Regular changes to bank notes counterfeit protection?

Now don't be daft!

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The reason is to make keeping cash at home (or in some deposit box) futile as notes will, suddenly, no longer be legal tender and thus worthless.

There was a time when this was not done and neither did the design of banknotes change nor did they suddenly cease to be legal tender but now this is being done on a rather more or less regular basis, happening every couple of years, almost; at least in Britain.

The aim is for people to keep their money in the bank, either in a current account or savings account and thus for the banks (and the government) to have control over your money.

In fact, it has come so far by now that banks and government consider the money that you have in your bank accounts not to be yours but theirs, to do with as they please should they so decide. In the UK you now have to prove good reason for you to withdraw more than about a thousand Pounds Sterling in cash from your account and if the bank does not like the reason (and you need to have written proof that you need the money) they will refuse to give you your money.

Many people really do buy the story the government – and banks – tell abut the need for changing the design of the notes all the time in order to prevent currency counterfeiting. However, there are countries who do not do that at all, such as the USA where there never seems to be a change in design and definitely, as far as I have seen, no removal of certain designs and then declaring them to be no longer legal tender. Then again in the US it is not all that easy, especially for people in rural areas, to have a bank account as access to banks (and electronic payments) is not as widespread as is the case in the European Union, for instance.

Several EU member states, Germany among them, have already basically declared that they consider all savings that people have in their accounts fair game should they need to secure the banks in the event of another financial crash.

Now the IMF has come out with a tax – the IMF, the “International Monetary Fund”, an unelected body that is not your government or mine – of around 10% (and you have already paid tax in your country on that money) on all your assents, all the money that you have, in savings, current account, pension funds and -plans, etc. And this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg (no, not the lettuce kind).

Not so long ago the German Finance Minister, I believe, stated that all financial assets of everyone in the European Union could be subject to seizure should the governments and/or the EU leadership so degree in case of need. Remember they are talking about the money that you have worked for and saved and have in one or the other bank account. And no, before you run to the bank to get your money out; that is not going to work as they have already “safeguards” against that in place in that you will need – at least it is thus already in the UK – a good reason to withdraw cash above a certain amount (with some banks that is above £500 with others above £1000) and that in writing please. Even then the bank may decide that your reason to get your money (in cash) is not good enough.

Changing your money, slowly but surely, over into gold or silver coins, as some survivalist websites and magazines in the USA advise, is not going to be of any use either and you know why? Because you can't buy anything for gold or silver coins; they are not accepted in shops as “legal tender”.

Guess we'll all have to come up with something better...

© 2014

Beyond the Fear of Living Without Money

Living without money is an issue that many are concerned about but not many people are talking about solutions. Many of us already live in either poverty or near poverty levels.  Is the answer found in government assistance and the material world or is it found in going beyond this ego-centered, materialistic world and finding a new way of living?

The world’s economy is based on economics, which is backed by the banking system that is designed to create debt.  For example, imagine that I am your local conglomerate bank and there was only $100 in existence. If I lent you that $100 and expected you to pay me back $110, how can you possibly do this when there is only $100 in existence?  Where are you going to come up with that $10 extra dollars that never existed? This is the global Ponzi scheme that banksters have been playing since the inception of currency.

The mainstream media continues to push ego-centered, materialistic programming while its advertisers support this mentality.  In the meanwhile, we are blinded by reality as we play into the system that has entrapped us as being economic slaves to the elite.  It’s a no-win situation.  The rich get richer at the expense of our hard work. Is this our true, divine reason for being here?

Read more: http://www.bodymindsoulspirit.com/beyond-the-fear-of-living-without-money/

‘We need to ask who should be allowed to create money’

Ben Dyson talks about the progress made by Positive Money in sparking the debate about monetary reform over the past four years

The last six months have been full of breakthroughs for the movement to democratise money. Since 2010 we’ve been working to raise awareness of the fact that the same banks that caused the financial crisis currently create 97% of the money in our economy and decide where that money goes.

One of the early challenges was simply getting people to believe that banks create money. Even the UK Treasury would reply to letters from members of the public with the line: “Banks have no authority to create money, digital or otherwise.” But this argument was settled in March 2014 when the Bank of England released the paper Money Creation in the Modern Economy, in which they explained that “the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans.” This confirmation from the Bank of England has already led some university lecturers to update their teaching on money and banking, and means that the debate can move on to the crucial issue of who should be allowed to create money.

The Positive Money movement continues to grow online and offline, with more than 30,000 followers on Facebook and 30 local groups around the UK (15 new groups have been set up this year alone). These local groups host film screenings, reading groups and run stalls at festivals. In addition, our members have been contacting MPs, local councillors, like-minded grassroots societies and the media to raise awareness of the fundamental problems with money. Internationally, there are now groups in 21 different countries, with Swiss group MoMo launching a petition that aims to get 100,000 signatures calling for a referendum on monetary reform.

Read more: http://positivenews.org.uk/2014/economics_innovation/16199/allowed-create-money/

Why silver and gold won't protect you from the economic collapse that's coming

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Silver and gold, especially in the form of so-called trade rounds, are often advocated by people in the survivalist community – who also have a vested interest in doing so – as the currency after the event of an economic collapse or such like.

However, silver and gold coins, and even less so bullion, will not be accepted as a means of exchange, that is to say as currency, by anyone after such an event and the reason for this is first and foremost that no one has the faintest idea as to how to value such coins nowadays.

There may come a time, long after the initial collapse, that such coins will become the coin of the realm, so to speak, again but even that is questionable. Thus acquiring and hoarding such – and investing money in them – would be more than foolish.

Mean of exchange after an economic collapse or other such or similar event will not be silver and gold coins or bullion, unlike it was the case after the two world wars and during the Great Depression but skills and products and, yes, the original currency of the country, in cash. Anyone who thinks and believes otherwise will be in for a very rude awakening.

The skills that will enable you to barter for things you want and need and cannot produce yourself will also not be academic or high-tech but will be skills of the hand and of working the land. Anyone not possessing such skills will do well to learn them and, in addition to that, it will be advisable to keep money, in the form of the currency of the realm, in cash somewhere safely stashed.

Look at the sites that advocate silver and gold coins and also bullion and think laterally when you see all the adverts for the vendors of such coins and bullion advertising on the site (or in the magazines). It should give you some idea as to why they are advocating such as means of economic exchange. They pander to their advertisers or, alternatively, they are very naïve and believe that people really will accept silver and gold coins and precious metal in other forms as means of payment for goods and services.

This, as said, while that worked after the two world wars will not in the modern world when the economy collapses or the political structure as we know it today, and it will. The reason is a simple one. After World War One and World War Two people still understood the value of silver and gold, having not so long ago had such coins in their currencies, very much in the way that the Pound notes in Britain did state “I promise to pay the bearer one, five, or whatever Pounds Sterling” and the Sterling here referred too Sterling Silver. It was directly valued against the value of such silver. Not any longer and thus the belief that such coins will be accepted are total hogwash.

The means of economic exchange after a collapse will be barter, and that means skills or products, and cash, and, maybe, much later, when the current cash no longer circulates, in the form of tokens, alternative currencies, and, maybe, later still, once again in silver and gold. Though I cannot see going any further than the alternative currency part, to be very honest. “Money” issued by regions, towns, villages, and such like, similar to today's Ithaca Hours, Mountain Hours, LETS (local exchange trading systems) or such like.

So, invest in skills and lay by cash, and don't waste money and time on acquiring silver or gold. Be wise not foolish.

© 2013

Living below your means

Living not just within your means but below it

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Far too many people are living (well) above their means and cannot make ends meet. They live from paycheck to paycheck and often rely on so-called “pay-day lenders” to tide them over to the next payday. This is no way to carry on.

Many people are struggling financially and many without much fault of their own. But some financial hardships are self-inflicted in trying to keep us with the Joneses, so to speak.

Ordering take-outs most days of the week is not a good idea but many who live just around the breadline do just that, and not just only that, to cause themselves and their families problems in the financial sector.

We must, also for the sake of the Planet, all learn to live (well) beneath out means.

“But how do I do that”, I now hear many as, “with the cost of everything?”

First of all reduce needs and, especially, wants, for many perceived needs are all but wants. Then learn to reuse, repurpose and make as much as possible yourself.

Also change what you eat and here especially reducing meat in your and your family's diet. (Believe me I would not have believed it myself some while back that I'd ever say that).

Then reduce food waste by cooking from scratch and by learning how to use leftovers.

When it comes to food reduce your costs by cutting out meat at least once a week or, better still, go almost vegetarian by restricting yourself to meat only on Sundays and special occasions, as used to be the case for most people not so long ago even.

While it is true that many people in dire straights are not entirely – and I do stress the word entirely – responsible for the financial difficulties there are a huge number who are, or who are doing little to nothing to help themselves, and this even and especially among those who live from paycheck to paycheck. And the main problem is the desire to keep up with the neighbors as to possessions.

This is not a way to go about things when one already does not have the mean to do so and when one is just about able to make ends meet.

What does it matter whether the neighbors have a new car, a new large screen LCD TV, or whatever? They may not actually be able to afford it themselves either and have run up debt to pretend that they can. No need to keep up with them. It is not a race, it is not a competition.

There is not need to partake in such “games” of one-upmanship for, if your car is OK, your TV fine (though I would even go as far as suggest ditching your TV altogether), etc., then those wishes for new are not needs at all. Often, as said already, the needs that we perceive are nothing but wants.

There is no need for a new cellphone, a new computer, or whatever simply because there are new models out or a neighbor or friend has or gets a new one. But too many people fall into this trap. It is not good for our finance and it is also bad for the Planet.

Our needs – on al levels – are far removed, often, from our wants. But the latter are all too frequently confused for and with the former. Needs are one thing and wants a different one altogether and we must learn to differentiate between the two.

It is wants, all too often, perceived as needs and mistaken for them, that many times lead people into financial difficulties as they then try to, instead of saving up for something that they want, have immediately and look for instant gratification and forego real needs in order to fulfil their wants and desires, sometimes by means of loans with exorbitant interest rates (in the form of credit cards).

Living below your means is a skill for sure and especially a mindset and it requires first of all discipline.

It means to make do with fewer wants and to live frugally, making do with what you already have got and also to make things you need (and want) yourself, including from what others regard as waste, as trash, even.

Being frugal used to be the way in most households at least until the late 1970s after which the keeping up with the neighbors by whatever means became the name of the game. So far even that families who prided themselves on their frugal ways were and are still considered odd and eccentric.

In fact being frugal is being considered, in this time of economic downturn and austerity, as an act, and I kid you not, by the authorities, akin to terrorism. How far have we come from how things should be and used to be and how far have we become removed from reality.

Regardless of how and what the powers-that-be do and think frugality is what we should and must strive for, especially for the sake of the Planet, but also for our wallet.

We cannot continue on the consumption bandwagon the way many have done and do, even when they actually do not have the means to do so, just because the government says that we need to buy our way out of the crisis. It just will lead from one crisis to another.

There are many ways to live below your means but to understand what your needs and wants are is where to begin and then reducing the stuff you buy. You wallet and the Planet will be happier for it and so will you in the end.

© 2013

Only cash makes anonymous payments possible

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Only cash (and we are not talking here about Johnny with the same surname) makes a nonymous payments possible and secures and ensures individual freedom.

Using the cashless payment system, which is being pushed on all of us by all the banks and by the government(s), on the other hand, we open the door to the surveillance state with each and every transaction and every item bought registered by some government computer.

In fact each and every transaction and every item purchased – so if you don't want them to know how much ammo or how many knives or how much storage food you buy don't use your debit or credit card – regardless of where and what shows up in the statistics and are available to the spy agencies at the click of a mouse.

There are many people who suggest that in order to be prepared for a time of crisis you should have silver and gold coins as means of cash currency but that is utter baloney as no one today, almost, will deal in that material, Cash,as in greenbacks, Pound notes or Euro is what you need and not precious metal coins.

There will be no shopkeeper or trader who is going to accept silver or gold coins after the proverbial hits the air moving device, not one, and not for a while to come thereafter. Cash, as in currency of the realm, is going to be king and not some trade round in silver or gold.

Thus, rather than investing in those get a safe, the best you can afford, and have at least some of your money at home in this place. While this may be considered nearly as bad as having your savings stashed under the mattress it is a great deal better than that and it also means that you can get at your cash as and when you need it when the chips are down.

The amount that you see on your bank statement is just a promissory note, so to speak, and IOU, which the bank promised to pay you but, when the chips are down and the ATMs not working then this is but an empty promise. There is no way that you can get at it and as the people in Cyprus learned when the government decides to have to pay for a bail-out they will, quite happily, seize your saving and your assets held in your accounts at the banks.

We have always been told that having cash at home was bad because burglars could take it from you and that having in the banks was a great deal safer, and this claim has been going on for ages. However, already the Great Depression showed the world of savers that having their money in a bank was not the safest way to go as the banks could not, actually, pay them back the money.

In fact, if everyone would go to take their money back from the banks they actually would collapse as they would not have the cash to hand to actually pay everyone. Banks do not have all the cash of all the people in some vault somewhere; far from it. Most of the money that they “hold” is, in fact, lent out to people and corporations and they have a great problem fulfilling even the requests to pay out several thousands in whatever currency and, in addition to that, paying for anything at around a thousand Pounds Sterling, in the UK, or the same in Dollars in the US, will, more than likely immediately bring the police into the game as sellers have to, by law, inform the police immediately if and when someone tenders cash in large sums for payment and they will stall you for so long until the police arrives on scene.

However, having said that, when the proverbial hits the air moving device or has hit it then cash will truly be kind (once again) as no one will be accepting debit or credit cards or even checks. Those will then just be worthless pieces of plastic or paper, nothing more. Only real money – and not even, as said already, gold and silver coins – will be accepted as payment, or you will have to revert to barter trade.

While barter will work with individuals, maybe, it will not, however, do so with shopkeepers and other traders, at least not for some time after the event. Thus the coin of the real, so to speak, is what will be needed, at least, as said, for some time to come after any breakdown scenario, aside from barter amongst individuals and groups.

If you want to make purchases, now or later, without leaving, especially in our current surveillance society, a paper or electronic trail then you will have to have cash ready to hand with which to conduct business.

However, because the powers-that-be do not like to be kept in the dark they try to push everything towards a cashless economy and society and are almost as far as outlawing cash for all but the most trivial of purchases. I can see a time coming not far hence when shops will no longer be allowed to take cash for purchases over hundred Pounds or Euro, or will have to involve the police if sums above such an amount are being tendered.

Our governments claim that the cashless payments are for our protection so that we do not have to carry (vast amounts of) cash around with us but in reality things are rather different and we best understand that now. It has noting to do, in the same way as CCTV cameras and other surveillance measures, with our safety and security but everything to do with government wanting to know what we buy and where we buy the things that we buy.

The problem is, however, that the majority accept the claims by the governments and swallow what they are told hook, line and sinker. And they, unfortunately, do that also with regards to CCTV and other surveillance measures directed against each and every one of us, spying into every nook and cranny of our lives. If you want to make anonymous purchases then cash is the only answer or barter or alternative currencies; nothing else will work.

© 2013

Labor was the first price, the original purchase money

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Labor was the first price, the original purchase money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased. ~ Adam Smith (No relation, not even a distant one).

The original purchase price of everything was labor not even barter, per se, though it was bartering of a kind in which you exchanged labor for the things that you could not produce yourself or bartering for them with the good you had produced by your own labor.

Gold and silver, and later paper money, often backed by absolutely nothing even though it used to say on the British Pound notes (paper bills) “I promise to pay the bearer x-amount of Pound Sterling”, meaning silver in weight, the promise was worth very little to nothing, came much later.

Labor as purchase price remained the currency in many places, by means of barter, even while money was already in use, and even into the twentieth century.

The real change in this way of buying and selling, however, on an individual bases was beginning to come to an end with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the move of people – aided and abetted by land clearances – into the towns and cities to work in the factories where they then got a pittance for their labor. Bartering for goods and services via one's own labor was then, no longer, possible.

This is why the organized labor of workers was and still is the only viable or appropriate response to the organized greed of capitalist business owners.

The love of money, as the Bible says, became the root of all manner of evil things and this is still to day the same as centuries ago, with the capitalists wanting more and more profit for themselves and their shareholders on the backs of the workers, regardless whether in factories or offices or in the field.

The love of money, of the fake means of exchange, which is not and never has been fair, really, is what has caused the destruction, also, of much of the natural environment, the health of the people and the Planet.

Greed, for money, lands, natural resources, and whatever else we can think of, has been the causal agent for wars and conflicts throughout the ages and even more so in the modern world, with oil being now the prime factor and the profits that it brings.

The demand for Lebensraum (living space) in the East, and especially the want to control the bread basket of the Ukraine and the oil fields of the Caspian Sea was one of the main reasons for Nazi Germany's treacherous attack on the Soviet Union in 1940, together with the racial purity ideas of having to wipe certain groups of peoples off the face of the Earth.

The warmongers and especially the armaments industry in Germany made money from all sides as Krupp guns were equally used by the Germans, the Americans and the Soviets, initially. Others too made their profit from this war (and others before and after), sacrificing the working class in the wake, and after the war they were willing to start all over again, planning constantly to attack the countries of the Warsaw Pact, including and especially the German Democratic Republic.

In the time between the two world wars Krupp (and they, probably, we not the only ones) held their workers much like slaves. The children of the workers had to attend the company's schools, workers were (partly) paid in tokens to be exchanged for goods at Krupp owned stores and they lived (predominately) in Krupp owned houses. And the little field that the women and younger children worked on which to grow food such as potatoes, cabbages and beets were also owned by the company. And, as said, Krupp was not the only firm that operated in that way. Workers were no more than serfs or villeins though not to a sovereign but to the company. Same thing, just different master.

If we ever are going to change things then money (and the love of it) will have to be consigned to the pages of history and we must start again with a system where one's labor, once again, is the unit of currency and not some metal or a piece of paper, the latter which is nothing more than an IOU.

As I have said so many times, we do not need a new government; we need a new system. A system based on the old and real values rather than values artificially created.

© 2013