Words from the Rising Republics

July 11, 2013

 

Fractional Banking

     After the Constitution was ratified, the bank was allowed to issue three or four times more paper notes or loans than it had in assets. This is called "fractional banking" because the bank has only a fraction of the assets needed to back up the paper money or credit which it has issued.

     Once again Jefferson protested: "The banks themselves were doing business on capitals [assets], three-fourths of which were fictitious.... "(Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, C1133.)

     Jefferson foresaw that the banks would inflate the economy by loaning out fictitious paper money (with no assets behind it). This would "boom" the economy. Then, when the financiers had lured borrowers into a precarious position, they would call for a "bust" and foreclose on the property for which the bank had virtually furnished nothing. At the first signs of a pending "bust," Jefferson lamented:

This fictitious capital ... is now to be lost, and to fall on somebody; it [the bank] must take on those who have property to meet it, and probably on the less cautious part, who, not aware of the impending catastrophe, have suffered themselves to contract, or to be in debt, and must now sacrifice their prop­erty of a value many times the amount of the debt. We have been truly sowing the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind. (Ibid.)

Amazingly, this disastrous pattern of "boom and bust" has been repeated off and on for over 200 years without the cause of it being corrected. A sound monetary reform pro­gram is still begging for a hearing.

An Economy of Debt Instead of Wealth

The financiers who gained control of American finance built the economy on debt instead of wealth. Jefferson's protest came out as follows:

 

At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public bless­ing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufac­tures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.... (Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 13:420.)

     Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln and Kennedy all tried to get the monetary program turned around so that Congress would issue its own money and banks would be required to loan on existing assets rather than use fictitious money based on merely a fraction of their assets. In other words, they wanted to get rid of the "boom and bust" cycle. At one point when the idea seemed to be catching on, the London Times came out with a frantic editorial stating:

“If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic during the late war in that country (the Civil War), should become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.” (Quoted in Gertrude Margaret Coogan, Money Creators [Hawthorne, Cal.: Omni Publications, 19741, p. 217.)

 

A Pressing Opportunity

All of this should demonstrate that somewhere up the trail, the leadership of the United States has an opportunity to add one more burst of momentum to the upward thrust of the 5,000-year leap. It will be a monumental monetary reform based on the principles which the Founders under stood but were never able to implement. As Jefferson said toward the latter days of his life:

     We are overdone with banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted a more fluctuating and unstable medium… These have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employment to nourish idleness… [These] are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied. (Berg, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 12:379-80)

     We are completely saddled and bridled, and…the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where [it] will guide. (Ibid., 9:337-38)

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