It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World
Thursday, 08 November 2012 10:10 By Ellen Brown, Truthout | News Analysis
Shredded money and percentage Interest charges are a strongly regressive tax that the poor pay to the rich. A public banking system could realize savings up to 40 percent – allowing taxes to be cut, services increased and market stability created – with banks feeding the economy rather than feeding off it.
In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35 percent to 40 percent of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35 percent to 40 percent cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed,” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.
This hidden tribute to the banks will come as a surprise to most people, who think that if they pay their credit card bills on time and don’t take out loans, they aren’t paying interest. This, says Dr. Kennedy, is not true.
To read the rest of this interesting article, go to:
http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=158501
Our comment: In ancient times, about 3,500 BC, our system of economics began as a debt system. The ancient Sumerians, the founders of modern western civilization, invented it. Interest was a common thing, used by tradesmen and business people. Exact records were kept on baked clay tablets of these transactions. But there was one difference: the Sumerians knew that simple mathematics showed that interest payments, creating money or credit out of thin air, would eventually take its toll on their society, and all the wealth would eventually end up in the hands of a few. But they had a solution. Every six decades or so they reset the counter, and all interest payment and debt was forgiven. Everyone started over again. This tradition carried down to the middle ages when the Catholic Church declared “Jubilees”, which were debt forgiveness and time to celebrate economic freedom. The absolute greed of our 20th century rulers and bankers, who have decided to go for the whole pot of wealth come what may, and our ignorant “leaders” both in politics and religion, have ensured that we have arrived at the tipping point today. Most of the real wealth in America is owned by a very few at the top. How long will the serfs allow this to continue?
