MAY 26
1976 – DEATH OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER, GERMAN PHILOSOPHER
“The things that are the most difficult to think about are the things that are most familiar to us.”
[NOTE: That is certainly the case with the things we call “money
2007 – PUBLICATION OF ARTICLE “CREDIT AS A PUBLIC UTILITY: THE KEY TO MONETARY REFORM” BY RICHARD COOK
“We now need to return to the recognition that money and credit truly are public utilities as recognized during colonial days and at the times of great crises such as the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the New Deal.
“Today we are in a similar crisis, when the solution is the same as it has been in the past. It is for the commonwealth of Americans, acting through their elected representatives, to exert their constitutional prerogatives in controlling the nation’s supply of money and credit.”
2019 – POSTED ARTICLE, “THE NECESSITY FOR MONETARY REFORM AND A JUST SYSTEM OF MONEY” BY NICK EGNATZ
“Transitioning to clean sustainable energy, a real national healthcare plan such as Expanded Medicare for All, sustainably rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, forgiveness of student debt and free public university education are all possible if we reform our present debt-based money system into the just money system of the NEED Act. The present debt-money system says that to achieve any of the above needed programs we must indebt ourselves to private banks. The Sovereign Money Creation power in the NEED Act allows our government to create the money for these programs and spend it into existence, debt-free, putting millions of us to work at good-paying jobs to do so.”
2023 – THE DEBT CEILING: THERE IS A BETTER WAY” POSTED ARTICLE BY HOWARD SWITZER
“On December 16, 2021, lawmakers raised the debt limit by $2.5 trillion to a total of $31.4 trillion. Historically the debt has been doubling approximately every 8 years so the winner of the 2024 election will likely see the national debt soar to $40 trillion in their first term…
“In 2022, [the Alliance for Just Money] updated the NEED Act to the American Monetary Reform Act which retained the above reforms. Such a system would remove the parasite of debt on the economy and empower politicians to address the problems plaguing society. It would allow the funding of a public healthcare system and a 21st-century energy, transportation, education, and food production system. Our money would circulate in perpetuity, ending the scarcity most people experience and empowering a new prosperity. The terrible costs of crime, sickness, war, poverty, and ecological collapse forced upon us by the current system would come to an end. The powers behind our money system have kept this from happening.”
MAY 27
1923 – BIRTH OF HENRY KISSINGER, 56TH US SECRETARY OF STATE
“If you control the oil, you control entire nations; if you control the food, you control the people; if you control the money, you control the entire world.”
MAY 28
1816 – THOMAS JEFFERSON LETTER ON DEBT
Thomas Jefferson commented on Hamilton’s plan to use debt as the engine for progress in building his desired empire in a letter to John Taylor, U.S. Senator from Virginia, saying, “And I sincerely believe. . . that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” Jefferson letter to John Taylor, Monticello, May 28, 1816
1836 – STATEMENT BY JOHN C. CALHOUN, FORMER US VICE-PRESIDENT
“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.”
2014 – STANLEY FISCHER BEGINS TERM AS A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM. A MONTH LATER, HE BECAME VICE CHAIR
“I thought that when Dodd-Frank [proposed bank reform legislation] started, that the banks would not succeed in influencing it, having lost all the prestige they lost…Boy, was I wrong.”
2021 – “PROFESSOR HUDSON: FINANCIALIZATION IS SUFFOCATING THE ECONOMY” posted video
“More and more economists state that we have created a “financialised” economy where it pays more to passively own than to work, to run companies or in general to do things that benefits society. The financiers are becoming increasingly powerful and richer, while households, business owners and society must tighten their belts. Why do we accept this?
“Professor Hudson tells us how economic and historical myths about money, debt and value have been used to justify an economic system that benefits financiers at the expense of everyone else.”
MAY 29
2015 – “BANKS ARE NOT INTERMEDIARIES OF LOANABLE FUNDS — AND WHY THIS MATTERS” PUBLISHED BY ZOLTAN JAKAB AND MICHAEL KUMHOF, BANK OF ENGLAND WORKING PAPER #529
“The quantity of [bank] reserves is a consequence, not a cause, of lending and money creation…in the real world, there are no pre-existing loanable funds…Instead, banks create new funds in the act of lending…there is no deposit multiplier mechanism that imposes quantitative constrains on banks’ ability to create money in this fashion. The main constraint is banks’ expectations concerning their profitability and solvency.”
2019 – POSTED ARTICLE, “BATTLE WITH THE BBC: HOW ONE POSITIVE MONEY SUPPORTER CHALLENGED THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND WON”
“But still there was no recognition of the fundamental point Dr. Laws had raised – that commercial banks do not lend out savers’ deposits!
“So this time, he wrote to the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit, requesting that they not only acknowledge commercial banks as being credit creators, but offer reassurance that future BBC output would no longer inaccurately describe banks as financial intermediaries.
“Months went by, until finally Dr. Laws received a response from the Head of the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit, Fraser Steel, who admitted that there had been “a serious breach” of BBC editorial standards:
‘…we agree the original version of the article misrepresented the way modern banking works. As you have pointed out, it is not correct to imply banks act as financial intermediaries by simply lending out the deposits which savers place with them.’
“Victory!”
2020 – “ENDING THE MONETARY PANDEMIC” BY GREG COLERIDGE posted article
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and worsened the inherent crises in our medical and economic system. The same is true of our monetary system, which in its own right is as invisible, harmful and widespread as the virus, but was unjust, unsustainable and undemocratic long before the first cough, sneeze, or breath from a coronavirus-infected person occurred on US shores…
“Let this sink in. Congress can only literally nickel and dime the issue of money creation. Our government currently cannot create money as an asset – unable to use one of its three constitutional financial tools to respond to our unprecedented economic crisis that is decimating individuals, small business, local and state governments, and the larger economy. The creation and distribution of money by banks is the most economic and democratically damaging form of privatization/corporatization in our society.”
MAY 30
1896 – DEATH OF MARK “BRICK” POMEROY, NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER, CURRENCY REFORMER AND ORGANIZER OF “GREENBACK CLUBS”
At the national Greenback Party convention in 1876, Pomeroy was named chairman of a committee to coordinate the activities of local Greenback clubs across the country. The clubs served as forums for monetary education and mobilization on behalf of the Greenback Party. During his leadership, Pomeroy claimed almost 6000 clubs had been chartered: the most in Missouri, followed by Illinois. Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Texas and New York followed in number of clubs.
1908 – ALDRICH-VREELAND ACT SIGNED BY PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The Act established the National Monetary Commission recommending the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, creating the Federal Reserve System, the current private central bank (actually 12 banks to give the appearance of decentralization of economic power and control) of the US. The Aldrich-Vreeland Act was passed in response to the economic Panic of 1907 of bank failures. JP Morgan and other bankers who had been the target of Roosevelt’s trust busting efforts through more aggressive enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act manufactured the Panic. Through manipulating the stock market, calling in loans and not granting new ones, Morgan severely contracted the nation’s money supply. Thousands of banks were overextended. An economic crash followed. The Panic of ’07 was the pretext used to end the nation’s system of decentralized private banking by creating a system of centralized private banking – the Federal Reserve System.
MAY 31
1857 – BIRTH OF POPE PIUS XI
“For what will it profit men that a more prudent distribution and use of riches make it possible for them to gain even the whole world, if thereby they suffer the loss of their own souls? What will it profit to teach them sound principles in economics, if they permit themselves to be so swept away by selfishness, by unbridled and sordid greed, that, ‘hearing the Commandments of the Lord, they do all things contrary.”
2023 – VIDEO “STATE ISSUED DIGITAL CURRENCIES: A RISKY SOCIAL EXPERIEMENT OR A PATH TO A THRIVING ECONOMY?”
“Should the state issue its own money in competition with private banks? Some big banks, state inquiries and orthodox economists have argued that a Central Bank issued Currency (a CBDC) would be a ‘risky social experiment’ that causes disintermediation of the banks, leading to economic stagnation. But is this really true?
“Kumhof et. al (2023) argue that these worries stem from the false belief that banks are intermediaries, which ‘will bias the results towards finding that CBDC leads to bank disintermediation’. Kumhof et. al (2023) show that if you instead start from the correct assumption that banks create money ex-nihilo (out of nothing creation), you get the result that introducing a CBDC would be highly beneficial, increasing financial stability and prosperity for all.”
JUNE 1
1938 – BIRTH OF HERMAN DALY, ECONOMIST, AUTHOR OF “STEADY STATE ECONOMICS”
“If our present banking system, in addition to fraudulent and corrupt, also seems “screwy” to you, it should. Why should money, a public utility (serving the public as medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account), be largely the by-product of private lending and borrowing?…Why should the public pay interest to the private banking sector to provide a medium of exchange that the government can provide at little or no cost? Why should seigniorage (profit to the issuer of fiat money) go largely to the private sector rather than entirely to the government (the commonwealth)?
“Is there not a better away? Yes, there is. We need not go back to the gold standard. Keep fiat money, but move from fractional reserve banking to a system of 100% reserve requirement…Banks would no longer be able to live the alchemist’s dream by creating money out of nothing and lending it at interest.”
From “Nationalize Money, Not Banks”
Monetary History Calendar 