The debt-based nature of our financial system
Sue Holden feels that we should face the problem
‘Our current economic system is unsustainable and violent as it leads to climate change, environmental degradation and resource depletion which threaten the well-being and human security of many around the world and that it is violent to the planet in calling for continuing economic growth…’
‘Peace building is about building relationships and connections between people and the conditions and systems that enable all to exist as a flourishing whole, addressing the root causes of violence
(such as the current economic system).’
‘QPSW is supporting Friends to learn about the economic system – both the way it is now, and possible alternatives – and to consider the way in which the testimonies inform the way Friends understand and respond.’
I agree with the all of the above quotations, which come from Sunniva Taylor’s briefing paper for Quaker Peace & Social Witness’s (QPSW) autumn conference. However, in my view, the central factor behind the injustice of our economic set-up is missing from these considerations.
That is: our financial system is based on debt.
This truth is enough to make any Quaker uncomfortable. It requires us to take on board the fact that over ninety-seven per cent of all money in the UK has been created by banks and building societies out of nothing, or rather out of personal loans taken out with them, plus mortgages and overdrafts. It is a seriously uncomfortable wake-up call to realise that this counterfeit system involves ‘virtually every pound in existence, whether circulating or deposited in bank accounts, being matched by an equivalent pound of debt’. [All unattributed quotations are from Michael Rowbotham’s excellent, ‘must read’ book: The Grip of Death.]
Banks and building societies treat more than ninety-seven per cent of the money in the economy as their own, temporarily ‘on loan’ to the economy – despite the fact that the bankers have only invented this money as figures on computers at the time of making the loan.
Hardest of all perhaps for us as Quakers, with our testimonies to peace and simplicity, is the fact that the ‘growth economy’ is not a choice. It is required, to perpetuate the debt-based slavery, which is the essence of our financial system.
It is too simple to say, as Sunniva does in her thinkpiece, that ‘Our current economic system… calls for continuing economic growth, on the presumption that this will bring increased happiness and well-being’.
This position is only its selling point, which neatly leads to the idea that it is our insatiable material appetite and consumer desires and habits that are responsible for forced economic growth.
This is the conventional economic view. The very term ‘consumer society’ implies that the economy is responding to what people actually want and that it is the consumer, and therefore people in general, who are to blame.
In fact: ‘Nothing could be further from the truth. The debt-based financial system makes a techno-marvel, quick turn-over, rapid-change, junk-produce, “consumer” economy inevitable. The consumer is completely subordinate to this process.’
In The Grip of Death, Michael Rowbotham explains, with utmost clarity and comprehensive detail, the single root cause of the unsustainably destructive results of forced economic growth, holding us all in its relentless grip.
‘All parties in the economic process – workers, consumers, business men and women and so on are completely bound up through their reliance on the means of exchange to an economy out of all rational or democratic control.’
I fear that QPSW’s efforts to encourage us in the building of an alternative economy en route towards a more peaceful society will be built on quick-sand unless we centralise the consideration of the devastating impact of the debt-based economy, which was started in this country and subsequently exported throughout the globe. I ask all Quakers to consider that this might be the crucial reason for, if not the sole root cause of, the economic insecurity that we, through our testimonies, seek to reverse.
The first chapter of Michael Rowbotham’s book can be found at: www.freewebs.com/whosemoney/gripofdeathchapter1.htm
Other interesting sources are Ben Curtis or Ben Dyson’s Positive Money Campaign: www.positivemoney.org.uk or Anne Belsey of the Money Reform Party at www.moneyreformparty.org.uk
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