Pencils B and 6B

Golden Oldie VIII

Time Stamped

 I wonder if the term "gold bug" came in part from a shortening of "buggery".

Saying what I hold to be true about money

If money is just another commodity, then why aren't people haggling with each other at the checkout of every store across the nation? If I think my commodity of twenty dollars is worth the commodity of the seven foot apple tree in the nursery, then by golly, that checkout lady better be a good barterer, because I'm going to give her a hard time.


How can something that is an issuance be "backed"? All what you have then is an I.O.U. Which is basically another form of debt. You're contracepting the beneficence of the common good from happening with your transaction. Redeem this certificate for a nugget of gold. I.O.U.

Money has representative power merely from the principle under which it is issued, whether that principle is corrupt or good. And that principle does not "back" it, for the principle is what issued it - like seed.

Bad principle: the money shall be printed up, and rented out at a rate of compounding interest and it will ultimately represent wealth in terms of how many people go bankrupt for the beneficence of those that don't go bankrupt, because the money to pay interest on the loans (loans that account for the entire money supply) will come from the same place that the loans come from. (In other words, the money to pay the interest must also be rented, at interest.)

Good principle: the money shall be printed up and spent through a public work and its quantity will be carefully and transparently controlled in keeping with the common beneficence that its issuing represents, according to such things as population and GDP and thus it will ultimately represent wealth that is spread out and actually owned by people. Representation has a power about which we must be careful, and we are careful about it because we know it is a power.

Bad principle: this money shall be printed up and we will make it real by saying it has no representative power through the principle of its issuance, that it is nothing more than a commodity, but less than a commodity in that it can be unmade, and its reality and quantity will be decided by the prices that are set for a commodity that is largely owned by wealthy bankers.



This obsession with "backing" is such a protestant sort of obsession.

Is it any wonder that after seven centuries of prosperity under the tally stick system, the gold standard was re-instituted in England by none other than King Henry VIII? (LOL!)

While bartering is not economical contraception, neither is it propitious to any kind of growth of civilization which is the mark of Christendom.

The economical contraception of debt-interest money, of commodity "backed" money, and of a one-world global money, is a contraception currency by which transaction between parties is prevented from benefiting the common good - that is, from genuinely growing, from refining itself, from everything that is conducive to freedom.

It's sort of like the fear of having too many children and how are we going to pay for all of them. That's inflationary, so let's have the gold standard pill to keep our transactions safe, like safe sex. Except that in the case of the gold standard, only the wealthy will be having the "sex". But hey, at least the money won't be fiat. And that Hoover Hut - it will be a real hut.

Just as contraception has destabilized society, so it goes for the economical contraceptive of debt money; and so it will go, and has indeed gone many times before, for gold-backed money; and so it will go for microchips imbedded in the skin.

Okay, I've completely changed my mind about the gold standard

after watching this Byron Dale interview.

Greenbackers, inflationary fiatists - watch at your own risk.

Have the courage to admit you were wrong.









Denninger merely solidifies it:






My paradigm is shifted. I am completely solvent.

Pencils 6B and B

Baby Eaters

"From the earliest days human beings have made good use of unwanted children. They were thrown into the fires to feed Moloch a god of the Canaanite, they were employed as slaves and still are in many places. They were sacrificed to insure good harvests to the rain god Tlaloc by Aztec priests who then ritually ate their corpses. Why all the sentimentality about not eating them? No one wants them. Though there is very little actual eating of babies as of this current writing, I have every confidence that, with time, that will change.

....So let us be honest and brave and stop referring to abortion and abortion rights and abortion clinics. Let us call it what it is: Baby Eating. Those who participate in it are Baby Eaters. People need to say quite boldly and clearly that by their vote and their tolerance they admit that people have the right to eat their own babies, or the babies of those who throw their children in dumpsters. Baby Eaters. Get used to the term. We are a society that devours its young."

--Reverend Know-it-all responding to a query about Senomyx's use of fetal cell lines for developing better tasting drinks: HERE.

An Economy

Vincent [Pallotti] had a hatred of waste - whether of time or of material things. He used to carry a book with him so as not to waste time while waiting for anything. On one occasion a young priest had received a letter and was about to crumple it and throw it into the fire. Father Palloti stopped him and had him tear off the portions of paper which were not written on and put them into a basket. The young priest obeyed unwillingly, thinking that the effort was really a waste of time. When he had finished, Father Pallotti noted that the basket was full of paper - as indeed it was - and he asked the young priest to find one of the men who collected such scraps. The man came and paid about 10 cents for the basket of scraps.

Then Father Pallotti and the young priest went to pay a visit to the Hospital of the Holy Spirit. On the way, Father Pallotti stopped and bought a box of crackers with the coin. At the hospital, there was a great sinner in bed 15 of one of the large wards; he was dying. Whenever a priest would come near him, he would foam at the mouth and utter all manner of blasphemies. On being told of this man, the two priests first went to the chapel to pray for the man's soul, for, as our saint said, "God is all-powerful and wishes the salvation of this man more than we do ourselves."

On entering the ward, Father Pallotti went first and visited with a number of other patients. When the man in bed 15 began to rave and blaspheme, he noticed that no one was paying any attention to him, so he closed his eyes. Quickly, Father Vincent went to stand by his bed. When the man opened his eyes, he saw the priest in the act of blessing him. He opened his mouth and began to curse again, but before he was well-started Father Vincent slipped one of the crackers into his mouth, saying gently, "Eat, my son, it will do you good."

The man had to stop to chew the cracker and swallow it, giving the priest time to say a few words. When he began again to curse, the priest repeated the same maneuver, time and again.

At last divine grace conquered and the man began to weep. He made an act of contrition and Father Pallotti heard his confession. As the young priest held the candle for Extreme Unction, he heard the dying man say over and over, "My Jesus, mercy! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony!" And so he died with expressions of the deepest penance. Father Pallotti then turned to the young priest and said, "There is a soul saved and gone to Purgatory...you see, my friend, of what use were those little scraps of paper."

--A story from the life of Saint Vincent Pallotti, from Modern Saints Their Lives and Their Faces by Ann Ball

Prophecy

They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be an unclean thing. Their silver and gold will not be able to save them in the day of the LORD's wrath. They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it, for it has made them stumble into sin. --Ezekiel 7:19

And then in those days, figures such as Mike Maloney and Ron Paul will come forth telling the masses all about how they've had their paradigms shifted, and how only microchips imbedded in the skin are real money.

Money Quote - Aristotle

"...but it is by exchange that they hold together. This is why they give a prominent place to the temple of the Graces -- to promote the requital of services; for this is characteristic of grace -- we should serve in return one who has shown grace to us, and should another time take the initiative in showing it.

"Now proportionate return is secured by cross-conjunction. Let A be a builder, B a shoemaker, C a house, D a shoe. The builder, then, must get from the shoemaker the latter's work, and must himself give him in return his own. If, then, first there is proportionate equality of goods, and then reciprocal action takes place, the result we mention will be effected. If not, the bargain is not equal, and does not hold; for there is nothing to prevent the work of the one being better than that of the other; they must therefore be equated...For it is not two doctors that associate for exchange, but a doctor and a farmer, or in general people who are different and unequal; but these must be equated. This is why all things that are exchanged must be somehow comparable. It is for this end that money has been introduced, and it becomes in a sense an intermediate; for it measures all things, and therefore the excess and the defect -- how many shoes are equal to a house or to a given amount of food. The number of shoes exchanged for a house (or for a given amount of food) must therefore correspond to the ratio of builder to shoemaker. For if this be not so, there will be no exchange and no intercourse. And this proportion will not be effected unless the goods are somehow equal. All goods must therefore be measured by some one thing, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth demand, which holds all things together (for if men did not need one another's goods at all, or did not need them equally, there would be either no exchange or not the same exchange); but money has become by convention a sort of representative of demand; and this is why it has the name 'money' (nomisma) -- because it exists not by nature but by law (nomos) and it is in our power to change it and make it useless. There will, then, be reciprocity when the terms have been equated so that as farmer is to shoemaker, the amount of the shoemaker's work is to that of the farmer's work for which it exchanges. But we must not bring them into a figure of proportion when they have already exchanged (otherwise one extreme will have both excesses), but when they still have their own goods. Thus they are equals and associates just because this equality can be effected in their case. Let A be a farmer, C food, B a shoemaker, D his product equated to C. If it had not been possible for reciprocity to be thus effected, there would have been no association of the parties. That demand holds things together as a single unit is shown by the fact that when men do not need one another, i.e. when neither needs the other or one does not need the other, they do not exchange, as we do when some one wants what one has oneself, e.g. when people permit the exportation of corn in exchange for wine. This equation therefore must be established. And for the future exchange -- that if we do not need a thing now we shall have it if ever we do need it -- money is as it were our surety; for it must be possible for us to get what we want by bringing the money. Now the same thing happens to money itself as to goods -- it is not always worth the same; yet it tends to be steadier. This is why all goods must have a price set on them; for then there will always be exchange, and if so, association of man with man. Money, then, acting as a measure, makes goods commensurate and equates them; for neither would there have been association if there were not exchange, nor exchange if there were not equality, nor equality if there were not commensurability. Now in truth it is impossible that things differing so much should become commensurate, but with reference to demand they may become so sufficiently. There must, then, be a unit, and that fixed by agreement (for which reason it is called money); for it is this that makes all things commensurate, since all things are measured by money."

--Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics [bold italics mine]


So how can money equate things (make them comparable) when its equating power is constricted to a commodity, or any number of those commodities which are the very things that are equated?

Commodity "backing" (bi-metal or otherwise) of money is inverted. It is geared to sterility. It is the same act of sodomy that the usurers perform.

Bear it away

Walls were meant to keep silence,
and any sound through them
is always some kind of violence.

Chichikov

DID HE EVER TELL? 

By Pavel Chichikov

V. M. Blokhin

Has he descendants?

The one with the leather apron

And the leather hat

And the leather gloves to the shoulders

With the Walther pistol

With which he killed

300 Polish prisoners in one night

7,000 in four weeks

A monster, you might say

“A being, not a human being”

But to me he looks like someone’s uncle

He looks like one of us

Gazing from the surface of a mirror

Well shaved, indeed

With a straight razor

But now not needed

Not necessary

Not in this modern era

Because there will be machines

To do Stalin’s black work

Chyornaya rabota

And they need not be intelligent

But only diligent

Easy for machines to kill

With great dispatch

No vodka needed afterwards

And no remorse

No bothered sleep

No dreams

To cause the sleeper to sit upright

Shout and pull the phantom trigger

But who was Blokhin killing on those nights?

Whose blood hosed out on the sloping floor?

Whose neck was bared for the bullet?

Whom did he see as he killed?

Over and over again

Three minutes by three minutes

A resurrected body

That would not die—

                        Did he ever tell?

THE GATE 

By Pavel Chichikov

There is no Temple yet to see

Nor open wide the twelve-fold gates,

But I will change the maple tree

Into a ruby lit by light

Through your vision enter in,

The temple glows with joyful red,

A moment’s glimpse of labor’s end

Where light can resurrect the dead

This is foretelling and a sign

This dying into peace that glows,

A gate of ruby that is Mine

                        A jeweled way that you may go 



The Poetry of Pavel Chichikov

Misc.

Last Saturday towards evening, after a day of rain and darkness, the clouds to the southwest broke open and sunlight came sidelong through like a golden cavalcade whose shouting victory made a double rainbow on the northern gloom; and the double rainbow was fully arched. It was so bright, so unbelievably solid, like thick glowing bars just taken from the smithy's furnace, that people all around were stopping and looking. At its outer edge the blue-black sky was held at bay, while the sky on the rainbow's inside was many degrees lighter - the perfect arch causing a summer-day resplendence within its own home.

Before I entered a store, I paused awhile to gaze. A man came out lingering, and I told him I had never seen a rainbow like that before. Then another man came out and started filming it on his little gadget thingy, and that somehow became a cue to turn inside and leave the sight behind.

*

Did you know that when you go to Mass on Sunday you are actually sanctifying the sabbath day? You are obliged not so much in the sense of one filling up a quota for God, but as one would be obliged to fulfill the opening up of a gift which, upon being opened, actually blesses the day, through your obedience to God's command. And that in turn blesses you - and others. This is part of the common priesthood to which everyone is called - man, woman, son and daughter: you are sanctifying the day, thus you are imitating Christ. Thus, when you do not go to Mass on Sunday, you are refusing to sanctify the sabbath day. You are profaning it.

It's hard to see this when Mass has been turned into an entertainment. And when Mass has been turned into entertainment it is never entertaining; it is just pure hell.

*

Any pursuit of beauty that goes unchastised, that goes without being humiliated and rebuked, will inevitably bring one to the ugly pit of insensibility.

*

Banks must be outlawed from practicing fractional reserve lending, which is lending money (at interest) that they do not actually have. Banks must be enforced by law to be able to lend only money they have. Imagine that: lending only money they have. Well, who would have thought? What a concept!

Governments must be outlawed from borrowing. Governments being outlawed from borrowing means they are then automatically beholden to their electorate who elected them into office; they become answerable to them, and not to unelected international bureaucrat bankers. For the borrower is servant to the lender.

Governments must print their own debt-free money, backed by nothing (for money is not "backable"), and spend it into existence. When the money is borrowed into existence, then no one (but the banks) owns that money, and thus no one owns the wealth which it should represent; and that is why incentives done under a debt system do not work. It's not because the money is "fiat"; it's not because of inflation - indeed, inflation today is nothing but the inevitable result of a debt money system; it's because the money is not the peoples.

When the government prints its own debt-free money and then spends it into existence, it releases ownership of that money. This is true distribution of wealth that simultaneously puts the incentive of producing wealth into the hands of the people. This is decentralization, and subsidiarity, and distributism - without that whole redistribution part. It's an open proposal communicated through the first experiment of being spent into existence. That release of being spent is the first touching point that goes to defining the growth that follows.

Money must not be "backed" by anything - indeed, money is not "backable", for it ever and only transfers, and when people think they have "backed" it with something, what they have done is merely transferred it to those who have the material that "backs" it.

The purpose of money (that is, debt-free money) is that it gives a common value to transaction itself, and simplifies it, whereas bartering is a discontinuous usage. Money is concomitant with the enacted model, or the principle, under which it is first issued. By being an issuance both before and after a transaction, it fixates transactions that are completed into a kind of societal memory bank, which, while providing "liquidity", is also a vast and continuing stabilization through manifest completed transactions, spread out, which is beneficence of the common good, which is economic stability, which can in turn do nothing but give birth to the incentive of further transaction.

Economies happen by enacted model; a model borne into existence out of which its bills come from that first successful experiment (the completion of a public work) and go into their secondary issuance: the second economy; an economy free for the public to shape and grow and expand.

Government ought to print its own money and spend the money into existence (which is what the governments are not doing today) - release totally from its hands its own money into the public through public works, which becomes the first animus, the first economical locus, indeed, the first completed exemplar economy: economies do not happen in a vacuum. They do not happen by "stimulis". Nor do economies happen in or by commodities. Commodities happen in economies. Contrary to our logic, transaction comes first: without transaction, commodities are not even commodities. Economies happen by enacted model.

Everything always has a model.

We've been led to believe that either a model doesn't matter, or that we don't have a model that's being enacted right now; and that if we do, it somehow isn't causing the consequences we're seeing. This is the result of economic contraception.

The truth is, there is always a model, and the model always matters, and the model is always consequential to any present economic condition that one sees.

When you have a government who makes the first economical locus one that borrows the money into existence, should anyone be surprised that a debt economy follows?

Likewise, if the first economical locus is one in which a commodity largely owned by wealthy people is made the "standard", then don't be surprised that a rule-by-rich economy follows, one in which the middle-class evaporates and the life-blood of the poor is sucked dry.

Golden Oldie VII

Still in the following Still Report touches on the 1869 Gould/Fisk gold scandal, which was the first - though not the only - originator of the term "Black Friday":






I always wonder why, when it comes to "fiat" money, some people refer to it in disdainful terms over the fact that it would come from, and would be circulated by, and controlled by, and gain its representation of wealth from, people - like the very thought that it comes from people means it is automatically an empty fraud - or as James Garfield put it: "the printed lies of the government".

It's as though after the references and job requirements were met, the hiring of a person for a job ultimately being decided on trust (which is ever and always the case) were a horrific and damnable frailty that needed to be cleansed from the human mind; and that if the person's performance in that position after being hired was excellent, it were to be declared a charade that came out of thin air because it wasn't "backed" every step of the way with the completion of those tasks for which the person was hired, before those tasks were ever completed.

But when it comes to the Gold Standard it is ubiquitously referred to in non-personal terms, like its market value did not come from people; and that a market value isn't "fiat", as though a market value is what makes and controls a "real" economy; and it's always referred to in terms of a kind of supra-clockwork auto-benevolence that will set things straight and make things "real", like it was some kind of monolith that just fell from the sky.

Never mind what gold and how much gold and where is the gold.

Whose gold are you referring to? The 2/3 of the world's gold that the national banks own?

The gold of the personal investments of Mike Maloney and Ron Paul? Oh yes, they certainly would love to see, and indeed, put forth their efforts towards, the implementation of a gold standard.

Yes, only gold and silver are money - right, and there's no such thing as conflict of interest. As long as your right hand does not know what your left is doing - I suppose that's how Maloney and Paul do it. It's the way the money-changers of the temple did it.



Update: The follow-up reports to the one above:






"Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender." --Proverbs 22:7

 So what's wrong with the government borrowing? Gee, I wonder.

Couple of Gold Nuggets

"If you had an illegal enterprise, a fraudulent enterprise, that raked in multi-trillions of dollars per year, you could afford to spend a couple billion on P.R. just to keep people confused. And that's exactly what's going on." --Bill Still (on the banking plutocracy)

"The mainline Libertarian position, which just drives me nuts, is that government is too corrupt to fix the problem. Half the Libertarian party are these anarchists; you know, they think the government just won't work. Yeah, well, you've got a political party, and you're going to have national conventions, and try and elect presidential candidates, but you don't believe in government." --Bill Still

 

B and 6B pencils

5B pencil

Golden Oldie VI

"Gold is a relic of Julius Caesar and interest is an invention of Satan." Mr. Edison continued. "Gold is intrinsically of less utility than most metals. The probable reason why it is retained as the basis of money is that it is easy to control. And it is the control of money that constitutes the money questions. It is the control of money that is the root of all evils....

"....Then there is another way—the method my friend Ford proposed the other day. He proposes just to go along and forget about gold. He says that the Government can finance Muscle Shoals without applying to money brokers for permission, and I think he is absolutely right about it. Of course, as long as the world is on the gold basis, we shall have to recognize it as an element in the international trade, but it is not necessary for commerce within our own borders. In internal business we can forget it. And we do forget it. If everybody in the United States suddenly demanded gold for their money, there would not be enough gold.

"Gold and money are separate things, you see. Gold is the trick mechanism by which you can control money. Gold is not money until the people of the United States and other nations put their stamp on it. It is not the gold that makes the dollar. It is the dollar that makes the gold. Take the dollar out of the gold, and leave it merely yellow metal, and it sinks in value. Gold is established by law, just as silver was, and gold could be disestablished, demonetized by law, just as silver was. When silver was demonetized the former so-called dollar became worth about 50 cents."

"But would not Mr. Ford’s suggestion that Muscle Shoals be financed by a currency issue raise some objections?" Mr. Edison was asked.

"Certainly. There is a complete set of misleading slogans kept on hand for just such outbreaks of common sense among the people. The people are so ignorant of what they think are the intricacies of the money systems that they are easily impressed by big words. There would be new shrieks of 'fiat money' and 'paper money' and 'green-backism', and all the rest of it—the same old cries with which the people have been shouted down from the beginning."

  
--Thomas Edison in The New York Times interview, Ford Sees Wealth in Muscle Shoals, December 4, 1921

High Sugar

High Sugar
By Les Murray


Honey gave sweetness
to Athens and Rome,
and later, when splendour
might rise nearer home,

sweetness was still honey
since, pious or lax,
every cloister had its apiary
for honey and wax

but when kings and new doctrines
drained those deep hives
then millions of people
were shipped from their lives

to grow the high sugar
from which were refined
frigates, perukes, human races
and the liberal mind.

The Secret of Oz

Down the debt-based money!

Down the gold bugs!

Bring back the tally stick!

Bring back the Greenback!

Hear, hear! Hear, hear!

Heresy of Feelings

"I've been ranting for years now—in the confessional, the pulpit, in my office; probably even in my sleep—that one of the greatest modern heresies to infect the Church is the pernicious idea that all things spiritual must be felt in order to be true. For example, a woman comes to me in despair b/c God has abandoned her. I ask: what makes you think God has abandoned you? I just don't feel His presence anymore, she says. What am I supposed to say to this? What does it mean? If God—the source and summit of our being—abandons us, we won't be around anymore to feel anything! That she feels anything at all is proof positive that God has not abandoned her."

 --Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP in his post On mercy and the heresy of feelings, HERE

Just putting it out there

Subsidiarity is not the breaking down of a power into smaller and smaller units, but a power whose issuance is fully expended, fully spent, into a corporeal work which creates another body. This is what a government printing its own money and then spending it into existence through infrastructure is about: Catholic teaching.

The gold standard is the implementation of the law of the jungle and the turning over of creativity, time, energy, labour and invention to the bondage of an idol.


Update: Bitcoin is Kitcoin. It is the eradication of "who". The money issue is not a money issue. It is a national sovereignty issue. Free trade is not trade.


Update II:  The Magic Isle of Guernsey, By Bill Still:

The simple fact is that a nation's money should be created in the public interest. Unfortunately, that is not the case today in almost every nation on earth. Money creation is given over to private banks through the deception that it is being created in the public interest by national central banks such as the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank de France, Deutsche Bundesbanke, etc.

Many believe that the only solution is a return to gold-backed money. I do not agree. I think this is yet another deception and I believe world monetary history proves this incontrovertibly. To me, the main point to remember is that it is not what backs the national money that is important; what is important is Who controls the quantity!

Despite the nationalistic-sounding names of these central banks, don't be deceived; they do not create money in the public interest. Every dollar, every pound, every euro is created as an interest bearing debt - primarily owed to - and the quantity controlled by - the commercial banking community.

The reason solution is two-fold:

1. Forbid government borrowing - no more national debt. Nations do not have to borrow. Nations can create their own money.

2. Forbid fractional reserve lending. This is where banks can lend out 10 to 12 times the money they actually have. Banks must go to "full-reserve lending".

In other words, the only way to end this worldwide spiral of depression is for every nation to return to a debt-free money system. Without the money power firmly in its control no nation can really be sovereign. In fact, creating money in the public interest is the very definition of sovereignty.

Fortunately, this is not a new or radical idea. It has been used hundreds of times throughout history, but every time it has been employed, it has been attacked mercilessly by the big banking class who lose profits whenever the idea of money creation in the public interest surfaces. So, this is a timeless struggle and nothing less than survival of the human species is at stake, because the debt the current system is generating is the primary cause of the world's hunger, poverty and misery, and is quickly destroying sovereign democratic governments and returning humanity to a nouveau-serfdom system from which it will soon be unable to escape.

Debt-free money creation has been going on in the tiny island of Guernsey for 200 years. Lets take a look.

Despite the fact that the island of Guernsey has only 30 square miles and a population of only 65,000 people and very little in the way of natural resources except cows; their per capita income is $40,000 per year, 9th highest among the 200 or so countries of the world. What gives? Guernsey has used a money system since 1817 that can serve as a model for the rest of the world to use to escape the ongoing depression of the 21st century.

Despite it's proximity to France, Guernsey is actually a British Crown Dependency and, to it's credit, has never joined the European Union. After the Napoleonic Wars, Guernsey was in dire straits. The island's roads were mere cart tracks, only 54-inches wide. In wet weather they were virtually impassable. There was not a vehicle for hire of any kind on the island. There was no trade, nor much hope of employment among the poor. The sea was washing away large tracts of land due to the sorry state of the dykes.

Guernsey, like most nations at that time (as well as today) had borrowed heavily from the banks. The States Debt was £19,137 with an annual interest charge of £2,390, but the gross national revenue of the entire island was only £3,000, leaving only paltry £610 per annum to run the entire island. In other words, interest paid to banks consumed 80% of the  GDP, thus reducing the populace to a state of pitiful serfdom.

In 1815, a committee of well-respected public spirited elders was assembled to finance the building of a public market near the the main harbor, Saint Peter Port, so the farmers could more easily sell their products for export. The cost of the new facility would be £6,000. In addition, fixing the dykes would cost an additional £10,000.

Further taxation of the impoverished island was impossible. Borrowing money from the banks would result in even higher interest charges that could never be paid. The committee made a historic recommendation to remedy this dire situation.

The committee recommends that the expense should be met by the issue of State Notes of £1 sterling to the value of £6,000.... and that these notes will be available not only for the payment of the new market, but also for Torteval Church, roads to construct, and other expenses of the States.

The committee argued that there was little to fear from inflation because the local banks already had £50,000 of their money (notes) in circulation. As a further protection against inflation, the overly cautious citizens of Guernsey placed redemption dates on the notes of April 1817, October 1817, and April 1818. In other words these notes were good for payment of taxes and good as regular money in circulation until the expiration date was reached. At that time, the notes would no longer be legal tender and the state would destroy them.

In this manner, without increasing the States' debt, it will be possible to finish these works, leaving sufficient money in the Exchequer for other needs.ii

Once the good citizens realised that these notes would work without the skies falling on the gentle island, additional issues took place in 1820 and 1821. By 1821, some £10,000 of Guernsey notes were in circulation, all created without debt.

[It was] the most advantageous method of meeting debts, from the point of view both of the public and the states finances. Indeed, the public seemed to realise this fact, and, far from being averse to taking the notes, they sought them out eagerly.iii

The citizenry clearly understood that these Guernsey Notes were clearly government financing in the public interest. They also realised that if there were to be any inflation as a result, at least it was better than no money at all, and at least they could all  shoulder the inflation equally.

In 1824, another £5,000 notes were issued for the markets, and in 1826 £20,000 to erect Elizabeth College and certain other schools.

In the bill d'Etat it was a frequent subject for congratulation; and it was stated over and over again by imminent men of those times that without the issue of States' notes, important public works, such as roads and buildings could not possibly have been carried out. Yet by means of the States' issue, not only were these works accomplished, but also the island was not a penny the poorer in interest charges. Indeed, the improvements had stimulated the flow of visitors to the island, and with increased trade, the island enjoyed its new-found prosperity.iv

In 126, however, the first signs of opposition by the banking community began. A complaint was lodged with the British Privy Council that Guernsey had no right to issue debt-free notes. However the Guernsey (also known as the 'States') Financial committee explained the situation to the satisfaction of all, and the matter was closed.

In the next year, surprise, surprise, a new commercial bank opened, called "Old Bank". They began printing up private bank notes in such quantity that the island became flooded with money. Soon Guernsey feared that inflation would set in - or worse that their own debt-free money experiment would be blamed for the inflation. So a committee was appointed to confer with the banks. What went on in these meetings remains a mystery to this day; but the result was that £15,000 of Guernsey Notes would be withdrawn from circulation and the government would be limited to issuing a grand total of only £40,000 of their own notes. This agreement remained in force until World War 1.

In the wake of World War 1, the banks came under severe restrictions on how much money they could issue. All bank money was being directed towards the war effort. But Guernsey was under no such restriction, probably because its experiment was unique, and perhaps forgotten.

Guernsey made good use of her opportunity. By the end of the war, in 1918, Guernsey had issued £14,000, and 40 years later, that had grown to £542,765. Today, private bank notes no longer exist. British money circulates side by side with State Notes.

Naturally, there is a greater demand for the State Notes; no sane citizen of Guernsey wishes to pay debt charges! To enlarge on this theme: In 1937 the States Note money, about £175,000, cost the States only £450 for printing and handling. A loan of the same dimensions would have about £11,383 annually. So can you blame the Guernsey taxpayers for preferring their own money since, under their sensible and benevolent financial system, they pay hardly any income tax.v

During the entire experiment in Guernsey, from 1817 to date, there has at no time been a threat of inflation from the creation of State Notes. At all times, the States were very careful in the issue and cancellation of notes according to their ability and requirements.vi

Today, Guernsey remains an island of prosperity. As author Ellen Brown puts it:

Guernsey has an income tax, but that tax is relatively low (a "flat" 20%), and it is simple and loophole free. It has no inheritance tax, no capital gains tax, and no federal debt. Commercial banks service private [lending], but the government itself never goes into debt.

When it wants to create some private work or service, it just issues the money it needs to pay for the work. The Guernsey government has been issuing it's own money for nearly two centuries. During that time, the money supply has mushroomed to about 25 times its original size; yet the economy has not been troubled by price inflation, and it has remained prosperous and stable.viii

Once you understand the Guernsey story, you have to admire the modesty of their website:

Guernsey's ability to look after its own fiscal affairs has meant that it has been able to foster a favourable tax climate. This has led to many offshore banks, fund managers and insurance companies establishing here. Whilst the traditional industries of flower growing, fishing and dairy farming still playing an important part, contributing both to the varied economy and to the islands character.

Guernsey also has its own stamps and currency, and while the British pounds can be used on the island, Guernsey pounds cannot be used in the UK.!

But the question may arise,what keeps them from printing too much. They watch inflation closely, and the calculations are all completely transparent, run by a committee of citizens, and open for all to see on their website.

That's all they care about; Is this causing inflation? They expand as much as they want as long as it causes no inflation. They don't care about theory. Born out of desperate need, they found out the secret of money and have quietly gone about using it and thereby have a high standard of living and very low taxes.

Fortunately, the Guernsey experiment is not an aberration. It has been tried time and time again, and when the quantity is controlled in the public interest, always with success. The bankers, however, inevitably attack these in-the-public-interest, debt -free government issues of money. Debt-free money is in everyone's interest except bankers'. Typically, they will use their money and influence to create some financial emergency then bribe sufficient politicians to convince them to vote for legislation giving the bankers monopoly on issuing all the nation's money as a loan, thereby stripping the nation of its ability to issue its own money debt free.

During the depths of depression of the 1930's, the majority of economists in the US discovered this monetary reform solution. In 1936, Frank D. Graham, professor of economics at Princetown University offered his perspective in the American Economic Review:

"What we need is not control of banking but a government monopoly of the supply of money, with commercial banks left to lend on short-term...out of capital funds, debenture borrowings, and real time deposits. Such a system... is a[n] indispensable prerequisite to regulation of the money supply on which all attempts to bring greater stability into our economic system, through monetary means, must inevitably be based. We are certainly not likely to get stability so long as the supply of money remains even partially in the hands of those who have no responsibility for the total issue and no motive to do other than increase it as far as law, and a merely selfish prudence, will permit.

There is a way for citizens and their governments to take back the money-creation power of the banks. Yes, bankers are experts with money, but they are experts in maximizing their profits and rarely have much interest in the public interest. Freeing your government from borrowing money from bankers is the first, and most important, step for national freedom and prosperity. It is also THE most important step to limiting governmental overspending. If a government cannot borrow, it MUST live within its means.

Debt-free, government issued money - where the quantity is properly controlled in the public interest- has always worked to promote low taxation and maximise freedom for the majority of the nation.

i Grubiak, Olive and Jan; The Guernsey Experiment ( 1960, 1999 reprint, Bloomsfield Books, Sudbury, England ), p.8.
ii ibid
iii ibid
iv ibid, p. 8-9
v, p.11
vi ibid, p 11-12
vii ibid, p.12
viii Brown, Ellen h., Web of Debt, ( Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Third Millenium Press, 2007), . p. 100-101

From the Sovereign Independent June 2011

Bill Still has a book out called No More National Debt: www.billstill.com

Restoration

The idea of there being a general restoration at some point in eternity, after the consummation of the world, where the damned in hell will find release - or oblivion - is irreconcilable to the truth of the Gospel.

To this idea, the posited answer is simple: that restoration, to which people give speculation, is happening right now. And after that comes eternity: there is no "point" in eternity at which it may happen, for that is to put a time template on eternity. Eternity is forever now. Another form of putting it is to say eternity is always beginning. A comprehension that finds no end to comprehending. A dawn that never ceases to dawn.

The truth of the resurrection and redemption works in the permission given to evil to work its ways; the truth works right down into evil and offers restoration beyond comprehension: a greater good. That is why evil is permitted - that a greater good may come of it.

One either believes in God's restoration which is happening right now, and seeks after it, seeks to align oneself with it, or one believes in rot, in decay. This aligning oneself with God's restoration begins in the work of your own soul - your salvation. It is the work of the Cross.

No evil has power over God's restoration, but one must repent of evil. One is allowed by dint of free will to insist upon decay instead. Usury, sorcery, fornication, abortion, contraception, pornography, etc., etc., etc. - they are all sorts of anti-sacraments by which one is bonded to the power of evil, to the power of the devil, to the power of hell. The Sacrament of confession breaks all bonds, makes you into a new creation, makes you into a you that is the most you. And continuing in sanctifying grace, one picks oneself back up, again and again.

If you choose decay (helped along by the falsehood of glamour) and not restoration, then you will go down to the place where decay is insisted upon, and there you will be lorded over by Beezlebub: Lord of flies.

(Yes, an actual place, and not just a "state" about which Christ's language was just a "spatial metaphor", à la Father Barron.)

6B and B pencils

Usury

Did you know that if banks were to practice Fractional Reserve Lending (lending money they do not have) without charging interest it would still be usury, the likes of which is unprecedented in human history?

It's not the interest on Fractional Reserve Lending that makes it usurious, though it definitely compounds the abuse. It is that Fractional Reserve Lending, in and of itself, done on the scale it is done, legally without limit in the U.S., manipulates the money supply. That is, the money supply already in existence.

It manipulates the money supply by devaluing it. In myriad forms, either sooner or later, whether it takes a couple years or decades or even a century, people have to default and foreclose and go bankrupt - not simply because the interest killed them, but because their money itself was devalued, along with every other person's. Think about it. Then the banks reap those assets up: this is the manipulation of money in order to consolidate wealth. And that is usury.

Side note: Any loan or lending (credit) that has any amount of compounding interest, it is usury. I'm not sure of any instances in which just a flat interest price is quoted. Credit card companies are usurers.

Freedom from fleeced by a lie

Treasured Notes

Golden Oldie V

"In the late 19th century, crooked bankers in California, upon being notified that the gold bullion in their vaults would be audited one-branch-at-a-time, were able to stretch out the travel time of the auditors between branches so that, by means of a faster horse, gold previously counted could be sent ahead to the next bank with the auditors unaware they had seen the same gold before." --Bill Still, Fort Knox Scandal

6B and 2B pencils

Medium: Pencils this and that

Three Quotes

"Remember that if the mighty ones of this world are honoured with noisy eulogies and public fanfare, I am honoured by the silent and attentive heart, by a delicate sacrifice known to no one, by a secret surrender, a tender inner glance. It is in this way, very simply, that My children console Me." --He and I



"'Strange powers have our enemies, and strange weaknesses!' said Théoden. 'But it has long been said: oft evil will shall evil mar.'"  --The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien (For those not privy to Tolkien's excellent and perfectly understandable language, Theoden is speaking the truth that evil always works its own destruction - always.)



"'Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.'" --Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

Medium: Pencils H and HB

Word & Question

They tryst and mingle - sailor's blood and sea -
such that earth-time, ticking, works enmity
to the breaker-cast eyes, the world-rim gaze,
final-harbour fixed and lanced with blue blaze,
and all-wanting of the eternal glance back.

Torpid time, torture time, trillion, quintillion time,
antagonizing the music in the surf;
Blessed Realm blood, set to Westernesse:
hostage to time, the soul is stretched on its rack;
sings, in sunset fire, until the world goes black.

Born from almost-corpse, spiritual infant,
with sun-counting conscience, that straddles
eternity and time, take into your sea battles
rum, rum, rum sweet rum, sweet rum, sweet, sweet rum;
take rum, sweet rum, sweet rum, sweet rum, rum, rum.



Word: Quintillion
Question: Why is the rum always gone?

This is for Word & Question as hosted by Shredded Cheddar.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad beauty

Entitled, Brothers (or Friars):
 

 






There are versions done in:

Strings and percussion 

Violin, strings and percussion

String quartet Cello and piano

Four, eight, twelve... cellos

Wind octet and percussion

String quintet

Wind quintet

Violin and piano

Viola and Piano



I like it done in violin and piano best.









Here's a good version done in violin and guitar:







 



Fratres in aeternum

Hiekooh

His beak spear punches.
Locked moisture in the dead trunk
sprays breath into air.

O'Brien Talk

An interesting talk given by O'Brien with the interesting title, Catholic Fiction and Restoring Culture in an Age of Escapist Illusions.

Michael O'Brien's site here.

Medium: Pencils F, 2H and B

Ink round-up

Some miscellannia.

These two are old and done with micron pens:

These two are recent and done with the brush pen:

These two are old and hardly even begun:

I knew the locations in the forest where these trees were, wanting to come back and finish them. I say were, because I went back and tried like mad to find them, but to no avail. The forest is strange. Trees, large trees, vanish according to some forest principle, and are never found again, though they might turn up somewhere else.

Question

A query for those who have read The Lord of the Rings at least once or several or twelve dozen times: have you read it out loud?

Find someone to read it out loud to. Images are just suddenly born, whole and alive, so vividly like from a spring of growth within yourself.

This occurs when reading it quietly to yourself of course; I've read the book at least six or seven times before; but reading it aloud, images come across my mind in a startlingly new yet familiar way. The images have deep roots. And the language being so true...well, language is meant to be spoken.

The great power of The Lord of the Rings lies in the fact that it does not overwhelm the imagination. Its power lies, so to speak, in that it does not claim power, like one claiming the Ring of Power. The reader sub-creates, in a certain sense, with Tolkien's sub-creation. Not because the book is like some empty pattern which one then fills up with colour, or some such nonsense explanation. Rather the reader sub-creates precisely because the sub-creation that is the story is so true to the reality of creation (and its redemption).

The imagination is not some infantile instrument by which one conjures up dreams of unicorns and such. The very word, "imagination" has been given a patronizing aura, like it was a nice little extra option or addition that one could otherwise make do without.

Imagination is a space in which one envisions the real battle going on in the soul, always so clouded by the trivialities of time. This is consequently concerned with the real nature of the battle occurring without. Imagination is God-given and concerned with the Real; both a space which we occupy and a faculty which we use; both a membranous channel by which we make contact with the Real and a shining diamond in itself in which the more Real is encountered. As with everything else about us, it is subject to fallen human nature, but it must be baptized.

The Lord of the Rings baptizes the imagination - baptizes it and prepares it, harrows it for baptism. It is pre-evangelization - this has been said of it, but it is pre-evangelization by way of Evangelium: it was not written in pre-evangelical times. What I'm saying is that it is pre-evangelical because is it evangelical. It's not the best of paganism intimating the incarnation, or foreshadowing the dawn of Christ. Rather it's the best (or one of the best) of Catholicism making God present in its story by the same logic which God made Himself present to us.

Logos - not logic.

Golden Oldie IV

"Prescott in his "History of Peru" tells us that gold was found so plentiful by Pizarro that it fell in value to an enormous extent. The natives did not use it for money as their trading was all by barter, article for article. One of the Spanish soldiers traded a hatchet for his two handfuls of gold and the native ran away for fear the man would want to trade back.

Says Prescott: "A quire of paper was sold for ten pesos-de-oro, eleven dollars and sixty-seven cents of our money. Therefore, the quire of paper exchanged for $116.70 in gold, reckoned in our money of today.

A bottle of wine was sold for sixty pesos-de-oro, a sword for fifty, a cloak for a hundred and sometimes more, a pair of shoes for forty, a good horse for seventy-five hundred."

Figuring in our money it would look so:

A bottle of wine $ 700.20

A sword 466.80

A cloak 167.00

A horse 29,175.00

A pair of shoes 350.10

All payable in gold and silver."

--Fabius Melton Butler, Lincoln Money Martyred, 1935

Medium: F and HB pencils