miércoles, 24 de octubre de 2007

2007 musings by an old junior officer on "Duty, Honor, Country" to "USA corporate usurped, mercenary canon fodder"

Duty, Honor, Country 2007

An Open Letter
to the New Generation of "USA" Military Officers Serving and Protecting Our Nation

By Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., 1978
National Commander, The Patriots

Dear Comrades in Arms,

You are facing challenges in 2007 that we of previous generations never dreamed of.

I.m just an old fighter pilot (101 combat missions in Vietnam, F-4 Phantom, Phu Cat, 1969-1970) who.s now a disabled veteran with terminal cancer from Agent Orange.

Our mailing list (over 22,000) includes veterans from all branches of the service, all political parties, and all parts of the political spectrum. We are Republicans and Democrats, Greens and Libertarians, Constitutionists and Reformers, and a good many Independents.

What unites us is our desire for a government that (1) follows the Constitution, (2) honors the truth, and (3) serves the people.

We see our government going down the wrong path, all too often ignoring military advice, and heading us toward great danger. And we look to you who still serve as the best hope for protecting our nation from disaster.

We see the current Iraq War as having been unnecessary, entered into under false pretenses, and horribly mismanaged by the civilian authorities. Thousands of our brave troops have been needlessly sacrificed in a futile attempt at occupation of a hostile land. Many more thousands have suffered wounds which will change their lives forever. Tens of thousands have severe psychological problems because of what they have seen and what they have done. Potentially hundreds of thousands could be poisoned by depleted uranium, with symptoms appearing years later, just as happened to us exposed to Agent Orange.

The military services are depleted and demoralized. The VA system is under-funded and overwhelmed. The National Guard and Reserves have been subjected to tour after tour, disrupting lives for even the lucky ones who return intact. Jobs have been lost, marriages have been destroyed, homes have been foreclosed, and children have been estranged. And for what?

We have lost allies, made new enemies, and created thousands of new terrorists, further endangering the American people. But you know all this.

I.m sure you also see the enormous danger in a possible attack on Iran, possibly with nuclear weapons. Such an event, seriously contemplated by the Cheney faction of the Bush administration, would make enemies of Russia and China and turn us into the number one rogue nation on earth.

The effect on our long-term national security would be devastating.

Some of us had hoped that the new Democratic Congress would end the occupation of Iraq and take firm steps to prevent an attack on Iran, perhaps by impeaching Bush and Cheney.

These hopes have been dashed. The lily-livered Democrats have caved in, turning their backs on those few (like Congressman Jack Murtha) who understand the situation. Many of us have personally walked the halls of Congress, to no avail.

This is where you come in. We know that many of you share our concern and our determination to protect our republic from an arrogant, out-of-control, imperial presidency and a compliant, namby-pamby Congress (both of which are unduly influenced by the oil companies and other big-money interests). We know that you (like us) wouldn.t have pursued a military career unless you were idealistic and devoted to our nation and its people. (None of us do it for the pay and working conditions!) But we also recognize that you may not see how you can influence these events. We in the military have always had a historic subservience to civilian authority.

Perhaps I can help with whatever wisdom I.ve gathered from age (I retired in 1978, so I am ancient indeed). Our oath of office is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Might I suggest that this includes a rogue president and vice-president? Certainly we are bound to carry out the legal orders of our superiors. But the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) which binds all of us enshrines the Nuremberg Principles which this country established after World War II (which you are too young to remember). One of those Nuremberg Principles says that we in the military have not only the right, but also the DUTY to refuse an illegal order.

It was on this basis that we executed Nazi officers who were only carrying out their orders.. The Constitution which we are sworn to uphold says that treaties entered into by the United States are the .highest law of the land,. equivalent to the Constitution itself. Accordingly, we in the military are sworn to uphold treaty law, including the United Nations charter and the Geneva Convention.

Based on the above, I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order.

I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal.

I know for a fact that in recent history (once under Nixon and once under Reagan), the military nuclear chain of command in the White House discussed these things and were prepared to refuse an order to nuke Russia.

In effect they took the (non-existent) button out of the hands of the President. We were thus never quite as close to World War III as many feared, no matter how irrational any president might have become.

They determined that the proper response to any such order was, "Why, sir?." Unless there was (in their words) a damn good answer, nothing was going to happen.

I suggest that if you in this generation have not had such a discussion, perhaps it is time you do.

In hindsight, it´s too bad such a discussion did not take place prior to the preemptive "shock and awe" attack on Baghdad. Many of us at the time spoke out vehemently that such an attack would be an impeachable offense, a war crime against the people of Iraq, and treason against the United States of America.

But our voices were drowned out and never reached the ears of the generals in 2003. I now regret that I never sent a letter such as this at that time, but depended on the corporate media to carry my message. I must not make that mistake again.

Also in hindsight, President Bush could be court-martialed for abuse of power as Commander-in- Chief. Vice President Cheney could probably be court-martialed for his performance as Acting Commander-in-Chief in the White House bunker the morning of September 11, 2001. We in the U.S. military would never consider a military coup, removing an elected president and installing one of our own. But following our oath of office, obeying the Nuremberg Principles, and preventing a rogue president from committing a war crime is not a military coup.

If it requires the detention of executive branch officials, we will not impose a military dictatorship. We will let the Constitutional succession take place. This is what we are sworn to. This is protecting the Constitution, our highest obligation.

In 2007,
this is what is meant by "Duty, Honor, Country."

Thank you all for your service to this nation. May God bless America, and sustain us in this difficult time. And thanks for listening to the musings of an old junior officer.

Respectfully,
Robert M. Bowman, PhD, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. 1978
1494 Patriot Dr, Melbourne, FL 32940
home phone (321) 752-5955; cell (321) 258-0582

jueves, 4 de octubre de 2007

Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank System, Now!

“We Hold These Truths”by Richard C. Cook


“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776


For the last nine months the author has been publishing essays on economic and monetary reform on Global Research and other websites. The essays have evoked a worldwide response, translation into a number of languages, and a readership in the tens of thousands.


“We Hold These Truths” is the concluding article of the series.


The author took on this project after retiring after thirty-two years in the field of public policy and finance. Following graduation from the College of William and Mary in 1970, he worked for the federal government and taught history. He spent over twenty years with the U.S. Treasury Department where his experience was practical rather than academic.

His basic thesis is that we have today a tragically escalating danger to democracy and world peace which stems from a flawed monetary system that is essentially a centuries-old relic.


In 1913, the nation’s private bankers, allied with those of Great Britain and continental Europe, gained nearly complete control of the monetary supply of the U.S. They did this through passage by Congress of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The immediate result was massive inflation and a huge increase in the national debt through bank financing of World War I.


There then followed the prosperity of the industrial growth of the 1920s until the bursting of a speculative bubble and contraction of the money supply brought on the Great Depression. The Depression ended, not by any action by the banks or the initiative of the private sector, but through massive government spending on social programs followed by expenditures for World War II.


After the war, the U.S. remained the world’s greatest industrial power until the 1970s. Since then, the policy known as monetarism has prevailed, by which the private financial interests reasserted the predominance they had lost during and after the New Deal.


Today those interests reign supreme. The difference is that while at the start of the Depression the financiers exerted their power by making money scarce, they have adapted to circumstances and now accomplish the same ends by inflating it out of recognition.

Meanwhile, U.S. manufacturing has been replaced by the rise of the “service economy,” with reliance on worldwide “dollar hegemony” backed by military power to finance our trade and fiscal deficits.


An economy subservient to monetarism administered at the top by the Federal Reserve System is one that is based on financial bubbles and an escalating pyramid of debt.


Consumers, businesses, and government at all levels are drowning in so much debt that the only people making any money are those who operate the financial sector and control the global corporations.


The profits of private financial interests in 2006 exceeded $500 billion in an economy with a GDP of $13 trillion. The ill effects of this drag on the economy cannot be overestimated. While the financial sector has prospered, even through the recent crisis marked by Federal Reserve bailouts of floundering investors, the producing economy of working men and women has been in recession for over a year and is bogged down in a stagflation reminiscent of the 1970s.


The author’s primary recommendation is to replace a Federal Reserve controlled by private finance with a new structure centered around the creation of a democratic currency, one based on recognition of credit as a public utility.

Such a system could be created by using the best ideas of monetary reformers from American history, elsewhere around the world, and past practices such as issuance of the Greenbacks in Civil War days and low-cost credit made available during the New Deal.


If applied worldwide, such reforms could remove many of the causes of the economic and social distress that have made the last century, though prosperous for a minority, among the most destructive in human history. To achieve the potential offered to mankind by today’s era of science and technology applied to production, the program described herein is among the most far-reaching ever presented.


What We Must Do Today
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are, or should be, the fruits of democracy. But the political democracy as defined by the Declaration of Independence has not been achieved, because economic democracy for the masses remains a distant dream. The attainment of real economic democracy is the next task for the human race in a world on the brink of destruction.


In the midst of the most productive world economy in history, the U.S. and much of the world today are in crisis, with stagnant or falling incomes, rising prices, collapse of societal purchasing power, persistent poverty, and skyrocketing debt. Many experts are predicting a worldwide economic depression, as people with money mobilize their institutions, armies, and police forces to protect themselves inside their gated communities and “green zones.”


No one in an official capacity has provided a convincing explanation of what is really going on in the world economy. In the West, we have been deceived for generations by the notion that economics is a science that operates under fixed laws that can be modeled mathematically by specialists trained in “neoclassical” methods. Many economists, especially those associated with the “Chicago School,” bow at the mention of “market forces,” assuming they are somehow “real,” though existing beyond the reach of human will and direction.


None of this is true. There are no such things as the “laws” assumed by the neoclassicists, as even Nobel laureates are starting to recognize. See, for instance, “There is No Invisible Hand” by Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, The Guardian, December 20, 2002. The concept of an Invisible Hand guiding market forces was invented by English writers of the pre-industrial age to explain supply-and-demand in a village economy. It gained ideological force because it was a convenient way to fight Marxism and keep government from interfering with the growing power of finance capitalism during the nineteenth century.


Of course there are plenty of habits and conventions, myths and prejudices in the way modern economies function. But the “laws” are the ones created by governments controlled by powerful people who work the levers of legalized influence to augment their wealth through legislative favor. Behind all the rhetoric about “markets” are a host of government-granted monopolies and cartels, especially those engaged in the lending of money, the trading of oil, and the manufacture of weapons.

The most egregious and harmful monopoly of all is the banking monopoly that controls the Federal Reserve System.


Again, the laws of the economic system are man-made. In some cases, the laws may provide benefits to those who work for a living, but in most cases not. What we forget is that any of these laws can be changed and that many of them now should and must be changed.


Besides, haven’t we learned by now that what has aptly been called “market fundamentalism” is really shorthand for the totalitarianism of money? It’s a fact that long ago control of economic life in the U.S. and other Western nations was turned over to a monetary elite who control both industry and resources through the issuance of credit that originates from the privilege of centrally-controlled fractional reserve banking.


Through this system, the people of the world, even in prosperous nations, have been reduced to the status of debt-slaves. This vestige of the financial system of the Middle Ages allows banks to produce credit “out of thin air” and lend it at a profit. Similar systems exist in communist nations like China. The only difference is that the central bank there is controlled by the government and the ruling party elite.


Within the U.S., the banks lend to consumers, businesses, investors, speculators, and to federal, state, and local governments. Under the banking laws, they generate this credit against a small “reserve base” consisting of customer deposits, government debt, and overnight deposits from corporations and government agencies known as repurchase agreements, or “repos.” The size of these deposits, along with lending potential based on them, has exploded over the last two decades in the era of electronic funds transfer.


The dependence of economic life on debt has assured that there has been a steady flow of wealth from the producing economy of goods and services into the financial web which surrounds it. Debt from lending at interest grows at an exponential rate. This is especially the case today when the banks rule the economy through the system of monetarism, where the money supply is regulated by the raising and lowering of interest rates. This is in fact a system of institutionalized usury.


Within the U.S., where the public and private infrastructures have been stripped through privatization, outsourcing, mergers, and acquisitions, every period of economic growth in the last generation has been largely a bank-created bubble. Each time a bubble bursts the financiers gain more wealth by buying assets at bankruptcy prices. The latest was the housing bubble, and we have started to see the bursting of an even larger bubble consisting of securities and investment funds. In fact, the financiers have already been taking advantage of the broad monetary collapse by purchasing bargain stocks through the fluctuations of the stock market.
Control of wealth by high finance is the main reason the bounty of science and technology has not assured a better life to the majority of the people of the world.


Despite the power of industrial processes which have the capability of providing a decent living to everyone in the world—contrary to the myth of global overpopulation—the world still lives under the illusion of scarcity. This tends to justify the senseless struggle for wealth and control of resources. But it’s one of the most glaring examples of the condition of mass hypnotism that has weighed humanity down throughout the ages.


Ethically, the illusion of scarcity leads to the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, the fight for dominance and supremacy. “Economic man,” whether capitalist or communist, still lives at the animal or sub-human level. The higher laws of human ethics, including the injunction to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” have been ignored. But they need not be forgotten if we wake up to the fact that we have it in our power to live in a much different and better world.


The present situation is just as harmful to the wealthy and powerful who hold their fellow men in bondage as it is to the debtors they oppress, for the rich as well are deprived of the benefits of living in a world where human being are free, happy, generous, and productive. Also, the system harms everyone through the gross over-consumption and waste needed to maximize profits, as well as through potentially catastrophic pollution.


The solution to the problem that cries out around the world for recognition is monetary reform based on principles of economic democracy. But such reform must include the realization that science and technology long ago removed the need for everyone on the planet to work all the time just to survive. Humanity, through its work and sacrifice, has earned the “leisure” dividend that reformers have talked about for over a century but which has yet to be realized.


Research shows that the U.S. actually had a balanced and reasonable approach to monetary matters for much of its history. The thirteen American colonies built a dynamic pre-industrial economy without the presence of a single bank. Throughout the nineteenth century, we developed the most powerful economy on earth without a large national debt. Our economy was largely capitalized by the availability of land, the capital markets, and retained corporate earnings. Money came into circulation by minting of gold and silver coins, government distribution of gold and silver certificates, Greenbacks that had been spent into circulation by the government during the Civil War, and a modest amount of bank money used to support commerce.


It took the efforts and sacrifice of the organized labor movement and even the threat of revolution, but by the year 1900, workers in the U.S. and Europe had begun to share in the bounty. Much of the world was at peace after a century of economic development, and it seemed to many that mankind stood on the threshold of epochal breakthroughs in prosperity and cooperation. Today in 2007, where people’s spirits have been crushed by decades of war, social and interpersonal conflict, and the economic rat race, we have no appreciation at all of the sense of excitement and optimism abroad in the world around the turn of the twentieth century. Even in history books, this spirit has seldom been captured, with the 965-page volume by historian Page Smith entitled The Rise of Industrial America the rare exception.


But by 1914 a world war had begun. The completely unanticipated horror and devastation of this conflict shattered an entire generation. It led to a century of war, economic turmoil, and psychic alienation that continues in full force today. In the U.S., the shift to an age of upheaval was marked by a crucial turning point which took place when Congress gave away its constitutional authority over money to a small group of private bankers known as “the Money Trust” through enactment of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.


It happened on December 23, 1913, when most of Congress had left Washington, D.C., for the Christmas recess. The plans for the Federal Reserve System had been drawn up by a committee of politicians and financiers, including bankers imported from Europe to explain to the Americans how these sorts of things were done. Informed people had always known that a central bank controlled by financial interests was the road to economic tyranny, which was why both the First and Second Banks of the United States had been discontinued long ago and why the nation had operated without a central bank since the 1830s. Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., (D-MN), father of the future aviator, called the Federal Reserve Act “the worst legislative crime of the ages.” But the Money Trust prevailed.


The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which had been passed earlier in 1913, created an income tax that would be needed to pay the interest on the national debt that the financiers knew would soar into the stratosphere once the Federal Reserve System had been implemented. It was a fact that throughout history, central banks, government debt, and excessive military spending had gone hand-in-hand. Not accidentally, the Federal Reserve Act marked the beginning of the tragic century of world conflict that still afflicts us.
We in the U.S. now need to reclaim our monetary system as an institution of democracy before our government and those of the great Asian land powers make the fatal error of igniting yet another world conflagration. The war in Iraq and the ongoing U.S. military conquest to control Middle Eastern oil and shore up the sliding dollar are just another episode in a sad, familiar story. Whether we do it now or in the midst of the rubble of our civilization, we must remove the central monetary controllers from their stranglehold over the economy as the first step in a return to social, political, and economic sanity.


A lifetime of involvement in public finance with the federal government has led the author to call for one basic reform to move in the direction of accomplishing this objective. In order to start redressing the damage that began in 1913, we should now abolish the privately-controlled Federal Reserve as a bank of issue and re-establish constitutional control of credit as a public utility.


Public creation of credit should be reflected in two basic policies: 1) direct issuance of credit to citizens through a basic income guarantee, a periodic National Dividend, and low-interest bank lending; and 2) direct spending by government for essential services—i.e., restoring the Greenback last seen in Civil War days and the decades following—combined with public low-interest financing of infrastructure investment.


Taking these steps would allow us to reduce much of the onerous burden of taxation at the federal, state, and municipal levels. It would also create a money supply which is properly independent of the banking system. Under a system of economic democracy, banks would have a role, but only in facilitating commerce. They would not create money through debt, and they would not dictate economic decisions based exclusively on pecuniary values.


At this point a note of clarification is in order. There are many people today who advocate a return to the gold standard but who are confused about the definition of “fiat money.”

There are actually different types of “fiat money.”

The debt-based credit created by the Federal Reserve System, often called “fiat money,” is not money at all. It is simply temporary credit with a lien against it for repayment with interest.

But real “fiat money,” like the Civil War Greenbacks or the American colonial paper currency, was true democratic money that was spent into circulation by government and was never inflationary in and of itself. Rather it allowed commerce to expand and people to prosper.
This type of fiat money created at the grassroots level to generate citizen purchasing power is actually the key to economic democracy in the modern industrial era. The question of assuring purchasing power to the masses of citizens is the key economic issue of the industrial age, though it was not recognized as susceptible of correction by national governments until the onset of what came to be called Keynesian economics during the Great Depression.


But Keynesian economics—leading to the hybrid known as the welfare state—was only a partial solution and was largely abandoned upon the arrival in the 1980s of the conservative ideologies associated with “Reaganism” in the U.S. and “Thatcherism” in Great Britain. These were really throwbacks to pre-industrial economic thinking, where it was assumed that additional “supply” would generate the purchasing power necessary to consume it—hence the term “supply-side economics.” In fact, it was the economics of the medieval manor brought back to life in the space age, with a good deal of bitterness thrown in when it didn’t work.


The results are what we see today—an escalating economic disaster where, under the monetarist system, the shortage of purchasing power is imperfectly met by bank lending at a level that ultimately bankrupts consumers, businesses, and government alike.


Instead, what the author is advocating it the issuance of grassroots credit through a basic income guarantee, a National Dividend, and low-cost bank lending, combined with self-financed government infrastructure programs that would reflect the necessary role of government in supplying the deficit in purchasing power to the economy.

This would correct the flaws in Keynesian economics by removing government deficit spending and high levels of taxation from the credit equation.


More details on this program are provided by the author’s Global Research articles, particularly the ones entitled “An Emergency Program of Monetary Reform for the U.S.” (April 26, 2007) and “Monetary Reform and How a National Monetary System Should Work” (May 11, 2007). These articles rely heavily on the Social Credit ideas of British engineer C.H. Douglas (1879-1952). Douglas, like Keynes, identified the chronic gap between prices and purchasing power as the central problem in economics, a gap whose existence had been denied by the early industrial “classical” economists such as Mill, Malthus, and Ricardo.


The existence of the gap between prices and purchasing power had been identified by Keynes as the central problem in economics in his landmark work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, published in 1935. Keynes knew that the underlying cause of the Great Depression was the fact that an industrial economy generated insufficient income through wages, salaries, and dividends for society to pay the prices firms had to charge for their output in order to secure sufficient retained earnings. A substantial level of reinvestment is an absolute necessity for firms operating in an industrial economy because of the depreciation of the physical plant and access to resources, also known as entropy. Keynes recommended that governments commit to deficit spending through borrowing as a means by which society could fill the price-purchasing power gap.

But Douglas saw this as an imperfect solution which would only add to the economy’s overall debt burden. Instead he advocated the simple expedient of a direct government payment to individuals through both a National Dividend and price subsidies. The National Dividend would be a payment against a book entry based on the overall appreciation of the value of the economy over time and, reflecting growth of societal wealth, one which would be non-inflationary and generated without recourse to taxation or borrowing. Douglas’s ideas were repressed through opposition by British and U.S. financiers who quite willing to support the Keynesian solution because government borrowing played into their hands.


Since World War II, the U.S. economy, the strongest in the world, has been a battleground between Keynesianism and monetarism, though the struggle has borne a certain resemblance to the fight to the death between the tyrannosaurus and triceratops of popular movie fare in that it’s really a struggle between two outmoded dinosaurs.


Thus we have not been able to do without massive amounts of government deficit spending, with monetarism meanwhile working to generate huge amounts of debt at relatively high interest rates compared to the New Deal era. Economic growth, which Keynesian economics relied on to stay ahead of the debt curve, has not been able to keep pace since the 1970s.


Today’s bankrupt monstrosity is the result. The solution is to do today what should have been done in the 1930s, which is to implement economic democracy, with Douglas’s Social Credit ideas a starting point. It’s the whole package of reforms which the author has come to refer to as “credit administered as a public utility.”


Reform Recommendations
The articles compiled in the Global Research essays referenced above contain numerous recommendations for actions that would restore the issuance and management of credit as a public utility under the commonwealth of American citizens which is recognized by the U.S. Constitution as the ultimate governing authority. That is what is meant by “We the People.” Credit administered as a public utility would reflect the discoveries of C.H. Douglas and other reformers and is the single most important principle that must be understood for economic democracy to become a reality either in the U.S. or the rest of the world.

The monetary system that rules the world today mainly benefits the financial controllers because credit is defined by law as their property. The principle of administering credit as a public utility, as it properly should be in a democracy, would change this. People who want to escape the status of debt-slavery should think about this principle, talk about it, and then implement it, remembering that every democratic culture in history has been based on the ability of the individual to create economic value without being under the total control of someone in power over him.

That ability still existed in the U.S. and other places around the globe until early in the twentieth century. Over the course of the last hundred years, it has been completely taken away through the twin atheistic collectivisms of finance capitalism and communism. These are really two sides of the same coin, for the banker and the commissar are both financial dictators living under the materialistic delusion.


Following is a comprehensive list of reforms that would restore the ability of economic self-direction at the citizen level within the U.S. The recommendations are divided into immediate, near-term, and long-term actions.


Note that monetary reform will make possible a large number of additional economic and political changes, including a transformation of the military posture of the U.S., since we no longer will have to fight the rest of humanity to compensate for our monetary weaknesses.


Monetary reform would also make available the tools to deal with the scourge of over-consumption and resource waste that exist because of the need to artificially inflate the GDP in order to pay down the societal debt burden.
Immediate

· Abolish the Federal Reserve as a bank of issue and reconstitute it as a financial processing bureau servicing the public and private financial sectors under the authority of the U.S. Treasury Department.

· Place all U.S. monetary operations under a Monetary Control Board that shall operate as a federal regulatory agency under the administrative supervision of the Secretary of the Treasury.

· Abolish Federal Reserve open market operations by authorizing credit directly issued by the U.S. Treasury as collateral for all U.S. bank lending.

· Restore private banking operations in the U.S. to the “real bills” doctrine and abolish all lending for financial asset and securities speculation.

· Outlaw hedge funds.

· Replace all Federal Reserve notes by U.S. Treasury certificates.

· Place the entire U.S. national debt under bankruptcy reorganization.
· Authorize the executive branch to begin direct Greenback-type funding of selected operational programs.
· Establish a self-collateralized Federal Infrastructure Bank to lend to state and local governments for long-term projects at zero percent interest.
· Restore the pre-2005 federal personal bankruptcy law.
· Utilize an off-budget national credit account to issue an annual guaranteed basic income to all legal U.S. residents in the amount of $10,000 per adult and $5,000 per dependent child.
· Establish a National Price Commission to work toward a system-wide fair pricing policy for the U.S.
· Freeze budgets and hiring for all federal government agencies, including the military and all contractors.


Near-Term
Adopt as a primary monetary goal the backing of our currency with domestic production within the physical economy rather than the “print, loan, charge, and spend” policy of bank-centered monetarism.


Extend the authority of the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate and eliminate predatory financial practices within U.S. capital markets that are destructive to U.S. industry, infrastructure, and labor.


Use the findings of the National Price Commission to establish an annual National Dividend that provides citizens with their rightful benefits accruing from the appreciation of national productive capacity through the application of science and technology to productive processes.


The National Dividend shall utilize the amount of the guaranteed basic income as a floor in calculating benefits and shall consist in both direct payments to citizens and pricing subsidies for products sold in U.S. markets.


Establish a new federal agency to oversee and regulate mortgage funding, assure low-interest lending for housing, and protect the housing markets from predatory financial practices including the inflation and deflation of housing bubbles.


Assure funding and legislative support to implement energy-conservation actions such as those contained in the 2005 report of the Rocky Mountain Institute entitled, “Winning the Oil End-

Game: Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security.”


Provide increased federal R&D funding for new energy technologies.


Provide funding for free college-level education for all U.S. citizens.


Reverse privatization of public utilities and re-regulate on a fair-price basis.


Protect and extend union collective bargaining rights.


Restore public service requirements for media broadcasting.


Establish public funding for all U.S. elections along with mandatory free air time for political candidates.


Depoliticize all agencies of the executive branch from undue corporate influence in decision-making and establish new and meaningful programs of public access and participation.
Establish federal support mechanisms allowing community banks to provide low-interest loans at one percent interest to small businesses and consumers.


Utilize a federal-state partnership to establish a series of ten regional mega-universities within the United States to serve both U.S. and international student audiences.
Reconstitute the federal budget by eliminating programs supplanted by the guaranteed basic income, utilization of direct Greenback-type funding where appropriate, and selective users’ fees.


Eliminate collateralization of private sector banking with federal debt securities. Emergency borrowing by the federal government will take place only through direct sale of Treasury bonds, not through the banking system.


Eliminate all federal, state, and municipal income taxes and replace to the extent needed with a national sales tax.


Establish a mandatory annual income ceiling for individuals and corporations.


Establish a mandatory national building and zoning code that provides for affordable housing, use of renewable energy resources, and expanded mass transit.


Recreate and revitalize the nation’s railroads.


Establish a system of single-payer universal health care that draws heavily on concepts of lifestyle and prevention.


Establish meaningful programs of center city renewal to transform “death zones” into vibrant centers of urban culture.


Abolish the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the North American Free Trade Association and replace them with an international monetary authority under the U.N. whose function is to regulate international currency exchange to the mutual benefit of all parties.


Place all outstanding loans by the IMF and World Bank under bankruptcy reorganization.


Support models of sustainable economic development among developing countries.
Begin the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from overseas bases.


Outlaw all covert warfare carried out by U.S. government agencies.
Eliminate all military programs of domestic surveillance and all overseas surveillance, detention, and torture contrary to established international law.


Reduce U.S. arms sales abroad to essential defense requirements.
Eliminate all U.S. funding of mercenary or contractor military forces.
Reconstitute the CIA and NSA as supporters of a defensive military posture and depoliticize their operations in order to assure accurate professional data-gathering and analysis.
Reconstitute the State Department as an agency to support the democratic aspirations of the people of the world.


Long-Term
Eliminate the entire U.S. national debt.


Carry out a general demilitarization of American culture.


Reduce the military budget by elimination of wars of “choice,” abandonment of “full spectrum dominance,” and restoration of a military devoted to defense of the U.S.
Work with the nations of the world on establishing democratic economic systems based on utilization of credit as a public utility in accordance with U.S. constitutional traditions.


Undertake reclamation and desalination programs to bring water supplies to drought-stricken areas.


Accomplish a permanent long-term conversion to renewable energy sources, including water-fueled hydrogen cells suitable to provide all power needs for homes and businesses.
Refocus the U.S. space program on activities that support space science and the economic development of space resources.


The Last Tyranny
One final recommendation could be made, which would be to restore to our citizens the money they have been forced to borrow during their lifetimes while forgoing the benefits of a National Dividend which could have been implemented decades ago. At a current estimated value of over $12,000 per year, the lifetime amount that should be paid to each citizen by the banking system would average around $500,000 per adult in today’s dollars. This figure represents the amount of debt we have had to incur, not including interest, due to a flawed financial system.


As monetary reformers of the past have affirmed, a program like this represents a spiritual vision. It cannot be achieved by moving pieces around on an economic or political chessboard. It requires a new way of looking at humanity—as individuals, who, like oneself or one’s family or one’s nation or those of one’s religion, also have a right to a life of economic security. But this program is not Utopian. We would still have to work, plan, and make wise decisions. But distribution of the bounty of the earth would become much more fair and equitable.


Of course no one can say how much more time must pass before such a program could be implemented. The illusion of scarcity has society in its grip. Will it take another world war, likely a nuclear one, to get us to wake up? A revolution? Catastrophes from pollution or global warming? Or perhaps a combination. One thing is certain. If the U.S. political leadership so desired, they could remove the financiers from their position of control tomorrow.


For now, however, enlightened individuals must do the best they can to acquire and maintain a positive perspective and be prepared for the time when conditions ripen. Measures such as getting out of debt, creating local currency/barter systems, growing our own food, forming conscious communities, starting small businesses, and acquiring manual skills are some of the economic actions people can take to protect themselves.


Just realize that someday monetary reform based on control of credit as a public utility will be recognized as the most fundamental requirement of economic democracy and will be implemented. It’s been said that the tyranny of money is “the last tyranny.”
Copyright 2007 by Richard C. Cook. Permission granted to reprint with attribution.


Richard C. Cook is a retired federal analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, and NASA, followed by twenty-one years with the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on monetary reform, economics, and space policy have appeared on Global Research, Economy in Crisis, Dissident Voice, Atlantic Free Press, and elsewhere.

He is the author of “Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.” His website is at http://www.richardccook.com/ .