The word “civics” refers to the education of individuals of the obligations and rights the citizens of civil society, within the laws and traditions of their nation-state. Related education in history, religion and media literacy is often included. In the United States, this is the overt argument for public education, to ensure the US constitution is upheld by the citizens of the United States, privately, and in public life.
Why is monetary theory not a core curriculum in public education? An understanding of what money is, where it comes from and how it works is a necessary foundation for the existence of political self determination. If members of the public lack this understanding (and they do lack it) they cannot make informed decisions about their own government or future.
To understand what I mean in the assertion that people cant possibly chose their own future through a democratic process, without knowing how their currency works, I will attempt to explain money. Most people in North America might believe something like: “I know what money is!”
Most making this claim are wrong.
Let’s start by defining the term “Hard Currency”. This is any system of money that represents real value, or a real amount of some physical commodity. The opposite of this is called a “fiat currency” where units of money have value only because a central authority asserts it to be so.
For the entire history of the United States up till 1971, a US dollar was a token or note representing a real amount of silver or gold. Bank Notes and Dollars were simply receipts for gold or silver. This meant that a bank or central authority could not create money out of thin air, but could only issue paper currency in amounts proportional to gold or silver held in reserve. A citizen holding a paper dollar could at any time, take that dollar to their bank and exchange it for the real gold or silver it represented. Paper is not real money.
After 1971, the reality of gold-backed money in the United States changed. Money was redefined and no longer represented any kind of physical reality. A 100-dollar bill issued prior to 1971 bore the text:
“This certifies that there have been deposited in the treasury of the United States of America One Hundred Dollars in Gold Coin payable to the bearer on demand.”
After 1971, a 100 dollar bill bears the text:
“Federal Reserve Note, One Hundred Dollars”
You may ask yourself: “What does a modern 100 dollar bill represent, if it is not ‘backed’ by any physical commodity?” Perhaps you don’t ask that question, perhaps you simply “believe” that a piece of printed paper is, by itself worth 100 dollars in goods or services.
The Federal Reserve says “this piece of paper is worth 100 dollars” and people believe it. This system is called fiat money, because the “money” people use, whether its paper bank notes or simply numbers counted in digital transactions is “worth something” only because people believe in it, and not because it represents some amount of a convertible commodity such as gold or silver. There is however, a small problem.
In the United States, all US currency is created out of thin air by an institution called the Federal Reserve. The name is misleading, “Federal” seems to imply that the United States government, or more correctly, the people, through the government, own or control the institution which creates their country’s money. The “Federal” Reserve is a privately owned central bank with the power to print money, and control interest rates. It is unaccountable to the US government, or through that government, the people.
This has some nasty consequences for normal people. The federal reserve does not just create money out of thin air and inject it into the streams of American commerce, it loans newly created money to the banks and government with attached interest. That means that if the government needs another billion dollars to pay for the latest illegal war, the Federal Reserve creates that Billion out of nothing, and loans it to the government. If the Government were to pay that loan back instantly (unrealistic) it would have to pay back not only the Billion, but the interest as well. That additional interest accrued between the loan and its repayment has to be paid in, guess what US dollars, which the government and banks also borrow from the Federal Reserve.
This system creates an even increasing burden of debt on the public. This debt is paid back in part by interest rates on loans, as well as though taxation of the earned private income of citizens. In short, the central bank system of fiat currency creates a system of permanent public indebtedness. By “public” I mean YOU. The money in your wallet is debt, owed to the Federal Reserve. The Fed created that money out of thin air. This seems like a pretty bad system for a country founded on the principals of personal liberty and rugged individualism in the tradition of the Enlightenment of the 18th century. It gets worse. In addition to a system of money with automatically attached debt, the Fed also devalues the money held by individuals and public institutions by continuously increasing the money supply.
The system of fiat currency is a system of public enslavement.
It is the reason why high-school civics is no longer a requirement for high school graduation. The few hereditary banking families which control your nation’s money do not want you to know that you are a slave.
“The refusal of King George III to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, was probably the prime cause of the revolution.”
~ Ben Franklin
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies…
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency…
The banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered”
~ Thomas Jefferson
If you want to remain slaves of the bankers and pay for the costs of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control the nation’s credit”
~Sir Josiah Stamp (1889 -1941)
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march toward a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual Elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
~David Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations
“By having this war on terror, you can never win it, so you can always keep taking people’s liberties away. The media can convince people that it is real. By repeating the story over and over, eventually people believe it.” “We created the federal reserve in 1913 through lies”
“The ultimate goal is to get everybody in this world chipped with an RFID chip, and have all money be on those chips, and everything on those chips, and if anybody protests what we do or violate what we want, we just turn off their chip”
~Nicholas Rockefeller, from a conversation with journalist Aaron Ruso.
This is total control and total oversight of every single person on Earth, by a few hereditary banking families.
Next year, see if your complete apathy had as much positive impact as your inaction had this year.
