UPDATE: This popular video is incorrect in several respects. Bankers do not end up owning everything. They certainly profit from the transactions, but they sell their debts. $1,111.11 simply does not create $100k of new money in the banking system. The proposals at the end are sorely misguided. For accurate criticism of the monetary system, go to mises.org.
I’ve watched this educational cartoon approximately five times since discovering it a few months ago. It presents the simple, tragic absurdity of our monetary system.
For example, most people believe that if individuals, companies, governments all saved and got out of debt, society would be prosperous, when the opposite is true. If everyone began saving and paying off their debts, there would be no money. Money is debt. Without debt, there is no money.
Watch at least the first three parts for an explanation of this. As an aid, I summarize each part and transcribe the many great quotes presented in the videos.
Part 1
-Early banking.
-The shift of currency from gold to paper.
-The shift of goldsmiths from artisans to bankers.
-The evolution of lending gold, to lending depositors gold, to lending non-existant gold.
-Runs on the bank.
-Government legalizes lending fictional money.
-The advent of the fractional reserve system.
-Central banks supporting local banks.
“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
– Woodrow Wilson
“Each and every time a bank makes a loan, new bank credit is created – new deposits – brand new money.”
– Graham F. Towers Governor, Bank of Canada 1934-54
“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
– John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.”
– Mayer Anselm Rothschild, Banker
I’m certain this diverges with the Austrian Economic point of view. I’ve heard this video series called socialist because it proposes government control of the monetary supply. I think the first two and half parts are an effective expose on the banking system. The ending is suspect.
See the rest: