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"...Colonial Scrip was a paper fiat money as opposed to specie issued by the colonies in the pre-revolution era, up until 1775. It was an altogether different money from Continental currency; which was money issued during the American Revolution, that depreciated rapidly, to fund the war effort.
Conception
Colonial Scrip was not backed by gold or silver and therefore the Colonies could control its purchasing power. This was a revolutionary concept in economics, because the conventional European mercantilist system of money required governments to borrow from banks and pay interest for those loans, as gold and silver were the only regarded forms of money. This is known as the debt-based money system, where banknotes are “bills of debt.” Colonial Scrip, however, were “bills of credit” created by the government, based on the credit of that government, and this meant that there was no interest to pay for the introduction of money. This went a considerable way towards defraying the expense of the Colonial governments and in maintaining prosperity. The Governments charged low interest when it loaned out this paper money to its citizens, with land as collateral, and this interest income lowered the tax burden on the people, contributing to prosperity.
The currency was born when a lack of gold and silver in the Colonies made trade hard to conduct, and a barter system prevailed. One by one, the Colonies began to issue their own paper money to serve as a medium of exchange to make trade vibrant. The Governments could then retire excess notes out of circulation by taxing the people, helping some Colonies generally avoid inflation. Each Colony had its own currency and some were better managed than others. It was banned by English Parliament in the Currency Act after Benjamin Franklin had explained the benefits of this currency to the British Board of Trade. Outlawing the circulating medium caused a depression in the Colonies, and Franklin and many others believed it to be the true cause of the American Revolution...."
https://21stcenturycicero.wordpress.com/fraud/colonial-scrip/
Anything goes Fri.
Speaking of off shore money, Amy Goodman does excellent segment on new documentary, “Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe.” Instead of watching brain cell killing Comcast (MSNBC) or Murdoch or Turner, Catch up on 'Democrcy Now!' This weekend.
Not sure why you want to tax corporations. The federal goverment is mainly an insurance company with guns. Corporate sales in the us has nothing to do with that. Transportation is paid by gasoline taxes. If you want them to pay education, fine, but that is independent of profits and even revenues.
widers: that's assuming people even know about it. Most people are not news -oriented, only watch the evening local news which doesn't carry anything political usually. Where are the Democratic Party on this? As usual, their lack of public comment and response is notable. It's as if they don't even care about losing. Most progressives just mock these 'backward" "vile" Alabamans, but now is not the time for ridicule. The corporate class is dead serious about taking over all branches of the government - BY HOOK OR BY CROOK! (Carl Rove's goal from way back), and the Democrats don't take them seriously - and look - they've got the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, more than half the state legislatures and governorships. You know Carl Rove couldn't believe Romney lost - he thought he had it all set up, but something, still not revealed, went wrong. You know they are not about to lose this election in 2016. Whatever is needed they are doing.- abo e board, and below board. Alabama is just the tip oif the iceberg. The Democratic Party needs to stand up now, and take Rove's plan seriously. We can no longer just believe in the above board Constitutional system, but we have to fight the adversary on their terms, For example, the Democratic Party should be checking out all computer voting machine jurisdictions,, and filing all kinds of lawsuits against Alabama and the like, even if they think the law is against them - there is always some little precedent they can pull up and rely on. Embrace the supporting lay groups that have been working on these issues, and stop considering them " conspiracy groups". All of us should "advertise" Thom's show on the back windshield of our cars, and use it to marker short news notes. I do, and get honks.
Thom,
I've listened to your show for a while on 1480 in Phoenix or at Progressive Voices via tunein.com.
I'm seeking a clarification of something I thought I heard you say during the Hour 2 segment on conservative denial of child hunger in the US.
Right before a break, I thought I heard you make statements equating Independents with so-called low information voters. Perhaps I heard that incorrectly. Woulld you review the tape and explain what you may have been trying to convery with such remarks especially since candidate Sanders (I-VT) is an independent. Did I miss something?
jtl
Independent in Phoenix
There's no such thing as genetic memory. There is no process for an organism to change its own DNA, and there's no process for reading DNA as if it were memory. The idea is ridiculous. Epigenetics is merely a modification of how strongly DNA is expressed, and contains even less information. Please stop the pseudoscience BS.
Dr818dr, Thom has talked plenty about the Republicans turning a blind eye to illegal employers (those that hire illegal immigrants) because it increases the labor supply, thereby lowering labor prices (wages).
I believe, as does Bernie Sanders, that all public colleges should be free. In most civilized countries, they already are free. We are virtually a third world country in a number of areas.
It is important for the economy that we have educated young people who can fill good paying jobs. A bright, ambitious man or woman should not be denied college due to a poor financial situation, nor should they be burdened by heavy debt. That alone is a disincentive for many who would otherwise apply.
As for the wealthy, chances are they wouldn't be attending anything but Ivy League schools anyway, but free is free. Once that policy is made, I don't think there should be discrimination. Let them come and see how the other half live. It just might do them some good.
Thom,
I can't argue with anything that you said. I can however argue with what you didn't say and what I've never seen you mention. Why is it wrong for businesses to send jobs out of the country for the cheap labor but it's okay to import workers who provide cheap labor? I've never seen you write anything about illegal aliens and the terrible impact they have on our unemployment, our wage supression and the massive amounts of government benifits that we give to those who can't find a job or can't get the hours they need.
If we somehow brought those jobs back and reopened the factories and we offered the 11-20 million illegal aliens amnesty who do you think will get hired for those jobs? Even if some of the jobs require higher skill levels the high level of unemployment will supress those wages.
Even Bernie, who has rightfully said we need to control all immigration is ready to legalize every person that's here illegally so he can lock up the Hispanic vote.
C'mon Thom, address this issue.
Regarding the British and our colonial paper currency.......I'm not aware of any British ban on colonial paper currency, but I do know that colonial assemblies all issued notes valued in either English Pounds or Spanish milled dollars. These notes helped fill the void created by the British policy of not allowing precious metal coinage into the colonies. The British only allowed their copper coinage to circulate. Most of the silver and gold coinage in circulation came from the Spanish colonies in Mexico and South America.
Continental Congress joined in the printing of paper currency during the rev war to raise money for arms which lead to rapid inflation and severe devaluation.
The economic depression created by the war eventually lead to Shay's rebellion. By 1786 Creditors refused to accept paper money because it lacked sound backing .....problem was, Debtors had little or no access to gold and silver. Rather than face foreclosures Daniel Shays organized an army made up of farmers, "Debtors".....the rebellion was eventually put down, but it lead to the realization that we needed a strong central government, and thus the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Regarding your show on October 7th.
Thom there is much more to this picture than you know. The pension is absolutely going insolvent because of total mismanagement. The Central States fund has investments in the governments of Turkey, 0% bonds in Fannie Mae a 8 dollar 7 stock investment in an 18 billion dollar portfolio, and it goes on and on. The Central States pension fund is managed exclusively by BNY Mellon, and Northern Trust, banks that received bailouts in 2008.
Thom there is a transaction in 2008 where BNY Mellon threw 5.1 Billion into their co-mingled funds and nobody, not the Feds, Central States, nor the judge overseeing this fund questioned it.
The only thing worse than a Company bundling bad mortgages and selling them off as good, is a company using pension money to cover their bad "assets".
The government take over of Central States has been a complete failure, while the administrators, investment companies, and many others have made millions of dollars from it.
The saddest thing, is the pensioners had absolutely no say in any of it.
And they now cut them.
Thom, there is other solutions. But it requires "work" on their parts, and well, it's not their own money, so why should they care.
Great article, Thom, but what you're not saying is that same media is supporting the takeover of 1-world Gov't necessitated by trade deals and financially supported by climate change alarm & the resultant push for regressive carbon taxes. NASA satellites show there has been no Earth warming since 1998, and the warming that did occur corresponds to solar radiation spikes, which are not sunspot cycle related CME's, BTW.
Yeah, now that Hillary Clinton is sinking the polls, and Bernie is gaining on her; she could have taken a more meaningful stance back in early June but she was too afraid of her donors but now that she is losing support, her donors are more willing to allow her to take a more anti-business stance vis-a-vis trade because they know once she gets in the White House, most of the Trans-pacific Partnership will have already been signedby the 12-nation Agreement pact by the Obama Administration. How sneaky, and under-handed is that Thom??????????
Why cant you (constructively) critize Hillary Rodham Clinton!????????????
The Republican base have no problem critizing their own candidates, as recent news have indicated (McCarthy as next House Speaker, today, quit, due in part to pressures from the Republican conservaties aka Right Wingers)
That should tell you right, there, Thom, but no-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.... you give Hillary Clinton more political cover and passes than you would probably ever do for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
You're making excuses for the phoney liberalism of Hillary; and, you refuse to have much spine to constructively criticize her foreign policy positions while she was SOS and her husband's economic naivte of the 1990s, including Bill Clinton's cave-in to corporate America by the way of Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
You only seem to support Bernie Sanders in the context of your national radio and through your web blog commentary; and only vocally support him when he does his Fridaqy guest on your show.
Why are you and some of these so-called progressives in the Democratic Party really, rather milkytoast and quite frankly, kind of political stupid and thick-headed.
Both Parties know that their philosophical penchant and idealogy DO NOT WIN national elections.
And by the way, why aren't you getting on Howard Dean's azz'ine appearances and commentaries, cheer-leading Hillary wherever and whenever the cameras and mikes are on him.....he mostly WANTS a position in an "Hillary Administration"
As with most political ambitions and presidental wanna be's, they're in it mostly for their egos and careers, and if there is enough crumbs leftover to toss to the American people, the people should feel so fortunate that a president would bestow upon them Unemployment benefits, medicare, and a few tax breaks to make it look like the president still "cares" about democracy and the will of the people.
It's already been mentioned in several news outlets that the political establishment and media DO NOT want a Bernie Sanders presidency because he REALLY means what he says whereas in with the other candidates, it's MOSTLY TALK aka BULLSH*TING.
mathboy, gold & silver is paper money, unless you are talking gold & silver coins which were trivial in magnitude, not practical as a the main currency even during those early days of economic systems. All that gold meant is Banksters issue paper gold certificates, which are traded just like paper money, and are not backed up by gold. All that they are is promises to pay face value in current gold price in more paper money, as is done today. There is a lot more paper gold than real gold.
Today virtually all money is just 1 & 0's, digital entries in Bank accounts.
My comment is more appropriate for chat -- my chat isnt working right now. Today Tom implied that Hillary is aping Bernie by coming out against Citizens United. I dont think that is true--Hillary has been against Citizens United since she has been able to comment (she refrained from domestic politics when Secretary of State). She may be late to the game on some issues but not on Citizen's United---especially since she was the topic of the prohibited "speech" which came to the Court case.
I would like to request plaxementr on my 49 blogs or any one of themto this site
No one is mentioning the 102 years of inflation caused by the fourth federal reserve Act system which has caused massive inflation over the years especially since Nixon unilaterally abolish the exchangeability of dollar into gold in 1951 which was agreed to at the meeting ast Bretton Woods, New Hapshire in 1944 where th dollar was granted globval reserve currency status.
No one is mentioning so council oon Foreign Relations the defacto governmnt of the United states.
No one is mentioning the Monetary Control Act of 1980 which gave enormous powers because which authorized the Federal Reserve to "monetize foreign debt." That is banker language meaning that the Fed was now authorized to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending to foreign governments. It classifies those loans as "assets" and then uses them as collateral for the creation of even more money here in the United States. That was truly a revolutionary expansion of the Fed's power to inflate. Until then, it was permitted to make money only for the American government. Now, it was able to do it for any government. Since then it has been functioning as a central bank for the entire world.
No one has mentioned the Report from Iron Mountain a think-tank study released in 1966 called the Report from Iron Mountain. Although the origin of the report is highly debated, the document itself hints that it was commissioned by the Department of Defense under Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, and was produced by the Hudson Institute located at the base of Iron Mountain in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The Hudson Institute was founded and directed by Herman Kahn, formerly of the Rand Corporation. Both McNamara and Kahn were members of the CFR.
The self-proclaimed purpose of the study was to explore various ways to "stabilize society." Praiseworthy as that may sound , a reading of the Report soon reveals that the word society is used synonymously with the word government. Furthermore, the word stabilize is used as meaning to preserve and to perpetuate. It is clear from the start that the nature of the study was to analyze the different ways a government can perpetuate itself in power, ways to control its citizens and prevent them from rebelling.
I beleive the fact of our 200 trillion indebt when all obligations are counted and the lacj of the presence of any real money in our dollas of fiat currency are what is causing the economif collapse of the U.S. as well was the rest of the world. We need a president who is going to do something about that.
James K. Galbraith ,”we are at the end of the illusion of a market place in the financial sphere.”
http://my.firedoglake.com/selise/2011/08/01/james-k-galbraith-the-final-death-and-next-life-of-maynard-keynes/
Economics is a non linear system and therefore subject to Chaos Theory. It is not close to an exact science. Someone will win the election and that is not going to have an effect either sooner or later. Power has not shifted. We will have a cliff until it collapses imminently and inevitably It will not be corrected, because it wouldn’t prevent what is to be avoided at all cost.
The fundamental problem starts with a denial of the reality of change. The idea that our economy can be modeled by some kind of long term pattern of constant economic growth modulated by periodic business cycles just does not match any objective measurements of reality. The economics profession is of limited value in understanding the problems of our economy because almost all of the profession wants to deny the reality of qualitative change. In any case, there are no economic policies that can manage dimly understood processes of long term change. Change primarily driven by technological advance is the dominant reality of human history. The post World War II era is rapidly fading into the past. All of the different hopes of recovering that era are also lost in the past..
In fact, RFord, cities used to have several newspapers, so there was competition. Somehow, with a larger population, we just don't seem to be able to maintain the same amount of industry. I wonder why that is.
So tell us, IRV, why were the founders so afraid of paper money, if it had made the colonies so prosperous?
"A truly grass-roots network" my left butt cheek!
What the Gun Lobby has that the Anti-Gun lobby does not is MONEY! There's dollars to be made selling guns, even more in the ammo business. Whose financial fortune will be increased by the passage of any kind of Gun Control legislation? Who will be in a better position to "help out" his favorite Congress-critter or Senator if we institute stronger background checks? Nobody, my friends, and therein lies the problem.
Yes ... even this problem is just a symptom of the greater problem ... it all comes back to MONEY IN POLITICS!
There is always a chance, and with so many countries involved there are more chances someone will back out and lead the way to ending such a disaster.
I think there is a ton of education restructuring at all levels are needed. as for higher education, I think there should be a program so anyone who isn't wealthy is entitled to a free public education. as for the wealthy I guess it doesn't matter for public schools since they are amost guaranteed to be going to a private very expensive campus. one way to do it is having approved degree's that they can pick from to ensure there's a demand when they graduate and anything outside their major (and minor or double major if they are capable of it) would be covered.
as for limitations: well, it'd be degree's that have have or projected to having a demand when they graduate. some occupations would even have a path all the way up to a masters or doctorates if there is a significant enough demand in those fields but by time they reach that and if they are doing well they will likely be in jobs that'd pay for those classes anyways.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."
-Thomas Pynchon, "Proverbs For Paranoids"
Dear Thom.. Knowing what we know today about our failed system I'm going to take a wild guess and bet the farm that it matter's nothing what the left or right think's or how we vote the Banking cartel that has long ago disgracefully corrupted our system and would never allow or take any chance that anything they have decided on could ever be over turned or repealed by the like's of voter's or some lowly politician . My god Thom are you blind just look at the damage they have already caused . Have any of you seen any meaningful legislation the put's an end to or does anything to help anyone but them ? I haven't and that's clearly because they will not allow it . Sure you can get up on your soap box and talk all that talk but at the end of the day Thom WE the people are no better off then we were a decade ago and that my friend is by no accident but rather careful design . So while we watch as the filthy rich get even more so we still have seen no Job's bill put forth that would even begin to start the ball to recovery rolling and unless your a naive child is again by no accident but careful design . Just take a good look at the teeth that have been so carefully removed from such agency's as the EPA the DEC or really any agency that act's as watch dog over any industry and that to is by no accident but careful design I think going back to the Powell Memorandum as it follow's it's direction to the letter just take a look and you will see like a smack in the face all the careful design I spoke of ..For Gods sake Thom these insane Petroleum cartel idiot's are using the atmospheric heater's to melt the ice for oil drilling . how much more insane are these people Thom ? Please tell Me you don't actually think that Climate change {Air pollution} is what you see those white chentrail's for do you ? They are spraying into our sky's what make the heater's effective because without the aluminum and other's they are useless , which is why the media is so vital and why they sre spraying non stop . We have been and are being systematically looted raped & plundered by the very same family's who have always done so ..just by a new generation of power drunken whore's
Yes, and for those like me who have financial restraints over long distant phone calls (which is why I chose the first option) There is no email option if your outside her disctrict she represents (Florida 23'rd disctrict restricted via zipcode) but there are other contact options on her government page contacts section including Twitter, Facebook, RSS, instogram, and Youtube.
https://wassermanschultz.house.gov/email-me/