MAY 19
1977 – QUOTE BY BIRTH OF EARL OF CAITHNESS (MALCOLM IAN SINCLAIR), MEMBER OF THE UK HOUSE OF LORDS
“The next government must grasp the nettle, accept their responsibility for controlling the money supply and change from our debt-based monetary system. My Lords, will they? If they do not, our monetary system will break us and the sorry legacy we are already leaving our children will be a disaster.”
2019 – ONLINE POSTING OF “RICHARD WOLFF’S TRAJECTORY BEYOND MMT INTO SMR” ARTICLE BY GOVERT SCHULLER
“Recently I watched two episodes of the progressive Thom Hartmann Program in which the host discussed banking and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) with the Marxist economist Richard Wolff [1, 2]. Following are the pertinent points I came away with, which developed into a little article, in which I will try to make the case that, when Wolff found in MMT the correct theory of banking and money, he actually went beyond MMT. He did so by discerning some of the theory’s obvious policy implications, which people promoting Sovereign Monetary Reform (SMR)–which is a competing monetary theory focused on a radical reform of the monetary system–would heartily agree with.”
MAY 20
1851- BIRTH OF CHARLES MACUNE, HEAD OF SOUTHERN FARMERS’ ALLIANCE AND ORIGINATOR OF THE POPULIST “SUB-TREASURY PLAN”
The “Sub-Treasury Plan,” developed by the southern Populist Macune, was an ingenious proposal to circumvent banking corporations, merchants and landlords by farmers to avoid debt at high interest, which often resulted in the loss of their farms. The proposal called for farmers to store their harvest in federal warehouses when prices for their commodities were low. Farmers would leverage those commodities for loans (up to 80% of the market value in federal notes) to support themselves until prices rose. The proposal was especially useful to southern farmers with non-perishable crops (i.e. cotton). The farmer had one year to sell the crop and then pay back the note and 1% interest.
1891 — FOUNDING OF THE PEOPLE’S PARTY IN CINCINNATI, OHIO
From their platform: “The right to make and issue money is a sovereign power to be maintained by the people for the common benefit, hence we demand the abolition of National banks as banks of issue, and, as a substitute for National bank notes, we demand that legal tender treasury notes be issued in sufficient volume to transact the business of the country on a cash basis, without damage or especial advantage of any class or calling, such notes to be legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private, and such notes when demanded by the people shall be loaned to them at not more than two per cent per annum upon nonperishable products as indicated in the subtreasury plan, and also upon real estate, with proper limitation upon the quantity of land and amount of money.”
MAY 21
1912 – SPEECH BY J. LAWRENCE LAUGHLIN, CHAIR OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL CITIZENS’ LEAGUE, ON MONETARY REFORM
Born in Deerfield, Ohio, Laughlin was the first chair of the economics department at the University of Chicago and chair of the Executive Committee of the National Citizens League for the Promotion of a Sound Banking System from 1911-13. The League was established and funded with $5 million in contributions from the big New York banks (including those owned by John D. Rockefeller and J.P Morgan) to establish an “educational fund.” The fund financed respected university professors, such as Laughlin, to endorse the concept of creating a private central bank, what became the Federal Reserve Bank, created by the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. The “Citizens'” League provided a terrific cover in providing the appearance that privatizing/corporatizing money creation by a private national central bank was sound and reasonable since “objective” intelligent university professors promoted it.
2018 – “THE ‘ACCOUNTING VIEW’ OF MONEY: MONEY AS EQUITY” ENTRY ON WORLD BANK BLOG
“After long being a tenet of post-Keynesian theories of money, even mainstream economics has finally recognized that commercial banks are not simple intermediaries of already existing money; they create their own money by issuing liabilities in the form of sight deposits (McLeay, Radia, and Thomas 2014).”
https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/allaboutfinance/accounting-view-money-money-equity-part-ii
MAY 22
1912 – SPEECH BY ROBERT MCCABE, VICE CHAIR OF THE OHIO CHAPTER OF THE NATIONAL CITIZENS’ LEAGUE, ON MONETARY REFORM
McCabe, an Ohio attorney, was recruited to speak on behalf of the plan supported by the nation’s biggest banks to create a private national central bank. He spoke throughout Ohio and the Midwest. He spoke on his date in Illinois. Among the points in his remarks was that the creation of what would become the Federal Reserve System would “avoid the tendency to take the money power of the nation out of the hands of the many and put it in the hands of the few.” The reality was and remains just the opposite.
The New York Times on the National Citizens’ League: ““A million dollars doesn’t go very far in a campaign of education such as is being carried on by the National Citizens League for the promotion of a sound banking system, yet the contribution of $1,000,000 for that purpose by individual Directors of the National banks of the country a short time ago provoked much comment and a suggestion that the electorate was the be corrupted by the use of these funds.”
MAY 23
1933 – ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT PRESENTED IN THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AGAINST THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD OF GOVERNORS, THE OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANKS, THE US SECRETARY OF TREASURY AND OTHERS FOR THEIR COLLUSION IN CAUSING THE GREAT DEPRESSION.
US Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, introduced the Articles of Impeachment. McFadden stated,
“The Great Depression was not accidental; it was a carefully contrived occurrence… bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here, so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.”
“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders, which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers…The truth is, the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly, which operates the Federal Reserve Board.”
1937 – DEATH OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, OIL AND FINANCIAL CAPITALIST
“God gave me my money!”
2017 – “THE DOLLAR AS A DEMOCRATIC MEDIUM: MAKING MONEY A CURRENCY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE” VIDEO PRESENTATION BY CHRISTINE DESAN, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
Desan asks whether we can re-design money to deliver more fairness in a world where inequality is escalating.
MAY 24
1604 – ENGLISH COURT DECISION ON “MIXED MONEY” CASE
English court rules that sovereign governments possess the power to create, regulate, limit and define money.
“The Mixt Moneys case decided that Money was a Public Measure, a measure of value, and that, like other measures, it was necessary in the public welfare that its dimension of volume should be limited, defined and regulated by the State. The whole body of learning left us by the ancient and renascent world was invoked in this celebrated dictum: Aristotle, Paulus, Godin and Budelius were summoned to its support; the Roman law, the common law and the statutes all upheld it; ‘the State alone had the right to issue money and to decide of what substances its symbols should be made, whether of gold, silver, brass or paper. Whatever the State declared to be money, was money.’”
– From The History of Money in America by Alexander Del Mar
2016 — “WHERE DOES MONEY COME FROM?” BY OLE BIERG, TEDx VIDEO PRESENTATION
“Where does money come from? How is money created? Can commercial banks create money by issuing new loans? Knowing that electronic money represents 95% of the total money supply, have we privatized the creation of money in our societies?
“Ole Bjerg believes that we have handed a vital societal power — money creation — to the financial sectors, and that this leads to instability, inequalities and a concentration of power outside democratic institutions. Facing this gloomy situation, he highlights the solution: a sovereign money system.”
[NOTE: Ole Bjerg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, and co-founder of Gode Penge, an initiative for the democratization of the monetary system.
MAY 25
1787 – US CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION BEGINS
The Congress shall have power to…coin money [and] regulate the value thereof” Article 1, Section 8, US Constitution.