Re: TURMEL: Ben Franklin, Prof. Flaherty, on Death gamble

From: Bill Ryan (william_b_ryan_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/09/04 

Date: 9 Nov 2004 07:14:14 -0800

Meldon, You are speaking as if money was like any other good,
like milk or a television. Money is valueless in and of itself and
only has value because it is backed by the wealth of our nation. That
anyone should profit from the creation of money is a scam.
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[REPLY] Monetizing credit is not a scam but a
necessary public service.
-->

It is no
different than if you or me printed counterfeit money. It cost next to
nothing to produce. Except that instead of the banks keeping the money
they create, they keep the interest on this money which in some cases
may be even more than what they created.
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[REPLY] Interest is payment for financial services
rendered.
-->

Money represents the property
of the nation. One of the main purposes of our government is to
protect our property. The government should create the money and it
has the right granted to do so in the Constitution. That this right
has been delegated to others is the clearest sign that our government
is corrupt.. Lincoln said it best:

"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency
and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and
the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing
money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the
Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these
principles...the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest [by
not having to borrow from privately-owned corporate banks]...Money
will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy
will rise superior to the money power."
- Abraham Lincoln
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[REPLY] Except Lincoln never said "it." The words
within the quotation marks are not Lincoln's words
but the words of G. G. McGeer, a Canadian politician.
They are the paraphrase of what he thought Lincoln
would have said. 

--
>From Keith Wilde:
My hunt for the origins of "Lincoln's Monetary 
Policy" led me to what is probably a more important 
question.
To refresh your memory, several current Money Reform 
sites on the Internet publish a brief statement under 
the above title, and some of them go so far as to 
cite as a source "Senate Document 23, 1865" and 
embellish it as something Lincoln wrote himself just 
before his assassination - which was, they say, the 
act of his real enemies, the international bankers 
(e.g., Michael Rowbotham in his book, The Grip of 
Death). I did find the actual author of the statement, 
a Canadian politician of our grandfathers' generation 
who was a vehement and articulate promoter of money 
and banking reform (a cartalist as I have come to 
understand the term) and also a great admirer of 
Lincoln. Gerald Grattan McGeer, of Vancouver, [once 
mayor of the city and then its member of parliament]. 
His book, The Conquest of Poverty, was published in 
1935. The by now widely circulated statement of 
"Lincoln's Monetary Policy" is very clearly 
acknowledged there to be his own inference from 
reading Lincoln's writings and recorded speeches. He 
leaves no room for doubt that he is putting words 
into Lincoln's mouth, albeit with full confidence 
that he is right about the Great Emancipator's 
intent. The currently published versions of the 
statement provide rather obscure or perplexing source 
references, but they do point to two twentieth 
century politicians, Jerry Voorhis of California and 
Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma. I haven't yet seen a copy 
of Voorhis' book, Out of Debt, Out of Danger, 
published about 1943 as I recall, but I have gotten 
hold of Owen's National Economy and the Banking 
System of the United States, published in 1939 as 
Senate Document 23, 76th Congress, 1st Session (108 
pages). On page 67 Owen says this:
"Lincoln thoroughly understood the constitutional 
right of Congress to exclusively create money and to 
regulate the value thereof. An abstract of his views 
is given by McGeer in Conquest of Poverty." The views 
of Lincoln are of surpassing importance. "McGeer's 
abstract will be found in the appendix."  And so it 
is, exactly as I have read it in McGeer's book.
It is reassuring to get Owen's affirmation, because 
on reading the McGeer book I am not impressed that 
the quotations he provides from Lincoln really add up 
to an inference of the man's views that is as 
unmistakable as McGeer would like his readers to 
believe. Owen's book is impressive; a well-marshaled 
argument for what he alternately terms "modern 
monetary science" and "stable money." I have a 
collection of small books and pamphlets which 
manifest a movement of the 1930s in the US and other 
English speaking countries that Owen identifies as 
the "Stable Money Association under the leadership of 
some of the greatest leaders in finance and 
industry." The first named of these is Owen D. Young, 
chairman of GE (mentioned on p. 81 of S.I.) and the 
list includes several prominent economists of that 
era. An interesting coincidence I located Robert 
Owen's book in the "Owen D. Young Library" at St. 
Lawrence University in Canton, NY. The librarian told 
me that Young had been an important sponsor of the 
University.
Now the puzzle. I have seen enough to be assured 
that there was indeed a significant movement for 
money and banking reform in the Depression era, which 
can be generally described as consistent with what I 
understand to be cartalism - and also with the Social 
Credit idea of an annual citizen's dividend. The list 
of people in Owen's book who were supporters of the 
Stable Money Association is very impressive - the 
kind that cannot at all be dismissed as fringe 
players or cranks: Alfred P. Sloan, Charles Evans 
Hughes, Elihu Root, John L. Lewis, Bernard Baruch, 
Henry A. Wallace, John R. Commons, Wesley Clair 
Mitchell, Pierre S. DuPont, George Eastman, Irving 
Fisher. Owen's presentation is seductive. Had I read 
it before tackling Zarlenga's Lost Science I would 
have had a vastly better understanding of what is at 
stake in the latter.
The great puzzle to me is why Owen's name is not 
better known among our generation. As one of the 
first two senators from the then new state of 
Oklahoma, he drafted the Senate version of the 
Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and was thereafter 
prominent as a critic or commentator on banking 
affairs. Nevertheless, he rates virtually no mention 
in economics literature of the post-war era. Carter 
Glass gets plenty of mention, but the only place I 
could find mention of Owen in a shelf of books on 
money and banking is a footnote in F&S's The Great 
Contraction where he is described as a banker and 
lawyer before being elected to the Senate and being 
chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee when 
the Federal Reserve Act was passed. He is quoted 
there as testimony before the House Banking and 
Currency Committee in 1932.
More important than the puzzle is the question of 
what happened to this apparently influential (?) 
movement for Stable Money in the aftermath of War II? 
I re-read Chapter 3 in Super Imperialism and see that 
it reinforces the notion that the New Deal team was 
more interested in domestic policy than in 
internationalism. Owen has a late chapter on 
"International Stabilization Impracticable." On the 
last page of his main text he notes his belief that a 
majority of the House in the 75th Congress "were in 
favor of congressional control and regulation of the 
volume and value of money. The matter is being 
debated on the hustings throughout the United States. 
Study clubs throughout the country are giving 
attention to this matter." I have in front of me two 
small books written expressly for the latter purpose.
What happened during the War and its aftermath to 
bury all this interest and initiative, I wonder? Its 
progeny seems to have turned very snarly and full of 
the great conspiracy theory when resurrected after 
1950.
Keith Wilde
-

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