http://www.positivemoney.org.uk
George Osborne says that we all must pay more taxes and receive fewer public services. According to the chancellor there is no Plan B for the UK economy - but he's utterly wrong.
We could make one simple spending cut that could make all others unnecessary.
Here's Plan B: cut the benefits to bankers!
Banks are the most heavily subsidised businesses in the world, specially protected by governments. While the money runs out for the rest of us, the largest private banks still thrive. This is because they get the biggest subsidy of them all - the licence to print money.
Hard to believe? Martin Wolf, the Chief Economics Editor at the Financial Times, said it recently: "The essence of the contemporary monetary system is the creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks' often foolish lending..."
You heard that right. Private banks create money out of nothing! Then they loan it to us and ask for interest on top!
If you've ever wondered why the bank buildings around the world soar higher than any palace or spire ever did, you now have the answer.
But the banks don't simply print money using secret printing presses in their basements. They don't have to. Like so many other things these days, printing money has now gone digital. With the popular use of debit cards, electronic fund transfers, and internet banking, only 3% of the money in the UK is now made of paper and metal coins. The other 97% is entirely in computers. Electronic money is convenient for everyone, but it's especially convenient for the private banks, since they own, run, and control the entire digital money system.
And what do they do with this special privilege? Do they channel new money, the blood supply of the nation, towards the things we need like hospitals, schools, universities and public transport?
Not if it doesn't make a profit for them. Instead they use their licence to print money to gamble on the financial markets and pushing house prices out of reach of ordinary people by pumping hundreds of billions of pounds into risky mortgages. This is exactly how the banks caused the financial crisis, and now the rest of us are being asked to pay for it.
George Osborne is essentially asking us to protect the gambling habits of a gang of overpaid paper pushers by raising taxes and slashing public services, both of which hurt the poor more than the rich. If we can't afford to run hospitals and build schools, can we really afford to subsidise the financial industry? Should we have to live with less so the bankers can have more?
This is ludicrous, and it's time to put a stop to it. The private banks can't be trusted to hold the reins to our entire economy.
Instead of cutting vital public services so that bankers can continue to enjoy the high life, we need to take away the bank's power to create money out of nothing. This will stop them from causing yet another financial meltdown and allow us to afford the crucial services that we as a society need.
So join us in sending this message straight to Mr. Osborne: there is a Plan B for the UK economy. Cut the benefits to bankers out, not the things we care about!
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