How Do Big Banks create all the $$$ ?

10/27
MONEY AS DEBT by Paul Grignon

producer's notes:

Money created as interest-bearing bank credit is a magic trick, a fraud - now 3 centuries old; one that very few people have seen through despite, or rather because of, its utter simplicity.

It is my intention to make this mysterious debt-money system comprehensible to everyone. It is also my intention to foster sufficient understanding of the problems with this money system that citizens will be motivated to join the monetary reform movement and/or create local alternatives to the global monetary system - a system in which most of the productive people of the world are collectively chained to an ever-increasing and perpetually unpayable debt.

This is a system designed for elite control of the people by those who have given themselves the privilege of creating money. It is also, I believe, a system that is designed for catastrophe. As the movie explains, there can be no sustainable civilization without a sustainable money system.

By 10/30
Create a blog entry describing this idea of money based on self-perpetuating system of control.
Briefly the notion of "Money as Debt", using examples from the video.
You could use examples of alternative localized barter systems...

and THEN!

Grignon challenges the us to ask 4 questions of ourselves and our governments:

1. Why do governments choose to borrow money from private banks at interest when the government could just create all the interest free money it needs itself?

2. Why create money as debt? Why not create money that circulates permanently and does not have to be perpetually re-borrowed in interest in order to exist?

3. How can a money system based on perpetual accelerating growth be used to build a sustainable economy?

4. What needs be changed to allow the creation of a "sustainable economy"?

Choose and answer one of the four questions, using ideas from the video and your own opinion, in your entry.

In addition to this blog entry make sure you have the essay on p.219 wirelesssing the world read for next time 10/30