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Chapter 7: Secrets, Ignorance and Lies: Money, Credit and Debt

April 15, 2019

CHAPTER 7: SECRETS, IGNORANCE AND LIES: MONEY, CREDIT AND DEBT.

“The tyranny of fraud is not less oppressive than that of force.” John Taylor of Caroline, Virginia (1814).

Our money system relies on people not understanding it. If people understood it, they would demand reform.[1]

The most outrageous falsehoods are propagated daily about money and banking. Here are one or two examples:

‘A commercial bank is fundamentally nothing more than a middleman to put these two groups of people (investors and entrepreneurs) together in an efficient way’.[2]

This untruth is repeated regularly in education and the media, and most people believe it. The ‘middleman’ story is denied repeatedly and explicitly by authorities who know about the system, and are honest.

Here are some authoritative denials of the ‘middleman’ narrative:

The Bank of England: “One common misconception is that banks act simply as intermediaries, lending out the deposits that savers place with them…[this] ignores the fact that, in reality in the modern economy, commercial banks are the creators of deposit money. …Rather than banks lending out deposits that are placed with them, the act of lending creates deposits – the reverse of the sequence typically described in textbooks.”[3]

Abbott Payson Usher (20th century banking historian): ‘The essential function of a banking system is the creation of credit, whether in the form of the current accounts of depositors, or in the form of notes. The form of credit is less important than the fact of credit creation.’[4]

Joseph Schumpeter (economist): ‘It is much more realistic to say that the banks ‘create credit’, that is, that they create deposits in their act of lending, than to say they lend the deposits that have been entrusted to them.’[5]

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Confronting “Alternative Facts”

January 10, 2019

Confronting “Alternative Facts”

They are unending. There’s no way to keep up, much less respond effectively, and it almost goes without saying that they are never to be taken back, corrected, or amended in any way. Call them false claims, lies, untruths, misstatements, whatever you want, but they are what comes out of his mouth just about anytime he opens it. Take, for instance, that moment as 2018 ended when, in a blacked-out plane, he landed at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq for a three-hour presidential visit with the troops. It was there that he swore (as he had before) that he had won those troops a 10% pay raise for 2019 and that, to do so, he had fought it out in the trenches with unnamed military officials. (“They said, you know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3%. We could make it 2%. We could make it 4%.’ I said, ‘No. Make it 10%. Make it more than 10%.’”) He insisted as well that they hadn’t had a raise, not just of such a monumental sort but of any kind, in “more than 10 years.” As it happens, what were once known as the facts went like this: those troops last received a pay raise — of 2.4% — in 2018 (and every year before that for three decades); the 2019 pay raise is for 2.6%, not 10%; and those unnamed military officials evidently won!

For any half-normal president that would have been the trifecta: three outlandish falsehoods in a single try, but for Donald Trump it was just the modest, everyday demonstration of his remarkable ability to adjust reality to his needs, desires, and fantasies, and (as Jean-Luc Picard would once have said) “Make it so”! After all, for the man who, according to Washington Post fact-checkers, managed to make almost 6,000 “false and misleading claims” in 2018 alone, more than 15 a day and almost triple his record-setting pace of the previous year, that was nothing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Mainstream Media Join the US Government Offensive Against Iran: Case Study of Reuters

January 10, 2019

How Mainstream Media Join the US Government Offensive Against Iran: Case Study of Reuters

How Mainstream Media Join the US Government Offensive Against Iran: Case Study of Reuters

Summary: A 2013 news investigation of Iranian corruption by Reuters news service has been cited by at least four books published one after another, the most recently in 2018. 

It has also been cited by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2018 speech. Given the article’s ongoing influence, this article will scrutinize flaws in the reporting techniques and raise reasonable questions about several of its findings. The article will also mention, a piece of important historical context, that was long assumed, but made official in 2013 – the same year the story was published – when the US government released classified documents about its involvement in the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader in 1953 and the establishment of the Shah. The purpose of this article is not to stain the reputation of an entire news agency – but to simply lay out an alternative context for interpreting a single, influential story. 

Ever since the beginning of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the United States has been leading a propaganda campaign against Iran, minimizing own harmful role in key historical events, justifying an ousted monarchist regime, and demonizing the new political system. Frequently it is done in lighter forms, for example by claiming that new government is far from perfect or even the same as a previous one, but the methods can sometimes be so radical that the characteristics of the two systems are completely inverted.

While the Reuters claims Iran is active in spreading disinformation online, the history of the agency’s reports about Iran shows the opposite. The latest of such reports is a false report about Iran’s missile program. The falsehood of the article has been dissected here.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wikileaks Warns Reporters Not To Publish 140 “False And Defamatory” Statements About Julian Assange

January 8, 2019

Wikileaks Warns Reporters Not To Publish 140 “False And Defamatory” Statements About Julian Assange

WikiLeaks is sick and tired of mainstream media outlets publishing inaccurate and at times defamatory claims about its founder, Julian Assange. So in a recent email to journalists who regularly cover the organization, Wikileaks described 140 “false and defamatory” claims about its founder, who has been living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012.

According to Reuters, WikiLeaks accused the Guardian of publishing a false report about Assange, though it was not immediately clear what specific report prompted the warning. The Guardian has refused to comment on the allegations.

The 5,000 word email claimed it was defamatory to suggest that Assange had ever been an “agent or officer of any intelligence service,” or that he had ever been employed by the Russian government, or that he is – or has been – closely connected with the Russian state.

Assange

Some of the claims were more bizarre, like claiming that Assange was a pedophile, rapist, murder or a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Others pertained to personal hygiene, like that Assange bleaches his hair, or has poor grooming habits. They also said it was defamatory to claim that Assange is a hacker or that he is not an Australian citizen.

Assange has remained in the embassy for fear that he could be extradited to the US to face charges stemming from violations of the Espionage Act. According to reports from late last year, the DOJ is preparing to file an indictment of Assange. Meanwhile, speculation that Ecuador could soon withdraw its offer of asylum has been simmering since President Lenin Moreno took over from the seemingly more sympathetic Rafael Correa.

Though the email was marked “not for publication,” a copy leaked online in its entirety.

Read the full text below:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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