France,
and 1913 in the U.S.
the state was allowed to create money
like private banks.
Banks could create money like I said
but state could also
create the money he needed for itself
and its investments.
For that it just needed to borrow
from its central bank.
And as central bank belongs
to the state, and
we are the state, the loan was
without interest.
When the state paid off,
it did not pay interest.
But eventually France, U.S. and Europe
were victim of a monetary coup d'état.
The monetary creation was left
to private banks exclusively
so that states cannot borrow
from their central banks anymore.
In other words, oblige the states
to borrow
from private banks
for their investements
and oblige them to pay interests.
And in any country where it happened,
public debt appeared.
Public debt was successfully used
to enslave Third World countries,
to steal their raw materials
and resources.
This happens now to developed countries.
Progressively, the state
is forbidden to create its money
and is forced to borrow
on the stock market, that is
from rich people.
This way, the elected representatives
enslaved the state, made it dependant.
This happens clearly in Europe today.
Greece, Portugal, Ireland
are beeing strangled
by the debt system and there is
most likely no way around it
for the other countries.
[It is interesting to say that
in 1973 this was decided
by Pompidou and Giscard d'Estaing.
And who was Pompidou ?]
Pompidou was the manager of the
Rothschild bank.
[As an example of what became
world politics, when Gaddafi
came to Paris, he pitched his tent
in the garden of the
Rothschild family.
Just another interesting relation.]
I didn't know that.
Anyway. We actually often call
this 1973 law, the Rothschild's law
because it incredibly served
the interests of banks.
And we are the ressources of the
states. The work of millions of people
is thus for a large part dedicated
to pay the debt service,
to pay the banks, the creditors
of the state, on public spending.
Since the state is not allowed
to borrow from
its central bank, it has to borrow
from private banks.
So what happend in 1973
is deeply against
general interest. It is a coup d'état.
And... the same thing happened
the same way
in the U.S. in 1913 and with
the same banks.
So...
I think that the most relevant
book about this
period is
"Secrets of the Federal Reserve".
I think that it is the best book
to understand
the monetary swindle of that period.
It has existed for a long time but
it was translated into french recently.
That's bomb.
When you read that you get outraged.
It is easy to read, like a detective
story. And it explains how...
[Eustace Mullins]
Eustace Mullins: M-U-L-L-I-N-S.
It explains how a couple of bankers who
were detested by the american people...
The americans just emerged from a
dreadful crisis. They had been ruined,
they lost their savings and people
hated banks and Wall Street.
[This was initiated by J.P. Morgan]
Yes, but I cannot tell everything now.
But...
How a couple of bankers literally
conspired: they hid on a private island
with a member of the Parliament
to develop a project of central bank.
But a private central bank.
A bank which looks like a
public bank but is not,
which is called "Federal Reserve"
and which is neither federal
nor american nor is a reserve.
They wanted this project to be voted by
the congress. It failed the first time,
then they tried again in 1913...
The plot of Jekyll island was in 1910.
All this looks like a detective story.
The servants were given vacation.
They had hired new foreign servants
just for this meeting, just for one week
so that nobody could recognise them.
Mullins' work is really interesting.
He pieced this
puzzle together:
he relied on thousands of old
articles... even on books written
by the conspirators.
After the system were installed, some of
them started to talk as they got older.
He managed to complete the puzzle.
He did a huge
research work, very complicated and
very interesting.
And we discover the same procedure,
the same rules,
the same outrageous rights given
to the central bank
compared to states in the current
european system.
This book describe also the way
this project has been voted.
These bankers financed the campaign
of the three
candidates... The two main candidates
who could win
the election had both a project
of federal bank.
they were described as contradictory
whereas
they were alike, they led to
the same thing.
Finally, Woodrow Wilson was elected
in 1913. The first thing he did was to
vote this project of federal reserve
in a quick and dirty way, in december.
He did it against public opinion and
against general interest. Since then...
I think it is relevant to describe
America as an occupied territory.
These people have had their money
stolen and thus have been
enslaved by some privileged guys
with power beyond imagination.
You have to realize that by taking over
the dollar, they took over the world.
Eustace Mullins did a major
investigative work to expose the owners
of banks. There are shares and control
shares which are more important...
Nowadays this secret is kept as well
as the nuclear launch code.
Today it is almost impossible to know
who controls banks.
Back then the information was
still available and the trail of
the ownership of the Federal Reserve
led to the City in London.
That's the last straw !
Can you imagine how harsh it is
for american people ?
And it led mainly to Rothschild.
This deserve to be discussed in public.
Mullins might be wrong on some points,
we have to check.
The problem is that we cannot
discuss that
without being called a fascist
or an antisemite.
It seems that antisemitism was made up
to protect Rothschild. When we talk
about him we are immediately called an
antisemite, a fascist... Hitler soon.
Well I don't think I have much
in common with Hitler and fascists.
So, among alternative solutions,
there is "Freigeld" (free money).
"Freigeld" is a concept proposed by
Silvio Gesell. He was a famous
and appreciated economist who
proposed something interesting.
Keynes considered Gesell's concept
with respect.
Gesell tried to prevent people
from accumulating money.
Indeed, other people need
unused money to circulate.
So, in order to dissuade people
to keep unused money with them
he proposed that money might
lose its value each month. For that,
stamps had to be purchased and
attached to the money to keep it valid.
Indeed, this encourages people to
get rid of it since it loses its value.
But if you think about it,
Keynes' solution
involving a bit of inflation
is equivalent.
Inflation makes your banknotes
lose their value progressively.
"Freigeld" and inflation
are very similar.
Not exactly identical though.
Anyway, it was
Keynes' solution to
"Euthanize the rentiers".
That is a rentier...
Inflation reduce the gold pile
of a rentier. Workers, however...
About protecting people
against inflation...
I am a bit lost with my books but...
Concerning solutions to
withstand inflation...
Maurice Allais was not in favor of
inflation, but explained that a little,
2% was necessary - due to landed
property, I will not explain that.
So, these 2% that Allais suggested
to maintain, were compensated
by a general indexation system
like France knew after 1945.
During 30 years in France,
people's income were
indexed to inflation with the
sliding wage scale.
Wages were indexed, loans were indexed,
rents were indexed and thus,
for the workers and the little people,
inflation was painless.
Only the wealth of people
keeping banknotes decreased.
Actually, speculators often managed
to earn more than inflation.
Only the wealth of people keeping
piles of banknotes decreased.
And more people than you think
keep banknotes.
For those people...
money melt away.
So "Freigeld" is a solution to prevent
people from accumulating too much money.
Concerning the maleficence that happend
in -73 when the state
abandoned monetary creation,
I see as consequences...
a ruined state.
You have to understand that
rich people have much to fear
from a strong state that
they could not control.
So the strategy applied by
so called "liberals"
all around the world aims
to destroy the states.
And an efficient way to do that
is to ruin it.
Ruin by depriving it of resources
and Galbraith emphasizes
that great crisis are preceded
by cuts in rich people's taxes.
It is the sign of a crisis.
When taxes of rich people
start to decrease strongly,
this means that we are getting
close to a crisis.
I think that Galbraihs is right.
Since recently, you can see
that often, rich people pay
almost no taxes anymore.
And when rich people do not pay taxes,
the amount
of money that state lacks is a
bottomless pit.
So first, the state is ruined
by depriving it of its resources.
Second, by getting it into debt,
state is
burdened with the interests of the loan.
It is burdened with additional expenses.
You have to realize that the
interests of the debt,
not the refund, just the interests,
cost France...
It costs us 45, 50 billions euros
a year.
It is considerable !
50 billions just for a debt,
it is just the interests,
I insist, an unnecessary debt.
A debt that is not necessary.
If the state...
had kept the right to create money
for itself...
If it was allowed to borrow
from its central bank,
that is to create money it needs...
it would not pay interests.
Besides, the amount of deficits...
André-Jacques Holbecq wrote
a short book, very simple...
This short book: "La dette publique,
une affaire rentable"
and this other one: "Argent, dettes
et banques"...
Two good short books by
André-Jacques Holbecq
that explain well and
enable to understand.
He did quite a hard work because
statistics were not
available anymore, so he had to
go hunting for them.
Since 1973, public spending
did not grow. It did not grow.
In proportion, it is roughly unchanging.
So how come we are
more and more in debt ?
Well look, it is the debt service.
At the beginning in -73, debt was little,
so debt service was little
and thus the deficit was shallow.
And then, year after year,
deficit is roughly equal to...
not exactly, but it is very close,
the deficit
of the french state correspond
to debt service.
By reducing resources of the state,
by increasing its expenses
and year after year...
you have to realize that since -73,
members of the Parliament decided
not to balance this growing deficit.
They could balance it by reducing
spendings or increasing taxes.
They did not. They left the debt grow.
Now we are told: "Parliament were lax"
or "they were weak"
or "they did it to be re-elected,
to remain popular".
Possible, but I don't buy that.
I do not. It is possible...
I think that all this
fits together too well...
This decision, year after year
to let the debt grow so that
the state is progressively
enslaved by those who lend money.
And eventually, the state will
depend on these people. All this
matches so perfectly the interests
of those who finance election...
that I can hardly believe that
it is a coincidence.
I know, it is conspiracist, paranoid...
Nevertheless, since -73, members of the
Parliament, the so-called "left-wing"
like the so-called "right-wing",
all of them let the debt grow.
I find it too easy to forgive them
pretending that
"they were weak, they wanted
to be re-elected".
For me all this looks like
an attempt to bring
the state to heel.
To bring the state to heel.
This is consistent with the destruction
of nations by the European Union.
This is along the same lines.
The European Union construction takes
part in the destruction of the nations.
The state that our revolutionary
fathers built in 1789 to get rid
of the old aristocratic system.
And we are beeing stolen that...
by those who were the privileged of this
system. This is a counter-revolution.
A lot of people write books called
"counter-revolution".
We are witnessing a counter-revolution.
The privileged are erasing...
what we gained in 1789.
Well...
I am reaching the end of my talk about
money, and I kept the best for the end.
Creating money aims to finance economy.
No matter whether state is allowed
to create money or
how much is created, our goal is
to finance economy.
For many years, for centuries, this
task was entrusted to the stock market.
To public companies and to the stock
market. Those who have too much money...
come to the stock market
to make it available.
And those who need it to
start a business, come to borrow it.
I think that stock markets
are justified in case money is rare.
And it is created by some
privileged people who keep it rare.
But if we consider, that money
should not be rare,
if we consider this as a society,
we could then design
a system where we would take back
the control of the money.
And we would create... not too much
money because we do not want to
live through those bad experiences where
everything collapsed because of it.
People were ruined and the situation
was worse than before.
Without creating too much...
I guess that we could create
more money than today and also
dispatch it to other targets
than what private banks do.
But if we manage to take back
public control of
monetary creation, we do not need
the stock market anymore.
We need neither the stock market,
nor savings, nor rich people's money.
So let us grant the control
of the monetary creation...
not to politicians...
I will come back to that later, but to
public power, to citizens. This could be
an assembly, possibly randomly selected
that decide how much money to create.
We shall discuss that
because it might be
too technical for
randomly selected people.
Anyway, some public power instance,
an incarnation of
what we, the people are,
could decide how much money we need.
This may be a way to finance economy
instead of private banks.
There is another way I wanted to talk
about, a wonderful work, very exciting.
This were brought to me by
Franck Lepage. Franck Lepage is
an exciting campaigner, you should
get to know him if you do not.
You can type his name into Google,
you will find his
"gesticulated conferences" where
Frank tells important things.
I cannot tell much for
it is not related to money:
his main topic is about a
popular education. It concerns
culture as political education
of young adults to avoid wars.
Culture is reduced to art,
which is a disaster.
Culture should include education
of young adults on ethics.
For example Orwell's Common Decency,
a kind of generosity...
altruism that can be developed
and taught with a dedicated education.
So, Frank's work is about popular
education: the scuttling of the culture
reduced to art and without political
aspect. It is an essential work but...
we may talk about that later
together with random
selection which is also a tool
for popular education.
Frank introduced me to
Bernard Friot's work.
I cannot talk in detail about
Friot's work.
I encourage you to watch Friot's
conferences, each of them is
2 hours long. I saw 4 or 5 myself,
I met him, I expect to do it again.
The work of this man is essential...
and revolutionary.
Before reading the book you should
watch several videos because he...
he improvises in his videos and
they are never the same,
there is always something new and
they are rich.
One has to master his own vocabulary
about job, wage, contribution.
He gives his definition of "job",
his definition of "work" which is...
very useful. I shall summarize
so that you
understand how it articulates
with my talk.
I am trying to finance economy
without rich people's savings.
I would like we, the many non-rich
people, to have a normal economic
activity, to live a decent life
without requiring rich people's money.
without requiring capital,
without capitalism.
Without the money accumulated by...
those who have money.
Taking back money creation
is a first idea. And Friot's idea...
That's another bomb. Friot says:
There is something in our
current real life,
this is no utopia, this is no dream.
In our real life,
there is an anticapitalist financing
system that works very well,
namely our pension system.
In what way is it a major
solution that demonstrate that
we are able to finance something
without saving money first ?
Well look how our grandparents designed
the pension system after the war.
It is easy, very easy.
We do not know what will happen
in 20 years, but next year we know
how many people are going to work
and how many will be retired.
We apply the rule of three and
thus we know the proportion of
the wages that must be deducted
to pay the pension next year.
Each year we decide the part
of the wages that must be
taken to pay the pension next year.
It is unsinkable.
Of course, for the baby boomer's
pension you must raise
the contribution rate, like today.
By the way, this rate
has kept growing since the end
of the 2nd world war.
The rate rises a bit each year.
This happens in a period of growth,
when wealth rises even more quickly.
Each time, we create
much more wealth and we take
a bit more of this new wealth
for pensions. It is painless and
the system is unsinkable.
Except if you scuttle it voluntarily.
When business leaders gained to
freeze the employer contributions...
when they stopped to increase...
to adjust the part taken on
wages for pensions, they scuttled it.
And then pretended that
the system was not viable.
But they unbalanced it voluntarily.
This is sheer sabotage !
The system was designed
to be self-balanced,
without the slightest deficit.
And it worked very well
with huge amounts.
Pensions are 230 billions a year.
And state is not needed.
These are social funds betwen us.
No state needed, no saving needed,
no loan needed,
and there is no interest to pay.
These are important commitments,
230 billions
over 30, 40, 50 years.
And it works very well.
Already 45% of the global salary
is paid by funds.
Not only retirement but also health,
unemployment... any social insurance.
Almost half of our income
is already paid
by firms to funds and then
by funds to us.
It is already happening,
and there is no need to borrow.
No need to pay interests.
No starting capital or savings needed.
Friot says: this system has existed
since the 2nd world war.
It has worked perfectly since then.
It should be
applied to every professional
categories, to everyone.
And above all, since it works
for pensions...
then let us do the same for salaries.
A firm would not pay its
employee directly. It would
pay a fund that would pay him.
It would be shared.
One may doubt it would work,
but it is already
working for pensions,
why not for salaries ?
And for investment.
Instead of entrusting the stock market
that does not finance economy anymore.
You know that all together
the stock market deplete wealth.
Each year, if you compare
what the market takes from economy
and what it gives to businesses,
it deplete wealth.
It is useless. For a long time,
the market has not financed economy.
I discovered Friot's idea
a couple of months ago.
It should be explored but
it is very appealing.
Friot's idea is:
"Let us follow...
the successful example of pensions
for 60 years.
Let us extend this system to other
problematic topics", like investment.
The part of GDP that goes
to investment is catastrophic.
We are far from the 25% of the GDP
we need.
But if firms were asked
a contribution in investment,
if firms that need to invest were able
to get money from an investment fund,
we would have 25% for investment instead
of relying on a useless stock market.
I think that none of these reform is
possible in the context of election.
Because elected representative,
for a large part...
a part that is hidden...
are answerable to their sponsors.
And if those sponsors are rich people...
the richest are not storekeepers,
they are banks.
So it would be an illusion
to believe that
representative would change
anything about banks.
It would be equivalent to a suicide.
So what I am about to tell about
sortition in place of election
is the political complement
to this work on financing.
I would be glad to hear
your opinions about financing systems
because I am still doing
research on that.
There might be things that
I have not fully understood,
or that I missed.
I am still seeking...
new material.
http://etienne.chouard.free.fr/Europe