With a little help from my friend:
There are no coincidences. Although I had been remiss the previous several Sunday mornings in tuning into my longtime favorite monetary realist Bruce McCarthy on RBN radio, his opening message on August 10th just seemed to be “right on” as a finale (for now) here. But we shall return.
Lawful Money vs. legal tender is the most important yet most ignored and least understood subject facing Americans over the past century, and it remains so today.
Bruce and I go back to the mid-1980s, when I had read a coupla’ books of his and found him worthy of inviting into Atlanta for a speaking engagement to a group of Constitutionists who were always thirsty for the truth. I had already found Bruce’s insight to the money issue to be unique and far more interesting than most because of his simplistic approach.
It had been two decades since the exposure of the greatest fraud and theft in the history of the world, and most still didn’t even know it was going on. Bruce used to poke fun at the audience’s ignorance by pointing out the gradual evolution of first our circulating lawful money (gold and silver coin); to the more convenient trading of paper notes in the marketplace (redeemable in the real value at any time); to the 20th century version of circulating counterfeit paper notes with imaginary value – not to mention the slug coins. Then he would say:
“If you’ve got a Ford automobile in your driveway, can you take a brush and paint ‘20’ on each side of it and have twenty Ford automobiles?”
Bruce and I don’t want to hear about “gold-backed currency,” and we don’t want promises to pay. That is the diversionary thinking our enemies are so fond of using. There is no “taxpayer’s money” or any funding of the government by “We the People” at all because there is nothing in circulation with which to use to fund it. Until the IRS fighters understand this simple basic, they 
will continue to be but another echo in the wilderness, “full of sound and fury and signifying nothing” but welcomed by the enemy. Any argument that misses the real target is always a pleasure for the adversary to hear.
Bruce McCarthy is one who hits the bulls eye every time.
Dear Pat,
Thank you for the invitation to follow-up on your recent Musings columns with some of my radio input. Indeed, it is pleasure to attempt to explain further the message of Monetary Realism to what is certainly a shrinking audience. You asked that I present in text from my August 10th radio presentation because it seemed to fit into yours of previous months of Musings. I have read them and see that after thirty+ years, you and I are still on the same page. Are we the only ones left?!!
VALUES CLARIFICATION
In today’s message, we’ll pick up where we left off in our last broadcast during which I shared a fictional illustration I often use to explain the world of legalized theft perpetrated by the banking system and its partner in crime — Congress. My fantasy had to do with printing $20 bills in my basement – a criminal act that most people would identify as counterfeiting. What startled me was that when this story was shared with a certain individual instead of a group, I inadvertently discovered through our personal interaction that a devout Christian adult could miss a more fundamental sin than simply my copying of FRNs. As a result he would have no reservations about accepting my $20 bills at his yard sale after having watched me thru the window while I printed them a few nights before.The crime of which I speak – and which I thought needed no explanation – is theft.
When I first entered the arena of public speaking on the subject of Money, Banking & Credit back around 1980, it never dawned on me that anyone in my audience would need to be told that printing green rags denominated as so many $’s was for the purpose of stealing. This was a conclusion that needed no explanation, or so I thought. Well, we all have our blind spots, and this was one of mine, and it took me years to recognize this recurring flaw in my presentations, that I had taken for granted that everyone would understand the purpose of printing press money is to steal the goods and services of others who work for this imaginary money. So if it seems that I take more pains than should be necessary to define, clarify, restate, review, and correlate what you already know and use, it’s because a white collar crime made legal by an act of Congress is difficult for most people to comprehend. We also need to take into account the fact that, not only has our generation been systematically taught to ignore and reject the moral values which guided our Euroancestors, but each of us may have a different set of criteria for determining right and wrong because of our family, religion, educational and other background variables.
We find a large percentage of our population today that has no qualms about theft so long as they’re the beneficiaries and so long as government will play the part of a scapegoat to make it legal for one group to plunder another who’ve been cunningly coerced into supplying goods and services for the recipients of government-issued licenses to steal (called $’s). By mingling real and imagined tax contributions to the benefits received, the beneficiaries find added justification for milking the system. For instance, I’ve heard recipients of unemployment compensation say that they paid in to it and so it was their money all along, although they can’t show a receipt for what was paid in – because their employer, not the employee, was the party billed to fund that specific program.
Back when I submitted those contributions, as they were identified euphemistically on the tax forms, they were mailed to the state every 3 months, the tax owed being determined by a schedule or rating calculated by the state agency depending on how many times an employee laid claim to any of those unemployment funds. Over time, if more employees collected unemployment (which claim could be challenged at an administration hearing) my tax rate would go up, but if no one ever made a claim my tax would be reduced, but never would it end. I’d be caught off guard by the federal unemployment tax form which arrived at year’s end to confirm that only a fine line exists between laughing and crying. Nothing can destroy the spirit of productivity more thoroughly than the cold and impersonal assault of a government bureaucracy.
When I was in my teens I worked in my dad’s grocery store and well remember being told about a disturbing revelation he gleaned from a magazine devoted to the retail grocery business, that if given the opportunity, 3 out of 4 people will steal from you. I was 15 yrs. old in 1962, and well aware that shoplifting was a real problem in our store, having watched my dad confront several instances of it when the perpetrators reached the check-out stand. But to think that 3 out of 4 customers who I talked to & joked with would actually steal from us was an uncomfortable truth that took on real meaning when I saw those people, some of them quite elderly, that I never would have suspected.
What makes the socialist system of bank credit and a welfare state look so appealing is that they both facilitate our sin nature, the idea of getting something for nothing. Our complicity is easily obtained if we have to kick a little bit into the kitty, which helps to justify our reprisal against the system, like when a cashier at the nearby superstore forgets to ring up an item in your shopping cart. Back in 1962, 3 out of 4 people might rationalize their failure to correct the mistake by alleging that the company makes a fortune off poor people like me. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and everybody has to look out for #1. That’s quite a moral standard.
As for just one aspect of banking, there are people who borrow credit throughout their lifetimes, with the expectation that all the toys they get to play with will never be fully paid for when they die. Years ago a neighbor of mine revealed his economic philosophy in just one sentence: When you owe a bank a little money, you’re in trouble; but when you owe a bank a lot of money, they’re in trouble. That’s a sorry outlook on life, because my neighbor had no idea how little he understood the criminal nature of such a well-respected profession called banking, and that the joke was on him. This system of bank fraud was designed to plunder the sin-laden victims who endorse it, and they’re the last ones to admit they were deceived.
New listeners may be unaware that bankers lend nothing, measured or expressed in $’s, to anyone. They create out of nothing what they pretend to lend as a mere bookkeeping entry. Meanwhile, the borrower of 0 works by the sweat of his brow to return what was never loaned, along with the added % of interest burden. In so doing, the victims impart psychological value to a criminal confidence game. It’s a labor for credit swap; your tangible labor for the bank’s intangible credit, a sin-laden practice that would end quickly if the public understood legalized bank fraud and cared about the truth. If you doubt my basic underlying premise however, then please accept my challenge which is seldom understood or quoted correctly: Identify the substance of the money (measured, expressed,or denominated in $’s) that you borrowed from the bank and I’ll send you 100 pounds of it absolutely free.
So what makes my fictional illustration of printing $20 bills in my basement, for the obvious purpose of stealing, so difficult for a serious Christian to understand? After reminding him that those bills had been accepted by everyone in the community for years, this being proof of their high quality, he couldn’t find a reason to refuse them at his yard sale. He’s not alone in his confusion and a more confusing subject there cannot be. Banking and bank credit affect everyone, but are understood by virtually no one – and this is not an accident. Said Professor Stuart Crane, It took along time to make us this dumb.
If only a small % of the American population was baffled by the economic system they erroneously call free enterprise capitalism, I wouldn’t make such a fuss about it, but the economists (our economic leadership) are as lost in their understanding of the basics as the man to whom I just referred.
For example, an eminent monetary economist, more candid than many of his colleagues, admits that we don’t really know what money is, but proceeds to argue that, whatever it is, its supply should grow regularly at a rate of 3 to 4% per year. (In Money, Nat’/Income & Stabilization Policy, edited by Smith & Teigen (1965), article by Prof. James Tobin, Sterling Prof. of Ec.,Yale Univ. p. 157, in ref. to “US Monetary Policy” written by E.S. Shaw (1958)
If the experts can’t define a simple word like money, how could we possibly rely upon them to know whether commercial banking or any aspect of modern economics is morally right or wrong To know right from wrong first requires a vocabulary with which to communicate, and then we need a standard of reference by which to determine right from wrong. Prior to a meaningful discussion or debate on any subject, you need to ascertain the moral standard of reference which guides the opposing side. While it’s nice to know that fallible humans are often sincere and sometimes candid about influencing and even controlling the rest of us, the fact is they intend to keep doing so by means of a modern criminal science they do not understand.
Louis Rukeyser – thirty years ago reported:
“Some of the nation’s leading experts on money have begun, very quietly, to make what many would regard as an astonishing admission: they don’t know what they’re talking about. In this case, as it happens, they mean it literally: They don’t know what “money” is in 1982 . . . take George W. McKinney, Jr., a highly respected economist who is retiring next month from New York’s Irving Trust Co. ”Is it then,” I inquired [of McKinney] innocently, that we just don’t know what ‘money’ is these days?”
Never did know,” confessed McKinney – and then, while listeners to our conversation chuckled nervously, made it clear he wasn’t kidding.”
(Just what is Money? Does Anyone Know? by Louis Rukeyser. St Louis Globe-Democrat; Business Section C, Pg. 1, June 1, 1982.)