Our money was once valued by the worth of goods, but today it is our goods that are valued by their worth in money. Banks create money out of thin air by loaning it into existence. Increasing the money in the market creates inflation. This also means the system is required to continually grow in [...]
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The U.S. Federal Reserve is our nation’s bank, created at the beginning of the last century (big thanks to President Wilson) to centralize our banking system and stabilize our currency. It is quasi-public, having both private corporations and public agencies with controlling interest. “The Fed,” as they call it on the street, controls our money, [...]
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New Scientist this week features an article casting money as a psychologically-rooted instrument. It may be a tool in the market to trade for goods, but it can be perceived by our minds as something with deeper significance and even activate the same centers of the brain as addictive drugs like cocaine and nicotine. We [...]
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Tax cuts in 2006 gave 70 percent of their benefits to the top 5 percent of Americans The growth-centered nature of our world economy is relatively new. For most of human history, growth has been slow and almost stagnant. Over the last 200 years (essentially since the invention of fossil-fuel driven machines) that has changed [...]
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A fellow citizen sent me an article; one that I feel everyone should read. New York Times columnist and writer of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman (not to be confused with Benjamin Friedman) recently wrote about our dire times and what Paul Gilding calls “The Great Disruption” – “when both Mother [...]
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You may believe that a steady-state economy cannot happen. Or perhaps you have doubts about it’s full-fledged ability to “rule” as the new standard. Whatever the case, you are still a consumer to some extent, right? We still need to eat, you still need clothes, you still need certain things to conduct a happy life [...]
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