Italie: Beppe Grillo ?

Le leader du Mouvement cinq étoiles a provoqué un séisme électoral
lors des législatives italiennes, en imposant sa formation comme première force politique du pays,

en nombre de voix, à
la Chambre,

loin devant Mario Monti. 

Il veut des dividendes pour tous…

Distribuer l’abondance en pratique

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfdwcoNV4Lc

Il est contre le remboursement des dettes, pour la plupart iniques et odieuses, obtenues par astuces et mensonges.
« La création de monnaie de rien actuelle par le système bancaire est identique … à la création de monnaie par des faux monnayeurs. …»
Maurice Allais
Physicien et économiste
Prix Nobel d’économie en 1988
•      « La crise mondiale aujourd’hui »
(Ed. Clément Juglar 1999).
articles.php?lng=fr&pg=765


On peut créer des milliers de milliards pour des guerres ou les banquiers, pourquoi pas pour les familles ?
L’ Europe s’écroule, nous devons aider les citoyens écrasés sous une rigueur absurde.

http://www.beppegrillo.it/en/

http://desiebenthal.blogspot.com/2010/09/demographie-objectifs-sournois-du.html

Parlant devant son domicile à Gênes (nord-ouest de l’Italie), Beppe Grillo
a observé: «Nous ne sommes pas contre tout le monde. Nous allons voir,
réforme par réforme, loi par loi. S’il y a des propositions qui sont
compatibles avec notre programme.

En quoi consiste il Movimento 5 Stelle (Le mouvement des cinq étoiles) ?

Mais qui est Beppe Grillo?
Un dangereux démagogue qui veut détruire les
partis, ou l’homme qui donne une voix aux Italiens ?

En exclusivité pour
Euronews, le comédien joue une partie de son spectacle.

“Qui je suis?
Je suis Beppe Grillo.

Je suis né comédien, artiste de variété.
Maintenant je ne sais plus ce que je suis. J’ai commencé à faire du
cabaret avec 2 personnes, puis 5. Pour le blog, sur internet, ca a été
pareil. Un message, puis 2, puis 3000…”

puis 25 % des électeurs…

Beppe Grillo, leader du “Mouvement cinq étoiles”

La croisade du Coluche italien

 

L’humoriste
Beppe Grillo, leader du “Mouvement cinq étoiles”, a récolté près de 25% des votes en Italie.

Cela rappelle le score de Coluche, lors de la présidentielle française
de 1981, avant qu’il ne jette l’éponge. Depuis trois semaines, Beppe
Grillo enchaîne une série de meetings baptisés le “Tsunami tour”. Il y
dénonce les politiciens en limousines et l’austérité budgétaire du
président du conseil Mario Monti, rapporte la journaliste Mali Ilse
Paquin, dans la Tribune de Genève et 24 Heures. Beppe Grillo est
persuadé que la colère de l’électorat face aux partis traditionnels – le
carburant de sa formation – ne fera que s’amplifier. Da!
ns son programme, il propose un référendum sur l’euro, l’abolition des
syndicats, une restructuration complète de la législation qui compte
235’000 lois.  A ceux qui l’accusent de démagogie, il répond que “son
mouvement incarne une révolution douce”.

Beppe Grillo contre Tridel.

Du point de vue économique, il embrasse les théories soutenant la
création de dividendes inconditionnels et d’emplois «verts» et rejetant ce qui est coûteux et polluant,
comme les incinérateurs, et aspire à une meilleure qualité de vie et une
plus grande justice sociale. Le mouvement des 5 étoiles propose
l’adoption de projets de grande envergure en faveur de
l’informatisation, de la conservation de l’énergie, de l’élimination des
déchets, et de la protection du territoire face à l’ultra-urbanisation.
Il se définit comme “hors du clivage gauche-droite”.

http://fr.euronews.com/
Le ras le bol s’est exprimé dans les urnes en Italie au profit des
candidats anti-partis. Les élections locales ont vu une abstention
massive et la percée spectaculaire du mouvement “Cinq étoiles”
notamment.

A Parme, ville bourgeoise du centre, le candidat de
ce parti s’appelle Federico Pizzaroti. C’est un employé de banque,
inconnu en politique, il rafle 60% des voix.
Le mouvement “Cinq étoiles”, a été fondé en 2009 par Beppe Grillo, un humoriste reconverti en politique.

“Nous
avons gagné Stalingrad, maintenant nous sommes en marche vers Berlin”
lance-t-il sur son blog à l’issue des résultats, espérant conquérir le
Parlement l’an prochain. Mais qui est Beppe Grillo? il répondait en 2007
à euronews :
“Qui suis-je? je suis Beppe Grillo, né comme une espéce
de comique, fantaisiste, aujourd’hui je ne sais pas ce que je suis
devenu”

Des cabarets de ses débuts aux émissions de variété de la
Raï dès les années 70, Pepe Grillo est connu pour ses provocations et
ses satires du monde politique.
Il sort du champ du spectacle en 2007 et devient militant en créant le Victory day avec le v de “vaffanculo”.

En
2005 il crée son blog, classé 3 ans plus tard par the observer au
neuvième rang des plus influents. C’est aujourd’hui le blog le plus lu
en italie, et l’instrument de communication privilégié de Pepe Grillo.

Farouche défenseur de la démocratie directe, pourfendeur de la corruption et des privilèges,
il prône la mise en place d’un salaire minimum, la réduction des dépenses militaires ou un retrait de la zone euro.
Si
cet indigné de 64 ans a su catalyser le désenchantement, son programme
économique reste flou, basé sur la fin du gaspillage et l’utilisation
des nouvelles technologies de l’information.

Piquant. DSK se réclame de la morale !

 

 
Dominique Strauss-Kahn avec Jean-Claude Trichet et Mario Draghi.

La conversation avec Anne Sinclair ( Sainte Claire, sic ) a été fondamentale. Elle a été
très gentille, mais j’ai compris à quel point elle est convaincue
qu’elle et son mari – car je rappelle qu’ils n’ont toujours pas divorcé –
appartiennent à la caste des maîtres du monde.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYp9e1csk5g

 

DSK, du lard ou du cochon ? Les tristes maîtres du monde !

 

Les avocats de DSK ont demandé notamment la saisie du livre de Marcela Iacub qui a eu une liaison de 7 mois avec DSK…

Demande refusée par les juges…

DSK par Marcela Iacub : “Un être double, mi-homme mi-cochon”

Marcela Iacub, la belle est la bête ?

Belle et bête ?

Une “théorie de l’amour” ? Un objet artistique ?

De l’art ou du cochon ?

“J’étais amoureuse de
l’être le plus méprisé du pays, le plus méprisé de la planète”, écrit
Iacub dans “Belle et Bête”.

Un portrait de DSK, avec qui elle a eu une liaison, en “cochon sublime”.

 extraits:

“Je suis allée rendre visite [à Anne Sinclair] pendant que j’écrivais
le livre, sous un prétexte quelconque. Ce n’est pas un procédé très
loyal mais il y avait des choses que je n’arrivais pas à comprendre de
la psychologie de Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Celui-ci ment beaucoup et tout
le temps, jamais je n’ai rencontré un individu qui mente comme lui,
parce qu’avant tout il se ment à lui-même.


La conversation avec Anne Sinclair a été fondamentale. Elle a été
très gentille, mais j’ai compris à quel point elle est convaincue
qu’elle et son mari – car je rappelle qu’ils n’ont toujours pas divorcé –
appartiennent à la caste des maîtres du monde.

“Il n’y a aucun mal à se faire sucer par une femme de ménage.” J’ai
failli lui répondre que sucer, ce n’est pas le travail d’une femme de
ménage comme passer l’aspirateur, qu’il faut demander ce genre de choses
à une pute, etc.


Mais, pour elle, le monde est séparé entre les maîtres et les
serviteurs, entre les dominants et les dominés et c’est normal. Cela m’a
un peu effrayée. Comme si on vivait dans la société de l’Ancien Régime.



« Ce qu’il y a de créatif, d’artistique chez Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, de beau, appartient au cochon et non pas à l’homme.
L’homme est affreux, le cochon est merveilleux même s’il est un cochon.
C’est un artiste des égouts, un poète de l’abjection et de la saleté. »



« Le cochon, c’est la vie qui veut s’imposer sans aucune
morale, qui prend sans demander ni calculer, sans se soucier des
conséquences. […] Le cochon, c’est le présent, le plaisir, l’immédiat,
c’est la plus belle chose qui soit, la plus belle part de l’homme. Et en
même temps le cochon est un être dégueulasse, incapable d’aucune forme
de morale, de parole, de sociabilité. »



« L’idéal du cochon, c’est la partouze  : personne n’est
exclu de la fête, ni les vieux, ni les moches, ni les petits. […] Alors
que DSK m’a toujours semblé être franchement à droite, ce communisme
sexuel auquel il aspire en tant que cochon me réjouit. »

“Même au temps où ma passion était
si fastueuse que j’aurais échangé mon avenir contre une heure dans tes
bras je n’ai jamais cessé de te voir tel que tu étais : un porc. C’est
ma compassion pour ces animaux si dénigrés qui a éveillé mon intérêt
pour toi. Tu étais le grand persécuté, le bouc émissaire.


Je me suis sentie obligée de prendre ta défense pour dire : “Les
porcs ont le droit d’être des porcs. Une société qui met ces créatures
en prison aux seuls motifs qu’ils ont des goûts propres à leur espèce
n’est pas une société libre et juste.” […]


“Tu te comportais comme un méchant porc. Tu n’étais plus la victime
de la société mais mon agresseur, mon bourreau. Je me disais : ‘A quoi
bon continuer de le traîner de tribunal en tribunal, de viol en viol ?
Il serait plus utile transformé en jambon. Il pourrait nourrir les
contribuables au lieu de leur coûter tant d’argent’.”

“Voilà ta véritable faute, ton unique faute impardonnable. Tu as
prétendu que tu étais prêt à donner ton sang pour la patrie quand en
vérité tu te serais servi de cette patrie pour verser ton sperme
inépuisable.


Tu aurais transformé l’Elysée en une géante boîte échangiste, tu te
serais servi de tes assistants, de tes larbins, de tes collaborateurs et
de tes employés comme de rabatteurs, d’organisateurs de partouzes,
d’experts dans l’art de satisfaire tes pulsions les plus obscures. […]


Pour cette faute tu seras toujours honni, maudit, méprisé, mis au ban
par la douce France qui avait mis tant d’espérances en toi. Rien ne
sera en mesure de te relever, aucun non-lieu, aucun accord. La politique
te sera à jamais fermée. […]”

Ce qui s’est passé dans cette chambre devenue légendaire ne peut se
comprendre si l’on ne se met pas dans la tête d’un cochon authentique et
véritable. D’un cochon qui prend une femme de ménage pour Catherine
Deneuve dans “Belle de jour”. Seul un cochon peut trouver normal qu’une
misérable immigrée africaine lui taille une pipe sans aucune
contrepartie, juste pour lui faire plaisir, juste pour rendre un humble
hommage à sa puissance.


Et la pauvre est revenue dans la chambre pour voir si tu lui avais
laissé un quelconque pourboire mais il n’y avait rien. Même pas un mot,
même pas une fleur. La femme de chambre a été horriblement offensée mais
elle n’a pas été violée.


Voilà comment j’avais vu les choses depuis mon appartement où j’écris et je lis nuit et jour. […]

“Très peu de gens savaient que ta femme avait fait de toi son caniche.
[…] Tu ne pouvais pas envisager de la quitter parce que cette vie de
luxe-là, c’était impossible d’y renoncer. […] Tu étais devenu son
caniche, un macho qui se sent un misérable caniche. Et plus elle faisait
semblant de ne pas se rendre compte que tu étais enchaîné à elle par
son argent, plus elle te possédait, plus elle te soumettait à cette
humiliation, à cette terrible prostitution. Elle avait ce rêve d’être
l’épouse d’un président. […]

Un jour de mars, au plus dur de ta chute, tu m’as dit : ‘Je me suis
trompé. Ma vie a été une terrible erreur. J’aurais pu faire tant
d’autres choses de cette vie-là.’ […] Ce jour-là tu croyais vraiment que
cette vie-là n’était pas la bonne vie pour toi. ‘Mais quelle vie
crois-tu que j’aurais dû avoir ?’, m’as-tu demandé. […]

“Il faudrait que le cochon, au lieu d’être ton inférieur, ton
prisonnier, ton esclave, ton arme, devienne ton maître. […] Ce jour-là
tu […] transformeras ton sperme en encre. Tu pourras enfin te
débarrasser de toutes les entraves qui s’interposent entre ton désir et
ton plaisir […] C’est seulement alors, mon merveilleux cochon, mon
amour, ma sublime créature animale, que tu sauras ce que jouir veut
dire.” […]


Dominique Strauss-Khan a écrit une lettre ouverte à Jean Daniel, cofondateur du Nouvel Observateur :

Cher Jean Daniel,
A la lecture du Nouvel Observateur de ce jeudi, je suis saisi d’un
double dégoût. Celui que provoque le comportement d’une femme qui séduit
pour écrire un livre, se prévalant de sentiments amoureux pour les
exploiter financièrement et, ce faisant, abondant dans le sens des
médias que naguère elle critiquait vertement.

Au-delà du caractère fantasmatique et donc inexact du récit, c’est
une atteinte méprisable à ma vie privée et à la dignité humaine.
Peut-être le dégoût est-il plus grand encore à l’égard du Nouvel
Observateur qui, inquiet de perdre des lecteurs, et on comprend
pourquoi, imagine son salut en s’avilissant dans une publication
commerciale et crapoteuse qu’on croyait réservée à la presse de
caniveau. L’ancien « grand journal de la conscience de gauche » vient de
sombrer dans une opération qui donne la nausée.

Dans ces conditions, j’ai demandé à mes avocats d’étudier toutes les voies légales pour combattre cette abomination. »

De la “recherche” universitaire financée avec nos impôts ?

Marcela Iacub dans Ce soir ou jamais et sur France Info :

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdPg65KIwq8&feature=player_embedded#!

« Un enfant a besoin d’un père et d’une mère ?
– C’est un présupposé naturaliste ridicule !
 »

« Hitler et Mussolini sont tous nés d’un couple hétérosexuel. »

« Les mots “père” et “mère” vont être substitués par le mot “parent”. »

« Le pire ennemi de la femme, c’est l’enfant, c’est la famille. »

« Vous avez un enfant ?

– J’ai un chien.
 »

Un portrait de DSK, avec qui elle a eu une liaison, en “cochon sublime”…sic…

Ferraye 9/11 and the WTC 7 or Salomon Building,

The Real Deal: 9-11 Profiteering.

Ferraye files were in the third building destroyed, WTC 7 or Salomon Building,

originally published by Global Research at www.globalresearch.ca
** 22 March 2004 **
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FIT403A.html
Distribution via the Unanswered Questions
Wire

Sign up for the wire at:

http://www.unansweredquestions.org/headlines.php


Unanswered Questions : Thinking for ourselves.

9-11 Profiteering


A Framework for Building
the
“Cui Bono?”
UnAnswered Questions
By
Catherine Austin Fitts
“We are
America’s…
-Oldest company
-Largest company

-Busiest company
-Most successful company”


–DOD 101, an introductory overview of the Department of
Defense from their website
(1)

“Pass a law, make a business.”

— Old New Jersey street saying

Something
to Hide

Much has transpired since September 11, 2001.

  • We have learned that numerous heads
    of state and foreign intelligence agencies tried to warn us
    before 9-11
    (2)
    ;
  • We have watched many deeply disturbing
    unanswered questions of 9-11 emerge through global Internet
    media
    (3)
    ;
  • We have worked with the 9-11 time-line
    (4) and realized that the official explanation of
    events is conspiracy theory, not conforming to documented
    fact;
  • We have watched the US government
    suppress facts and restrict of the 9-11 Commission’s access
    to information
    (5)
    ;
  • We have watched the 9-11 Commission
    fail to answer the unanswered questions and concede to
    official suppression of information (5) ;
  • We
    have watched the leaders of the national security
    infrastructure richly rewarded for their failure to protect
    America on 9-11
    (6)
    ;
  • We have noted the material ommissions
    of the corporate media
    (7)
    ;
  • Something does not
    add up. Someone has something to hide.
    “Cui
    Bono?”

    “Cui Bono?” is Latin for “who benefits?”
    Is
    there a connection between the rich flow of profit and
    market manipulations flowing from 9-11 and the stonewalling
    by the Administration and the agency members of the National
    Security Council?
    Time has passed since September 11,
    2001. As new budgets are approved, financial statements
    published, laws passed, taxes cut and stocks go up, it is
    easier to identify who benefited politically and financially
    from 9-11.
    As we map out the financial “real deal” on
    9-11, we realize there are three categories of people
    benefiting.
    Richly Guilty: The first category of
    people who benefited were those who are guilty and complicit
    in designing, implementing and financing the 9-11 operation.
    On such a sophisticated and successful covert operation, the
    people responsible would have had budgets and financing and
    would have organized the operation to maximize their
    political and financial benefits. This is the nature of
    economic warfare.
    Richly Opportunistic: The second
    category of people who benefited were those who were
    opportunistic in taking advantage of 9-11 as an economic and
    political event as soon as it happened. Some folks, such as
    money managers, are obligated as fiduciaries to be
    opportunistic. Others, such as government officials, may be
    opportunistic at the cost of ignoring their fiduciary
    obligations. As one retired banking executive said, “Let’s
    face it, if the guys in Washington had been doing their job
    instead of helping their pals make money, 9-11 could never
    have happened.”
    Sustainably Naïve: The third
    category of people who benefited where those who shared in
    the political and economic profits generated by the first
    two categories. Taking the position that, “money has no
    smell,” the large number of people in this category are
    generally not cognizant of their complicity through the
    incentive system created by “voting with their money, time
    and attention.”
    Where to begin to determine the specifics
    of who benefited? This is a significant task for private
    citizens who do not have the rich flow of investigatory,
    intelligence and enforcement resources of government. Hence,
    a citizen led effort will need to break the task down into
    manageable collaborative pieces.
    One way for global
    networks of researchers, blog authors and Internet media to
    start to build the “Cui Bono?” unanswered questions of 9-11
    is to develop a framework that outlines the general areas of
    profiteering.
    Top 20 Areas of 9-11
    Profiteering

    Here are my candidates for the top twenty
    profit flows resulting from or related to 9-11 and the
    response to 9-11:

    **** # # #
    ****
    Money Missing from the US
    Treasury

    In fiscal 1999 and 2000, the Department of
    Defense (DOD) reported $3.3 trillion of undocumentable
    adjustments in the process of failing to produce audited
    financial statements. In the summer of 2001, the
    appropriations for DOD failed to report out of committee
    before the summer recess. The political tension between arms
    manufacturers and defense contractors who anticipated pay
    back from the Bush election victory and those pressing for
    federal spending and financing to conform to spending and
    securities law was resolved by 9-11.
    The questions remain
    – who has the $3.3 trillion plus missing from the US
    Treasury? what is the role of the NY Federal Reserve Bank
    and its members as depository for the US government and
    agent for the Exchange Stabilization Fund? and why are we
    proposing to cut back social security rather than getting
    these resources back?
    Useful Link:
    Where is the
    Money?

    http://www.whereisthemoney.org

    US Stock
    Market Pump & Dump Fraud

    At the time of 9-11, federal
    and state enforcement leaders were facing a mountain of
    documentation that up to $6 trillion had been fraudulently
    skimmed out of pension funds and retail stock holdings
    through insider trading and other forms of corporate and
    banking financial fraud and securities law violations.

    The events of 9-11 are alleged to have destroyed
    significant amounts of documentation related to
    investigations against Wall Street firms and leading New
    York Federal Reserve members. Subsequent to 9-11,
    enforcement bureaucracies attention shifted in response to
    the Patriot Act and a shift in budgetary resources away from
    policing white collar crime by corporate and banking
    leadership.
    Useful Links:
    Le Metropole
    Cafe
    http://www.lemetropolecafe.com
    Sanders
    Research Associates
    http://www.sandersresearch.com
    Scoop
    Media
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason
    From
    the Wilderness

    http:///www.fromthewilderness.com

    No More Fake
    News
    http://www.nomorefakenews.com
    Tom
    Flocco

    http://www.tomflocco.com

    Federal
    Credit Arbitrage & Relaxed Monetary Policy

    Financial
    institutions who have access to the federal credit can use
    such credit to raise deposits and savings from citizens,
    paying little or no interest, and then lend it back to the
    citizens at much higher interest rates through financing the
    US Treasury, mortgage agency securities or in relaxed
    lending policies which charge relatively expensive interest
    and fees. Hence, it is now a common fact pattern to find
    people in America earning 2% on their bank CD’s while their
    neighbors are paying Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and the IRS
    18% on their debt.
    Subsequent to 9-11, these types of
    rich federal credit arbitrage profits appear to have
    skyrocketed as the facilitating ease in monetary policy was
    matched by extraordinary increases in government debt and
    easing in consumer debt policies and more industry favorable
    bankruptcy and lending laws. In short, 9-11 appears to have
    been used by Greenspan and the NY Federal Reserve to promote
    the back door liquidation of middle class equity through
    federal credit arbitrage.
    This kind of manipulation allows
    sophisticated financial institutions to “put” their losses
    back to the government and the citizens in a “heads we win,
    tails we win” economic model which is hard for the
    non-financially literate citizen to understand.

    Useful Links:
    Le Metropole Cafe
    http://www.lemetropolecafe.com
    Sanders
    Research Associates
    http://www.sandersresearch.com


    US Military and Policing Deployment Globally

    With
    important air cover from 9-11 and the 9-11 response, the
    flow of government contracts and economic activity is
    diminishing throughout the United States. That is because
    our military is being deployed abroad. As these government
    contracts and related economic flows move to Eurasia, the
    private equity pump and dumps move from onshore to
    offshore.
    Useful Links:
    Centre for Research on
    Globalization

    http://www.globalresearch.ca

    From the Wilderness

    http://www.fromthewilderness.com

    UnAnswered Questions
    re: CSC DynCorp

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00158.htm

    Eagle
    Eye

    http://www.eagleeyeinc.com/

    DynCorp wins $1.75 global
    policing contract to support
    US Department of State $6
    billion contact support for civilian policing missions

    http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040224/latu054_1.html
    Scoop
    Media
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason
    The
    American Tapeworm
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00228.htm

    Eurasian Oil & Gas/Afghanistan & Iraq War &
    Occupation

    The 9-11 response has been used to justify
    increased military, political and covert support to ensure
    that American and European oil interests are protected in
    the Middle East and worldwide.
    As part of the 9-11
    response, the US has invaded and occupied two sovereign
    nations and, in the process, increased war profiteering,
    narcotics trafficking and organized crime flows in these
    areas.
    Of particular concern is the necessity that the
    draft will be re-instituted after the Presidential election
    and global invasions will continue to subsidize the war
    profiteering business model.
    This model is essentially
    one in which government pays all the expenses, the citizens
    give their lands, lives and limbs, and the economic benefits
    and private booty flow to a handful of private parties and
    their investors. When viewed by age group, it is a war on
    the young by the old.
    See links above.

    Insurance Industry Legislation

    After 9-11, the
    insurance industry won important legislation that shifts
    significant risk from private investors to
    citizens.
    Useful Link:
    Under New Bill, Taxpayers to
    Underwrite Insurance Losses

    http://www.american-reporter.com/2,307/709.html


    Airline & Other Special Legislation

    Additional
    legislation and special benefits were provided to the
    airline industries as well as other corporate and banking
    interests. Significant tax cuts would fit into this
    category.
    Useful Link:
    Tom Flocco

    http://www.tomflocco.com

    Increased
    National Security Appropriations

    Budgets for the
    national security state increased across the board,
    including to support its control over domestic functions and
    to deploy globally both in space and on land.

    Useful Link:
    Sanders Research Associates

    http://www.sandersresearch.com

    Commodity &
    Financial Market Manipulations

    While allegations of
    insider trading on 9-11 have circulated in the press, there
    has been little comment on the extent to which the 9-11
    response supported continued manipulation by the NY Federal
    Reserve and its member banks, including through the US
    Treasury Exchange Stabilization Fund, of the gold, silver,
    stock and other capital markets and the continued build up
    of private unregulated derivative positions.

    Useful Links:
    Le Metropole Cafe
    http://www.lemetropolecafe.com
    Gold
    Anti-Trust Action Committee
    http://www.gata.org
    Is Silver
    Scandal on the
    Horizon?
    http://www.insightmag.com/news/
    2004/03/30/National/Is.Silver.Scandal.On.The.Horizon-632699.shtml


    Fund Raising for Trusts & Endowments

    While
    not-for-profits raised a tremendous amount of donations as a
    result of 9-11, where the money went is a question. Was it
    used to respond to 9-11 or did it enrich endowments that
    were reinvested in corporate and bank stocks and the
    securities financing the profiteering?
    Useful
    Link:
    The Red Cross in the Cross Hairs?

    http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=117216


    Privatization and Redevelopment of the WTC

    The World
    Trade Center was sold by the Port Authority of New York and
    New Jersey with a transfer of mortgage shortly before 9-11.
    Understanding the economics of these transfers, the controls
    and economics of the losses and the potential profits of the
    redevelopment are essential to understanding what has
    happened. Also essential is understanding the various
    insurance and security company players who had access to the
    building and building specifications, information systems
    and archives and the law firms who represent them.

    Useful Link:
    Centre for Research on Globalization

    http://www.globalresearch.ca

    Airport &
    Building Security Contracts

    The increase in airport
    and building security and the centralizing control of it’s
    outsourcing has contributed significantly to the costs of
    these facilities, who controls the facilities, flow of
    traffic and data and the profits flowing to selective
    parties providing these services. A look at the economics of
    the related insurance business and premiums is warranted.
    Analysis of the average time to move through the facilities
    of corporate travelers and their luggage versus
    non-corporate travelers and their luggage and who controls
    that differential and the related data will be instructive.

    Useful Links:
    Kroll claims 10,000 building
    security assignments after 9-11

    http://www.solariactionnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=2321#2321


    Suppression of the Florida Media Recount & Black Box
    Voting

    US media canceled the announcement of their
    recount of the Florida presidential election as a result of
    9-11. Allegedly, this would have raised legitimate questions
    as to the Bush Administration’s legitimacy.
    After 9-11,
    the installation of computer voting systems for which there
    is no verifiable paper trail has accelerated. This increases
    the chances that Florida type events will increase. The
    companies doing the installation appear to be predominantly
    Republican owned and controlled.
    Profits are generated
    both from installation of the system, as well from the
    benefits to those who can rig elections as a result. For
    example, it is worth estimating the extent to which rigging
    the Florida election impacted who got how much 9-11
    profits.
    Useful Links:
    Major Media Suppress
    Recount Study of Florida Vote

    http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/54/MediaSupress.htm

    Scoop
    Media’s Black Box Voting Series
    http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup

    Patriot Act Consolidation of Banking & Money Laundering
    Market Share

    The Patriot Act, available off the shelf
    at 9-11, was passed with little legislative access or
    discussion. It authorized extraordinary control of financial
    cash flows and data about financial cash flows. What is the
    value of controlling an estimated $500 billion- $1 trillion
    of annual US money laundering?
    Retirement Benefit
    Privitization & Cutbacks

    In the shift to a permanent
    war time economy, the alleged insolvency of the Pension
    Benefit Corporation, Social Security, the health care system
    and the credits behind the mortgage securities and other
    securitized consumer debt held in US pension funds and
    retirements savings has received short shrift financially
    and conversationally.
    Corporate Media
    It is
    essential to understand the impact of 9-11 and the 9-11
    response to the market share and profits of corporate media
    and the linkages between investors in corporate media and in
    the corporations and banks that most benefited from the
    policies promoted by corporate media.
    HAARP, Ocean,
    Space & Satellite Weaponry

    Since 9-11, we have watched
    the role out of a significant amount of black budget
    technology. The intimate militarization of all planetary
    air, land, water and oceans and space with electromagnetic,
    laser, sonar and other invisible weaponry implies a zero
    privacy world for all living things. This is a world where
    our thoughts and feelings are not free of 24-7 interference
    and influence unless we wish to tunnel deep underground.
    Perhaps that is why the black budget is financing so many
    underground facilities.
    Useful Link:
    Dr. Nick
    Beglich on HARRP

    http://alberta.indymedia.org/news/2002/10/4519.php

    Centre
    for Research on Globalization

    http://www.globalresearch.ca

    From the Wilderness
    http://www.fromthewilderness.com

    Law Firms

    Always telling, a review of what law firms
    are representing the parties profiting in all the other
    categories will say a great deal. Attorney client priveledge
    remains the primary railroad to protect the rich flow of
    organized crime profits behind national security law.
    Lawyers are often the channel for political campaign
    contributions and political lobbying as well.

    Useful Links:
    Open Secrets

    http://www.opensecrets.org

    The American Lawyer Law
    100
    http://www.law.com/special/professionals/
    amlaw/2003/amlaw100/amlaw_100main.html


    9-11 and Enron

    The crossover between the players
    involved in 9-11 profiteering and in Enron’s rise, fall and
    clean-up are mystifying. There are linkages here that can
    offer important clues if we analyze them as related economic
    flows. One hypothesis is that Enron was being used by the NY
    Federal Reserve member banks as US Treasury depositories to
    launder some of the monies disappearing from the federal
    government.
    Useful Link:
    The Real Deal on
    Enron
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0304/S00031.htm

    Promotions

    Who has been promoted following 9-11? The
    salaries, stock options, health care and other perks of the
    key players both private and public are well worth reviewing
    carefully.
    Useful Link:
    They Let it Happen on
    Purpose

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00068.htm

    ****
    # # # ****

    This list of twenty
    profit areas does does not include payments to the 9-11
    victims or their families. Such payments have been a
    remarkably effective tool to negate the political influence
    of the families, and should be viewed economically as an
    effective advertising expense relative to the total profit
    flows.
    For example, the Republican convention is being
    held in New York this fall to concide with the 9-11
    anniversary. It is essential for this event that the 9-11
    families are muted as an independent voice against 9-11
    profiteering. The potential failure to do so is a major Bush
    Administration political vulnerability.
    Invitation to
    the “Cui Bono?” Conversation

    One opportunity to build
    a better understanding of 9-11 will flow from an analysis of
    9-11 profiteering. As we understand the profit flows, we can
    then drill down to define the banks, companies,
    organizations and investors who benefited as well as the
    particular individuals in key leadership positions who
    profited personally.
    In an ideal collaborative research
    effort, we would attempt to estimate the total financial
    profits and capital gains to the individuals who have
    enjoyed the greatest 9-11 benefits. We would also attempt to
    ascertain patterns between these benefits. For example, we
    would look at the flow of donations into the current
    political campaigns. In addition, we would want to
    understand the shift of capital from the US to Asia to
    finance the outsourcing of US jobs, to finance the
    privatization of US government and assets at below market
    prices or above market contracts, and to park and enjoy the
    freedoms of offshore havens.
    The Administration has
    something to hide. Rather than lose time and resources
    getting lost in the White House fog, let’s follow the
    alleged advice of one of the 9-11 Commissioners, Fred
    Fielding, thought to be the “deep throat” long ago who
    leaked the Watergate secrets while a Deputy White House
    Counsel:
    “Follow the Money”


    *************
    ABOUT THE
    AUTHOR:

    Catherine Austin Fitts is the President
    of Solari in Hickory Valley, Tennessee.

    Ms. Fitts is a
    former managing director and member of the board of
    directors of Dillon Read & Co, Inc, a former Assistant
    Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner in the
    first Bush Administration, and President of The Hamilton
    Securities Group, Inc.

    Ms. Fitts is a member of the
    Advisory Board of Sanders Research in London, a founder of

    UnAnsweredQuestions.org
    and publishes The Real
    Deal
    , a column with Scoop Media in New
    Zealand.

    *************
    The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca
    grants permission to cross-post original Global Research (Canada)
    articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community
    internet sites, as long as the text & title of the article are not
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    *Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www
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    *For cross-postings, kindly use the active URL hyperlink address of
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    editor@globalresearch.ca

    © Copyright Catherine Austin Fitts 2004. For fair use only/ pour usage équitable seulement.

    *************
    STANDARD
    DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does not
    necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above
    article. We present this in the interests of research -for
    the relevant information we believe it contains. We hope
    that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us
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    before us.

    © Scoop Media

    http://ferraye.blogspot.ch/2010/03/to-mr-president-barack-hussein-obama.html 

    DSK, du lard ou du cochon ? Les tristes maîtres du monde !

    Les avocats de DSK demandent notamment la saisie du livre de Marcela Iacub qui a eu une liaison de 7 mois avec DSK.

    DSK par Marcela Iacub : “Un être double, mi-homme mi-cochon”

    Marcela Iacub, la belle est la bête ?

    Belle et bête ?

    Une “théorie de l’amour” ? Un objet artistique ?

    De l’art ou du cochon ?

    “J’étais amoureuse de
    l’être le plus méprisé du pays, le plus méprisé de la planète”, écrit
    Iacub dans “Belle et Bête”.

    Un portrait de DSK, avec qui elle a eu une liaison, en “cochon sublime”.

     extraits:

    “Je suis allée rendre visite [à Anne Sinclair] pendant que j’écrivais
    le livre, sous un prétexte quelconque. Ce n’est pas un procédé très
    loyal mais il y avait des choses que je n’arrivais pas à comprendre de
    la psychologie de Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Celui-ci ment beaucoup et tout
    le temps, jamais je n’ai rencontré un individu qui mente comme lui,
    parce qu’avant tout il se ment à lui-même.


    La conversation avec Anne Sinclair a été fondamentale. Elle a été
    très gentille, mais j’ai compris à quel point elle est convaincue
    qu’elle et son mari – car je rappelle qu’ils n’ont toujours pas divorcé –
    appartiennent à la caste des maîtres du monde.

    “Il n’y a aucun mal à se faire sucer par une femme de ménage.” J’ai
    failli lui répondre que sucer, ce n’est pas le travail d’une femme de
    ménage comme passer l’aspirateur, qu’il faut demander ce genre de choses
    à une pute, etc.


    Mais, pour elle, le monde est séparé entre les maîtres et les
    serviteurs, entre les dominants et les dominés et c’est normal. Cela m’a
    un peu effrayée. Comme si on vivait dans la société de l’Ancien Régime.



    « Ce qu’il y a de créatif, d’artistique chez Dominique
    Strauss-Kahn, de beau, appartient au cochon et non pas à l’homme.
    L’homme est affreux, le cochon est merveilleux même s’il est un cochon.
    C’est un artiste des égouts, un poète de l’abjection et de la saleté. »



    « Le cochon, c’est la vie qui veut s’imposer sans aucune
    morale, qui prend sans demander ni calculer, sans se soucier des
    conséquences. […] Le cochon, c’est le présent, le plaisir, l’immédiat,
    c’est la plus belle chose qui soit, la plus belle part de l’homme. Et en
    même temps le cochon est un être dégueulasse, incapable d’aucune forme
    de morale, de parole, de sociabilité. »



    « L’idéal du cochon, c’est la partouze  : personne n’est
    exclu de la fête, ni les vieux, ni les moches, ni les petits. […] Alors
    que DSK m’a toujours semblé être franchement à droite, ce communisme
    sexuel auquel il aspire en tant que cochon me réjouit. »

    “Même au temps où ma passion était
    si fastueuse que j’aurais échangé mon avenir contre une heure dans tes
    bras je n’ai jamais cessé de te voir tel que tu étais : un porc. C’est
    ma compassion pour ces animaux si dénigrés qui a éveillé mon intérêt
    pour toi. Tu étais le grand persécuté, le bouc émissaire.


    Je me suis sentie obligée de prendre ta défense pour dire : “Les
    porcs ont le droit d’être des porcs. Une société qui met ces créatures
    en prison aux seuls motifs qu’ils ont des goûts propres à leur espèce
    n’est pas une société libre et juste.” […]


    “Tu te comportais comme un méchant porc. Tu n’étais plus la victime
    de la société mais mon agresseur, mon bourreau. Je me disais : ‘A quoi
    bon continuer de le traîner de tribunal en tribunal, de viol en viol ?
    Il serait plus utile transformé en jambon. Il pourrait nourrir les
    contribuables au lieu de leur coûter tant d’argent’.”

    “Voilà ta véritable faute, ton unique faute impardonnable. Tu as
    prétendu que tu étais prêt à donner ton sang pour la patrie quand en
    vérité tu te serais servi de cette patrie pour verser ton sperme
    inépuisable.


    Tu aurais transformé l’Elysée en une géante boîte échangiste, tu te
    serais servi de tes assistants, de tes larbins, de tes collaborateurs et
    de tes employés comme de rabatteurs, d’organisateurs de partouzes,
    d’experts dans l’art de satisfaire tes pulsions les plus obscures. […]


    Pour cette faute tu seras toujours honni, maudit, méprisé, mis au ban
    par la douce France qui avait mis tant d’espérances en toi. Rien ne
    sera en mesure de te relever, aucun non-lieu, aucun accord. La politique
    te sera à jamais fermée. […]”

    Ce qui s’est passé dans cette chambre devenue légendaire ne peut se
    comprendre si l’on ne se met pas dans la tête d’un cochon authentique et
    véritable. D’un cochon qui prend une femme de ménage pour Catherine
    Deneuve dans “Belle de jour”. Seul un cochon peut trouver normal qu’une
    misérable immigrée africaine lui taille une pipe sans aucune
    contrepartie, juste pour lui faire plaisir, juste pour rendre un humble
    hommage à sa puissance.


    Et la pauvre est revenue dans la chambre pour voir si tu lui avais
    laissé un quelconque pourboire mais il n’y avait rien. Même pas un mot,
    même pas une fleur. La femme de chambre a été horriblement offensée mais
    elle n’a pas été violée.


    Voilà comment j’avais vu les choses depuis mon appartement où j’écris et je lis nuit et jour. […]

    “Très peu de gens savaient que ta femme avait fait de toi son caniche.
    […] Tu ne pouvais pas envisager de la quitter parce que cette vie de
    luxe-là, c’était impossible d’y renoncer. […] Tu étais devenu son
    caniche, un macho qui se sent un misérable caniche. Et plus elle faisait
    semblant de ne pas se rendre compte que tu étais enchaîné à elle par
    son argent, plus elle te possédait, plus elle te soumettait à cette
    humiliation, à cette terrible prostitution. Elle avait ce rêve d’être
    l’épouse d’un président. […]

    Un jour de mars, au plus dur de ta chute, tu m’as dit : ‘Je me suis
    trompé. Ma vie a été une terrible erreur. J’aurais pu faire tant
    d’autres choses de cette vie-là.’ […] Ce jour-là tu croyais vraiment que
    cette vie-là n’était pas la bonne vie pour toi. ‘Mais quelle vie
    crois-tu que j’aurais dû avoir ?’, m’as-tu demandé. […]

    “Il faudrait que le cochon, au lieu d’être ton inférieur, ton
    prisonnier, ton esclave, ton arme, devienne ton maître. […] Ce jour-là
    tu […] transformeras ton sperme en encre. Tu pourras enfin te
    débarrasser de toutes les entraves qui s’interposent entre ton désir et
    ton plaisir […] C’est seulement alors, mon merveilleux cochon, mon
    amour, ma sublime créature animale, que tu sauras ce que jouir veut
    dire.” […]


    Dominique Strauss-Khan a écrit une lettre ouverte à Jean Daniel, cofondateur du Nouvel Observateur :

    Cher Jean Daniel,
    A la lecture du Nouvel Observateur de ce jeudi, je suis saisi d’un
    double dégoût. Celui que provoque le comportement d’une femme qui séduit
    pour écrire un livre, se prévalant de sentiments amoureux pour les
    exploiter financièrement et, ce faisant, abondant dans le sens des
    médias que naguère elle critiquait vertement.

    Au-delà du caractère fantasmatique et donc inexact du récit, c’est
    une atteinte méprisable à ma vie privée et à la dignité humaine.
    Peut-être le dégoût est-il plus grand encore à l’égard du Nouvel
    Observateur qui, inquiet de perdre des lecteurs, et on comprend
    pourquoi, imagine son salut en s’avilissant dans une publication
    commerciale et crapoteuse qu’on croyait réservée à la presse de
    caniveau. L’ancien « grand journal de la conscience de gauche » vient de
    sombrer dans une opération qui donne la nausée.

    Dans ces conditions, j’ai demandé à mes avocats d’étudier toutes les voies légales pour combattre cette abomination. »

    De la “recherche” universitaire financée avec nos impôts ?

    Marcela Iacub dans Ce soir ou jamais et sur France Info :

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdPg65KIwq8&feature=player_embedded#!

    « Un enfant a besoin d’un père et d’une mère ?
    – C’est un présupposé naturaliste ridicule !
     »

    « Hitler et Mussolini sont tous nés d’un couple hétérosexuel. »

    « Les mots “père” et “mère” vont être substitués par le mot “parent”. »

    « Le pire ennemi de la femme, c’est l’enfant, c’est la famille. »

    « Vous avez un enfant ?

    – J’ai un chien.
     »

    Un portrait de DSK, avec qui elle a eu une liaison, en “cochon sublime”…sic…



    Découvrez qui est Pierre Hillard.

    Découvrez qui est Pierre Hillard dans cette interview originale qui se différencie de ses diverses interventions passées.

    Pierre
    Hillard se livre… Il nous parle de lui, des origines de ses
    recherches, de l’état de ses découvertes qu’il compare à un puzzle dont
    il ne reste, selon lui, que quelques pièces à mettre en place…
    Ses
    informations seraient accessibles à tous depuis des années, mais trop
    peu de personnes se seraient réellement intéressées au mondialisme,
    projet dont la description faite par Pierre Hillard est effrayante.
    Selon
    notre invité et un groupe restreint en France dont il parle, le chaos
    est proche et cet événement à venir résonne comme une évidence et il
    faut s’y préparer.

    “L’époque que nous vivons, et nous en sommes qu’au début, est extraordinaire”

    Pour
    Pierre Hillard, nous allons vivre une période noire entre “la guerre
    du feu” et “Mad MAx” selon la loi de la nature où les faibles
    disparaitrons, et les plus solides auront quelques chances…

    “Je suis épouvanté…surtout pour les enfants”

    Malgré tout, Pierre Hillard nous donne ses quelques conseils et références d’ordre spirituel et matériel.

    “La roue tourne, et le mal n’aura pas le dernier mot”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wden4GPY_vs

    Le pape Benoît XVI annonce sa démission

    Le pape Benoît XVI a annoncé lundi sa démission.

    Le pape Benoît XVI a annoncé lundi sa démission à partir du 28
    février, dans un discours prononcé en latin lors d’un consistoire ordinaire au
    Vatican, a confirmé le porte-parole du Saint-Siège.

    “Le
    pape a annoncé qu’il renoncera à son ministère à 20H00 (19H00 GMT), le
    28 février.

    Dans son annonce en latin traduite ensuite par le Vatican, Benoît XVI,
    agé de 85 ans, a dit être “parvenu à la certitude que (ses) forces, en
    raison de l’avancement de mon âge, ne sont plus aptes à exercer de façon
    adéquate le ministère” de pape et évêque de Rome, ce qui est permis par le droit canon selon l’évêque de Lausanne.

    Voici ses déclarations traduites en français :

    “Frères très chers,
    Je
    vous ai convoqués à ce Consistoire non seulement pour les trois
    canonisations, mais également pour vous communiquer une décision de
    grande importance pour la vie de l’Eglise. Après avoir examiné ma
    conscience devant Dieu, à diverses reprises, je suis parvenu à la
    certitude que mes forces, en raison de l’avancement de mon âge, ne sont
    plus aptes à exercer adéquatement le ministère pétrinien. Je suis bien
    conscient que ce ministère, de par son essence spirituelle, doit être
    accompli non seulement par les œuvres et par la parole, mais aussi, et
    pas moins, par la souffrance et par la prière.
    Cependant, dans le
    monde d’aujourd’hui, sujet à de rapides changements et agité par des
    questions de grande importance pour la vie de la foi, pour gouverner la
    barque de saint Pierre et annoncer l’Evangile, la vigueur du corps et de
    l’esprit est aussi nécessaire, vigueur qui, ces derniers mois, s’est
    amoindrie en moi d’une telle manière que je dois reconnaître mon
    incapacité à bien administrer le ministère qui m’a été confié.
    C’est
    pourquoi, bien conscient de la gravité de cet acte, en pleine liberté,
    je déclare renoncer au ministère d’Evêque de Rome, Successeur de saint
    Pierre, qui m’a été confié par les mains des cardinaux le 19 avril 2005,
    de telle sorte que, à partir du 28 février 2013 à vingt heures, le
    Siège de Rome, le Siège de saint Pierre, sera vacant et le conclave pour
    l’élection du nouveau Souverain Pontife devra être convoqué par ceux à
    qui il appartient de le faire.”

    fin de la traduction du latin.

    Commencera alors la période de ‘sede vacante’ (siège
    vacant)” et d’élection sous l’autorité du protodiacre selon Félix V.

    Le prochain pape sera probablement … extra-européen.

    La foudre frappe le Vatican le jour de l’annonce de la démission de Benoit XVI

    Prise par un photographe de la Repubblica

    Prudence avec les mauvaises traductions venant de Rome.

    Exemples:

    Mauvaise traduction dangereuse en anglais de Caritas in Veritate

           
    …je pense surtout à la création des Monts de Piété (
    traduit par pawnbroking…)
           
    …I am thinking especially of the birth of
    pawnbroking…
           
    Amour et don versus … profit et avarice

    65. Il faut enfin que la finance en tant que telle, avec ses
    structures et ses modalités de fonctionnement nécessairement renouvelées après
    le mauvais usage qui en a été fait et qui a eu des conséquences néfastes sur
    l’économie réelle, redevienne un instrument visant à une meilleure
    production de richesses et au développement
    . …Si l’amour est intelligent,
    il sait trouver même les moyens de faire des opérations qui permettent une
    juste et prévoyante rétribution, comme le montrent, de manière significative,
    de nombreuses expériences dans le domaine du crédit coopératif….L’expérience
    de la microfinance
    elle aussi, qui s’enracine dans la réflexion et dans
    l’action de citoyens humanistes – je pense surtout à la création des Monts
    de Piété
    –, doit être renforcée et actualisée, surtout en ces temps où les
    problèmes financiers peuvent devenir dramatiques pour les couches les plus
    vulnérables de la population qu’il faut protéger contre les risques du prêt
    usuraire ou du désespoir. Il faut que les sujets les plus faibles apprennent à
    se défendre des pratiques usuraires, tout comme il faut que les peuples pauvres
    apprennent à tirer profit du microcrédit, décourageant de cette manière les
    formes d’exploitation possibles en ces deux domaines. Puisqu’il existe
    également de nouvelles formes de pauvreté dans les pays riches, la microfinance
    peut apporter des aides concrètes pour la création d’initiatives et de secteurs
    nouveaux en faveur des franges les plus fragiles de la société, même en une
    période d’appauvrissement possible de l’ensemble de la société.

    Nonobstant cet effort proposé à tous, le pape exhorte les opérateurs
    financiers à rectifier leur agir en revenant à la justice, à « redécouvrir le
    fondement véritablement éthique de leur activité afin de ne pas faire un usage
    abusif de ces instruments sophistiqués qui peuvent servir à tromper les
    épargnants. L’intention droite, la transparence et la recherche de bons
    résultats sont compatibles et ne doivent jamais être séparés » (CIV,
    n. 65).
    Dans l’heureux souvenir des Monts-de-Piété catholiques (création par un
    religieux récollet italien Barnabé de Terni en 1462 ; confirmée au concile de
    Latran V en 1515)Le terme français vient de la « mauvaise traduction en
    français de l’italien monte di pietà, “crédit de pitié” »[1], de monte,
    « valeur, montant », et pietà, « pitié,
    charité ».
    L’idée du mont-de-piété est née en 1462, quand un moine récollet italien, Barnabé
    de Terni, cherche un moyen de combattre l’usure et les taux d’intérêt abusifs pratiqués à l’époque. Il est
    alors à l’origine de la création du Monte di Pietà, à Pérouse en Italie. Dix ans
    plus tard, le Monte dei Paschi di Siena est établi à Sienne avec le même
    objectif. Cet établissement propose alors un système de prêt
    sur gage
    à faible intérêt ou gratuit.
    Des initiatives semblables voient le jour dans d’autres villes d’Italie. Au Ve concile de Latran, en 1515, le pape Léon X
    reconnaît officiellement les monts-de-piété.

    L’ Église dit que nous avons besoin d’un système de polyarchie

    Méfiez-vous traductions erronées …

    à partir de: Mgr Robert A. Gahl, Jr., est professeur agrégé d’éthique à l’Université Pontificale de la Sainte Croix, à Rome.

    http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/money_from_love/

    … Même ceux qui sont habitués à la profondeur théologique de Joseph
    Ratzinger dans ses analyses de la culture contemporaine, sont peut-être surpris de
    constater que, dans Caritas in veritate, Benoît propose une
    théorie politique et économique ancrée et inspirée par la théologie
    trinitaire. Toutefois, il convient de mentionner que son sens est
    malheureusement obscurcie par quelques traductions malheureuses … (par
    exemple, “polyarchique» est rendu par «stratifié», «polycentrique» que
    «de nombreuses couches superposées», et «Monti di Pietà» comme «prêteur
    sur gages»).

    L’utilisation du terme «stratifié» plutôt que
    «polyarchique” pourrait sembler impliquer …les couches
    bureaucratiques des organismes gouvernementaux étatiques. En revanche,
    Benoît préconise des autorités polyarchiques de gouvernance, afin qu’un plus
    grand, ou simplement complémentaires, l’autorité puisse garantir la
    poursuite d’une bonne globalisé commune tout en respectant pleinement le
    principe de subsidiarité. En proposant polyarchie, le Pape propose un
    principe novateur tout en confiant la mise en œuvre de politiques
    détaillées pour les experts techniques capables de s’adapter aux
    principes en accord avec notre monde en mutation rapide. De nombreuses
    autorités, peut-être avec intersection et compétences complémentaires,
    qui servent à protéger la poursuite de l’individu libre du bien commun
    en accord avec la vérité. Benoît réaffirme et avancées de traitement
    Jean-Paul II de subsidiarité en affirmant qu’il s’agit d’une
    «manifestation particulière de la charité”, “un guide éclairant pour la
    collaboration fraternelle entre croyants et non-croyants”, “une
    expression de l’inaliénable liberté humaine”, “assistance aux la
    personne humaine »,« la reconnaissance de la personne comme capable de
    donner quelque chose aux autres “, et la promotion de« la liberté et la
    participation en tant que responsabilisation »(57). Par ailleurs, Benoît
    affirme le principe de subsidiarité comme un antidote” contre toute
    forme d’Etat-providence qui englobe tout “.

    Benoît rappelle les
    exigences fondamentales d’une économie, du progrès scientifique et des
    avancées dans la qualité de vie. Qu’est-ce qui motive réellement le
    monde n’est pas l’argent, mais l’amour. La force motrice derrière le
    développement humain, c’est l’amour, pas d’argent, …. …

    Mgr Robert A. Gahl, Jr., est professeur agrégé d’éthique à l’Université Pontificale de la Sainte Croix, à Rome.

    http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/money_from_love/ 

    En France [modifier]

    En France, un
    mont-de-piété est fondé à Avignon en 1610 par la Congrégation de Notre-Dame de Lorette,
    mais la ville est à cette époque une cité papale depuis 1348, et le restera
    jusqu’en 1791.
    C’est à Paris que le fondateur de La Gazette de France, Théophraste Renaudot, ouvre le premier
    mont-de-piété en 1637.
    Cinq ans plus tard, le roi Louis XIII autorise plusieurs autres
    villes du royaume à établir des monts-de-piété.
    Après la mort de Richelieu et de Louis XIII, un arrêt du Parlement met fin à l’institution sous la
    pression des usuriers. Il faut attendre une ordonnance du roi Louis XVI, le 9 décembre 1777, pour qu’elle soit
    rétablie.
    En juillet 1805 (8 Thermidor de
    l’an XIII),
    le décret impérial no 850 interdit aux maisons de prêt de Paris
    de recevoir des dépôts et de pratiquer des prêts sur nantissement,
    et ordonne le transfert des dépôts au mont-de-piété[2]. Le même
    jour, l’empereur Napoléon Ier et le
    secrétaire d’État Hugues-Bernard Maret signent le décret no 851
    relatif à l’organisation et aux opérations du mont-de-piété de Paris[2].
    Le 24 octobre 1918, un décret
    transforme les monts-de-piété en caisses de crédit municipal. Le mont-de-piété de Paris
    devient ainsi le Crédit municipal de Paris. Le changement
    de dénomination correspond au développement de ses activités bancaires parallèlement
    aux prêts sur gages.
    source: Wikipedia

    Caritas in veritate

    65. Furthermore,
    the experience of micro-finance, which has its roots in the thinking and
    activity of the civil humanists — I am thinking especially of the birth of
    pawnbroking
    — should be strengthened and fine-tuned. This is all the more
    necessary in these days when financial difficulties can become severe for many
    of the more vulnerable sectors of the population, who should be protected from
    the risk of usury and from despair. The weakest members of society should be
    helped to defend themselves against usury, just as poor peoples should be
    helped to derive real benefit from micro-credit, in order to discourage the
    exploitation that is possible in these two areas. Since rich countries are also
    experiencing new forms of poverty, micro-finance can give practical assistance
    by launching new initiatives and opening up new sectors for the benefit of the
    weaker elements in society, even at a time of general economic downturn.
    Profit et avarice versus amour et
    don…

    M. Oskar Freysinger au Conseil d’Etat valaisan

    Chers compatriotes,
    Chers amis, Je me souviens…..

     

    Je me souviens lorsque nous avons fondé l’UDC, c’était il y a 12 ans
    !! Je me souviens de la réprobation des médias, des autres partis qui
    nous traitaient de tous les noms d’oiseaux, nous insultant ainsi
    gravement, parce que nous osions simplement nous référer aux valeurs
    traditionnelles de la Suisse.
    Je me souviens de l’incendie de ma maison familiale.
    Je me souviens de l’affiche me comparant à Hitler par des gens prétendument si respectueux.
    Je
    me souviens de la caricature de Vigousse me présentant en nazi envoyant
    des enfants à la chambre à gaz, simplement parce que je demandais que
    les plus faibles soient pris plus particulièrement en charge par le
    système scolaire.

    Oui, je me souviens de tout cela. Et pourtant, aujourd’hui plus que
    jamais, ces agressions me poussent à continuer car, en m’insultant,
    c’est vous que l’on insulte, c’est le peuple et nos institutions que
    l’on insulte !!!

    Malgré l’opprobre, je continue à penser aux victimes auxquelles on ne veut pas rendre justice.
    Je pense à l’ouvrier qui perd son emploi parce qu’il ne compte pas pour l’économie globalisée.
    J’entends
    les agriculteurs soumis à une concurrence déloyale et qui ne
    parviennent plus à vivre décemment du fruit de leur labeur.
    J’entends les patrons des PME écrasés par les impôts et les taxes.
    J’entends les policiers condamnés alors qu’ils faisaient leur travail pour garantir notre sécurité.
    J’entends
    cette jeune fille qui s’est fait agresser dans le train à Viège et qui
    n’a échappé à un viol collectif que grâce à l’intervention de deux
    militaires.
    J’entends les citoyens qui se soucient de la délocalisation des hôpitaux.
    J’entends nos jeunes qui s’inquiètent pour leur avenir professionnel.
    Je pense à cet agriculteur de Collombey-Muraz dont le terrain fut occupé illégalement avec l’accord d’autorités complaisantes.

    Nous devons réagir et faire en sorte que la solidarité n’aille pas sans la responsabilité,
    que les droits soient toujours assortis de devoirs,
    que celui qui n’a jamais travaillé et cotisé ne soit pas favorisé au détriment de celui qui a travaillé et cotisé toute sa vie.
    Nous devons faire en sorte que les criminels et les tricheurs soient punis comme ils le méritent.
    Nous
    devons surtout renforcer les contrôles à nos frontières pour empêcher
    la criminalité internationale de sévir impunément chez nous.

    La coupe est pleine, chers amis, et le peuple en a assez !!!

    Si nous continuons à être laxistes, ce pays risque de perdre sa qualité de vie et pire encore, son âme.

    Si rien ne change, les conditions humaines, politiques, économiques
    et sociales de notre société vont se détériorer de manière
    irrémédiable.

    Ce sont les valeurs du travail, de l’effort et du mérite qui ont rendu ce pays et ce canton prospères. Ne les bradons pas !!!

    Nous devons agir pour que la formation professionnelle soit revalorisée.
    Nous
    voulons une école où l’autorité du maître et du savoir est reconnue
    parce que nous ne pouvons pas éduquer nos enfants sans un minimum
    d’exigence et de rigueur.
    Le laxisme ne rend pas service aux enfants !
    Nous voulons qu’ils deviennent des êtres responsables, car sans la responsabilité, la liberté est un leurre.

    Si je suis élu au gouvernement Valaisan, je m’engage à : maintenir,
    voire renforcer la qualité de l’enseignement public en soutenant les
    enseignants dans leur métier.
    J’encouragerai les PME à créer des postes de travail.
    Je soutiendrai le foisonnement de la culture, car elle est le ferment d’une civilisation.

    Je continuerai à lutter pour la liberté d’expression, base de toute
    démocratie. Je défendrai une justice sévère avec les criminels et
    respectueuse des victimes.
    Je prendrai toutes les mesures
    nécessaires pour renforcer la sécurité. En tant que membre du
    gouvernement, je m’engagerai pour la construction d’une gaine technique
    le long du Rhône, véritable colonne vertébrale du futur de notre canton.

    Je veillerai à ce que le Valais ne soit pas spolié de ses
    ressources naturelles et défendrai le patrimoine en combattant toute
    taxe sur les successions.
    Finalement, je ferai tout mon possible
    pour que le deuxième tube du Lötschberg soit construit et que
    l’autoroute dans le haut Valais soit enfin terminée.

    Ce ne sont là que quelques lignes générales, mais elles donnent le ton.
    Si
    vous me faites confiance, si le peuple me fait confiance, je ferai
    l’impossible pour que le Valais, ce canton qui m’a vu naître et que je
    chéris plus que tout, sache surmonter ses difficultés et exploiter au
    maximum ses forces et ses vertus.

    Ensemble, nous vaincrons et nous transmettrons à nos descendants un canton prospère !
    Ensemble, nous réaliserons les rêves qui sommeillent sous les paupières de nos enfants.
    Ensemble, nous dessinerons le Valais de demain.

    Vive le Valais !

    Dix projets pour le Valais du futur

    1. Rhône 3

    Un fleuve au service de l’homme

    Dans
    ce dossier crucial, je soutiens la solution des communes qui se
    caractérise par une faible emprise sur le patrimoine foncier.

    Le
    Rhône est la ligne la plus directe qui permet de construire une gaine
    technique à travers le canton comprenant l’enterrement des lignes à
    haute tension, la sécurisation du fleuve, un espace détente pour les
    citoyens ainsi que l’aqueduc (turbinage, vente d’eau potable) et une
    autoroute informatique pour ainsi renforcer notre indépendance
    énergétique et miser sur le développement de notre potentiel
    hydraulique. En détournant les eaux de turbinage dans un aqueduc, les
    valaisans pourraient acquérir les avantages suivants : suppression des
    marnages,  production d’électricité de 400 millions de KWh nets avec une
    production de pointe et de super pointe, vente d’eau potable de
    qualité. Cette réalisation offre aussi la possibilité d’évacuer 600
    m3/sec à hauteur de Riddes en cas de crues.

    L’élargissement prévu
    par Rhône 3 tourne autour de 2,5 milliards. La solution des communes ne
    coûte que 600 millions. Les milliards économisés pourraient être
    utilisés pour le deuxième tube du Lötschberg et l’autoroute dans le haut
    Valais. De plus, une grande partie des travaux pourrait être effectuée
    par les gravières gratuitement dans le cadre de leur concession
    d’extraction. Peu de travaux seraient nécessaires.

    La durabilité
    des éoliennes et du solaire (30 ans) est limitée. La RPC (rétribution
    prix coûtant) pose un problème. Le courant vert ne peut se vendre qu’à 5
    centimes et devrait être vendu à 30 centimes pour que ce soit rentable.
    Une installation comme l’aqueduc doit être amortie en 60 ans, mais
    après, c’est du bénéfice pur pour 2 à 300 ans. (Aqueduc : 10 centimes de
    valeur et 20 de revente).

    En encaissant 25 centimes par mètre
    cube d’eau potable au départ du Bouveret, on aurait un rendement 15 fois
    supérieur que si l’on utilisait la même chute pour produire de
    l’électricité.

    Il faut absolument éviter la technique du salami :
    tranche par tranche, on introduit l’élargissement qui rend la gaine
    technique à terme impossible. La politique doit prendre une option
    claire immédiatement. Les paramètres de l’élargissement sont connus :
    terre arable perdue, pénuries énergétiques et alimentaires, destruction
    d’infrastructures, coûts très élevés.

    2. Éducation, enseignement, culture

    Travail, excellence et imagination

    Dans ce domaine, un éventail de mesures s’impose :

    Renforcer l’enseignement des compétences fondamentales.

    Construire une base de savoir cohérente (grille de lecture globale du monde).

    Favoriser le plus possible l’existence de référents stables (maîtres de classe).

    Renforcer
    la prise en charge d’élèves avec de graves déficits dans des classes
    spéciales jusqu’à leur insertion dans les classes régulières.

    Mieux axer l’enseignement de la HEP sur l’application de méthodes pratiques et applicables dans le réel.

    Eviter la fonctionnarisation et la bureaucratisation des enseignants.

    Favoriser et flexibiliser les échanges linguistiques. Immersion le plus tôt possible où c’est possible.

    Finalement
    construire rapidement un campus pour la recherche et le développement
    en lien avec l’EPFL (santé, énergies) et améliorer les collaborations et
    la flexibilité dans la chaîne des formations CFC, ES (car il y a un
    besoin de personnel, mais il n’y a pas d’offre de formation, raison pour
    laquelle on va chercher ailleurs la main d’œuvre) et HES. Il faut
    accroître l’offre dans la formation pour les différents métiers de la
    santé.

    Côté culture, il s’agit de renforcer les liens entre le
    monde culturel valaisan (musique, théâtre, littérature) et l’école. Les
    subventions doivent être le plus possible transformées en contribution
    pour une prestation.

    Il faut également faciliter l’accès des troupes amateur à des infrastructures scéniques, salles de concert etc.

    3. Tourisme, économie

    Une économie alpine prospère

    En
    contrepartie de ce que la Confédération impose au canton (lex Weber,
    LAT et demain, qui sait, dans le domaine du droit des successions et les
    droits d’eau), je propose :

    La réalisation sans retard de la sortie en Y du Lötschberg,

    La
    création d’un fonds d’infrastructure financé par la Confédération d’au
    minimum un mil-liard de francs : 200 millions de francs par année pour
    rénover et remettre à niveau les infrastructures touristiques dans les
    communes proscrites ( >20% de résidences secondaires ) pour la
    période 2013-2017. Puis renouvellent de ce fonds en fonction des besoins
    planifiés par période quinquennale.

    L’introduction d’une
    obligation légale pour les instituts financiers suisses de financer les
    projets touristiques hôteliers et équivalents ( hôtels – restaurants –
    chambres d’hôtes – établissements locatifs touristiques conformes à la
    loi Weber) sur le territoire des communes proscrites,  avec la caution
    de la Confédération et à des taux équivalents au marché hypothécaire
    local.

    4. Décloisonnement, transports

    Le Valais à la croisée des chemins

    Le
    but central, dans ce domaine consiste à renforcer l’attractivité
    générale du canton pour inciter les entreprises et les touristes à venir
    en Valais. Cela exige le DECLOISONNEMENT du canton ! Il faut mettre fin
    au terme « région périphérique ». Géographiquement, le Valais est au
    centre de l’Europe, pas en périphérie. À nous d’exploiter cet avantage.

    Pour cela, il faut :

    Diminuer
    l’impact de l’éloignement (région périphérique) par l’amélioration des
    voies de communication et de transport : finir rapidement l’autoroute
    dans le haut Valais, terminer l’achèvement du 2ème tube du tunnel du
    Lötschberg pour exploiter pleinement  ses capacités, mettre en valeur
    l’aéroport de Sion dans ses activités civiles, rehausser le tunnel de la
    ligne CFF à St-Maurice (possibilité de faire venir le TGV à Brigue),
    soutenir la ligne du Tonkin.

    Elaborer un concept favorisant le
    home-working (marketing démontrant les avantages du cadre qu’offre le
    Valais pour les familles, la qualité de vie des employés). Il faut aussi
    généraliser l’introduction de la fibre optique pour que ce créneau
    puisse être exploité. Cela permettrait de désengorger les axes routiers
    et les transports publics.

    Favoriser la jonction par le Grimsel
    entre les réseaux de chemins de fer lémanique, oberlandais et alpin, ce
    qui créerait le plus grand réseau de chemins de fer à voie étroite du
    monde. En résulterait une formidable attraction touristique permettant
    un circuit avec des escales.

    5. Sécurité, prisons

    Un Valais sûr

    Il
    est prioritaire de renforcer les contrôles de personnes en zone
    frontière. Schengen permet certaines formes de contrôle, il faut
    exploiter au maximum le peu de marge que laisse ce mauvais accord.

    Il s’agit ensuite de renforcer les effectifs de la police cantonale

    Il
    y a un grave manque de personnel au niveau des prisons. Les conditions
    de travail des gardiens se sont détériorées. Avant de décider de
    réformes, il faut d’abord écouter les praticiens (problèmes à Pramont !)

    Il est prioritaire de réduire l’attractivité des conditions de détention. Je défends le concept de la réinsertion spartiate.

    Finalement,
    il faut insister pour que les renvois soient réellement effectués.
    (environ 80% de délinquants étrangers en préventive dans les prisons de
    Sion et Martigny).

    6. Santé, système hospitalier

    La santé pour tous à un prix abordable

    La
    politique de la santé ne doit pas se focaliser uniquement sur des
    aspects particuliers mais plutôt sur une vision globale de la prise en
    charge de personnes malades, âgées ou nécessitantes des soins
    particuliers sur le long terme. Avant tout, le système sanitaire doit
    être au service du patient et non le patient au service du système.

    Je propose les mesures suivantes :

    Maintenir
    un hôpital de soins aigus (chirurgie de base, urgences) par région :
    Rennaz pour le Chablais, Sion pour le centre et un hôpital dans le
    Haut-Valais (à définir entre Brig, Visp ou la  construction d’un nouvel
    hôpital).

    Muter l’hôpital de Sion en hôpital cantonal pour les
    disciplines médicales de pointe en garantissant le bilinguisme.
    (nécessité économique).

    Garantir un espace pour les cliniques
    privées afin de laisser la liberté de choix aux patients valaisans. (Non
    à une situation de monopole du RSV).

    Impliquer les acteurs du terrain comprenant également le secteur privé dans la planification cantonale.

    Améliorer les filières de formations de la santé et rendre le système de formation plus souple.

    Favoriser
    le secteur de la réadaptation et du thermalisme pour créer un label
    bien-être et santé en Valais, soit une autre forme de tourisme.

    7. Institutions

    Plus de démocratie

    La
    démultiplication d’organismes intermédiaires sans réelle légitimité ni
    contrôle démocratique (projets d’agglo, conventions inter-cantonales)
    doit être réduite au maximum et avec elle le règne des technocrates. Le
    gouvernement et le parlement doivent reprendre la main à tous les
    échelons de décision et au niveau communal ce doit être le peuple.

    Je
    dis non à la démission du politique par rapport aux technocrates et à
    la bureaucratie (comme pour le rapport de la Suisse avec l’UE).

    Concernant
    R21, il faut enfin soumettre au peuple l’initiative « chaque voix
    compte ». Je     suis, dans ce dossier, pour passer à sept conseillers
    d’Etat, abroger les préfets, introduire le     droit d’initiative
    communal généralisé, encourager les fusions de communes par   
     l’incitation     et sans contrainte, et passer à un quorum électoral de
    5%.

    8. Impôts

    Soulager les citoyens

    Il
    faut revoir l’impôt sur les gains immobiliers (IGI), dont le Valais
    était exonéré jusqu’à il y a une décennie et demie environ et que le PDC
    a introduit et refusé d’abolir depuis, alors que plus de 70% de
    valaisans sont propriétaires. Certes, cet impôt est régi par du droit
    fédéral. Mais le Valais pourrait faire comme Genève qui s’est plié au
    droit fédéral en fixant le taux d’imposition à 0% à partir de 25 ans de
    possession comme c’était le cas dans notre canton (actuellement 1%).

    9. Paysage : bisses et murs à sec

    Protection du patrimoine

    Les
    bisses et les murs à sec sont une composante essentielle du patrimoine
    et du paysage valaisans. Des démarches sont entreprises pour faire
    inscrire les bisses au patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO. Je m’engage à
    soutenir sans réserve cette démarche et à faire inscrire également les
    murs à sec, un peu comme cela a été fait pour le vignoble du Lavaux.

    10. Justice : affaire Luca

    Réparer le tort subi

    Si
    je suis élu, je ferai tout ce que permet la séparation des pouvoirs
    pour que toute la lumière soit faite, enfin, dans cette tragique
    affaire.

    Identité – proximité – sécurité
    Ces
    trois thèmes représentent les axes essentiels de l’action politique de
    l’UDC. En préambule de nos lignes directrices, il convient de les
    traiter un à un en esquissant toutes les conséquences qu’impliquerait,
    pour notre pays, le fait de les négliger.
    I Identité
    L’UDC est le
    seul parti, en Suisse, qui ose poser la question identitaire. Or, cette
    question est vitale pour la survie de l’Etat Nation. Qui sommes nous ?
    Quelles sont nos racines ? Sur la base de quelles valeurs la communauté
    nationale s’est elle construite ? Et comment défendre notre patrimoine
    culturel ? Voilà des questions qu’il vaut la peine de se poser et qui
    fâchent tous ceux qui n’ont d’autre but que de fondre la petite Suisse
    dans l’empire UE qui l’entoure.
    Depuis
    la deuxième guerre mondiale, des esprits dits « éclairés » cherchent à
    « globaliser les consciences », à « décloisonner la pensée ». La
    liberté, disent-ils, s’est de s’ouvrir à tout, s’est de faire tomber
    toute limite entre les différentes identités,
    ethnies
    et nations. Ce que provoquent ces gens en mélangeant tout, c’est une
    sorte de génocide de la disparité, une extinction des différences. Car
    l’identité se construit à partir d’un paysage émotionnel constitué d’une
    terre particulière, peuplée de traditions, de coutumes, de valeurs.
    Or, la
    modernité dite « globale » veut justement éradiquer tout cela. Elle n’a
    pas compris que c’est parce que l’autre est différent

    de moi qu’il me permet d’être ouvert et tolérant envers lui. Elle n’a
    pas compris que c’est justement parce que nous sommes tous uniques grâce
    à notre identité propre et irremplaçable que notre humanité commune
    nous unit. Oui, ce n’est qu’en restant autre que l’autre peut m’enrichir
    et que je puis lui apporter quelque chose en retour.
    La
    pseudo-tolérance proclamée sur toutes les ondes depuis mai 68 n’est
    qu’un leurre, car la vraie tolérance est quelque-chose qui exige un
    effort, c’est une qualité qui ne supporte pas le nivellement par le bas.
    Etre tolérant pour l’infiniment même n’est pas un exploit.
    Or, la
    mondialisation actuelle cherche à détruire la coexistence de visions du
    monde différentes, de systèmes politiques divergents, de valeurs
    contradictoires. Par un déplacement systématique de
    s
    foules humaines et des marchandises, elle cherche à créer un énorme
    « melting pot » planétaire où l’homme n’est plus que l’ombre de
    lui-même, elle instaure une sorte de société globale diffuse ou tout se
    vaut, où rien ne se distingue plus dans la promiscuité d’âmes errantes
    et terriblement vides.
    La
    société globale est ainsi à la dignité humaine ce que le hamburger est à
    la haute cuisine. C’est peut-être rassurant de savoir qu’un Hamburger a
    strictement le même goût et la même consistance partout dans le monde, m
    ais
    cela ne permet aucunement de vivre pleinement. Au plus, les hommes se
    content-ils de survivre tristement avec, dans un recoin de la mémoire,
    une vague nostalgie de saveurs oubliées. Non, l’identité, ça ne
    s’égalise pas, ça ne se nivelle pas, vendre son identité équivaut à
    vendre quelque chose qui n’a pas de prix, car ce faisant, c’est son âme
    que l’on vend au diable.
    II proximité
    « Aime ton
    prochain comme toi-même ! » A ce jour, aucun concept régissant la
    cohabitation humaine n’a égalé de près ou de loin le génie de ce simple
    précepte chrétien. Là où les difficultés apparaissent, c’est dans son
    application. L’on peut bien être d’accord sur le fait que tous les
    humains sont des frères et donc nos proches, mais on réalise aussitôt
    que celui qui embrasse trop de monde embrasse mal. La fraternité
    globale, l’amour pour le monde entier, voilà bien des coquilles vides ne
    cherchant qu’à culpabiliser ceux qui cherchent à privilégier la qualité
    sur la quantité, la proximité sur l’éloignement.
    Or, en
    quoi le frère humain lointain avec qui je n’ai encore rien partagé,
    dont j’ignore le caractère profond, qui n’est mon proche qu’en théorie,
    devrait-il être considéré comme plus proche que celui dont je partage le
    quotidien,
    les soucis, les responsabilités :
    mon concitoyen Suisse ? Pourquoi, afin de favoriser l’économie d’un coin
    de planète lointain, devrais-je négliger le producteur de chez moi,
    l’artisan du coin, le travailleur indigène dont le labeur contribue à
    élever le niveau de la société dans laquelle je vis ? Si, pour être
    ouvert et tolérant et embrasser le monde entier, il faut nécessairement
    défavoriser mon prochain réel en favorisant le prochain virtuel que la
    pensée globale m’impose, alors je n’aurai bientôt plus de proches à
    aimer.
    Le
    drame actuel, c’est que l’on détruit des pans entiers de l’économie de
    proximité pour faire venir d’ailleurs, à grands renforts d’énergie
    dilapidée et de pollution, ce que l’on aurait très bien et même pu mieux
    produire chez nous. Mais voilà, le consommateur globalisé doit pouvoir
    consommer de tout en tous temps. Le décloisonnement dicté par le haut
    fait disparaître les saisons, les frontières et les distances. Tout doit
    être proche à tout moment, même si le prix à payer, c’est l’aliénation
    de ceux qui n’acceptent pas de voir leur travail bradé à vil prix. Ce
    que l’on veut, c’est transformer l’homme en pièce de rechange infiniment
    remplaçable, déplaçable, jetable, en nomade économique. Or, les
    chômeurs de tous les pays ont une chose en commun : Ils ne sont plus
    proches de personne, car ils sont exclus de tout, ils trainent leur âme
    en peine comme des morts vivants que l’on maintient sous perfusion par
    un peu d’argent étatique. Le proche devient ainsi lointain, il dépérit
    dans un cercle vicieux dévastateur, se mure dans son désespoir.
    L’économie
    globalisée n’en a cure, elle continue à prôner le décloisonnement et
    l’ouverture. Les grandes banques achètent des actions pourries aux Etats
    Unis plutôt que de sauver la compagnie d’aviation nationale ou
    d’accorder un crédit intelligent aux PME Suisses, aux entrepreneurs du
    crû, forces vives de notre pays. Les œuvres d’entraide continuent à
    prôner l’aide aux plus démunis de l’autre bout du monde, dont la
    télévision et l’internet rendent la misère plus proche que la souffrance
    du voisin de palier désœuvré. Il est vrai qu’il est plus facile de
    délocaliser et de jouer avec les destins humains à des milliers de
    kilomètres de distance que de créer des places de travail pour le
    concitoyen trop proche, trop exigeant, et dont la souffrance est trop
    visible en cas de licenciement. Il est vrai aussi qu’il est plus facile
    de se donner bonne conscience en faisant de temps en temps un don à la
    misère lointaine plutôt que de s’attaquer à bras le corps à la misère
    qui règne dans le plus proche voisinage.
    Le
    prix à payer pour cette évolution inquiétante est exorbitant. A force de
    vouloir être proches du monde entier, nous nous perdons nous-mêmes dans
    la solitude la plus affligeante. Lorsqu’il n’y a plus rien de lointain,
    plus rien d’étranger, il n’y a plus rien de proche non plus.
    La
    solution, c’est que nous balayions d’abord devant notre porte, que nous
    tendions d’abord la main au frère réel au bord du chemin avant de
    vouloir faire le bien des si lointains proches du désert des tartares.
    Cette attitude n’a rien d’égoïste, elle procède tout simplement du plus
    élémentaire bon sens.
    III Sécurité
    Le choc culturel engendré par la
    nomadisation des peuples crée une situation en certains points analogue
    à celle des grandes migrations qui ont marqué la fin de l’empire
    romain. Au lieu de se retrouver dans des conflits classiques opposant
    des Etats, c’est une guerre civile généralisée entre quartiers, ethnies
    et groupes sociaux qui s’installe. Or, la violence urbaine et le
    sentiment d’insécurité qui sont en train de se répandre dans les villes
    européennes et suisses permettent à une élite d’instaurer peu à peu,
    sous le couvert de la protection des libertés citoyennes, la limitation
    de celles-ci.
    Ayant
    fait tomber tous les cordons sanitaires entourant les espaces de liberté
    que constituaient les Etats nations, les élites politiques, principal
    vecteur de cette évolution, proposent l’établissement d’un état policier
    pour compenser la perte de sécurité. Sachant que le bon peuple ne prend
    rien plus en horreur que le chaos et qu’il est même disposé à sacrifier
    une partie de sa liberté pour que l’ordre public soit rétabli, ces
    esprits machiavéliques installent un contrôle permanent de tous les
    citoyens sur tout le territoire national. D’homme libre, le citoyen
    devient un suspect en puissance dont il faut espionner les habitudes
    économiques, sociales, alimentaires, sexuelles et politiques. Des moyens
    policiers transgressant les règles de la protection des données font
    voler en éclat la sphère privée. D’énormes banques de données sont
    nourries de nos faits et gestes, presque toujours à notre insu, sous le
    prétexte que la protection de la liberté vaut bien quelques sacrifices.
    Or, une liberté emmurée n’est plus la liberté, une vie momifiée par des
    règles de sécurité n’est plus une vie. Peu à peu, le système glisse vers
    un totalitarisme « soft » dans le cadre duquel les pompiers pyromanes
    qui ont créé le chaos proposent de le circonscrire au prix de notre
    liberté. Bientôt, le remède sera aussi effrayant que le mal qu’il
    prétend combattre.
    Cette
    évolution qui consiste à détruire la liberté au nom de la liberté dans
    un monde devenu incertain a été très tôt annoncée par certains auteurs
    futuristes du siècle dernier tels Orwell, Huxley et Bradbury. Le but de
    ce processus est de forcer le citoyen à se claquemurer chez lui, à
    prendre pour vérité les inepties quotidiennes d’une télévision étatique
    dévoyée et de laisser l’Etat s’occuper du reste, de tout le reste. Or,
    accepter cela, c’est brader la responsabilité civile et la démocratie
    directe, c’est devenir un rouage dans un système instaurant une sécurité
    sans liberté, une égalité sans humanité et un monde de loisirs sans
    bonheur.
    Le
    seul moyen de s’opposer à cette évolution inquiétante consiste à
    combattre les sources de l’insécurité avant que celle-ci ne se soit
    insérée à tous les niveaux du corps social telles les métastases d’un
    cancer. La société Suisse est une société ouverte comptant le plus grand
    nombre d’étrangers par rapport à sa population en Europe. Pour ne pas
    mettre en péril cet équilibre fragile il faut empêcher toutes les mafias
    du monde d’y établir leurs succursales et cesser d’être laxistes envers
    les criminels qui ont choisi le territoire national Suisse comme
    territoire de chasse. Ce n’est qu’en éradiquant le mal à la racine que
    les Suisses parviendront à vivre en sécurité et libres malgré tout.
    Depuis l’abandon des contrôles stricts aux frontières, les cambriolages
    se sont démultipliés dans l’arc lémanique. Demain, ce sera au tour des
    Valaisans de ne plus être en sécurité chez eux. Après demain, nos
    enfants seront prisonniers dans leur propre pays. Les citoyens Suisses
    doivent rester sur leurs gardes et agir aujourd’hui déjà en empêchant,
    par une immigration jugulée, l’établissement de ghettos culturels, donc
    du communautarisme, et l’apparition d’un droit parallèle contraire aux
    droits de l’homme et aux principes de l’Etat de droit. Lorsque ces
    phénomènes se seront répandus dans le corps social, il sera trop tard.
    Et la Suisse, plus vieille démocratie du monde après 500 d’histoire,
    risque alors de voir sa cohésion sociale et sa démocratie directe voler
    en éclats.
    Oskar Freysinger
    Conseiller national et président de l’UDCVR

     

    Ateliers Monnaies complémentaires


    Ateliers Monnaies complémentaires

    La monnaie est au coeur de tous les problèmes que traverse notre société.

    La monnaie dont la fonction première était de faciliter l’échange entre
    les membres d’une communauté et de mesurer  ses richesses, est devenue
    elle-même une marchandise et nous nous sommes habitués à l’idée qu’il
    fallait l’accumuler pour être riche et souffrir pour en obtenir…  ! En
    somme, au lieu de regarder la vraie richesse, on a commencé à loucher
    sur ce qui sert à la mesurer
    .

    A la suite de la Journée du 19 janvier et
    en collaboration avec APRES-GE et Community Forge, EcoAttitude
    participe à la préparation d’une monnaie complémentaire locale dans la
    région genevoise et relance un atelier.

    Si vous voulez en apprendre plus et partager vos questionnements et vos savoirs 


    atelier monnaies complémentaires
    La Muse – 5 rue de la Muse (2ème parallèle après la rue des Savoises)
    18h30-21h.

    Lundis 11 février, 4 mars
    : Deux lundis pour partager nos lectures des ouvrages de base et
    contribuer à la rédaction d’un document qui doit convaincre les membres
    d’APRES-GE de l’importance du sujet, pour la date de leur AG en mai
    2013.

    Pas
    de pré-requis, mais participation informée requise. Ce n’est pas un
    cours. C’est un atelier . Si vous avez des notes de lecture à partager,
    envoyez-les à EcoAttitude, nous les publierons.

    Inscriptions  : info”at” ecoattitude.org
    Réservez aussi les dates de la conférence + atelier des 27-28 mars avec Frédéric Bosqué, ainsi que la conférence de Patrick Viveret le jeudi 18 avril.


    Si vous comptez participer, prenez le temps de lire les textes suivants :

    .http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5enljAk_FlQ


    M. Étienne Chouard explique pourquoi il faut libérer les Hommes de la quête
    nécessaire de l’argent par le travail marchand, facteur de soumission
    du peuple à ceux qui détiennent l’argent. Avec un revenu de base
    inconditionnel, on libérerait ainsi la créativité humaine, et on
    permettrait aux citoyens de se consacrer à ce qui leur semble bon et
    juste.



    Voir l’interview complète : http://youtu.be/WKBj8rtiL6Q

    https://docs.google.com/open?id=1LULZl8uEZTZ1XOjSSBpopgN1KfmueeVa2PBVxGeKMu5lPf_0tGphrfmKYbpF

    Madagascar, images

    http://desiebenthal.blogspot.ch/2012/06/congo-experiences.html
    Chaque année, une semaine d’étude a lieu à Rougemont
    au Canada en 4 langues fin août suivie du congrès international début
    septembre (fête du travail au Canada), avec des pèlerinages facultatifs offerts. Repas, pèlerinages ( not. St Joseph, N-D du Cap et St Anne) et couchers gratuits
    pour tous nos invités des pays hors du Canada. Autre période de
    formation en mai chaque année, en 2013 du 9 au 18 mai pour les études et du 19 au 26 mai pour le Jéricho


    Le
    chef-d’oeuvre de Louis Even
    Tous
    ceux qui apprécient les écrits de Louis Even sur le Crédit Social se
    feront un devoir de se procurer ce livre, un chef-d’oeuvre de logique et
    de clarté. Pour les nouveaux lecteurs de Vers Demain, nous recommandons
    fortement la lecture de ce livre, qui donne d’une manière simple mais
    éclatante les meilleures explications possibles sur la nouvelle
    conception de l’économie qu’est le Crédit Social. La dernière mise à
    jour de l’édition imprimée date de juin 2008, qui contient une
    quinzaine de chapitres de plus que l’édition précédente de 1988.
    312
    pages, 14,5 cm x 21 cm, 15$ par la poste, de notre bureau de Rougemont


    Du
    régime de dettes à la prospérité 
    par J. Crate Larkin
    C’est ce livre qui a fait découvrir
    à Louis Even le Crédit Social, et qui lui fit s’écrier: «Voilà une
    lumière sur mon chemin!» Ce livre a changé la vie de Louis
    Even; il
    pourrait changer la vôtre aussi! Ce livre de 112 pages met en valeur
    les buts et les fins de l’économie, de l’industrie et de la
    technologie. D’une actualité cuisante, c’est un oeuvre mémorable qu’il
    vous faut lire absolument.  Prix au comptoir (à nos bureaux de
    Rougemont): 5 dollars. Par la poste: 7 dollars pour le Canada, 10 $ pour
    les autres pays.
    Pour télécharger
    la version PDF de ce livre, cliquez ici (ou
    sur la couverture du livre) (822 Ko)


    Deux autres brochures de Louis Even
    sur le Crédit Social

    Qu'est-ce que le vrai Crédit SocialLa
    première brochure, Qu’est-ce que le vrai Crédit
    Social
    , explique que
    le Crédit Social n’est pas un parti politique, mais une série de
    principes exprimés pour la première fois par l’ingénieur écossais
    Clifford Hugh Douglas en 1918, et que l’application de ces principes
    feraient l’organisme social et économique atteindre sa fin, qui est la
    satisfaction des besoins humains. Ces principes peuvent être appliqués
    par n’importe quel parti au pouvoir, et il n’y a aucun besoin d’un
    «parti du Crédit Social» pour les appliquer. C’est la brochure que
    nous recommandons à tous ceux qui étudient le Crédit Social pour la
    première fois, car elle contient un très bon résumé des principes
    créditistes (Le syllabaire du Crédit Social), et répond à la plupart
    des objections des adversaires.
    Une finance saine et efficaceLa
    deuxième brochure, Une finance saine et
    efficace
    , est destinée à ceux
    qui possèdent déjà quelques notions du Crédit Social, mais veulent
    en savoir plus sur ses aspects techniques et la possibilité de son
    application dans le concret. Elle explique les trois propositions de
    base de Douglas pour un système financier sain, et comment ces
    propositions peuvent être appliquées: comment obtenir un équilibre
    constant entre les prix et le pouvoir d’achat, comment financer la
    production privée et publique, financer la distribution par un
    dividende social à tous, et finalement, ce qu’il adviendrait des taxes
    dans un régime de Crédit Social.
    Deux
    brochures de 32 pages, 21 x 27 cm

    3,00 $ chacune par la poste



    Offre spéciale
    pour organiser des cercles d’étude
    Pour
    connaître et comprendre la cause de la crise financière, il vous faut
    lire ces ouvrages très instructifs qui vous sont proposés
    à un prix spécial pour un temps limité, afin de former
    des
    cercles d’études dans vos paroisses, dans vos milieux:
      1)
      «Du Régime de Dettes à la Prospérité»
      , 110 pages, une traduction par Louis Even du livre
      “From Debt to Prosperity”
      de J. Crate Larkin. L’édition originale anglaise comprend 96 pages. Louis
      Even, notre regretté fondateur, a eu le
      livre entre ses mains, en 1934 durant la crise économique. Après en avoir pris connaissance, il s’est dit : “C’est une
      lumière sur mon chemin, il faut que tout le monde connaisse cela”.
      2)
      «Sous le Signe de l’Abondance»
      , par Louis Even, 312 pages. Une conception nouvelle de l’économie,
      une merveille de simplicité qui fait voir clairement le non-sens de la misère en face de l’abondance.
      3)
      «Une Finance Saine et Efficace»
      , par Louis Even, 32 pages, format-magazine, un ouvrage qui démontre
      clairement comment on pourrait appliquer les grands principes de la Doctrine Sociale de l’Église dans les faits concrets.
      4)
      «La démocratie économique expliquée en 10 leçons»
      ,
      par Alain Pilote, 148 pages, une vue d’ensemble à la lumière de
      la Doctrine Sociale de l’Église, une synthèse qui est utilisée dans
      nos semaines d’étude et dont plusieurs se servent pour former
      des cercles d’étude de par le monde.
    Nous sommes très reconnaissants envers Son Éminence le Cardinal Bernard
    Agré, de Côte
    d’Ivoire, pour le grand privilège qu’il nous a accordé de deux
    visites à Rougemont.. Voici le magnifique avant-propos qu’il a daigné nous
    offrir à la suite de sa deuxième participation à la semaine d’étude et à notre congrès de septembre 2008:

    A
    la demande des Pèlerins de saint Michel,
    je
    me décide à proposer ce petit mot au début
    de
    l’édition des «Propositions
    du
    Crédit Social en dix leçons».
    Ce
    manuel de 150 pages guide les animateurs
    des
    semaines d’étude et des rencontres
    à
    Rougemont.
    Avec les participants venus des continents d’Afrique, d’Amérique, d’Europe et d’Asie, j’ai eu le
    bonheu
    r de prendre part à ces enseignements instructifs et bien animés pendant les semaines d’étude et de rencontres à Rougemont.
    Dans
    la ligne de Louis Even, fondateur de cette organisation fortement
    mariale qui tire ses thèmes majeurs de la doctrine sociale de l’Église
    Catholique, nous saluons la pertinence des traits saillants du Crédit
    Social qui appelle de tous ses voeux un monde social nouveau de justice
    et de charité.
    Fort
    heureusement, le compendium de l’Église Catholique offre en sa récente
    édition une source qui éclaire cet ouvrage en ces quatre visions
    fondamentales suivantes,
      – Le respect de la personne humaine
      – La recherche du bien commun
      – Le principe de subsidiarité
      – Et la solidarité
    Les dix leçons du Crédit Social et le Compendium
    sont disponibles en plusieurs langues pour être des instruments précieux de
    réflexion personnelle et communautaire.
    Nous
    sommes tous interpellés par la misère et la pauvreté récurrentes des
    peuples. Comment comprendre que I’on manque du nécessaire sur une terre
    plantureuse? Comment comprendre qu’adultes et enfants par millions
    meurent de faim et de malnutrition? Comment comprendre que des pays
    extrêmement riches croulent sous les dettes jamais remboursables si un
    système financier universel vicieux ne les retient en captivité, par un
    groupe de privés puissants, solidaires dans le mal?
    L’espoir
    est permis de la libération des banques et des intermédiaires
    impitoyables. Cela prend des millions d’hommes et de femmes, éclairés,
    organisés, débordant de foi et d’amour qui se lèvent de partout pour
    crier leur ras-le-bol et construire un nouvel environnement national et
    international ou «personne dans cette famille humaine ne manquera du
    nécessaire vital.» (BENOÎT
    XVI, Deus caritas est)
    Les Pèlerins de saint Michel ont commencé ce combat, il dure officiellement pour eux, depuis 70 ans. Le chemin est encore long.
    Apôtres,
    Hommes de foi, Spécialistes, Hommes de bonne volonté, levez-vous, c’est
    votre tour, n’ayez pas peur, le Christ est vivant et maître du temps et
    de I’histoire.
    Bernard
    Cardinal Agré
    Archevêque émérite d’Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
    Rougemont, le 3 septembre 2008
    Offrandes suggérées pour vous procurer les livres suivants :
    “Sous le Signe de l’Abondance”
    15.00 $
    “La démocratie économique en 10 leçons”
    8.00 $
    “Du Régime de Dettes à la Prospérité”
    5.00 $
    “Une Finance saine et efficace”
    2.00 $
    Pour vous procurer la série de livre cité ci-haut pour un temps limité : Offrande
    suggéré
    Série complète :
    25.00 $
    5 Série complète :
    100.00 $
    10 Série complète :
    175.00 $
    Pour favoriser la création de cercles d’études, nous vous offrons ces manuels de formation
    à un tarif préférenciel :
    10 volumes “La démocratie économique en 10 leçons” :
    50.00 $
    20 volumes “La démocratie économique en 10 leçons” :
    90.00 $




    Fichier attaché Taille
    Atelier Monnnaies complémentaires 1.pdf 127.11 Ko
    Atelier Monnaies complémentaires 2.pdf 133.25 Ko

    Beppe Grillo, leader du “Mouvement cinq étoiles”

    La croisade du Coluche italien

     

    L’humoriste
    Beppe Grillo, leader du “Mouvement cinq étoiles”, récolte 15% des
    intentions de vote en Italie, l’équivalent d’une centaine de sièges.
    Cela rappelle le score de Coluche, lors de la présidentielle française
    de 1981, avant qu’il ne jette l’éponge. Depuis trois semaines, Beppe
    Grillo enchaîne une série de meetings baptisés le “Tsunami tour”. Il y
    dénonce les politiciens en limousines et l’austérité budgétaire du
    président du conseil Mario Monti, rapporte la journaliste Mali Ilse
    Paquin, dans la Tribune de Genève et 24 Heures. Beppe Grillo est
    persuadé que la colère de l’électorat face aux partis traditionnels – le
    carburant de sa formation – ne fera que s’amplifier. Da!
    ns son programme, il propose un référendum sur l’euro, l’abolition des
    syndicats, une restructuration complète de la législation qui compte
    235’000 lois.  A ceux qui l’accusent de démagogie, il répond que “son
    mouvement incarne une révolution douce”.

    Beppe Grillo contre Tridel.

    Du point de vue économique, il embrasse les théories soutenant la
    création de dividendes inconditionnels et d’emplois «verts» et rejetant ce qui est coûteux et polluant,
    comme les incinérateurs, et aspire à une meilleure qualité de vie et une
    plus grande justice sociale. Le mouvement des 5 étoiles propose
    l’adoption de projets de grande envergure en faveur de
    l’informatisation, de la conservation de l’énergie, de l’élimination des
    déchets, et de la protection du territoire face à l’ultra-urbanisation.
    Il se définit comme “hors du clivage gauche-droite”.

    http://fr.euronews.com/
    Le ras le bol s’est exprimé dans les urnes en Italie au profit des
    candidats anti-partis. Les élections locales ont vu une abstention
    massive et la percée spectaculaire du mouvement “Cinq étoiles”
    notamment.

    A Parme, ville bourgeoise du centre, le candidat de
    ce parti s’appelle Federico Pizzaroti. C’est un employé de banque,
    inconnu en politique, il rafle 60% des voix.
    Le mouvement “Cinq étoiles”, a été fondé en 2009 par Beppe Grillo, un humoriste reconverti en politique.

    “Nous
    avons gagné Stalingrad, maintenant nous sommes en marche vers Berlin”
    lance-t-il sur son blog à l’issue des résultats, espérant conquérir le
    Parlement l’an prochain. Mais qui est Beppe Grillo? il répondait en 2007
    à euronews :
    “Qui suis-je? je suis Beppe Grillo, né comme une espéce
    de comique, fantaisiste, aujourd’hui je ne sais pas ce que je suis
    devenu”

    Des cabarets de ses débuts aux émissions de variété de la
    Raï dès les années 70, Pepe Grillo est connu pour ses provocations et
    ses satires du monde politique.
    Il sort du champ du spectacle en 2007 et devient militant en créant le Victory day avec le v de “vaffanculo”.

    En
    2005 il crée son blog, classé 3 ans plus tard par the observer au
    neuvième rang des plus influents. C’est aujourd’hui le blog le plus lu
    en italie, et l’instrument de communication privilégié de Pepe Grillo.

    Farouche défenseur de la démocratie directe, pourfendeur de la corruption et des privilèges,
    il prône la mise en place d’un salaire minimum, la réduction des dépenses militaires ou un retrait de la zone euro.
    Si
    cet indigné de 64 ans a su catalyser le désenchantement, son programme
    économique reste flou, basé sur la fin du gaspillage et l’utilisation
    des nouvelles technologies de l’information.

    Infinite interest rate ?

    They say, interest rate was never so low, but In fact, it is a big lie because the interest rate is going to infinity…

    Why ?

    Because they create the capital in an unlimited way out of nothing,
    then,
    if you create an infinity of capital, the interest rate becomes itself
    infinite, and this lead to an infinite economical war, killing millions
    of the poorer.

    They lie to everybody all the times since a long time. They cheat all balances…

    The different
    guise
    is this money creation out of nothing allowing them to infinite control of everything and everybody and every souls.




    3…The
    mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more
    than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different
    guise
    , but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping
    men….

    NO limits in money creation…by Dr. Pinar Yesin, University of Zurich





    At least 5
    countries have NO limits in money creation…by Dr. Pinar Yesin,
    University of Zurich, i.e.  a 0 ( zero, none )  limit, that means
    private banks can create debts with interests as much as they
    can…..leading to unfair competition and crisis… and wars…

    Those very huge amounts are leading to huge amount of interests to be paid, even if the interest rate is low.






    Country   Required reserve ratio/%     
    Australia None
    Canada None
    Mexico None



    Sweden None
    United Kingdom None


    Other countries have required reserve ratios (or RRRs) that are
    statutorily enforced (sourced from Lecture 8, Slide 4: Central Banking
    and the Money Supply, by Dr. Pinar Yesin, University of Zurich ( based
    on 2003 survey of CBC participants at the Study Center Gerzensee[2] ):



    In
    crisis times, value ot many assets are collapsing but most debts are
    kept intact thanks to the support of the politicians to the bankers,
    leading to more troubles in all the others segments of the populations.



    Politicians will protect taxes to be sure to have better conditions for themselves and for the bankers.


    Most
    taxes are going first to pay the huge and insane salaries of the
    bankers. Who are the real owners of all those very huge amounts,
    trillions and trillions ??? ). What do they do with ?  Wars ?
    Manipulations ? Viruses ?









    Under Pres. Carter, prime rate was above 20 % !

    Dear  Francois,
                                   
    You  are  absolutely correct about the banks having the right to
    create   “credit”  with its  corollary of “Interest Bearing Debt  to
    the  creator”,  such creation functioning  as  “Money”   wherever it is
    used.     New  Zealand Ministers  of the  Crown,  like  expert
    witnesses   in  Commission Hearings and investigations are  currently 
    acknowledging that  only  around  3% of   the national  so-called  
    “M1”  Money Supplies  exist as  legal  tender created  by  central
    government administrations.  
    This 
    admits that the other 97%   of  the   official  “Money Supply”   has
    been created  out of nothing  as  debt by , and to , the banking system,
    by the  members of that sector.   Put  another way,   the  figures  in
    computers that  currently  function as  “Money”    are  just 
    reflections of  debts owed by  individuals,  enterprises,  and  all 
    local  and central governments,  to   members of the  Finance Sector; 
    mainly  the  Banks. 
    When 
    the late President Abraham Lincoln stated , ” If the American people
    ever discover how  the finance system really works,  there will be a
    revolution before  breakfast ” ,  he was  dead  serious.   It is  fear
    of this   contingency  which  causes the  Finance Sector,  and all the 
    parties which,  for   whatever reasons  want the present  privileges
    and  arrangements to  continue ,  that  motivates  their  unofficial
    representatives  to  accept all  sorts of conventions  and  apparent 
    restrictions to  continue.   Such  concessions,  even extending to the
    payment of interest on deposits with   lending  institutions of all
    kinds,  are accepted because they  not only  confuse the issue,  they
    appear to  “prove”   that banks  lend their deposits.   Factually,  all
    they   do is  prop up the  “Myth”  of deposit  lending,  which  all
    supporters of the  Debt Finance System  hide  behind;  some  for reasons
    of  complicity,  and others  through outright ignorance. 
    Until 
    the  right to  create  and own  national money supplies  is  reclaimed
    by  representative governments, and spent  into  circulation by  them,
    without  debt,  but  limited  to   the proper  balance with the
    circulating value of Goods  and  Services,   then  the legal  extortion
    by the  Finance Sector  will continue.       Only  then will it be
    possible for  we  human  beings  to have  and  enjoy   the  wealth we 
    are creating , using   currently
    available  resources,  without  mortgaging our  children  to  the  Banking Sector.    We need  another  Abe Lincoln. 


    Dear Francois,
    You are absolutely
    correct about the banks having the right to create “credit” with its
    corollary of “Interest Bearing Debt to the creator”, such creation
    functioning as “Money” wherever it is used. New Zealand
    Ministers of the Crown, like expert witnesses in Commission
    Hearings and investigations are currently acknowledging that only
    around 3% of the national so-called “M1” Money Supplies exist as
    legal tender created by central government administrations.
    This
    admits that the other 97% of the official “Money Supply” has
    been created out of nothing as debt by , and to , the banking system,
    by the members of that sector. Put another way, the figures in
    computers that currently function as “Money” are just
    reflections of debts owed by individuals, enterprises, and all
    local and central governments, to members of the Finance Sector;
    mainly the Banks.
    When the late President Abraham Lincoln stated ,
    ” If the American people ever discover how the finance system really
    works, there will be a revolution before breakfast ” , he was dead
    serious. It is fear of this contingency which causes the Finance
    Sector, and all the parties which, for whatever reasons want the
    present privileges and arrangements to continue , that motivates
    their unofficial representatives to accept all sorts of conventions
    and apparent restrictions to continue. Such concessions, even
    extending to the payment of interest on deposits with lending
    institutions of all kinds, are accepted because they not only confuse
    the issue, they appear to “prove” that banks lend their deposits.
    Factually, all they do is prop up the “Myth” of deposit
    lending, which all supporters of the Debt Finance System hide
    behind; some for reasons of complicity, and others through outright
    ignorance.
    Until the right to create and own national money
    supplies is reclaimed by representative governments, and spent into
    circulation by them, without debt, but limited to the proper
    balance with the circulating value of Goods and Services, then the
    legal extortion by the Finance Sector will continue. Only then
    will it be possible for we human beings to have and enjoy the
    wealth we are creating , using currently
    available resources, without mortgaging our children to the Banking Sector. We need another Abe Lincoln.
    So writes Don Bethune of Godzone (New Zealand)

    countries at the top have a 0 ( none) limit, that means they can
    create as much as they can…..leading to unfair competition, crisis,
    revolution. slavery… and wars…

    Country ↓ Required reserve ratio/% ↓ Note ↓
    Australia None
    Canada None
    Mexico None



    Sweden None
    United Kingdom None


    Other countries have required reserve ratios
    (or RRRs) that are statutorily enforced (sourced from Lecture 8, Slide
    4: Central Banking and the Money Supply, by Dr. Pinar Yesin, University
    of Zurich (based on 2003 survey of CBC participants at the Study Center
    Gerzensee[2]):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation

    http://paulgrignon.netfirms.com/MoneyasDebt/references.htm

    If concepts are not right, the words are wrong,
    and if the words are wrong, works cannot be achieved.

    Confucius
    This prophetic mail was sent in April 2008, copy for you
    More
    and more robots and computers will produce most of the goods. less and
    less human will be necessary to produce what is neccesary to live, the
    problem is how to distribute the money to buy all goods on the market ?

    Do not accept a centralized system, go the swiss way. Small is beautiful.

    Say no to more taxes.
    http://www.michaeljournal.org/images/029--It's-Up-to-You.gif
    Robert A. Heinlein described a Social Credit economy in his first novel, For Us, the Living (published in 2003, but apparently written ca. 1939). (Beyond This Horizon
    describes a similar system, but in less detail.) The society in the
    book uses a method to prevent inflation: the government makes a deal
    with business owners. Instead of increasing prices, they cut prices, and
    the government (or the Bank of the United States) pays them the
    difference after seeing their sales receipts. Like the guaranteed income
    or heritage checks, this money comes out of the inkwell. In the future,
    the government no longer uses taxation to fund itself. The characters
    point out that present “fractional reserve” law allows banks to create
    money (by loaning out many times more money than they have on hand),
    while in Heinlein’s future society only the US government can create US
    currency.

    Robert Anton Wilson proposed another form of Social Credit. His plan aimed to end wage slavery,
    and began by offering a reward to any worker who designed
    him-or-herself out of a job. The guaranteed income (or, in the
    Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, a lesser reward to all other workers who
    “lose” their jobs to innovation) would prevent starvation. This income
    would consist of “trade aids” which would lose numerical value with the
    passage of time. This official reduction in value would encourage
    spending and (although Wilson does not state this explicitly) limit
    price inflation. Elsewhere, Wilson attributed this strategy to Silvio Gesell,
    who also suggested the government encourage small communities to
    experiment with alternate economic models. If one of these enclaves
    seemed especially successful, the country could copy their model in
    place of Gesell’s own plan.

    Different guise, University of Fribourg,
    Switzerland
    :
    An
    English priest named Father Drinkwater, wrote a book in 1935 that
    identified this “devouring usury under another form” that is the
    monopolization of credit, which was to amount more and more to a
    monopolization of money, although the workings of this monopolization of
    credit were still mysterious to almost everyone at that time.
    Father
    Drinkwater recorded that a committee based at the University of Fribourg,
    Switzerland, had prepared some elements for the drafting of Rerum
    Novarum
    , and that among the members of this committee there was at
    least one person from Austria who was well aware of the money question and
    of bank credit. A text that this Austrian had prepared and that was
    apparently approved by the committee, showed clearly how mere bank money–which
    is created in banks and consists basically of figures written in
    bank-books and ledgers, and which was already becoming the major monetary
    instrument for trade and industry–was nothing but the monetization of
    the production capacity of the whole community. The new money thus created
    can only be social in nature (belonging to all of society), and not the
    property of the bank. This new money is social because of its basis: the
    community, or society, and because it can buy any good or service in the
    country. The control of this source of money therefore puts in the hands
    of those who exercise it, a discretionary power over all economic life.
    The
    text of this Austrian expert also showed that banks do not lend their
    depositors’ money, but rather deposits that they create out of nothing
    simply by inscribing figures in bank-books. When banks lend money–no
    account is diminished in the bank–they do not have to extract one penny
    from their safes. So the interest charged on their loans is certainly
    usury: whatever its rate–it is actually more than 100%, since it is
    interest charged on a capital of zero, nil–the lender (the bank) does
    not have to do without the money he lends, he just creates it! This usury
    can rightly be described as “devouring”, since banks require
    creditors to pay back money that has never been created, that has never
    been put into circulation. (Banks create the principal they lend, but not
    the interest.) It is therefore mathematically impossible to pay back all
    loans; the only way for the economy in such a system to keep going is to
    borrow again to pay the interest, which creates un-repayable private and
    public debts.
    What
    was the exact wording of this text about the monopoly of credit? One
    cannot know, since there is no mention of it in the encyclical. Was it
    suppressed in Fribourg in the final draft sent to Rome? Was it stolen
    between Fribourg and Rome, or between its arrival in Rome and its delivery
    to the Sovereign Pontiff? Or was it Pope Leo XIII who decided to put it
    aside? Fr. Drinkwater raises these questions, but gives no answer. End of
    quote. This scandal is producing the same absurd situation as in Canada.
    And
    finally let us quote Mackenzie King, who stated while he was campaigning
    to become Prime Minister of Canada in 1935: “Until the control of the
    issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as
    its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the
    sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.”
    For
    more graphs depicting our financial situation see our webiste: http://www.michaeljournal.org/images/croisdet2.gif
    and

    http://www.michaeljournal.org/images/debtcan.jpg

    Dear Frank

    Following your message.

    Hello Francois.  Would you be so kind as to view this and share your insights with us?  There is something here.

    FM

    My comments:

    Bad translations from Rome.

    Example in the recent papal encyclical Caritas in Veritate…


    Pawnbroking is not monte di pietà…

    Can we translate the concept hospital by bordel  or brothel or whorehouse?

    65. … Furthermore, the experience of micro-finance, which has its roots in the thinking and activity of the civil humanists — I am thinking especially of the birth of pawnbroking —
    should be strengthened and fine-tuned. This is all the more necessary
    in these days when financial difficulties can become severe for many of
    the more vulnerable sectors of the population, who should be protected
    from the risk of usury and from despair. The weakest members of society
    should be helped to defend themselves against usury, just as poor
    peoples should be helped to derive real benefit from micro-credit, in
    order to discourage the exploitation that is possible in these two
    areas. Since rich countries are also experiencing new forms of poverty,
    micro-finance can give practical assistance by launching new initiatives
    and opening up new sectors for the benefit of the weaker elements in
    society, even at a time of general economic downturn.

    Real translation and its importance: 

    A
    mount of piety is an institutional pawnbroker run as a charity in
    Europe from the later Middle Ages times to the 20th century, more often
    referred to in English by the relevant local term, such as monte di
    pietà (Italian), mont de piété (French), or monte de piedad (Spanish).

    In
    Switzerland,  e.g. the cantons of Bern and Zürich enacted elaborate
    laws for the regulation of the business. In Zürich the broker must be
    licensed by the cantonal government, and the permit can be refused only
    when the applicant is known to be a person underserving of confidence.
    Regular books have to be kept, which must be at all times open to the
    inspection of the police, and not more than 1% interest per month may be
    charged, just to cover the costs and not for profits, as asked by the
    Church, i.e. permitted 
    by Medici Pope Leo X’s
    usury-for-a-good-cause: the Monte di pieta, so-called “charity banks”
    operated in the Renaissance in the name of the poor, with no profits. A
    loan runs for six months, and unredeemed pledges may be sold by auction a
    month after the expiration of the fixed period, and then the sale must
    take place in the parish in which the article was pledged. No more than
    two persons at a time have ever been licensed under this law, the
    business being unprofitable owing to the low rate of interest. In the
    canton of Bern there were once two pawnbrokers. One died and the other
    put up his shutters. The Zürich cantonal bank, however, conducts a
    pawnbroking department, which lends nothing under 4s. or over £40
    without the special sanction of the bank commission. Loans must not
    exceed two-thirds of the trade value of the pledge, but 80% may be lent
    upon the intrinsic value of gold and silver articles. The swiss
    establishments make practically no profit.


    Fribourg in Switzerland and Rerum Novarum, 


    3…The
    mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more
    than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different
    guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping
    men….

    Hunger
    in the world, population growth, wars, bad distribution of wealth, and
    the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor, call for a
    neutral and objective reflexion. We admit that there will always be
    disparities, but the present situation calls for urgent solutions, and
    most of the problems are yet to receive any beginning of efficient
    realization, except for a few rare exceptions.
    After
    years spent studying the recent demographic phenomena, and because of
    their relationship with the present banking crisis, I can affirm that
    the following facts are of the utmost importance, their seriousness
    having been anticipated by only a few civilizations in the past. The
    non-respect of natural laws inscribed in nature will cost a high price,
    and the more we wait, the higher the bill will be for us, our children,
    and our grandchildren.
    The main facts
    The
    present demographic crisis in Europe is the most serious in history.
    One of the worst situations is that of Italy, with an average fertility
    rate of 1.2 children per woman, even 0.8 in Northern Italy. Soon Spain
    will beat Italy in this demographic pit. In the near future, Europe will
    have to consecrate more than half of its Gross National Product to the
    elderly. The European States will be ruined because of the lack of young
    people. The European economy is already declining. In an absurd
    reaction against this, some voices are raised in the mass media to
    promote the active euthanasia of the elderly and disabled. (Laws along
    this line have already been voted in in Zurich and the Netherlands.)
    Most
    of the Western Nations can no longer manage to pay the interest on
    their debts nor control them, to the detriment of primary tasks. For
    example, Italy is socially bankrupt because of its taxes. There is
    widespread corruption, a decline of the GNP, the failure of the school
    system, young people on drugs, and the ever-increasing cost of health
    care (more than 50 billion Swiss francs in Switzerland alone): all of
    these facts carry a heavier burden on society. National pensions plans
    are going bankrupt.
    The productivity due to robots and computers could save us, but it will have to be redistributed in a just way.

    The role of credit and its demographic consequences
    Today’s
    economy is based on loans. The public does not know that banks take
    huge liberties with the loans they make. If, for example, there are 100
    dollars in deposits, the U.S. banking system lends a hundred times this
    100 dollars, which makes $10,000, or a creation of $9,900 out of
    nothing. This creation of money is possible thanks to the trust in the
    banks and the law of large numbers, which says that it is never all of
    the depositors who will withdraw their savings at the same time. The
    globalization of the world economy aggravates this situation of the
    “miraculous” creation of money by the banks, which creates skyrocketting
    debts.
    Since
    human nature has its limits, many people have begun to realize the
    limit of this system of the creation of money out of thin air, and its
    human cost, especially regarding unborn babies. There is a shortage of
    babies in every western nation, and the present crisis is due to this
    shortage. If all the depositors in the world wanted to withdraw their
    savings all at once, there would be a huge financial crisis. This is
    going to happen in developed nations because of the ageing of the
    population. We should be smart enough to prevent this fall, and prepare
    alternative solutions, by favoring families.
    The role of interest rates
    Through
    sudden raises of the interest rates and money creation, banks become
    gradually the owners of the real wealth of the nations, since all the
    fictitious money they lend has to return to them, plus the interest.
    Families
    or small businesses borrow when the interest rates are low, and most
    often, are forced to pay back these loans when the rates are high. The
    consequence is the absence of children and the collapse of the economy.
    In
    some nations, the real rate of interest is 7% per month, which amounts
    to 125% per year (shylocking), whereas the inflation rate is 9%. These
    rates are usurious, and are the plain representation of greed. And there
    are even worse systems.
    The
    interest plays an even more pernicious role, when money is lent to
    developing nations. In this case, these loans are granted with
    advantageous rates, provided the creditor nations apply birth control
    policies (like China’s one child policy, which brings about forced
    abortions and the massacres of girls). This is the beginning of a
    vicious circle, with debts causing the sacrifice of human persons to the
    modern Moloch. Human rights and freedoms are crushed by the economic
    system.
    Taxes and the social budget
    Nations
    have borrowed from private banks huge sums of money which, for the most
    part, is scriptural money created out of nothing. This money is based
    on the wealth of the whole nation. This creation of money out of thin
    air is legalized, but immoral, just like abortion which, even legalized,
    remains a crime in the sight of God. These huge sums of borrowed money
    bring about ever-increasing debt payments, which take an increasing part
    of government budgets, leaving less money for health, education and
    other services, creating unemployment, cuts, stress, quarrels, divorces,
    downsizing, restructuration plans, etc.
    The
    solution is obvious: the State must create its own money, interest
    free. Savage capitalism eats up its own children, but so slowly that
    some people actually get used to it.
    Interest and usury condemned
    Cardinal
    Ratzinger recently said that there are over 40 million (declared)
    abortions per year in the world. This means that if one counts the
    abortions through coils and abortive pills (undeclared), for the last
    ten years, there have been one billion human beings killed, not to
    mention those who were not conceived because of the prevailing
    contraception mentality. This slaughter is the worst of history. What
    are the causes?
    In
    the Old Testament, God and the Church have always condemned any
    interest on the loan of money as usury, and not just high rates of
    interest, especially through the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. (See
    also Josue 3:15 and 4:18, Chronicles 12:15, Isaias 8:7 and 24:2, Daniel
    8:16, Exodus 22;25, Nehemias 5:5, Leviticus 25:36, Psalms 15:5, Jeremias
    15:10, Ezechiel 18:8, Proverbs, and in the New Testament, Matthew 25:27
    and Luke 19:23.) In the Lord’s Prayer (the “Our Father”), which
    Christians recite every day, the Latin version uses the words “debita
    nostra” (reported in Matthew 6:12: “forgive us our debts”), which has
    also to be understood in the literal sense, as taught by the Catechism
    of the Catholic Church.
    There
    is no difference between interest and usury, for it is the very
    principle of charging interest on time that is pernicious. Besides, it
    is obvious that the higher the interest, the more harmful it is. The
    condemnations of greed by Pope Pius II are very harsh: “heretical
    theories that are appaling and abominable.”
    The
    penalty for this type of crime is the same as for all those who take
    part in an abortion: excommunication. Popes Paul II, Sixtus IV, Innocent
    VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, and Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum also strongly condemned interest. ( an other form of voracious usury…)

    The encyclical Vix Pervenit
    On November 1, 1745, Pope Benedict XIV issued the encyclical letter Vix Pervenit,
    addressed to the Bishops of Italy, about contracts, and in which usury,
    or money-lending at interest, is clearly condemned. On July 29, 1836,
    Pope Gregory XVI extended this encyclical to the whole Church. It says:
    “The
    kind of sin called usury, which lies in the loan, consists in the fact
    that someone, using as an excuse the loan itself — which by nature
    requires one to give back only as much as one has received — demands to
    receive more than is due to him, and consequently maintains that,
    besides the capital, a profit is due to him, because of the loan itself.
    It is for this reason that any profit of this kind that exceeds the
    capital is illicit and usurious.
    “And
    in order not to bring upon oneself this infamous note, it would be
    useless to say that this profit is not excessive but moderate; that it
    is not large, but small… For the object of the law of lending is
    necessarily the equality between what is lent and what is given back…
    Consequently, if someone receives more than he lent, he is bound in
    commutative justice to restitution…”
    The interest in one of the factors that triggers inflation, and not the opposite. Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor reminds
    us that there are intrinsic evils and absolute sins. To ignore them may
    suppress personal sin (according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the borrower
    commits no sin), but society pays for this misdeed, even at the cost of
    its own disappearance, and those who favor the ignorance of the sin of
    usury are responsible for endangering the survival of the population.
    What
    comforts us, however, is that this condemnation of usury is repeated in
    the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, at the end of the comments on
    the Seventh Commandment.
    Impossible contracts are null
    It
    is impossible to pay back interest-bearing loans, either they are
    compound or not. Take the following example: Croesus borrows a principal
    of 100 at the birth of Christ. If one applies an interest rate of 10%,
    the sum to be paid back in the year 2000 is (100 x 1,12000), or six
    times ten to the power of eighty-four, or a number with 84 zeros, which
    simply blows the mind… It would represent 10 to the power of 68 houses
    for every person on earth. It is obvious that it is impossible to
    respect such a contract.
    A
    French mathematician, M. Levy, showed that, after a while, all the
    wealth in the world will be owned by the banks, through the simple
    application of mathematical rules.
    Money
    is a human creation which, if the interest is admitted, begets more
    money. This money is not only a sign; it really causes deaths and
    injuries, in every area. It is more prudent to forbid any new organism
    that is self-reproducing (like viruses, the development of new species
    in vitro, etc.), including abstract concepts like money that have
    consequences in real life. The common good called “money” is in the
    hands of people without scruples. It is a duty for society to take back
    control over the issuance of money.
    It
    is said that everything has a cost, and so the interest would be the
    cost of money. However, money is not a thing, a commodity, but a sign, a
    common good that belongs to all, just like water or air. It is
    precisely the dream of the greedy to make people pay for the air and
    water they consume. Money is a universal, and to leave its creation into
    the hands of the supporters of death is a crime.
    Today,
    money is more and more invested in labor-saving technology rather than
    in creating jobs. The interest causes the repayment of loans to the
    banks to go before the wages of workers, and to prefer to lay off these
    workers instead of paying them. This is how human rights work today:
    money, a sign or abstraction, comes before the human person, a reality.
    Where is the dignity of the fathers of families, who are not bankers?
    Besides, bankers do not have large families, for money comes even before
    their own children.
    Abortion: a sacrifice to Moloch
    This
    swindle of the “creation” of money by the banks, and the widespread use
    of interest on the loan of money, favor economic crises and abortion
    when loans have to be paid back. In Switzerland, the first reason given
    by women who had an abortion is the repayment of loans, contracted by
    themselves or their families. We know that there are other reasons
    (hedonism, selfishness, fashions, social pressure, frivolity, ignorance,
    etc.), but to shut up our eyes and do nothing against one of the causes
    is neither scientific nor Christian. To let the people who earn money
    without working (by collecting the interest on their loans) crush the
    poor who are defenseless, is ridiculous. However, to defend the poor is
    far from being ridiculous.
    History
    of ancient Egypt shows the close link between mortgage rates and the
    decline, even disappearance, of the population. (See the analysis of
    Belgian historian Pirenne on the 20% rates that caused the deadly
    exposition of children to the sun.)
    The
    new Catechism of the Catholic Church maintains the condemnation of
    interest and its harmful role at the end of the comments on the 7th
    Commandment, which forbids to steal. As lay people, we must make this
    condemnation understood by all, for it is a liberation for the poor;
    moreover, an economy based on investment in real developments and
    improvements (and not simply hoarding money through
    the gimmick of the interest rates), is much more dynamic, and favors a
    reduction of prices, while rewarding those who take risks in investing
    in new developments.
    Justice
    is necessary to achieve holiness. It is too easy to wash one’s hands of
    the matter by saying that one understands nothing in economics.
    Economics is not so complicated, especially when one takes the trouble
    to humbly study solutions that are finally more practical than those who
    manipulate public opinion want to make you believe.
    For
    many centuries, the Church has been suffering, because her sons are
    prisoners of a huge disinformation campaign. Maurice Allais, 1988 Nobel
    Prize winner in Economics, wrote that the present international
    financial system is the biggest disinformation system in human history.
    The sons of darkness control this disinformation and crush the weak,
    often with the help of the ignorant of good faith. Let us unmask them,
    to give some fresh air amidst this general atmosphere of corruption.
    What to do?
    Why
    not react now? The human race has survived for centuries without this
    so-called creation of money at interest by banks, and even with no banks
    at all. So, why not abandon these inhuman and outrageous interest rates
    that know no limits and steal time from us as educators of our
    children? The interest is time stolen from fathers and mothers.
    Nations
    spend billions for research in physics. Let us spend a few million to
    study more carefully the social doctrine of the Church and the practical
    solutions it entails in favor of a sound economy. Let us create a
    center of studies and formation for social action.
    Let
    us make the promise made to Abraham possible. The earth is huge and
    generous, as well as the seas. All the serious experts, after long
    studies (cf. Julius Simon), admit that our planet can feed all the
    population to come in the future. In fact, those who believe that the
    earth is overpopulated neither believe in God nor in His promise. Let us
    learn again to utter this greeting of the sons of Abraham: pax, peace,
    shalom, salam… This peace, as Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta said,
    will come on earth only if abortions are stopped, and if we accept those
    who are different, the disabled.
    A salary for housewives
    Housewives,
    mothers who stay at home, work just as hard as those who are hired in
    the workforce. They deserve a real salary, which will create more job
    opportunities, boost consumption and the economy, and allow the Gross
    National Product to double. It was possible to finance two world wars,
    so there is no reason why it would not be possible to finance this wage
    to housewives. In Canada, it is estimated that the work of housewives
    represents 46% of the GNP. So it is simple justice, as Pope John Paul II
    said, to reward them with a salary.
    Is is true that:
    The less the children in a family, the less vocations to sharing and generosity?
    The best school to teach the principle of subsidiarity is a large family?
    The main flaw in world politics is this generosity in the existence of intermediary bodies?
    The contraception mentality is directly aimed against large families?
    The system of interest directly attacks the family?
    The interest is a theft of time and children?
    The creation of money through interest is a lie and a swindle, a theft to the detriment of future generations (unborn children)?
    Can any person of good will take part in this slaughter, by action or omission? Can we stand up and stop this mechanism?
    Is
    the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on usury still valid today? Can the
    time that belongs to God be stolen? This is a good explanation for
    stress.
    Any
    human invention that has no limits is monstrous; the system of interest
    rates has no limits. Moreover, a means of exchange, or unit of
    measurement, cannot multiply by itself. If money breeds more money
    today, it is at the expense of our own children. This is criminal!
    It
    is easy to show that the present crisis is in large part due to this
    search for zero population growth, based on flawed facts and analysis.
    What a mistake it is to think that the earth cannot support all of the
    present population, whereas Europe alone could feed many times the
    world’s population, not to mention the resources of the oceans that are
    barely developed.
    For
    those who say: “We will have to change the way our deposits are managed
    in banks,” I reply: “This is true, and you will be rewarded a
    hundredfold, for a dynamic economy will benefit all, unless your
    selfishness make you sad to see others happy. How sad it would be it you
    were in such a situation, especially since you risk eternal damnation.
    All
    this work is done with the hope that a few simple economic concepts can
    be explained for the good of the poor, the unborn, especially in
    Third-World countries. Don’t believe those who complicate everything to
    keep their control over the economy, for billions of human beings will
    never be born because of this control. True love cannot accept interest,
    but it can accept just profit. Let us entrust the future of mankind to
    the family, with mothers having for their model, Mary.
    François de Siebenthal





    “The Church has not changed her teaching
    on usury and one can make a reasonable
    argument for the validity of the intrinsic
    injustice of usury itself.”
    1. Introduction
    In order to know whether usury is still a sin we must first understand
    what it is. Although today usury commonly means charging
    excessive interest on loans, or perhaps merely on loans intended for
    consumptive purposes,1 the classical doctrine of the Church on usury
    and the debates among some of her outstanding theologians were
    concerned with another question. For usury as it was understood for
    centuries meant the charging of any interest on a loan simply by
    virtue of the loan contract, that is, without any other justifying cause
    except that money is being loaned. The most recent relatively
    complete papal discussion of usury occurred in Pope Benedict XIV’s
    encyclical of 1745, Vix pervenit. The pope stated:
    448 Thomas Storck
    The nature of the sin called usury has its proper place and origin
    in a loan contract . . . [which] demands, by its very nature, that
    one return to another only as much as he has received. The sin
    rests on the fact that sometimes the creditor desires more than he
    has given . . . , but any gain which exceeds the amount he gave
    is illicit and usurious.
    One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the
    gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or small;
    neither can it be condoned by arguing that the borrower is rich;
    nor even by arguing that the money borrowed is not left idle, but
    is spent usefully . . . .
    Although, as we will see, in this same encyclical Benedict expressly
    allows for the possibility that there can be legitimate titles to interest
    which do not fall under the head of usury, the central question is
    simply whether interest is ever justified merely by virtue of a loan
    contract, and we should keep this point in mind as we proceed.
    Usury is a question that arises at the intersection of theology,
    philosophy, economics, and law, and has implications for each.
    Considering the weight of the Church’s consistent and centurieslong
    condemnation of usury, obviously there arises a theological
    question of development of dogma, as well as of the validity of
    venerable arguments in scholastic moral theology and moral
    philosophy, in canon law, and in the teachings of economic theory.
    I will treat the subject mainly, however, from the standpoint of
    moral philosophy and theology, which, along with canon law, is
    where historically most of the controversy was conducted.
    2. Historical background and development
    Since the usury question has an unusually long and rich
    history, I think that it is necessary to sketch this background,
    without which both the importance of the controversy and the
    weight of the intellectual argumentation on behalf of the Church’s
    traditional position might not be clear. In addition, an historical
    approach will help to show how gradually the essential features of
    the condemnation of usury were worked out.
    The negative judgment upon usury in the early Church
    occurs against a backdrop of wide condemnation by Greek and
    Roman writers as well as in the Old Testament. The list of classical
    pagan authors who disapproved of it is impressive and includes
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 449
    2Laws, bk. V, 742.
    3Politics, bk. I, 10, 11. Since Aristotle’s opinion on usury was the one most cited
    of all pagan authors during the Middle Ages, I reproduce it here: “The most hated
    sort [of wealth-getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain
    out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended
    to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest,
    which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money
    because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting
    wealth this is the most unnatural” (1258b, Oxford translation). Too much stress
    should not be put on his statement about “the breeding of money” taken in
    isolation, for the question of whether money can be fruitful is in large part a
    semantic question.
    4Clouds, 1283ff.
    5De Beneficiis, bk. VII, 10.
    6William C. Morey, Outlines of Roman Law, 2nd ed.(New York: G. P. Putman’s,
    1914), 355–56.
    Plato,2 Aristotle,3 Aristophanes,4 and Seneca.5 In addition to a general
    condemnation of usury by some of the best minds of the classical
    world, Roman law provided the legal concept from which canon
    law would later draw its fundamental analysis of the usury question.
    This was the Roman law contract of mutuum, and one can hardly
    overestimate its importance for understanding the usury question in
    the medieval period and thereafter.
    The subject-matter of the mutuum must consist of things that can
    be measured, weighed, or numbered, such as wine, corn, or
    money; that is, things which being consumed can be restored in
    genere . . . . From the nature of this contract the obligation is
    imposed upon the borrower to restore to the lender, not the
    identical thing loaned, but its equivalent—that is, another thing
    of the same kind, quality, and value . . . .
    With regard to the responsibility for loss, since from the
    peculiar character of the contract the right of consumption passes
    to the borrower, the latter is looked upon as the practical owner
    of the thing loaned, and he therefore holds it entirely at his own
    risk . . . .6
    The two characteristics of the mutuum contract that were to figure
    so greatly in subsequent discussions about usury were the fact that in
    such a loan the actual good loaned was not returned but consumed
    in some manner by the borrower, and therefore the borrower was
    considered as the owner of the borrowed goods for all practical
    450 Thomas Storck
    7Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:36–37, Deuteronomy 23:19–20, Nehemiah 5:7–10,
    Psalm 15:5, Proverbs 28:8, Jeremiah 15:10, Ezekiel 18:8, 13, 17, and 22:12.
    8“The modern Rabbis give an extremely interesting explanation of the Torah
    permission. There was, they say, at that time no law amongst the Gentiles which
    prohibited the practice of usury; and it was only equitable that the Jews should be
    entitled to exact usury of a people who might exact it of them. In this way, by a
    system of compensation the Jews were secured against impoverishment by the
    payment of usury, since what was paid in usury by some, was recovered by other
    members of the race” (Cleary, The Church and Usury, 7).
    9That an atmosphere of disapproval of usury existed throughout the Jewish and
    Christian spheres of intellectual influence is clear also from the denunciations of
    usury in the Koran. See 2:275–6, 3:130, 4:161, 30:39.
    10On the pre-scholastic period, see John T. Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of
    Usury (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1957), 12–17, and Cleary, The Church and
    Usury, 37–62. Noonan’s work is exhaustive in its historical details, but he clearly
    holds a bias in favor of the ultimate vacuity of the usury prohibition as such, and
    this bias often shows in the manner in which he presents the opinions of
    theologians and canonists. Most seriously, he states (57) that St. Thomas limits the
    usury discussion only to money, whereas in fact in both the Summa theologiae II–II,
    q. 78 and the De Malo, q. 13, Thomas spends most of his time talking about wheat
    and wine. Noonan quotes from the latter work, but omits the section on food and
    drink.
    purposes. This is in contrast to the loan or rent of something that
    will be physically returned, such as a house or a car.
    The Old Testament also contains numerous strictures against
    usury.7 Although those in the Pentateuch limit the prohibition only
    to fellow Israelites, the later passages, for example Psalm 15 and
    Ezekiel, are phrased as if they are meant to apply universally. I think
    that the way to regard both the pagan and Jewish usury prohibitions
    is to see them as part of a general framework of disapproval of usury,
    without stressing too much the reasons given in any particular text
    or even, as in the Pentateuch, the question of whether usury was
    prohibited only to fellow Jews.8 Usury was suspect, it had a bad
    odor, the upright did not exact it. This somewhat vague condemnation
    of usury was the inheritance of the Church and explains the fact
    that some of the early canons seem to condemn usury only when
    taken by clerics, although there are also decisive prohibitions of it as
    intrinsically unjust.9
    The Church first manifests her opposition to usury during
    the patristic period.10 Numerous writers condemn usury, including
    Apollonius, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil,
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 451
    11Arthur Vermeersch, “Usury,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert
    Appleton, 1912), vol. 15, 235. The authenticity of the condemnation by Elvira of
    lay usury is doubtful.
    12Cf. Cleary, The Church and Usury, 48–56.
    13Denzinger, 280–81.
    14Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 15.
    Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and John Chrysostom.
    In addition, the Apostolic Canons, dating in their final form to
    around 380, in their 44th canon prohibit the taking of usury by the
    clergy, as do the Council of Arles in 314 (12th canon) and the First
    Council of Nicaea in 325 (17th canon), while the Council of Elvira,
    305 or 306, the First Council of Carthage in 345 (12th canon) and
    the Council of Aix in 789 (36th canon) prohibit it to the laity also.11
    Many of the patristic utterances against usury are in the form
    of denunciations of exploitation of the poor and thus do not state
    whether usury is an offense against justice or simply charity, or even
    whether it is simply prohibited by the positive law of the Church.12
    But among the patristic strictures on usury two deserve special
    mention. The first is the letter of Leo the Great, Ut nobis gratulationem,
    addressed to the bishops of Campania, Picene, and Tuscany in
    October 443.13 This contained a section dealing with usury, known
    from its opening words, Nec hoc quoque. John Noonan calls it “the
    single most important document of the early Church on usury.”14 It
    is important because it proceeds from the supreme ecclesiastical
    authority, because it clearly includes the laity in its prohibition and
    because it singles out usury as intrinsically unjust, not simply one of
    a number of uncharitable practices which exploit the poor.
    The second item is a remarkable statement known as Ejiciens,
    once attributed to St. John Chrysostom, but now thought to be from
    the fifth century. It was later incorporated by Gratian in the
    Church’s canon law and anticipates the classical form of the
    argument against usury given by St. Thomas, and presents the
    clearest rationale for the usury prohibition of any of the early
    documents. It is worth quoting at length.
    Of all merchants, the most cursed is the usurer, for he sells a good
    given by God, not acquired as a merchant acquires his goods
    from men; and after the usury he reseeks his own good, taking
    both his own good and the good of the other. A merchant,
    452 Thomas Storck
    15As quoted in Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 38–39.
    16In De Malo, q. 13, ad 4, Thomas rejects the “wear and tear” argument. But
    despite this, it seems to me to fit well with Thomas’ understanding of the question,
    as we will see.
    however, does not reseek the good he has sold. One will object:
    Is not he who rents a field to receive the fruits or a house to get
    an income similar to him who lends his money at usury?
    Certainly not. First, because money is only meant to be used in
    purchasing. Secondly, because one having a field by farming
    receives fruit from it; one having a house has the use of inhabiting
    it. Therefore, he who rents a field or house is seen to give
    what is his own use and to receive money, and in a certain
    manner it seems as if he exchanged gain for gain. But from
    money which is stored up you take no use. Thirdly, a field or a
    house deteriorates in use. Money, however, when it is lent, is
    neither diminished nor deteriorated.15
    Ejiciens makes the crucial distinction between goods which must be
    returned to their original owner after being used, and goods such as
    money, which are returned only in amount and kind, the subject of
    a contract of mutuum. The first type of good normally deteriorates in
    use and the owner can rightly charge something for the use and, of
    course, expect the original thing back also. But with a good which,
    as the saying goes, is consumed in its use, it is hard to see how one
    can charge for wear and tear.16
    The reasoning of Ejiciens is not altogether clear in every
    respect, and there are more than hints of some of the popular
    grounds for opposing usury which were ultimately rejected because
    they did not stand up to examination, such as the idea that time
    could not be sold and that money was purely a measure. Nevertheless,
    we have here a very early and solid grasp of the Thomistic
    argument, at least in germ.
    Before we proceed to the scholastic period with its rich and
    complex discussions of usury, we would do well to sum up where
    we stand. Usury is clearly condemned by the Old Testament, several
    notable classical pagan authors, and the early Church. But many of
    these sources seem to condemn usury as a sin against charity, not
    necessarily against justice, in the sense at least that they include it in
    general denunications of acts that exploit the poor. There is usually
    no clear reason given in these statements for saying that usury is
    wrong, and most of them tend toward the rhetorical rather than
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 453
    17Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 16.
    18Ibid., 17.
    being rational examinations of what usury is and why it is wrong.
    But no one could read this mass of material and come away without
    understanding that usury offends against Christian morals, whatever
    the ultimate basis of its depravity might be.
    Next we turn our attention to the elaborate development of
    theories about usury that began tentatively in the early middle ages
    and lasted till around the middle of the eighteenth century. The
    scholastic analysis of usury by no means ended with the end of the
    medieval period, for the same kind of reasoning and arguments, even
    if sometimes with different results, were employed for several
    centuries afterwards. In discussing this period I will proceed as
    follows: after some preliminary remarks I will set forth the scholastic
    usury teachings that have the most force, chiefly official pronouncements
    by the Church and the opinions of St. Thomas Aquinas. Then
    I will discuss the kinds of contracts that became increasingly
    common as means either to avoid or evade the usury prohibition,
    noting in particular any official reactions to them. This will bring us
    to the end of the period in which scholastic reasoning could be said
    to be taken for granted in the world of Catholic theology and
    philosophy, a period that, for our purposes, conveniently coincides
    roughly with Benedict XIV’s encyclical, Vix pervenit. We should
    keep in mind that throughout this period hardly any Catholic
    attempted to justify the taking of usury as such; on that there was no
    controversy to speak of. The controversy and the complex arguments
    that characterize this period concern not whether it was licit
    to take interest simply by virtue of a contract of mutuum, but why
    this is so, and especially whether various other contracts do or do not
    constitute usury and whether and when extrinsic titles can be
    invoked by which one may justly receive interest on a loan.
    During the Carolingian period both ecclesiastical and civil
    authorities had promulgated numerous decrees against usury,
    including excommunication for laymen guilty of usury.17 Scholastic
    analysis proper may be said to begin with St. Anselm of Canterbury,
    “the first medieval author to suggest the similarity of usury and
    robbery . . . one of the earliest indications that usury is to be
    considered a sin against justice.”18 In the high middle ages the
    discussion of usury became more focused and clear. At the same time
    454 Thomas Storck
    19For a somewhat different interpretation of the natural law basis of the usury
    prohibition, see Christopher A. Franks, “The Usury Prohibition and Natural Law,
    a Reappraisal,” The Thomist 72, no. 4 (October 2008): 625–60.
    20See also the De Malo, q. 13, a. 4.
    writers sometimes took as the basis for their reprobation of usury a
    ground that was subsequently to be disavowed or at least to fail to
    find much support in other authors, for example, the selling of time,
    which was held to occur in usury; the Aristotelian doctrine that
    money was not fruitful or that money was purely a measure; and the
    idea that a loan had to be gratuitous (cf. Lk 6:35) and thus the lender
    could not hope for or receive any recompense beyond a return of
    the principal. But the bases that were to provide the best means of
    understanding the sinfulness of usury were also frequently mentioned,
    and in the case of St. Thomas, constituted his principal
    argument against it. These bases are chiefly the consumptible nature
    of money, and hence the fact that in loaning money the same thing
    is not returned but something of the same kind and value, and thus
    ownership in a sense passes to the borrower. The important point
    about the development of scholastic doctrine on usury is that almost
    all writers sought to ground the Church’s prohibition in the natural
    law itself, however variously they explained it.19
    St. Thomas’ most mature discussion of usury is in the Summa
    theologiae II-II, q. 78.20 I will quote extensively from the Respondeo
    from article 1, which contains his theory in a nutshell.
    I answer that to receive usury for money loaned [mutuata] is in
    itself unjust, because that is sold which does not exist, by which
    clearly an inequality is constituted which is contrary to justice.
    For the evidence of which it must be known that there are
    certain things the use of which is the consumption of those
    things; as we consume wine by using it for drinking or we
    consume wheat by using it for food. Whence in such things the
    use of a thing ought not to be computed separately from the
    thing itself; but to whomever is granted the use from that fact
    itself is granted [possession of] the thing; and on account of this
    in such things through the loan [mutuum] ownership is transferred.
    If anyone therefore wishes to sell separately the wine, and
    again wishes to sell the use of the wine, he would sell the same
    thing twice, or he would sell that which does not exist; whence
    clearly he would sin by injustice. And by a similar reason he
    commits injustice who loans [mutuat] wine or wheat seeking to
    be given two recompenses; one indeed the restitution of an equal
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 455
    21Canon 13 forbids Christian burial to usurers (Denzinger, 716).
    22Denzinger, 906. “The Council of Vienne presents a variety of difficulties. With
    the exception of some fragments, the acts of the Council have perished . . . .
    Joannes Andreas . . . tells us that Pope Clement V made very considerable
    modifications in the constitutions . . . hence it is difficult to decide what decrees
    were passed in the Council” (Cleary, The Church and Usury, 74–75).
    23On the contractus trinus, see Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 202–29,
    and Cleary, The Church and Usury, 126–32.
    amount of the thing, the other, on the other hand, the price of
    the use which is called usury.
    Below I will consider this argument in more detail and attempt to
    show how it provides a solid intellectual justification for the
    proposition that in a loan of mutuum nothing may be asked except
    the principal, unless some other title to interest is also present.
    In addition to numerous papal condemnations and those by
    local councils, it is worth mentioning the several condemnations of
    usury by ecumenical councils during this period, including Lateran
    II in 1139,21 Lateran III in 1179, Lyons II in 1274, Vienne in
    1311–12,22 and Lateran V in 1512–17. I will mention this latter again
    in connection with the question of the montes pietatis.
    Although as I said, in view of the repeated condemnations of
    usury by the Church, it was extremely rare for anyone directly to
    defend the practice during the scholastic period, the needs of
    business, or it may be the greed of men, sought ways to ensure a safe
    and guaranteed return and yet avoid the sin of usury or at least the
    severe canonical penalties to which usurers were subject. One such
    method was the contractus trinus or triple contract.23
    Briefly, a contractus trinus was a three-fold contract existing
    between two business partners. The first contract was the simple
    contract of partnership by which one partner undertook to provide
    the funds and the other to do the trading. The second contract was
    a contract of insurance by which the active partner insured the
    principal of the inactive partner, and the third contract, similarly a
    contract of insurance by which the inactive partner was guaranteed
    a profit, smaller than the enterprise was likely to make, but guaranteed,
    whereas the profit of the partnership itself was always in some
    doubt due to uncertain business conditions, the possibility of loss,
    etc. The silent partner paid for the two contracts of insurance by
    forgoing the difference between the profit he might have made as a
    456 Thomas Storck
    24On the census, see Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 230–48, and Cleary,
    The Church and Usury, 121–26.
    25On implicit contracts, see Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 269–80, and
    Cleary, The Church and Usury, 153–55.
    full partner and what he would receive as guaranteed profit, say the
    difference between an expected 8% and a guaranteed 4%. Thus even
    if the enterprise miscarried the active partner would be required to
    restore the principal plus a guaranteed profit to the inactive partner.
    Although a bull of Sixtus V in 1586 could be interpreted as condemning
    the contractus trinus, it was largely without effect. Theologians
    argued that it did not ground its condemnation of the triple
    contract in natural law, but was merely positive legislation on the
    part of the pope, and in addition that its apparent ambiguity left
    doubt as to exactly what contracts were included in its strictures.
    During the sixteenth century it became widely used even without
    definitive approval by the Church.
    The other popular contract used to avoid usury was the
    census or rent-charge.24 The census was a curious sort of contract, at
    least to modern ears. In its original form someone would buy the
    right to receive the income, or even the actual produce, from some
    definite thing, such as a farm. Later, with the personal census, this was
    extended to be merely the right to a return from the work of a
    certain person, or a census could be established based upon the tax
    revenue of a city or even upon the income from another and prior
    census. In addition, the census contracts had many variations, for
    example, some provided that the census could be terminated at the
    call of the buyer or of the seller or of either party. Pope Martin V in
    1425 approved the more conservative types of the census, but the
    more exotic and speculative kinds never received official approval,
    although they were defended by some theologians.
    Both the contractus trinus and the census assumed many forms
    according to the needs or wishes of merchants. Even more remarkable,
    however, was the growth of the notion of implicit contracts.25
    Merchants, and even the notaries who drew up contracts, often did
    not take the trouble to put them in the form required by theological
    authority, e.g., to specify clearly and distinctly the three parts of a
    contractus trinus, so that a contract document that was phrased
    ambiguously might appear on its face to be a contract of mutuum,
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 457
    26Duke William V of Bavaria in 1581 had tried to stop this movement toward
    easy acceptance of loosely-worded contracts by drawing up several model contracts
    for use by his subjects. See Cleary, The Church and Usury, 154–55.
    27Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 279.
    with the guaranteed return simply an instance of usury.26 This too
    found its theological defenders who developed the theory, which
    became generally accepted, that if a contract, no matter how its
    wording ran, could be analyzed into some acceptable type, then it
    was licit, and that merchants needed to have only an implicit
    intention of entering into some kind of licit contract, even if they
    could not state what that was. “Not only were the effects of the
    triple contract and census those of a loan, but even their form did not
    need to be explicitly different from a loan, if the form could be
    analytically reduced to a licit contract.”27
    Although among Catholics usury as such still found almost
    no defenders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, theological
    opinion working hand in hand with the inventiveness of merchants
    and lawyers had succeeded in furnishing several substitutes that
    allowed for both safety of the principal and a guaranteed return. But
    before discussing the dramatic, if confusing, turn of affairs after 1745,
    we must look at the titles to legitimate interest on loans that had
    been developing since the middle ages, and that ultimately became
    of more significance than either the contractus trinus or the census,
    because they could be applied to a loan contract directly and without
    any necessity for using a particular form of words in drawing up the
    contract. These were the titles to legitimate interest that were
    considered extrinsic to the mutuum contract itself, that is, they might
    or might not exist depending on extrinsic circumstances, even if
    some of these circumstances were nearly always present. These were
    chiefly lucrum cessans and damnum emergens.
    Lucrum cessans and damnun emergens are in a sense two sides of
    the same coin. The first refers to the profit that someone might have
    made with his money had he not instead made a loan of mutuum, and
    the second is damage or loss that a lender suffered or might suffer
    because he did not have access to his money for the duration of a
    loan. Admitted in principle, at least in isolated cases, early in the
    debate, they become generally accepted later. One point to note,
    however, is that here the question of one’s intention in making a
    loan, a point that loomed large at certain times in the usury debates
    458 Thomas Storck
    28On the montes, see Cleary, The Church and Usury, 106–13, Noonan, The
    Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 294–310, and Umberto Benigni, “Montes Pietatis,” in
    The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 10, 534–36.
    29For the text of the decree, see Denzinger, 1442–44.
    and that we have not looked at, must be mentioned. If a merchant
    accustomed to trading used a sum of money for a loan of mutuum
    instead of in a business venture, then clearly he could claim lucrum
    cessans, since he was always engaged in profitable activities with his
    money. But what of someone who simply wanted a safe means of
    earning a return? It is true that theoretically he could engage in
    trade and therefore would qualify for lucrum cessans, but in many
    cases there was no real likelihood that he would do so, either
    through inexperience or fear of loss, for example. I raise this point
    here in connection with the extrinsic titles, and we will look at it
    again when we discuss the moral questions of lending in today’s
    economy.
    One last subject that must be mentioned in our historical
    review are the montes pietatis.28 These were institutions, sponsored
    usually by municipal governments or the Church, which made loans
    at low rates of interest to provide an alternative to usurers. They had
    some similarities to pawn shops in that they required that a pledge
    be left to cover the possibility of the loan not being repaid. As a rule
    they charged interest to cover their expenses, including salaries of
    their employees. Was this interest usury, and therefore despite the
    good intentions of their founders were the montes illicit? Previously
    it had been generally held that a loan of mutuum could be made only
    by a merchant who diverted funds to a loan, and probably out of
    charity toward the borrower. To justify the montes seemed to open
    the way for justification of lending itself as a business, for if the
    montes could charge for their employees’ salaries, why could not a
    private pawnbroker do the same? Because of considerations such as
    this, they had many opponents, but the popes gave their approbation
    to numerous individual montes throughout Italy, and definitive
    approval came in 1515 with their acceptance by the Fifth Lateran
    Council, despite opposition by the famous Thomistic commentator,
    Cardinal Cajetan.29 We will see that this approval of interest charges
    for expenses figures in our discussion below of licit and illicit
    interest.
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 459
    30Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 357.
    31Denzinger, 2546–50.
    Questions concerning what was and was not usury continued
    to be debated, sometimes bitterly, by theologians throughout
    Catholic Europe down to the middle of the eighteenth century. At
    this point (1745) there appeared the papal encyclical, Vix pervenit,
    already mentioned. Vix pervenit was the most extended discussion of
    usury ever to come forth from a pope, and it reaffirmed the essentials
    of the traditional teaching, while at the same time giving express
    allowance for extrinsic titles. Although originally addressed only to
    the bishops of Italy, and thus not a teaching binding on the entire
    Church, “it was extended to the universal Church by a decree of the
    Holy Office of July 28, 1835.”30 Since it is the controlling authority
    for our discussion, I will quote it again and more fully.
    The nature of the sin called usury has its proper place and origin
    in a loan contract [in contractu mutui]. This financial contract
    between consenting parties demands, by its very nature, that one
    return to another only as much as he has received. The sin rests
    on the fact that sometimes the creditor desires more than he has
    given. Therefore he contends some gain is owed him beyond
    that which he loaned, but any gain which exceeds the amount he
    gave is illicit and usurious.
    One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the
    gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or small;
    neither can it be condoned by arguing that the borrower is rich;
    nor even by arguing that the money borrowed is not left idle, but
    is spent usefully, either to increase one’s fortune . . . or to engage
    in business transactions. The law governing loans consists
    necessarily in the equality of what is given and returned; once the
    equality has been established, whoever demands more than that
    violates the terms of the loan . . . .
    By these remarks, however, We do not deny that at
    times together with the loan contract certain other titles—which
    are not at all intrinsic to the contract—may run parallel with it.
    From these other titles, entirely just and legitimate reasons arise
    to demand something over and above the amount due on the
    contract.31
    Shortly after the appearance of Vix pervenit occurred the
    series of events, chiefly responses from various Roman congregations,
    which seem to some to constitute the Church’s repudiation
    460 Thomas Storck
    32On developments in the early nineteenth century, see Noonan, The Scholastic
    Analysis of Usury, 377–82, and Cleary, The Church and Usury, 168–77.
    33Some of these are reproduced in Denzinger, 2743 and 3105–09.
    34In addition, in a letter to an Irish priest in 1823, Rome specifically reaffirmed
    the doctrine of the encyclical. Cleary, The Church and Usury, 169–72.
    35This is numbered as section 2 of the Paulist transation as published in Seven
    Great Encyclicals and elsewhere. The Latin text runs, “Malum auxit usura vorax,
    quae non semel Ecclesiae judicio damnata, tamen ab hominibus avidis et
    quaestuosis per aliam speciem exercetur eadem.” The characterization of usury as
    vorax was traditional and goes back at least to the Roman poet Lucan, Pharsalia, bk.
    I, 181.
    of its hitherto constant teaching.32 The decisions emanated from
    either the Holy Office, the Sacred Penitentiary, or the Sacred
    Congregation of Propaganda, beginning in 1822,33 some of them
    with explicit approval by the reigning pope. They were addressed to
    confessors and their general tenor was the same: persons demanding
    interest on loans within the limits allowed by civil law should be left
    undisturbed and not denied absolution. Sometimes the proviso was
    added that penitents should be prepared to submit to any future
    decision of the Holy See. At the same time Rome never retracted
    the doctrine of Vix pervenit and even reaffirmed and applied it to the
    entire Church, as we saw above.34
    After this period of acquiescence in the practice of taking
    interest on loans without any clear extrinsic title we come to more
    recent times, where the first thing to mention is the condemnation
    of usury in 1891 by Leo XIII in the encyclical Rerum novarum.
    Rapacious usury has increased the evil [of unrestrained competition,
    etc.] which, more than once condemned by the Church, is
    nevertheless, under a different form but in the same way,
    practiced by avaricious and grasping men.35
    Although Leo does not explain what he means by “under a different
    form,” I think it is clear that what he terms usury is simply what the
    Church always meant by it, especially since he states that it has been
    “more than once condemned.” Thus we can see this as a simple
    reaffirmation of the traditional doctrine as stated previously in Vix
    pervenit.
    Then the 1917 Code of Canon Law (canon 1543) reads,
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 461
    36The footnotes to canon 1543 refer to the decrees of Lateran V, to the encyclical
    Vix pervenit, and to decisions of Roman congregations on usury in 1821 and 1878.
    Of course, the 1917 Code, since it has been abrogated by the 1983 Code, is now
    simply a witness to official understanding of doctrine at the time.
    37Like Pope Leo, Benedict does not say what he means by the term “usury.” But
    there is reason to think that he had in mind the historical rather than the modern
    notion. In the same section of the encyclical, the English version when speaking of
    “the experience of micro-finance,” goes on to make mention of “the birth of
    pawnbroking.” This might seem a strange thing to bring up until one looks at the
    Latin text of the encyclical, as well as the versions in the Romance languages (all
    available on the Vatican website). Instead of “the birth of pawnbroking,” the Latin
    text has “de Montibus Pietatis constitutis,” while the French has “la création des
    Monts de Piété,” the Italian, “alla nascita dei Monti di Pietà,” and the Spanish, “el
    origin de los Montes de Piedad.” Clearly Pope Benedict was thinking of medieval
    conditions and institutions in this section.
    If a fungible thing is given to someone in such a way that it
    becomes his and later is to be returned only in the same kind, no
    gain can be received by reason of the contract itself; but in the
    payment of a fungible thing, it is not in itself illicit to contract for
    the gain allowed by law, unless it is clear that this is excessive, or
    even for a greater gain, if a just and adequate title be present.36
    Here again we see a restatement of the doctrine of Vix pervenit,
    followed, it is true, by words that seem to deny much significance to
    the doctrine. Finally in the very recent encyclical of Benedict XVI,
    Caritas in veritate (2009), in section 65, after noting the necessity of
    reorienting the financial sector toward the common good, the pope
    twice mentions protecting and helping to defend “the more
    vulnerable” or the “weakest members of society” from usury.37 But
    let us now conclude our historical treatment and enter upon a
    discussion of whether and how the usury doctrine still binds
    consciences today.
    3. Was there a change in the Church’s teaching?
    Without question the vast majority of those who are at all
    aware of the usury question would say that there was at least some
    change or evolution in the Church’s teaching, however they might
    want to explain it. For certainly it appears that usury is no longer a
    sin that Christians need to worry about. But there is something
    curious about saying the Church’s teaching has changed. When did
    462 Thomas Storck
    38“Development in Moral Doctrine,” Theological Studies 54, no. 4 (December
    1993): 663.
    this occur? When did usury in the sense which we mean by it here
    cease to be a sin? If we look in the first half of the nineteenth
    century as the best place to locate such a change, we find no
    statement by the Church during that time that says anything about
    repudiating the teaching of Vix pervenit, but rather the contrary, as
    we saw. Then in Rerum novarum we have a matter-of-fact reminder
    of the evil of usury, in the 1917 Code a bald-faced assertion of the
    medieval doctrine in its full rigor, followed by qualifications whose
    meaning and significance we will look at below, and most recently
    another denunciation of usury in Caritas in veritate. Even John
    Noonan, in an article written expressly for the purpose of proving
    that there had been changes, or developments as he called them, in
    moral doctrine, admits: “Formally it can be argued that the old usury
    rule, narrowly construed, still stands: namely, that no profit on a loan
    may be taken without a just title to that profit.”38 It is true that he
    continues, “in terms of emphasis, of perspective, of practice, the old
    usury rule has disappeared.” What this means and what, if anything,
    can or should be done about this we will take up subsequently. But
    I do not think that there is any special difficulty in saying that Pope
    Benedict XIV’s teaching from 1745 still retains its force today. One
    can certainly find a nearly universal practical neglect of the question
    of usury, but one looks in vain to find that the Church ever
    retracted, abrogated, or substantially altered her teaching on usury.
    Something of course did occur, and that we will try to understand
    and explain, but no one should have any hesitation about proclaiming
    the doctrine of Vix pervenit as the doctrine of the Catholic
    Church.
    We have seen that beginning in the sixteenth century interest
    began to be routinely justified on loans by one or more of the
    extrinsic titles, and that about the same time the contractus trinus and
    the census allowed a lender pretty much the same security that he
    might seek in a simple loan at interest. Moreover, by the late
    sixteenth century these contracts did not even have to be correctly
    drawn up in order to avoid the stigma of usury, for an implicit good
    intention was widely accepted as sufficient. There is no doubt that
    theologians, well before the nineteenth century, while formally
    upholding the condemnation of usury, allowed for much that their
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 463
    39Aquinas, for example, had denied lucrum cessans because of the merely
    speculative quality of the lost gain. See Summa theologiae II-II, q. 78, a. 2, ad 1.
    40Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 317.
    41John F. Cronin, Catholic Social Principles: the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church
    Applied to American Economic Life (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1950), 44–45. Apparently this
    was nothing new, though, since Domingo de Soto (d. 1560) complained that few
    theologians of his day understood the details of the banking system. Cited in
    Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, 336.
    medieval predecessors would have looked askance at.39 Although in
    some instances these developments were sanctioned by Rome, by no
    means all of them were. The real change, not in doctrine, but in the
    application of that doctrine to economic life, came during these
    centuries and not in the 1820s or 1830s. Let us try to understand
    what took place.
    When one reads the subtle analyses of usury by the theologians
    of the Baroque era, one cannot help but be impressed by their
    painstaking efforts. Nevertheless, the increasing complexity of
    commercial life made it difficult to say with any assurance what was
    and what was not usury. Even in the fifteenth century, Fra Santi
    (Pandolfo) Rucellai, who had been a banker before entering the
    Dominican order and who, at Savonarola’s request, wrote a treatise
    on the morality of exchange banking, was unable to give a definite
    opinion on certain points.40 And things did not improve as time
    went on and as contracts and commercial practices grew more
    exotic. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, or so it appears
    to me, the Roman authorities basically threw up their hands and
    decided it was better to allow penitents to take moderate rates of
    interest on loans than to continue to analyze contracts and reach
    decisions on matters more and more opaque, especially because in
    many or most cases probably some kind of just title to interest did
    exist. In general moralists and moral theology textbooks began to
    retreat from an engagement with the facts of economic life. Fr. John
    Cronin notes this as follows:
    Our moral theology texts were, in general, hopelessly out of date
    in applying moral principles to economic life. Apparently few
    moralists knew enough about economic facts to work out a
    realistic and complete solution. Hence moral teaching generally
    confined itself to obvious justice and injustice and clearly defined
    motives.41
    464 Thomas Storck
    42Francis X. Funk in the middle of the nineteenth century suggested such an
    explanation based on the changed use of money. Cf. Noonan, The Scholastic
    Analysis of Usury, 385–87. Heinrich Pesch proposed that the “expansion of
    production and commerce” and the fact that “everyone who has the necessary
    funds at his disposal could actively participate in commercial life” justified routine
    interest taking. Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie/Teaching Guide to Economics, translated
    by Rupert J. Ederer (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, c. 2003), vol. 5, book 2, 197–99.
    John A. Ryan stated, “The money in a loan [today] is economically equivalent to,
    convertible into, concrete capital” (Distributive Justice, 3rd ed. [New York:
    Macmillan, 1942], 124).
    In other words, it was easier to say of those involved in transactions
    the usurious nature of which was doubtful, that they ought not to be
    disturbed, than either to try to apply the principles of the usury
    doctrine to the complex facts of the situation or still less to make the
    gigantic efforts required to orient the economy away from financial
    speculation and emphasis on individual enrichment toward an
    economy based on production for use and a recognition of the
    claims of society as a whole.
    This change in the Church’s approach to usury did not pass
    unnoticed. Various authors explained it in various ways, commonly
    arguing, however, that in modern times the nature of economic
    activity or the function of money differed essentially from what
    obtained in the middle ages.42 In our last section we will try to
    understand what really happened when we try to understand what
    the Church’s teaching on usury should mean for Christians today.
    4. Argumentation in support of scholastic doctrine
    Before proceeding to look at the significance for us today of
    the Church’s prohibition of usury, I want to argue anew for the
    correctness of the teaching of Vix pervenit, based on St. Thomas’
    argumentation, which looks to the consumptible nature of money
    as the key point. I do this so that we might approach the question of
    the meaning of the usury rule with a positive appraisal of the
    scholastic doctrine and regard it as something that must be understood
    rather than disregarded as a relic of the past.
    We might remember that as far back as Ejiciens thinkers had
    distinguished between something loaned that “deteriorates in use”
    and something that, “when it is lent, is neither diminished nor
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 465
    43I noted above that St. Thomas rejected the “wear and tear” argument;
    however, this argument seems to me the best reason why it is licit to charge for the
    use of something such as a house, whose ownership is separable from its use.
    44Ryan, Distributive Justice, 176.
    deteriorated.”43 Money is certainly the most common representative
    of the latter class, but is not the only one. As we saw, St. Thomas
    based his argument on the more general class of consumptible things.
    And I think that if we look at more humble consumptibles, such as
    food or drink, we might be able to look at the question afresh and
    understand the Church’s doctrine better. Let us consider the
    following analogy.
    Suppose we have a small businessman who owns a catering
    service, catering food and drink, and let us suppose further that all
    the supplies that accompany the food and drink are disposable, such
    as plastic forks, paper napkins, etc., so that there is nothing he
    provides to his customers that he must reuse. Now what may he
    licitly charge his customers for? For the replacement cost of the food
    and drink and the other disposable supplies, certainly. In addition, he
    may charge each customer for a share of the overhead for his shop,
    including rent, utilities, etc., his delivery van, for wages for any
    employees, for any legitimate interest payments he must make, and
    for a “return for his labor of organization and direction, and for the
    risk that he underwent.”44 But as regards the food and other
    consumptibles that he provides, it is hard to see how he can charge
    a customer for more than the amount purchased. If he furnishes 100
    bottles of wine, the caterer may charge what it will cost him to
    replace a similar kind and amount of wine. Anything he charges a
    customer in addition must come from one of the other titles I
    mentioned above, such as costs incident to the running of his
    business and wages for his employees and for himself.
    This last is what is generally called profit, a term that is often
    used loosely and inexactly. As we see here, Ryan reduces it to the
    proprietor’s labor, plus his entrepreneurial abilities and risks. It is not
    an open-ended invitation to charge as much as the market will bear,
    but rather there must exist some title of justification such as Ryan
    enumerates here. Looked at in this way the limiting of the reimbursement
    for the consumptibles sold seems obvious. Of course the
    caterer cannot charge for 110 bottles of wine if he delivers only 100.
    His profit, in reality his salary and compensation for risk, etc., comes
    466 Thomas Storck
    45“The great majority of businessmen in competitive industries do not receive
    incomes in excess of their reasonable needs. Their profits do not notably exceed the
    salaries that they could command as hired managers, and generally are not more
    than sufficient to reimburse them for the cost of education and business training,
    and to enable them to live in reasonable conformity with the standard of living to
    which they have become accustomed” (Ryan, Distributive Justice, 190).
    46Pesch, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie/Teaching Guide to Economics, vol. 5, bk. 2,
    200.
    47Another way of looking at this example that yields the same conclusion is to
    regard a mutuum of money as a sale. As in the case of the caterer who provides 100
    otherwise and is not gained at the expense of expecting more in
    return than what he supplied.
    We can now easily apply this analogy to loans of mutuum.
    Supposing someone is in the business of making loans, then similar
    expenses could justly be taken from customers. The montes pietatis
    acted in similar fashion. Of course the montes were not profit-making
    in the sense that they intended to earn more than their expenses,
    including salaries. But according to Ryan’s analysis of business, no
    business is profit-making in the sense that it can justly seek as wide
    profits as it can obtain. The owner can seek a fair “return for his
    labor of organization and direction, and for the risk that he underwent.”
    Although one cannot calculate such returns with mathematical
    exactness, neither can one maintain that they have no theoretical
    limit.45 And even if one were to argue that there should be no limit
    on such a return for labor, skill and risk, still that is not the same as
    saying that usury for the lending activity itself may be taken, for we
    have seen that here the entrepreneur can require only the same
    amount as the consumptible good that he has provided, “the equality
    of what is given and returned,” as Benedict XIV taught.
    Of course in the case of our caterer he receives immediate or
    nearly immediate payment for his expenditure on food and other
    consumptibles. A loan, however, is generally paid back after a period
    of time, or gradually during such a period. Is not the lender entitled
    to some compensation on account of this delay? No, for “the mere
    time differential by itself does not cause a difference in value. There
    must be added the possibility of earning a profit in the intervening
    time period.”46 In other words, one must have a title such as lucrum
    cessans or damnum emergens to justify receiving interest, for the mere
    fact of delay by itself does not equate to the right to contract for
    more than the principal.47
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 467
    bottles of wine and receives as part of his total payment the price of the 100 bottles,
    no more and no less, if we look at money loaned as a sale of money we see that the
    price of $100 is obviously $100. Any other just charges come from the same titles
    as the caterer had, such as overhead expenses, wages, etc. For the product provided,
    money, one can charge only what it is worth, which is always its face value.
    I have argued both that the Church has not changed her
    teaching on usury and that one can make a reasonable argument for
    the validity of the intrinsic injustice of usury itself. On both these
    points, it seems to me, assent to the scholastic teaching is not where
    the real difficulty is. That lies elsewhere, in the question, what does
    it mean? Or better, does it have any meaning except as an empty and
    antiquated formalism? Assuming that we accept at least some of the
    extrinsic titles and other practices that grew up during the Renaissance,
    would adherence to the usury prohibition today make any real
    difference in our economic and legal practices?
    5. Application of usury theory to contemporary economies
    If what I have said is correct—if, based both on arguments
    from reason as well as on a failure to find that the Church ever
    retracted her papal and conciliar teaching on usury, it is the case that
    the “law governing loans consists necessarily in the equality of what
    is given and returned”—then there are two chief questions that
    concern us in this last section. In the first place, returning to my title,
    Is Usury Still a Sin?, we have to ask what effect the intrinsic evil of
    usury should have on the moral conduct of the Christian. Is there
    anything that Christians should do or avoid in their financial or
    economic behavior as a result of the sinfulness of usury? Secondly,
    what meaning does usury have in an economy hopelessly enmeshed
    in all kinds of interest-bearing transactions as a matter of course and
    without a thought as to any justifying title? Given that for centuries
    theologians have found it easy to justify most forms of interest, are
    we committing the Church to a ridiculous anachronism, a relic of
    the past? Are we hankering after a silly formalism in order to justify
    something that it is easier and more honest simply to call interest on
    a loan?
    In regard to our first question, in light of the various Roman
    decisions of the nineteenth century and of the 1917 Code, no one
    468 Thomas Storck
    48“Even higher rates of interest are not unheard of, as one Indiana payday lender
    offered a loan of $100 with interest of $20 per day—an APR of 7,300%” (John
    Skees, “The Resurrection of Historic Usury Principles for Consumption Loans in
    a Federal Banking System,” Catholic University Law Review 55, no. 4 [Summer
    2006]: 1132). As late as the mid-1970s most state usury laws set a limit of 10%, and
    the model Uniform Consumer Credit Code proposed a maximum of 18%
    (Lawrence P. Galie, “Indexing the Principal: the Usury Laws Hang Tough,”
    University of Pittsburgh Law Review 37, no. 4 [Summer 1976]: 764).
    49The 1978 Supreme Court decision, Marquette National Bank v. First of
    Omaha Service Corp., 439 U.S. 299, made inevitable the eventual demise of state
    laws regulating interest rates.
    can be condemned for taking the legal or customary rate of interest
    on a loan, provided that it is not excessive. The reason for this, I
    argued above, is that the complexity of modern finance renders it
    safer simply to allow moderate interest than to engage in probably
    fruitless endeavors to determine the presence or absence of extrinsic
    titles. The Church presumes these titles to exist generally and makes
    the judgment that even if in some cases they do not, it is better for
    the sake of consciences to ignore that fact. The remedy always exists,
    moreover, for restitution to be made via almsgiving in case a
    penitent is troubled or there seems a well-founded and probable case
    of real usury.
    Of course, it should go without saying that the interest rates
    of loansharks and others on so-called payday or similar loans, which
    can reach even 500% per annum, have clearly no justification in any
    extrinsic title, and no Catholic can lawfully have anything to do with
    such loans.48 Such usury is a serious offense against justice and ought
    to be strictly prohibited by the civil law. Unfortunately, since 1978
    in the United States judicial decisions and the gradual repeal of state
    laws regulating usury have allowed such gross injustices to flourish.49
    The ecclesiastical decisions of the 1820s and 1830s were
    addressed to confessors and did not purport to change the usury
    doctrine as expressed in Vix pervenit. So even though no one can be
    criticized for taking moderate interest, I think that in some cases one
    can detect the presence of usury in modern interest. For example,
    while it is certainly correct to point out that today there is usually
    opportunity for productive investment, and that therefore those who
    put money out at mutuum but would otherwise invest it in some
    manner are entitled to claim lucrum cessans, this reasoning does not
    always hold. In certain cases of depression or recession, “the profit
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 469
    50Paul Samuelson, Economics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 336.
    51John F. Cronin, Economics and Society (New York: American Book Co., 1939),
    131.
    52John P. Kelly, Aquinas and Modern Practices of Interest Taking (Brisbane: Aquinas
    Press, 1945), 33.
    53Summa theologiae II-II, q. 78, a. 2, ad 2.
    expectations of businessmen are likely to be so low that they would
    not employ men and machines on new investment projects even if
    you let them borrow temporarily at a zero interest rate.”50 In such
    cases “some savings will follow the sterile path of debt-financed
    consumption, with eventual repayment at the expense of current
    consumption.”51 In other words, in such situations a lack of
    consumer demand makes spending on productive investment
    unprofitable, so it is likely that someone putting money out at
    mutuum is not truly forgoing investment profit, because no profit is
    to be had for the time being. Thus when there is excess savings with
    no outlet for profitable use, it is hardly in accord with the common
    good to reward those who choose to loan by giving them a rate of
    interest based on a merely hypothetical opportunity cost.
    We must remember that since the extrinsic titles were never
    given official approval except as compensation for lost opportunities
    for investment earnings “they can never be advanced as a justification
    of a general loan system based on motives of profit.”52 Thus it
    seems hard to justify lucrum cessans for those who have no real
    intention of making investments, simply because such opportunities
    are readily available to all. What of ordinary savers who desire to put
    their money into insured savings accounts at banks and who because
    of inexperience or fear of loss have no desire to invest in business
    ventures, even to buy shares of stock or mutual funds? They are not
    undergoing a real loss of investment income on account of their loan
    of money to the bank, since otherwise they might have simply
    hidden the money in a mattress. I do not see how the merely
    theoretical possibility that they could make gains from investments
    applies to them, since they are too risk-averse to do so. Can they
    licitly claim interest on bank accounts and under what title? I think
    there is a reason for thinking such interest just, but it is not one of
    the extrinsic titles that theologians approved. It is the mere fact of
    inflation. “He who receives a loan of money . . . is not held to pay
    back more than he received by the loan”53—but with our ability to
    470 Thomas Storck
    54Garrick Small, “Rapacious Usury: Fact or Fiction?” unpublished paper
    presented at the Campion Fellowship meeting in Toongabbie, Australia, in January
    2002, p. 7. Used with permission of the author.
    monitor the level of inflation in an economy, we realize that money
    simply left alone, as in a mattress, will actually diminish in value.
    Therefore payment for inflation for money deposited in a bank or
    credit union seems just.
    Moreover, it does seem possible to roughly distinguish a just
    rate of interest, anything above which would be usury. If we
    consider the rate of interest on government bonds, historically the
    safest investment possible, as risk-free for all practical purposes, we
    can then examine other interest rates in their light. The following
    discussion refers to Australian interest rates.
    For example, on 5 January 2002, the ten year government bond
    rate was 5.21%, and home mortgages were 6.3% while inflation
    was about 2.5%. The gap between home mortgage rates and
    government bonds of about 1.1% was due to the riskiness of
    lending to home buyers compared to the government. By
    subtracting inflation, the government bond rate is reduced to
    about 2.7% which is known as the real rate of interest. Markets
    anticipate a fall in rates, so there is a negligible liquidity preference
    effect. This means that 2.7% of the loan interest on government
    bonds, home mortgages and all other lending is purely the
    result of the expectation of the lender for a return in excess of the
    principle. That looks suspiciously like usury.54
    This analysis justifies the interest paid on government bonds only on
    the basis of inflation, apparently without considering the presence or
    absence of any extrinsic title. Nevertheless it suggests an interesting
    way of approaching the question. Another method of analysis is to
    recall that interest legitimately taken is compensation for an investment
    opportunity forgone. Thus a just rate of interest could in
    principle be formulated based on the expected return of an investment
    which the lender had the opportunity of profiting by, assuming
    that it was possible to specify a general rate of profit for any particular
    place and time.
    Abstracting from statutory regulation of interest, and from any
    special expense or risk of loss incurred by a lender . . . the
    criterion [of a just rate of interest] is the just rate of profit from
    investment. This does not mean that the just rate of interest is
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 471
    55Lewis Watt, “Usury in Catholic Theology” in Readings in Economics, ed.
    Richard Mulcahy (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1959), 278.
    56Kelly, Aquinas and Modern Practices of Interest Taking, 20.
    57“The Idea of a Christian Society” in Christianity and Culture (San Diego:
    Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, [1939] 1977), 77.
    58Pope Benedict also commends credit unions in his encyclical, Caritas in veritate,
    65.
    exactly the same as the just rate of profit . . . [for] the profits of
    any business are due, at least in part, to the activities of those who
    are running it; and also that ordinary investment involves
    financial risks which are not inherent in loans of money. Consequently
    . . . the just rate of interest will be lower than the just
    rate of profit. How much lower? Evidently by as much as
    corresponds to the differential advantage of lending rather than
    investing.55
    We must remember that “the modern world . . . has ordered
    its economic affairs with little reference to moral scruples, and in
    such a world it is exceedingly difficult to assess the moral implications
    of loan contracts.”56 Often we will agree with T. S. Eliot’s
    confession: “I seem to be a petty usurer in a world manipulated
    largely by big usurers.”57 The point of these last examples is simply
    that even in an economy that gives and receives interest as a matter
    of course we can at times distinguish what might be legitimate
    interest from what is probably usury. Although the praxis of the
    Church for the past two hundred years has been not to disturb
    consciences on the subject, that does not mean that there is anything
    wrong with discussion of the matter and with attempts to identify
    usury where it is present. An increased consciousness of the evil and
    the ubiquity of usury today (cf. Rerum novarum) cannot but help to
    make Christians more aware of what to our ancestors was one of the
    greatest of sins.
    Another benefit of discussion of the presence of usury in
    today’s financial transactions is that it might lead to steps to establish
    institutions which avoid or minimize usury. One possible means of
    overcoming loansharking, for example, is an institution with some
    resemblance to the medieval montes pietatis, the credit union.58 A
    commercial bank has stockholders who expect to receive a return on
    their investment. If establishing a commercial bank can be considered
    as a legitimate investment activity, then some return for the
    472 Thomas Storck
    59One very important topic which space prevents me from taking up is the
    question of bank-created money. Although it would be possible for a banking
    system to work otherwise, ours operates by creating money as debt. Most of the
    money supply today originates in this way. The banking system creates money out
    of nothing and yet banks charge interest on this money as they loan it out to
    borrowers. Almost all of the interest on such loans seems to be nothing but usury.
    See Rupert J. Ederer, “Is Usury Still a Problem?” Homiletic & Pastoral Review 84,
    nos. 11–12 (August–September 1984): 18–20.
    60Islamic banks claim to engage in risk-sharing agreements with their borrowers,
    although there is some dispute about whether in fact they do that as much as they
    claim. See Timur Kuran, “Islamic Economics and the Islamic Subeconomy,”
    Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 4 (Fall 1995): 155–73. Kuran claims that the
    whole notion of Islamic banking originated with Maududi (or Mawdudi), an
    Indian/Pakistani Moslem theorist of the mid-twentieth century. But see the two
    bibliographies on Islamic banking, part of a bibliography on Islamic law, the first
    of which lists works earlier than Maududi’s activity: Law Library Journal 78, no. 1
    (Winter 1986); the section on Islamic banking is at 161–62. The update appeared
    in the same journal, vol. 87, no. 1 (Winter 1995); the section on banking appears
    at 122–25.
    bank stockholders is just. But still, whatever the stockholders receive
    must be paid for by higher interest rates on loans and higher bank
    fees. This is not the case with credit unions, which are not profitmaking
    institutions in that sense. Of course they pay wages to their
    employees, as did the montes pietatis, and for the necessary expenses
    of providing loans.59
    Today the only financial institutions that operate with the
    goal of avoiding usury altogether are Islamic banks.60 If usury is
    unjust, why are Christians not as active in promoting these sorts of
    financial institutions as Moslems? Let us in conclusion look briefly
    at a few more financial practices and institutions which Christians
    might promote were we to recover the zeal for economic justice that
    characterized Catholics at an earlier period.
    The whole Christian doctrine of property with its responsibilities
    of ownership which the modern world has forgotten is wrapped
    up in this question of money and the taking of interest thereon.
    If I am in possession of money, I am in possession of something
    that is vital to the society in which I live. I, as a Christian,
    therefore, have very definite responsibilities with respect to the
    ownership of that money. Christian morality knows of no theory
    of an unqualified and unconditional ownership of property of any
    description. Property must be used according to its true end and
    purpose and in the case of money that true end and purpose is as
    Is Usury Still a Sin? 473
    61Kelly, Aquinas and Modern Practices of Interest Taking, 46–47.
    62Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, 49 (Paulist translation).
    a means of exchange. Therefore, the wrongful withholding of
    that money from circulation for the purpose of making a profit
    by waiting is a misuse of property.61
    Such a doctrine of money is akin to Paul VI’s doctrine of property
    in Populorum progressio.
    [P]rivate property does not constitute for anyone an absolute and
    unconditioned right. No one is justified in keeping for his
    exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities
    . . . . If certain landed estates impede the general prosperity
    because they are extensive, unused or poorly used, or because
    they bring hardship to peoples or are detrimental to the interests
    of the country, the common good sometimes demands their
    expropriation. (23–24)
    Clearly expropriation of funds that are being used merely in idle
    usury should be a last resort, and normally the law will use financial
    incentives and penalties to direct such funds toward uses more in
    accord with the common good. But no Catholic need be afraid to
    acknowledge that “the public authority, in view of the common
    good, may specify more accurately what is licit and what is illicit for
    property owners in the use of their possessions.”62 A Christian
    society, then, by outlawing true usury completely, and by forbidding
    or discouraging the kinds of contracts that during the Renaissance
    helped undermine the usury prohibition among both theologians
    and merchants, would seek to direct money toward its proper use.
    Some form of credit union might be adequate to provide financing
    for non-productive consumer loans. The demand for commercial
    credit could be satisfied either by merchants diverting funds from
    investments, and licitly claiming lucrum cessans, or by some form of
    commercial credit union run by associations of businesses.
    Just as in the Great Depression of the 1930s, so also now
    events are forcing theologians and moralists to turn their attention to
    the economy. But in reality, Catholics should have as lively a sense
    of the demands of the moral law relative to the economy as they do
    relative to sexuality or war.
    474 Thomas Storck
    63Cronin, Catholic Social Principles: the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church Applied
    to American Economic Life, 43.
    In the Middle Ages, it was taken for granted God’s law applied
    to the totality of life. The idea of a double standard of morality,
    with a strict code for private life and a minimum of moral
    obligation for business and public life, is an innovation based on
    philosophical and religious individualism of the eighteenth
    century.63
    However far we are today from a Christian society or a Christian
    economy, the goal “to impress the divine law on the affairs of the
    earthly city” (Gaudium et spes, 43) is always present. With respect to
    usury the Church has been clear in setting forth a principle, a
    principle it is true that must be intelligently applied to the complex
    circumstances of financial life, but which nonetheless is a standard for
    both individual and social conduct. The doctrine on usury establishes
    a social goal, and even if we cannot fully achieve that now there are
    various intermediate goals that we can work toward implementing. G
    THOMAS STORCK is the author of The Catholic Milieu, Foundations of a
    Catholic Political Order, Christendom and the West and numerous articles and
    reviews on Catholic culture and social teaching. He is a member of the editorial board
    of The Chesterton Review.


    Maurice Allais, a french Nobel price, described the ex nihilo ( ex nihilo means out of nothing, out of thin air, out of a pen, out of a computer, out of a subtle robbery from your pocket…) creation of money by the banking

    system as identical to the creation of money by “counterfeiters,”
    the only difference being that those who profit are different.

    He proposed, therefore, that although all banks would be
    private, except for the Central Bank, all income derived by the

    Central Bank’s creation of money should be returned to the
    State, enabling the latter, under present circumstances, to do
    away with practically the whole of the progressive tax on income.
    This would eliminate the present circumstance where profits

    and their beneficiaries are not transparent. Such revenues, he
    wrote, “merely generate inflation, and by encouraging investments
    that are not really profitable for the community…

    The
    Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed –
    Are The Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Comprehend ?


    By David DeGraw, AmpedStatus

    The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed - Are The Federal Reserve's Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?What
    if the greatest scam ever perpetrated was blatantly exposed, and the US
    media didn’t cover it? Does that mean the scam could keep going?
    That’s what we are about to find out.

    I understand the importance of the new WikiLeaks documents. However,
    we must not let them distract us from the new information the Federal
    Reserve was forced to release. Even if WikiLeaks reveals documents from
    inside a large American bank, as huge as that could be, it will most
    likely pale in comparison to what we just found out from the one-time
    peek we got into the inner-workings of the Federal Reserve. This is the
    Wall Street equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.

    I’ve written many reports detailing the crimes of Wall Street during
    this crisis. The level of fraud, from top to bottom, has been
    staggering. The lack of accountability and the complete disregard for
    the rule of law have made me and many of my colleagues extremely cynical
    and jaded when it comes to new evidence to pile on top of the mountain
    that we have already gathered. But we must not let our cynicism cloud
    our vision on the details within this new information.

    Just when I thought the banksters couldn’t possibly shock me anymore… they did.

    We were finally granted the honor and privilege of finding out the
    specifics, a limited one-time Federal Reserve view, of a secret taxpayer
    funded “backdoor bailout” by a small group of unelected bankers. This
    data release reveals “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3
    TRILLION in taxpayer money – $3.3 trillion in liquidity, $9 trillion in
    “other financial arrangements.”

    Wait, what? Did you say $12.3 TRILLION tax dollars were thrown around
    in secrecy by unelected bankers… and Congress didn’t know any of the
    details?

    Yes. The Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves. The
    original copy of the Constitution spontaneously burst into flames. The
    ghost of Tom Paine went running, stark raving mad screaming through the
    halls of Congress.

    The Federal Reserve was secretly throwing around our money in
    unprecedented fashion, and it wasn’t just to the usual suspects like
    Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.; it was to
    the entire Global Banking Cartel. To central banks throughout the world:
    Australia, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden,
    Switzerland, England… To the Fed’s foreign primary dealers like Credit
    Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Royal Bank of Scotland
    (U.K.), Barclays (U.K.), BNP Paribas (France)… All their Ponzi players
    were “gifted.” All the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
    got their cut.

    Talk about the ransacking and burning of Rome! Sayonara American middle class…

    If you still had any question as to whether or not the United States
    is now the world’s preeminent banana republic, the final verdict was
    just delivered and the decision was unanimous. The ayes have it.

    Any fairytale notions that we are living in a nation built on the
    rule of law and of the global economy being based on free market
    principles has now been exposed as just that, a fairytale. This moment
    is equivalent to everyone in Vatican City being told, by the Pope, that
    God is dead.

    I’ve been arguing for years that the market is rigged and that the
    major Wall Street firms are elaborate Ponzi schemes, as have many other
    people who built their beliefs on rational thought, reasoned logic and
    evidence. We already came to this conclusion by doing the research and
    connecting the dots. But now, even our strongest skeptics and the most
    ardent Wall Street supporters have it all laid out in front of them, on FEDERAL RESERVE SPREADSHEETS.

    Even the Financial Times, which named Lloyd Blankfein its 2009 person of the year,
    reacted by reporting this: “The initial reactions were shock at the
    breadth of lending, particularly to foreign firms. But the details paint
    a bleaker and even more disturbing picture.”

    Yes, the emperor doesn’t have any clothes. God is, indeed, dead.
    But, for the moment at least, the illusion continues to hold power. How
    is this possible?

    To start with, as always, the US television “news” media (propaganda)
    networks just glossed over the whole thing – nothing to see here, just
    move along, back after a message from our sponsors… Other than that
    obvious reason, I’ve come to the realization that the Federal Reserve’s
    crimes are so big, so huge in scale, it is very hard for people to even
    wrap their head around it and comprehend what has happened here.

    Think about it. In just this one peek we got at its operations, we
    learned that the Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in near-zero interest
    loans, without Congressional input.

    The audacity and absurdity of it all is mind boggling…

    Based on many conversations I’ve had with people, it seems that the
    average person doesn’t comprehend how much a trillion dollars is, let
    alone 12.3 trillion. You might as well just say 12.3 gazillion, because
    people don’t grasp a number that large, nor do they understand what
    would be possible if that money was used in other ways.

    Can you imagine what we could do to restructure society with $12.3 trillion? Think about that…

    People also can’t grasp the colossal crime committed because they
    keep hearing the word “loans.” People think of the loans they get. You
    borrow money, you pay it back with interest, no big deal.

    That’s not what happened here. The Fed doled out $12.3 trillion in
    near-zero interest loans, using the American people as collateral,
    demanding nothing in return, other than a bunch of toxic assets in some
    cases. They only gave this money to a select group of insiders, at a
    time when very few had any money because all these same insiders and
    speculators crashed the system.

    Do you get that? The very people most responsible for crashing the
    system, were then rewarded with trillions of our dollars. This gave
    that select group of insiders unlimited power to seize control of assets
    and have unprecedented leverage over almost everything within their
    economies – crony capitalism on steroids.

    This was a hostile world takeover orchestrated through economic
    attacks by a very small group of unelected global bankers. They
    paralyzed the system, then were given the power to recreate it according
    to their own desires. No free market, no democracy of any kind. All
    done in secrecy. In the process, they gave themselves all-time
    record-breaking bonuses and impoverished tens of millions of people –
    they have put into motion a system that will inevitably collapse again
    and utterly destroy the very existence of what is left of an economic
    middle class.

    That is not hyperbole. That is what happened.

    We are talking about trillions of dollars secretly pumped into global
    banks, handpicked by a small select group of bankers themselves. All
    for the benefit of those bankers, and at the expense of everyone else.
    People can’t even comprehend what that means and the severe consequences
    that it entails, which we have only just begun to experience.

    Let me sum it up for you: The American Dream is O-V-E-R.

    Welcome to the neo-feudal-fascist state.

    People throughout the world who keep using the dollar are either A)
    Part of the scam; B) Oblivious to reality; C) Believe that US military
    power will be able to maintain the value of an otherwise worthless
    currency; D) All of the above.

    No matter which way you look at it, we are all in serious trouble!

    If you are an elected official, (I know at least 17 of you subscribe
    to my newsletter) and you believe in the oath you took upon taking
    office, you must immediately demand a full audit of the Federal Reserve
    and have Ben Bernanke and the entire Federal Reserve Board detained. If
    you are not going to do that, you deserve to have the words “Irrelevant
    Puppet” tattooed across your forehead.

    Yes, those are obviously strong words, but they are the truth.

    The Global Banking Cartel
    has now been so blatantly exposed, you cannot possibly get away with
    pretending that we live in a nation of law based on the Constitution.
    The jig is up.

    It’s been over two years now; does anyone still seriously not
    understand why we are in this crisis? Our economy has been looted and
    burnt to the ground due to the strategic, deliberate decisions made by a
    small group of unelected global bankers at the Federal Reserve. Do
    people really not get the connection here? I mean, H.E.L.L.O. Our
    country is run by an unelected Global Banking Cartel.

    I am constantly haunted by a quote from Harry Overstreet, who wrote the following in his 1925 groundbreaking study Influencing Human Behavior:
    “Giving people the facts as a strategy of influence” has been a
    failure, “an enterprise fraught with a surprising amount of
    disappointment.”

    This crisis overwhelmingly proves Overstreet’s thesis to be true. Nonetheless, we solider on…

    Here’s a roundup of reports on this BernankeLeaks:

    Prepare to enter the theater of the absurd…

    I’ll start with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). He was the
    senator who Bernanke blew off when he was asked for information on this
    heist during a congressional hearing. Sanders fought to get the
    amendment written into the financial “reform” bill that gave us this
    one-time peek into the Fed’s secret operations. (Remember, remember the
    6th of May, HFT, flash crash and terrorism. “Hey, David, Homeland Security is on the phone! They want to ask you questions about some NYSE SLP program.”)

    In an article entitled, “A Real Jaw-Dropper at the Federal Reserve,” Senator Sanders reveals some of the details:

    At a Senate Budget Committee hearing in 2009, I asked Fed
    Chairman Ben Bernanke to tell the American people the names of the
    financial institutions that received an unprecedented backdoor bailout
    from the Federal Reserve, how much they received, and the exact terms of
    this assistance. He refused. A year and a half later… we have begun to
    lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed…

    After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are
    finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed’s
    multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America….

    We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout… turned out
    to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars
    in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal
    Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this
    country.…

    Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign
    private banks and corporations including two European megabanks —
    Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse — which were the largest beneficiaries
    of the Fed’s purchase of mortgage-backed securities….

    Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?… [read Global Banking Cartel]

    What this disclosure tells us, among many other things, is that
    despite this huge taxpayer bailout, the Fed did not make the appropriate
    demands on these institutions necessary to rebuild our economy and
    protect the needs of ordinary Americans….

    What we are seeing is the incredible power of a small number of
    people who have incredible conflicts of interest getting incredible help
    from the taxpayers of this country while ignoring the needs of the
    people. [read more]

    In an article entitled, “The Fed Lied About Wall Street,” Zach Carter sums it up this way:

    The Federal Reserve audit is full of frightening
    revelations about U.S. economic policy and those who implement it… By
    denying the solvency crisis, major bank executives who had run their
    companies into the ground were allowed to keep their jobs, and
    shareholders who had placed bad bets on their firms were allowed to
    collect government largesse, as bloated bonuses began paying out soon
    after.

    But the banks themselves still faced a capital shortage, and were
    only kept above those critical capital thresholds because federal
    regulators were willing to look the other way, letting banks account for
    obvious losses as if they were profitable assets.

    So based on the Fed audit data, it’s hard to conclude that Fed
    Chairman Ben Bernanke was telling the truth when he told Congress on
    March 3, 2009, that there were no zombie banks in the United States.

    “I don’t think that any major U.S. bank is currently a zombie institution,” Bernanke said.

    As Bernanke spoke those words banks had been pledging junk bonds as collateral under Fed facilities for several months…

    This is the heart of today’s foreclosure fraud crisis. Banks are
    foreclosing on untold numbers of families who have never missed a
    payment, because rushing to foreclosure generates lucrative fees for the
    banks, whatever the costs to families and investors. This is, in fact,
    far worse than what Paul Krugman predicted. Not only are zombie banks
    failing to support the economy, they are actively sabotaging it with
    fraud in order to make up for their capital shortages. Meanwhile,
    regulators are aggressively looking the other way.

    The Fed had to fix liquidity in 2008. That was its job. But as major
    banks went insolvent, the Fed and Treasury had a responsibility to fix
    that solvency issue—even though that meant requiring shareholders and
    executives to live up to losses. Instead, as the Fed audit tells us,
    policymakers knowingly ignored the real problem, pushing losses onto the
    American middle class in the process.” [read more]

    Even the Financial Times is jumping ship:

    Sunlight Shows Cracks in Fed’s Rescue Story

    It took two years, a hard-fought lawsuit, and an act of Congress, but
    finally… the Federal Reserve disclosed the details of its financial
    crisis lending programs. The initial reactions were shock at the breadth
    of lending, particularly to foreign firms. But the details paint a
    bleaker, earlier, and even more disturbing picture…. An even more
    troubling conclusion from the data is that… it is now apparent that the
    Fed took on far more risk, on less favorable terms, than most people
    have realized. [read more]

    In true Fed fashion, they didn’t even fully comply with Congress. In
    a report entitled, “Fed Withholds Collateral Data for $885 Billion in
    Financial-Crisis Loans,” Bloomberg puts some icing on the cake:

    For three of the Fed’s six emergency facilities, the
    central bank released information on groups of collateral it accepted by
    asset type and rating, without specifying individual securities. Among
    them was the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, created in March 2008 to
    provide loans to brokers as Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

    “This is a half-step,” said former Atlanta Fed research director
    Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc.
    in Sarasota, Florida. “If you were going to audit the facilities, then
    would this enable you to do an audit? The answer is ‘No,’ you would have
    to go in and look at the individual amounts of collateral and how it
    was broken down to do that. And that is the spirit of what the
    requirements were in Dodd-Frank.” [read more]

    See also:

  • Fed Data Dump Reveals More Contradictions About its $1.25 Trillion MBS Purchase Program
  • Fed Created Conflicts in Improvising $3.3 Trillion Financial System Rescue
  • Meet The 35 Foreign Banks That Got Bailed Out By The Fed
  • Ben Bernanke’s Secret Global Bank
  • Here’s the only person on US TV “news” who actually covers and
    understands any of this, enter Dylan Ratigan, with his guest Chris
    Whalen from Institutional Risk Analytics. This quote from Whalen sums
    it up well: “The folks at the Fed have become so corrupt, so captured by
    the banking industry… the Fed is there to support the speculators and
    they let the real economy go to hell.”

    The Progressive’s Matthew Rothschild has a good quote: “The financial bailout was a giant boondoggle, undemocratic and kleptocratic to its core.”

    Matt Stoller on NewDeal 2.0:

    End This Fed

    The Fed, and specifically the people who run it, are responsible for
    declining wages, for de-industrialization, for bubbles, and for the
    systemic corruption of American capital markets. The new financial
    blogosphere destroyed the Fed’s mythic stature…. With a loss of
    legitimacy comes a lack of public trust and a vulnerability to any form
    of critic. The Fed is now less respected than the IRS…. Liberals should
    stop their love affair with conservative technocratic myths of monetary
    independence, and cease seeing this Federal Reserve as a legitimate
    actor. At the very least, we need to begin noticing that these people do
    in fact run the country, and should not. [read more]

    In case anyone is confused into believing that this is just another
    right vs. left partisan issue, enter Fox Business host Judge Andrew
    Napolitano with his guest Republican Congressman Ron Paul, who is, of
    course, a longtime leading Fed critic. Paul hopes to see some Wikileaks
    on the Federal Reserve:

    The Sunlight Foundation shines a light on Bank of America and the Federal Reserve’s brother money manager BlackRock:

    Federal Reserve Loan Program Allowed Bank of America to Benefit Twice

    Bank of America was one of several banks that was able to play both
    sides of a Federal Reserve program launched during the 2008 financial
    crisis. While Bank of America was selling its assets to firms obtaining
    loans through the Fed program, the investment firm BlackRock—partially
    owned by Bank of America—was potentially turning a profit by using those
    loans to buy assets similar to those sold by Bank of America. [read more]

    Gretchen Morgenson at the New York Times jumps into the act:

    So That’s Where the Money Went

    How the truth shines through when you shed a little light on a subject….

    All of the emergency lending data released by the Fed are highly
    revealing, but why weren’t they made public much earlier? That’s a
    question that Walker F. Todd, a research fellow at the American
    Institute for Economic Research, is asking.

    Mr. Todd, a former assistant general counsel and research officer at
    the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said details about the Fed’s vast
    and various programs should have been available before the Dodd-Frank
    regulatory reform law was even written.

    “The Fed’s current set of powers and the shape of the Dodd-Frank bill
    over all might have looked quite different if this information had been
    made public during the debate on the bill,” he said. “Had these tables
    been out there, I think Congress would have either said no to emergency
    lending authority or if you get it, it’s going to be a much lower number
    — half a trillion dollars in the aggregate.” [read more]

    Welcome to the “global pawnshop:”

    The Fed Operates as a “global pawnshop:” $9 trillion to 18 financial institutions

    What the report shows is that the Fed operated as a global pawnshop
    taking in practically anything the banks had for collateral. What is
    even more disturbing is that the Federal Reserve did not enact any
    punitive charges to these borrowers so you had banks like Goldman Sachs
    utilizing the crisis to siphon off cheap collateral. The Fed is quick
    to point out that “taxpayers were fully protected” but mention little of
    the destruction they have caused to the US dollar. This is a hidden
    cost to Americans and it also didn’t help that they were the fuel that
    set off the biggest global housing bubble ever witnessed by humanity. [read more]

    “No strings attached.” Financial reporter Barry Grey unleashes the truth:

    Fed report lifts lid on Great Bank Heist of 2008-2009

    The banks and corporations that benefited were not even obliged to
    provide an account of what they did with the money. The entire purpose
    of the operation was to use public funds to cover the gambling losses of
    the American financial aristocracy, and create the conditions for the
    financiers and speculators to make even more money.

    All of the 21,000 transactions cited in the Fed documents―released
    under a provision included, over the Fed’s objections, in this year’s
    financial regulatory overhaul bill―were carried out in secret. The
    unelected central bank operated without any congressional mandate or
    oversight.

    The documents shed light on the greatest plundering of social
    resources in history. It was carried out under both the Republican Bush
    and Democratic Obama administrations. Those who organized the looting of
    the public treasury were long-time Wall Street insiders: men like
    Bush’s treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson and
    the then-president of the New York Federal Reserve, Timothy Geithner….

    The Fed documents show that the US central bank enabled banks and
    corporations to offload their bad debts onto the Fed’s balance sheet.
    Now, in order to prevent a collapse of the dollar and a default by the
    US government, the American people are being told they must sacrifice to
    reduce the national debt and budget deficit.

    But as the vast sums make clear, the “sacrifice” being demanded of
    working people means their impoverishment―wage-cutting, mass
    unemployment, cuts in health care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
    etc.

    The very scale of the Fed bailout points to the scale of the
    financial crash and the criminality that fostered it…. The entire US
    capitalist economy rested on a huge Ponzi scheme that was bound to
    collapse…

    The banks were able to take the cheap cash from the Fed and lend it
    back to the government at double and quadruple the interest rates they
    were initially charged―pocketing many billions in the process….

    The ongoing saga of the looting of the economy by the financial elite
    puts the lie to the endless claims that “there is no money” for jobs,
    housing, education or health care. The ruling class is awash in money. [read more]

    Here’s an old Jim Rogers interview from two years ago when this whole thing was originally going down:

    Here are two videos that I made last year, with an assist from Alan Grayson and Dylan Ratigan:

    The Wall Street Economic Death Squad – Part I

    The Greatest Theft in History – Wall Street Economic Death Squad – Part II

    And on a final note, you may as well rock out to this new song while Rome burns…

    WORLD PREMIERE ~ Ben Bernanke: Public Enemy #1 – Mr. Big Shot (((Music Video)))

    Ben Shalom Bernanke is wanted for violating the
    United States Constitution, committing acts of financial terrorism and
    crimes against humanity. As a leading member of the Global Banking
    Cartel, he is considered a highly dangerous enemy combatant. Citizens of the United States hereby demand that he be properly detained under the laws and customs of war.




    After Cardinal Agré and Archbishop Concessao, a new Cardinal, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, says credit crisis has killed capitalism.

    After Cardinal
    Bernard Agré and Archbishop Concessao, a new Cardinal, Cormac Murphy
    O’Connor, says credit crisis has killed capitalism…

    The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has declared that capitalism is dead because of the credit crunch.


    http://www.michaeljournal.org/agree.htm
    http://www.michaeljournal.org/concessao.htm

    Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor stands inside Westminster Cathedral, London, after launching a £3 million appeal to fund major restoration work including urgent repairs to the cathedral domes, heating and electrical systems. January 17, 2008.

    The
    Cardinal has set up a £3 million appeal for Westminster Cathedral which
    he fears will be forced to close within a decade if cash is not found
    for urgent repairs

    Photo: HEATHCLIFF O’MALLEY


    Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, 76, made the astonishing claim at a
    lavish fund-raising dinner at Claridges which secured pledges of
    hundreds of thousands of pounds for the catholic church.


    The Cardinal, dressed in his full clerical regalia, said in a speech at
    the black tie dinner that he had worried whether the dinner should
    go ahead because of the troubled economic times.


    But he went on to say that in 1989, with the collapse of the Berlin
    wall, that “communism had died”. In 2008, he said, ” capitalism had
    died”.

    The remarks will cause dismay in
    Downing Street as the Cardinal’s remarks will be interpreted as a
    signal that the entire economic order has collapsed.


    The Government has clashed with the Cardinal before over homosexual
    adoption, abortion and the Embryology Bill. One Whitehall source
    said: “We would like the church to work with us, not against us.”


    The remark caused astonishment in the ballroom, where the dinner was
    held, to launch an £8 million Faith in the Future appeal for money
    for the work of the bishops in England and Wales.


    One guest who was present, who declined to be named, said: “I could
    hardly believe my ears. The Cardinal announced that, in his view, that
    Communism had died in 1989 and capitalism had died in 2008 because of
    the credit crisis.

    “His remarks were
    part of a carefully considered thesis that it was capitalism that had
    got us into this mess and had died because of it. It was not just
    remarkable that he thinks that but it was remarkable that he said it
    in a room packed with some of the richest and most influential catholics
    in the land. Those same capitalists pledged a six figure sum to the
    church appeal.”

    The four course
    dinner, with a champagne reception, had been provided free of charge
    by Derek Quinlan, the property developer, who owns Claridges who is
    worth an estimated £60 million.

    Sir
    Rocco Forte, the hotelier and prominent Roman Catholic, was in charge of
    the decoration. He decked out the ballroom in red flowers and red
    lights to match the Cardinal’s clerical outfit.


    The guest list included Baroness Williams, the Lib Dem peer and former
    Labour Cabinet minister, Lord Brennan, the Labour peer, Lord Guthrie,
    the former Chief of Defence staff, the Conservative MP Nicholas
    Soames, and a clutch of bishops from England and Wales.


    Nicola Benedetti, the violinist, serenaded the guests and Julie
    Etchingham, the presenter of the ITV News at 10, compèred the
    proceedings.

    Last month the Cardinal,
    76, issued a statement on the economic crisis which said: “Religious
    leaders are not normally economists, however, they cannot ignore the
    damaging human consequences of the rise and fall of economic
    indicators. Behind the gloomy headlines are cities, neighbourhoods,
    families, individuals deeply affected by the economic breakdown; and the
    hardest hit will be the poor: those already struggling to survive.
    Christians have a paramount concern for the poor. This “preferential
    option for the poor” is a constant theme in Catholic social teaching”.

    A sopokesman for the Cardinal said: “They were private remarks at a private dinner.”

    The Cardinal has also set up a £3 million appeal for Westminster
    Cathedral which he fears will be forced to close within a decade if
    cash is not found for urgent repairs.


    Parts of the building, which opened in 1903 but has never been
    completed, are in danger of structural collapse. The cathedral is
    recognised as one of the finest examples of Victorian architecture
    and Byzantine art.

    The remarks by the
    Cardinal come as leading bishops in the Church of England have
    launched a withering attack on the Government, questioning the morality
    of its policies.

    Five of the Church’s
    most senior figures said the Government now presided over a country
    suffering from family breakdown, an unhealthy reliance on debt and a
    growing divide between rich and poor.


    The Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester, accused Labour of
    being “beguiled by money” and “morally corrupt”. He said: “The
    Government believes that money can answer all of the problems and has
    encouraged greed and a love of money that the Bible says is the root
    of all evil. It is morally corrupt because it encourages people to
    get into a lifestyle of believing they can always get what they
    want.”

    The Rt Rev Tom Wright, the Bishop
    of Durham, said: “Labour made a lot of promises, but a lot of them
    have vanished into thin air,” he said. “We have not seen a raising
    of aspirations in the last 13 years, but instead there is a sense of
    hopelessness.

    “When a big bank or car
    company goes bankrupt, it gets bailed out, but no one seems to be
    bailing out the ordinary people who are losing their jobs and seeing
    their savings diminished.”

    The bishops of Hulme, Winchester and Carlisle joined in the attacks.

    Kucinich “…the manipulation of the Federal Reserve!”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsLiS8UlZyo&NR=1

    Kucinich: Federal Reserve No More “Federal” Than Federal Express!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR2EtMteHCg&feature=channel_page


    Kampf der kathol. Kirche in Oesterreich gegen den Liberalismus (=Kathol. Stimmen aus Oesterreich N. Ausz. (H. 1) ) 1873




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