Even the world’s most resource-rich country has now been caught in the debt trap. Its once-proud government programs are being subjected to radical budget cuts—cuts that could have been avoided if the government had not quit borrowing from its own central bank in the 1970s.
Last week in Ottawa, the Canadian House of Commons passed the federal government’s latest round of budget cuts and austerity measures. Highlights included chopping 19,200 public sector jobs, cutting federal programs by $5.2 billion per year, and raising the retirement age for millions of Canadians from 65 to 67. The justification for the cuts was a massive federal debt that is now over C$ 581 billion, or 84% of GDP.
An online budget game furnished by the local newspaper the Globe and Mail gave readers a chance to try to balance the budget themselves. Possibilities included slashing transfer payments for elderly benefits, retirement programs, health benefits, and education; cutting funding for transportation, national defense, economic development and foreign aid; and raising taxes. An article on the same page said, “The government, in reality, doesn’t have that many tools at its disposal to close a large budgetary deficit. It can either raise taxes or cut departmental program spending.”
It seems that no gamer, lawmaker or otherwise, was offered the opportunity to toy with the number one line item in the budget: interest to creditors. A chart on the website of the Department of Finance Canada titled “Where Your Tax Dollar Goes” showed interest payments to be 15% of the budget—more than health care, social security, and other transfer payments combined. The page was dated 2006 and was last updated in 2008, but the percentages are presumably little different today.
Penny wise, Pound Foolish
Among other cuts in the 2012 budget, the government announced that it would be discontinuing the minting of Canadian pennies, which now cost more than a penny to make. The government is focusing on the pennies and ignoring the pounds—the massive share of the debt that might be saved by borrowing from the government’s own Bank of Canada.
Between 1939 and 1974, the government actually did borrow from its own central bank. That made its debt effectively interest-free, since the government owned the bank and got the benefit of the interest. According to figures supplied by Jack Biddell, a former government accountant, the federal debt remained very low, relatively flat, and quite sustainable during those years. (See his chart below.) The government successfully funded major public projects simply on the credit of the nation, including the production of aircraft during and after World War II, education benefits for returning soldiers, family allowances, old age pensions, the Trans-Canada Highway, the St. Lawrence Seaway project, and universal health care for all Canadians.
The debt shot up only after 1974. That was when the Basel Committee was established by the central-bank Governors of the Group of Ten countries of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which included Canada. A key objective of the Committee was to maintain “monetary and financial stability.” To achieve that goal, the Committee discouraged borrowing from a nation’s own central bank interest-free, and encouraged borrowing instead from private creditors, all in the name of “maintaining the stability of the currency.”
The presumption was that borrowing from a central bank with the power to create money on its books would inflate the money supply and prices. Borrowing from private creditors, on the other hand, was considered not to be inflationary, since it involved the recycling of pre-existing money. What the bankers did not reveal, although they had long known it themselves, was that private banks create the money they lend just as public banks do. The difference is simply that a publicly-owned bank returns the interest to the government and the community, while a privately-owned bank siphons the interest into its capital account, to be re-invested at further interest, progressively drawing money out of the productive economy.
The debt curve that began its exponential rise in 1974 tilted toward the vertical in 1981, when interest rates were raised by the U.S. Federal Reserve to 20%. At 20% compounded annually, debt doubles in under four years. Canadian rates went as high as 22% during that period. Canada has now paid over a trillion Canadian dollars in interest on its federal debt—nearly twice the debt itself. If it had been borrowing from its own bank all along, it could be not only debt-free but sporting a hefty budget surplus today. That is true for other countries as well.
The Bankers’ Silent Coup
Why are governments paying private financiers to generate credit they could be issuing themselves, interest-free? According to Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, it was all part of a concerted plan by a clique of international financiers. He wrote in Tragedy and Hope in 1964:
The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.
Each central bank . . . sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.
In December 2011, this charge was echoed in a lawsuit filed in Canadian federal court by two Canadians and a Canadian economic think tank. Constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati filed an action on behalf of William Krehm, Ann Emmett, and COMER (the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform) to restore the use of the Bank of Canada to its original purpose, including making interest free loans to municipal, provincial and federal governments for “human capital” expenditures (education, health, and other social services) and for infrastructure. The plaintiffs state that since 1974, the Bank of Canada and Canada’s monetary and financial policy have been dictated by private foreign banks and financial interests led by the BIS, the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), bypassing the sovereign rule of Canada through its Parliament.
Today this silent coup has been so well obscured that governments and gamers alike are convinced that the only alternatives for addressing the debt crisis are to raise taxes, slash services, or sell off public assets. We have forgotten that there is another option: cut the debt by borrowing from the government’s own bank, which returns its profits to public coffers. Cutting out interest has been shown to reduce the average cost of public projects by about 40%.
Game over: we win.
________________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com. The Public Banking Institute’s first conference is April 26th-28th in Philadelphia.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary |
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. In Australia Through The Commonwealth Bank Of Australia and In Canada Through The Bank Of Canada. […]
[…] Ao invés de ratificar o draconiano tratado MEE [1] , os europeus seriam mais avisados se revertessem o artigo 123 do tratado de Lisboa. Então o BCE poderia emitir crédito directamente para os seus governos membros. Alternativamente, governos da eurozona poderia restabelecer sua soberania económica pela ressurreição dos seus bancos centrais de propriedade pública e utilizá-los para emitir o crédito do país em benefício do país, efectivamente isento de juro. Isto não é uma ideia nova mas historicamente tem sido utilizada com muito bom efeito, na Austrália por exemplo através do Commonwealth Bank of Australia e no Canadá através do Bank of Canada . […]
[…] Ao invés de ratificar o draconiano tratado MEE [1] , os europeus seriam mais avisados se revertessem o artigo 123 do tratado de Lisboa. Então o BCE poderia emitir crédito directamente para os seus governos membros. Alternativamente, governos da eurozona poderia restabelecer sua soberania económica pela ressurreição dos seus bancos centrais de propriedade pública e utilizá-los para emitir o crédito do país em benefício do país, efectivamente isento de juro. Isto não é uma ideia nova mas historicamente tem sido utilizada com muito bom efeito, na Austrália por exemplo através do Commonwealth Bank of Australia e no Canadá através do Bank of Canada . […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g., in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
Reblogged this on French Road Bakery and commented:
For those who think that Canada has a much different and/or better banking system then the US’s Federal Reserve….
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
The above interest spike almost lines up exactly with the debt spike in the U.S. and Canada and when those are combined with private debt both of them are exponential trends. Exponential trends have a cause which is not based in homeostasis but has to be caused by a discrepancy in the system. In my view it is caused by a discrepancy between what all creditors earn on their deposits, in total, and what all debtors pay for their loans, in total. All debtors, as a group, pay compound interest on the full term of a loan. All creditors, as a group, earn interest on a decreasing deposit amount due to the debtors earning money from them in order for them to repay their loan. This creates an discrepancy. Below I will show an example but for simplicities sake I will use small numbers which will represent all debt ever given out to any debtor and creditor from the past right up until now, in today’s dollars, pretending it will all be given out today and that it would all average out to a term of 30 years. If it bothers you add 9 zeroes. This is an example anyone can verify:
All debtors combined borrow a 30 year fixed loan for $250,000 with a interest rate of %4 which costs them $1194 month, a total cost of $430,000 once the loan is repaid with interest, and they spend it. The creditors, as a group, deposit the $250,000. The debtors, as a group, earn $1194 month from the creditors, therefore, the creditors balance decreases $1194 month as long as they have money. A $250,000 deposit will last 19 years 2 months with %1 interest, not an uncommon rate today, and a $1194 monthly withdrawal. The total earned by all the creditors is $274,620. How can all the debtors pay off a loan with a total of $430,000 when all the creditors only end up with $274,620 total. Where do the debtors get the remaining $155,380 from over the 30 years?
What ends up happening when this discrepancy is hidden in overlapping loans is that the debtors, as a group, begin to gradually go broke trying to pay their loans, due to there being a shortage of money, this signals to them, incrementally, that they are not making enough profit and, therefore, need to raise their prices causing inflation. Why this happens is that all the loans are tightly overlapped and everything becomes an average. The average the debtor is earning from the creditor would equal the $274,620 over the next 30 years since it obviously will not bluntly stop at 19 years because new loans are created, which of course also have the prior discrepancy. That means the debtor is buying the good for the loan amount of $1194 but selling it back to the “creditor” for $762, over the 30 year average. This is not noticeable at first because it has been averaged from past loans and therefore hidden from the debtor in inflation, due to prior debtors raising prices, and existing unpaid loans which circulate in the economy. Gradually over time it does become noticeable so the debtors raise their prices, with some sooner and some later. At the same time and in incremental steps throughout the above process new loans are made every day which match the gradually increasing prices the debtors set above to try to earn what they owe.This serves to incorporate the creditor debtor discrepancy above within the new larger loans, hiding the discrepancy of the old loans while at the same time adding their own creditor/debtor discrepancy. This happens with wave after wave of loan with all the debtors raising their prices causing the next wave of loan to be based on a higher price, therefore, hiding the prior debtor/creditor earning discrepancy again and again while it increases in amount exponentially. Since the new loans incorporate the discrepancy over and over, which is hidden by inflation, with interest charged on the higher amount there is an exponential trend which starts slow and accelerates over time. Government spending and more exports than imports, injected money which in-debts another country, will slow this trend within the economy by removing part of the exponentially increasing debt from the economy and putting it on its own books, this explains Government debt increasing exponentially world wide, on average, due to Governments generally staying at roughly %x of GDP. The trend still continues and when the two sectors trends, public and private, are combined the real trend appears .This exponential trend of increasing debt cannot continue forever though, and eventually, defaults increase, banks slow lending and Government slows spending, in one order or another. At this point many defaults will occur and pricing will bottom out shedding some of the unpayable debt as restructured loans or defaults on underwater houses. In all of this the middle class and poor are taking a bigger hit, today anyway, vs the well off, relatively speaking. In essence they are losing wealth and money faster vs their total assets, on average, than more affluent individuals. After this debt clear-out the exponential trend starts all over again, slowly and more abundant at 1st then rising to a crescendo with another crash and scarcity. 1920’s was the last crescendo with 1929-1939 being the crash and depression. This time the 1990s-2000’s were the crescendo and 2008 was the beginning of the crash. The difference this time is debt is no longer tied to gold so the Government is not constrained and will continue spending and hobbling along until tax revenues mostly go to paying interest on the debt. Then what? Guess we’ll find out within the next 2-8 years.
To verify the above example of what all the creditors/depositors get in total from a savings account, while withdrawing funds which are earned from them by debtors Google: “savings withdrawal calculator.”
Then find any Mortgage calculator pick principle, term of loan and interest rate.Then put the principle you picked, interest and the monthly payment the Mortgage calculator gave you into the “savings withdrawal calculator” and it will calculate when the creditors/depositors account will be empty and how much the debtor can possibly earn from him. It will always be before the loan term and, therefore, less than what is necessary for the debt to be fully repaid.
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada.Today the issuance of money and credit has […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] En lugar de ratificar el draconiano tratado del ESM, los europeos estarían mejor aconsejados en revertir el artículo 123 del Tratado de Lisboa. A continuación, el BCE podría emitir crédito directamente a los gobiernos que lo integran. Por otra parte, los gobiernos de la zona euro podrían restablecer su soberanía económica con la reactivación de los bancos centrales de naturaleza pública y emplearlos en la emisión del crédito de la nación para beneficio de la misma, efectivamente libre de interés. Esto no es una idea nueva, pero se ha usado históricamente con muy buenos resultados, por ejemplo, en Australia a través del Commonwealth Bank of Australia y en Canadá a través del Banco de Canadá. […]
[…] En lugar de ratificar el draconiano tratado del ESM, los europeos estarían mejor aconsejados en revertir el artículo 123 del Tratado de Lisboa. A continuación, el BCE podría emitir crédito directamente a los gobiernos que lo integran. Por otra parte, los gobiernos de la zona euro podrían restablecer su soberanía económica con la reactivación de los bancos centrales de naturaleza pública y emplearlos en la emisión del crédito de la nación para beneficio de la misma, efectivamente libre de interés. Esto no es una idea nueva, pero se ha usado históricamente con muy buenos resultados, por ejemplo, en Australia a través del Commonwealth Bank of Australia y en Canadá a través del Banco de Canadá. […]
[…] En lugar de ratificar el draconiano tratado del ESM, los europeos estarían mejor aconsejados en revertir el artículo 123 del Tratado de Lisboa. A continuación, el BCE podría emitir crédito directamente a los gobiernos que lo integran. Por otra parte, los gobiernos de la zona euro podrían restablecer su soberanía económica con la reactivación de los bancos centrales de naturaleza pública y emplearlos en la emisión del crédito de la nación para beneficio de la misma, efectivamente libre de interés. Esto no es una idea nueva, pero se ha usado históricamente con muy buenos resultados, por ejemplo, en Australia a través del Commonwealth Bank of Australia y en Canadá a través del Banco de Canadá. […]
[…] historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. Today the issuance of money and credit has become the private right of vampire rentiers, who are […]
[…] using to attack us is our own misunderstanding of the government’s debt, and how it was created. The Federal government started borrowing money from private banks in 1974, when it could have create… The private banks create the money out of nothing by making a book keeping entry, and they charge […]
[…] Ao invés de ratificar o draconiano tratado MEE [1] , os europeus seriam mais avisados se revertessem o artigo 123 do tratado de Lisboa. Então o BCE poderia emitir crédito directamente para os seus governos membros. Alternativamente, governos da eurozona poderia restabelecer sua soberania económica pela ressurreição dos seus bancos centrais de propriedade pública e utilizá-los para emitir o crédito do país em benefício do país, efectivamente isento de juro. Isto não é uma ideia nova mas historicamente tem sido utilizada com muito bom efeito, na Austrália por exemplo através do Commonwealth Bank of Australia e no Canadá através do Bank of Canada . […]
[…] En lugar de ratificar el drástico tratado del Mecanismo Europeo de Estabilidad, sería más aconsejable revocar el artículo 123 del tratado de Lisboa. De esa forma el Banco Central Europeo podría emitir crédito para sus estados miembros. O de otra manera, los gobiernos de la Eurozona podrán reestablecer su soberanía económica revitalizando sus bancos centrales públicos y usándolos para emitir el crédito del estado para beneficio de la nación, sin interés. Esta no es una idea nueva, sino que se ha puesto en práctica en la historia con buen resultado, por ejemplo, en Australia a través del Banco de Australia de la Commonwealth y en Canadá a través del Banco de Canadá. […]
[…] Ao invés de ratificar o draconiano tratado MEE [1] , os europeus seriam mais avisados se revertessem o artigo 123 do tratado de Lisboa. Então o BCE poderia emitir crédito directamente para os seus governos membros. Alternativamente, governos da eurozona poderia restabelecer sua soberania económica pela ressurreição dos seus bancos centrais de propriedade pública e utilizá-los para emitir o crédito do país em benefício do país, efectivamente isento de juro. Isto não é uma ideia nova mas historicamente tem sido utilizada com muito bom efeito, na Austrália por exemplo através do Commonwealth Bank of Australia e no Canadá através do Bank of Canada . […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]
[…] Rather than ratifying the draconian ESM treaty, Europeans would be better advised to reverse article 123 of the Lisbon treaty. Then the ECB could issue credit directly to its member governments. Alternatively, Eurozone governments could re-establish their economic sovereignty by reviving their publicly-owned central banks and using them to issue the credit of the nation for the benefit of the nation, effectively interest-free. This is not a new idea but has been used historically to very good effect, e.g. in Australia through the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in Canada through the Bank of Canada. […]