Do you want a recovery? Let the foreign banks fail

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 24, 2012

Although the financial crisis is said to have begun in 2008, its actual inception started many years before. As explained yesterday, the so-called recovery that almost every politician says governments are seeking is a sham. There are no plans drawn to have a recovery of the kind spoken of on the main stream media. In fact, it is totally the opposite.

It is true; the crisis that we are experiencing is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930′s, but the conditions that created the crisis are the same that have existed for the past century. The system of creating money out of thin air enables the money makers to inject fake capital into economies, in what is called investments. After the economies get addicted to ‘free’ quick money to build their businesses, the issuers of the fake money take it away quickly or demand immediate return on those ‘investments’, which causes the decapitalization of those economies and consequently their collapse.

The causes of what seemed to have unraveled in 2008 began at the start of the 20th century with the adoption of the debt-based economic model. According to its precepts, governments yield the power to issue money to a group of international bankers who issue the it on behalf of governments around the world at a profit of as much as 30 percent or so. The interests accrued due to the issuance of the money — which is given to governments as a credit — is charged on those governments’ credit card and are immediately added to the tabs of the people who work to sustain government spending.

In a sense, the debt-based economic model originated on the irresponsibility from the part of the bureaucrats who manage the  government. Instead of spending the people’s money responsibly, the bureaucrats thought it was a better idea to borrow cash at immense interest rates, rather than decrease spending. Then, they decided to accept bribes and advice from international bankers to finance their out of control expenditures while charging the interests of the debt on the working classes.

The same system initiated in 1913, is still used today everywhere there is a central bank. Whether the bank is a private entity or an agency of the government is irrelevant. The bureaucrats elected to represent the people borrow money from the IMF and the World Bank, for example, in exchange for adopting specific policies that will guarantee the international bankers their ownership of the labor force for many generations into the future.

The money paid by working people to the central governments is not used to improve the communities where they live. They go to pay the interests on the debt acquired by the same central government in the name of the people. The type of improvements promised by politicians during their political campaigns are not paid with taxpayer money, but with the cash borrowed from the international bankers. The bankers arrive to nation-states and offer loans to governments that do not have enough liquidity to carry out the promises made during the political campaign. The government accepts all the conditions on the loan contract and effectively sign away sovereignty to the money makers.

The collapse of the kind the world is experiencing now is the last step of the plan that bankers have put together and implemented to become the sole owners of everything out there. The important difference between previous crises and the current one is that this may just be the last time bankers need to use their plan. That is because this time the bankers may simply walk away with everything, so no more manufactured crises will be needed.

The question is then, how do we stop the bankers from doing the same they’ve done in Greece, where they’ve looted it all? It is very easy, actually. All of Europe and the rest of the world needs to do the same that Iceland did. Instead of saying that international financial institutions were too big to fail, Iceland decided to kick them out. As it turns out, around 90 percent of the debt held by the Icelandic government was debt created by the banks and only 10 percent was actual debt incurred into by the people. After that fact was carefully determined, Iceland decided to take the other path towards a real recovery.

Believe it or not, Iceland decided to let the banks fail, which is exactly the opposite of what was done in Italy, France, Greece, Spain, England and the United States, to cite a few countries. Everywhere else where the crisis touched international banks, governments decided that it was a bad idea to tell the banks to get out of their countries and to take their debt with them. Instead, they printed more fake money to ‘rescue’ those banks and passed the debt to the people, who will have to pay interests on that debt for generations to come. This move not only did not solve the problem because the only thing it accomplished was to increase the debt, but also worsened economic conditions as no real solutions to the crisis were enacted.

At the beginning of 2008, the banks operating in Iceland owed the equivalent of 6 times the country’s GDP. The government there decided to nationalize the 3 most important debtor banks, which caused the devaluation of the local currency — the króna — by 85 percent. This seemed to spell trouble for Iceland, but contrary to common wisdom it actually help the nation have a real recovery while it maintained much of its independence and sovereignty. The government went bankrupt by the end of the year, but the country avoided having to make the citizens responsible for the debt generated by the international banks.

Along with the devaluation of the króna, Iceland experienced soaring inflation immediately after the declaration of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the government decided to take all monies and deposit them in the recently nationalized banks in order to start all over again. The move by the Icelandic government meant a short period of real pain, but also gave the opportunity to the people there to start fresh, with no debt and with spending under control.

By 2010, just two years after the declaration of bankruptcy and the nationalization of the banks, Iceland experienced its first signs of economic growth, which marked the beginning of the recovery. By letting the international banks fail, Iceland not only punished irresponsible bankers for their overreach, but also prevented their people from becoming slaves to the banks. The country also admitted to having some real debt — a tiny portion of the total — and is now working on a successful path to a full recovery.

The lesson we get from all this is the following: We cannot fight fire by dumping gasoline on it. If the origin of the current crisis is the debt-based economic system, no solution will emerge when all we do is create more debt to pay the existing one. The reason why most countries decided to choose the issuance of more debt — as nations in Europe are doing now — is because their politicians are bought and paid for by the bankers to make that decision. If the opposite is done, that is, if the debt generated by the banks is rejected and they are left to fail, we will have many other successful recoveries. It is so simple that even Paul Krugman understands it.

So if you want your country to be free from fake money and fake debt, ask your government to renounce the debt-based development model, which is not even a development model. If all you want is a real recovery, let the banks fail.

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