It’s very common that most words that people use are tossed about casually; most people are not using “proper” Black’s Law Dictionary vocabulary on a regular basis. It’s not necessarily a problem if you and the people you're talking to know what you’re talking about, but it becomes a problem if you don’t know what you’re talking about or the people you are talking to don't know.
The words people use are a direct result of their awareness/comprehension. The difference is dramatically affecting life on a daily basis.
There's a huge difference between money and currency. If you’re not even aware of that difference, then that means you're misunderstanding one of the most important parts of life (99% of people in the US are using money--or what is considered money--to acquire almost all goods and services!).
Although many people use the terms loosely and interchangeably, they’re not the same thing. Most people think they're using money on a daily basis to pay for needs, and really they’re using currency, a FIAT currency at that!
Money and currency are both divisable, fungable, and standardized. This is really good for commerece as it is way easier to just trade the money/currency for whatever you want vs barter or trade where you have to have something that the other wants in order to get what they have.
The difference between the two is that currency has no intrinsic value, and money has intrinsic value. This difference has GREAT IMPLICATIONS.
For thousands of years, many civilizations have used objects as money--coffee & cacao beans, seashells, gold, silver, stones, etc. That is why items that have REAL value to the culture are used.
“Recent” civilizations began coining money. Back in the Egyptian days for example, they used gold for money--chunks of gold you had to weigh with a scale. They were figuring out a value based on weight and purity, which is potentially difficult to make a good trade unless you have confidence in these factors, plus it takes a lot of time.
Because of the bulkiness of these transactions, they invented standardized coins of a given value and began coining money. They would melt down silver or gold or other metals and put it in a coin press to make standardized coins--they were all the exact same size, weight, shape, and purity. Each one would have a value assigned to it and stamped on it. This is where an established reliable money can be so useful.
We used to have silver, gold, and copper coins in the US; every single one was the exact same as every other one. Gold, silver, and copper all have intrinsic value (the metal has inherent worth in that it can still be used for other purposes and is not in easily attainable and readily available supply). The value of the coin was based on the actual metallic value. It was a medium of exchange standardized throughout the country that people could depend upon and count on as being of set value; people felt confident in accepting it as trade for livestock, land, crops, or whatever they were selling.
Banking has been around for awhile; it is a key aspect of the money system and any major civilization, because for any civilization to expand they must do lots of commerce. Even in the Bible (which is one of the most, if not THE most, influential books on this Earth right now, especially here in the US), it actually says that Jesus chased the moneychangers (the old school bankers) out of the temples--
These moneychangers were taking people’s money and storing it in their vaults: the potential downside of having a lot of gold and silver is the need for protecting it and storing it...it’s really heavy, it takes up a lot of space, it’s also really valuable--someone could just come in and rob the place/steal it/take it, so banks came into existence so people could store their money there. Banks were just highly-secured vaults which protected the safety of money. You could hire people with guns to secure and protect your money and keep it safe. Banks offered insurance upon it; it was guaranteed.
Back in the day, all it was just a service--all the banks did was hold that money.
Every time you came in, you had a notebook that kept track of how many pieces of gold and silver you had. You’d fill out a piece of paper to request your gold or to make a deposit, and your balance would go down or it would go up. The balance was recorded in the little notebook called a “ledger”.
All the banks did was hold your money; they give it to you whenever you want it, and store it whenever you didn’t want it.
That’s how IOUs came about; they were the first paper currency. It was basically a receipt. It was the bank saying I owe you = I have 1 pound of gold or 3 pounds of silver--it’s yours! It’s not mine, it’s yours--I’m holding it for you, and this is your receipt, this is your claim check so you can come and get it whenever you want.
The banks realized, “Oh my god, we’ve got these vaults and vaults of gold and silver. And people come in and get a little bit here and a little bit there, every now and then people come in and get their whole store, but even then we’ve got pounds and pounds and pounds of excess gold and silver!”
And that’s when loaning first came into place. So they would give out loans--they were actually giving out their customer’s money.
They’d loan out however much they felt they could loan out, and then they’d charge interest on it--so they’re loaning out money that’s not even theirs AND getting paid interest on it PLUS they’re getting paid a service fee for anyone that holds their money at the bank. It’s really good business!
That’s the way banking used to be...
In 1913, here in the United States, the Federal Reserve came into action. The Federal Reserve is the central bank.
When the United States had its Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, a big purpose of those founding documents and the founding fathers was to protect our future from the reality of where we’re at right now.
The whole reason why the founders left Great Britain is because they didn’t like being slaves to the king. They didn’t like paying taxes on everything.
Only the royal family was a sovereign; everyone else was subject. They were subject to the rule of the king. At any point in time, the king could make new rules and taxes, and the people would be subject to that. They got “protection”, but it came at a cost and a level of inequality.
When everyone came to America, part of what was so amazing about it was that all of a sudden there’s no kings--we’re ALL kings! We’re all sovereign, we’re all free. We come upon a piece of land, and we build our homestead, our kingdom. We make all the rules on our land. If no one wants to be on our land because they don’t like our rules, then OK, go find your own piece of land--there’s plenty of land in the United States, because no one owns it!
Now as I side note of which I wont' get to much into. I do want to recognzie and acknowledge that there WERE people here, native people here of which lived on the land and in that way it WAS their land. But because of their way of life they had no “claim” and also no powerful army to really defend that land. So unfortunatly there were many natives killed and driven out of parts of the country that once were used by their people. This could easily be a multi article in and of it self. As I said I am not saying there was no one in the lands now known as America nor am I saying that everything was fair or honorable. What I am simply doing is telling a brief story about the progression of money in a more isolated topic.
That’s why it was so amazing to be here in the United States back in the day. All this land, all these resources, all this opportunity, all this freedom--all of these citzens coming over were now becoming kings of their own domain!
The Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, those were all founding documents created to protect and secure those rights. They didn’t GIVE us those rights; they were there to PROTECT & SECURE inherant rights. (There’s a lot of really important stuff in those documents, if you haven’t read those documents, you need to. You need to study them and compare interpretations, see what people say about them. They’re powerful.)
As far as the Truth about Money goes, these documents very clearly state that only Congress, which is elected officials--We the People elect the Congress--only Congress has the right to print and dictate the value of money.
The documents say that because we don’t want some foreign king, big corporation, or central bank coming in to our country, on our land and changing the money and taking the power.
They’d seen it happen, they’d seen it in big civilizations, they’d seen it in Rome, they’d seen it in Great Britain--these big central banks come in and they take over. The founding fathers were aware of all of this--they knew their history, they were smart/intelligent, they had researched. They were awakened and empowered individuals, so aspects like this were put into our founding documents to protect us from what has now happened.
Well, in 1913 the Federal Reserve finally came into play. This was after multiple times of the global elite attempting to set up a centralized bank in the United States, but the people at the time were empowered and conscious and intelligent enough to make sure it didn’t happen. They shut it down twice--the global elite tried very hard 2 times to establish a central bank before 1913 and failed.
In 1913, the Federal Reserve comes into play. They named it the “Federal Reserve” on purpose to trick people. It’s not Federal--it’s a private corporation. It’s a private corporation; there’s nothing federal about it. It’s a private corporation!
It’s a private corporation--just wrap your head around that one little thing!
The institution that is in charge of printing all of our currency is a private corporation.That means that it is going directly against our founding documents, which means it’s unconstitutional, which means that it’s treason. That’s just a fact.
...so, the Federal Reserve comes into play. If you look at the old school bills we had at that time, it said on there “exchangeable for gold”. It was still just an IOU for gold. All of the Federal Reserve notes were backed by gold. Even though it was treasonous, even though it was not regulated by Congress, it was still backed by gold, so it was real money that was backed by value. You could trade it--because it was just an IOU/receipt for gold. You could take it to the bank and give them the $20 bill, and they would give you $20 of gold in exchange for that.
In 1933, the President passed a bill that nullified the gold standard. It got rid of the gold standard. “Welp, there’s no more gold standard! We just have paper now.”
Of course, there’s a big depression at this point in our history. So they go off the gold standard, and not only that but they pass an executive order, THAT ACTUALLY CONFISCATES ALL THE AMERICANS’ GOLD. You’re not allowed to have gold! You have to bring it in to the banks! They exchanged federal reserve notes for it, but you have to bring it in because you’re not allowed to have any stores of gold. That’s hardcore.
It wouldn’t be so hardcore now, but back then it was really really hardcore! Up until that point we had a gold standard and a silver standard--our whole country had a gold and silver standard all this time! Our money was gold; it was real! It had real value.
All the sudden, just like that, the Federal Reserve came into play. They got rid of the gold standard, and then they confiscated all the gold from all the Americans. There’s nothing free about that; there’s nothing sovereign about that. To me, that’s just like being back under the rule as a subject in a kingdom. So as you can see, even by 1913 and 1933 the sovereign power of the citizens is disappearing. People had forgotten and become complacent. They wanted the benefits and the services of the government, blah blah blah, lots of manipulating, lots of politics, lots of lobbying. All sorts of stuff is happening over the course of a couple hundred years in the United States.
Ever since 1776 (and even before then really), every single day the kings and central banks were trying to get control over this nation. Every. Single. Day. In 1913 and 1933, on big days like that it was big blows, big wins, big checkmarks in the books of the outsiders taking control of this nation.
NOW, we’re in a place where we call “money” money--you pull out those green bills from your wallet or your purse and call it “money”, not only is this not money (rather, it’s a currency), but it’s actually a FIAT currency. It’s a fiat currency because it’s not federal. It’s not governed, it’s not regulated by We the People or the government! It’s regulated by a private corporation!!!
So what’s happening is the Federal Reserve is a private corporation, and they have all these printing presses in a big warehouse. And they’ve got some ink and some paper and some machines, and it costs them .1 cents or whatever to print the bills, and they can print as many as they want, and everyone in the United States is like, “Oh my god, look at this bill it’s worth $100!!!” and they printed it for .2 cents--that’s what’s happening here!!! But it gets even worse.
It’s even worse because the United States government has given away (which they’re not even allowed to do--they’re not constitutionally and lawfully allowed to give it away because it’s in our founding documents that only Congress has the right to print and dictate the value of money), but they gave away that power. Now they go to the Federal Reserve and they’re like “Oh, we’re broke! We have no money and the economy is down and we need to make more money (which is really a fiat currency)...”
And the Federal Reserve is like “No problem!” and they push the button on the printing press and a bunch of money comes out and they’re like “Ok, here’s $10 billion!”
Now while that may sound awesome it sucks because now the government is in debt….In debt to a private corporation of which it is paying interest.
So think about this….If all the currency in the country is printed by a private corporation on interest (which it IS) and say there is 10 billion in circulation. How do you pay the interest? Because now you have to pay back the 10 billion PLUS interest. Its actually IMPOSSIBLE to ever become debt free....
This is huge…..Ponder that….Let that sink in….The whole system is designed to PERPETUATE debt, ever increasing debt….I havaent even gotten into fractional reserve banking yet! I shall expound upon that in the next part.
I am going to finish this Part 1 of “The Truth About Money” so that this can sink in. I am sure there are MANY in this cutting edge community who are aware of aspects or all of this. That is one of the reasons I love this community because there are so many educated partipants. However this is an article of great implications and I feel is of great value to the portfollio of the community as a whole.
I have included a link to a video presentation I did on “The Truth About Money” for anyone who wants to watch that. Please Upvote if you feel this is valuable and also please comment if you have something of value to add. While we may not agree on every aspect of this article we can agree on the FACT that we have a fiat currency that perpatues debt of which is run by a private corportation owned by global elites. That in it self is a grave situation.
I am always learning and have already learned so much from this community.
I will follow up with part 2 in an upcoming post if the community likes this part one!