RE-POSTED: SIX-PART VIDEO: Credit as a Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis”
This is a six-part professional-quality video that is over two hours in length. Each part consists of a lecture by Richard C. Cook on the economic crisis and its solution. The video was made on March 16, 2009, in the Maryland Room of the Prince George’s County Library, Hyattsville, MD. This is among the most in-depth critiques of our debt-based monetary system ever made. The video concludes with a program of reform based on the draft American Monetary Act, implementation of a Greenback-type currency, and a citizens’ dividend/basic income guarantee. The material is deeply rooted in the history of American public finance and the author’s experience of 21 years as a U.S Treasury Department analyst. His recommendations would replace the existing financial system, which mainly serves the interests of the financial oligarchy, with a new monetary system that would serve the needs of “We the People” and our producing economy. It would also replace Federal Reserve Notes with a new system of United States currency.
YouTube link: watch?v=Q3p48upXJaA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
Many thanks to Lori at Dandelion Salad for getting the series reposted to YouTube when Google went out of the video business. Thanks Lo!
Link to Dandelion Salad site: credit-as-a-public-utility-the-solution-to-the-economic-crisis-by-richard-c-cook-videos
Click “Donate” button on homepage to place order for the 39-page script – $5.95.
Synposis
Part One of Six Parts: Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis
“Our Early Political Leaders Warned Us Against the Banking Interests”
Early U.S. statesmen, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson worked to free the nation from control by the bankers who had been behind the establishment of the First and Second Banks of the United States. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln implemented a true democratic currency by spending Greenbacks directly into circulation without borrowing from the banks. These measures allowed the U.S. to develop for much of the 19th century largely free from bankers’ control. By the end of the century, this had changed, and the bankers were taking over.
Part Two of Six Parts: Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis
“The Federal Reserve System: The Bankers Take Over”
President Lincoln’s Greenback system worked but was undermined and replaced by the financiers who got Congress to pass the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864, then the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The United States now became a nation dominated by the financial elite, the banks, and a debt-based monetary system. Consequently, the 20th Century was one of constant cycles of inflation and deflation resulting in the economic chaos we see today.
Part Three of Six Parts: Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis
“The Collapse of the Financial System”
The collapse we are seeing today began in the financial system, not the producing economy. The crisis started with the housing bubble which the Federal Reserve created by cutting interest rates and then brought own by raising them. The trigger of the 2008 bank meltdown was refusal by European banks to purchase any more “toxic” U.S. debt based on mortgages and sold as securities. Now, with the decline in equity values, the burden of debt in our economy has grown even larger. Thus a renewal of bank lending will not solve the problem, while the economic stimulus program of the Obama administration is likewise insufficient to restore economic health.
Part Four of Six Parts: Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis
“What is Credit and Who Should Control It?”
Fractional reserve banking is the process by which banks create credit out of thin air. But despite abuses of the system, credit is still a crucial part of modern economics. An enlightened concept of governance would view credit as a public utility. This means that government must take back the control of credit from the private financiers.
Part Five of Six Parts: Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis
“The Gap Between Prices and Income”
One of the most important and least understood concepts in modern economics is the existence of a gap between prices and purchasing power. This gap results when a portion of prices must be set aside as business and private savings. The money is then used by the financial system for lending and speculation. Keynesian economics takes control of some of the savings through government deficit spending but is still a compromise with control of the economy by the financiers. In fact Keynesian economics has helped cause the collapsing debt pyramid. A better system would be to provide consumers with a National Dividend as a way to monetize the continuous appreciation of the producing economy.
Part Six of Six Parts: Credit As A Public Utility: The Solution to the Economic Crisis
“The Greenback and National Dividend Solutions”
The U.S. should convert to a system where the money supply is created by the federal government by being spent into circulation without government borrowing or taxation as was done with the Greenbacks. The Federal Reserve should no longer be a bank of issue. Additionally, a National Dividend should be paid directly to the people. The “Cook Plan” calls for the initial distribution of vouchers in the amount of $1,000 a month plus a new system of community savings banks. Greenbacks combined with a National Dividend will create a non-inflationary democratic currency and transform the economy of the United States.
March 30, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
Dear Richard,
The six past video is both a work of great genius and effort — and too much in total: great for 4 parts, but it fails to seem doable by the end.
We must visualize a conversation between Cook, Obama, and a perfect representative of “what we should REALLY do”.
We cannot do ALL the changes you seek. The greenback principle and direct basic income dividend, more or less YOUR bottom line summary judgment, help to simplify and make things doable: but are they plain and simple enough by the time you finally finish.
I believe we must go in reverse order: start with the END and list a very few simple silver bullet changes: what we could do that would (a) solve our deficit in demand (relative to supply) and (b) our deficit in supply (relative to need).
You have made one terrible error: you have given coherence and purpose to the victory of the money power over common sense.
You have created an anthropomorphic caricature out of the force of greed, the lure of wealth, the possession of goodies.
The connections between Alexander Hamilton, Rothschild, Morgan, Greenspan, YOU and Myself, are not akin to a monster able to fight like a man.
They are the same as the connections between good guys: they do NOT actually exist.
If you and I are wedded to the Golden Rule, along with Jesus Christ, we are NOT, nevertheless, connected to Him. The Deciples were.
So the banking interests (anywhere and anytime) do not normally form an oligarchy.
They form a set of separately motivated bastards who do not have a conscious plan to monopolize all the money.
They did not create the money system — they took advantage of it. History created it. It evolved. Like modern medicine.
The problem is the money system is flawed: the change you want to see made is the same as the one I want to see made and that should be made.
But no one has yet articulated a simple enough change to convince a reader that such change is possible.
Money, today, is as entrenched as language. Change it does. Change it we can. But only a little bit at a time.
We need therefore to change it the very least we can for the most favorable effect in our age old war on poverty, scarcity, and ignorance.
I have spent all night with your powerful video: thanks
April 1, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
I enjoyed the presentation and I hope it gets wide viewing. I particularly appreciate Richard Cook’s effort to integrate his own development of Douglass social credit with the greenback theory of Stephan Zarlenga’s American Monetary Institute.
Credit as a “public utility” is a brilliant insight that provides an easy way for people to understand the social nature of money & credit.
I have a disagreement with the historical overview in the first video regarding the role of Populism and William Jennings Bryan in the election of 1896. As I consider the cause of monetary reform a true Populist endeavor, I think it is important to get the historical facts straight. Those of us who call for popular control of the monetary system are Populists, descendants of the 19th Century movement that championed the same cause.
Richard asserts the the Populists took over the Democratic Party and that Bryan was essentially a Populist candidate, representing the Populist agenda. This is not true. The definitive account of the Populist movement in the US is provided by Lawrence Goodwyn in his 1976 book, “Democratic Promise, The Populist Moment in America”, Oxford U. Press.
William Jennings Bryan was not a Populist and did not deign to grace the July, 1896 St Louis nominating convention of the People’s Party with his presence. He was nominated earlier as the Democratic candidate for president when he delivered his famous “cross of gold” speech. The People’s Party sought to promote its agenda within the Democratic Party in the “fusion” politics of the day. The Democratic Party took over the People’s Party, not the other way around, and the greenback platform, the monetary reform agenda that was the core of the Peoples Party platform, was displaced by the “free silver” agenda that Bryan and the Democrats advocated.
Bryan’s VP running mate in 1896 was Arthur Sewall, an eastern national banker and railroad magnate. One is known by the company one keeps, as Obama is known by his affiliation with Timothy Geithner and other private monetary monopolists.
William Jennings Bryan was an opportunist who used his oratorical gift to win over the Populist constituency. When the Peoples Party sought to fuse its agenda with the Democratic Party, it collapsed because the greenbackism that was its core identity was abandoned in the name of “free silver” that was ersatz monetary reform at best.
Furthermore, as Secretary of State in the Wilson administration, Bryan was instrumental in allaying the doubts surrounding the 1913 legislation that established the private financial monopoly. He argued in favor of the Federal Reserve and helped to get it passed.
Those of us who advocate creating a public monetary utility from a private monopoly are Populists. We should be familiar with our own history and honor our antecedents. William Jennings Bryan is not among them.
April 22, 2011 @ 7:02 am
[…] Richard C. Cook » Blog Archive » SIX-PART VIDEO NOW AVAILABLE … […]
Pingback by cash-for-clunkers-hit-and-run | AutoInsuranceGalaxy.info on March 17, 2010