Tuesday

Economics - a religious saga?


Remember, an economist is someone who will promise to tell you tomorrow why what he predicted yesterday didn't happen today

The G20's Continuing Free Market Disease - a Religious Saga?
by Stephen Zarlenga AMI

What do you get when a religion masquerades as a science?

You get what's know today as "Economics!"


* Why do we identify it as a religion? Because it is a belief system based on faith,

* Where enshrinement of those beliefs is independent of evidence, pro or con;

* Where its bad effects are regularly dismissed as "anecdotal;"

* Where it's high priests, the economists, such as Ludwig Von Mises, assert that their theories (beliefs) cannot be dis proven by mere facts (!);

*And where they actually get away with those statements that are so destructive to sound thinking methodology.

A recent example is the official 18 point statement released by the G20 group of countries after their emergency meeting last Weekend (Nov. 15th and 16th). Lawmakers and citizens should regard it as an insult to the intelligence of all thinking and working Americans.

Most of its 16 points refer to actions that common sense and decency would have required them to have already been performing, especially over the past lawless decade. So it all reads much like closing the gates after the thundering herd has run off. The first reaction to it is therefore "yeah sure," followed by a big yawn. But its worse than that. Particularly points # 2 and # 12, quoted below from the official G-20 Statement on Financial Markets and the World Economy:

"2. Over the past months our countries have taken urgent and exceptional measures to support the global economy and stabilize financial markets. These efforts must continue. At the same time, we must lay the foundation for reform to help to ensure that a global crisis, such as this one, does not happen again. Our work will be guided by a shared belief that market principles, open trade and investment regimes, and effectively regulated financial markets foster the dynamism, innovation, and entrepreneurship that are essential for economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction."

This is horrible. They are saying that one of the main causes that facilitated the problem – the notion of so called free market ideology – must still reign unchallenged. This while the only reason anything is still standing in their ridiculous financial world is because of our government.

And they do it again in point # 12:

"12. We recognize that these reforms will only be successful if grounded in a commitment to free market principles, including the rule of law, respect for private property, open trade and investment, competitive markets, and efficient, effectively regulated financial systems. These principles are essential to economic growth and prosperity and have lifted millions out of poverty, and have significantly raised the global standard of living. Recognizing the necessity to improve financial sector regulation, we must avoid over-regulation that would hamper economic growth and exacerbate the contraction of capital flows, including to developing countries."

There's that old destroyer again – "Free market principles." Its their heavy artillery in the class warfare those who these people represent are committed to. You see how desperate they are to bolster this ideology. But Greenspan has effectively destroyed it (Thanks Alan!). See or request my recently sent essay on Greenspan's Admission of Methodological Error.

Well a week later the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation group meeting in Lima Peru, issued a two page statement, that continued to promote this failed market religion. It included these two pledges, which continue to ignore and evaluate the negative effects of the theory, in order to support the religious belief in the market as God:
"We reiterate our firm belief that free market principles, and open trade and investment
regimes, will continue to drive global growth, employment and poverty reduction."

and:

"We reaffirm our commitment to the Bogor Goals of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific as a key organizing principle and driving force for APEC."

But reading their statement, the only proposed actions that make sense are those promising greatly increased regulation, rules and governmental oversight. In other words, with curtailing the religious free market experiment. That is hopeful.

Friends, its interesting that many of the free market people, being libertarian oriented, would probably qualify as agnostics or atheists, when it comes to the mainline religions. Yet their great need to kneel and worship the market God, demonstrates a powerful, if misplaced psychological need for a religious experience. They even conjure up "holy ghosts," and call them invisible hands!

The first step in eradicating a sociopaths destructive behavior is to recognize the problem. Sad to say, the G20 and the APEC have not yet done that. Lets hope President Obama receives better advice and Counseling!

As Congressman Dennis Kucinich said in his election victory speech:
"We have to look at the role of the Federal Reserve...That isn't a Democratic or Republican issue.Its an issue that relates to whether were going to control our own government. The Banks took over the government with the bailout. We borrowed money from the banks to give to the banks so they could offload their toxic debt or hoard the money or use the money to buy other banks! Our country is in jeopardy because of this and the only way out is to take a new look at the way we create money in our society...we have to not only prime the pump of the economy the way Roosevelt did but we also have to look at the structures in our society that are causing this acceleration of wealth upwards."

See the inspiring 3 minute conclusion at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Xez11JfVM
Sincerely ... Stephen Zarlenga AMI.

Money Reform - Positive Examples

Germany Reconstructs

http://respublicauk.blogspot.com/2000/03/germany-reconstructs.html

Of course this helped pave the way to WW11. But Germany would not have succeeded if it had not been for the enormous support of American corporations, Wall Street, International Bankers & BIS.


Lincoln and the Greenback

http://respublicauk.blogspot.com/2000/03/lincoln-greenback.html


Slavery, Lincoln & Greenbacks

http://respublicauk.blogspot.com/2000/03/slavery-lincoln-greenbacks.html


Lincoln's drive for a national treasury

http://respublicauk.blogspot.com/2000/03/lincolns-drive-for-national-treasury.html

Long and interesting article about the Greenback and Lincoln's struggle against European bankers.



How can paper money increase the wealth of a nation?

http://respublicauk.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-can-paper-money-increase-wealth-of.html

N American colonial financial structures are reviewed, quotes from David Hume, Benjamin Franklin, & Adam Smith & more plus the 1815 Guernsey Experiment.


Lincoln & the Greenback

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Please find links at foot of page to articles about the Greenback.

Page is "in the making" - Brief intro to the Greenbacks success:

Abraham Lincoln succeeded in creating government money to spend debt and interest free. America, using the Greenbacks, enjoyed significant prosperity under a system where government money was not interest bearing enslavement by bankers. The history of the success of the Greenback is not well published, as with the continental before it. Unfortunately the stimulation for the Greenback was both the strangulation grip of private banking and war. A better world is possible though if enough citizens understand the constructive power of a sound, sane, accountably money system in the peoples hands.

What follows are some clips and links to stimulate further interest in the Greenback & UK money reform in particular.

According to a London Times editorial in 1865, alarmed at the success of Lincoln's greenbacks, "[America] will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world...That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."[1]

[1] This quote is attributed to Lord George J. Goschen, Director of the Bank of England and later, Chancellor of the Exchequer.



Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/economics-articles/this-monetary-reform-bill-will-surely-loosen-the-banksters-bowels-4244208.html#ixzz1JPXURQhF

Under Creative Commons License: Attribution


Some key US political figures that promoted money reform above their own self interest. Check out how many were subject of assassination or attempted murder.


Andrew Jackson
Abraham Lincoln
Ben Franklin
Barry Goldwater
Louis T, McFadden
Charles Lindbergh
James Garfield
John F Kennedy



Slavery, Lincoln & Greenbacks

Lincoln's drive for a national treasury

Long and interesting article about the Greenback and Lincoln's struggle against European bankers.

Lincoln's drive for a national treasury

This is presented as a view of history not absolute truth. The reader needs to do their own research to give authority to what they alone believe to be "most likely" accurate. Anorak Notes

Rochelle Ascher submitted the following speech to the annual conference of the International Caucus of Labor Committees and the Schiller Institute in Vienna, Virginia on Sept. 5. Her speech was delivered on her behalf by her husband John. Ascher, the first associate of Lyndon LaRouche to be convicted in the Virginia ``get LaRouche'' political trials, began serving her 10-year sentence on June 15. She is appealing her frameup to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Printed in the American Almanac, September, 1992

There has not been in American history, until Lyndon LaRouche, a man such as Abraham Lincoln. When we look at the situation in the world today, and that in the U.S., the situation Lincoln found himself in was equally, if not more, devastating. Surrounded by traitors on all sides, with a totally bankrupt economy, he acted as no one expected him to act. The economic mobilization carried out during those four years, under conditions of brutal war in which more Americans died than in World Wars I and II combined, is unparalleled in U.S. and, possibly, world history.

When Lincoln was elected, he received no electoral votes in 15 states and no popular votes in 10. While he received 1.8 million votes, his three opponents together received 2.8 million. In the four months before his inauguration, five states seceded from the Union--the rest of the Confederacy shortly thereafter. By the time he took office, civil war was only weeks away.

The U.S. was bankrupt. For 30 years it had been the victim of British economic measures. Jackson's dismantling of the Bank of the United States, followed by Polk's Independent Treasury Act of 1846, and the free trade treason of Presidents Van Buren, Tyler, Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan, had placed the U.S. totally under the control of the Baring and Rothschild-allied New York banks of Astor and Gallatin. In 1857, the U.S. went totally bust; the banks collapsed, factories closed, business came to a standstill. Hunger and unemployment were widespread. The Treasury was empty. Congress had not been paid.

The Buchanan administration, as Anton Chaitkin has amply documented, was indistinguishable from the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite. These freemasonic traitors had been working actively for months to disarm Northern federal arsenals while equipping the Southern rebel states. Citizens demonstrated throughout Northern cities, as tons of military hardware were stolen and shipped south for an attack on the U.S., with the connivance of the vice president and at least three cabinet members.


Lincoln's Gethsemane

The most telling description of the situation the country faced following Lincoln's election appears in an interchange between Lincoln himself, and one of his closest friends, Judge Gillespie, in the days before the inauguration:

"...Gillespie,'' said he, ``I would willingly take out of my life a period in years equal to the two months which intervene between now and my inauguration to take the oath of office now.'' ``Why?'' I asked. ``Because every hour adds to the difficulties I am called upon to meet, and the present administration does nothing to check the tendency toward dissolution. I, who have been called to meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here, doing nothing to avert it or lessen its force when it comes to me.''

I said that the condition of which he spoke was such as had never risen before, and that it might lead to the amendment of such an obvious defect in the federal Constitution.

``It is not of myself I complain,'' he said, with more bitterness than I have ever heard him speak, before, or after. ``But every day adds to the difficulty of the situation, and makes the outlook more gloomy. Secession is being fostered rather than repressed, and if the [secession] doctrine meets with a general acceptance in the border states, it will be a great blow to the government.''

Our talk then turned upon the possibility of avoiding a war. ``It is only possible,'' said Mr. Lincoln, ``upon the consent of this government to the erection of a foreign slave government out of the present slave states....

``I see the duty revolving upon me. I have read, upon my knees, the story of Gethsemane, where the Son of God prayed in vain that the cup of bitterness might pass from him. I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now, and my cup of bitterness is full and overflowing....''

I then told him that as Christ's prayer was not answered and His crucifixion had redeemed the great part of the world from paganism to Christianity, so the sacrifice demanded of him might be a great beneficence. Little did I then think how prophetic were my words to be, or what a great sacrifice he was called upon to make.

President Lincoln received news from Fort Sumter that it was threatened the very morning after his inauguration. For the next 1,503 days, he mobilized as if drinking from that cup of Gethsemane every single day.

With Lincoln invoking the full powers of the presidency, the Civil War created the emergency conditions for Lincoln and his Whig advisers to carry out the most sweeping reorganization of the economy along American System principles since the founding of this country three-quarters of a century earlier.

Today, as we look around the world, particularly at the situation in eastern Europe, Lincoln's lesson to us--the reinstitution of the American System under emergency conditions--must be understood.

The breathtaking economic development program which Lincoln designed not only saved the nation and won the war, but remained in effect long enough after his assassination for the U.S. to become the world's greatest industrial power and to remain so for years to come.

Lincoln's policies as President were a result of a 30-year fight by him for the reinstitution of the American System against British free trade. Without going through the history, suffice it here to say that he did not arrive at this out of the blue--as a young man he was a student and devout admirer of [Henry] Clay and Mathew Carey. In his first election day speech, at the age of 21, he announced his commitment to the American System: ``My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvements system and a high tariff.''

He led the fight for internal improvements for eight years in the Illinois state legislature and for a national bank and protective tariff as the national spokesman for the Whig Party during every presidential campaign and his own single term in Congress. But he was not in a position to implement these policies until under the emergency conditions of a wartime mobilization, when he was able to force them through.

Lincoln's history as an American System economist is virtually blacked out of the history books. The other problem is that no historians understand what Carey and Lincoln and we understand--that slavery and free trade belong to a single evil system--which had to be defeated.

Formed in response to Kansas-Nebraska, the Republican Party was anti-slavery, but many of its leaders were rabid free-traders. Carey and Lincoln knew that it was an absolute necessity to win the platform fight at the 1860 convention to not only attack slavery, but to include a total commitment to Hamiltonian American System economics. Carey and Lincoln spent four years organizing for such a policy. Much of this agitation was initiated by the Home Protective Union of Pennsylvania, of which Carey was president. The four years of organizing paid off: Of the 17 planks adopted, 8 dealt with slavery, the rest with the political economy of the American System, including reestablishing the Bank of the United States, railroads, internal improvements, and restoration of a protective tariff.


Fighting the British-backed New York banks

So, what was it that Lincoln did that forced the British to murder him?

When Lincoln took office, Congress was out of session. The only available means Lincoln had to finance the war effort was to go to the Associated Banks of New York, run by British agents Gallatin and Astor. The government depended upon these banks for specie, and the government budget was financed through the sale of bonds to these banks. America was then mortgaged to Britain, as the U.S. debt was sold overseas to the Rothschild and Baring banking houses.

But, Carey and his circles organized an alternative, whose spirit was set forth by Lincoln in his famous Dec. 3, 1861 ``Annual Address to Congress.'' The significance of this address cannot be overstated, as the British were well aware.

Lincoln's emergency economic measures included:

  1. a nationally regulated private banking system, which would issue cheap credit to build industry;

  2. the sale of long-term, low-interest bonds (5:20s) to the general public and to the nationally chartered banks;

  3. the increase of tariffs until industry was running at full tilt;

  4. government construction of railroads into the middle South, promoting industrialization over the Southern plantation system--what Carey called ``a peace-winning program'' to industrialize the South.

The national banks were intended to serve a useful purpose by being both investors in the future wealth of the U.S. through the purchase of 20-year bonds at 5% (the 5:20s) and through the issuance of long-term, low-interest loans to manufacturers, as well as by acting as a medium for the circulation of currency. Instead of selling the U.S. debt to the British, the citizens would buy the debt. The policy was identical to Hamilton's: The debt would be the basis for credit for industrial development.

James Gallatin, the New York Associated Banks, and their friends in the British government went nuts. On Dec. 28, 1861, they suspended specie payment to the government. They suspended payment of gold owed to their depositors, and stopped transferring to the government the gold which they had pledged for the purchase of government bonds. The banks of other cities immediately followed suit. They came to Washington to present their alternative to Lincoln: high-interest bonds to be sold to the European banking syndicates; deposit of U.S. government gold in private banks for the investment use of the bankers; and a tax on basic industry to finance the war.

Lincoln showed the bankers the door, something which could be usefully repeated all over the world today.

While Lincoln fought the Eastern bankers, the Treasury issued several hundreds of millions of new greenbacks. Jay Cooke was employed to become sole agent for the 5:20 bonds. Carey's associates Colwell and Elder prepared the propaganda to sell the bonds, and were appointed to posts in the Treasury Department. Cooke sold over $1.3 billion worth of bonds to the citizens of the U.S. between 1862 and 1865.

The original bill authorizing the sale of the 5:20 bonds contained no provision for paying the interest on the bonds in gold. If the bill as prepared by Thaddeus Stevens's House Ways and Means Committee had passed the Congress, it would have had the effect of severing the domestic economy of the U.S. from the British early in Lincoln's administration.

The British pound sterling at the time was the world reserve currency. But, before the bill was passed, August Belmont and James Gallatin worked out a compromise with Congress which allowed the bonds to be purchased with greenbacks, but the interest to be paid in specie.

This compromise was the first step in pegging the value of the U.S. national currency, the greenback, to gold, and allowed August Belmont and other New York merchants engaged in the export-import trade to speculate in gold through the Associated Banks and thus create fluctuations in the greenback as measured by the British gold standard.

Lincoln had to bring the national banks under his control, out of the condition of anarchy and treason. Lincoln succeeded, through the enactment of two bills, the National Currency Act of February 1863, and the National Banking Act of June 1864.

Since the time of Andrew Jackson's removal of government deposits from the Bank of the United States, there was no national bank and no national currency, which, in effect, meant no national sovereignty. Each bank issued its own notes. In January of 1862, there were 1,496 banks in the U.S., 7,000 legitimate notes and 5,500 counterfeit notes. The specie payment on these notes was now suspended.

Banks had no one in the federal government to answer to--only state banking inspectors, who were frequently bribed. The banks had little or no capitalization or reserves, and operated often solely on the connections of the bank's chairman. Banks promoting the most outrageous schemes and responsible to no one were the order of the day. The large private banking houses, like the House of Morgan, used large credit lines from Europe to add to the chaos.

Lincoln attacked the British dominated banks through the following steps:

  • First of all--strict federal supervision of bank chartering, eliminating chaotic state banking practices. State chartered banks fell from 1,466 to 297, while federal banks increased to over 1,600.

  • Secondly--regulations were imposed covering minimum capitalization, reserve requirements, the definition of bad debts, reports on financial condition and identity of ownership and other elements of safety to depositors. Every bank director had to be an American citizen, and three-quarters of a bank's directors had to be residents of the state in which the bank did business. Interest rates were limited by state usury laws, with the maximum allowable rate set at 7%.

  • The third step concerned the control of currency. There were to be two kinds of legal money: greenbacks and bank-issued notes. Government-authorized bank-issued notes were strictly regulated. Banks were required to deposit bonds with the Treasury to qualify as a circulator of notes, and strict specie and money reserves were also required.

During the war, $450 million in greenbacks were issued. It is doubtful the war could have been won without the issuance of the greenbacks. By creating $450 million worth of greenbacks, Lincoln increased, by increasing government credit, government spending by 300%! The revolutionary nature of the greenbacks, of putting a nation in charge of its own currency, cannot be overstated. The Venetian system of finance was based upon limiting payment to gold, and controlling the gold supply, as was the Venetian-inspired British system.


Revolutionary improvements

The other key elements of the American System, beyond the national banking system, which Lincoln implemented were the system of protective tariffs and internal improvements.

  • Protectionism: Congress passed the Morill Tariff in early 1861, the highest protective tariff to date, then through the middle of 1864, new tariff bills, pushing rates even higher, were introduced and passed. By the end of the war, the average rate on goods subject to duty stood at 47%, compared with 18.8% at the start of the war.

  • Infrastructure and internal improvements: In 1862, the U.S. Congress chartered and pledged grants of land and subsidies to finance the construction of the first transcontinental railroad.

After Lincoln's assassination, Congress continued to finance massive railroad construction. The effect of this on the nation's future was astounding. In the second half of the 19th century, the railroads, along with the steel industry, were the ``science drivers'' of the American economy. The technology of railroad production involved pneumatic brakes, blasting through and grading tracks on inclines through mountains, the making of durable bridges to ford rivers, and the abundant use of different grades of iron and steel. The connection of the country by rail increased traveling speed two to three times, allowing rapid development of the West. Railroad mileage went from 45,000 miles in 1865 to 167,000 in 1890. By 1900, the U.S. had over 193,000 miles, more than all of Europe combined. The number of patents issued rose from 883 in 1850 to over 14,000 in 1876.

Additionally, Lincoln proposed and saw implemented measures for a national and international network of telegraphic communications, the development of the Land Grant College system, establishing the state college system for instruction in agronomy and the mechanical arts, the creation of the National Academy of Sciences, ``to investigate, examine, experiment and to report upon any subject of science or art,'' and the U.S. Coast Survey, which quickly became the largest employer of physical scientists in the U.S., with the largest budget ever allowed a scientific bureau connected with the government.

Lincoln also organized a new Bureau of Navigation in 1862, which totally revolutionized the U.S. Navy. He also, saw to the creation of the Department of Agriculture, whose purpose, as Lincoln stated in his famous 1859, Wisconsin State Agricultural Society speech was, ``to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before.'' As a result, Lincoln revolutionized American agriculture. Through Lincoln's policies, wheat and corn production tripled in the three decades following the Civil War.

With such measures, and the passage of the Homestead Act opening up vast areas of the American West for settlement, and his Immigration Act, recruiting waves of new immigrants, Lincoln guaranteed development for decades to come.

Standardization and mass production were introduced for production of war matériel, starting with uniforms and coats. This was the first time clothing had ever been produced outside of cottage industries. Steel production, which essentially did not exist in the United States before Lincoln, grew by leaps and bounds. The Bureau of Labor reported in 1886 that in the previous 20 years, productivity had increased 40-80% in agricultural implements, footwear, in machines and machinery, and other areas.

The U.S. population almost tripled between 1860 and 1902: from 31 million to 92 million. Immigrants flocked to and were welcomed into the United States. Finally, the U.S. shifted from a rural to an urban society. Philadelphia became the leading industrial city in the U.S., and possibly in the world. Chicago was transformed from a small town into a major urban center in a few years.


Free trade traitors counterattack

But the British-allied Northern bankers and their congressional spokesmen forced several compromises, while the British government itself organized every possible opposition.

Frantic over the American System financial policy, the British began a massive organizing drive in the U.S. in support of free trade. John Stuart Mill and Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone controlled the Cobden Clubs--Britain's worldwide agitators for free trade. These were heavily deployed into the free trade wing of the Republican Party and abolitionist movement.

There was speculation on Wall Street to depreciate the greenbacks, by Belmont and other New York merchants engaged in export-import trade.

The second compromise forced on Lincoln was his appointment of British agent and rabid free-trader Hugh McCullough as first Comptroller of the Currency, which he had to do to get enough votes to pass the National Banking Act. Lincoln appointed McCullough in March of 1865, one month before the war's end.

Lincoln and Carey were quite aware of the problem created by such compromises. Several steps were taken. First, at Lincoln's request, Thaddeus Stevens authored a bill to outlaw all sale of gold in the New York Gold Room.

Just three days before Lincoln's death, McCullough initiated an attack on Lincoln with an open letter to Carey in the Chicago Tribune, in which he called for a reduction of the protective tariff, an immediate return to specie (elimination of the greenback), and contraction of the currency. The article was accompanied by the following excerpt from the London Times:

``He [McCullough] is what few Americans are; a sound political economist. He has studied the philosophy and theory as well as the practice. To read his letters and treatises anyone who did not know that he was American might imagine that he was an Englishman or a Scotsman, who had never embraced the delusion so prevalent on this side of the Atlantic, that as the resources of America are not half developed it is competent to American statesmen to run riot in world experiment and set as defiance the dearly bought experience of older communities. McCullough is, as far as his published opinions testify, a worthy successor of Adam Smith, Mill, Ricardo....''

Lincoln responded with a brutal attack on McCullough--and was killed three days later. In fact, just before his assassination, Lincoln and Carey were making major moves to wipe out some of the most pernicious British-controlled New York banks. They had already severely restricted their speculative real estate loans by law.

In fact, on the day he was assassinated, Lincoln was considering the problem of how to combat speculation by bringing the national currency (the greenbacks) up to par value without contracting the supply. He was planning to break with the British gold standard altogether. At Lincoln's request, Carey wrote a series of open letters to Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax that were titled, ``How to Defeat England without Fighting Her.'' Carey argued against the heteronomy with which U.S. economic policy was carried out. Carey said that Lincoln had been forced to put his signature to bills that he did not consider in the national interest.

Carey called for the creation of a national economic policy planning body under the control of the Executive branch, which Lincoln did set up shortly before his death, called the Commission on Revenue.


The corrupt Johnson administration

Lincoln's assassination constituted a virtual coup d'état. The British had succeeded in wiping out with a single bullet the hope of the world.

Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, in his inaugural address, signaled a total reversal of Lincoln's economic policy. He called Lincoln's tariff ``a clearly recognized outrage.'' He concluded his inaugural with the statement: ``Free trade with all the markets of the world is the true theory of government.''

Almost the entire Johnson cabinet were outright British agents or corrupted by British ideology. In late 1865, McCullough officially announced his intention of reversing the American System and all that Lincoln fought for. His policy was to rapidly contract the national currency (the greenback) and return the nation immediately to specie payments and direct taxation of productive wealth (looting) to pay off the national debt. Within the context of a policy which called for destroying the nation's industrial base to pay off foreign debts, any positive program for reconstruction of the South was impossible.

The congressmen and senators allied with Carey launched a counterattack in defense of Lincoln's program--that action, even if rear guard at times, was responsible for the continued growth of American industry and the scientific development of the last three decades of the 19th century, which turned this nation into the most technologically advanced nation in the world.


Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon LaRouche

In conclusion, Abraham Lincoln, like Lyndon LaRouche today, demanded that leadership required for taking responsibility directly upon our shoulders.

In his Second Annual Address to Congress in 1862, he said:

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress, and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we know how to save it. We even here--hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed--this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous and just--a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.

If we do this we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people the world over shall rise up and call us blessed, to the latest generations.

The fact that Lyndon LaRouche sits in a federal prison, while the fate of 6 billion souls depends on his freedom and the implementation of his economic policy, defines the task at hand.

Slavery, Lincoln & Greenbacks

Dr. R.E. Search in Lincoln: Money Martyred (Omni Publications, PO Box 900566, Palmdale, CA 93590)

An alternative view of the Civil War history.

Abraham Lincoln was "the man who first proved that government could issue its own paper money, legally, honorably, and rightfully, and make it full legal tender for all debts, both public and private..." The Greenback was successful in it's intended purpose but Lincoln failed to get approval to extend the system.

Was Lincoln "a dangerous man from the [bankers] point of view? Could they have continued their knavery, trickery, bribery, and destructive work... if Lincoln had lived?"

"The struggle that was to rid the country of human slavery of the black race, however, was also to fasten upon the whole nation an economic or money slavery, which has endured to the present time..."

Abraham Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase (Chase Bank later named after him) went to the New York bankers "and applied for loans to the Government to carry on the [Civil] war; the bankers replying, 'Well, war is a hazardous business, but we can let you have it [the loans] at from 24 percent to 36 percent.'" (Dr. R.E. Search)

Appleton Cyclopedia (1861), page 296, states: "The money kings wanted 24 percent to 36 percent interest for loans to our government to conduct the Civil War." (qtd. in Search's book)

President Lincoln and Secretary Chase were outraged at the usurious interest, and refused the offer.

Lincoln wrote to an old friend, Colonel Dick Taylor in Chicago, and asked for advice. His friend told him to "get Congress to pass a bill authorizing the printing of full legal tender treasury notes or greenbacks." (qtd. in Search's book)

60 million dollars of full legal tender greenbacks were issued. "All were taken at par and never appreciably fell below par at any time..." (Dr. R.E. Search)

Lincoln referred to these greenbacks as "the greatest blessing the people of this Republic [have] ever had." (qtd. in Search's book)

But as soon as Lincoln began issuing the greenbacks, "the bankers and money changers saw that unless they could stop that sort of thing they were 'sunk' as far as ever being able to issue money again themselves." (Dr. R.E. Search)

The banksters "had been able to fool and hoodwink England, and keep her in bondage for 168 years, and they wanted very much to continue, and to add the balance of the world to their conquest; making the people everywhere economic serfs, working for them." (ibid.)

From the London Times:

If this mischievous financial policy [greenbacks]... should become endurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without debts. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe. [qtd. in Search's book]

The Bank of England/Rothschilds (do not be deceived by name, "Bank of England"; Bank of England was/is a private bank) issued, and distributed to American banksters, the following document, quoted in part below:

The Hazard Circular

Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power, and chattel slavery abolished. This, I and my European friends are in favor of, for slavery is but the owning of labor, and carries with it the care of labor, while the European plan, led on by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages.

The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the [Civil] war must be used to control the value of money. To accomplish this, the Government bonds must be used as a banking basis.

We are now waiting for the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States to make this recommendation. It will not do to allow greenbacks, as they are called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that, but we can control the bonds and through them the bank issues. [qtd. in Dr. Search's book]

Slavery is but the owning of labor, and carries with it the care of labor.

A "new, improved system" of slavery was being born. Gustavus Myers (a "leftist") corroborates this in his book, History of the Great American Fortunes: "...chattel slavery could not compete in efficiency with white labor... more money could be made from the white laborer, for whom no responsibility of shelter, clothing, food and attendance had to be assumed than from the Negro slave, whose sickness, disability or death entailed direct financial loss."

"The perfect slave thinks he's free." That was the "new, improved system" for exploiting labor. (Currently, a further refinement is the use of temporary labor.)

James Robertson BOOK LIST

James Robertson established the New Economics Foundations to promote money reform - taking the creation of the nations money supply into the government's hands. This is a book list reproduced from his site [http://www.jamesrobertson.com/books.htm] as I fear it may become "unobtainable" as his main site has become in recent weeks. 01.01.2011

Books

Please click on the following links to go to the description of an individual book. Alternatively, please scroll down the page to see descriptions of all the books.

Hard copies of some of these books are still available. Click here for details.

The History of Money: From Its Origins to Our Time - the English text of "Une Histoire de l'Argent: des origines à nos jours", Paris 2007.

This 12,000 word "Junior Histoire" from Autrement is about how money began, how it has evolved to the present day, what it has enabled humans to achieve, why so many people in the world today suffer from the way it works, how it may develop further, and how young people today might want it to develop.

Click here to download a pdf version of the English text.

Monetary Reform - Making it Happen, 2004 (with John Bunzl). International Simultaneous Policy Organisation, paperback, 80 pp. ISPO "Making it Happen" Briefing Series No 1.

The text of this book can be downloaded free - click here.

"A brilliant treatment of a question which has never been so urgent" - George Monbiot.

More comments can be found here. For details about ordering printed copies, click here.

Creating New Money: A Monetary Reform for the Information Age, 2000 (with Joseph Huber). New Economics Foundation, paperback, 97 pages, £7.95.

"We look forward to monetary reform moving to the centre stage of public and policy debate" - Ed Mayo, then Director of NEF.

Click here to order a hard copy of the book. A pdf version of the book can downloaded free by clicking here.

The book was launched in the first Alternative Mansion House Speech - on Financial and Monetary Policies for an Enabling State - on 15th June 2000. For the text of the speech, click here.

The New Economics of Sustainable Development: A Briefing for Policy Makers, 1999, written for the European Commission's Cellule de Prospective (Forward Studies Unit), and published in paperback, by Kogan Page, London, Editions Apogée, Paris (asChanger d'Économie: ou la Nouvelle Économie du Developpement Durable), and The Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg.

For further background, click here.

To download the 2005 text, click here.

There are two omissions from the 1999 printed version of (1) information about relevant organisations which is now outdated, and (2) my biographical details available elsewhere on this website. In addition, the page numbering differs from the 1999 printed version.

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Transforming Economic Life: A Millennial Challenge, 1998, Schumacher Briefing No 1, 77pp.

Written for the Schumacher Society (UK) and published by Green Books, £5.

Copies are available from www.greenbooks.co.uk.

Beyond The Dependency Culture: People, Power and Responsibility, Adamantine Press, 234pp. Foreword by Ronald Higgins.

Sixteen papers and lectures dating from 1977 to 1996 on the need for a new path of progress based on co-operative self-reliance and not on the further growth of dependency. Topics include; a conserving society, work, health, welfare, money, politics, energy (including nuclear power), a post-modern worldview, and a post-marxist strategy for change.

Out of print. No hardcopies available. The Contents can be found here. The book can be downloaded for free in three sections.

Section 1 - Foreword, Acknowledgments, Introduction and Chapters 1-4

Section 2 - Chapters 5-10

Section 3 - Chapters 11-16 and the Epilogue

Sharing Our Common Heritage: Resource Taxes and Green Dividends, 1998. Proceedings of an International Conference, held on 14th May 1998 by the Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics and Society, 74pp.

Contributions by Prof. David Marquand, Prof. Philippe van Parijs, Fred Harrison, Prof. Mason Gaffney, Alanna Hartzok, Dr.Tatiana Roskoshnaya, and James Robertson, who organised the conference and edited the proceedings. For further background, click here.

To download the text, click here.

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Future Wealth: A New Economics for the 21st Century, 1990, Cassell, London, 179 pages.

This is one of my more important books. It provides a framework of understanding for the new economic order which the world clearly needs. An agenda for transition on the lines it put forward for the 1990s is now (December 2005) more obviously relevant than it was fifteen years ago.

Review comments at the time included the following.

"'A New Economics for the 21st Century' is an exact description of this very remarkable book" - The Good Book Guide, 1990.

"It could well be that Future Wealth will ultimately be required reading for economics students, alongside The Wealth of Nations and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" - Francis Kinsman,Management Today, May 1990.

"With Future Wealth as our guide, we can describe the framework of the living economy... We can show how current initiatives can be enabled and encouraged, and we can show how that framework can be created out of our present, rather warped version." Perry Walker, New Economics, Summer 1990.

No hard copies are available. The list of Contents can be found here. The book can be downloaded for free in three sections (pdf format).

Section 1 - Contents, Introduction and Chapters 1-5

Section 2 - Chapters 6-10

Section 3 - Chapters 11-14, Appendix and Index

Future Work: Jobs, self-employment and leisure after the industrial age, 1985, Temple Smith/Gower, 220pp, paperback.

"The best book of its kind so far, packed with ideas and one cannot but be affected by its enthusiasm and verve" - Prof. Ray Pahl in the Times Literary Supplement, 14th March 1986.

This was one of the books I most enjoyed researching and writing. I tried, but failed, to persuade the publisher we should call it 'The Ownwork Revolution'. He thought that title would be too far out to appeal to a mainstream readership. However, if and when the book is republished, I shall insist on it!

Its theme is that a possible future for work, and the one we should seek to create, is its liberation. In the age of slavery and the age of employment, most people have had to work for people and organisations richer and more powerful than themselves. But in the age of ownwork it will be accepted as normal that most people will work independently for themselves and one another, and the institutions of society will enable them to do so instead of depending on employers for jobs.

The book is in four parts:
1. What Comes After the Employment Age?
2. Changing Perceptions of Work
3. The End of the Employment Empire
4. The Practicalities of the Transition

This book is out of print. A few copies are available from us - click herefor ordering details.

The list of Contents can be found here. The book can be downloaded for free in three sections (pdf format).

Section 1 - 2006 Preface, Contents page, Introduction and Part 1, including Chapters 1 to 4

Section 2 - Parts 2 and 3, including Chapters 5 to 10

Section 3 - Part 4, including Chapters 11 & 12, Conclusion, Appendices, Notes and References, and Indexes

The Sane Alternative, 1983, James Robertson, 156pp, paperback.

The text can now (February 2008) be downloaded for free, together with a new 2008 Preface - click here.Hard copies are also available - click here for ordering details.

This is the revised and expanded version of the original 1978 edition - probably my best known book. The gold medal awarded in 2003 by the Pio Manzu Research Centre is inscribed to "Creator of a Sane Alternative".

"The best and most persuasive handbook I know to the 'alternative society'" - Michael Shanks in The Director.

"An essential book.... compelling reading" - Tom Hancock in Town and Country Planning.

"The best futures books I've ever read.....People will read it, keep it and thank you for introducing them to it" - Prof. James E. Moore, University of Texas.

"This book is important. It seeks to get new ideas on the move" - Harford Thomas in The Guardian.

"The most practical book on futures that I know" - Prof. John Morris, Manchester Business School.

"Comprehensively considerate..... a very realistic future" - R. Buckminster Fuller.

"Indispensable. A rare combination of important new theory with practical guidance. An important map for the future of all industrial countries" - Hazel Henderson, author of Beyond Globalization and other books, from the Foreword to the US edition.

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Power, Money and Sex: Towards a New Social Balance, 1976, Marion Boyars Publishers, 149pp, paperback.

"A most searching, radical, even revolutionary book" - Harford Thomas in the Guardian, 12th August 1976.

A few copies are still available at £5.95 from Central Books. To order a copy, click here, write James Robertson in the 'Quick Search' box on the webpage that comes up and then click on 'Go!'.

Profit or People? The New Social Role of Money, 1974, Marion Boyars Publishers, 95pp, paperback.

"A powerful cocktail of novel ideas which will leave the reader either exhilarated or queasy" - Christopher Johnson in the Financial Times, 20th February 1975.

This short book, in Marion Boyars' Ideas in Progress series, arose from my reflections after my few years working for the banks.

It has six Chapters as follows: Breakdown or Breakthrough; Socially Responsible Enterprise; Financially Responsible Government; Honest Money; Money Science and Money Metaphysics; and Whose Move?.

Its final paragraph begins as follows: "To transform the money system into a fair and efficient mechanism of collective choice, a value system of society... must be pioneered by those of us who can imagine what the new social role of money could be and how it may be achieved."

This book is out of print. A few copies are available - click here for ordering details.

Reform of British Central Government, 1971 (by J.H. Robertson), Chatto & Windus/Charles Knight, 226pp, hardback.

"His book is of first-rate importance" - Prof. Max Beloff in the Daily Telegraph, 22nd July 1972.

This, my first book, was the outcome of my experiences in Whitehall. It suggested that, in the words of Sir Robert Morant, one of the great administrative reformers of the early 20th century, the efforts of those attempting to modernise our system of government in the late 1960s and early 1970s were:

"as though a man had been seeking to build a substantial house by working spasmodically on odd portions of the structure on quite isolated plans, fashioning minute details of some upper parts, when he has not set up, nor indeed even planned out, the substructure which is their sole possible foundation and stay."

In this book I was trying to set out, systematically and holistically - to use words unfamiliar to me then - how I thought the functions of government might be better organised as an intelligent whole.

I had learned that our institutionalised society, fragmented and dominated by specialist professions and interest groups each with its own separate 'territory', finds it almost impossible to deal sensibly with any situation as a whole. To this day, 'joined-up government' remains an elusive goal.

This book is out of print. A few copies are available - ordering details can be found below.



Ordering Details

Future Work, The Sane Alternative, Profit or People? and Reform of British Central Government can only be ordered via me as they are no longer available through bookshops. All four can be ordered together at a reduced price or individually.

Book
Cost (incl. postage)
UK
Europe & Outside
Europe
(Surface Mail)
Outside Europe
(Airmail)
Future Work
£10.00
£11.00
£15.00
The Sane Alternative
£6.50
£7.00
£11.00
Profit or People?
£5.00
£5.50
£8.00
Reform of British Central Government
£7.00
£7.50
£12.00
Bundle of all four books
£25.00
£28.00
£40.00

Please email me for prices if you wish to purchase multiple copies.

To order, please send details of the book(s) you require together with a cheque (in pounds sterling only) made payable to James Robertson to:

James Robertson
The Old Bakehouse
Cholsey
Oxfordshire
OX10 9NU
United Kingdom

Please indicate if you would like a signed copy on your order letter.

Note: The rights to republish most of the out-of-print books listed above have reverted to me. At some future date they may be republished or further texts may be put on this website.