#40 The Lawful Bank

Here is just a sampling of video presentations. There are far more out there describing all of Roger Hayes' activities and involvements. 

Roger Hayes 29th Oct 2012 Lawful Bank TAMS Magna-Carta 2015 presentation

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 1 of 6

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 2 (ROGER HAYES ARRESTED) [This video says nothing about his arrest.]  

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 3 (ROGER HAYES ARRESTED [This video says nothing about it either]

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 4

LAWFUL BANK ROGER HAYES, PART 5

PART 6 COULD NOT BE FOUND!

TheLawfulBank.com

Roger Hayes is a nobody just like myself. He has tirelessly gone up and down among his countrymen, explaining things very well concerning present political realities which definitely have their counterparts everywhere else in the world, because everyone is presently under the same enforcement of unlawful statutes that have nothing whatever to do with basic common law, in fact they have attempted to steal national and individual sovereignty and place it under the supervision of so called “experts” (who are all traitors to real law, real people and real nations). We are currently under rule by ourtlaws, just about everywhere in the world. We have tremendous respect for this man. He has demonstrated courage, has gone before his people to explain their situation (always a potentially dangerous undertaking) and what he says has direct application to everyone else in the civilized world and has tremendous implications for people everywhere else on earth.

Hayes has done a spectacularly good job explaining what the people are facing under the present banking cartel (PART 3 above). We notice that Hayes' preferred solution turns out to be exactly the same as Bill Still's; have the government issue the money without interest and spend it into circulation “for the public interest,” etc. This requires the government to tax back everything it spends as otherwise inflation inevitably results, because the government doesn't have anything to sell back into the economy to retrieve the money they have spent. What neither Hayes nor Still sees, and they have a lot of ready followers, is that if you allow the government to issue the money you inevitably end up with communism, which doesn't work. We have tried state issue of money now for many hundreds of years and it cannot and does not work. It's time we stop advocating this as a preferred objective.

Riegel and others pointed out that ANY government issue of money amounted to turning over the natural rights of each one of us, to people who neither had the right nor the responsibility to create and spend money for us on our behalf, etc. We believe that it's time for the people of the world to grow up and take care of themselves, stop behaving like snivelling aged children and take back the power from governments and others who have no rights, no reason and no basis for their authority over us.

Authority as we maintain, rests solely with the truth, which can be rationally attained, contrary to all those who might insist that “noble lies” are every bit as good as the truth. We are in common agreement that it all begins and ends with who issues the money, because nobody does anything without being paid. Money is the ultimate lever of power and certain people have known this far longer and used it against the rest of us for a very very long time ... going all the way back to Babylon. All issues related to war and poverty are directly related to who has stolen the legitimate right of money issue from humanity.

Hayes explains the accounts required for his system in PART 4 above. What he has in mind is something like a “land bank” as he has clearly seen that another power has been stolen from us, the power of the land to become wealth and generate income for us. We agree with him and remind him and others that property rights extend to both the right to secure and protect property in land and other tangible resources, free of encumbrance from anyone else (allodial title) as well as the right of money issue. He makes many excellent points.

In PART 5 Hayes describes a fundamental truth that might change our mind concerning how we deal with taxation. If they want to tax us, they must accept our money which we do not expect them to do; therefore “pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's” etc. He makes many excellent points in this section that will become the basis of our future public campaigns. Hayes advocates creating common law authorities. We ultimately agree. There are a variety of “free state” or “self rule” movements under way right now across the world. This represents the future as we turn our backs on statists, bankers, elites and cabals of all kinds, etc. He also explains his means for exchange through use of the fractional reserve, which he ratchets down as more reserves in “public” money come in. He advocates using their money to underpin his new money which is intended to be interchangeable with pounds sterling which they will buy and retire. He also has many excellent ideas concerning allowing transfers into his system that we shall certainly evaluate.

The remainder of this article concerns the proposed Lawful Bank and how it compares with our proposal, the Independent Exchange. So we begin with this:

Welcome To The Lawful Bank

The Lawful Bank provides a gateway to 'The Alternative Monetary System' (TAMS) - a new and independent monetary and banking system owned and controlled by its users/members. The objective of TAMS is to create its own liquidity (money) for the benefit of the people of the nations that choose to use it... and by so doing, reassert the sovereign right of the people to self-governance - for a nation cannot truly govern itself unless it is in full control of the means by which its money is created.

The Lawful Bank is owned by its members. What then is the structure of this business? He says the branches are “for profit” operations, so what is the basis for ownership? It's based on deposits of national “public” money; UK pounds sterling. He says there's nothing wrong with fractional reserve banking. We obviously see this differently, but we marvel at the ingenuity of his monetary system design, as it solves some issues while creating others. Hayes turns the fractional reserve model upside down and considers that the “owners” of the “bank” deserve the proceeds of the bank. Perhaps he grants that it is the members themselves that create their own Sovereign Pounds (we really like the name and concept! Tally ho!), but what he's done is set up certain percentages that will determine how much money would be created.

Now of course, certainly he also knows that this money could not be spent outside his network, his market, TAMS (organised as a voluntary private club), the one created by the entire network of Lawful Bank branches. It's basically a system primed by national “public” money, which would form the “reserve” to generate the money of its members on a predictable 10 to 1 ratio.

I want to point something out to my American readers, many of whom may have lost their ability to really feel this thing called nationality (before our so called Civil War most of us felt the same toward our states). This is being written by a Briton who I am quite sure accepts as normal the concept of national identity. We have a requirement in our proposal that will not be understood by many, it's called Domicile. In order to be a member of any IE within our proposed VEN (our term for TAMS), you must actually prove that you have a lawful right to be resident where you are; recognized residence for one year or more in any location. We propose a private organization and we shall have our rules. If we hadn't been able to exert our will at the polls, since the governments were bought by those who wanted to profit from the importation of people more desperate than ourselves, who would work for less, etc. then we certainly jolly well will have our way in these matters by rights, right from the start of our new monetary system.

Those in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Russia, etc. who understand this immigration problem acutely, please pay attention; our purpose through the requirement to prove legitimate domicile, is to recognize the natural right of all nations to establish and preserve their national identities. We have further news for those in Africa, Asia, South America, etc. where most of these people have come from; we have the solution to your poverty and the means of your prosperity. Return home, use our private monetary system and methods and become prosperous in your own lands and among your own nations.

By the way, we happen to think that the globalist corporatist fascist paradigm, with its beehive groupthink mentality of chasing around after the eleventh marble, where everyone is treated as “human resources” by these people ... is really boring. We prefer our uniqueness as individuals and yes as peoples and nations too. This is the kind of diversity that we shall promote. It will be demonstrated on the obverse (front) sides of our exchange notes. Possibly each nation will adopt a national obverse side, but the monetary unit would always be the same everywhere. We shall have no more need of money changers!

We'll eventually get to describing our evaluation of Sovereign Pounds, we liked the name, would like to see the design. We do think that ultimately cash will be king, so that the idea of printing and minting these tokens of exchange, will take on more importance than most think.

That most nations around the world do not control their own money supply is not well known - but it should be - and it is our intention therefore to educate as many people as possible about this issue and explain its significance in terms of the impact it has on our freedoms.

We certainly hope he actually means it. By this I mean that all our freedoms are inherent in each of us as individual human beings, no matter where we are or what we are by natural or national makeup. We must insist that these rights are beyond the reach of ANY law to FORCE compliance against our own interests; none of these rights can be taken from us by FORCE (or other attempts to cheat us out of our wilful consent; stealing our consent by frauds and deceits), without instantly invalidating the action as unlawful. That's exactly how we see the issue of liberty: it can be national, it must be individual and respected.

TAMS has been developed to counter the destructive modern-day banking system that is the sole cause of the massive debt mountains that are now the burden of virtually every nation on this planet. It is our contention that people should be educated to the fact that the national debt would not exist if the creation of money was directly controlled by our elected government and that also, if this were the case, the taxes we pay could be dramatically reduced.

Emphasis here: this is absolute rubbish! No government, whether elected or not, should control the creation of money, EVER! It is a widespread and ghastly mistake to think so. The practice directly contributes to war! We've already been doing this, even during the “greenback” era before the Federal Reserve, people suffered from the natural scarcity of money under the traditional banking model.

Governments are supposed to rely for their money on US and WE are the only ones who can, by inalienable right, create money. ALL money created by governments is by fiat (not a problem) and not backed by anything the government could sell to us to justify their spending (THE problem!) and is all loaned into existence at interest (a swindle deliberately creating scarcity of money, which they think is a good thing and it isn't: this is the cancer in the present monetary system, creating huge tumours of debt that eventually kill the host economies). Governments rely on taxes taken by FORCE and they always overspend, so the rest becomes higher prices; inflation. We know all this, so let's stop talking about the governments creating money, shall we? Their money is all illegitimate and we just keep using it, because there hasn't emerged a credible alternative. One will emerge, because more and more people want something else.

TAMS provides the means by which national debt mountains can be extinguished - for the universal benefit of us all - by creating streams of positive financial liquidity in the hands of the people - instead of the streams of negative debt that have been placed on the shoulders of national governments and which are being paid for by ever-increasing taxes. It is a statement of fact that these debt mountains were entirely unnecessary and exist simply because the political elite in national governments have been 'persuaded' (some would say bribed) to hand over the control of their nation's money supply to the international banking cartel. In our view this is nothing short of criminal collusion.

As can be seen, if you have watched the video presentations, Hayes' approach is far more politically direct than ours. He seems to want to demand things of the system that we would prefer to approach through a “come out of her, my people” strategy. (We should consider any who stay on their side as the “left behinds.”) But others may see this differently; if they are doing this in England, why not in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, all the rest? Why not also in the BRIC nations?

"I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies." Thomas Jefferson

The Lawful Bank is not a “banking institution” run on the same model as Jefferson had in mind. He knew full well the usual commercial banks as they existed then; run exactly the same then as now. We want to call our branches exchanges rather than banks because we have the same reasonable concerns about the endless stacking up of money which the word bank implies. Hayes mentioned some sort of tax on extra cash in accounts. He should really throw this idea out too. People knowing that there's a tax on “cash” in accounts, would then certainly prefer to be holding cash in notes and coins outside of any accounts, so there wouldn't be any trail to implicate them in some future tax. People are tax averse by nature, which indicates to me that everyone recognizes taxation as robbery, even under the best regimes.

Hayes mentions some ideas for reclaiming the real estate of Britain, for a sort of “pay it forward in life, recoup on the decease,” model. He clearly dislikes inheritance. I wonder if he'd consider farms, or industrial property in the same category as housing? We would tend to support the notion of families owning the land or business their forefathers owned and that certainly goes for housing too. Getting rid of inheritance was one of the key planks of the Communist Manifesto. so we think Hayes badly needs to rethink this one too. While we concur concerning the excesses of the financial elite, honest capital formation is not a bad thing for any nation or community and the best way for it to form is in families over many generations, under conditions of peace.

The right of inheritance is actually an extension of personal property; the donor gets to pass his property on to whomever he freely chooses. It's nobody else's business! If you're FORCING someone into payback at death, you've assumed an authority that sooner or later in the wrong hands would turn very ugly. On the other hand we STRONGLY support the maintenance of an independent land registry for every geographical area where an independent exchange (or Lawful Bank branch) is started.

Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Yeah, we know. But what Rothschild did was not new. John Law tried it and before him the bankers in London, Amsterdam, etc. The present banking model is very old. It traces itself back apparently to ancient Babylon.

YOU can help change things.

Please click here to sign up to the Lawful Bank now. (Read the details at your leisure.)

No offence Roger, but we have to laugh. We've just been told what we already knew, that we are universally spied upon by the bankers' paid government elves. What makes you think anyone will want to sign up in the broad open daylight of internet traffic? You have to use snail mail or even the private mail systems. You have to form networks of secure correspondence over vast distances as well as within tight communities. Above all you have to start building potential pools of liquidity as soon as possible. These will form the juice for starting the new monetary system. Hayes is absolutely right about one thing though, it will be a tremendous effort to get and secure what I'd prefer to call “subscribers,” pursuant to becoming members and it will ultimately be a numbers game; when enough people have a personal interest in the future of a new monetary system, it will kick start all over the world, rise and thrive as the old order passes away and takes its usury based banking model with it.

Please note, you are not making a commitment at this stage, you are merely expressing an interest, which will provide us with an early indication of the level of support that we might expect. The success of TAMS depends on our ability to co-ordinate our efforts and work to a common agenda to take back control of the means of money production and by so doing - reassert our sovereign rights.

This is something like what we think. But sovereignty to have any real meaning in these times, ultimately resides in the individual human being. These rights spring from no outside authority and they include life, liberty and property, including the right to defend what belongs to us. Property also extends to allodial title to all real property and the right to pass that property on to anyone we choose.

The lawful Bank, serves as a conduit to TAMS via this web site. By signing up to The lawful Bank you will (in due course) avail yourself of the benefits of membership of this unique monetary and banking system, the essence of which is to distribute to the people the grotesque profits being skimmed by greedy bankers from the nation's economy.

This is exactly why Hayes likes the fractional reserve model, turned upside down. What he has solved by this is tying the amount of each member's potential money creation to the amount contributed to the bank's “reserves” in national currency at a ratio of 10 to 1. Recalling that nothing becomes money until it is exchanged for something, a value in an open market, a member could stack up as many Sovereign Pounds as he had pounds sterling to invest in the future money he'd have access to when TAMS gets up and running. He's got one problem though; his sovereign pounds are numerically tied to the purchasing power of whatever pounds sterling would buy. This is what most complementary systems try to do, because it's conceptually simpler for most people. But his members would still be at the mercy of what happens to the pound sterling when Weimar like hyperinflation sets in, as it very well could.

Instead, we used E. C. Riegel's approach, setting a stake in the ground, a Figure 1, upon which the monetary unit, as a measure of value, not a holder of value, the distinction is conceptually important, would determine all future assessments of value including the relative value of other currencies while they last. We set our proposed Value Unit at 1,000 per 1 troy ounce of gold bullion on 2 November, 2011, an easy day to remember. On that day the hypothetical international standard Value Unit as an independent measure of monetary value had a comparable value in US dollars of $2.16.

TAMS, with no shareholders to satisfy, is able to distribute all profits to its members and provide benefits that no other system can provide (see benefits below).

The members are actually shareholders in some precise arrangement as to the number of pounds sterling they have placed into the Lawful Bank's public currency reserves. The Lawful Bank does not deposit these public monies, they buy them with money created by The Lawful Bank members called Sovereign Pounds. This situation could fluctuate as people come and go, presumably taking their public money with them. Of course the Value Unit and the Sovereign Pound would always be private money. You can spend it within the community upon the actual launch of either TAMS or the VEN, but the Sovereign Pound is still tied to the public pound sterling, whereas the Value Unit is independent of every other money and will not be affected by government spending or bankster racketeering.

The fundamental principle of TAMS is that each nation's money supply should be in the hands of the people, for the benefit of the people - and not controlled by privately owned central banks, as is the case with the present international monetary/banking system.

Here again we see the emphasis on the idea of a nation. Quite probably Hayes and we agree on the illegal alien issue and seek a remedy through private initiatives seeing that we get nowhere with governments who are in thrall to the bankers and their corporations, always seeking advantage through exploiting desperate people who will work for less than provides a living wage for a particular community. These are serious problems that the libertarians are unalterably opposed to. We part company with them on these points, not because we do not approve of human freedom, but because these are cases where some have obtained freedom directly at the expense of others, the depletion of their freedoms. We have elaborated some critical definitions on this blog, including selfishness. Genuine selfishness consists in deliberately taking advantage of someone else. Where do advocates of liberty fail on this issue? They fail to recognize that liberty does not extend to bullies, whether they be globalist fascists or impoverished desperadoes.

Understanding money, its creation and the means by which the main political parties are controlled is vital to understanding the controls that the banking cartel places on each one of us personally by virtue of the control that the banking fraternity imposes on our system of government.

We of the E. C. Riegel approach do not concern ourselves with these matters as they form for us a dead letter; we have not been listened to, our requirements have not been met, our desires for advancement, freedom, prosperity, etc. have been cast aside as if we do not deserve them or because somehow we must serve some higher cause or purpose. Whatever. It's all strictly speaking a load of claptrap. Hayes' approach is bound to get him into trouble, as he advocates a process that will eventually end in conflict at the courts first and then in the streets.

An honest government would take back control of the money supply.

An honest government is an oxymoron and they could have about as much success controlling money as if they set about deciding the orbits of the planets! People consistently ask government to do what it should never have done and then wonder why it never works. ALL fiat money fails because it is government issued and for no other reason. Why don't more people get some sense and figure it out?

We would like people to start asking the question, 'Why don't they? The answer is of course that the political establishment is universally in the pocket of the banking fraternity and that this is the sole reason why so many politicians end up with lucrative directorships or consultancies with and for the banks.

To reiterate, since we agree here, the answer is that ANY prominent politicians are bought and paid for by them and if they step out of line, as a few American presidents have done, they end up disgraced or dead. We are dealing with the oldest criminal cabal in the world. THAT too should be better understood by more people.

An honest politician that voted in favour of taking back control of the production of our money supply, for the benefit of the nation, would not make a single penny from that decision... but the same cannot be said for voting for the status quo - i.e. leaving the production of the money supply in the hands of a private banking cartel... which rewards its sponsors (politicians) very well indeed.

Well of course, but this only proves that ALL politicians without exception are dishonest. There will not be any possibility for honest politicians until the present order fails, as sooner or later it certainly will.

TAMS Member Banks.

All banks that are members of TAMS have the capacity to offer a range of unique benefits to its members because it operates independently of the existing system - i.e. beyond the control and influence of the interest based global system.

Fine, so let's see what he's selling.

TAMS recognises the absolute sovereign rights of the individual and the sovereign rights of nations as created by the voluntary joining together of individuals of like-mind and shared national ambition and objectives.

Any valid concept of sovereignty in this 21^st Century must dispense with the notion that it belongs first and foremost to nations or states. We have a meme over here that is growing in usage; people want to be their own Alpha. But get that nationalism in there? More people should feel this, including those in the less developed parts of the world. It all begins with individual dignity and self respect, then onward to the mutual respect and reasonable business trust of others nearby. We would normally expect that those who most closely share more things in common will develop goods and services for their individual circumstances that will meet their needs better than anything arriving from some foreign destination, though genuine free trade would be encouraged by sharing the same monetary language.

TAMS has been created as a tool to serve the interest of sovereign men or women and to help assert global freedom. Any group of individuals from any nation may establish their own independent bank and sign up to the TAMS charter... which confirms its universal ownership by its users, to be operated in accordance with the principles agreed by the majority of its members.

The VEN would be similar. Independent Exchanges, we prefer these terms for our organizations rather than calling them Banks, would operate within a designated geographic area and be open to those who can prove clear Domicile for the past year. They would not need to deposit anything to begin with, because everyone starts with some free money. Hayes' free money is created in his system as a result of turning the fractional reserve mechanism on its head and allowing members to create a certain multiple of the public money reserves. We don't know whether he restricts this to individuals or includes businesses. We stick to Riegel's design here by excluding businesses and governments from creating money.

TAMS is managed in accordance with these principles by a team elected by the membership on the basis of one member one vote. The managers of TAMS are not born into their position or come to it via membership of an exclusive international club of elites.

We could all resolutely hope this is the same everywhere, but again we can feel Hayes' anger toward those who inherited money or property. Fine, there are ways to limit what might be inherited. The probate courts do a bang up job of that right now anyway.

What Hayes really needs to be concerned about are a class of people so far above his head that they use the current inheritance tax laws and probate courts to make sure that only they can profitably pass on their property to others of their choice. These people have no love for the independent farmer or businessman whose farm or business might be a cherished family legacy that benefits community and society alike and would be sorely missed were it to go under ... or gobbled up by yet another corporation. We cannot accept as lawful at all a society that forbids inheritance of property as a natural right. We may deal with the real villains in the piece or we may not. We'd honestly prefer not to have any dealings with them at all, unless or until they are led to the scaffolds for their crimes. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you couldn't be a criminal, perhaps even of the very worst kind imaginable. As has been said vast wealth usually rests upon vast crimes.

So, here's this particular monetary system's features and how they differ from our proposal:

The benefits TAMS will offer: -

Interest free loans for home purchase - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Interest free loans for businesses - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Interest free loans for cars and other household goods - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Interest free funds for community projects - subject to an arrangement fee only.

Bonded car insurance - at massively reduced annual premiums - approx £100 per vehicle - subject to payment of a security bond of about £500. There are no investors to pay.

Higher interest payments to deposit accounts - achieved through direct loans to other members.

A large network of community branches.

A positive credit system - for every £1 of cash deposited, each member creates £10 credit in their account. This credit (created by the system) on the back of the cash deposited is the property of the member and thus not a debt to the member. This will provided streams of credit to the system - and not debt.

To name just a few of the many benefits available.

This is a bank turned upside down with the benefits flowing to the members. It's not bad as a concept, except that its money is created as direct counterparts to a national currency that may become hyper inflationary as the debt on which it is built loses its appeal. A Weimar meltdown would not affect any Value Units as they are separate from any and all other currencies, so that they would not be affected by government spending, corporate games or financial chicanery. Hayes can't claim the same for his, but on the other hand, since his money would be identical to public money in purchasing power, as it is designed that way, he could make a better case for forcing certain public companies into taking his money. But that's ultimately going to require a political solution. And then there's the matter of taxes; if they accept your money as legitimate (lawful) they will find every possible means of taxing it.

Our branches are not in the finance business at all. They are only concerned with transaction clearing and determining whether labour and credit contracts as described are lawful within our very simple rules. Financing in the VEN would be undertaken by member businesses assuming their own risk. Should any of them fail, it would not bring down the entire system.

TAMS also operates in conjunction with The Common Law Courts and The New Land Registry.

We like these ideas, especially the New Land Registry, but wonder if now is the time for them. Perhaps so though. Some of us wondered if Britain still retained the offices of Sheriff at the county level and whether they could call for a Grand Jury to be opened to decide matters under common law, usually to send an indictment of a public official or agency up to a higher court for action.

Please sign up now (external link)

Yeah, maybe by snail mail or in person. People have gotten really angry over here about knowing that their government has no respect at all for anyone's privacy. Signing up for anything on line is probably going to become less effective until these matters are dealt with. After all, in the case of the current NSA spying, the US government has clearly violated the terms of its charter, the 4^th Amendment, a part of the original Bill of Rights. They have broken the law and everyone knows it! It's quite another matter however whether anyone can reasonably expect any justice will come of it.

It is a formidable undertaking to try and explain The Alternative Monetary System (TAMS) and its benefits in a few short paragraphs - suffice it to say at this point in time that the benefits are real and substantial. We invite individuals to sign up and take the time to read a more detail explanation of how the system works at your leisure... including how you can set up your own profit making branch in your community.

All this reading a more detail explanation of how the system works at your leisure is very important as the devil is usually in the details.

IMPORTANT: TAMS is not currently in operation... the system, although fully developed will not be activated until it has a minimum number of members in order for it to function effectively and for the maximum benefit for members - we are inviting YOU to join now and help make up the critical mass of members that we need.

The easiest way to recruit new members is to have them set up preliminary accounts. In Hayes' system, anyone willing to send in a few British pounds sterling could probably start one with £10 for each pound deposited. The bookkeeping requirements are pretty simple. He also seems to have left it open to anybody to join, regardless of nationality. So presumably even wanker Americans could open an account with The Lawful Bank.

This is a people based project that needs individuals to sign up so that through the collective power of the many, each one of us may benefit individually... but we need NUMBERS to breathe life into this project - we need your support.

I'm about to do this too, so I'll hand Hayes a tip: get yourself a private post box with a reliable mailing address and advise people to send their correspondence in to you. That way there will be less chance of potential customers ending up on someone's list.

There is nothing to pay at this point in time. When there are enough members signed up, sufficient to make the system viable... we will email every member and ask them to pay a one-time-only subscription of £10 (or international equivalent) - to help pay for the operational costs of the system. At this time also we will have in place a board of directors voted for by the members for the proper and transparent administration of these funds.

Again, why not have them send in their contributions NOW by snail mail and begin by sending them back a crude little piece of paper informing them that they have a preliminary account with The Lawful Bank? (Some in the room are fighting with me concerning this, thinking that Roger Hayes may be just another disappointing character as have been so many working in this area of interest. I asked them whether they thought I was especially brilliant and had all the best ideas? They didn't know, but I assured them that I wasn't and didn't and that Roger was on the level -after all he even went to jail for a while last year- and though some of his ideas really should be revised, that nevertheless he'd come up with a pretty good alternative banking model. Were I resident in the UK and actually planned to live there and contribute to their society, I would jolly well want to sign up right away, but not over the internet.

You see people are increasingly desperate. They know something's wrong and they know it's the money. Most want to deal in something else, something that is not subject to inflation, something they can reliably save as a measure of value, not a holder of value; the more money one has the larger thing one can measure for purposes of procurement. People would like to be able to trust their government to take care of them as some great parent in the capital city. But it's time to wake up and grow up. No government has ever been good at parenting its charges. Why would we ever expect things to be any different today?

The Lawful Bank is the first of many 'new banks' to come. The Lawful Bank is a partnership between 'The British Constitution Group' and 'The World Freeman Society.'

We're glad this represents at least some fringe support, but as Hayes himself seems to know, ANY politician represented as a member of ANY political party is actually operating in opposition to the government and people served. Certain kinds of mythologies die hard, party politics being one of these.

At the very heart of TAMS is the principle that a nation's monetary/banking system should be owned and controlled by that nation, for the benefit of the people. TAMS is an alternative to the present private banking system because national governments refuse to recognise their obligation to act in the best interest of the citizens. TAMS is owned by its members and membership is available to every individual as a right, not a privilege and without restriction.

Let's untangle this: the first underlined bit is a practical impossibility. You are asking governments to act in matters over which they can have nothing but harmful effects through their market interventions. The second bit, as a rationale, since they aren't doing their job (which in any case they'd make a mess of, as they always have), we're doing it for them. No sir, we are doing something for ourselves that we should have done hundreds of years ago! Every individual human being on the planet deserves to create his/her own money as an extension of their private property. No one else can steal this right from them. All The Lawful Bank is doing is enabling anyone, whether they are truly of the nation or not (as he just said this was open to anyone), to exercise their lawful rights.

TAMS operates internationally and gives easy access to low-cost international monetary transfers. In each case, access is via a nationally controlled network of branches, owned and controlled by small groups and communities. These small groups and communities control TAMS through an elected committee who hire and fire the managers of TAMS. The whole system is controlled from the bottom up by members through the democratic process of one vote per member. There are no block votes.

Fine, if you have all this together, it's merely a simple matter of establishing preliminary accounts, then branches, then hooking them all up to TAMS and away you go with commerce. But if TAMS is international and your banks in England are operating from a pound sterling basis, while we operate on a dollar basis, you still have not eliminated money changers, the primary causes of inflation or by opening up membership to all comers, have not furthered the causes of integrity, honesty and ethical dealing, as the more desperate someone is the more risks they are willing to take just to survive, including doing some things that might really wreck things for other members. This comes of having the finance function tied to the transaction clearing functions within a bank. It's time to consider separating these functions for good and forever, so that a lender assumes his/her own risk apart from a bank. If a lender is beset by a bunch of bad loans, it would not affect any independent exchange (bank branch) within our proposed Value Exchange Network.

There are no investors to satisfy and no high flying executives on million pound/dollar salaries or city slickers on astronomical bonuses. Our system plays no part in casino banking. TAMS is both safe and cost effective and serves the interest of the sovereign aspirations of individuals.

None of our people would be able to earn these fabulous remunerations either. It will be a good thing for everyone concerned including the individual branch exchange officers.

TAMS is a mirror image of the existing monetary system - it is tried and tested... but with a crucial difference in that there is an entirely different approach as to where the profits are delivered. In the existing system, the profits go to investors, and the people running the bank - with our system the profits are distributed to our members.

We like it and we don't. Does this not in fact infer that you have taken a system that makes money on money and turned it upside down so now everyone can get in on making money on money? Our proposal would involve giving people money based on their pensions, in international standard Value Units of course, not dollars, pounds, etc. Over a matter of a few months they'd be accruing more money than in most alternative systems, but aren't we really about retaining the ability to trade real goods and services that we all really need and want? Isn't it also true that we would want to have the means to build back through our own efforts what the elites have swindled and taxed away from us, from our families, our communities and yes our nations? 

We have given a great deal of thought to these matters and would surely like to share them with Roger and others involved in similar serious efforts. And aren't we also about returning the means and the reason to work to billions of people? Isn't the elimination of poverty and war worth the effort? The criminal elites? Why not move away from them and when confronted by their minions, ask them just who they'd prefer having as friends, the snotty elites or we the people? Hayes has actually done this. More of us should be doing the same. 

I've put my challenge out to all military and law enforcement veterans and their likely mothers, the grandmothers of this world, to unite and begin to start preliminary accounts that would form the basis of a viable alternative to the present systemic disaster. Anyone with a valid pension including all Social Security recipients should get on board with this right away as the clock is ticking and ... we have advance warning of our enemies' plans and they intend on winning which means billions of people are scheduled to be ... liquidated for the good of the planet, etc. (more abysmal claptrap and rubbish dressed up as “science” in order to secure our rights against our free consent!)

Operating an honest banking system is not rocket science... it is merely a record keeping exercise. The complication of banking only arises on the coattails of the deceit and corruption employed by the present system. TAMS steers clear of the greed that has now become the hallmark of today's banking system... and the casino mentality that drives it.

Or have you? Gee, if I just keep earning pounds sterling and sticking them into your bank and pull out ten times the money, that's quite a nice casino and I can always count on it. But of course what happens when that public pound shrinks in value? So too will any Sovereign Pounds generated therefrom, because they are linked. Best solve as many problems as one can within any new system, or it will just manifest some odd problem that will need fixing later.Hayes and others have already started out with a principle, the government issuance of money in the public interest, that is completely untenable. Idealists are people who want the world to function the way they thy think it should and are oblivious to facts of life that make their ideal impossible. The sovereignty of the individual makes a far better principle and doesn't require anyone else being involved but the members. 

For now, all governments are forbidden membership within our VEN. Perhaps they only get taxing authority when they accept our money as legitimate and then we allow them membership as B members as Riegel had originally proposed. Maybe.

It is the irrefutable fact that the near collapse of the world's financial system (which is still a possibility) is directly attributable to the banking fraternities focus on profit, greed and the gambling mentality the pervades in the banking industry.

The same models have been used from time immemorial and they have failed catastrophically before, so yes they will fail again. In fact the incidences of failures have gotten closer and closer together. The causes are built into the mathematics of debt and all the fabulous ways this has been played with to swindle real wealth (that which is capable of providing income) from whole classes of people, in particular, the middle classes upon whom civilization rests as a given and without whom no civilization worth the name can exist. The banking model cannot be so easily bettered or rendered any more sound by flipping the model upside down to benefit members rather than absentee owners (investors) etc. The fractional reserve banking model was based on a well known fraud concerning gold and silver warehousing and the leverage used to cause the creation and circulation of bad notes not redeemable for precious metals held in storage and still belonging to those who had deposited them with the storeroom managers. Our model uses silver and gold bullion as a buffer between ourselves and their money, so we never have any of it in our institutions be they independent exchanges or the various finance businesses that decide to operate within our VEN.

In contrast and in a similar vain to co-operative banking and mutual societies - TAMS uses the power of a large number of members to generate the benefits that each individual member can tap into. Achieving a large membership is the hurdle we must overcome in order to get our alternative system up and running - i.e. we need a critical mass of members to sign up to maximise the benefits available.

Well you said you had no problem allowing the rich to transfer their money into The Lawful Bank. We don't have any prejudice in that regard either, but we have far fewer ways for them to ever make money on money, as they are often used to doing. A rich person by definition has enough money and so doesn't need to be creating any more of it. In fact by failing to spend their excesses back into economies and instead preferring to live off of the “yield” from debt instruments or equities, they are economic parasites every bit as much as those who work for non-profit foundations, think tanks, the government or live from public relief. A rich person buys Value Units with their public money in the only means of exchange we will allow, through gold or silver bullion as they are the only reliable means of comparing our money to theirs. In this way we can provide exchange for all the major currencies for as long as they last.

TAMS charter. (Please note that this is work in progress)

The Alternative Monetary System (TAMS) is the hub of a network of autonomous branches, each owned by members of their local communities. No one member can have an interest in more than 3 branches.

The Value Exchange Network is the totality within which all branches, called independent exchanges (IE), operate. Individual people who can satisfy Domicile requirements are eligible to join an IE, but they are sponsored by two other members. They do not pay anything to join. Each individual human being is an A member whereas all groups of A members joining are B members; businesses and eventually governments starting with the most local ones first. In the beginning no governments will be allowed membership because they will not be expected to accept Value Units. All these transactions will have to be conducted in local currencies until these become ... valueless? No, until they no longer adequately measure any value in trade. Most currencies die from a Weimar meltdown in hyperinflation as governments try to repay their debts with more and more unbacked useless money.

An A member has an account in his/her local IE only. If he moves to another location where an IE already exists, his account transfers there also. An A member may open a business using the customary “doing business as” (DBA) form, available through most local county clerk's offices or their equivalents in other countries. A business operating as a B member at the local IE may have branches in other IE's, other locations and these could be very far apart. There could be many or few depending on the size and scale that nature allows. Nevertheless the B member is not organized as a limited liability absentee ownership stock company, as these would not be allowed as members. You want to stop corruption? Here's where you start, by keeping certain kinds of predatory business entities out of the VEN (or TAMS).

It is this extensive network of autonomous community based branches that controls the operation of the hub and not the other way around - thus ensuring that the hub functions for the benefit of all users/members and that control of the system can never fall into the hands of a small minority. Any attempts by any individual to influence more than 3 branches will result in a life-long ban as a branch director.

We kind of like this, even though we suppose that the only means for this kind of concentration is usually in the forms of corporate structure and the various applications of usury and compound interest (usury on steroids). It seems to me that what Hayes has advocated for loans is an arbitrary up front payment of what would normally be an interest charge, but this is satisfactory to us as all the money involved in the deal is out of already created money, so there's no need to filch the eleventh marble from an artificially scarce money supply.

The only problems with this are 1) he's maintained the loan functions within the same institution as the transaction clearing function, therefore subjecting the vital transaction function to the risk of possible default on loans which could bring his whole system down. This is what always brings banking systems down so I'm not bringing up anything new. And 2) he thinks all lenders would be satisfied with the same rate, represented as the up front fee, to carry their risk. Not all members are equally able to be counted upon to pay their debts. That's a simple fact of life. We'd prefer all that finance business to be carried out by those willing to assume the risks outside the IE with the IE holding the all important power to decide whether the credit contract, since that is what it is, passes the rules. We would not set any rules regarding how much extra someone might have to pay for the same thing under different credit situations. We would only insist that no uncreated money is ever involved and that the loan is retired entirely by money earned or created by the borrower. Compounding of interest is always absolutely forbidden.

All branches are profit centres... that is, they are run by their board directors with the aim of making a profit. Revenues come from earning a range of fees from a variety of services, including providing loans and insurance.

Under such terms, perhaps Hayes' bank officers would earn more than our IE exchange officers, because the rewards from carrying on trade would be spread among more factors. There is no reason why finance operations apart from clearing transactions could not enjoy similar rewards for members brought together for these specific purposes. Finance entities would be separate businesses operating within the VEN, usually organized as limited partnerships, that share the rewards for putting up their money to be loaned to others within very simple and strict guidelines that must still be fully worked out and universally accepted by all VEN members. Perhaps Hayes' suggestion that real estate loans be a flat 10% would be widely acceptable. But perhaps not. This whole area really requires more feedback.

The system provides interest free loans... and the branches charge a fee to arrange same.

The VEN can suggest sources for loans in Value Units through B members affiliated with the IE but no IE is ever involved in financing anything. The functions are separate and forbidden to be engaged in hereafter as they represent a conflict of interest and pose a risk to the continued operation of the transaction clearing function.

Borrowers must pay a fee of 10% of the loan value.

This is a straight 10% interest on all loans. We'll have to see whether this is widely acceptable. It may be.

If borrowers do not have the 10% fee - they may make arrangements to borrow the fee from other members, and will be required to pay 10% interest to the lending member and a fee to the Branch.

This 10% rate is to become a standard within The Lawful Bank and its branches. We agree that the interest charges should be paid up front from already created money, but we aren't sure what a fair and equitable rate for any loan would really be as there are many possible durations for repayment to consider, especially for real estate, which would have to affect the cost of borrowing money. We are all in agreement that the usual definition of usury as “excessive interest” is served by fixing an upward or standard interest rate, but what this also does is prevent certain needful large projects from getting funded, because of the tremendous sizes of the loans involved and for how long the schedule of repayment is anticipated to last. Both of these affect the cost of borrowing directly. It's wonderful to imagine that everyone will accept a 10% interest as “reasonable” or “acceptable” when circumstances would demand another approach.

Anybody can start a branch. Individuals who wish to do so must comply with the start-up rules and find 5 other members to form a board of directors whose job it will be to uphold the integrity and honesty of their branch and to operate in compliance with the rules. 3 directors of each branch must be property owners to 'anchor' their branch at a known location.

What had I said earlier? It was that the people who can help us the most are the least desperate among us, those who have something they can live on but are concerned about the future. We offered another idea and suggested that military and police pensioners and grandmothers be the first two likely groups to form an alliance and work together to start these new banking / money exchange institutions. They start by opening mutually agreed to accounts that complement the money they receive from their pensions. Starting with 3 people, each does the minimal accounting for another member which at this stage only takes a few minutes each month. We have a page where the latest exchange value of the proposed Value Unit is maintained. Currently we express a Value Unit in US dollars. Below the daily quote is a table of amounts for each month since inception on 2 November, 2011. I am looking into setting up columns for pounds, euros, and yen as well as US dollars. A pensioner merely takes the amount normally received under the rules of his/her pension (yes, including Social Security) and takes the amount of Value Units this dollar amount would represent as it would change every month because dollars, etc. change while the Value Unit does not, and credit each account with new Value Units and maintain a running balance. All this was explained in #39 Monetary System Engineering and Just Why Cash is King.

There is much that's good about Roger Hayes' design. But is it good enough? My colleagues have advised me to be careful about forming alliances with others in this budding field of new possibilities through new money creation and the institutions that must sustain it all, but I wonder if some competition might not be so bad as to finally flush out all the mechanisms that would not work. We know what some of them are. We have to build in the same kinds of checks and balances as statesmen have tried when designing government institutions. Will our designs ever come to fruition as real live social and economic entities? Only time and people will tell. But more people are getting interested all the time as the present order promises no good future for most of humanity that has been slated by the elites for extinction. What a pleasant thought from such pleasant people!

David Burton

dpbmss@mail.com

#0 THE SYSTEM

The System Playlist

News from the UK. A variety of ideas and causes are presented here: we encourage these people to have a look at our proposals. Viewers will be able to see the various subtle ways the British system is and is not like the American version, but it's the same basic administrative / commercial / communitarian law system, with the same basic outlines of the problems covered that should be understandable to any English speaking people around the world (Canada, Australia and New Zealand all face something similar) and these should be of considerable concern to everyone else as well, as the entire world right now is infected by the same economic diseases, all stemming from the same sources and causes. Everything these documentaries cover is of relevance to the formation of a viable Value Exchange Network (VEN).

We are certainly heartened to see the interest in an alternative monetary system to the national or “public” money and its banks, and we note that the same ideas “complementary, for now,” have occurred to some of the people there. However, we would like to acquaint our friends and neighbours around the world with our proposals, based on the work of E. C. Riegel and others, as we believe that it serves to answer many important issues that our friends in Britain (and elsewhere) may greatly benefit from adopting. A paper on The Lawful Bank, TAMS proposal appears here.

A community trust solution sounds to us like statism without a state. We want allodial title; ownership of real property (land, buildings and fixtures) that is independent of any superior landlord, to apply to all private property, not the chance to join a “sweat equity” commune so as never to have to deal with money and finance ever again. Many things about this turn us off, but we are particularly disgusted with being forced to accept the concept of “unconditional love,” which is an irrational illusion that does not and shall not exist and is furthermore quite irrelevant to most people's lives.

A community trust attempts to do what it does without money, falling into the trap that most people believe money in and of itself is evil, when the Bible said that it is the love of money that was the root of all evil and that applies to gold as well. The “free of charge for free of charge” exchange plan requires the imposition of “leaders” when money performs this service naturally. There are easy ways in which corruption can be eradicated from a monetary system by simple design and by policy exclusions; certain practices are simply not allowed. You break the rules and you're out! Our message is that MONEY = FREEDOM and that money issuance is a natural extension of each person's personal property by inalienable right. Why on earth would we ever want to give that up to some people Ayn Rand would easily identify as “hate eaten mystics' who perhaps rightfully hate the present system but do not have the slightest concern or understanding of the requirements and necessity for personal individual liberty. Deny that to anyone and you expect people to be slaves to someone.

We do not agree with the views of all the people interviewed. In particular, we discard as complete rubbish ANY ideas that try and explain away the right of private allodial title land ownership as a basis for freedom. We do NOT extend this right to limited liability, absentee ownership, so called “public” corporations, which are all the creatures of states. Without private property rights, there is likewise no freedom for the individual and the opportunity opens immediately for some leadership tyranny to emerge; state or other communitarian authoritarianism. Always run don't walk away from people advocating such colossal rubbish !

Here is nearly six hours of this documentary series:

Episode 1 Part 1 [1 hour, 42 min]

http://paradigmshift.tv/pstv/view/episode/81

http://vimeo.com/39508148

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BVov8ajcKuo

Episode 1 Part 2 [1 hour, 42 min]

http://paradigmshift.tv/pstv/view/episode/82

http://vimeo.com/39529547

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cMOWj8XURkk

Episode 1 Part 3 [1 hour 42 min]

http://paradigmshift.tv/pstv/view/episode/83

http://vimeo.com/41695274

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRdW2wSsii0&feature=player_embedded

And here's a site that certainly deserves your support, particularly if you live in the UK.

ParadigmShift.tv

#39 Monetary System Engineering and Just Why Cash is King

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.” ― John Maynard Keynes

These blog posts are each papers, preliminary to drafting something like a Manifesto and from the beginning were intended in the same spirit as the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers prior to the drafting of the US Constitution. I'll briefly describe my role in these matters as, so far at any rate, might perhaps be similar to that of one of the Founding Fathers of the American Republic. I'll explain. Our position in time, in the stream of current events, is similar in all respects to those times just prior to the American Revolution. We should remember that these men were all those who did something about it rather than those who were allowed to do something by grant of some authority. None of them got anyone's permission to do what they did. 

Observing matters as they are, with the very survival of the planet in the balance, certainly the survival of civilization as we have known it everywhere at risk of dissolution into barbarism or worse, as we are driven ever closer to world war by homicidal maniacs pulling the levers of power, it comes down to “well if not me, then who?” That should serve adequate notice to men far better than I, to be setting about doing what I am doing. Are there any among you anymore in every country for that matter because all our concerns are the same; are there any more statesmen left? I am looking for them. For now, I manage to have the time, and by my age, George Washington would have had but five more years to live. I'd rather be a Franklin than a Washington in these affairs: I am looking for the other counterparts among younger and abler men than myself.

Hence, arriving at seniority, having observed and studied and been places and met people few others have, after studying the history and mechanics of exchange, trade, money, economics, politics, etc. after spending at least twenty-five years of my life researching these matters, I came upon the work of E. C. Riegel, read his works, scant as they are, and began this blog, because “when the student is prepared, the teacher arrives.”

This blog is not however a memorial to E. C. Riegel. It should be understood that there are other matters posted on this blog that have to do with gaining basic thinking skills themselves, rational thinking, the seeking and knowing of certain provable truth, not in the sense of the loose corrupted “science” of the present day, itself held prisoner to the cynical interests of financial speculators and special interests. These are matters that you likely never were taught in school, any school, therefore they are of the nature of finally gaining a worthwhile education, beginning with learning how to think rationally, so that you can defend yourself against fraud, lies, jeers, etc.

That said, what impresses one most about Riegel, or should, is his bare bones rational approach to everything. Any weaknesses he shows are in the nature of implementation. In the intervening period, between his time and ours, certain things he predicted have already come true and technology has marched ever onward, affording if anything, an easier means of implementing his ideas in concrete form and usefulness for the peaceful benefit of all mankind.

When this blog's launching was announced on my other blog, I received this eloquent comment; 

“In my opinion E.C. Riegel was, so to speak the greatest composer of classical music in the theory of money to ever live. He has challenged and invited in his composing those who wish to be inspired and lead by his masterful theory of monetary conducting. His orchestra is now coming together to finally discover him. If one were to try to compare him to the musical composers such as you have featured on this musical blog he would be by far the worlds greatest. Self taught, he stood virtually alone in his field as he independently transposed his classical money manuscripts. Unfortunately because his musical money compositions are so obscure, they have for the most part eluded the world, though a few of us have now discovered them. The virtually un-read and un-played masterfull scores he so brilliantly composed, are free to the world. It is up to us to follow the conductor E.C. Riegel and play them. His writings contain the most valuable and liberating music ever written.”

Construction of a viable Value Exchange Network (VEN) is a monetary engineering feat or architectural effort, based on the sparse rigour of Riegel's ideas, as if he made a few pencil strokes indicating the basic design, while it was left to someone else to attempt a blueprint for bringing them into reality, at a precise moment in history when they are most needed. Riegel regarded money as the measure of value, not the holder of value, as a mere accounting tool, an appliance, not something intrinsically valuable in and of itself. He regarded money as the means to account for splitting barter perfectly in half between buyer and seller and nothing more in and of itself; that money's value was “backed” by whatever it bought and nothing more. If that's all it is, then why would we want to use something as expensive, scarce and clunky as precious metals, to accomplish this task?

In ordinary terms of trade worldwide, we don't and we haven't for a long time. There are certain parts of the world where precious metals enjoy a larger role in trade than elsewhere, but close examination reveals that while these societies are at this time benefiting from technology transfers (originally due to the lure of cheap labour and expanding markets in these places), that among those areas of the markets in these countries that rely on trade in gold and silver by tradition, people are usually poor because only a few have these metals, because after all they are scarce relative to other things. The scarcity of money issue only benefits those who have the tokens to participate and if they be intrinsically rare, fewer people will have them and there will be less trade accomplished accordingly. As I said, falling back to trade in only say gold, silver and copper, else barter, is returning to perhaps the 4^th century, a barbarous era when life was “nasty, brutish and short” for the vast majority of humanity.

No, we ordinarily use paper, some coins, or plastic, or digits on computers for money, because money is nothing more than a bookkeeping appliance. As money measures value, the more of it one has, the larger thing that can be measured with it for the sole end purpose of procurement. Which is where we come to ... the intrinsics of cash.

Cash, in any monetary unit, is that representation thereof that confers personal anonymity on the possessor in any purchase. Cash, represented as familiar bills and coins, is made up of standard interchangeable material objects you can hold in your hand, fold in your wallet or stash in a drawer, it is a thing or many things comprising the appliance of measuring value in trade with any other trading partner willing to take it as payment for a tangible good or service. If you keep it in your possession, this appliance or pieces thereof, can be passed along, whether given by free will or taken by theft, to someone else, who may then also anonymously use it in trade for something else, in a monetary circle that is closed every time the buyer takes back the equivalent amount for some good or service offered for sale.

But cash these days can and is also thought of as electronic representations in accounts. The advantages of having one's “cash” in an electronic account may be ease of settlement of trading transactions across the globe, but they do not convey the same idea of anonymity as do the actual physical representations; usually bills and coins. This can simply no longer be denied, as of the revelations of what we have long known has been going on for years, ever since the dawn of the internet. The surveillance society is the kind of thing the government buys, on the orders of those behind the curtains. These are not things we would willingly spend our own money on, “in the public interest.” So any money in electronic accounts is not strictly speaking “cash” in any money because it does not confer anonymity on the holder.

Swipe cards do not represent anonymity in transactions either as has likely been the case now for many years. Transactions made electronically, those using any of the popular modes of communications, leave a trail.

Showing the basic Value Unit designs around, crude as they are, found many who have become used to their swipe cards, who seem to think that notes and coins, with their mix of worldwide and local flavour, represent a kind of “return to Mayberry,” a reference to an old American TV sitcom, centred in a small country town. But we have also heard from some who say that most small or medium sized businesses, in most countries, will take nothing but the public notes and coins used in their countries; cash. They will not take swipe cards or checks. Therefore the concept of anonymity is familiar the world over and for the advantages mentioned, serves as the best means to represent the appliance of value measurement to trade.

The reasons “cash is king,” as they say, are that any cash that isn't traded in, that is stacked up, saved, represents a potential immediate and incontestable claim on resources (goods or services), when it is presented in trade, of course within the community of traders who would willingly take it in trade, normally a political country. Cash also gets the lowest prices on anything and that applies even more so to quantity purchases. As we said, when a purchase is perfectly cleared, then both parties are fully paid then and there. The purchase has been finalized. Obviously most businesses like operating this way, which is why cash works better than anything else.

Is cash always going to be in short supply in a Value Unit system as it is in the regular “public” monetary systems? It will be sufficient for an individual's subsistence by locality and cost of living, to be determined by the members and will be sufficient to justify most general transactions. Value Units can be stored in accounts or as notes and coins, as cash and eventually a worldwide cash market will develop, because whether people are IE members or not, trade will find a way and people will figure out that Value Units represent a steady value that doesn't change due to whatever “the masters of the universe” are doing in the crumbling old monetary system. So it may well turn out that the seeming “return to Mayberry” forms of money that we are all familiar with, will become once more the most familiar form of money as people continue to back away from anything showing a trail of any information for government insiders to use to their advantage.

This is why we proposed that the obverse (front) sides would each represent a specific location and its people, so that the variety of designs would themselves add artistic value to these exchange tokens that we hope to introduce to the world in order to rescue one of the greatest technical achievements of mankind, money, from destruction by those who have less understanding (Keynesians) or profess to take us to a utopia that existed nowhere in the past (Austrians), using fraudulent methods that would not change; these people will simply not throw out usury as their reason for existence, even when more of the world is waking up to the sinister nature of this clear mathematical anomaly, that allows liars and thieves to steal from the productive and the poor alike.

And finally we put it to you, take a good look at what you presently hold in your wallets, your cash, notes of the debts of states, they will claim these as your debts to them, not to the states in most cases, but to the creditors of the states, the private central banks. The Federal Reserve supposedly charges 6% interest per year on all its issue, the IRS collects this sum from taxpayers; your taxes do not go to pay down the principal of the national debt as that is more or less perpetual, except for the greatest swindle of them all, the locking up of valuable resources and land in America as pledge for the debts of the corporate government to foreigners.

And foreigners hold a lot of US government debt (treasuries). I did say there was an active market for these issues known as sovereign debt. What happens when a creditor believes they are holding unpayable debt or when they suspect that the debtor is attempting to “pull a Weimar on them,” by inflating their money so the debts are paid back in increasingly worthless currency? The creditors eventually dump it, but they want to be careful so as not to ruin their investment in America. None of any of this did you personally have any say in and like it or not these pieces of paper and their coins facilitate wars, are not intrinsically worth anything more than any similar pieces of paper, but that isn't really the point.

We know what they are, they are money despite what Rothbard and his deluded followers may think. Everything begins with identity, facts are facts, these tokens are money. We know what pieces of money do, they buy things. Clearly no one thinks beyond the reality that whatever one buys with one's presumed money is what backs it and nothing more. When we take a look at who generates this stream of money that everyone must use, we see the machinations of governments spending money they don't have on things none of us would ever buy. That goes for any country on earth too. We can't tell them not to, because it isn't our money and isn't even our government any more.

Paul Craig Roberts pretty much said as much the other night for all who heard it. The other day I heard Roberts' appearance on John Stadtmiller's National Intel Report on RBN. If I am at home on any weekday at 5 pm Eastern time, I will normally be listening to this programme. Roberts told everyone that the people in charge were going to need a war to keep it all going or it was going to come crashing down, and then get this folks, they'd give us another currency for the one that failed, etc.) and they would start it all over again! Why would anyone accept their new currencies, except that its use would be coerced by government FORCE? Really? Is this the 21^st Century or sometime during the Dark Ages? Take a look at whose visages are on their money; “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.”

We also draw every American's attention back to that weird pyramid with an eye over it and the weird Latin motto on the reverse side of every dollar bill. This is supposedly the great national seal of these United States! Is there anything really American about this symbol and this motto? If not, can we submit for fair examination before all Americans (as well as the many people outside the USA who visit this site) that these things are foreign to our ideas of what it means to be an American? Yet we continue to use this money, because we know how it works and everyone just goes along with it, all the while we're being pillaged by inflation and the eleventh marble of usury and all the rest; what the largest buyer in society buys for itself and its creditors and the worldwide corporate Goliaths that absorb and destroy everything or anything that is really innovative, creative, beneficial, artistic or honest and deliver to us Franken everything delivered to ensure a profit to the few at the top.

Instead, on the reverse sides of the proposed international standard Value Unit exchange notes, there would be a simple map of the world. Perhaps the words would be different or their equivalents printed over the basic designs in their home languages, but in any case, each community everywhere would be using the same monetary language, therefore putting money changers out of business and saving everyone everywhere a lot of extra expense. The obverse (fronts) of these notes would depict scenes, places or people from diverse places, these pieces of money would reflect the varying cultures of the people of the earth.

Who would be backing this money? The people identified on these obverse (front) sides. What would be the nature of their backing? That they would agree to take these same notes from anywhere in exchange for things they have to sell. It's as simple as that! It would be our money, not theirs. We would protect it with a system that forbade certain practices and business combinations that benefit no one but speculators. We are going to actively discourage as far as possible the practices of making money from nothing but money. Eventually we expect an international accounting standard to emerge within the VEN as well (each business would use the same set of accounts, so that it would be possible to ascertain very quickly whether we are dealing with a fraudulent or real business that has honestly earned equity, etc.)  Speculators? We expect that there will be a few, there always are. But what can be done is to make rules that recognize the essentially criminal (fraudulent and parasitic) nature of their practices and forbid them membership in our exchanges. What will they do then? If they choose to operate, they will be restricted to the cash market, where anonymity is more attainable anyway.

I note in passing that at this point gold and silver have been trounced by the futures markets, the torrents of naked short selling by the banks. The brokers will eventually put forth a spot price that cannot be supported by normal supply and demand at usual tracking levels above spot for actual transfer of bullion. Meanwhile they are talking the gullible public into switching out of clunky chunks of precious metals (which aren't true wealth anyway as they produce no income) back into the paper equities markets (where they may pay you a pittance in a dividend that is itself bogus and based on nothing resembling true profitability). Of course as was predicted, the stock markets have plunged also which indicates my friends that both ends of their dialectic are losing the trust of the public. 

[23 June, 2014: Even with new highs scored by this year's stock market rally, there's really nothing behind it.  How long can they keep it up?  I suppose indefinitely as long as they control the levers of power and payment and people continue to accept their money as payment for goods and services.  But eventually, their abilities to delay and delay and delay and delay ... will come to an end.  That would be nature taking its course.  Right now, whoever has lots of cash is clearly putting it into corporate equities, because they simply can't afford to lose these; to admit that they are grossly over-valued, because what they represent in power over resources is more than matched by whatever the resources themselves may actually be worth in a fair and free market such as has never existed.  That too will be rigged.  It's a nightmare scenario where reality can change relatively quickly if the right occurances coincide just right.  Call it a "black swan event" or what have you,the eventual death of the present system is inevitable.  If you're still in the equities markets, you're playing with fire.  If you buy precious metals, the deflation wave could still sink your attempts to preserve purchasing power.  Only the proposed Value Unit is different.] 

We note that as this happens, whatever value the market for paper equities or precious metals might represent is transferred back into currencies, into cash. As it is further transferred into the actual notes and coins of dollars, euros, pounds, etc. pools of liquidity develop, the potential for purchase just as the mass sale and exit from markets represented the realized potential of pools of held positions in equities or precious metals. What we are seeing though, as more and more people begin to realize that the markets are all rigged and that despite all attempts to control something as big as worldwide markets in securities or precious metals, that due to the sheer size of these enterprises they are ultimately doomed. Cash becomes the ultimate safe haven even from the traditional safe havens like gold and silver, even while it is devalued daily due to continued government spending. But why we haven't seen a Weimar meltdown is two fold; first that most people still regard cash in whatever national currencies as safer to keep until they can determine what out there is worth buying and secondly the money is distributed disproportionately in the hands of fewer people therefore it doesn't circulate much. The biggest cash deals that float world markets involve either commodities like oil or sovereign debt. Otherwise with so little money out there that isn't immediately reclaimed in debt service, there is a natural deflationary pressure that can build for a while; "full shelves but no money to buy it," until the economy rots or people finally stand up and do something about it. .

We note, somewhat insolently in fact (using Ayn Rand's preferred venom), that since inception on strictly price to value terms, the proposed international standard Value Unit has held its own against all currencies and gold and silver! Right now, with today's dramatic falls in spot prices for the precious metals, each hypothetical Value Unit becomes fair tradeable at the so far not exceeded $2.71 per Value Unit! Imagine a yardstick of monetary value where the primary unit would currently be worth closer to $3 than to $1? Imagine what the prices would be. Think about the structure outlined so far and the labour and credit contracts. On paper only, this proposed money has risen 25% against everything else in almost 20 months (1 year and 8 months), measured against gold, and this is at bullion trading prices too, not spot.

Where do we go from here? Paul Drockton says, and we agree, that the present system is designed to loot the rest of us and it is about done and over with (so they can then just issue another currency of exactly the same kind and start the looting all over again) unless they can get a nice good war going that will put everyone back in debt to them for the next hundred years, if there is anyone left. Do you understand how insane this all is? Do you understand that what they have in mind doing with their money, their corporations, their governments, etc. has nothing whatever to do with a peaceful and sane sojourn through any civilized place on the planet where normal people try to live their lives? Drockton also informs us that they have succeeded in bringing down the price of silver below the cost of taking it out of the ground. He doesn't believe this can continue. As for gold, he suggests this is a good time to buy, especially the pieces under 1 oz. Our position on precious metals can be summarized as follows:

We believe that it is appropriate at this time to be holding some gold and silver for the long run (certainly 5 years out or more), understanding that what one is doing is placing one's current purchasing power (which is diminishing in all currencies) on ice. You wont usually be renting your silver or gold, so you wont be earning any income from it, therefore again, precious metals are not explicitly speaking wealth, though some may claim erroneously that they hold wealth. Their relative trading power is also at the mercy of futures markets until such a time, and it may come soon, when their prices no longer represent anything comparable to real supply and demand prices for real available bullion, at which point these phony paper exchanges will cease to exist as viable and ... nature will take its course. At that point the prices of precious metals may go vertical as any and all currencies become as the Weimar reichmark in the 1920's.

But ladies and gentlemen, if gold and silver become virtually priceless, they wont be passed around as trading tokens now will they? I'd certainly rather not trade mine away for very much of anything. That attitude will prevail and then nothing but barter will happen until someone comes along and tries to set up money. By then it may be too late. Yes, I know, the guy would be lynched perhaps right on the spot, because at that point worldwide society would have plunged back into the 4^th century and people's lives would revert to becoming nasty, brutish and short.

And please make no mistake people, if you have been paying any attention to what's presented on this blog to date, there are those out there, the “stakeholders” in UN Agenda 21 for instance, with visions of future reinstatement of serfdom and feudalism in mind, who would certainly like nothing better than a return to some general level of barbarism as they have plenty of silver and gold and will the better be able to have their way with the rest of us. You see why we have to think about all of this NOW before the present financial system becomes inoperable due to the dead weight of corruption finally bringing it to its demise. Bigness will not save it either, because the entities have grown to such gigantic size, making them literally unfit to survive under the scrutiny of the public following a financial collapse, and removal of limited liability and absentee ownership from the economic equation within the VEN will seal their fate. Corporations are dinosaurs. Anyone working for them, especially those among the most hated by the public, is at greater risk in the future than they can possibly realize as sooner or later nature will take its course ... so it is time to start NOW.

To begin with then, any new system will have to presume that some people start out with more ready cash. Some will whine, why can't we all just have more government cash instead? My answer will be as follows: You can get their money easy enough through lots of grants in aid etc. All you have to do is figure out how to fill out lots of forms that are in accordance with the agendas behind the regulations, which you also have to know and agree to, and then perhaps they'll let you “own” (while you go into debt due to inflation, etc.) some business or other enterprise. Government issue of money leads inexorably to the state turning all businesses into appendages of itself, eventually to communism. You cannot run a truly free enterprise economy with a socialized monetary system. It never works. All corporations in fact are creatures of the states. Is that what we really want? We think we can do better, but what would it take? Into whose lap do we automatically decide to grant the right to begin with more cash, when the market for our money opens, as indeed it will once there is ample money out there waiting to be spent into circulation.

That's the power of cash and why it is king, it's potential to be spent. Those with a lot of cash are correctly considered rich, but they may not necessarily be wealthy unless by their craft, skill, or capital, including land, they manage to provide an income to live on. The common-wealth is thus obviously the totality of that which would produce the living income for those who dwell in the realm comprising it. One of the grave errors made by the economic planners of whatever stripe, is to attempt to make communities interdependent where they should in fact be as independent as possible. Redundancy at the level of small towns or communities within larger cities is thus by definition healthier, more efficient and capable of providing a decent livelihood, than a massive Goliath organization that runs ineffectively and inefficiently, because it cannot be everywhere or be everything to everybody. Each community is likely to determine its strengths and weaknesses going forward as new trading pathways develop. The VEN will tend to support this trend too. But who should be getting this cash to begin with?

If this is an engineering feat, we would be looking for our foundation, and our support so that our structure would be strong. We suggested that the ranks of military and law enforcement veterans be chosen as a vanguard from which perhaps the statesmen we are looking for might emerge. The other group that deserves empowerment and could benefit society greatly, would be grandmothers of every conceivable walk of life. Simply put, a crop of politicians and community leaders drawn from the ranks of these two groups would on average provide a better social and political order than the one presently in evidence. Many of these people have a few hours of time each week they could use to do what they may already be doing; networking with others in their communities, discussing an alternative to present arrangements as concerns virtually everything having to do with money, especially that money which would be chosen to represent their own choices for real advancement, often denied and even FORCIBLY curtailed by the present governments, for whatever handy excuses to cover for the fact that they are politically and economically the appendages of the financial elites who pull their strings.

Yes, we know that the whole thing is orchestrated and runs like a well oiled machine and we know what it produces; war and genocide, because it has been infected like all governments down through time by the avarice of power, fed by the lure of riches, all of which is on loan, so the politician who knows he may never be able to pay anything off or live a normal respectable life, lives it up instead. It's what's supposed to happen given the architecture of the structure the US government, and all others don't be fooled, have become.

Veterans and grandmothers might convene in every community and start forming networks with others, a minimum of three interested people in each community. Then each two bring another, and so on and so on. To begin with, perhaps you serve coffee and cake or what have you and discuss using an alternative money when it becomes available, discuss the merits of a universal international standard that would be adopted everywhere locally, discuss the various little businesses that have been around for years that might participate as B members of a local independent exchange, etc. You'd form a steering committee. You'd select officers. You only need three who alternate their effective responsibilities so they get to handle all aspects of an IE's operation.

Then you do something that some have difficulty with, you make an agreement among yourselves that you will follow the proposal of beginning a preliminary account for each A member (only individual human beings, no groups, businesses or governments), knowing full well that whatever is in it can not be spent yet. Each of the original three A members holds the responsibility for another A member's account and they should always have a means of staying in contact with the person given responsibility for their account. When a new A member is added, that person's account becomes the responsibility of one of the two sponsors and the new member gets the account of the person held by that sponsor in exchange. In this way responsibility and anonymity are preserved and bonds of trust are built among members. The extent of the network can never be known by any single member and it wont have to be to work.

Each of these A members, from the aforementioned groups only, would present to the other A members, some official documentary evidence that a state, military or other usual pension authority is providing or should be providing (in cases where aid has been cut off) some amount of money in the public currency per month, probably exclusive of the cost of any other benefits. Each A member's preliminary account, it could be in a simple folder, would include a copy of this document, plus the following documents; a piece of paper signed by the member and his/her sponsors, or the original three members, to the effect that it is understood that a preliminary account has been opened and that it will be thenceforth having the dollar value in Value Units added to it, subject only to the termination of this by the A member owner of the account or the A member's decease. The third piece of paper is a simple ledger indicating the date and the amount of Value Units deposited. There could be another column giving the running balance.

Additional deposits to these preliminary accounts are made after the first of each month and reflect the number of Value Units the aforesaid dollars, euros, pounds, whatever as described on the pension notice, would buy on or after the first of each month. We can presently offer a free service for all those figures in dollars, see the bottom of this page under History. What you would be doing is taking the monthly dollar amount and dividing that by the dollar amount given on the table for that month and year. That would give you the number of Value Units to add as an entry on the ledger and you would carry forward the running balance.

Another part of the original proposal was that once this schedule was in place, no further changes would be accepted; we know already that their money is going to depreciate in inflation, as it can't help it, so we wont be changing the monthly dollar amounts based on cost of living increases, etc. You'll see, the Value Units will more than keep up with inflation. For all intents and purposes this is going to seem a fantasy to most people. But please carry it forward as if everything you're doing is real, because there will come a time that just as batteries are required for an initial jolt, the new monetary system will require pools of capital in order to get started. You are implementing the golden rule by distributing this paperwork and responsibility for others. These preliminary accounts could get started right away, built just as I've described. If you want a future structure, you have to start from the ground and build with good materials. We badly need to build back mutual trust, responsibility and respect and this seems the best beginning effort. If there aren't any straight thinkers among the ranks of those who put their lives on the line, or of grandmothers who have seen much of life, to see the value in this sort of advanced planning and organizing, then heaven help us!

What I've presented here is a bold and unique idea. I imagine that anything that can happen would require the least effort, literally only a few extra minutes each month to record deposits into the account of a fellow A member who is doing the same for you. Begin to plan to do it today, do it soon, as we never know how much time we have before the “savage babies” in charge start something new and terrible for us to deal with. Please let me know as you proceed. I'll be available for any questions. I'd also be perfectly delighted to hear from anyone in either of the groups aforementioned who “get it.”

David Burton 
dpbmss@mail.com