{"id":64,"date":"2008-10-24T10:31:52","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T01:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgoodchild.net\/blog\/?p=64"},"modified":"2012-05-28T13:09:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T12:09:09","slug":"money-as-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulgoodchild.me\/blog\/money-as-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"Money as Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you read the title and have no idea how your money is actually debt, you are not alone.<\/p>\n<p>Money is no longer based on any hard commodity like gold or silver, but rather as a <em>promise from the government<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Its journey to you was through a series of loans from private banks, starting with the central bank.<\/p>\n<p>This means that <strong>all money in circulation has been created from a bank loan and therefore represents a debt<\/strong> by someone, somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>This principle underlies every aspect of our financial lives and we&#8217;re completely unaware of it.\u00a0 Yet it is arguably the single largest influence on your life, your health, your wealth and your future.<\/p>\n<p>The principles of money and its lack of any real value are so tightly interwoven through the fabric of our society that to imagine our lives without it is an exercise in abstract thinking.<\/p>\n<p>You may think that I&#8217;ve received a knock to the head by a blunt instrument if you&#8217;ve never heard of any of this before.<\/p>\n<p>But here lies the innate intelligence and danger of the system &#8211; the<strong> corruption of the banking and financial system sits right under our noses and the only reason it persists is because we&#8217;re all ignorant of it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>The meaning of money as we&#8217;re taught it<\/h2>\n<p>While growing up, you and I were both taught the monetary system as we know it today.<\/p>\n<p>From the beginning we were taught that as we work, or provide a service or product, we receive money.<\/p>\n<p>With this money we can go on to buy a product or service of our own desires- namely food, drink, gadgets, houses etc.<\/p>\n<p>So the meaning of the money we learned was simple:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>money represents the value of the products\/services you provide which can then be exchanged for someone else&#8217;s products\/services.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You never questioned it.<\/p>\n<p>Why would you? Why would anyone question something so basic in our lives.<\/p>\n<p>No-one else questions it, so why should you?<\/p>\n<h2>Let&#8217;s start with inflation &#8211; it&#8217;s a built-in rule of our banking system<\/h2>\n<p>So you start earning, but you soon find after a time your <em>spending power <\/em>has slowly and steadily decreased.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t think of it as &#8220;spending power&#8221; exactly, rather you comment to yourself and others how things just seem to get more expensive.<\/p>\n<p>Your salary is unchanged, but the goods you are buying are a little harder to afford.\u00a0 Gradually. At first it didn&#8217;t seem so significant, but now you look to get a raise in allowance\/earnings to compensate.<\/p>\n<p>This is your your first direct experience of <strong>inflation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Inflation is simply the <em>devaluation of money<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The same product\/service hasn&#8217;t increased in value, but the amount of money required to purchase it has <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">increased<\/span>.\u00a0 This can only mean the value of your money has <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">decreased<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>And how does your money&#8217;s spending power mysteriously decrease?\u00a0 Because of the way the money\/banking system is structured.\u00a0 It is actually <em>built-into<\/em> the system.<\/p>\n<h2>The cause of inflation<\/h2>\n<p>So what exactly causes the value of money to go down?\u00a0 The explanation is long and complicated, but I&#8217;ll take a stab at it.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with the Federal Reserve in the US.\u00a0 This <em>private agency is responsible for the creation of all money supply in the US<\/em>. (Most 1st World economies have an equivalent private bank entity)<\/p>\n<p>Read that again.\u00a0 It&#8217;s important.<\/p>\n<p>How do they create money in the system?<\/p>\n<p><strong>They loan it to the U.S. central bank<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Did you get that? \u00a0A private banking entity loans &#8220;magic&#8221; money to government. \u00a0Magic? Because <strong>before this loan was created, it never existed<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>All <\/strong>money in the system today has been provided through a series of loans.\u00a0 When the central bank (government) needs more money for the economy, it requests a loan from the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n<p>The money then gradually enters general circulation through private\/corporate and inter-bank loans from the central bank.<\/p>\n<p>This means that <strong>all money in circulation today is\u00a0debt<\/strong>.\u00a0 Whichever way you look at the money in your hand, you can trace it back to a loan taken from a bank.<\/p>\n<p>It must <em>all <\/em>ultimately be paid back to the bank, WITH INTEREST.<\/p>\n<p>So what if all debts were paid off?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;<strong>there would be <em>no<\/em> money<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Each time more money is magically introduced into the system by the central banks, it isn&#8217;t based on anything, except the &#8220;need to have more&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If all the available goods and services remains constant, but the amount of money in the system increases, the value of each dollar <strong>must<\/strong> fall, as the system becomes more diluted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Things used to be different.<\/p>\n<p>When we lived with the gold standard, the amount of money in the system was backed by the value of gold &#8211; a hard currency\/commodity that cannot be forged (and thereby compromised).\u00a0 Now, with the current fiat system (i.e. not gold standard) money is created out of nothing. \u00a0Nothing.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t represent more monetary value, but less.<\/p>\n<p>Take the following example, where the orange juice concentrate represents the <em>value<\/em> of the goods and services, and the water is the money in the economy.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You are making an orange drink from concentrate.\u00a0 You pour in the orange concentrate and add water.\u00a0 But you&#8217;re thirsty and want more orange to drink.\u00a0 So you put what you have into a bigger glass and just add more water.\u00a0 This doesn&#8217;t give you more of the actual orange juice (the good stuff).\u00a0 You will just have to drink more in volume in order to have the same quantity of orange you had in the beginning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s basically how inflation works.<\/p>\n<p>You have more money (water) in the economy than before, so now you have to spend more cash for the same product (orange concentrate).\u00a0 The products and services didn&#8217;t get any more expensive than before, your money just lost its value after it was diluted.<\/p>\n<h2>A conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>The value of the money that you earn is constantly at risk because it isn&#8217;t backed by anything real (e.g. gold).\u00a0 It is a figment of the government&#8217;s imagination and subject to devaluation on a whim.\u00a0 If a government requires more cash to spend, it borrows and thereby pushes down the value of your money.<\/p>\n<p>But we haven&#8217;t actually touched upon the sinister aspect of the banking system, but if you&#8217;ve understood this so far, you&#8217;re in a good position to continue.<\/p>\n<p>Please visit the follow-up article &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/paulgoodchild.net\/blog\/2008\/10\/your-interest-in-interest\/\" target=\"_self\">Your interest in Interest<\/a>&#8216; to see just how precarious our monetary system is and why our economy is collapsing around us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever wondered what money is and how it&#8217;s created? Where does money come from and why do things always seem to get more expensive?  Find out here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[19,293,12,15,292,283,291,295,294],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cat-manage-your-money","tag-banking","tag-central-bank","tag-debt","tag-economy","tag-federal-reserve","tag-loans","tag-meaning-of-money","tag-understanding-inflation","tag-what-is-money"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Money as Debt - Plog - Paulie&#039;s Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/paulgoodchild.me\/blog\/money-as-debt\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Money as Debt - Plog - Paulie&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ever wondered what money is and how it&#039;s created? 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