On 11/2/11, Tom asks:

> John, how would you put real wealth, real money, money not based on debt, back into circulation?
>
> T.

My words may fail to give adequate background to understand this if you are starting from scratch. You could catch up on the morality and mechanics of modern money if you have the motivation and leisure to study the core principles of Austrian Economics, starting with http://mises.org/ or the daily blog at http://www.lewrockwell.com/.

The first principle to give meaning to understanding money is to acknowledge that whenever men trade, they trade some thing instead of no thing. There are 3 indispensable descriptors that define what men trade with each other. IF we are not honest about the Substance, Measure, and Quantity of what we are trading, there is only one other option. Dishonesty. Let’s abbreviate these three elements to QMS. If there is no Substance (or definition) of what you’re trading, it will be impossible to have any kind of Unit of Measure. If there are no measures, what are you going to count (Quantity)?

So…can you tell the difference between a mountain and a hole-in-the-ground?

Present money consists of quantities that banks say they owe account holders -- or that banks say account-holders owe the bank.

These "owings" can be cancelled by contrary/opposite "owings", but no "owing" can be paid. These imaginary counts of "say-owe" debt - we refer to as “dollars”. But to use such a word as ‘dollar’ for what the banks are pretending to loan and borrow is like putting a very thick coat of top-quality, exterior, marine-grade, glossy paint over dry-rot. It is like putting bright, red lipstick on a muddy pig.

“Dollar” in our American System has meant different things since the Pilgrims started their thanksgiving feasts in the fall. The abundance of Spanish silver coins before the Constitution motivated the Founders to calculate an average and fix the definition of the US Dollar to objective, physical reality. Wiki says it:

In 1792 the U.S. Congress passed a Coinage Act. Section 9 of that act authorized the production of various coins, including "DOLLARS OR UNITS—each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard (10% copper added to 90% pure) silver".

There was some tinkering with adjusting how much gold was in the face-value equivalent gold coins, trying to keep up with the relative values of the elements coming out of the mines. A big switch came in 1900.

The Gold Standard Act of 1900 abandoned the bimetallic standard and defined the dollar as 23.22 grains (1.505 g) of gold, equivalent to setting the price of 1 troy ounce of gold at $20.67.

Congress was doing what the Constitution described as [Article 1, Section 8, #5] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; Except when they said ‘value’, they did not mean how much folks were willing to trade for a coin. Instead, it had to do with Measuring how many weight-units (grains) of precious metal (Substance) would comprise the coins that would be regarded as the Unit of Account, and thus counted by Accountants. “Dollar” meant a verifiable Quantity of verifiable weigh-units of Measure of a verifiable Substance. This setup the possibility of being honest or dishonest about all 3 elements, and the certainty that any of the 3 elements could be reliably tested for that honesty.

People may consider Congress -- with the other branches of government – as having the right to define crimes and see that punishments are enforced, but no thinking adult can, logically distort, “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof” as meaning lawmakers can add a new substance to the Universe, or increase, out of nothing, measurable quantities of any known substance to the Universe. Men are limited to only manufacturing new compositions of what was originally created – ex nihilo, out-of-nothing – by the triune Creator God revealed in the Bible. To attribute to Men power to bring anything into existence from nothing is the textbook definition of idolatry.

The watershed of 1933 was that President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order which made holding more than 5 of the legally-defined dollar-coins a felony crime with a maximum punishment of 10yr/$10,000. All existing and future contracts to trade gold, as the money-side of a transaction were annulled and contracts could only require settling in bank credits or un-redeemable scrip. Until 1973, Americans were not allowed to have, hold, or use real money in trade. It all had to be surrendered to the banking system who promised to keep, at least some of those real, legal dollars as representative of all the rest of the count of sum-total deposits all the Federal Reserve system banks said they owed American account holders.

The final repudiation or default came in 1971, when Nixon acted to suspend redemption of gold to foreign central banks for American bank obligations. This was the last, objective ‘tether’ whereby the free market would be enabled to openly demonstrate the dishonesty and the resultant moral evil and economic losses in trade and provide the necessary, limited feedback loop to protect owners of monetary wealth. Understanding how we got where we are in small stages helps us understand the path back to honesty and justice in monetary trade.

The rare person who understands the mechanics and morality of the operations of the US Dollar in the world, will be self-consciously seduced to be partner in what he knows to be dishonest gain, or he will refuse that dishonest gain and undertake the responsibility to see that theft gets punished.

“The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”

The Rothschild brothers of London writing to associates in New York, 1863.

If you would like a deeper grasp of the physical and moral implications of our imaginary money this slide show will clarify a great deal. There are still only a few who understand the system, and I would guess most of those are self-consciously profiting from the criminal activity, however they might justify it in their own conscience. Most do not really understand how it works or the moral implications, but have a vague idea that they are “dependent upon its favours” and have no moral incentive to exert themselves to bring the criminals to justice.

I have seen many writers who have seen the short-term pain it would take to remedy this system. The early adopters of the Solution, will suffer for it, and if sufficient people do join the corrective action, there will be a short-term disruption in the economy until doing things right begins to pay off. No one wants to have to be the one to be responsible for the trampling, when Somebody has to tell the Crowd the place is burning down, and the window-of-time to make it out the doors is closing fast. The music stopped a long time ago, and almost no one realizes there are no chairs to be found.

So how would a culture return from imaginary, dishonest money to real, honest money?

With the modern technology available, there could end up being a huge array of options available to us to facilitate trade. There could be a plurality of Substances, as well as various Units of Measures employed. Whether Metric or Decimal type, a standardized Unit of measurement (as the old definition of dollar was supposed to be) is beneficial, though not essential, to trade.

Factors to consider:

1.                 The simple, but not easy, answer is that we have to be honest – on the money-side of trades – about what we are trading, the measure we are using, and the count of those measures. What are ways to do that?

2.                 Coins/bars: Gold and silver (or lesser semi-precious metals), in coin or various other forms, could be carried or vaulted in banks or bank-like businesses. The substance they represent could be near as our pocket/purse, or as far away as a vault in London or Hong Kong. As now, we could carry token coins of base metal in our pockets which could represent any monetary unit a new banking system would support. These would have to be economically redeemable in the substance they represent.

3.                 Bills/Notes/WarehouseReceipts: Like our old Silver & Gold Certificates, showing a defined note-type contractual promise (who pays who what when). Banks could honor the redemption of these pieces of paper we carried for whatever the money consisted of. We could write checks, as now, instructing our depository institution to transfer legal title of our QMS to another party. A clearing house could help with arranging transfers to cut down unnecessary shipping of Substances around the world.

4.                 Internet options: Electronic Account Number/Exp Date, Scanned plastic cards, user-name and Passwords – all these could be used to transfer title to the economically stored and delivered substance used as money : We could use our Debit/Credit cards on phone or internet - with the difference that real title to QMS would be transferred in this system. A BitCoin-type system, although set to be a limited-issue non-substance currency, may have technology that could be used to transfer title to securely-held substance.  Something like PayPal would work, only with real substance.  GoldMoney, or BullionVault, and others have attempted to set up a trading platform connected to SWIFT/the current banking system to provide an honest “back-end” of precious metal. Lode.one is a website promoting a blockchain/crypto/distributed ledger-type connection between your Card, and a precious-metal backend.

5.                 Banks would operate with QMS as money, with 100%-reserve, timed-deposit/loan agreements. If you deposit your money in the bank, they either keep it for you, or have an agreement that they are going to loan it out for a period of time, and you will not have access to it during that loan/savings period. If you had to have your deposit back early, you would have to forfeit interest with a discount, or simply borrow somewhere else at market rates. This would be similar to the Certificate-of-Deposit.

6.                 Free Banking?: Now, some of the Libertarians/Austrians disagree that law should punish everything but 100%-reserve, timed-deposit/loan agreements dealing with quantity of measurable substance. They do not see a way to righteously restrict people from using whatever-kind-of-money they want. The only legal  requirement would be honesty in what the substance of the money was, (and measure and quantity). This way anybody could use and bank on any kind of imaginary money, scrip, or whatever they could dream up.

[To the objection there would not be enough money for an ideal economy if we worked this way — I would point out that there is not enough money now. There is never enough money for any man. We all want more. The crucial questions are, “What substance increases when additional monetary units are ‘reckoned’ and is the substance measured and counted honestly? How does it come to be ‘more’ money? Who owns the new money? Do we require double restitution for stealing or not?”]

What challenges need to be overcome to rebuild this honest system?

1.                 The men who control national and international money, banking, and finance are not the kind of characters that will give up their power and privilege unless forcefully evicted. Since they "own" or control -- Military, law-enforcement, national and state governmental structures, Education and the University system (economic departments), Media & Entertainment, Finance & Commerce, Transportation - who or what will be powerful enough to punish the guilty and protect the innocent? The Enemy arrayed against us has an unlimited budget. They can approach any player with reward in one hand and a gun in the other. Any time the going gets rough (and money-manipulation can only make things worse), these men start whatever wars are required to spook enough people into conforming with their program. Why are people so easily persuaded that destroying property and killing workers (i.e. War)  the surest way to increase prosperity? If wars look like they improve an economy it might be because people are so terrorized and coerced  — they work hard enough to be productive enough to overcome the murder, property destruction, and inflation-disruptions in wealth-exchange.

2.                 There are legal strictures if we try to use "stuff" instead of what the government calls "money". They will want to charge us sales tax on "buying" and "selling" what we are using for money. If you buy a coin at a coin shop, or over web, they will want to charge you sales tax on buying the coin, plus they want to charge sales tax again (for the equivalent dollar amount) when you use your silver coin to purchase other "stuff". There will be capital gains income tax they want to hit you with as you acquire and expend your commodity money. Besides confiscation there is the potential for government crackdown on private mints who are trying to develop the needed medallions and bars needed to use as money. The harassment of the Liberty Dollar folks comes to mind.

3.                 FinCen  will require you to know-your-customer and report anything they want you to report of transactions which might have a tax implication. They are concerned about folks possibly stealing from the government, but not at all about banks stealing from account-holders through inflation.

4.                 Centuries, or at least decades, of very-well-funded brainwashing from our educational institutions and media has rendered us so twisted in our thinking, that it can take years of study and reflection before some men can clarify an accurate view of how our monetary system came to this pass, and understand how to make progress in reforming it - against the ignorance and resistance of others.

5.                  

What is it that might make men willing to work hard enough, take the risks, and pay the price to reform this system? I submit that self-interest of the few rich investors who continually talk amongst themselves about how they can increase or protect their wealth or profit from the coming crash will not help enough people. Owning gold, silver, or other types of investments -- will not sufficiently retard the destruction, or rebuild from the rubble. Instead, for a project of this magnitude, you must tap into the religious nature of man. Just like Normandy beach, some men are going to have to draw the fire of the enemy guns. Some men will have to die, if the others are going to "get through". Men can only be motivated to the necessary action because they must, and that can only come through the deepest religious-faith wells of motivation.

I think monetary reform has to start with ethics taught by the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible they represent. They will need to start teaching the Biblical principles of God's law again. Right now, most of the best mainstream churches which still take the Bible seriously -- have abandoned (for over a century) God's revealed law  with its definition of crimes and punishments -- in favor of a supposed new and different "law of Christ" (love), which ends up being subject to the attitudes of popular culture instead of the objective definitions of God's Revelation. On top of that, even if that law was the standard for Justice, they teach that God does not hold men responsible to obey that law until some future, bodily reign of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem in Israel.

Current "money" is debt. The Bible discourages debt as being unbecoming for a Christian. It is a form of slavery to men which grates against our privilege of being slaves of Christ and is incompatible with being the Lord's Freeman. It is even forbidden specifically as a sin (though I don't see evidence of it being a crime), to charge interest to a Christian. Debt would not be the normal condition of someone who is experiencing the blessings of tithing and keeping the Sabbath. God generally provides all His faithful People will need.  All this, faithfully done, would pull all the best men out of the borrowing/debt business, increasing the ratio of bad men in the "business" with negative consequences which would make the whole mess less palatable to the average man.

Families and churches should be re-teaching the basic forgotten corollary to "Thou Shalt Not Steal". It is more than just "you shall not directly steal for yourself" -- we must all stop being partner with a thief.

Thomas Watson* (From the book: "The Ten Commandments" on 8th commandment: 1692)

(9) The last sort of theft is, the receiver of stolen goods. The receiver, if he be not the principal, yet is accessory to the theft, and the law makes him guilty. The thief steals the money, and the receiver holds the sack to put it in. The root would die if it were not watered, and thieving would cease if it were not encouraged by the receiver. I am apt to think that he who does not scruple to take stolen goods into his house, would as little scruple to have stolen them.)

This could apply to welfare benefits and subsidies, generally, but also to this whole area of central banker's exclusive privilege to steal by inflation. In the Federal Reserve Act we have law enforcement turned on its head, punishing the innocent, and offering special immunity and protection for perjurers and thieves. The proper response from "good men and true" would be to actively coerce double-restitution for such theft, or, at least, have nothing to do with such dishonest businesses that offer the plunder of legalized theft.

IF banks are lying and stealing by using "Deposits" as their excuse to multiply money -- depositors share culpability for the theft, and should quit giving them deposits.

IF new dollars only arrive in the universe (thus diminishing every dollar-holder's purchasing power) through loans to willing borrowers, the borrowers become implicated in that theft and should stop being willing to take the bait. Dishonest businesses should fail as responsible customers abandon them in order to support businesses that function ethically. This reformation would not require any new State or Federal laws or regulations (even though changes should be made), but only honest and willing customers.

But just as teaching the ethic must start in Christ's Church, so the practice and obedience will need to start in Christ's Church. Otherwise Her hypocrisy will deafen the world to Her message. Besides teaching, She can begin restoring honesty to the tribute offered to Her Creator/Owner/Master in the form of Tithes and Offerings. Contributors to local church ministry could convert some of their money into silver or gold, or any other quantity of measured substance that was truly created by Her God.

It would take very few families, doing this, in each church across the country, and a very small percentage of a churches' bank-account balances -- to draw down so much silver out of COMEX, that it would blow the cover on the huge manipulation of the precious metals market. That would go far to diminish the universal, but irrational, trust in our monetary masters. Since this was written, the COMEX pretty much has fallen apart. They cannot deliver the physical silver they promised. Folks must take their redemptions in US Dollars equivalent.

Frankly, the Government/Bank Partnerships in our modern world are too strong for the Individual (voter), the Family, or any kind of Private Organization -- they will always lose. The only entity with the power and authority behind Her to subdue and rule in opposition to all the soldiers and policemen of the New-World-Order, and the Fabian Socialist Planners that have been oppressing the world for centuries -- is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. She has been the true New World Order for 2,000 years (but don't be too offended by the tares in the wheat field).

I believe it is evident that the Church has been ruling the world all along, even when not doing a very good job of it. If She says, "Debt is OK, Usury is OK, imaginary 'money' is OK, Murder is OK (murderers need not be executed, God will not 'spank' a culture who refuses to execute capital criminals), Legal Theft (welfare/transfer payments) is OK." Then even non-Christians feel free to oppress and be oppressed by perversions of Law.

Whatever She says, Goes.

If, as I suspect, God would be pleased by this motion of faithfulness (tithing in honest measures) -- wouldn't He show Himself strong to come to Her aid? If the Church says, "We work and sacrifice to utilize honesty in the substance we present to our God (tithes/offerings), and honesty in the way we measure it." All of a sudden, we find that we have to move away from the US Dollar, since no one even knows its substance or how to measure it. Since men have primarily used silver and gold for money throughout recorded history, this would be an obvious place to start.

Church leaders can return to teaching the whole counsel of the Bible regarding honesty and how it relates to contracts, usury, debt, substances traded, measures, slavery, freedom, theft, perjury, and covetousness. Church leaders can call upon their congregations to return their tribute to their Savior and Master in the form of substance Christ created, instead of imaginary nothing that is not created or existent, but is, instead, the bitter fruit of faith in a lie, and the mother of all weapons of mass destruction of economies and nations.

Even if church leaders are not informed or interested, church members can present their gifts and tribute in this form (commodities and commodity money). The Pastor can take home a dozen eggs, a box of apples, or put gold/silver coins in the church safe. Church leaders may decide to sell the coins for operating expenses instead of letting them backfill their savings account by sitting in a secure place. Perhaps others in the congregation will eagerly buy them back again for the next tithe offering, or to backfill their own family savings. Either way, that is just that much less wealth that the Banking System is pretending to borrow and loan.

Should the church run out of dollars before conditions wake everyone up to the obedience and wisdom of this - and the church must spend some of the saved QMS, there are several possibilities. Each possibility can be a prime educational moment. Perhaps the Pastor or church staff would be interested in taking their pay in silver coin. You could offer it to the utility companies, the printers, the ministry partners. When inflation is 100-1000% per year, they will remember your offer, and, at some  point, take you up on it.

You could "load up" a commodity holding internet account for transfer to overseas missions work. When faith in the dollar completely dies, and the neighborhood must use other means to trade -- people will start asking questions: Why is the Church so rich now - so She can help so many others? How did you know it was wise to save and trade in quantities of measurable substance?

The principle at work here, is that we are very limited (corporately) in wisdom and power on how to reform all this -- to turn things around against seemingly overwhelming odds (see above). We cannot do it in our own knowledge and power. But, if these tiny steps are elements of Biblical obedience, trying to honor God, follow His law, and treat our neighbors as ourselves, being as concerned about their well-being as much as our own -- we can be absolutely sure that God will respond in blessing by giving us more wisdom in how to reform it, and more ability to accomplish more effective steps.

If there was a time, in the past. when there was more obedience (in the area of money) on the earth, why couldn't this ground be regained? If the Kingdom of Christ was supposed to grow, why couldn't we see improvement now over the best practices of the past?

Please gmail me all your ideas that are better, more true to God's revelation, and more likely to result in glory to God and blessing to Man (at honestmeasures). 
If these are the best ideas you have seen, help me spread them and help me find men to whom God has given unique talents and positions to further the project.

I wish to be a facilitator of the Reconstruction that will be a blessing for my family, grand-kids, friends, neighbors and all strangers.

But if we complain, if we cry theft -- what is the remedy, the solution....what is our responsibility? The reality is that there is no possibility to Restitute for these institutions that launch worldwide inflation should goad our resolve to change what can no longer accept. The way to take away their power, is to refuse the dishonest gain that accrues to those who borrow, deposit, and use their "money" which does not really exist. When you benefit from the theft, you become partner with a thief, and it binds your conscience and freezes your "tongue". Pr 29