How Big Banks Run the World – at Your Expense

Link … READ ORIGINAL at truth-out.org

June 9, 2012

By Gar Alperovitz, Truthout?

The recent Public Banking conference held in Philadelphia offered a message that is at once so simple – but also so bold – it is hard for most Americans to pause long enough to understand how profoundly their thinking had been corralled by the masters of finance – in ways far, far, far more insidious and powerful than even the latest financial crisis suggests.

To understand what has happened, however, you first have to take a minute to shake a few cobwebs out of your brain about “money” – and how it is created and by whom and for whose benefit.

Money is “created”? Yes, obviously so – or did you imagine there is some fixed pile of “money” some place that exists once and for all and for all times?

Think about it: If that were true, it would be impossible for the economy ever to change and grow. If the “money supply” were not increased over time, the original economy of, say, 1776 – which served about 2.5 million Americans – would still define the amount of “money” we would have to work with today.

(And yes, going back further, if money were not increased – i.e. “created” – the amount that existed even in a far smaller economy prior to 1776 would be all there was and is, even down to today.)

…snip…