STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 23 January 2013

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10. The Trillion Dollar Coin: A Debt Solution for the People By Ellen Brown

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14015-the-trillion-dollar-coin-a-debt-solution-for-the-people

Far from being a gimmick, having the US Treasury mint high-denomination coins is a solution that cuts to the root of America’s financial problems. And Benjamin Franklin would have liked it, too...On Friday, January 11, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman urged the White House to mint a platinum coin worth $1 trillion, as a counter to what was then a threat to block federal spending that Congress had already approved. (Republicans made good on that threat yesterday, putting the United States in danger of default.) The White House responded by saying the trillion dollar coin is off the table, because the Federal Reserve declared that it “wouldn’t view the coin as viable.” Even Krugman called the coin idea “silly.” He just thought it was less silly—and less dangerous—than playing with the debt ceiling. But it is not silly. We have forgotten the role that money issued directly by the government has played in our history. The American colonists did not think it was silly when they escaped a grinding debt to British bankers and a chronically short money supply by printing their own paper scrip, an innovative solution that allowed the colonies to thrive.

Many people believe that the U.S. government creates its own money. This is not true. Today, the Federal Reserve creates trillions of dollars on its books and lends them at near-zero interest to private banks, which then lend them back to the government and the people at market rates. We have been brainwashed into thinking that it makes more sense to do this than for the government to simply create the money itself, debt- and interest-free. In fact, the trillion dollar coin represents one of the most important principles of popular prosperity ever conceived: nations should be free to create their own money without incurring debt. Some of our greatest leaders, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, promoted this essential strategy. They realized that the freedom to print money offers a way to break the shackles of debt and free the nation to realize its full potential.

Money creation is an all-important power that has been fought over for centuries, in a largely secret battle between governments and private banks. For the last two and a half centuries, the banks have had the upper hand, making us forget that any other option exists. But we are learning the great secret of money: that how it gets created determines who has the power in society—we the people, or they the bankers. It is no secret who has that power today. Witness the great bailout of 2008 that rewarded banks for making irresponsible and fraudulent gambles in the subprime mortgage scandal. None of the bankers responsible served time in jail. Then there was the robosigning scandal, in which banks skipped important steps in the process of foreclosing on the homes of ordinary Americans, and came away with a slap on the wrist. Now we are seeing the LIBOR scandal unfold, in which traders at the Swiss financial services company UBS were convicted of colluding with other banks to tweak interest rates for their own financial benefit. We can make an educated guess as to how this too will turn out for them (hint: well). While a commoner might get 10 to 20 years for robbing a bank, bank executives get huge bonuses for robbing us.

We may rail against the banks and demand change, but change will not come until we grasp the fundamental secrets that are the foundation of their power: those who create the nation’s money control the nation, and nearly the entire money supply today is created by banks in concert with the Federal Reserve.

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