Summary of all top ten Americans for monetary reform: the most important economic policy in US history

hyperlinks and video live at source: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m10d6-Top-10-Americans-for-monetary-reform-history-and...

The financial crisis in America today could be over almost instantaneously through monetary reform. Monetary reform is a fundamental shift in how America creates money. The shift is from a Robber Baron-era design of banks creating credit to lend to us at interest and ever-increasing debt, to our community (government) creating it for the direct payment of public goods and services. The benefits of monetary reform are conservatively $1 TRILLION every year, the end of the national debt, and full employment.

Please review the links above to fully understand this idea.

The power of monetary reform is evident in history. Napoleonic France quickly became the world’s leading economy and Paris its most beautiful city after ten years of violent revolution that killed or drove-off their economic leadership. Nazi Germany overcame tragic-comic hyperinflation to become the model economy during the Great Depression. These nations were in worse economic conditions than America today (economic power needs to be invested in the public good, not for empire).

This top 10 list of Americans who understood monetary reform deserve your attention. Given our economic condition, you literally have nothing more valuable for your attention. Each of the ten gives unique and added perspective for your learning of this multi-trillion dollar topic.

As always, please share this article with all who say they want to be a competent citizen. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe by clicking under the article title (it’s free). Feel free to peruse my other articles here. Following the list of our top 10 is two short video-clips of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul discussing monetary reform in the present.

1.Thomas Edison (1847-1931) held over 1,000 US patents for his inventions and is considered among the most brilliant minds in American history. Edison understood the engineering of our monetary system and actively spoke for monetary reform. The following seven paragraphs are from an interview with the New York Times in 1921 from a publicity tour Edison took with his friend and fellow inventor Henry Ford to discuss monetary reform at a potential site for a hydroelectric dam at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He discusses with the reporter how the US government should directly create the money for this public good.

2.Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, a foundation of American ideals. He was a scholar of the Enlightenment, including religious tolerance and freedom. Jefferson’s written work is extensive. He communicates strong understanding of banks creating credit that cause inflation to devalue everyone’s currency, the gambling of created credit such as we see today in credit default swaps and exotic derivative trading, and states, “Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.” My personal analysis is that Mr. Jefferson did not fully understand the power of creating money directly for the public good. However, he was quite eloquent to the dangers of the banking system creating and gambling with credit, the monetary and financial system we still have today.

3.Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) is the last US President to pay-off the national debt. He did so only after ending the Federal Reserve of his day, the privately-owned Second Bank of the United States. The story is told in the 10-minute video below from the Money Masters. As did Thomas Jefferson, Jackson understood the subversive act and perpetual national debt with banks creating money to lend to the government. He did not understand the positive policy response of the government creating money directly for the payment of public goods and services.

4.Peter Cooper (1791-1883) was one of America’s leading inventors and businessmen. He designed and built the first US locomotive in 1830, the “Tom Thumb.” Cooper was the first to introduce anthracite coal into iron production in 1845, resulting in the US’ first wrought iron beams for construction. In 1854, Cooper was a founder in the telegraph company that created the first trans-Atlantic cable. He patented Jell-O. In 1859, he founded The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a university in New York City that grants full scholarships to the nation’s brightest students with express admittance to all regardless of race, religion or sex. Peter Cooper was the newly-formed National Greenback Party candidate for President in 1876. Cooper learned about monetary policy from Albert Gallatin, US Secretary of the Treasury from 1801-1814.

5.John F. Hylan (1868-1936) was Mayor of New York City from 1918 to 1925. New York has long been the US banking and financial headquarters, with the mayor’s office about a half-mile from the New York Stock Exchange. Hylan has two revealing communications in strong argument for monetary reform. The first is four paragraphs from a speech he made in Chicago on March 26, 1922 and reported in the New York Times the following day in the article titled, “HYLAN TAKES STAND ON NATIONAL ISSUES" (and here with immaterial other commentary). The next are 12 extensive paragraphs reported by the New York Times on Dec. 10, 1922 in the article titled, “HYLAN ADDS PINCHOT TO PRESIDENCY LIST; FORESEES A REVOLT.”

6.These revealing comments come from two Chairpersons of the House Banking Committee, totaling 24 years of service in that position of comprehensive insight into American banking. Louis McFadden (1876-1936) was Chair from 1919-1931, and Wright Patman (1893-1976) was Chair from 1963-1975. After the two gentlemen’s remarks is a new 10-minute video from “The Secrets of Oz,” the sequel of the acclaimed “Money Masters” documentary.

7.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was a Founding Father of the United States and one of the most accomplished inventors and brilliant minds in human history. Among his achievements was the discovery of how to fund a government without taxes. Ok, Ben didn't invent this, but he was bright enough to recognize its power, write for it, and act for it's permanency in policy. This article will concisely summarize the method, document its veracity in conservative history, allow Mr. Franklin to explain it to you directly, and finish with a scenic 7-minute video describing Mr. Franklin’s contributions.

8.William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) was an attorney, one of the nation’s most popular public speakers, and the Democratic Party’s choice for President in three elections: 1896, 1900, and 1908. Bryan’s political populism centered on American monetary policy. He supported an expansion of the money supply in response to a national depression in the 1890’s by rejecting the gold standard, a limitation on currency based on a fractional reserve of gold holdings. His powerful stand for monetary reform is clearly expressed in his “Cross of Gold” speech in accepting the Democratic Party nomination for President in 1896, quoted below (click here to listen to Bryan’s reading of the speech 25 years later).

9.Charles Lindbergh Sr. (1859-1924) was a member of the House of Representatives from 1907-1917 (R-MN). Lindbergh became disgusted with the leadership of both Republicans and Democrats, and ran as an unsuccessful third-party candidate for the Senate, Congress, and Governor from 1916 until his death. Lindbergh was among the leading spokespersons against the Federal Reserve and against US involvement in World War 1. Lindbergh’s powerful Congressional speech from his 1917 book Why is Your Country at War?, page 156, that alleges the Money Trust created the privately-owned Federal Reserve banking system to maximize their own profits. This speech is as strong and accurate a message that can be communicated. It is fully worth your investment of under 5 minutes' attention.

10.The Great Depression in the US (1929-1941) motivated professional economists to comprehensively and creatively address its causes. Upon consideration of previous US economic depressions in 1837, 1873, and 1893, prominent economists led by Henry Simons at the University of Chicago proposed monetary reform as the nation’s most effective and practical policy response, known as the Chicago Plan (and here). This proposal was endorsed by Simons’ colleague, Paul Douglas, Frank Graham and Charles Whittlesley of Princeton, Irving Fisher of Yale, Earl Hamilton of Duke, Willford King of NYU, and sent to a thousand academic economists for their input. Three hundred twenty responded to the mailed proposal and survey (an impressively high number for a cold-call proposal and survey) from 157 universities, with 73% in full agreement with the proposal, 12.5% in approval with various considerations in its implementation, and only 14% in disagreement.

Fiat currency

Currency is what is acceptable as a medium for trade. Money, on the other hand, is a commodity. That's my understanding. Currency can in some instances be created, but if the currency is money, it is the underlying creation of the commodity that is important, for example, by growing tobacco, which was for a long time used as "money" in the colonies, or by mining gold or silver, and these things are generally created, not specifically for use as money, but for the other purposes the society uses them for.

I think what you are getting at is that you are going to create a stable fiat currency. I will point out a few objections to such a currency that are generally not touched on. If you decide to peg the currency to a market basket of goods in order to measure its "stability," you will in essence be price fixing. You will end up negating market signals that come from supply, demand and cost of production of the various items in the market basket. This will ultimately cause problems in the monetary system and in the economy.

I believe that if you try to keep prices stable based on your market basket system of valuation, you will end up having to so restrict the supply of currency that interest rates will be very high. On the other hand, if you decide to supply the demand for currency and keep interest rates low, you will end up with inflation, or what is the same thing, a downward valuation of the currency with respect to your market basket.

What in essence will happen is that the free market will eventually value the currency for what it is worth, an accounting entry in a book, which has little bearing in terms of vaue on the face value of the currency and its value with respect to the market basket of good. In other words, the market will eventually let you know that your currency is essentially worthless.

In the old days, when credit was circulated as currency, it was known that the notes would eventually be redeemed in gold, and the successful currencies were eventually redeemed. No real harm in that. I could sign on to that kind of program. Even the greenbacks of Lincoln were that sort of currency. As long as the notes say that they are redeemable in a quantity of "lawful money" equal to the face value stated on the notes, I see no harm. But to think that you will be able to maintain the "face value" of the notes by merely printing them and putting them into circulation, I think that will not happen.

So for those who believe you can divorce a currency from money, and expect it to retain its value, I would rather steer things in a different direction. Unfortunately, or realistically, you must devote a portion of real resources, such as a monetized commodity, to the monetary system. There is no way around it. That is my opinion on the subject. And I think Andrew Jackson would be horrified at a monetary system that was not gold/silver based.

You're missing several important points

Hi pduveen,
Money is whatever we say it is. It's origin from Aristotle's writing is that money is a function of the law and not a thing of value in itself. The history of fiat currency that is not a commodity has a far superior history than commodity-money. The Greeks, Romans (when they were successful), Ben Franklin's direct experience and experimentation in Pennsylvania, Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany (be sure to invest wisely) used money as a symbol of wealth and not the wealth itself. Restricting currency to a commodity puts an unnecessary and dangerous variable into the money supply equation.

I would issue credit as a public service with non-profit interest rates. History has shown that increasing the money supply along with economic growth is not inflationary. Friedman, Fisher, Keynes all argued that this would be the case. Gold-backed currency caused the crashes of 1873, 1893 and would be inflexible to economic growth, and would put gold on the sidelines rather than in use in our economy. And if Andrew's ghost could have a chat with Franklin, Adams and Jefferson, I believe he wouldn't restrict money to any commodity's supply.

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

One question

What are you going to value the monetary unit at? How are you even going to conduct monetary policy, and toward what purpose. As you may know, with the advent of fiat money, these questions became important. Some central bankers continued to promote stability of the monetary unit, or, in other words, to keep the currency "stable." Others focused on interest rates. Still others made economic growth their main target. These individual goals, if any of them are really achievable under a fiat regime, may indeed not be compatible. So what is your program. Go easy on the links please, a little plain english will do. Analysis trumps name-dropping. Thanks.

I think Ben Franklin had it right

Pennsylvania lent money into circulation with an additional 5% to pay for government services and equal to the interest they charged on the loans. This resulted in a booming economy and near-zero taxes. That said, I think the key component was trial and error, which Franklin emphasized. There are options for monetary policy; let's look at stability. This would keep money supply constant with economic growth and population, and would require professional and TRANSPARENT scrutiny. Too much money would be taxed out of existence. Too little would be supplemented thorugh creation and spending or a national dividend. Politicians would be responsible and punished in elections if they screw-up. We could also create a 4th branch of government if we wanted.

Interest rates should be at non-profit level, I say. Access to credit is an essential public service. Growth: create what our representatives get the votes to do with government using surplus labor for its accomplishment. If the investments create more growth than the cost of inputs, then prices go down; if the converse, prices go up. Either way, if we're buying what we want (schools, infrastructure, landscaping freeways) than the changes in price is at our choice.

We hold these truths to be self-evident...